Sweep

For Chris

I heard from an old friend today, and she had some advice for any uninspired artist.  She said that every day you need to try to do just one piece of art, one little thing, to keep in the swing.  It sounded like good advice, so I played around with this tonight.  So this is for you, Chris, and thanks for the good advice on art and keeping on. 

Peacock Feather: The Color of Summer

_{The peacock feather appeals so to me because it sports many of my favorite colors, and they are the colors of Summer.  A carefree, dazzling beauty, that no one could have made up but God himself.}

_{This is an interesting combination of hand drawn and digital art.}   

Art Studies

I am not so disciplined with my art at times.  I go from one thing to another without finishing what I started.  I want to work on that, and I may have found a method to motivate myself.

I added to this site a feature entitled Art Studies.  Here I will be required to tell a story with art, to think through the art I am working on and be forced to articulate what it means and how my imagination was captured by a concept.  I hope the stories told will entertain, enlighten, but, most of all, make the viewer think about the concept being visually defined.  Have any of these concepts captured your imagination?  Have you created images around these themes or written about them.  If so, please feel free to share with me.  Let's collaborate.   Perhaps we can find some mutual inspiration and have some fun.

The image to the left is entitled "Slotha" which is the Aramaic term for prayer.  It implies setting a trap for one to catch God.  It will be part of an Art Study entitled "Creative Prayer' in which I hope to explore visual images associated with concepts of prayer.   

Ghinko on Black

What a difference a background makes for an image.  On blace the gold of the ghinko leaves just seem to burst off the page. 

Tennebrosus

Tennebrosus is Latin for "of dark or shaded places" and captures that element of the garden I may want this image to convey.  I don't much care for sun gardens, though I love some sun plants such as daylilies and  roses.  The lure of the garden is its cool shade, running water and mysterious darkness.   In the deep South where temperatures are routinely over 100 degrees in the summer, the garden becomes a true sanctuary.  In its deepest recesses grow moss, ferns and violets that are too delicate for the heat of the sun.  There one finds respite from the intensity of summer, and twinkling light with overhead canopies. 

Color is of utmost importance in such a garden.  Flowers should be muted - blues and whites and lavenders.   We may need red flowers at Christmas to warm us, but in summer we need flowers to cool us.     

Garden Art

I have been working on this piece which is a digital collage/painting.  I have been struggling with the name and what do do with it, but it has something to do with my love of gardening.  I am considering a gardening series and want this to be the title image.  I have struggled more with the name than the image itself which flowed for me.  "Gardens of Symmetry" or "Confederate Jasmine and Other Southern Eccentrics" or "Kiss Me Over The Gate and Other Southern Charms" or "Confederate Jasmine and Other Forms of Civil Disobedience" or what?  In the South plants can make major statements.  Where I live we have growing season for about 9 months out of the year, so plants can just about take you over.  And I love their drama, the drape and strength of these plants.   I love Southern gardens, with their intense heat where shade is appreciated, and the way plants are associated with people, often because a plant was a pass-along.  Red geraniums will always be my Grandmother Carrie (Kate); Impatiens and white Oleander are my Mother; Mexican Petunia are my Aunt Carolyn; Roses are Daddy; Indian Hawthorne and Daylilies are my Sister; Lenten Rose are Cletis; Petunias are Nanny Black; Hydrangeas are me, and in the South Azaleas, Camellia and Crepe Myrtle are everybody.   At the fullness of Summer sometimes I marvel at my good fortune to live my life in a rich land of gardens with what remains of manners and cherished memories.

This piece has more work that is needed, but is on its way to inspiring a larger idea.