Karin Doleske

Washington Notes 18

2012-01-28T05:35:00.014-05:00

Wednesday January 4, 2012

Daughters of the American Revolution
- tribute to founders, also a pedigree
- some displays indicate inclusion of African Americans
- a chapter for children of the revolution
- patriotism/ loyalty to the Constitution
- library of records
- can follow whatever paper trail thee exists to connect oneself to past events
- folk art displays
- Paul Revere's tea service that he made
- one quilt from the 1700's
- ideas of family/ working together/ common struggle
......

Lunch at Ebbert's Grill which goes back to the 1800's. American foods: oysters, cheeses, peacan bread. Actual gas lights in the restaurant.
......

TV: watched Republican Primaries. I heard a twenty-something person telling his desires for pulling out of the Middle East. His passion and argument showed he cared deeply about his country, the people of his own country.
......

101 Things to Learn..., Kit White
The importance of an artist is determined by the number of new signs he introduces into the language of art. - Matisse

"... Each new generation describes the world it sees in its own way. The symbol language of art must always be evolving. ..."

My thoughts: mending, by whatever means, by whatever scale, appears to be a part of the world.
......

World Bank Bookshop
- books from everywhere
- writers seek markets here
- there's writers, artists, thinkers even in war-torn, unstable countries
- one of those minor major miracles of the human spirit
......

National Gallery
- Cabinet of Wonders Exhibit
- I got upset by the pictures of the huge trees cut down during the early days of settlement
- I also got upset about the photos of buffalo herds that used to be
- folk art: quilts and paintings
- Contemporary Art Exhibit
......

Emotional Logic / Creative Logic

2012-01-26T08:33:00.008-05:00

I've engaged with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood at various levels, by which I mean at various ages ranging from my teenage years to now. The most recent was a movie about how Capote investigated the murder which would become that story. The story was both actual facts and fiction but it rang true emotionally.

If he had been a painter and responding to those events he might have painted Stations of the Cross, or made some sort of contemplative ensemble like Rothko's paintings in Washington. If he had been more poetically inclined he might have written Ginsberg's Howl. Whatever the case, it did start with some sort of imaginative, emotional analysis and there's an logic that goes with that, but I don't understand it myself.

The Embedded Paintings are related to those artworks, but that's another layer of context for the work itself, which is image and text embodying one another. To be continued...
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Washington Notes 16

2012-01-25T13:17:00.027-05:00

January 2, 2012

Arlington Cemetery
We saw Kennedy's memorial (quotes again.) Bobby and Ted are buried there? Anyways there are small gravestones at the edge of the memorial property and small white crosses with the Kennedy names on them too. It's hard to figure what went on with that presidency, what with the relatives being such a big part of it.

I was charmed by Jack and Jackie's sexiness. But then I was a teenager. They both had style, but I didn't know that much about them. They were on the TV news I kept passing on my way out the door, and on the fronts of newspapers I didn't read. I was sitting in Grade 10 Math class, it was morning and all of a sudden the loudspeaker came on telling "assassination."

All I knew about assassination was Arch Duke Ferdinand from history class. Afterwards a war happened and my grandfather was part of that, but the story is foggy here. At school though, on that morning, I expected all hell to break loose and my mother's stories about the fighting and devastation would be happening to me this time. It didn't.
......

Gertrude Stein Exhibit
I was disappointed because I wanted to understand her more and the excerpts from her books pasted on the wall didn't help me with that. I bought the catalogue/book about her for later reading.
......

TV
The Russian station is heavily anti-American depending on the ethnicity of the person doing the program I think. The Chinese station has documentaries which on the one hand smell like propaganda, but also have a lot of new information about Asia. Every country is in the propaganda business it seems to me. I don't have a problem with that because some of the stuff, especially in the States, is pretty fabulous. Most shows, whatever the country they're from, are having debates about the meaning of democracy, particularly and acutely, the Al Jazeera station, but that stands to reason given current events.
......

Tate Papers16 (general drift)
- constant change and fleeting impression
- high rate of obsolescence
- icons replaced and expendable
- anxiety, and yet something can always be done
- violence and easy solutions to problems
- desire for closure?
- prolonged ideas
- cumulative effects
- cycles and no resolutions

Thoughts: I'm a news consumer now. What am I looking for?
......

American Military Women Memorial
- ambitious women
- still not in straight combat
- sense of agency and power
- personal stories and photos

Thoughts
- still doesn't call to me
- I know I feel rage when I see women in Burkas
......

101 Things to Learn..., Kit White (Apologies to Kit White)
# 45 Work from your intuition, and analyze with your intellect.

"Intuition draws upon [my] subliminal knowledge and allows the unfettered, unfamiliar, and unknown to enter [my] work. Once there I can apply [my] powers of rational analysis to discover what [I] have done. At this stage [I] can always edit, but [I don't need to] edit or preclude what does not yet exist."

Thoughts: I paint and write; therefore I exist. Debatable?
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Holocaust Museum
- Protocols of Zion
- recognition: some of the people I love believe this stuff
- but I was just so happy to be with them
- that I ignored their beliefs
- except when it hurt me badly
- and I'm not with them anymore
- and I still feel sad about that
- !
......

Up and Down / In and Out

2012-01-24T08:38:00.018-05:00

The maps on my walls all show North America and Europe as being "up." I came across a map done by Chinese explorers that showed the Chinese rivers flowing the reverse of what I see on my maps. The image of the Earth from Space shows my "normal" view: North America is safely upright in the world and I'm still standing.... . Yet, the Earth spins in a directionless field, no up or down. There was a German artist who did a series of paintings with up-side-down figures and I'm wondering about his thoughts on the subject. I don't normally paint with any clear idea of up and down in my paintings, that comes later, and I have to satisfy myself for what I want up or otherwise. I suppose I can make this as significant as I want to.
......

Mary Cassatt..., J S Barter et al (pp 53 - 41)

... structure... segues (?)... frame experiments... color theories... surface beyond... quality of light... flesh... shocking... fashionable world... spectacle... ensemble... what she knew... protect the subject... vertical anchor... absorbed... reflections... self consciousness... intimacy... domestic mirrors... watcher... physiological and psychological... coexistent systems... compositional device... between public and private... loge... exploring... embrace... .
......

Tate Papers 16, Spatial Utopia..., Shelley Rice

"... The quotation... disguise; license to express oneself in terms otherwise impossible." ~ Douglas Ekland (p 10)
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101 Things to Learn..., Kit White
# 61 The whole of life of those societies in which modern conditions prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that was once directly lived has become mere representation. ~ Guy Debord

Thoughts: It was sometimes a shock to wake up and find out I wasn't in a movie. Some people think in terms of sitcoms.
......

Washington Notes 14

2012-01-23T14:35:00.014-05:00

Saturday, December 31, 2011
It's New Year's Eve and after a long walkabout there's TV and laughter.

TV: a show on how the apple, potato, cannabis and flower did "biological travel" throughout the world. Sweet apples are actually rare in the wild. We have sweet taste receptors and these are what moved apples, particularly sweet ones, around. The potato was a valuable food source which felt good and full. Movement is pretty well guaranteed there too. Beauty receptors moved Tulips. THC receptors moved Cannabis. THC receptors deal with forgetting which is pretty useful re trauma or just ordinary life pain.

So we have receptors that help us make stuff, i.e. ornamentation (which gets us power and prestige,) receptors for curiosity (to know and to discover,) and receptors that help us adapt, change, improvise.

Thoughts
The forgetting aspect: I have strong resistance, re my personal history, to both forgetting and remembering. It's taken some dedicated effort to sort out what's necessary or desirable to forget and to remember. I sometimes feel I'm always looking through old garbage to find something that may be necessary now. Ain't life grand.
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101 Things to Learn..., Kit White
# 43 Simulacrum refers to a likeness or simulation that has the appearance but not the substance of the thing it resembles.

"... That disconnect between what we know as image and what we experience, materially or actually, constitutes a large part of what must be the disruption of the world we know. ..."
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Tate Papers 16 (thought trigger words)

...the audience... imaginary constructs... newness... conventions... adaptive... substance... .
......

Gallery Observations:
Rothko's paintings at the B Gallery were perfectly lit (low light) as per his wishes. The paintings glowed. What was most beautiful to me was the audience faces. Faces (and bodies) became co-joined to the paintings, each sort of counterpoint, separate, yet of the same body. It felt intimate beyond words.

The computer terminal (Textile Museum) to access more information about the exhibits: I played with it but was unable to access the info they wanted me to. I did send out an email to Sault Saint Marie and it did show up on my google search. That was fun.
......

James Elkins and Algoma Paintings

2012-01-21T06:57:00.021-05:00

James Elkins is an art critic I very much admire. He was kind enough to make some critical remarks on my Algoma Paintings. I feel his insights and attitude are important, not just for my work, but in the larger field.

KD:
Dear Mr. Elkins: I am a painter living in Sault Ste. Marie Ontario, Canada.
I'm wondering if you do studio visits to web sites. I ask because I am so far away from you. If you do, what would you offer in the way of art criticism and what would you charge?

Sincrely, Karin Doleske
......

JE:
Hi, just send me the URL. Glad to make some brief comments.

You might be able to help me, too. I was just thinking ... .
......

JE:
Thanks for those notes. They'll end up in ... .

