fearless Creating: Color and Surface

I was so delighted with Rococo Red I realized my immersion in red was not over by a long shot.  It was absolute joy creating puddles of vibrant color and playing with my brush.  The finished piece was a tangible record of my play--very exciting.

"Rococo Flow"
  10 x 13 in.

Having exhausted my meager supply of illustration board I reached for a sheet of Yupo.  Yupo is basically plastic so painting on it can be like painting on water and sometimes that is exactly what you do!

My intent was to continue exploring red and making beautiful marks, very visible marks, on paper.  I stopped every once in awhile, to breathe, and to let the paint dry so that everything did not run together in to "color" soup.   And I took a few shots to record the process.

Because it is plastic and the water and paint really do float on the surface, Yupo records the act of painting with watercolors like nothing else I have ever worked on.

The trick is allowing the paint and water time to rest and dry so that the "flow" you love is not obscured.

As I look at this piece I can see the dance of brush and color.

There are a lot of hard edges, created as "dams" to keep the flow of one area from flowing into another.  I wanted my colors fresh and vibrant so I will continue to experiment with the surface tension and beautiful brush strokes.

fearless Creating: Eat with two Hands

The "hunger to create" is what drives creativity.  Anxiety over creating, if not addressed, can supresses that hunger, killing it.  Maisel offers several ways to "feed" a hungry mind, a kind of whetting the creative appetite. 

Eat With Two Hands

Do you mean to learn daintily what red can do?  No!  Spread red around with two hands, live with it night and day, paint your ceiling red, paint your body red, see red everywhere, learn its every association, its very meaning.  Dream red.  Be red.  Feed your hungry mind a lava flow of red, a torrential sunset of red, a bloodbath of red.  Learn deeply.

Rococo Red

8 x 10

watercolor on hot press illustration board

I adore red.  I am excited and intimidated by red.  We grow a tulip called Rococo, the perfect subject for my immersion in red.

fearless Creating: going wild

If you consider pages, I have not made much progress in the book.  But if you could peek into my head you would be amazed! Like a teenager's closet, I am bursting with surprises.  I am living in that wonderful place that is rich and full and exciting. 

Maisel, the author, describes a painter he was working with and it was like reading about myself.

Usually he would bring a preformed image to the painting moment.  The activity of painting was rather more the reproducing of that ready-made image than the encountering of a blank canvas.  On a regular basis the finished product looked like what he'd had in mind and possessed technical merit, but struck him as conventional and dead.

OMG--when I am totally honest with myself, this describes much of my work for the past few years!  Ahhh, no wonder I was not excited or enthusiastic about painting.  

Somewhere along the line he'd turned correctness into a synonym for good-ness and defined good painting as painting like an Old Master.

Somewhere along the line I'd defined good painting as painting like all the painters celebrated in all the big shows--AWS, NWS, etc.  Not that I don't admire the work these people produce, much of it takes my breath away.  BUT why did I decide that I wanted to paint like anyone else?  AND how do I now break away from that?

Maisel suggests that in addition to hushing and holding, the artist must learn to be wild.  He describes wildness as an "amalgam of passion, vitality, rebelliousness, nonconformity, freedom from inhibitions.  Think of this wildness as working naked."  And then he suggests working naked!  Seriously!

Now, this guy has really gotten into my head, and I am totally digging the doors he is opening to me so I am seriously considering this "activity" but here's the thing.  My studio looks out onto open fields, foot hills and mountains, but it is also within sight range of a major interstate.  That's one, two, it's winter in Idaho--that means sub-zero temperatures and three, I am just not a naked-in-the-house-kind-of-girl.  (Totally different on hot summer days anywhere near a body of water.)  I think it would just prohibit me, I would be totally conscious of myself and not my work--so until further notice I will not literally paint naked.

Rather than strip myself--I stripped my work!  The very next exercise was to draw my Wild Faces and give them a name.  While hushing an image came to me, a face obscured but emerging from some wild Eden.  Working very intuitively and allowing total freedom--I found Her! 

Emerging

multi-media

8"x10"

fearless Creating: Day Three

"Pears"

8"x10"

$50

 I have been very conscientious about "hushing", enough that my poor husband was a bit unnerved and asked if he had done anything wrong--as in why was I giving him the silent treatment.  I explained that I was "hushing"--I was thinking and non-thinking and painting in my head.  (He is a writer, so he understood immediately.  I just forgot to tell him I would be dropping out now and again.)

