A Meditation

People ask what I think about when I paint. I tell them I go into a different space - a space that is open and free, one that thinks of nothing but the paint and its movement. I call this place my Zen space. For A Meditation, I went into this space and turned control of the brush over to my hand. Later, I wrote a haiku about the experience.

A Meditation

With minimalist

movement, brush yellow on white:

a meditation.

Centering/3

Centering/3, the third emotional response to covid-19, has been developing in my mind for almost a month. Yesterday, after a conversation with a friend, I finally had a clear direction of presentation.

What we do with fear determines how we survive. In Centering/3, use the thought of breath – breath as prayer, outgoing to incoming.

Into the Silence

It’s dark

when I cover my eyes,

safe,

and no one can see me

huddled in a corner

of my windswept mind,

waiting.

I could move,

go quickly,

fill my time with distractions,

or I could listen

to the whisper

that asks nothing

until I move into the silence

and breathe

a beginning.

Centering

Centering/2 - 12 x 9” - Mixed Media on Paper (graphite, brush pen)

For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a new series called Centering. When I first began, it was an inner need to stop an ever increasing mental chaos. I was searching for balance, for a more centered way of being and thinking.

Instead of my usual way of painting, I began drawing an abstract on paper. As I drew, I felt I was releasing my chaotic thoughts onto the white background, searching with pencil and black pen for a calm center. When the first drawing was finished, I knew I would do more, but at that point, I still thought it was just me in need of centering.

Thoughts of the second drawing began soon after the first was finished. The more it developed in my mind, the more I understood what I was doing - expressing an emotional response to the coronavirus.

In Centering/1 there is chaos - lines twisting and turning, going nowhere. The lines on the outside suggest walls - those walls that are implied from distancing.

In Centering/2, the lines for the walls are thicker as our isolation expands. The circle represents incomplete actions. The bench, loneliness. And the dashes dropping from the incomplete circle, sadness.

To be continued…

Worldinnerspace

I just finished reading You Must Change Your Life – The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin by Rachel Corbett. As of this date, it’s my favorite book of this year. I’ve always been a Rilke fan, reading and re-reading Letters to a Young Poet and Letters on Cezanne, but after reading You Must Change Your Life, I have more insight into the personalities, anxieties and gifts of both these men.

Three pages from the end of the book, I read words that reminded me of a painting I did in 2013. I named it “Becoming Whole” but didn’t think that said enough. I changed it to “As a Willow,” trying to bring out the tree that was part of the young man’s face. Today, I changed the title to “Worldinnerspace,” a word Rilke coined “to describe the space where the barriers between the internal and external collapsed onto a single plane. It is a realm where the self is like a bird flying soundlessly between the sky and the soul, he said. Rilke accepts the concept as both a contradiction and a reality in a poem titled “Worldinnerspace”: “O, wanting to grow, / I look out, and the tree grows in me,” he writes.

“Worldinnerspace” was painted in early February, 2013, 20 x 20” and is many layers of acrylic, some of which were poured over the entire canvas. I used brushes to develop the face, the partial faces and the tree.

At the Outdoor Cafe

In March, my friend Liz spent a couple of weeks in Paris and Berlin. Mixed in with brief texts about art galleries, museums, the cemetery where Susan Sontag was buried and The Shakespeare & Company bookshop were comments about cafe hopping. I began to see images of the outdoor cafes I had frequented while in Germany and I knew Paris would have even more. An integral part of life, the cafes offer a sense of community -  opportunities of conversation with both friends and strangers, a place to work or write while still among people. But cafes are also places to just be - places where no one gives a second thought to a person sitting alone with a drink, a book or a laptop.

Now you can create your own story about an afternoon at the outdoor cafe.

At the Outdoor Cafe was painted with acrylics and a palette knife.

They Come to Sing the Blues

For three years, I sang in a bar - just me and my guitar amidst the quiet and the rowdy, the depressed and the happy. If I sang something they knew, they joined in. If they didn't know the song, they kept talking or continued to stare into their chosen drink. When I took a break, they talked - about anything and everything.

This painting reminded me of those days and I thought of Billy Joel's Piano Man - the embattled aspirations of the people around the bar and how much easier it was to become another person in the dusky-dark of the place.

They Come to Sing the Blues is a satirical look at the people in the bar, singing with the piano man -  inhibitions dropped, personalities changed, singing to another life.

This painting used a limited palette of gray-green, black and white acrylic on watercolor paper and was created with a brush and a palette knife.

Dystopia

In this painting, the city is almost there but not quite. It’s imaginary – an imaginary place where everything is as bad as it can be (according to the British dictionary’s definition of dystopia). I choose to keep this as an imaginary place, the setting of novels and stories. I will let it make its own statement, let it be bold in its chaos and lack of physical definition.