Meanwhile: I can't quite see from the Algoma Paintings what was cut and mended, and what was painted. It's clear on the one painting that's reproduced large, the cover image: there I can see two sets of cuts in "C" shapes, and a box cut in the middle. But the two "C" cuts seem to be mended differently. The one on the right seems to have been cut out and replaced by a carefully cut piece. The one on the left seems to be mended in situ.
And I can't figure out the relation between the rectangular patch and the left-hand "C" cut.

I mention all this because a good critique is dependent on details. I'd be willing to look more carefully, and write more, if you send me a very high-res image of just one painting, with explanation. OK?
......

KD
Best of Luck on your writing J. Glad you found my info somewhat useful.

The image shows my basic approach re sewing, mending. I used a blanket stitch and mending (e.g. mending socks) techniques. Patches were added to the front or back and then the actual hole was also reinforced with stitching. I worked the material during travelling and therefore sometimes I worked the back of it, and sometimes the front. I added stitching as necessary so the paint wouldn't dip through, but I didn't always succeed in this, so some paintings still have actual holes.

I want the mending to be something that certain lighting will bring it out (i.e. - in the mornings the paintings will show mending more sharply in some
paintings.) I took photos under same light conditions so the images will be more or less sharp depending on the stitching.
......

JE:
Now I understand. The reason it's important is that it goes to the kind of expression the paintings have. I'd have two observations, both with the big caveat (!) that I haven't seen the paintings.

1. About tearing, ripping, and then repairing: the idea of ripping, cutting, etc., has at least three expressive valences:
(a) anger, frustration, etc.
(b) age: wear and tear on the fabric, and
(c) conceptual alterations in the canvas, as in Lucio Fontana.

I don't think
(b) and (c) are pertinent here. That leaves (a), but it also raises questions. If you were really angry, wouldn't you make more kinds of tears? Different sorts of cuts? More extensive, more damaging, or less centered, less geometric? The sorts of damage you've done look controlled, and control shouldn't be part of the expressive purpose here.

And then the mending: the sock-style patch mending has resonance of care, warmth, etc., but the other kind of stitching ("blanket stitch"; I hadn't known about that) looks more violent, less caring.

Having the two in one canvas is confusing. Is the artist mending her own anger (sock stitch)? Is she impatient with it (blanket stitch)? The key, I think, is to separate the expressive meanings of the moments of destruction (make them stronger, less predictable, more believable) and the restitution (make the stitches more consistently caring and careful, or more consistently careless and violent).

2. The painting that then goes on top is an entirely different enterprise, perhaps not connected as strongly as it might be to the stitching. These days, stitching could be enough, without painting. If you also paint, the paint should be connected as strongly as possible to the gestures and meanings of the cutting and mending.

Those are some thoughts. Usually I don't write at length when I haven't seen the work! But it's an interesting practice. Thanks for sharing it with me.
......

KD:
Dear J; These were done while I was undergoing therapy and under those conditions, where I had help with my emotions, the paintings make sense.
This is just for your information. I appreciate your help and observations.
Thank you very much.
Sincerely, Karin
......

JE:
That makes great sense. For the future, for public settings, then maybe my comments might be useful.
......

Washington Notes 13

2012-01-20T15:08:00.004-05:00

Friday December 30, 2011

Walked the Embassy area.

Exhibits at the Textile Museum: Weaving Abstractions(Kuba Textiles - bought the catalogue - and Woven Art of Central Africa., and an exhibit on the Congo - 1700's textiles to the present, dance skirt, pile weaving.)
Catalogue: Weaving Abstraction, Vanessa Drake Morago, 2011.

Woodrow Wilson House: time of tremendous changes, positive and negative attributes of his administration, deeply flawed and deeply progressive. Impressive.

The Philips Collection: Luncheon of the Boating Party painting. Couldn't take photos.
......

I'm still reading the articles on Alloway (Tate Papers16) and Rethinking Curating. Useful re asking myself questions re my own work. Taking notes is a problem.
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101 Things to Learn..., Kit White
# 42 Art has no boundaries except those imposed by the needs of the maker.

"Boundaries are a form of definition, nothing more. They are a way to create a hierarchy of concerns, interests and priorities. Boundaries change all the time. That is a part of what art does. By defining an area of interest, art allows us to create new definitions of ourselves and the context in which we operate. To blur a boundary is to confuse the definition. To move a boundary is to make a new definition."
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Lost and Found

2012-01-19T08:46:00.012-05:00

I got bored with the movie Tin Tin so about halfway through I took off the 3D glasses and watched the rest of the movie just focusing on the shapes in the distance as contrasted to shapes in the foreground. I liked the method of rendering shapes apart which the glasses would recombine for me (that is if I used them.) I'm going to take the glasses home next time and try them out on my shadow paintings. There'll be some interesting surprises maybe.

101 Things to Learn..., Kit White
# 58 Photography forever altered our compositional sense.

White goes on to explain briefly that depicting the world cut off by the picture frame was a new idea in painting once upon a time.

My thoughts: With the Embedded Paintings I deliberately painted a world I could get myself lost and found in because I needed and wanted that. I think I may have picked up some of the violence in the (my) world as well. I'm struggling with meanings here.
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Mary Cassatt..., J A Barter et al, p 28
... her belief that through knowledge of the Old Masters would enable her to discover her own identity as a professional artist...

Right.
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Washington Notes 11

2012-01-18T14:48:00.020-05:00

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

National Gallery (East Building)
- Andy Goldsworthy, Roof
- Ellsworth Kelly, Color Panels
- Rachel Whitehead, Ghosts
- Leo Villareal, Multiuniverse
- Robert Morris, Untitled (cage)
- Richard Serra, Five Plates (BIG)
- Chuck Close, Fanny (finger painting)
- Alice Neel, Loneliness (no figures)
- Jackson Pollack, Number 1
- Henri Matisse, Cut Outs
- Barnett Newman, Stations of the Cross
- Ed Ruscha, Lisp (which I read as "crisp")
- Jasper Johns, No 1961
- Juan Gris, Fantomas
- Piet Mondrian, Tableau 1v
- Joseph Cornell, Untitled
- Marsden Hartley, The Aero
- Hans Hoffmann, Autumn Gold
- Alberto Giacometti, The Invisible Object
- Calder (many and fun)
- Andy Warhol, Shadows (series) and Headlines (art based on newspapers)

Thoughts: I'd seen most of these in books. Scale makes a difference as does seeing them in the flesh. Fab building and experience.
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101 Things to Learn..., Kit White
#40 Making art is an act of discovery.

"If you are dealing with only what you know, you may not be doing your job. When you discover something new, or surprise yourself, you are engaging in the process of discovery."

Thoughts: input is part of the job. Every 15 years or so there are shifts in the field as well and a new crop of people write art books for all levels. It's fun to see what changes or gets new twists. The newness aspect? - not sure about that anymore.
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Rethinking Curating...

I read through the first chapters hoping to find something that would help me explain why re my work. Well, there's other stuff to learn. So far the new media looks like a lot of stuff I'm really not interested in messing with. However, I've seen some of the stuff the book refers to. I didn't engage very much with it because I really got pissed off about all the reading involved. I could make the same complaint about me which is also humorous.
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Field Studies

2012-01-17T07:07:00.014-05:00

Home
This home reno situation a.k.a. chaos: old coping behavioral sets keep popping up. There's work which doesn't change and if I can just keep working the rest might glide away, or even limp to otherwise. Basically this song and dance with myself is boring.
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Studio
I've updated to new materials as the final glaze on the embedded paintings. Notice the inner cry: old friends are leaving all those bearded funny looking men and their assistants grinding up varnishes yes I miss you and there's this new stuff which has the stamp of scientists and tests and probabilities going for it but its not personal...

old paintings old vanishes those cracks and flaws in certain lights I can see your instructions do around the virgin's face before you do the arms old masters fussing and the light just now catching your hand over image...
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TV
We watched Prime Minister Harper on CBC last night. It felt pretty exotic seeing the Quaker Oats cereal box image actually talking and he sounded so safe. Doubtless him and his wife are still having a pretty good go at it, and he still may have surprises for me regardless of his smile. I like him. Is that enough?
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101 Things to Learn..., Kit White

#56 In all good work, the image and its medium are inseparable.

Thoughts? There are other images possible many times and unintended ones are fun. To me, a successful painting would ring true to myself before anything. Whether the painting is good or not seems none of my business, but I could be being an optimist here.
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Tate Papers 16, Lawrence Alloway's Spatial Utopia: Contemporary Photography as 'Horizontal Description,' Shelley Rice. (pp 3 -1)

Phrases and some words:
new types of people with radically different visions... emphasis on the metaphysical rather than the physical... constructed through an artist's personal engagement with both the domestic and global spheres... anchored by individuals and the local and international connections they had the opportunity and the inclination to make... common store of knowledge... the significance of an expression by the national origin, social class, race or cultural background of its creator... the potential of intense and isolated regional artistic expressions... expanded field... endless connectivity... art that refused to stay in its place... contextual mobility... dialogue and influence... circulatory system... 'pyramid' of culture... panoramic vision... multiple countries and multiple epochs... simultaneous and equivalent expressions... cross sections of time... the work of art as an organized, visible pattern... potential of myriad cultural interfaces... .

Thoughts? My apologies to all the people I've quoted.
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Washington Notes 9

2012-01-16T09:39:00.014-05:00

Monday, December 26, 2011
- National Portrait Gallery, American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, National Building Museum

Visitor's Guide: The museum captures the extraordinary creativity of our artists, whose works are windows on the American experience. Everyone can discover his or her own own story on its walls.

