more interested in being than improving these days
Made this quick little drawing on the way back down from Wildcat Rock, near Fairview, NC. The midwestern winter had me yearning for a fresh walk through spring mountain air—i felt so fortunate to spend a week on the road with two of my older sons.
Leave a CommentHere are some progress images from a new 3×4 foot painting where I’m layering abstractions based loosely on photos from my walks in nature.
I’ve been interested in how music influences the improvisational aspects of my mark making, and as such I am making this painting while listening to a single album on repeat – Makaya McCraven’s “In the Moment” (which is itself built from pure improvisation). So far so good.
I have just started exploring my way into a new painting concept I’m calling “Obverstractions.” In this series I am attempting to marry my bent toward abstraction with my passion for nature and observationally driven works, balancing these few facts about myself as an artist:
I feel most “at home” and connected to my work when it’s abstract.
Painting with observation as a starting point works for me..
Observing the natural world closely is my biggest inspiration.
I desire to connect with a “live,” improvisational energy while painting
My first couple of small attempts have proved to be instructive and validating. I’ll write more about my process as the series progresses.
I was encouraged by the results of the first study (below) and doubly encouraged by the second (above). To me, #2 is more successful as it arrives closer to the destination I envisioned while also departing furthest from the initial observation. I am using my mindfulness training as a compass for doing these works, and I felt that with #2 I was able to embrace uncertainty more and get into a more connected improvisational state while still channeling the subject (or at least my view of it).
Stay tuned for more of this work. I’d love to hear what you think of it.
Leave a CommentI purchased a little clip-on macro lens for my phone and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. It has caused me to look more closely at what’s around me. Here are some highlights.
This small painting of the May River and marshes at high tide captured the scene and the moment pretty well without overdoing it. It was my first time using the great new Holbein gouache paints that I received got as a gift last Christmas. They are really wonderful to use compared to the cheap-o stuff i was working with earlier. There is enough pigment to do supple washes and also highly saturated or deep parts. The layering is divine..
I really enjoy the act of creating observation work in nature. It helps focus my attention on the beauty and complexity of the world around me. This Palmetto tree is one of the more complex things i’ve attempted to draw recently and I like it.
I’ve have been enjoying gardening and the specific wonders of nature this year. In the context of the confines of this pandemic, I am more aware of the small beauties in nature. There is more time, it seems, to look and notice and contemplate my surroundings. For even as the space I am living in doesn’t change, the growing things inhabiting that space are constantly changing. I am drawn into this process.
Here are several drawings from the last week that i’ve made of flowers. Two from our garden, and a few from gardens i encountered downtown on Sunday.
A few years ago, I came to realize (through hardship and a great therapist) that I had a problem with self-differentiation. In my most important relationships I was being driven by a deep-seated fear of rejection and abandonment. My sense of self was WAY too tied up in others and outside forces.
Self-differentiation is a concept introduced by Dr. Murray Bowen, and here I’ve copied some text from The Bowen Center to describe a well-differentiated self.
A person with a well-differentiated “self” recognizes his realistic dependence on others, but he can stay calm and clear headed enough in the face of conflict, criticism, and rejection to distinguish thinking rooted in a careful assessment of the facts from thinking clouded by emotionality. Thoughtfully acquired principles help guide decision-making about important family and social issues, making him less at the mercy of the feelings of the moment. What he decides and what he says matches what he does. He can act selflessly, but his acting in the best interests of the group is a thoughtful choice, not a response to relationship pressures. Confident in his thinking, he can support others’ views without being a disciple or reject others’ views without polarizing the differences. He defines himself without being pushy and deals with pressure to yield without being wishy-washy.
thebowencenter.org – Differentiation of Self
This is hard shit if you didn’t grow up in a family with healthy attachments. Honestly, it’s hard shit for anybody.
With the help of a this therapist, I began to try and rewire my brain, in what I now recognize as my first steps into mindfulness training. It began with a constant reminder that became a mantra: Orient Self To Self. My aim was to move away from looking to others/outside to see if i’m okay, Rather I can look to myself (hello, mindfulness!) and also commit to being the kind of person that I am proud to be, giving myself grace and forgiveness when I don’t live up to my own expectations or the commitments i’ve made to others. To be free to be okay when others may not act in the way I expect or hope for.
I’ve made some progress. Most day’s I earn a “B” in this category. Some days and strings of days, I really lock into a healthy mindset that’s even better. But on the occasions when my more intense anxiety surfaces, and my ability to access these new skills becomes compromised, I can actually observe myself getting pulled away from wise mind, sucked into fear and muddled thinking, feeling unworthy and unloveable.
Tara Brach, in her excellent teaching on the RAIN of self-compassion, refers to this as a trance, “a narrow, distorted reality that lasts for a time.” The trance narrows one’s focus to only see what’s wrong, forgetting the larger context of life. She proposes that the only way to widen perspective from the narrow focus on what’s wrong, is to shine a light on the trance itself, which I suppose is what i’m attempting to do here.
I’m going to write more another time about how I’ve been attempting to integrate the RAIN concepts into my life this year. It is slow and vulnerable work, and rewarding.
These last couple of weeks I have been battling the trance with some big wins and some sad losses. Wish me luck.
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Has it really been nearly four months since I started this painting? In this period of quarantine stress, lockdowns, social upheaval, and massive shifts in my daily life, I have been without the motivation to paint. Like a fool who has learned nothing about self-motivation I have waited to feel it again. But for me, action precedes inspiration and motivation. Surprise, surprise… just getting started was all I needed to reconnect. Returning to painting has returned me to painting.
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Took a little dip into painting again today. The quarantine energy has been the opposite of what motivates me to paint, but today as i was setting up a painting station for my daughter, i decided to flip open the big pad and do some quick, monochromatic paintings.
It was fun, and i felt things click for a bit, which was reassuring.
There is a mind state I find conducive to making landscape paintings. The best way i’ve found so far to induce this state is by working to certain kinds of jazz. I am going to explore this more in future writing, but for now I’ve got a handful of records that bring me right there.
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I made this blind contour drawing while waiting for Jeff Parker to play at Dorian’s. It was my last night out, and the last live music I witnessed before the stay at home orders hit Chicago just a few days later.
The show was exquisite. I can’t wait to get out and see live jazz of that caliber again. I have a new list of acts I have to see and I’m willing travel to make it happen “whenever this coronavirus thing is over” (as my daughter Ingrid would say).
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