Intuitive Painting/ Drawing Continued...

Here is my 3rd Intuitive Painting/ Drawing, first with two details shown, then the painting, then an additional detail. Upon leaving the residency, I set out that my drawing and painting would inform my glasswork, but it seems here it has turned the other way around. I see my years of glasswork informing my painting with a fluid sense of line and composition, and layers of opacity, translucency and transparency.

Interestingly enough I just found an additional article on Pousette-Dart whose work initially inspired these works and this new explorative process while doing a curious research on 'transcendence', connected to the Cremaster video that Stuart showed us in Critical Theory I.

It is odd how things happen, but then there are no accidents, right?!

Intuitive Painting/ Drawing Continued...

Here is my 2nd Intuitive Painting/ Drawing with a detail. Getting the feel for the layers of white and feeling for the graphite layer(s).

Intuitive Painting/ Drawing

I have now completed three Intuitive Paintings/ Drawings.
Here is one with a detail shot.
This is the one I had posted earlier, but felt it was too dark and went back into it.

Magic Gardens

Art should not be segregated to museums; it needs to live free among us. ~ Isaiah Zagar



The city of Philadelphia has numerous murals of paint and tile which have reformed neighborhoods and communities throughout the area. Last week I led a small group on a Mission Trip to the St. Francis Inn in Philadelphia which had been planned for some time. While on the trip we took a few afternoons/ evenings to take in some of the cultural sites including the Magic Gardens in Philadelphia, off of South Street. This is an outstanding environmental mural installation of tile, glass and mixed media by the artist, Isaiah Zagar, who we had the pleasure to meet. The installation took him years to complete, which he began in 1994, and he continues to build across the street, parallel to South Street.

See photos of Zagar's Magic Gardens.

We also took some time to visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art and viewed the Impressionists, Post Impressionists, Modern, Post Modern and some special Contemporary exhibitions there.
We also viewed the special exhibition at the Franklin Institute, Cleopatra, which included artifacts from a recent archaeological excavation.

During the long train ride from NC to Pa and back, and some evenings, I had a lot of time for reading to inform my work in progress.

Intuitive Drawing/ Painting, 7/10/10

Here are two pics of my first new attempts with my Intuitive Drawing/ Painting strand. The one photo of the piece that is cropped is complete, I think. I am going on a Mission Trip to Philadelphia for a week, so I will decide when I come back if I should work on it some more or not. I feel like I let it get too dark. Before I went into the last layer with oil, it had a wonderful quality about it. I learned a lesson, having gotten too aggressive with it.

The other pic shows an unfinished drawing/ painting and my studio in the background, mostly set up for my glasswork, but will be a painter's studio too for awhile. I do love painting and drawing intuitively and am reading this semester a few books on art and spirituality. I love my little studio, especially in the summer, when I can really enjoy the daylight. When we first moved into this house, a Craftsmen Cottage style built in 1925, some 28 years ago, my husband enclosed the back porch which extends across the whole back of the house, for my studio.


To the left, that you cannot see, is my glass rack, sink, and shelving with supplies. To the right and back of where I am standing, is a bench/ counter that provides good working surface for works in progress.

Soon I will also be doing a lot of drawing and painting directly outdoors, so my studio will be carried on site, wherever/ whatever I settle upon, french easel, et al.

Summary for Residency 1 completed and submitted

I worked today on my Summary for Residency 1, completed it and sent it to Tony Apesos, my adviser. Now, fantastic I can resume working on my art again! :)

Fall Semester Reading List

I took a good part of the day today to organize my reading list for the Fall Semester, and work out the MLA citations for each. As I progress through these areas of exploration I will be pouring over these texts and articles and write up annotated bibliographies on each to assist with my writing assignments. I still have some more items to research, and need to also cite the articles I pulled, but I think the brunt of the overarching reading list for the semester outside of the additional required readings that will follow later this semester, are intact at this point.

Wake Forest Library and Log template

Yesterday evening my daughter and I headed over to Wake Forest University to get a library membership, so that I am able to conduct a serious research. They have a wonderful collection of Art books, art history and artists, not to mention philosophy and aesthetic theory. I checked out a stack on artists: Chuck Close, Red Grooms, Andy Warhol; and other related research based on my explorations: Ayn Rand, Art & Spirituality, Art History and Critical methods.

