Laurelines

2014, cutting up and letting go

Two things I learned last year in the studio:

Thing One:

    I am in love with texture, shapes, color... the materiality of my stuff. Seeing brushmarks on board or paper makes me giddy with delight, euphoric. That, and the drive to respond to the chi, the energy that is in and through all things, are the reasons why I paint and draw. It comes to that.

Thing Two:

When I follow my inner prompts, I go places. I know now to stay tuned.... and move aside... when I hear the call of the (inner) wild.

So, having learned all of that:

I'm going to spend the rest of this month playing with paint on big sheets of paper... making all kinds of marks and textures and shapes on page after page.

This will loosen me up and make me happy. The sheets of paper will be used--- maybe, maybe not, who knows how--- as elements in future paintings and illustrations.

See! Look what happened just this morning as I was cleaning up my studio! While filing away old sheets of paper on which I tested colors last year, I really looked at their surfaces for the first time. And picked up my scissors and started cutting. Birds happened. (The big one is maybe 12" across.) A whale happened.

So, cutting up (which also means, in American English, to act in a silly and/or noisy way) and letting go.

Letting go of my need to control. Letting go of foregone conclusions. Is there any art more boring than the same stuff cranked out year after year, where the artist knows exactly what the piece is going to be at the outset? Ugh. 

Of course, I haven't abandoned all need for structure. I'm just minimizing it in my art life.

With another painting show slated for next fall and with, I hope, continued illustration assignments this year, there'll be enough structure in my work days.

Of course, my thinking self is still (mostly) in charge of my wild self. It's a lively pas de deux.  

In 2014, I'll be painting, drawing, writing, cutting up. I'll be using acrylics, inks, pens, pencils, crayons, scissors, glue, and watercolors.

So, from this morning, a watercolor sketch, on pastel paper, of a hyacinth in my studio.  

In 2014, I'll also be traveling (of course) and I'll be starting a secret (for now) drawing project, the idea of which just came to me yesterday!  I'll tell more as the days go on. I'm excited and happy!

Are you coming with?

Norway 2013 sketches, resumed!

My scanner seems, for now, to be working again, so I've decided to postpone the 2014 Plan post so I can, at last, share these! We are turning back to Norway, where I was this time last month.

There is something so profoundly calming about the northern Norway coastal landscape in winter. It is the opposite, in my mind, at least, of Icelandic landscape, which teems and pulses with energy.

 

The café in Ersfjordbotn was the one warm and open place we found during our stay in that small fishing village near Tromsø. We walked through the snow to this cozy place every day and ate things we should not have.  They were delicious ;D.

Lanterns and candles are used everywhere and all day in Norway, in a valiant effort to illuminate the dark December days. I loved this cozy café corner, with its candlesticks, lantern, strings of lights.

 The Oslo Opera House is rightfully noted for its stunning architecture. An equally stunning sculpture, all crystalline and icy-looking, seems to float in the fjord behind the Opera House. 

And here is one last look at the rugged mountains and valleys of northern Norway, drawn quick, quick, quick as our ship made its stately progression ever northward.

Next up: the Plan! It's still January, it's definitely still 2014. All is well!