Beautiful Living Things

"Art is the Flower - Life is the Green Leaf. Let every artist strive to make his flower a beautiful living thing, something that will convince the world that there may be, there are, things more precious more beautiful - more lasting than life itself... you must offer real, living - beautifully coloured flowers - flowers that grow from, but above, the green leaf – flowers that are not dead – are not dying – not artificial – real flowers springing from your own soul – not even cut flowers - You must offer the flowers of the art that is in you – the symbols of all that is noble – and beautiful – and inspiring - flowers that will often change a colourless leaf - into an established and thoughtful thing." ~ Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Gold Fades Fast

As brillant as gold is, it doesn't last long. It fades as do all beautiful things.  Here I tried to freeze the brillance of gold in much the same way Van Gogh tried.  Our tools, however, differ tremendously.

This piece was originally painted on my iPad and exported to Photoshop Touch where I combined and blended it with a stone textured layer.  It was then exported to Photoshop, cropped and framed. I like to use different techniques on one piece and have been playing with the options since I got my iPad two years ago.  I am glad to now read about others doing this in the context of Adobe Creative Cloud promotion.  I am kicking around the concept of Creative Cloud.  It would be fun to work with all of Adobe's programs.

Flying with CS6

“Photoshop is a perfect bridge for me between traditional painting and the digital world. I use it without any extra plug-ins or fancy filters. Photoshop is definitely a tool that gives you an amazing feeling of creative freedom. I can compare using it to the freedom of movement found when flying a plane.”
-Jarek Kubicki from Spotlight on Jarek Kubicki where you can see his amazing images created in PS6.  Kubicki's web site is here. 

Art and Desire

"The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists: it is writing. Writing is: the science of the various blisses of language, its Kama Sutra (this science has but one treatise: writing itself).”
- Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

On some level I suspect that all successful art has this component of evoking the feeling of being desired. The viewer feels wanted and pulled in through experiencing the art. Perhaps a strange concept, but worth pondering. I kind of "get" it. Barthes' words desire me, and I will give them time by pondering the meaning.

Edgar Allan Poe's words desire me:

"Sometimes I'm terrified
of my heart; of its constant
hunger for whatever it is
it wants. The way it stops
and starts."

Barthes again:

“I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.”
-Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

The Mission: Gabriel's Obo and The Fall by Yo-Yo Ma wound and desire me. So does Cinema Paradiso: Looking for You from Giuseppe Tornatore Suite and Giuseppe Tornatore Suite: Malena and Philip Glass' Satyagraha: Evening Song. I suspect that music which touches me in a sensate way and which I have described for years as "so beautiful it hurts" is music that wounds and desires me.

And visual art? Oh my, so many works of color, texture, line, depth give me a feeling of being seduced and desired.  I cannot begin to name them all, but Starry Night by van Gogh not only seduces and desires me, it owns a piece of my heart.  Remember?

In the same vein, Barthes said:

“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.”

Do colors tremble with desire?  I think so.  Greens and blues whisper to each other and merge into the brilliance of turquoise.  Lines flirt until they connect or seductively avoid. Textures smile and wink when they "work together" in art. 

What art desires you? Have any works wounded or seduced you lately?

Mist and Fire

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

"There is a powerful kind of silence that engages my consciousness during my most centered and productive moments.  This inner space has a quality of active, very alive, utter stillness.  It is where I hear the voice of my creative muse most clearly."

~Leslie Montana

There are not enough days of stillness, but when they come, my insides hum with clarity and ideas.  The dogs sleep, the TV sleeps, no music floats on the air.  Only the gurgling noise of coffee brewing and a train whistle in the background can be heard.  I wear my robe all day; I forego makeup; I have never been more beautiful.  I cannot say that I am at peace, but I am at something somehow better...a joy of clarity.  I know things I have not known and am grateful for the insight.  I am a crucible of creativity, and there is mist and fire in the crucible. 

Golden Fleece

I have been away gathering fleece, but now I am back with a quotation that says a thing I believe with all my mind and heart:

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”  ~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Sometimes I think we get it backward. 

I have often heard artists refer to the act of creation as a spiritual expression whereby the great spirit (some might say the muse) works through the artist as an instrument.  This may be wrong; it could be the other way around.  Maybe our spirit swells up and spills out our humanity in color's passion, line's seductiveness, tone's modulation and design's intelligence.     

When considered from this angle, maybe the artist is the image.  That might account for how precious a gift of art is.  To take such a gift deceitfully is more than theft.  The deceitfulness is the theft, but the actual receipt of the gift is rape.

I once knew a woman who wanted to be cremated and her ashes incorporated into a painting.  When I first heard this I thought what a neat and unusual idea.  But the more I have pondered it, I realize the profound spiritual poverty such an idea reveals.  What an artist pours onto the canvas is her own revelation of humanity, not the human debris of another.   To do so would be an invasive violation of spiritual energy and a disgusting attention seeking desire to grab attention in a physical way even in death. 

Or as Sipsy says in Fried Green Tomatoes, "A lady always knows when it's time to leave."

I think it is high time for me to recognize the precious humanity revealed in my art as an expression of the spirit I am.  It is mine, it is enough and it is wonderful.  Realizing that is golden fleece. 