Now for the second part of "hushing" which is "holding".  Holding is described as "following your idea".

"...once you nurture your wish to create, once you hush and go into these periodic trances in which ideas gestate, you will begin to possess emergent ideas which, in order to grow in vivacity, must themselves be nurtured.  

You hold precious both the feeling of working and these nascent ideas.

Work is happening underneath, in this place of inner quiet (which is also a wild place), but work is not happening independently of you.  You are holding it:  giving it space, giving it a container, offering it life."

I am nurturing the idea of beautiful marks.  Each brushstroke is meaningful, in and of itself.  Each brushstroke must be a beautiful mark, not just a technical tool to create a wash or layer values.  Every time my brush touches the page, I try to leave a mark that if made on a fresh sheet of paper would be pleasing to look at.  It's a tall order and I can see where this "idea" could easily overwhelm and over-complicate a painting.  It feels like conducting a symphony--each note must be beautifully played and layer together to create a harmonious whole.  I know there will be a lot of missteps and discarded paper but when it works,  I love it!

"Apples"

8"x10"

$50

"Filling a space in a beautiful way.  That is what art means to me."

Georgia O'Keeffe

Connections

The Idaho Watercolor Society southeast region is opening a new show tonight at the Pocatello Art Center.  We were asked to show work that was "new" in some way and to explain that "newness".

"Connections"

by

JaSabin, IWS

I am showing "Connections".  My intention was to explore realistic objects in an abstract way, focusing on the dark values of the composition.  I connected all the dark values to create an interesting abstract shape--one dark value "flowing" into the adjacent one.

To test this lets play "Connect the Darks":  Squint your eyes, to obscure the objects and narrow the light, and see if the dark values do blend together and flow.

fearless Creating: Day Two

"What you have to do now is work.  There's no right way to start."

  --Anna Held Audette

Mind, Body, Spirit

JaSabin

So far I have three brave creators interested in joining me on this journey.  I know you will see their comments here and by linking to their blog.  (Please visit Roxanne at River Garden Studio, you can hook up with her by clicking on her blog just to the right of this page, under my blog roll.)  In the meantime, I will continue to share my experiences. 

The first chapter of "fearless Creating" is titled "Hushing and Holding" and just under the title, Nurturing the Wish to Create.  Ironically, I spend a lot of time thinking about the "wish to create" during our farm season.  I spend hours and hours and hours alone, delivering our flowers, and thinking about my work, thinking about painting, paintings and being creative.  Reflecting on this today I realized I am like people that long to visit a foreign country, but never buy a ticket, or pursue an intimate relationship with someone already committed.  

Hushing is a practice described in the book as a "quieting and an opening".  The artist is encouraged to practice quieting the mind, the author calls it "hushing".  Familiar with meditation this was not a new concept but I am making a conscious effort to practice "hushing" each day, especially before working in the studio.  If one hushes long enough, perhaps something will come along that is "vivacious", then one is encouraged to take that thought deeper and "hold" it.  The author uses the term "holding" to follow and explore that idea.  He says that "if your idea is vivacious and your mind hushed, you will discover that you are not wishing to create, but creating".  

Reflecting on this I know that some of my best work has come to me in this way.  I was not consciously hushing and holding, but by incorporating this practice in a very precise and regular way will encourage more vivacious work, work I can be really excited to do.

"I have to lose my mind to be able to concentrate."

--Hannah Wilke

Fearless Creating

I am working on something.  I am working through something.  I am working with something.
At least I am working.

A few days ago I walked by a bookcase that I pass by a million times a day and a title jumped out at me.  Seriously, I continued through the house but the title stuck in my head and I was compelled to return and get the book.  I took it up to my studio and began to read.

I bought this book years ago, more than ten years, read the preface standing in the shop, was intrigued and bought it.  Then promptly tucked it away and forgot it.  So why did it call out to me today, I can't answer that question.  I am just so grateful it did.

Maybe it's the title, "Fearless Creating" (by Eric Maisel) because I have been fearful about creating.  We have the ideal situation--we farm, so we work six months of the year and then we have six months off to create.  This year I started off brilliantly, one week into our down time I took a workshop with Roxanne Evans Stout.  Please refer to my prior post--great work, so inspiring, I loved every second of this project. Then look at the date--yeah, October, and it is now late January and I have frittered away most of my "creative" time.

