My friend just forwarded an article from the New York Times about a prisoner in California’s Pelican Bay Prison who paints using the color leached from M&M’s. It’s quite fascinating. Click on the M&M’s to read the artcle.

In Houston there once was an artist
who really was trying her hardest
to paint with her heart
magnificent art
and tell stories that truly seemed smartest.

To paint with her heart she was trying
though some days she ended up crying
(it was more like a whine
that sniveling kind)
but when painting the brushes went flying.

She painted for five hours straight
with nary a small little break.
Then when she was through
time to make a meat stew
to nourish her family of eight.

Well, eight is a number that’s false,
her husband and one little dog,
four daughters, it’s true
but one’s in Peru
there’s also a gecko with spots.

“What’s up,” said her husband one morning,
“I’m writing a small little warning
of what happens when prose
gets stuck in one’s toes
and the readers get lulled into groaning.”

“The writing has gotten me stuck
every word that I write just sounds yuck
I’m going to bed
to clear out my head
upon waking to find better luck.”

Come on, take it. Take another little piece of my heart now baby….

So far it hasn’t really hurt to let go of my paintings. But I’ve purposely not sold any lately because I’m preparing for this solo exhibit, and the gallery said that I need to have 50-ish works ready to show. It feels a little funny to ask for paintings back, so I just haven’t sold any (on purpose). The good thing is that I will have enough works with which I am pleased to exhibit.

These paintings all have a little bit of my heart and soul in them. The more I live with them on my walls, the more accustomed I become to their presence. As my daughters are growing into adulthood and leaving the house, and I rejoice with them in their independence, I will also rejoice as these paintings join new collections. So come on take it….take another little piece of my heart now, baby, come on take it!

My life is inextricably connected to these new artistic pursuits. I haven’t figured out a way to turn off my brain at the end of a “work” day. Consequently, I think about art all the time.

This is a continuation of a pattern for me. As a new mom, I studied and completely devoted 100% of my time and effort to motherhood with the ultimate goal of raising mature, healthy, independent adults. My daughters are amazing human beings. I’m delighted to be part of their lives, what a priviledge. As a gardener, I sweated, toiled, labored and now my garden grows without much effort.

Ultimately, this is an art blog. As explained before, the purpose of this blog is to document the trials and triumphs of my artistic life. But that’s just it. It’s all my life. I contemplate all kinds of issues all the time that intertwine with almost everything I do artistically. And now that I’m writing a blog, I try to think of new ways to convey to my reading public something interesting about my tiny artistic life. What I’m trying to say is that I can’t seperate being an artist from being a mom, being a gardener, being Reese’s wife, and everything else that encompasses my life.

Tipping my daughter’s hand, (which she might not appreciate) we watched The Princess Diaries recently. It’s a charming story about a young lady who finds out that her father was a crown prince and therefore she is a princess. Heretofore, she has lived a life of invisibility. The conflict, of course, is she must decide whether or not to accept her responsibilities as a princess. Regardless, she can no longer ignore who she is by birth. She was born a princess. She “discovers” herself and eventually embraces her birthright.

Was I born an artist? Or will art be a phase like gardening? Motherhood is a phase that’s nearly over for me…. will the art continue? Is there one identity, really, to which we were born? I know that The Princess Diaries is just a fairy tale, but is there a smidgen of truth to it? Did God create us for one thing? I mean, I’ve been a lot of things already. This art thing is new-ish, but it feels right. Is this the one thing for which I was created? Doesn’t everyone want to find this super meaning to life and figure out why they are here?

For a long time, I’ve been developing my artistic license. The two most notable examples of this are regarding my inventive cooking “skills” and my sometimes flamboyant story-telling. As my friend Stan says, “It’s a true story….that’s the way I heard it.”

The newest expression of my artistic license is changing things in my paintings in order to tell a better story. This newest painting (that I worked on FOR-EV-ER) started with sweet young Anna hunting for Easter eggs. She was carrying a basket filled with plastic grass. It’s from one of my favorite photos of all time. Anna is eager with anticipation at the start of the hunt. But instead of hunting for eggs in my rendition of the painting, I changed it to Anna showing off a toad she has caught. This was not unusual in the life of our daughters; they loved catching critters. To do this I had to completely change the grip of her fat little hand, and find a toad that matched my vision. In addition to that, I changed the color of her little dress to compliment her hair, and softened the shadows on her face.

Hopefully I captured the same sweet little girl and the look of delight and wonder on her face. That’s what I really loved about the photo….not what she was doing (hunting eggs) but how well she was doing it (enjoying life.)

Here’s the deal: I’ve been working on one painting for a month now. Apparently, it’s more complicated than my skill level. When my family looks at it they unanimously say that it needs more work. The sad pathetic thing is, at this point I don’t think I’m capable of achieving a higher standard on this painting. For the life of me I can’t figure out what to do next. I have no idea what colors to mix to get the effect that I want. And even if I knew what colors to mix, I have no idea how to translate that to the canvas. I don’t think I have the right brushes, and I don’t even know which ones to buy. And if I bought them, would I even know how to use them?