- Nam June Paik work: Electronic Superhighway and another one I forgot the name of.

- Art of Hildreth Meire (Art Deco)

- Portraiture Now Exhibit - Roger Shimomura: I have found to be routine to be asked what part of Japan I am from or how long I have lived in this country. Just as common, subtle references continue to connect me to stereotypical 'oriental' traits, both physical and behavioral. Far too many American-born citizens of Asian decent continue to be thought of as only 'American knockoffs.' This latest series of paintings is an attempt to ameliorate the outrage of these misconceptions by depicting myself battling those stereotypes or, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, by becoming the very same stereotypes. - Portraiture Now, Asian American Portraits of Encounter (catalogue)

My thoughts: maybe watch my curiosity?

- Renwick Gallery - Contemporary American Crafts: Wow re fiber, metal, glass works.
....

Christmas Day we walked the National Monuments area. Saw the major memorials including the new Martin Luther King's. The Vietnam Memorial is old now and there were throngs walking through it. Very moving. A Christmas tree had been put up and there were home made small memorials in front of various sections. The Lincoln memorial had, as usual, crowds of people paying their respects. The people were from all over the world, speaking many languages. My heart sort of broke experiencing that. There was also (new to me) a memorial to the Korean War soldiers but it didn't break me up as much as the others.

I had a spate of remembering S and D who were draft dogers living in the same rooming house with us while we lived in Toronto. That war broke apart their families. We lost track of them after they moved on to godknowswhere. They really missed their families and I'm hoping they found their way back home.

I took pictures of MLK's quotes around his statue. The quotes spoke about wanting brotherhood between the races, between people of different beliefs. Pretty tall order given today's events on the news. I remember the Lorraine Motel where he was assassinated. I opened the door to the balcony and just stood there for a minute -- and then all hell broke loose. (Nobody was supposed to go out there. )
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Games

2012-01-13T07:00:00.012-05:00

Sports
People in Carolina complain about the flood of Republican ads. Players are playing hard and "fans" are rebelling? The playing field is crowded with players. I could call it "sport" from where I watch maybe, but it's a strained and anxious metaphor.
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Rethinking Curating... (pp 293 - 300)

political position... catch 22... rhetoric... Database Imaginary... philosophically hyperactive... convergence... rationality... media bliss... feminist... how it looks... what it does... glitchy... glitchiness... patchy... messy... minimal... cold... provenance... reinterpreted... documentation... review... first contact... embodied knowledge... do-it-yourself... vocabularies... hybrid... experience economy... leisure attractions... new enthusiasms... other modes...
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Tate Papers 16, Mapping the Field..., Moonie... (pp 8 - 6)

surplus value... critical purchase... provisional relationships... information capitalism... by no means clear... normative information... vague branchwork... uncensored continuum... density... process abbreviation... blurs... codes... currency... commonality... distribution...
......

My thoughts? I'm playing with words and phrases. I don't know what, if anything, will mean something.
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Washington Notes 8

2012-01-12T10:03:00.008-05:00

Friday December 23, 2011

Museum of the American Indian

Arrowheads placed in pleasing arrangements, some tribes with a lot of writing about their beliefs, photographs. So much reading. I got pissed off about the low light and all those words probably because I've seen lifestyles for myself. The photo of R's work was nice though. I still think about her from time to time. The structures based on traditional building methods outside were interesting and the building itself was beautiful.

TV: protests again in Cairo. I'm wondering about the women I met there. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Tate Papers 16. The articles are about an art writer, Alloway. He was influential in the postwar period (20th C.) I didn't keep notes on the authors, but this wasn't deliberate on my part, or was it?

Some words and phrases I find interesting:

parallel systems...urbanism...modernism..messiness...democratized....the media engines evolve to control changes in culture...
....

Washington Notes 7

2012-01-11T09:56:00.003-05:00

Thursday December 22, 2011

I'm debriefing, but using the words I'm reading, trying to make sense: supposed localized identities...mobility and art...cultural interfaces...horizontal descriptions...spatial utopias...google indicators...significance circumstances...constructed scenes...exploded world...art jockeys

National Gallery: the women painters and Degas, and Renoirs and et als my eyes glaze over

Lunch: chestnut soup

TV: Jane Fonda interview: sensitive and highly strung, wonders about women and their choices.

Amen.

Washington Notes 6

2012-01-10T09:28:00.009-05:00

December 21, 2011
Natural History Museum, National Archives

collections: rocks, gems, dinosaurs
displays: Neanderthal burial site (some actual bones,) slavery (tribes and locations,) Declaration of Independence, government farm assistance in the 20th century, changing American diets and public health (via schools, 4-H and other organizations,) the container used to rescue the Chilean miners earlier this year.

Margaret Meade's report of Southern Race relations: both Whites and Blacks wanted equilibrium. Meade wrote changing that desire would be very difficult.

Jewelry Exhibit: the Hope Diamond is very big. The other jewels were boring.

other exhibits: collecting seeds and plants all over the world (photos and letters,) ways of introducing new methods of farming to farmers, patents and inventions, food safety - how it became part of American culture.

Purchases
documents (ie - Constitution,) Martin Luther King Jr mug, Rosie the Riveter mug, also books:

Mihaly Csikssentmihalyi, Creativity and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Harper Collins, New York: 1996

Richard Osborne and Dan Sturgis, Art Theory for Beginners, Steerforth Press, Hanover New Hampshire: 2006

Michael J Gelb, How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Random House Inc., New York: 2000

Ray Smith, The Artists' Handbook (3rd Ed) DK Publishing, New York: 2009
......

Domestic Colouring

2012-01-09T08:04:00.025-05:00

Home
I finished the last album cover for the Alaska Road Trip scrapbook. There are eight albums in all and the trip is duly documented. When I need to feel uplifted I'll have plenty of visuals and words about our time together, how sweet it is. Dave took over putting the photos in the albums and I just make the covers now - mostly maps and other materials. He really does a nice job. So do I.

Sports
The Republican New Hampshire Primaries: the debates go on. There's parsing of the Constitution, references to founding fathers, but the elephants in the room (the economy and military spending) are strangely de-valued. Using Obama as a scapegoat seems the usual (historical) method that Blacks have faced since the founding fathers. I find myself wondering about what founding mothers would have constituted.

Reading

#50 Learn the basic principles of color, 101 Things to Learn in Art College, Kit White (2011).

The author names primaries, secondaries and tertiary colours as being the foundations of painting. Well, okay. There's also various systems articulating ways to mix values, adjust chroma. International colour associations also create colours for the current times and there are artists like Kandinsky and on and on... . I can't imagine artists not being influenced by living spaces, culture, social conditions -- by using actual colours of the milieu or making some other reaction or response to their environment, culture, etc.

Right now I'm staring at my white canvasses. I'm trying to imagine myself as a child, but with no previous colour experiences or personal history. I want to play.
.....

Tate Papers 16, Mapping the Field: Laurence Alloway's Art Criticism-as-Information, Stephen Moonie.

I just started this article. So far, nothing new. I keep asking so why am I reading this? I'm pretending I have no critics or public. Maybe I really don't know who or what my audience is. I pretend I send this out to a void, no faces, no feedback. I also continue a conceit that I can be my own critic, which is kind of fun. Well okay. Maybe he can teach me something despite myself.
......

Rethinking Curating..., Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook, 2010.

pages 275 - 279, some words and phrases:

the production of meaning
where the power lies
global playing fields
thinking cultures
authorship
evolution
legitimization
the cultural voice
process
becoming with the audience
partner organizations

My thoughts: I sometimes sort of wrestle with these words and phrases from time to time. Various sections of this posting seem to address the other sections. Can I hope for some unified sort of narrative or images or both out of this way of working?

Washington Notes 3

2012-01-08T07:55:00.017-05:00

Books purchased
An Eye for Color, Olga Gutierrez. Harper Collins, New York, 2007.

Seeing Gertrude Stein/ Five Stories, Wanda M Corn and Tirza True Latimer. University of California Press, 2010.

Rethinking Curating/ Art after New Media, Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook. MIT Press, Cambridge Mass, 2010.

(CD's) Jazz/ The Smithsonian Anthology, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Washington DC, 2010.

Natural Architecture, Alessandro Rocca. Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2011.

Modern Colors/ Selections from the Collection (25 postcards) Museum of Modern Art. New York, 2011.

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol. Harcourt Inc., New York, 1975.

Painting/ Documents of Contemporary Art, Perry R Myers (editor.) MIT Press, Cambridge Mass, 2011.

Andy Warhol, Arthur C Danto. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009.

101 Things to Learn in Art School, Kit White. MIT Press, Cambridge Mass, 2011.
......

Aerospace museum: saw the original capsule used for the moon landing. The exhibit had actual footage of the landing and the actual recordings of the astronauts. Blew me away.

History of flight exhibit: saw many airplane prototypes; visuals and texts on the personalities and backgrounds of the Wright bothers; and the role of family and family values in their discoveries.

Moon markings exhibit: explained the reasons for scarring, lines, other markings on the moon and solar system planets. Lovely visuals.
.....

Hirshorn Museum: saw a large collection of modern art of the 20th century. Womens' paintings were particularly interesting.
.....

TV: Kim Il Jong died (Korea.) I'm remembering many stories of starvation in that country.