I also modified a log template that was shared by one of the grads in one of our crits, to my adaptation of working out the requirements within academic and studio work.

Visit with my mentor and to the Weatherspoon Art Museum

"The whole world as we experience it visually comes to us through the mystic realm of color." - H. Hoffman

I visited with my mentor for the first time this afternoon at a Vietnamese restaurant in Greensboro. We had lunch and talked about the program and my goals for this semester. Afterward we visited the Weatherspoon Art Museum to view the Hans Hoffman: Circa 1950 exhibition. I browsed a book on Hoffman also while watching the PBS video that the museum had to view. It was really wonderful to learn more about his life as an artist and teacher of so many post modern masters.
I have been a fan of his for some time, since my younger years as an artist, and love his little text, "Search for the Real" that I will revisit soon and reference within one of my writings this semester.

At the Weatherspoon I also viewed Andy Warhol's Polaroids and a small exhibit of the work of Robert Stanley (brother in law of Roy Lichtenstein), whose works may inform a tangent on my Art Heroes work.

Exploration at Reynolda Gardens:

This morning I finally made it over to Reynolda Gardens to take photographs of more focused nature. I took over 100 photos, some to investigate what I would like to draw and paint directly, and some will be a good resource for me as my work develops. I think I am going to have to get one of those umbrella hats though, if I am going to draw and paint out there in the near future. It was really sunny and hot this morning!


See a few of my favorites.

Ideas, Directions, Exploration:

The past few days have been ones of soul searching in reflection now of Residency 1.
I have been taking some photographs as you can see below, and I also have been sketching from direct observation. Drawings that are about an hour to 3 hours in length, primarily to get myself oriented into the discipline of drawing and painting. I see these drawings as a foundational exercise that I can spring from for more sustained works from observation.


Simultaneously today, I began my first intuitive drawing/painting inspired by the lovely exhibition I saw last week of Pousette- Dart's Predominantly White Paintings. I like the idea of working from white into white. The last time I worked with a series of intuitive drawing /painting I was using a lot of black, and the works were expressive, but very dark in spirit.

As I painted today, I started thinking about Lee Krasner and her painting at Reynolda House, Museum of American Art, Birth. I will have to go view the painting again soon, as this kind of working evolves for me, and to investigate her works at-large for inspiration.

Since I am working with oil, I see the need to work on a few of these at a time to allow the paint to dry between layers of drawing, and painting with scumbles and glazes.

Nothing that I really want to show visually here yet, just keeping this blog as a kind of journal through these phases of departure.

I was told many times through Residency 1 by faculty and peer students, that this is the semester to explore and experiment in a search for 'my voice'. So I am pushing and pulling in varied directions and will see where it leads me.

Regarding my glass work and murrini portrait(s): I unpacked the box of glass I ordered prior to the residency and so excited to finally receive the Effetre clear sheet glass that I have been looking for, for a couple of years now. I am really excited to create a few test tiles, to gain some visual feedback, comparing and contrasting the aesthetics of fusing from the first piece created, completed and brought to the first residency.

I did some additional research on Faith Ringgold today and found a few more sources for my reading and inspiration, in addition to some aesthetic philosophy by Ayn Rand to locate.

Fig Tree

These are photos taken this morning of the fig tree in my yard. The Fig tree holds a lot of personal symbolism for me and its imagery is something I have desired to make a piece about for some time now. I will begin by exploring it through drawing and painting, perhaps stained glass later on.

StudioPics10

Photos taken heading southbound yesterday from DC to Roanoke on I 81.

While driving to and from my niece's in DC, I started thinking about varied sources of subject and began thinking about focused nature. Since I am to paint and draw, I thought I would warm up each day this summer with morning explorations at Reynolda Gardens, drawing, painting and photography of focused nature with initial references to Georgia O'Keeffe and Edward Weston. At my niece's I found a beautiful plant with a waxen texture and oak tree with great bark texture on it's trunk, see photos linked above.