Art Spirit

Birds #1-103 --- worked through

If you have ever made anything and walked by it, read it over and over again, listened to it  and in this process thought .... something should be more, different, --- this is how I've been feeling about these birds.
 Needing this work for an upcoming show -- I really wasn't interested in leaving it as it was --- so I opened up the frame  and re-worked the piece. I feel much better now thank you --- after an afternoon of cutting into the image , drawing back into  the pelican and the other birds with colored pencil and oil pastel. The piece now begins  the story of image and  layered-ness that speaks of something pregnant with faith , with sacrifice and with a quiet yelling that I was hoping for in the piece.

Birds #1-103

When  working I try to think about the paint. How it moves, how the color looks when mixed. The process  still feels  so new , so different.  I've been painting for awhile but it is a tenuous and often insecure practice. Leaning closer to drawing here, perhaps. Did begin to forget myself, moving out of my own way. The necessary completion of 100-- really 103 birds ... and now this only seems to have just begun.

Color is so interesting. The mounds of opaque  and transparent color. Not the concrete cerebral approach that  inhabits  the practice of sculpture --- painting is akin to music , yes ... but sometimes a marching band and other times --- like this one maybe the sound of learning the recorder... slow truncated, but trying.

Birds #1-76

Each day that I looked at the previous pelican painting--- nice alliteration --- I would cringe a little --- too many black lines everywhere , too distracting --- so I repainted. It feels like it might be under way.  The pelican  here is a Catholic symbol that is on both of the baptism  certificates that belonged to my grandparents. I thought it so interesting --- and probably will show up again.

Birds #1-76

Birds #1-76.
Now the question is about birds 77-100.  What happens? Do they fill in around?  What about a bird landing  on something?  Is this it?  Not really. There's much more to place into this picture  and really many more birds--- enter--- the challenge.

Birds #1-76

Birds #1-76.
A pelican feeding three babies.  The image is becoming  more interesting.  The pelican feeding the three is still  in process.  What more could happen with it?  Not really sure...

Birds #1-68

Birds that  have evolved  to these mosquito  looking birds. Really I am trying to get reacquainted with this picture. Sort of like these spindle-y  looking birds.

Birds #1-45

Birds #1-45
The pattern of the little red birds is interesting  with the overlay  of the larger ones. They are all going the same direction... what's up with that?  Thinking that they will need to start going in other directions--- but then again it's kind of nice  with them all moving  the same way.

September 14, 2008

Birds #1-40
Alchemy.
Art making  is about searching around in the  dark for what  might become gold . Not to turn it into gold for the sake of selling it  but for  gold that will turn the heart, the soul, to the warmth that it is  or that  it could become. Alchemy.  Mixing and changing something from nothing into something else. The artist is not the alchemist --- the alchemist is the idea --- the artist is that  which is the conduit to the idea to the material --- these little birds are an attempt to   find the sweet  spot --- the place where birds are painted and  in flight and collected together.  What is interesting about this  is  how the image is  as a symbol , a representation of the thing it begins to  coalesce into a recognizable  image -- or thing  by itself-- But this is s stretch. What is really going on here is warming  up -- warming the flame  as it were  for  the tincture of idea/ material/ worker to become hot enough that it really does become something else. The practice is to come to this --- however short or long --- but to come to this with patience, with gratitude , with work.

Starting over and over again in this process of alchemy--- the artists is not at the center --- more peripheral  an observer , a participant  who is only invited in at the right time---and is necessarily  there for the right time. This is about stepping back --- stepping in   when the flame is at the right temperature. When the flame is hot enough that the work can be done  and lived and moved through  and then cooled-- and started again.

Birds #1-10

Birds #1-10
As the trees come to a close --- here come the birds ...