This is just the way it is

Water #2, Work in Progress

For the first time since I started this blog, I’ve let an entire week pass between posts. I had to make another unexpected trip to New York to check on my elderly mother-in-law, who is forgetting the names of household items and alarming her friends. She was annoyed that her 1999 IBM desktop computer had stopped working (at least five years ago, actually, but she wouldn’t give up on it), so I dismantled it and hauled it off to the recycling center. But no, this child of the Great Depression thought I should bring it to “the man who fixes things” because it’s only thirteen years old and she paid a lot for it! I tried to explain that that’s just not how things work now, although I do think she’s got a point.

After a couple of doctors’ appointments and meetings with caregivers, I drove back home, beating back the anxiety about being away from my work for several days. In New Haven, over a solo road dinner, I finally reached an understanding. This is the way it is. There’s no perfect time, no perfect situation, for doing creative work. After my initial sixty day commitment, I had immediately started phase two of my renewed life of an artist–the permanent phase, in which my art and the other parts of my life aren’t compartmentalized, but integrated with each other in a way that allows growth and nourishment on all fronts. Or so I told myself. Easier said than done.

A friend and colleague  from my former job, recently retired, invited me to her piano recital last weekend, and I was happy to go. She seemed entirely in her element on the stage, fluid and relaxed, as she introduced her program and explained how she had returned to music. She told the story of receiving a beautiful grand piano as a gift from her husband 25 years ago, taking it up briefly then, and drifting away from it while she tended to other parts of her life. Ten years ago she decided to try again. She found a teacher, who told her she would make progress if she set aside a couple of hours every morning to practice. At my old job, it was well known that she came in late every day, and worked late to make up for it, but I never knew why she did that. Now I know; she was at home, quietly becoming a musician. She promised herself that she would celebrate her 70th birthday by having a recital and inviting family and friends, and here we were. When she played, it was clear that the daily practice had brought her to another place in her life. She was a pianist, and she played beautifully. I was inspired.

I was finally able to get back into the studio for a couple of days this week and make some progress on the raindrops painting. It’s  progressing much like the Beavertail rocks painting did; I see where I need to go with it. I just need to make several thousand brushstrokes, each one deliberately placed, to get there. In the studio today, I played Debussy’s Preludes in the background. It seemed like a fitting tribute to my friend Anne, as she turns 70, a musician again.

Fightin’ words

#2 Work in Progress

A couple of weeks ago, while my dog and I walked along the pond in the park, what had started as a sunny, cool day suddenly turned showery. I ducked under a tree (Puck didn’t care about the rain and trotted away, nose to the ground) and noticed, at the edge of the pond, the tree dipping thin branches into the water and raindrops falling between the leaves. The water in the shadows had a rich mahogany and purple surface, and the lighter areas glowed silvery gray. The leaves were just turning red.  I took out my camera and took a few minutes of video; then the sun returned just as suddenly. I’m so glad I was there. That’s what I’m painting now.

I realized today that the mental language I use while I’m painting is all pugilistic: I’m wrestling it to the ground, I’m whipping into shape, I’m battling, struggling, fighting, tussling. I’m winning. Or losing. This painting has been a battle from the beginning, maybe because the moment I’m trying to recreate was so magical and ephemeral. I saw it and I knew I wanted to paint it, and maybe that certainty gets in the way of the dialogue that needs to happen before a painting happens. I don’t know. I have so much to learn.

But if this sounds like I’ve been defeated, that’s wrong. (There it is again. Defeat! Victory!) I’m energized by the struggle. Every evening while I clean up and get ready to leave, I can’t wait to get back to it again. Tomorrow, maybe. I’ll wrestle it to the ground. I’ll nail it. I’ll win.

 

India Point

Morning at India Point

I let this sit for a couple of days before posting the final. I had to make sure I wasn’t going to pick up a brush and keep poking at it. As it turns out, I didn’t. I had been concerned about some areas of spatial ambiguity that I had worked and reworked until I was satisfied, and I guess I was afraid my perception would shift again. But the space reads as it should, I think.

I’ve started the next in the series; very different, but a continuation of the investigation of time passing and energy shifting on water. I’m excited by where this might take me. I haven’t been able to pursue an idea in depth for a long time, maybe not since graduate school. That kind of focus just wasn’t part of my daily life. I’m grateful for the chance to do that now.

Work/Life

I think the new reality of having a job in America – a “professional” class job, maybe what used to be called “white collar” – is the expectation that you’ll put in so many hours both in the office and outside it that your job and your outside life will become one seamless web of obligations that never ends. I’d gotten so accustomed to getting to work and paying my household bills or making doctor’s appointments for my kids, then later, getting home and checking and responding to work emails, that it hardly seemed to matter where I was. There were endless demands on my time, and I just had to keep going to meet them. In this new life in art, I’m trying to change that. I’m trying to think of my studio as a sacred space, reserved for one purpose only, to paint. In order to do that, I feel I need some kind of ritual to make the transition from home to studio. Lately I’ve been just taking my painting jeans with me, and changing into them once I get there, an irrefutable signal that I’m here to work. I’m not sure how effective that’s been. I need to learn to stop reading just one more article in the New York Times, or checking the baseball scores, or calling one of my sisters to say hello, or logging in to Facebook. My painting demands my full attention. Even if I only have a couple of hours for it – especially if I only have a couple of hours for it – I need to give it all of me in order to make any progress and be true to the work. Since starting yoga practice several weeks ago, I’m finding it easier to close my eyes, settle in for some deep breathing, and be here now. I’ll keep working on that. I think it’s key.