The good thing is that all artists learn by trial and error. I just wasn’t quite ready for this painting to be an error. An artist friend of mine who knows a LOT more than I, suggested working on fuzzy landscapes to rebuild my confidence. The ironic thing is that the fuzzy landscape part of this painting is a big part of why it looks so unfinished. UGH.

Naive is a term that art muckety-mucks use to describe an untrained artist. It means that the art is unsophisticated, simple, and lacks perception (usually). Henri Rousseau is one of the most widely known of the naive artists. What Rousseau lacked in technical skill, he more than made up for in design and imagination. His paintings were well collected during his lifetime, but too often he undervalued his own paintings, trading them for a simple meal.

Rousseau started painting at age 40 because he loved it. He seemed to keep an innocence about life that translated well into the fanciful paintings he produced. His paintings often have a yin yang quality, balancing danger and innocence. “The Sleeping Gypsy” is perhaps his most well known work. In it we see an idyllic desert moonlit night, a gypsy asleep after perhaps singing for his supper, and an ominous looking lion, the king of beasts just casually sniffing the gypsy. Am I reading too much into the painting to suggest that the lion represents a harsh world ready to devour us, and the sleeping gypsy is an innocent, a naive, perhaps Rousseau himself, who still is drinking from the elixir of life, is happy and content and has found peace in the world?

As a non-academically trained, and more precisely self-taught, I fall into the category of being a naive artist.

Last week was rife with inspiration. I met new people, tasted new food, saw new places, and learned new words. I’m really excited about a few paintings in the works because of these new influences. Another thing I learned about myself last week was that not only am I naive with regard to art, I am also naive with regard to people. My husband and I spent a few days in an unique environment, and more and more we found ourselves extremely naive to our surroundings. Suffice it to say that I am inordinately naive.

Maybe perceptions change as we age. Maybe when life knocks us around a bit, we become “sophisticated,” I don’t know. Is it so wrong to be naive? Is it better to be schooled so much that we lose our joy of life? Would it be better to be afraid of the lion or blissfully unaware of it’s existence?

This new painting I’m working on has turned out to be much more complicated than first imagined. To be true, I thought it would be a piece of cake. Not so. First of all, this is the painting that did a belly flop last week (jelly side down). And it’s the painting that caused such turmoil yesterday (pit of despair). I just couldn’t find the right color values. (which amazes me that I have now used the term ‘color values’ in a sentence—go figure) But my friend, Joan came by yesterday and agreed that the painting was a little off.

We are expecting company on Friday night, and I was sure that this painting would hide in my bedroom closet, not be displayed in the studio for all to see. But after dreaming about the painting last night, and avoiding it for most of the day, I finally went back in the studio. I am so pleased with today’s results. It’s not finished, but it’s in a much better state.

In other news, as I was looking through a book on Cezanne today, I found this.

Does an artist need to experience turmoil and suffering in order to produce great art? And if so, does the turmoil and anxiety experienced while painting count as said suffering?

Several artists have given me the same advice. They say, “study the masters!” Even Renoir, Cezanne, Mary Cassatt, Matisse, etc., studied the masters. Of course, the Louvre was at their disposal. Perhaps I should spend more time studying the masters. But every time I go to the museum, or half price books to get another art book, it’s not the masters that interest me. I like the impressionists and post-impressionists and modern painters like Cezanne, Matisse, Cassatt, Monet, Manet, Degas, etc. While everyone acknowledges that Michelangelo, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci are indeed masters, I don’t find myself as often drawn to them as I am a good Cezanne painting.

Lately I have been looking a lot at Matisse’s work. In addition to his “Still Life with Magnolias,” I was inspired by another of his paintings. It’s called “La petite pianiste, robe bleue, fond rouge.”

What I like about it is that it is in an intimate setting; the young lady is thoughtful and concentrating on what she is playing; the use of color; the fuzziness of her hands; the outlines; the big bold strokes; the blue dress….when I first saw this painting in a postcard from our daughter who saw it in the Matisse Museum in Nice, France, I felt like I could sit and enjoy the music the young lady was playing. And maybe she wasn’t the best pianist in the world, but you enjoyed the music because you loved the one playing it. 

Rachel is a wonderful pianist. As I’ve been thinking of using Matisse’s “La petite pianiste” as an inspiration, I wanted to make sure that someone posed for me who loved, lived and breathed music. Like in the Matisse painting, I wanted it to be a young lady, and it was a huge plus that Rachel was wearing blue jeans the day she posed. So I took the same theme by a tried and true artist (though not considered a master), and painted it with a more modern feel. By modern, I mean contemporary with Rachel in blue jeans with a ponytail and t-shirt. She was playing so fast and beautifully that her fingers were a bit of a blur like in the Matisse painting, too. And it just so happens that as much as I enjoy hearing Rachel play the piano, she really is quite talented, I enjoy it even more because I am so fond of the one playing it.