Washington Notes 2

2012-01-07T11:28:00.006-05:00

Monday December 19, 2011
We're staying in a mixed area: Spanish, Asian, African American. I forgot to change out of my slippers before our flight so we walked around until I found some comfortable shoes. We're going to one of the Smithsonian galleries today, an adventure. The apartment has two bedrooms, three baths, three TVs, one computer (not working,) a fully equipped kitchen, and laundry machines. It's over a restaurant (Vietnamese) and the smell of spices is strong. The furnace is very loud but doesn't kick in very often because it's quite warm here, no snow.

Streets are thronged with Christmas shoppers. There's a renovated theatre building on the corner and a grocery store one block away. Dave tells me how this area was burned out by rioters after Martin Luther King Jr's assassination. There's a monument to Dr. King near the White House and I'm looking forward to seeing that. The apartment also has a list of African American important historical locations to visit, so we'll be visiting some of those places as well.

The last apartment occupant left behind conference materials. The conference had various talks on current Neuro Science discoveries. It seems Neuro Science covers a lot of fields: physical, emotional, mental, and the researchers are located all over the world. The study of fear in humans and animals was a topic widely discussed at that convention (August 2011.)

Reading Notes 1

2012-01-06T10:28:00.018-05:00

Tate Papers: Julian Myers, "Living in the Long Front" (cont.)

Myers: "... signs are positive, direct, and acquire meaning and value only in relation to other signs." (p. 9) He continues that signs are common information and also personal. I won't argue with that.

He also states Baudrillard objected to this and goes on to say "the psychic and the social were collapsed and the unconscious colonized; real labour and desire were replaced by a simulacral 'system of oppositions' that privileged one sign over another; these abstractions then played out 'on the order of power' and on life itself."

My thoughts
I suppose one person, me, seeking self-empowerment might be aware of that and I'm still busy making my own(ed) hierarchy of power. Do I need to worry about others' power structures? Not right now I don't. Perhaps there are others like me building their own lives and art with their own(ed) power bases?
.....

Kit White, 101 Things to Learn in Art School

#49 With opaque media, learn to mix colors on the surface of the image.

White advises me to also to learn how colours react to each other when mixed. Hmm. I've been doing that, sort of. However, I haven't used colour opaquely for a long long time. Although I like paintings with heavy paint applications or/and opaque applications, I'm still absorbed by using the paint as varying transparencies. Maybe I'll just keep on with it until I want to change it for some reason. Colours gleaming through and interacting with each other seems more alive to me. I play with that. I've been doing that ever since I can remember actually.
.....

Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook, Rethinking Curating

This book has some situations and ideas useful for my own practice. The focus on collaboration may be useful -- although my work looks like solitary work, there's major unrecognized collaboration going on all the time. This Google site: me and Google have a stake in one another. I can start by acknowledging that and giving thanks. Thanks Google. I sincerely mean that.

Painting to the Edge of Poetry

2011-12-17T06:36:00.005-05:00

I sent the new catalogue link out and the silence is deafening. Could be because of the holidays and busyness. So, I'll keep on sending it out and see if anyone will enjoy the play of it. I use words like paint sometimes and I think it worked in this instance. Bine just said she hoped I would have a harmonious Christmas which I took as an indirect comment on the effect of the catalogue on her.

Well, it's play, words and images stuff again. The abstract at the beginning gives it some density. It's a love poem. The form of it, using the blog format, gives it enough structure I think. It will be wonderful to bring the words together with the actual images when I show it in Toronto. Word-images and image-images: playing the two together feels like music somehow.

Optic Fields

2011-12-12T09:40:00.010-05:00

Mary Cassatt was enchanted by the new optic fields afforded by gas lighting in the late 1800s. I admire her palette in her painting Woman in a Lodge (1879.) She lived in Paris at that time and knew Degas and the others and their work. The streets and inner spaces of Paris must have seemed magical considering the oil lamps and candles that would have been normal in their childhoods. In Cassatt's painting her palette is luminous. One critic called her colour harmonies "bold," but I think they might have just been accurate.

One other thing the book mentions is the fabrics shown in Cassatt's and others' paintings at that time. Paris and other cosmopolitan cities would have realized large shipments of fabrics from colonies, India, China. These would have been fabrics for the rich. I've checked out palaces and large buildings in many places in the world. At that time those buildings had dim lighting at night, or lighting from sources like candles etc. I remember when I saw the reflective fabrics in India how these would have made sense in their environments. Fabrics that caught every available gleam of light would have been highly prized. In Cassatt's time there's a sort of neat mixing of optic worlds which some of the painters picked up on: old "new" optic-enhancing fabrics were seen and painted in their new lit environments. Talk about a dazzle head trip!

Personal Observations
- running wild through the streets of Prescott at night, the bluish glow of the new TV sets in houses and yellow pools of light from street lamps
- the milky weg streaking vividly overhead in the dark bush when we camped in Algoma
- stars over the Nile and flickering low lights along the shore, gleaming shadows of people and cows(?) along the shore
- flying back to the Sault at night, this very tenuous row of lights on patches of an unseen highway and masses of dark surround
- flying over Toronto: the lighting turned from yellow to peach over the years
- a newspaper article on the best dark places in the world (a new aesthetic?)
- I'm thinking Cassatt and her contemporaries were blessed with an innocent eye in those days
- there are people still seeing light with innocent eyes in many places in the world

Morisot and Play

2011-12-07T06:49:00.006-05:00

I finished the book and learned some more about how she and others worked which was helpful but I'm looking and yearning still for some sign that she had fun yes play and she knew it

I think she knew she played there's no doubt but but did it make her glad and full and joy what about that?

her self-portrait with July was a mindblower it looked psychological and left her contemporaries spitting in the dust she painted that in 1885

Stuckey, Charles E and William P Scott, assisted by Suzanne Lindsay. Berthe Morisot/ Impressionist. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1987.

.....

This writing thing seems to work to get back on focus with painting. Catalogue work continues. When I have that finished I'll be ready to start on another new adventure.

Lone Ranger, Tonto, Morisot

2011-12-04T06:30:00.004-05:00

movies in childhood in the fifties about The Lone Ranger and Tonto there's a joke: Tonto disguised himself as a door and the Lone Ranger came along and blew his knob off I used to laugh now I cringe and I wonder if it would help or hinder to tell it again maybe

a sort of truth about some quest to save the world or at least do good requiring an added self someone more submissive but helpful nonetheless and the perceptions of First Nations got mixed in some ways they're still struggling with that so am I

the Lone Ranger persists even now but the reality is we need one another to get anything done half way successfully if at all we're learning to adjust on major scales not just locally

someone like Morisot with her band of fellow artists more or less close stuggling with vision and she struggled with separation finally finding form in all that dazzle defined barely and she knew her truth

Whine On!

2011-12-01T08:37:00.009-05:00

Nothing like a whine session to build up the appetite even brushed my teeth before breakfast all while these niggling reminders about blessings which can be a drag when the world is supposed to suck sigh it's getting harder and harder to feel put out

Morisot reading: good info and insights about her work and process. I decided to just read and study through despite desires to jump off in all directions.

Office: I set the email program to delete spam infested mail. I see the infected ones the first time I open them but then later when I look the emails are gone just like that. The new protection program does go through sound signals when it's killing off the unwanted. Who would have thought it could be so bloody noisy?!

Studio: experiments restretching the canvas has me rethinking to what I can do better next time. The glue size on the back should help to make pressure differentials between back and front more even. However, I'll have to re stretch after every washdown because the fabric is just a little light for the way I work.

We both tried our whines on each other this morning over breakfast and it was a hoot.

In Sight, 2

2011-11-29T05:46:00.004-05:00

My head's in such a whirl reading into Morisot's work seeing familiar brush strokes I destroyed or washed away but she decided to keep

the artist crew who danced to her paintings made her inventions their own and could distill her forms but it was she despite all that material and all those dresses who painted naked

those fleeting moments the rush and flow and dazzle and persistence I'm struggling to separate out of her paintings but why bother I'll still be here and I have my own in-sights as to the truth of now

Mein Kampf and All That Jazz

2011-11-25T08:34:00.007-05:00

struggles of an artist Hitler considered himself one his deadly performances using real live players making most obvious victims a true craftsman with disciples other artists write their own Kampf explaining why

Kahlo had her options about telling she didn't paint Christ on the cross for truly she knew her crosses in ways unimaginable and there are crosses enough to take up every single soul

Chicago had her crosses like everybody else this age allows the cry here anyhow sometimes it's deafening with causes donations pledges all that weeping in the night

if I had been at your bedside I could not doctor you or even distract you from the inevitable holding your heart close to me regardless fate wails and performances unwind

continue anyways and there is joy somewhere it's tough too just finding my way back home

----------

Book: Frida Kahlo. Face to Face, Judy Chicago (with Frances Borzello,) Prestel Veriag (Munich 2010)

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Kahlo's Work, Play

2011-11-22T09:05:00.009-05:00

Enmeshment and codependency are outcomes of conditions and experiences. Important figures can become fused to a self and separation isn't easy. Taking on larger identity "figures" can be part of the package too. I see that in Kahlo's work and I also wonder about Chicago's work in that light. Maybe everybody has this to a certain extent; it's part of the human experience rather than strictly gender.

The side bar is in the details: Kahlo's laces, flora and fauna, shells, rocks etc. are telling something at play, taking pleasure. Pain may be large and encompassing, but there's something else going on as well.

Self-separation was thrust on Kahlo in her life experiences. The accident separated her from expected mores of her old and newer cultural realms. The continuing evolution of her body breakdown literally forced her own psychological self-evolution. She learned about standing on her own two feet, despite amputations. She learned how to mother herself, maybe. The double painting of herself would point to that.

