Slicing the Blueberry

I know it shouldn't have been a surprise to realize; my process for assembling a finished video piece is akin to my process for painting. It's all rhythm and instinct. For these little lyrical pieces I've been contriving it all starts with finding the right song to accompany it. It's like mixing paints and building the pallet. Then I start piling images onto the timeline and finesse everything until it feels right.

Cozette and I went blueberry picking a couple days ago. I only captures 8 minutes of footage, which is not much, but I enjoyed playing around with it. I constructed a fistful of little pieces, each one very different from the next even though the same footage was used. I adore that about images; that they can change based on the atmosphere surrounding them. Each one also captured the energy and mood I had at the time, like any painting would.

I cut this first one on Saturday when I got home from picking the blueberries. I had gone to three yoga classes within a 24 hour period and had just spent and hour basking in the sun picking my own fruit while conversing with a dear friend. My energy was strong and a little nostalgic. This is the result....

This second one I did the following day, on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I had met a friend for crepes, walked home in again beautiful weather feeling the tiredness of my body from those three yoga classes. My energy was still very good, but much calmer. This is the result....

Mystic Bub

I went on a little adventure with my brother this weekend. I wanted to start the month off right in regards to creative productivity so I brought along my little Flip camera. I spent a few hours editing the footage together this afternoon and this is what happened.....

Outside of being an editing exercise it's a video postcard that my brother and I will look back to fondly some day. I really enjoy assembling these little video postcards and hope to be posting many more in the future...

arrested development

Excuses, excuses, excuses… an endless cycle of excuses. June has been a very difficult month for me creatively. I’ve always wanted to assemble a mobile; the delicate dance of balance intrigues me and I would like to attempt the challenge. I received the invitation to my friend’s baby shower and immediately thought, “I’ll make the baby a mobile!” The shower was yesterday, it was not a mobile that was given. And the adventure to that was a true head ache. 

I tried to adapt what I wanted to do into something I thought someone else would want. That behavior is a detrimental flaw in my nature. Every time I started the project I talked myself out of how I was going about it. I would settle on another notion and talk myself out of it. I would begin execution and I would be irritated with every cut and seem. On this project, the perfectionist arises and bashes my interpretation into a mutilated mess until I have no idea what I’m trying to do.  This may sound extreme, but I assure you, that’s what it feels like. I completely break down and my head feels like it’s filled with cement. Again, this is not an exaggeration.

I put the painting aside to work on the mobile. I put the mobile aside to breakdown. Creativity coming to a heavy halt, I shut shown. My thoughts were sticky and I became forgetful. It has been a downward spiral I have not at all enjoyed. When I decided to put it aside I felt incredible relief. I took a power nap and woke up feeling clearer and lighter. 

I do still want to build a mobile someday, but for now I think I’ll continue with my paintings, because it seems like when I deter to work on something else I stumble into a dark hallway. 

Sigh…..   moving forward…..

walk don't run

This is the start of my newest portrait of Marie. I'm posting this work in progress not to show the development and process of it, but in order to share the change in the process that I've experienced today.  I've been away for my creative habit for a short while. I have never been this consistent in my productivity. Usually there is an entire year in between my creative bursts. I'm sure that my process is constantly changing. Today the difference has been striking.

Typically I spend a long time with the image I'm interpreting, spend some time with size and shape of the canvas and sketch out the primary image.

Today I woke up, made coffee and started painting without sketching any markers. I painted the hair and the hands. Then I left to spend the day with a friend. (Great day Cozette. Thank you.) I continued as soon as I got home. I painted a base coloring of the face and eyes. I walked away for an hour or so and returned to start adding definition to the nose. The mouth and everything else is still completely without gesture. I haven't been over speculating features, nor am I all too concerned that the nose is not at the right angle. I think this may be the slow return of the clarity I obtain when I paint.

Looking at the current status of the painting I'm very happy with today's work. I've decided to walk away in hopes of getting a good night's sleep and intend to return to it tomorrow evening. Hopefully the clarity will continue to grow and I will find that peace when I finish it.

getting the funk out

As you may be able to tell, I haven't been posting often lately. This is a direct reflection of my productivity. I've been in a spiral of excuses and mind numbing t.v. crime dramas. This is pretty normal for me. I have spurts of prolific creative expulsion. And I have spurts of reclusive fermentation. It became clear to me that I absolutely had to reconnect with the former.

It may seem like I've been dragging my feet on my Marie series, but that isn't the case.  The paintings in the portrait series that I have presented in this blog prior have all been created out of a place of clarity and excitement. After a couple of weeks of slopping around in mental murk and lethargy I have spent the last couple of days with my friends and rebooted.

creative impasse

I've been living with the glass bellies that were made for my Rosmerta (Rose) project for a couple weeks now. I'm at more of a standstill now than I was when I first got them, which is discouraging.

I saw the first belly in December. The glass blower (Joe) and I agreed that it wasn't right; the lip needed to be at more of a 90 degree angle and the roundness of the belly needed to be larger. So that was what I was expecting when I picked up the new one. The lip was at an almost 90 degree angle which we agreed upon, but the whole thing was what seemed half the size of the first one. I could feel all the blood drain from my face.

2nd belly on left

I had decided to turn this project into a collaboration and couldn't turn back because of a difference in vision, because that's a part of the collaborative process. So I took the bellies and Rose's torso home and decided to sleep on it. I was very quiet and zoned out for the rest of the week, processing the change and calculating how to move forward.

I decided I would use the second belly, primarily because my mind was so initially set against the first one. I did some research on sculpting compounds. I would build out the belly and place the glass piece into that.

I had friend over who is due at the end of August. I knew she would know MUCH better than I what a pregnant belly should look like and how I should go about placing it. It was seeing her belly that made me realize the the first belly is actually more conducive to what I want to portray.

As you may be able to see though...the lip of the glass is larger that Rose's body.

Here we are, two weeks later and what I'm thinking now is to use the initial belly but I have to learn about how to cut glass. I'm thinking if I'm able to cut it I may be able to get it to fit better, but I have no knowledge of glass and/or if such a thing is possible. If it is, then I will then use the same concept of building out the belly and sculpting the belly onto Rose; which I would have never thought of if the second belly hadn't been made.

Marie

It's been almost a month since I painted last, but not quite. I've been unmotivated for some reason. It may be that thoughts of Rose have been on the front of my mind. More about that later. This is about Marie. Marie's features are much different than my other friends. Her nose is narrow. Her eyes are sky blue. There are two things I think of when I picture her in my mind, her smile and her decolletage. I need to spend more time staring at her to be able to get her smile translated to canvas, but this is an attempt at her decolletage...

 The canvas for this piece sat naked on my wall for a couple weeks as my attention shifted to another project. Daily I had intentions of visiting this canvas, but I just stared at it until I walked away. Then last night I woke up in the middle of the night and went to it. Now I'm thinking, I should get up in the middle of the night and paint more often. It's almost as if the fog of slumber turned off something, some editing filter. The dramatic curved line on her cheek; I don't think I would have accepted that if I had done in the light of day, but I looked at it this morning, and I'm looking at it now, and I'm so glad it's there.