Funny How Things Sort Themselves Out

There were a few days in the last week when I attempted to work on some small garden-friendly sculptures for the art fair. I have this idea for garden totems, first conceived when writing my novel last fall. But while I am convinced the concept is good, the execution was a different matter altogether. Not only do I not have the strength and lack of discomfort to wield hammer and chisel, I don't even have it with power tools. There may be tools out there I could use, but they seem to be very expensive, costing more than I am likely to make even with 100% sales. So there I was, with a concept stuck in my head and wanting to come out, and the materials at hand, but without the physical ability to accomplish it. Kinda like the time in college and after, when my hearing loss went from severe to profound, that dividing line between being able to use a telephone with amplification and not being able to use it at all.

Today is Father's Day and we will be visiting my parents and having steaks on the grill. Nick will be going with us, so we can also visit with him on the drive there and back. While at the farm I will rummage around for assemblage bits (at Mom and Dad's invitation) and perhaps try out Dad's bandsaw, a tool suggested by a clerk at Lowe's who was trying to figure out what I could use to at least do the rough cutting on the wood posts I am using as the core of the totems. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. The only reason I am pushing this is because the art fair isn't far off and I have the complete ideas for them in my head, plus nearly all of the materials at hand. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother. Honestly.

I brought this up to Steve a couple of days ago during one of our pleasant coffee breaks on the deck. It is as if my brain, adjusting to a new sort of way of being (must everything be labeled a "handicap?"), is allowing me to settle down enough to specialize--and in this case to specialize in painting. My 3-dimensional urges seem to be satisfied by my gardening hobby. When I try to do more, the pain and fatigue set in. Steve not only agreed that this was happening, but gave me examples of others this happened to, such as Charles Darwin and Marcel Proust. While I certainly do not for a moment consider myself a genius, I do feel the utter truth of the syndrome in my own modest life.

And talk about confirmation: I sent the attached image in an email to my parents to give them an idea of the sort of thing I have been painting lately. They are not particular fans of my work in the past, so I only sent it as a way of staying in touch. To my surprise, mom liked it so much she asked if I could do a portrait of Dad and his tractor in this manner. I am flabbergasted!

The Bottom Line

My top priority right now is getting art done for the art fair. Everything, including the fair itself, takes a back seat to that. If I can just keep my mind and effort focused on that for the next six weeks, I will have a nice body of work for that event and beyond. So I set my goals: seven garden-friendly assemblages and seven paintings, all of various sizes. I hope to have more, but that will be enough, seven new works in each medium. I have three paintings so far, although two need further work. No assemblages as of yet, but we will see. If my body and mind balk at doing assemblages, why then I will keep painting.

I do not currently spend enough concentrated time on production, so that is one thing that has to change. If I simply make the decision to not get involved in busywork, dinner parties, and large house and garden projects, it should be possible for me to have a decent production of work. Non-working time can still be working time if I am thinking or reading something relevant to work. Working in the garden or driving to the grocery store is inane enough to allow me to think about compositions.

No matter what I read or think or learn about other artists and things going on in the area, what I would like to achieve or do, it is irrelevant unless I have product to show for my time and intent. And that’s the bottom line. It doesn’t get any more real than that. The sales and the resume cannot happen without first having the product. This needs to be the summer of the product.

Ideally, I’d like it to be the year of the product, but we will see how things pan out at the end of summer. If I focus on product now, however, it increases the likelihood that the rest of the year can be about product, too. And after that, I'd stand a good chance of actually achieving something.

Sometimes the Little Things are Really Big Things

A couple of weeks ago I needed to stop at the local Hobby Lobby for a tube of Cadmium Yellow Medium and was pleasantly surprised to see that the store now stocks Daler-Rowney paints. Steve brought a few tubes of this brand with him from England, and they had a lightness and fluidity which reminded me of painting with oils. But he prefers to work with jars of paint and the only way we could get that brand in jars was online for high prices plus shipping, so we never replenished the Daler-Rowneys. I grabbed their Cad yellow plus tubes of Process Yellow, Cyan, and Magenta, and used them to finish and glaze the painting I was working on. I completely fell in love with them, and Steve encouraged me to replace all my paints with the Daler-Rowneys. He didn't have to twist my arm to get that done!

The change is thrilling. It's easier than ever to get the happy colours I love, and the process of painting with these acrylics is the closest I've ever come to the musicality of painting with oils. There is much less drag on the brush and colour depth is much easier to control, preventing "dead" paint areas, even with the earth tones. I'm going to rework a painting from a couple of months ago, gessoing over the dead areas and redoing them with the new paints. The painting's composition is excellent and thus worth rescuing.

Funny how something so minor as metal tubes of paint can impact the larger art process. They appeal to my frugality, as it is easier to squeeze out the last bits from a metal tube as opposed to the vinyl ones. The intensity of the pigment means a little can go a long way, especially the way I paint.

We went to the library yesterday afternoon to get a change of reading material and the librarian suddenly looked up at me and said, "I saw one of your paintings at my sister-in-law's." Small world! But as we chatted I recalled the painting and the buyer. Bit by bit I will achieve World Domination, huh? The aforementioned painting is in the owner's bathroom, incidentally. My art as a special sort of contemplative device....gotta love it!

The local resale shop beckons me every now and again because they offer lots of craft castoffs and leftover bits at prices like ten cents a bundle, plus homemade knicknack shelves every now and again. It's a gold mine for assemblage material. Last week's foray produced large and small wood boxes, frames, a needlepoint frame, office trays, several doll and craft bits, boxes of test tubes and microscope slides, and a bundle of strange red plastic threads which surely will find their way into something equally strange from my imagination. $18 bought all of this plus two like-new sleeveless summer tops. Working from already-made boxes and framing devices saves a lot of wear and tear on my hands, not to mention time and money. And what I do spend goes to charity, which is an extra bonus.

The Art Fair is shaping up and we already have enough participants to make for a nice event. Steve and I have agreed that this year we will only set up one tent and display only our own art, to cut down on our workload and increase our chances of making some money. He has suddenly started painting again, and has produced several true abstracts, of a lightness of spirit that is appealing. We have both agreed that we are going to paint what we like, but also what we like to look at, and sell them for reasonable prices. There is a time and place for the political and the dark, but there is also a time and place for the joyful and beautiful and fun.