Necessary inventions and the play aspect of her life and work interest me very much.

Studio: I'm playing with tangles of threads literally. Seems to articulate current thought process quite well.

Sum Thoughts

2011-11-19T07:36:00.005-05:00

Chicago's work and book: I have mixed feelings about that. The Dinner Party spoke to me vividly, but on the other hand it passed on the task of self-recognition on a very personal level. At the beginning of this book I find myself saying yes, these appalling conditions regarding women artists are true --and I also find myself with the challenge of keeping on despite that. I can't erase "then" and "now." Systems go on, and there are some rips and tears in the fabric, which in my own oblique fashion I've addressed all along. To continue is the challenge and I can do that.

The computer is back, a huge relief. Some more Christmas bazaars are on this weekend. The dinner party of my own went well. Dave has the itinerary of galleries and museums in Washington almost finished. I've asked him to add the National Women's Gallery because I want to have another look at the travel diaries collection.

Studio: work on the fabric layer continues. I've started adding safety pins. Seems appropriate.

Today

2011-11-17T06:27:00.008-05:00

life is a broken computer and I'm realizing the help the Tec guys gave me in the past I'm sending thanks to H et al at Algoma Services and sorting through books I won't read again so the donation box is filling and Dave said no to another job he looks so tired and I curb myself in trying to fix him or give advice and my belly is large now and I know how it got that way and I know what to do too then there's the CD I found of an old web project thanks to Harry I still have it I'm wondering if Myspace could show it again lots to give thanks for

studio is emptying content and emotion and playing with what remains and there's this back and forth circles and lines in stitching which makes a close resemblance to inner actions Bridget Riley's seeing with the mind's eye comes to mind and although the world feels confusing I keep working through it and there's a lot of interesting stuff going on the first snow IS magic

Keep On Trucking

2011-11-14T07:37:00.005-05:00

I woke up crying. What do I do with the Prescott memories? I couldn't take care of my brother and sisters. I was 11 years old. I'm looking for happy memories. I remember rolling down the grassy mounds at the fort, walking through fields, being paid a dime to deliver a neighbour's mail, exploring the town on my bicycle, stealing comic books, my first smoke with Annabel at night behind the pickle factory, the lady who smoked cigars wishing me well when I told her I was leaving. What do I do with the darkness that keeps coming up in-between? Shit happened. "Playing" with the materials seems to rouse things up. I can work through this, I can play. It's just another new thing.

Picasso and the Boys

2011-11-12T08:10:00.009-05:00

Today: choral group at Bishophurst and laying pavers in the yard.

M tells me she's working with encaustic these days. I'm curious about it because it's rare in the art world, but she's not sure enough of herself to invite me to have a look and I'm not pressuring her. She's actually talking about it which is interesting.

I've asked other local contemporaries for studio visits, but get no replies. I remember being unsure myself at various intervals. The studio stuff feels so raw and exposed sometimes. Meanwhile I'm in one of those periods where I'm laying everything on the table so to speak, like some whore. This is humorous -- this whore attitude -- no offense to whores.

In high school (Sault Ste. Marie) I'd written captions for class pictures one year. For myself I wrote get off the table Karin, the quarter's for the beer. At that time I was still a virgin so I hadn't realized the connotations of the term. I was merely writing what was my truth -- laying everything on the line. It caused a kerfuffle at the time. Maybe I haven't lived that down even yet. But then, maybe laying everything on the line gets transposed to sexual in this society.

The Eternal Fem book goes on about various early to mid 20th century (male) artists but dwells most definitely on Picasso. I first saw his work (slides and photographs) in grade 10. I was stunned. They seemed the most truthful portraits of "me" that I'd ever seen. It was exhilarating and I felt empowered to make my own self portraits that seemed truthful to me. Wish I'd kept some of them or had photos.

Maybe this speaking subject becomes one of Picasso Fems actually telling about herself. The art of it becomes a kind of talking back. So what do you think Picasso? I'm talking to you.

Fem

2011-11-10T09:27:00.009-05:00

My computer's broken and in the repair shop. Looks like I won't be buying an ad for my show next November. However, there's time to get back to reading while waiting for the studio to warm up. I'm reading the Eternal Feminine. I'm familiar with all the 20th century artists mentioned. I like the author's take - how women were depicted, prevailing perceptions of the time. He traces the term back to Goethe who I very much admire and the artists were my fab faves when first looking at art.

I wonder how I would have fared in the early 20th C, what with my sensibilities and proclivities. I would probably have made some man and children very unhappy, but then maybe I wouldn't have been so adamant about breaking roles and expectations. Then too, the world was a very different place and the forces were different, different overwhelms. Besides, society didn't support women who were "trouble makers." Gertrude Stein ended up far from home in Paris where she and her money found a congenial group to belong with.

I'm wondering if my paintings can "carry" my writing or vice-versa. Maybe the idea of one carrying the other is unrealistic. One sort of becomes the ground for the other. Figure and ground do switches. Then there's the author who is "me". I'm becoming familiar with my own inner stranger allwhile. The audience or viewer is confused (no kidding!) but becomes a background too in that I use the idea of audience. The audience becomes a thing, maybe a sounding board, perhaps a wall I throw stuff against, like throwing mud at a wall. If the mud sticks, that's OK. If it doesn't, that's OK too.

I've encountered a lot of Tracey Amin's work in my travels, both in the flesh and on the web. I admire her sexualized expression and her raw, acute honesty. She's a ground for further artistic development. I may have something like that happening regards my work. However, none of the people who've used my work in their art classes have responded to my queries about what exactly they did with what I was doing. Go figure. meanwhile, at this point, I'm too close to the work to make sense of it.

Remember

2011-11-05T05:41:00.006-04:00

sometimes I feel like one of Norval Morisseau's figures needy little hooks all over my body hunger thinking but with a desire to smash things down the bitch self damning but I'm realizing sources and the confusion of time again and there are world events but I lack nothing

coming back to earth and finding I lack nothing all I want or need is here and now and there's nothing to fear things work pretty much okay and people are actually nice we're doing

Christmas Bazaars this weekend and fund-raising suppers in churches and other places and it's not outrageous watching others just being good and doing what they can with smiles on their faces these are my people now

they fought for me and I'm no longer in a war-zone-once-removed

Daughter of Invention

2011-11-03T08:02:00.006-04:00

met D from high school last night at dinner at the Husky India food much more tender vegetables here than there but I almost didn't recognize her without a suit on but

she said the mural I painted at the high school meant a lot to her nice surprise because I'd miscounted the thing didn't even have a picture shame for it looking so different from the others my father once asked me why the hell didn't I paint pretty pictures like his neighbour down the street

my work means a lot to me but it's not necessarily everybody's cup of tea I send them out into the world like they're my children sometimes it breaks my heart to see the scoffing yet

I haven't made much work compared to other artists and it's a big deal even making them at all I'll be an old lady (I hope) with a houseful of paintings

I'm going to use the remaining paint and not add to it until I run out new colours will be a reward for diligence and I'm curious about what will happen Picasso had a blue period but I won't be starting with blues and my reasons are different the old adage

necessity is the mother of invention proved true often enough but then the mothers of invention was a rock group in my highschool years and I like painting in circles

Thinking Jerusalem

2011-10-31T06:08:00.006-04:00

I listened to an expert telling about how things are there about the safety if I were to visit about people who seem to be living permanently in bomb shelters and about his talking which registered like my father's talk my mother's talk my family's talk and my talk too when I'm feeling low them versus us

his gift for coming all the way from Jerusalem was a book In the Footsteps of Grey Owl as if he would want to know the bush all that water beyond the eye as if he could visit one day

my resistance to warring marriages warring families warring tribes as if the suffering wasn't real as if there weren't innocents maimed as if at the end of the day they're not still tearing each other to pieces

I could have stayed for coffee afterwards but didn't merely thinking it was a simple white room with church-like pews and a hanging at the front beautiful embroidery people seemed so nice and friendly too but then

when I think of Jerusalem I think crazy old gods who will grind me up and spit me out

My 62nd Birthday

2011-10-25T09:08:00.003-04:00

it's a birthday among many others but oboy not policies procedures directions doing good just watching him as he kisses me and there are roses

being wife of somebody and those presumptions smile ignore the gossip ignore the traps pretend the latest scandal hasn't happened it's just him and me now and I have a lover and a friend who knows me giving roses

and I'm laughing there's a dance in the old dame still

A.R.T. Visit

2011-10-20T07:00:00.004-04:00

at the end of it I didn't approach you merely standing there with a magazine popular science as if the universe was more important we'd met just briefly long agos intervals too brief as if I wanted that but despite myself I blessed and wished you well

but I was weeping and laughing about being happy to see you didn't quite believe but you and you and you pretended it was true these goodbyes you never know if there'll be another

so I blessed you with these lies there's been so many times so many losses you know that too I won't bother paying the ferryman plenty's been paid already

A.R.T. Hot Damn!