Curiosities Big and Small

I can so identify with a concept described by Chris Middleton and Luke Herriott in Instant Graphics:

"Many designers and illustrators are explorers and archivists of their immediate environments, scouring the city streets, parks, river banks, gardens, markets, and even their own studios, for objects, textures, and source material that they can sacn in and use in their palettes, or incorporate into freehand collages and assemblies of objects.

Whether or not they use digital techniques to manipulate such raw materials and create their final designs, many designers inevitably find themselves becoming collectors and/or curators of certain types of imagery or objects - insects, sports cards, magazine clippings, old catalogs, engravings, or prints. Some develop a fascination with a specific type of image or object - perhaps from an accidental find - and set about actively researching and building collections of them, which, in turn, begin to influence their subsequent work."

It seems that most of my artist friends collect curious objects.  Not just graphic artists and illustrators, and I would be surprised by a painter who didn't keep a camera nearby to snap an inspiration.  It reminds me of a time my brother-in-law came to my house at Christmas and asked where I find all the unusual things he saw there.  All over the place, I responded.  Nothing looked unusual to me, but I know what he meant.  Compared to the traditional decoration my sister favors, I suppose my artist's abode does look unusual to him.

Which leads me to the best excuse I have for not getting my "stuff" under control.  Creative inspiration.  A sunburst garden ornament lies on the rug in the sunroom awaiting painting; antique books for reference lie on the floor next to my computer; rocks, leaves and bird feathers are scattered about the house; sexy, inspirational cards sit on my table; a scarf hangs from a wall light; a dried rose given to me by a lover long ago resides in a pen case; turquise sunglasses, my Scottish rock, my nephew's favorite rock and an armillary adorn a table in my office.  During the season of Pentecost rose petals danced across my porch, and last summer little blue pellets - lacecap hydrangea droppings - filled little bowls around the house.  A piece of wood that looked like a gun or something of that nature hung out in the sunroom all last year, and robin egg shells are housed with music boxes, old letters and other curiosities in a curio cabinet.  I could go on, but you get the picture.

If I had given in to my mother's influence, I would have a neurotically organized, if not bland, house.  I would scrub and control it and all that enter therein.  Honoring cleanliness and order over flair, I would look for ways to express myself through controlling my environment.  I would paint dull brown paintings.

I make no more excuses.  While the eye delights in color, shape and texture, collections of curious objects are more than visual delights.  They often serve as objects to study in order to produce.  Most people don't know this, but the production of art is frequently a highly intellectual process.  A subject is studied, turned inside and out, pondered until the "problem" is solved.  Chu-chink.  It comes together.  The work is produced; the idea is conveyed.  I believe that this is the main reason I prefer to produce graphic art.  It is more intensely symbolic, bearing more than technique, conveying an idea.  

With all these objects around, I used to think my life was a souvenir.  It isn't.  It's a work in progress filled with things done and left undone, curiosities big and small - just another artistic habitat for creative inspiration and a statement of rebellion against the dull brown painting. 

Elephant Art

You aren't going to believe this.  Elephants painting!  Really. 

The elephants at the National Elephant Institute, Thailand, have learned to paint, and their art gallery can be seen at the Elephant Art Gallery.  A video of the artists at work can be seen at Good Morning America (click the video and wait for the commercial to end). 

This is just way cool, and the art work is pretty good. 

A Petra Dura "Thing"

A few years ago I matched beads to this petra dura pendant to create a necklace to wear on special occasions.  There is something tropical about the design of the petra dura; it makes me want to smell the hot scents of the tropics, and the combination of black and aqua is exotic.   

Petra dura is a type of stone mosaic (literally meaning "hard stone") perfected in Florence, Italy.  The technique includes cutting small slices of colored stone which are formed into a design on a bed of black marble.  Petra dura designs flourished in popularity during the Victorian period, and travelers to Europe often brought home souvenirs of their journeys in the form of stone art - everything from pins and pendants, rings, wall plaques and table tops.  Like other visual art forms, the designs can be jagged and amateurish or highly skilled arrangements of magnificent detail.  All things bright and beautiful - especially delicacies of nature, such as birds, flowers and fruits - were themes used in this art form.  

I have never tried my hand at crafting petra dura, and I probably will not have the occasion, but I greatly appreciate the tiny work of art I wear around my neck.  When I do I commune with the artist whose mind formed this design and whose hands made it appear as well as the lovely ladies who, over the years, held it up to their wardrobes to determine how to best frame it on their bodies.  The artist and the ladies surely smile and join in the wearing.   

I have been accused of thinking too much and caring too much about "things" (said piously by those more righteous than me with disdain as if a "thing" is a bug).  With that disclaimer, I admit that I care about this "thing" because appreciation of this petra dura is timeless communion with the act of creation  and a meaning-making way of making friends with those who made and wore it before me.  Such means of making meaning warms my soul, feeds my spirit and is, unpiously, not all about me.     

Satanic Spottings

Lordy, Lordy, what is Satan up to these days? 

A documentary entitled "Rape of the Soul"  examines allegations of satanic, sexual and occult images in historical and contemporary Catholic works of art.  I barely quit reeling over this idea when my (G)nu friend, John Carroll, told me about claims of demonic images in pine bark down in South Alabama.  His blog post describes the frenzy to find the devil bark worshipers some of the locals want to flush out.

I guess Satan as well as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I really want to behold those pine trees. 

God, it is fun living in Alabama.