Matt Bollinger
A few days ago I travelled down to Manhattan to see a solo show that one of my studio neighbors is currently having at the Zurcher Studio on Bleecker Street. Matt Bollinger is a young painter who works with large scale graphite drawings and torn and collaged colored paper to make gorgeous, evocative images of fraught moments in the lives of suburban adolescents. I love their obsessive handmade quality, the references to ubiquitous brand names that ground the images to a specific time and place, and the human scale of the drawings that makes the viewer witness to the drama. Well worth the trip to New York, although I could have just knocked on his door to ask him what was up with all that tearing paper noise.(Matt’s in the studio next door to me. I think one of his work rituals is to crank up his music, forcing me to do the same here. No problem!) I think he has a substantial career ahead of him.

Deadlines!

India Point, in progress, 10.10.11

My years in publishing instilled in me a respect for/fear of deadlines that for better or worse, I can’t shake. I know I need to finish these six paintings by December, and not only because I have 39 Kickstarter backers who have put their faith in me, although that’s a very big deal. I’m keenly aware that I’ve endowed these next six paintings with a heavy burden of significance for my future as a painter. Maybe that’s foolish, but honestly, I find that it helps me stay focused. I can’t pretend that I have forever to make this work, and I have to prove to myself that I can do it.

On Saturday we were finally able to make the trip to see Chris’s mother, who’s nearing 90, lives alone and recently fell on her back in her bedroom. Although she wasn’t seriously injured, and she was able to call her pastor for help, it was still a distressing event for her and for us. I spent Saturday and Sunday running errands for her and making sure her support system is in place. We live 200 miles away, and she is adamant that she will not move to Providence, ever, so we have to do what we can when we see her. But as I drove the winding roads through the Hudson Valley from grocery store to pharmacy to hardware store, the drumbeat of unfinished business at home pulsed steadily in my head. I needed to get back to the studio. Soon.

So today I finally made it here, and was able to pick up the thread on the India Point painting quickly. I stopped when I made a mess of it (see pic). I’m not concerned right now; I’ll get it back again. What I see here is that I am trying to maintain the structure of the painting while giving free rein to the playfulness of the line. The balance skews back and forth between them. I love the dialogue.

But what I realized over the weekend, while I struggled with the pull of competing life roles, is that after all these years of not painting, I am actually a better painter now than I was when I was younger. I have more patience, more resolve, better focus, more persistence. I have better command of the materials and a sharper vision.

Most importantly, though, I have a strong conviction that it’s okay for me to take up this much space in the world. Old school feminists (and I was/am one) used to talk a lot about how women’s body language – crossed legs, elbows drawn in – was designed to diminish the spatial impact that a woman makes in the world. But making a painting – making a suite of large paintings – makes a territorial statement that can’t be denied. Yes, I made this, and I think you should look at it. I think it will make your life better in some small way. That’s an ambition that I couldn’t really claim when I was younger. I felt more apologetic, accommodating. Not so much anymore. Now, I say, here’s my work. I think it’s worth putting out in the world. I hope it reaches you on some level. If not, well, that’s okay.

I think I can pull this together tomorrow and finish it up. I hope so. The deadline looms!

I once was lost…

Starting a new painting is like wandering into the woods in the dark. You grope the trees, take many wrong turns, maybe walk in a circle a couple of times. But you keep on going, until you begin to recognize something that looks like a path. I’m starting to see the beginnings of the path through the India Point painting. It came to me today; I suddenly saw a diagonal structure in this painting that I had completely missed previously, a geometric underpinning to all the organic forms I’d been painting. At that moment, I started to make sense of the painting. I started to see the way the winds had crossed and formed triangles on the surface, and the strong line demarcating a shift in currents slashing the view. Why had it taken me three days of viewing video to finally see it? I think I never would have seen it if I hadn’t spent three days trying to paint it, feeling frustrated that the forms were falling apart. I went back to India Point this morning to look again, and I still didn’t understand what I was seeing until late this afternoon in the studio. It’s such an amazing moment, that moment when you feel that you know what you’re doing in a painting. I actually felt my heart beating faster, warmth rising to my face, something like pure joy, even. Admitting those emotions feels almost too confessional, like I’m describing a moment of intimacy that I should be embarrassed to share. But I’m thinking that this is part of my evolution from who I needed to be at work – ironic, cool, detached, efficient – to this more authentic version of myself: vulnerable, productively lost, and grateful to find the path again.

Providence River at India Point, Work in Progress

Still a long way to go.

The River

I didn’t expect to be here today; we were planning a visit to my mother-in-law’s in the Hudson Valley today, but my husband’s lingering migraine kept us home. I felt relieved, actually, to be able to take this gift of unexpected time and put in a few hours’ work.
True, it doesn’t look like much yet. This is the first of my six paintings project, the beginning of the deliberate investigation into the subject matter of water. I’m happy with the size, 48″ x 48″; not huge, but big enough for impact. This is the Providence River at India Point Park, just before it flows out into Narragansett Bay. From the edge of the city park to the horizon as it heads out to sea, rusted urban junk alongside great blue herons, and the river, churning blue-violet in some places and silvery smooth in others, criss-crossed by currents and rippled from boat wakes. I like this place. There’s a lot to look at.
This painting poses some of the same challenges that Cape Wind did. I was attracted to the way the various forces worked on the surface of the water, but the effect is so fleeting you can only see it in movement. My experience of the place and the time (early morning) included hearing and feeling the wind, and I wanted it all in the painting. The experience is temporal, but the painting is static. Conveying an illusion of time as well as space…that’s the challenge. And my love of the material, the paint, the canvas, is rooted in the past.
I’m finding that it really does help me to have a plan for the next six paintings. I like the idea of a series, of taking a concept through stages of inquiry and experiment without knowing where it will end up. This painting, so far, has not quite revealed itself to me, but I am open to its possibilities.

India Point 1 (Work in progress)