2011-10-18T09:58:00.005-04:00

I usually run into them early early after coffee and cigarettes on the deck figuring there's be nobody around at that time but no there she is with her cute little gauzy hat and smile and he with his wary look looking at the devil I imagine they ask how I am but she does the talking and he shuffles just a little bit to the side and not out of earshot

I like her simple hair clear eyes and hands folded like some rabbit over her gut long sensible dress black stockings flat bottomed shoes in brown she asks how was the tour and I want to say fucking incredible but mange one word "charming" which embarrasses all of us

They were moving back home guess there's not too much of a community in Alaska he's an electrician and drives a car so they're not like the Mennonites in Algoma more worldly maybe and besides there's grandchildren back in Oklahoma to return to they have a cabin on board and he does a lot of reading while she does crossword puzzles it's a forced holiday and they don't quite understand it from what I can tell

?so how do I conduct myself ?how? to be friendly and and treat them well allwhile imagining him on top of her in one of the bunks having a wild ride hot damn things get complicated sometimes

A.R.T. Inner Passage

2011-10-17T05:17:00.009-04:00

day 40 crossing open water it's pretty rough we're told "one hand for yourself one hand for the ship" and there's no TV or Internet connection and books don't do it anymore just these thoughts still a student maybe never quite graduating that's a laugh

this ships makes trails in the water how long do trails in water last perhaps a lifetime maybe the shudder of our flanks against waves will break surface long enough to smooth it out but then even calm sunny days show trails in water after storms

the facts of permafrost came and went as did distrust and trust I learned about clouds and mountains and grey scales and how people lived and about their hearts and about ... but now I wonder

the veteran holds court on the third deck but he's bunking on the top deck where there's tents and short teenagers from Japan wearing hiking boots maybe he owns one of the sleeping bags there but now he holds court in a haze of cigarettes and youngers tell their lives to him

I'm between worlds a veteran of sorts but no real experience to offer and this illusion "of the people" right as if I sleep in sleeping bags and wander the world looking for work or making cheap jewelry for stores in tourist areas some sleep with their heads on tables in the common room with all their bags and gear heaped around their shoes

you smile at me but it's a distance smile you can't imagine I can't either

A.R.T. Words

2011-10-15T15:17:00.006-04:00

one slight word just a scratch barely audible and her story tumbles we through sad times glad times cars stolen when this place thrived and everybody flourished old times and older wars in Vietnam a fur coat that fit how long away your origin restless as your soul you tell

the amount of snow falling in winter as 100 inches more or less with melts in between some places get 400 and it stays and there are photographs to prove probabilities the other women are silent but this one smokes like me and because I'm close to the ashtray there's this trust thing maybe

I can't figure if she's honest but she probably is just in this moment in spite of details that don't fit so I believe her utterly and not a single word she says

A.R.T. Gold

2011-10-13T05:57:00.007-04:00

It's Dawson City former home of various writers but I don't know if Jack London lived here once upon a time and the houses look more fixed up than the 1950's National Film Board slice of life that showed old sourdoughs who'd braved the pass and now were toothless and grinning among decaying streets and cabins

I'm looking for Sharon who'd been a friend before she moved to the Yukon not a word these forty years or so just gone one day no forwarding address but undoubtedly continued her life of adventure I was here at last Oboy and she'd probably had her share just surviving as if she's still alive would she remember me?

we stay in a renovated prospector's cabin between the Yukon River and a hill that looks like it would be sliding down in some rain or perhaps when snow melts and the river is an earnest flow northward with a lot of power and a ferry ride across got us here after driving what's called the Top of the World Highway yes it felt like that and scary too

A.R.T. September 10

2011-10-11T10:18:00.005-04:00

Yesterday we drove the #1 to an ocean town but tour boats to glaciers weren't running due to rain and cold. Colours along the sound were breathtaking because greys pop out aspen yellows and there are red bushes all over the lower areas of mountains.

Our apartment has a kitchen so we bought local seafood for some very fresh meals. Locals seem to prefer hamburgers and steaks, but then seafood costs as much as in the Sault, but it's a whole lot fresher.

We're by the railway. There are still droves of tourists from other countries taking train rides to the interior. As for us, we've driven most of the paved roads in Alaska. Some of the passes are under repair. Sometimes the lack of guardrails feels pretty frightening; mountain valleys are pretty deep.

Today we drove the Thompson Pass. Its mountains had a dusting of snow on the peaks, but at the lower levels it's been rain alternating with clear. We stopped to look at two moose -- a mother and a calf -- grazing beside the road. Other trucks, some with hunters, stopped too, but we all just enjoyed the view. It may be that mothers with calves are off-limits in hunting season. Nonetheless, one of the trucks had a fresh kill in the back. The antlers stretched from one end of the truck to the other. There are hunter's trucks and off-road vehicles thickly sprinkled throughout the non-park areas.

We're on a glacier cruise in the morning. Many of the glaciers we've seen en route showed huge fissures at the edges where they join to land. Signs at park information centres told how ice worms lived on glaciers. This was a surprise. I'd thought Robert Service's poem telling about ice worms weren't true.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of September 11. On TV, and it seems in Alaska too, there's a determination to turn the day into a celebration of survival -- while keeping vigilance about possible terrorism. I'm still working through 9/11 myself.

A.R.T. And and And and And...

2011-10-07T10:14:00.007-04:00

Tundra Tour: 65 miles into Denali Park swimming into vegetation reds yellows and rock and skinny roads with no guard rails stopping for lynx sheep moose grizzlies and box lunches and the tour guide's story of his life and I met people from South Carolina Nome Romania all flora and fauna exhausting delight

Talkeeta called itself the coolest place in Alaska and there weren't crowds at the outdoor cafes drinking in the sun but then buses rolled in and a train disgorged waves of tourists from everywhere on earth and we all grinned at one another but the locals at this end of the season were too tired to chat

we drove on and a woman at a gas station explained to me she was showering there because her house didn't have running water and she answered to my statement tough life that she was from Oklahoma and the snakes were a worse thing to live with there and in Anchorage we found a nice whalebone pot to put ashes in

A.R.T. Layers

2011-10-05T10:24:00.011-04:00

the farmers' market heritage tomatoes danced with oversize onions and salad greens we bought grass fed local beef inside and out red potatoes sourdough bread wild honey and pastel-coloured eggs in blues greens pinks and yellows

she didn't answer about the colours only telling how the chickens were sporadic in making eggs it seems the fact of colour isn't unusual but chickens' behavior certainly is

the meat cutting shop was taking orders from hunters about the various cuts required and I waited for the other carcasses to be moved to the back for processing reindeer caribou elk buffalo and moose it's hunting season for dark meat without much fat thin textured and fine a bit like liver we bought reindeer sausages

the man in the roadhouse museum told stories about the people who'd run it like he knew them yesterday while David listened raptly I studied the objects a familiar iron hot from the stove keep away it will burn you this stove holds larger firewood and this kitchen has a hand pump instead of hauling water

A.R.T. Red River Valley

2011-10-01T10:22:00.003-04:00

Dave dreamed about moving dirt he kept moving dirt all night but I heard trucks ceasless tro and fro all night building up flooded highways we're in Devils Lake the lake with no exit which leaked out all over because there was so much rain this year it's leaking northward now through Saskatchewan into James Bay and northern seas

Red River Valley old songs come to mind and this motel has a pioneer wagon skeletal and small beside the highway and between there's a railway line pushing west where once were buffalo as far as the eye could shoot from trains we push to pacific waters

this ceaseless wind I bend like prairie grasses to just stand up sometimes

A.R.T. Motion

2011-09-30T06:35:00.007-04:00

movement of eyes motion of thought perhaps women sorting through dahl for rocks insects debris waving off flies on old horizons your bleary-eyed sun sighs behind iridescent smears once pinkish now cloud forlorn by degrees infinitely slight a bird scolds some wind languid and persistent

air conditioners drone and bicycle wheels play counterpoint and a man with a cigarette watches and now just now some stranger runs pad pad pad pad pad pad I can feel your impress and it's morning

Alaska Road Trip, 3 (9/11)

2011-09-11T13:23:00.004-04:00

there are still aspects details information to sift through sifting through as shadows and there's vegetation to wait amongst the living watch watch keep the eye moving some things aren't dead not yet

for just one movement out of sync that slightest edge shift not quite align perhaps one shade of voice untune as background comes to fore behind in front and through

blended too too what about ?hunters and the hunted?

every nerve tunes and birds underbrushing flashes could be only smell or hair strands on the back of some neck attending it may be safe before these shadows fall again we're all watching now

are there plans to action some indeterminate loose ends somelies where camouflage slips my focus are there hunters still and does this prey ignore ?some turned to night?

Alaska Road Trip, 2

2011-09-04T11:35:00.008-04:00

The old Alaska Highway built by the American military just in case after Pearl Harbour splits into other highways started at different times and places and for other reasons from time to time so my sightings of mileposts is off we missed the 1,ooo milepost somehow but I've lost track anyways

5 Am in Fairbanks I strain to see a moose just beyond my balcony I was debriefing photographs of those who endured survived persisted but there's only bird songs among birch leaves which fall because of feather scuffles the sky is Prussian blue I used to favor in pencil crayons deep time ago I can see my breathing in the air

a fluctuating horizon tells the same mountain all day from different angles and heights an empty filled with flowers even now as leaves fall and bushes turn to crimson streaks sometimes with white summits

this road winds triumphantly: rock asphalt concrete steel guts determination sheer cussedness to maintain a very narrow range of body temperature and all this space and time between the heart keeps stopping to jump-start again

I gather seeds

Alaska Road Trip, 1

2011-09-02T10:19:00.006-04:00

about Whitehorse why
so many flat topped houses? what
happens to rain when it hits perma frost?

organic farming and wellness activities and the poor
living up the hill what's life really like living here all
year and three months warm?

at a retreat I get away from input other
motels/hotels are geared to museums adventure
experiences and there are also rooms for truckers
only truckers trucking through

this road moves between worlds

a public laundry is huge clean weary
with a woman removing cash from washing
machines looks India and a man folding
shirts looks First Nations except
he's way past six feet I read

a fashion article in the local paper
telling mukluks and razzle dazzle dresses
but the writer is leaving shortly people
who stay are sourdoughs

Three Women

2011-08-10T09:52:00.005-04:00

Amy died at twenty-seven having sung her grasping loopy-loo fearing maybe ?freedom what is freedom can be sobering sometimes breaking pattern could be as simple as that

Aphrodite didn't lose her virginity she just kept on bathing swim out grime can chime
I like the broad who makes it look effortless

If she were love which she-am too and the fucking sort as well these are just facts
Why bother washing excessively?