I finished a big piece, entered a few shows and tried a few fun things but I just was not enthusiastic about my art.  I was so inspired working on "A New Genesis", I always am excited, on fire, when I am working on multi-media projects but I can't find the same passion for what I shall call "painting".  For me, that is watercolor.  I am a skilled painter, I love color and love the process of mixing, layering and painting.  I can spend hours making puddles of color, I love it.  And I can totally trance out listening to music, moving a brush around on paper...but my work doesn't thrill me.  Technically it is good, visually pleasing, beautiful--just not thrilling and I want to be excited to create.

This book just might help me find the passion I crave, the passion I know is within me, within all of us who yearn to and do create.

Just a few pages into the introduction the author seemed to be describing my problems and addressing them, addressing me!  The author, Dr. Maisel, is a psychotherapist who works with artists--all artists, performers, writers, painters, poets...you name it.   In the first few pages he describes the anxieties involved in creating--the huge anxiety to create, the excitement and passion that urges all of us to make something, to create.  And the anxiety attendant in all acts of creativity--is it good enough, am I good enough, can I do it, will I fail, etc., etc., etc.  All the anxiety that has allowed me to distract myself with other creative acts--I cook, I knit, I sew, I do yoga, I teach, I have grandchildren, I blog, the list goes on and on.  Sound familiar?

The author puts into words and actions his idea of the creative process and he tries to convey these ideas with activities.  There are short "assignments" throughout the pages.  The first assignment was to stop reading and do half an hour of creative work--which I did not, thought about, but then kept reading.  He's good, and knew this would happen and addresses it immediately in the very next paragraph, made me feel guilty and I did stop reading and started to work...and then something magical happened.

I started a small sketch and was about to start painting and knew it was just more of the same old, same old.  I was not excited, I was just following the assignment.  I scrapped it and went in another, entirely different direction.  I put a clock in my studio--not to time my half hour of work, but to limit the time I would allow myself to sketch.  I wanted to put down a few lines and get to painting as soon as possible.  Down and dirty, fast and loose.  I cut up some illustration board, threw down a sketch and grabbed my brushes.  I then started with this clear intention, I was not going to "paint" this piece, I intended only to make beautiful marks on the paper.  Every so often I said aloud to myself, "Just put beautiful marks on the paper."  When I stopped between washes to consider the piece and the next move I reminded myself to make beautiful marks on the paper.  An hour and a half later I came out of a creative trance transfixed!  Excited!  Euphoric!  Thrilled!  Thank the gods that be!

I approached the studio the next morning so excited to work.  I can't adequately describe urgency to get in the studio but you all know what I am talking about.  I left my new piece up to look at and after reading another section of the book, realized that the values I had placed were not saying what I wanted to say.  I needed to lay in some darker values to be satisfied, but, I had specifically chosen a very unstable surface to work on--hot press illustration board can be like painting on wax paper, the work underneath can slip up and mix with subsequent layers, making mud--so that I had to work fast and intuitively and not overwork.  The section I had just completed urged the following:

Paintings, Not Pictures

Surprise Yourself

Feel, Don't Think

Rishks, Not Ideas

Don't Be Afraid to Fail

Break the Rules

Ideas Are the Trap

Don't Know

Alive, Not Right

No Fear, No Failure 

Don't Be Afraid to Fuck It Up

Power & Passion

Who Am I?

Encounter

Don't Give In, Never Give In

One Surprise Is Worth a Thousand Ideas

Waht is a Mistake?

Don't Be Right

Okay, this one really got me...Don't Be Afraid to Fuck It Up...so I grabbed the brush, mixed up some puddles, took a deep breath and laid some values!  I love it.  I just love it.  Nothing melted, no one died, it's just a piece of paper and...AND...I didn't fuck it up...I made it just right.

I read and study and paint every day now and I am working my way through this incredible book.  I want to invite you to join me.  Grab a copy.  Let's do this together!  I long to share this experience with others, I crave feedback and I want to share.  Anyone interested out there?

I will continue on and keep you posted.  Please, please, if you are the least bit intrigued, please join me.