“Dystopia” was created by layering acrylic paint then scraping and scratching (in various stages of drying) each layer to expose glimpses of the paint beneath. After applying the final layer of paints, I sprayed the canvas with water, once again scraping and scratching but not as deeply as with the other layers.

In “Dystopia,” I choose to see fantasy but I acknowledge the possibility of reality – a reminder that we all are responsible for our planet, our cities and towns, our citizens, ourselves.

Freeway

This morning, I heard that our infamous Spaghetti Junction in Dekalb County had received the dubious honor of being the most dangerous intersection in the United States for the third year in a row. I thought it was time to dust off an older painting and write about it.

I threw this painting in the trash three times. The last time I retrieved it, I submitted it to an exhibition in Nebraska and was stunned when it was accepted. Several weeks later, the curator of the exhibit contacted me, saying that “Freeway” had been a great hit at the show. (I didn’t tell him I had thrown it away three times.)

The original title was “Spaghetti Junction” – our slang for this crazy intersection of I-85 and I-285. When it was accepted for the exhibition, I changed the title to “Freeway” so Midwesterners would understand what the images represented. It is acrylic on canvas and was painted with palette knives, brushes and … a credit card. (Appropriate use of a credit card, don’t you think?)

Favorite Books of 2017

I subscribe to several newsletters, some of which mention books. I love books so I’m always interested in what people are reading. (If you\re a member of Goodreads, friend me!)

Around June last year, I received my weekly letter from Austin Kleon (austin@austinkleon.com) and he mentioned the book Montaigne by Stefan Zweig. After reading his comments and a book review, I purchased the book and thoroughly enjoyed it.

In December, I received a newsletter from Ryan Holiday (ryan@ryanholiday.net). This man reads a LOT of books! There was Zweig’s Montaigne again, which he called “brilliant, urgent,” and he listed it as one of his favorites read during 2017.

I decided to ask a few friends to send me the title of their favorite book they read in 2017. I wondered if there would be any repetitions and how many genres would be represented. The results were diverse with no repetitions! Here’s the list:

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Jane Austin at Home: A Biography by Lucy Worsley

A Place Called Freedom by Ken Follett

I Love Dick by Chris Kraus

A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

While I was Gone by Sue Miller

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

Citizen by Claudia Rankine

The Presidents Club by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy

Thinking about all the books I read in 2017, the one that kept returning to my mind was This Gladdening Light: An Ecology of Fatherhood and Faith by Christopher Martin.

If you’re looking for a good book, any of these would be a great place to start. Enjoy!

Until next time,

Linda

Stormy Night

Stormy Night was painted with brushes, knives and rags. I used this combination to create movement – storm against city. It is definitely a mood piece and could be interpreted literally or figuratively.

Out for a Swim

Often, the paint tells me what to do. That was the case in Out for a Swim. My original thought was to paint using layers, smears and a few geometric designs. Then I saw the fish. I changed course and created a water scene with fish swimming between glimmers of sun.

Woman on the Move

What started as a geometric pattern became a layered image of a woman moving through time. She’s complicated, intense, invigorated, determined. “Woman on the Move” was painted with palette knives and brush pens.

An Anthem for the Individual

I read Anthem by Ayn Rand years ago, but her words lingered. If we lose sight of our existence, we can be duped into following a "pied piper" and lose our individual identity. In Anthem, a young man and woman begin to see beyond the sterile community around them and leave to develop their own society based on individualism.

An Anthem for the Individual developed over a painting in progress. I used the brown and white already on the canvas as an underpainting and layered yellows with a palette knife. When the imagery began to emerge, I developed the city, using the edge of several palette knives to create a suggestion of a very stark looking urban setting. The darker yellows in the sky are hints of mountains in the distance. The lone figure leaving the building is the symbol for the individual. 

The Road

Is The Road literally an extended pathway of asphalt, dirt or gravel moving somewhere in the distance or figuratively, a mental journey of endless possibility?

After brushing and drying several coats of white paint on the canvas, I put down artist tape to outline a road that seemed to go on forever. I brushed on several coats of black in the space between the tape, let it dry and then removed the tape.

Using a minimalist approach, I wanted the viewer to ponder where she was and where she was going. 

Cable News

Cable News is a satirical look at the spewing of news, which seems endless. This house can no longer contain all the information from television, the internet and newspapers.

After gesso dried on the watercolor paper, I began to use a palette knife to randomly spread blue and white paint across the paper. As I worked it, a design began to form. While the first layer of paint was drying, the title floated across my mind and the fun began. I worked paper strips into certain areas to create a ticker-tape effect and looked for other media-like images to develop. I laughed as I painted, especially when I found a bucket and shovel hanging, ready to use to shovel the garbage that was spewing.