Maybe she plunged to follow fish or other treasures too light to carry back on seafoam lined with silk standing tall

The bitch knew how to live and she kept coming back

One who hung in then and then and then and then
Way past thirty into double time at least past the rise and fall her cracked voice carries

Falling into love is easy so is falling out

New Songs

2011-07-19T06:42:00.006-04:00

We're going to the strawberry social tonight yet turmoil thoughts merely stand ins for anxiety and self-doubt la la
Who am I not to be wonderful?
This fighting off as self-denial blaming others fault finding or rehash situations unresolved as dragons
Really in my head la la from long ago
Actually there's sweetness and no complaints but a victim song and dance so tiresome
Song and dance ho hum
Actually we bought perennials yesterday and we're planting them after Dave comes back from the dentist
Facts and thoughts private storms actually it's funny ye ole tunes aching old songs
What could I sing instead?
Perhaps power and glory and wonder perhaps a dragon's head (stuffed) on my castle walls tuning in perhaps

The facts of my advantages perhaps this life is mine perhaps it's good and sweet perhaps embracing Dave and flowers and strawberries

Why the hell not just enjoy?

Boston Trip

2011-07-08T10:03:00.006-04:00

We visited with Philip and Eleanor twice. They're both artists still perking and developing their work. It was great seeing their work, visiting one of their galleries and meeting other artists. I was particularly interested in their artistic development over time, their uses of colour. They were warm and friendly people and I'm glad they took the time to visit with us.

Our hotel was a bit of a mind blower. Ho Chi Minh and Malcom X both worked there (!!!!) We had a dinner at the same table that Jack Kennedy proposed to Jacqueline Beauvoir (!!!!) Later, reading some of her letters at the Kennedy Centre I renewed my interest in finding out more about "women" -- I sometimes feel I know so little about the subject. Jackie-O and the women in her (very political and privileged) family: I wonder (knowing a bit of the family history) how they coped, how they managed, what they were like as persons in their own right.

I also picked up some documents integral to American history. I now have reproductions of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, as well as Frederick Douglass' What to the Slave is the 4Th of July, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation 1863, Sojourner Truth's Aint I a Woman 1851, Martin Luther King Jr's I Have A Dream and his I've Been to the Mountain Top.

Why am I so interested? What in the hell am I going to do with these documents? These are integral documents to this time, my time -- still. They've inspired me and countless people all over the world. My own search for a sense of freedom was impacted by these. We'll see what happens as I deal with them "in the flesh" so to speak.

On the 4th: listening to the Boston Pops with the symphony punctuated by fireworks was a moving experience. Both sides of the Charles River were thronged with people from all over -- both Americans and visitors. The National Guard was on hand as well as countless of police and volunteers -- making sure the party didn't get out of hand or otherwise. It went smoothly. Children played, people laughed and clapped and had a good time.

Taking Stock

2011-06-16T10:16:00.003-04:00

I'm in the middle of putting some of my 1990's work on my web site. it's a step back to see if I can see some patterns in the work. I've been evolving away from the figure, but the figure is still there symbolically, so to speak. The art as the body still operates.

My interest in narrative as structure still operates too. To attempt to explain this: I've found for myself the role of narrative(s) in shaping my own life. I've been making art that examines this for idea well over a decade. I've been persistent, insistent about this.

The "embedded" paintings: I haven't decided whether they're finished. I haven't even decided whether the images should be "read" vertically or horizontally. I am thinking more about that. Looking over my notes will help. I've decided to go more public with all my notes. Perhaps there will be some input from others regarding my work, which might prove interesting or not.

1990's paintings: looking at them now, I have only vague memories of the emotional storms I was going through. The art of it though, the use of colour, medium, the types of images -- brings back vividly the art, biographies, the artist statements I was studying at that time. I was deeply involved in learning post-war artists and also contemporary artists of that decade. I call them shadow paintings and I was very aware, at the time, of dealing with various narratives over-layered in the act of painting itself. I painted with glazes - which was my way of acknowledging the history of colour pigments and oil in western painting -- these were, to me, indicators of significant technological and intellectual changes in western culture.

you were beautiful fom the beginning

2011-06-10T05:13:00.005-04:00

I feel pretty excited about the Australia trip this winter. With apartments we can cook, pretend we're locals, feel the insides of the place a little more.

Leaving my studio though can be upsetting as well. Taking care of anxieties, my fears, my worries, my shit, that's my job. But I'm trusting anyways. I can manage. The art of it loves the input, but I fear the "doing" will be neglected.

Work is nearing completion, at least it feels that way. They're standing and lying all over the studio and I spent some time just looking after the painting session yesterday. I realized they're (literally) about states of being, which seems pretty old fashioned, like old 20th Century artists, none of whom particularly come to mind. It seems I'm painting the invisible stuff, which sounds so . . . .

....

stand tall I knew you could take your first steps to your last I'm cheering for you the universe roots for you all the heavens celebrate you standing deep in my love you were beautiful from the beginning
....

I feel insecure about the paintings. Yet they do come from somewhere. I will accept them despite or maybe because they're so rough and home-made looking. They're all too human, which is a fact of existence, my existence anyways.

Fields

2011-05-04T10:16:00.005-04:00

I started this series of paintings thinking I would settle once and for all what various colours meant to me. I wanted to use them to tell a narrative. I've discovered something different though. Even on an individual level, a red will mean different things, as do all the others. Anything can set me off into worlds of meaning unplanned. On some level this feels rather glorious and empowering.

I'm doing the mixing and putting colours together and paintings are turning out looking rather similar to fields. However, "colour field" paintings don't seem to address this phenomenon. My direction may be the result of actual fields I used to study. At that time I was making notes about the proportions of certain colours. It's a WOW that fields may look the same at first glance, but there were incredible variations in the proportions of various colours when I really studied them.

I feel embedded. That's a nice feeling.

This Spring

2011-04-19T23:50:00.004-04:00

I've tasted your springs
Some fresh some sour others bitter rue
But what's spring o earth air water fire?
A season ending
Fire begins again
Released
One seed opens and
Joy sings through

Sense

2011-03-25T03:38:00.010-04:00

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

News: Japan, Libya, Egypt, other places. Canada, mercifully, doesn't have major events. It's been a holiday month for me. I've been watching others struggle and fight for their lives. The word "irony"doesn't begin to cover it.

Last night we had pizza at an outdoor restaurant overlooking the place where the Mekong river joins two other major rivers. Amid beggars, pollution, streaming luxury cars, tuck-tucks, bicycles, rickshaws, vendors, tourists, noise and seeming chaos I could hear a heartbeat.

....

The National Gallery this morning: the Buddhas on display have altars. There are women trying to sell incense to light at the altars. The museum stuff is old and older. It was bought from farmers trying to make some money to buy water buffaloes. The buyers, mostly from the first world, donated the treasures back to Cambodia.

After going to a market I watched money exchanging hands between a woman and a Euro-man. The daughter, about fifteen years old, finally put her hand in the man's hand and they walked off together. I then watched a young man getting his mouth pried open by a tourist. The tourist then patted the young man's groin area and laughed. They then entered a message parlour. These are methods of survival in the land of the Buddha.

It's hot. We both have dirrareah. I'm debriefing before the flight home. The news on TV won't look the same after this trip. I have a notebook of drawing experiments. Maybe the drawings are about sense-making, which is a dubious enterprise after all.

Red and Fire

2011-03-21T19:31:00.009-04:00

Cambodia. I wrote on the other blog as well. I appear to be having problems keeping them straight. This is relevant to the drawings anyways, but then so was the other post. well. onward.

In grade four I was in a one room country school somewhere in Leeds and Grenville county district. I failed and repeated grade one in Toronto. I moved to the country and entered grade three but the teacher skipped me on to grade four. She handed me a book containing maps of the world and various countries. She said, "Äll the contries in red beloing to the British Empire. Canada does too."

That was pretty flabbergasting. I looked at the map of the world on the inside cover and face page and it looked pretty red to me. I was part of that. WOW.

It took decades for me to get over the feeling that every person coming from any part of the British Empire was my friend, even family. Meanwhile the Empire dissolved and independence
struggles continued. But when I felt a part of that it felt so wonderful and reassuring.

Debriefing

2011-03-04T02:29:00.004-05:00

We're joining a tour group tomorrow. One of the highlights is a rickshaw ride through the city which I find overwhelmingly embarrassing due to the body mass differential between myself and the bicycle man. However, it's a living for the other and there's being a good sport. Right.

More museums today. The revolution museum we stumbled across isn't listed in the guidebook. The guide book specifically mentions that people here don't want to be remembered for the war. Right again. But we found it anyways and it's taken a couple of hours to get the images out of my mind.

Here in the north they consider that the south was ruled by "puppet regimes." I can't argue with that version. I also can't imagine what it must have been like to be dirt poor with people from other lands dictating my activities. Photographs in the museum look like they were taken by simple cameras and in secret. The revolutuionary leaders didn't, for the most part, live past their thirties. The story is haunting.

During Vietnam's last push for independence I was living in Toronto with Dave. We were friends with draft dodgers from the states. I was tuning out politics, as if I'd ever tuned in to politics that is. I was getting a degree at Rochdale College as well as holding down a full time job in an insurance company.

So I'm debriefing myself right now, looking at the children and grandchildren of this place. I can't imagine that any of them weren't touched by what their grandparents and parents went through. However, that was then and this is now. I'm glad they want to take my money and are nice to me.

I like seeing the TV stations from Japan, Australia, Russia, England,China, the States too. I like the different takes on what they think is important to them. Same facts become fluid. When I miss home I'm glad this hotel has a business section. I can check people I know on their computers and sort of feel connected.

I Walk By Falling Forward

2011-03-02T18:02:00.004-05:00

This is our second day in Hanoi. We visited the contemporary art museum, ate our first Vietnamese meal, and walked the streets.

Vietnam is called "Communist" but the activities of the people reads "Capitalism" big time. We're in the old section of Hanoi. This area reminds me of the section in old Delhi we once stayed in. It's an area of very small shops, specialty trades, and thronged with people who know the maze and each other.

The art museum had a collection of paintings made in the forties and the rest of the twentieth century. The paintings showed the facts of resistance to occupations. There were paintings about soliders, both men and women, and the dailies of war, raising children, trying to harvest crops, being away from home, keeping spirits up, as well as losses. There were also images of groups of peasants trying to educate themselves, looking after the children whose parents were away fighting. The sense of these paintings was very personal.

I broke down in front of a painting called "letter from the front." It showed a woman reading a letter to a group of old men, women, children. I was reminded of a long ago painting, another land, another universe: the paintings had the same title, same emotional charge.

The girl who sniffed at me when I was looking for a Viet Cong poster called the art "propaganda." I merely thought, "Yes, propaganda was a part of that." Basically though, I am in awe of the strength and resiliance and determination ... .

The world feels very real and actual sometimes. I'm thankful for the travel opportunities. It's fun but also core-shaking. Drawing helps me sort out from the welter of impressions and sensations.

Sum Thoughts

2011-03-01T02:44:00.004-05:00

We took one of the subway lines to the ocean today. The old fishing village is giving way to highrises, but some of the old boats and snack shacks remain. The boats have motors now and the shacks have loud music to accompany the seafood.

It was chilly. People were packed tight in puffy jackets but we wore our shirts and didn't shiver much. Compared to the Sault it felt like early summer. The hills around the village were swathed with pearly grey clouds. I felt like I was in one of those old Chinese or Japanese landscape paintings.

Prior to that we stopped at an old mineral springs spa town. It was developed by the Japanese before and during the first world war. I don't know whether the Japanese were there during the second world war, but there were many wars at this place before that.

And prior to that we went to an indigenous museum. I experienced artifacts, music, video footage, statistics about the many tribes who got taken over by various colonial aspirations, including those of the Japanese. In these times Taiwan is making a huge effort to put the past behind and to appreciate all the peoples comprising this place.

But the faces remain. Like me, others of my generation -- we're spawn bred after wars, after other outrageous events. I can't blame us for being born. I can't blame us for the sins of our parents either -- not exactly anyways.

We're leaving for Hanoi tomorrow morning. I'll miss this place. It's been fun and the people are nice. The subway is excellent.

Bitches Will Be Bitches

2011-02-28T17:53:00.003-05:00

We're doing the usual tourist stuff for here among masses of people. I carry my assumptions and, looking at others, I think they do the same. I'm enjoying the one and two children families, couples, singles, groups doing their thing. I see differences and similarities to what I know as "normal." I still have trouble with people, no matter how friendly their intentions, assuming that they know what I need or want. That's my issue. I don't think they have many dealings with someone who literally stops to think about what she really needs or wants.

There's no smell of testosterone here, that is, guys or chicks sliding their eyes over bodies, doing the moves thing, signalling interest or whatever. If there is, I'm not getting it anyways. I remarked on that to Dave and he said he'd noticed it too.

Dave looks large here. I guess I do too. During subway rides I see women sizing me up, looking at Dave, then looking at me, then looking at us. Sometimes I hold their glances and there's this awkward smiling back and forth.

We were put in a gondola with a group of teenage girls and boys. The girls echoed the way I talked but I stared them down. Then they stared at me and made comments and laughed among themselves. Old stuff, but it lasted the ride across the valley. Dave, who doesn't see cat games, was very happy and jovial. At the end one of the girls asked him if he would pose for a picture. He was as pleased as punch, and I made the effort to be happy for his sake.

I've had a lot of this in my forty plus years of marriage. Dave gets the respect and friendliness and I get the cat games. Sometimes the men did it too. There are reasons and I've learned to fluff it off for the most part. Sometimes though it can hurt.

My drawings are turning into studies. Maybe they'll be worth developing when I get home.

Every Place Has Its Face

2011-02-26T18:59:00.002-05:00

Early mornings when the sheen of light settles slowly, like a thought having realized
Night forgets I remember being in a swim
Just yesterday all days are
Like the last and before maybe always
To be continued

Thinking About Thinking

2011-02-24T10:33:00.003-05:00

Today: Flower show (BIG), Contemporary Art museum, a nap, night market. I'll have to ease up on the street food. The lilies and orchids are pretty fucked with colour-wise, size-wise and in growth habits. I envied the bamboo sculptures. That material is so versatile. It can extend the line, the stroke, the hand so beautifully. However, it was just nice to see what could be done with it regarding scale more than anything.

I won't name the retrospective artist, a local hero who I found boring. I was looking for Terra Incognito, new inner universes. Perhaps those were new worlds for him and the other people here.

I felt like some puffy pink slug pressing my way through the masses. I guess that's what being a new Canadian feels like at times.

Thinking about thinking: I'm removed from language when on the street and in my hourly affairs. There's the tone of what I'm hearing, but otherwise the meanings are lost. I most miss snatches of conversations, hearing intimate details, being somewhat of an insect buzzing through. Sometimes that could feel very marvelous in a crowded environment.

I find myself suspecting everything the Russians say on their (English) news programs, but then I also find myself admiring the depth of coverage, Ha Ha. Putin comes up regularly: the camera loves him.

Lybia: distressing. I caught a flash of myself avidly reading Alice in Wonderland (about age 12.) I remember thinking that at last there was this book showing what reality was like. That book sort of comforted me. I'm wondering at the Lybian's versions of going down the rabbit hole. However, the actual content of thinking is giving way to ideas of process. I think the drawings are sort of experimenting with that.

Taipei

2011-02-23T08:09:00.006-05:00

Pretty luxy hotel. I miss having a coffee maker in the room. The balcony is off limits for security reasons. BBC doesn't air here, but there's an English language Russian news station as well as a German one, and CNN too. Different slants, different twists on the facts, same ole trying to see through ideologies. I'm looking for Tripoli, wondering how things are going, keeping my fingers crossed.

I'm in the "Business Suite" with some pretty fancy IT stuff and all races pecking away. Dave's waiting for his coffee but I don't think they're going to trust me about taking the cups out with my own two hands. The coffee is nice and there's a place to smoke. There are some English papers as well.

It took five hours before our room was ready. I feel pretty wasted after a plane ride of 15 hours. There's a big flower show happening. Although English street signs are not really, we'll figure it out somehow. The big museum has stuff the Chinese say was looted during the revolution, but Dave tells me the Island and motherland have a guarded business relationship now. This will fill in some of the blanks of the Beijing museums maybe. My drawings are changing.

Faith

2011-02-18T11:25:00.006-05:00

Tie these pieces together loosely so they may breathe their own
Few pieces not enough I fear sometimes I fear that I would not have enough
To cover my dreaming
There's enough though faith faith there's enough
To cover all dreaming eyes

....

Wednesday November 3 2010, Buenos Aires
Inflation predictions for here this year are 26%. I ask Dave what drives inflation. It makes sense. I wonder about the poor here. How do they manage?

I've been testing out various underpainting configurations. I'm also trying to figure out how the overlays will work in relation to the colours beneath. I'm brooding about forgiveness, but spinning in circles.

We went to the Japanese Garden and had sushi and champagne at their restaurant. Bubbly is cheap here. We then looked at the work of a very lot of Argentine artists. The paintings were mostly dark. I bought an art magazine. The rose garden after that was overwhelming. They out-Englished the English with roses. The day finished with a boat ride (row boat) through the park and we laughed and laughed.

I watched trucks loading up in the Once area too. Old beat up trucks get packed to the roof and high on the roof as well with tightly trussed boxes. They drive all over South America with cheap goods for tiny stores. Once area stores are crammed with colour blazes of plastic goods for children in God-knows-where. People greet me with "Hola!" which is saying Hi with gladness. I don't speak but I smile a lot.

I'm thinking about how I think about people sometimes. Sometimes I view them (and act accordingly) like problems to be fixed. I would rather just enjoy the soul in front of me. I wonder, can I do that?

2011-02-18T10:29:00.009-05:00

Anniversary

2010-09-07T07:49:00.004-04:00

Just a few days before the anniversary my father'd just died I conflated the two events newscasts continuously replayed the images worlds colliding

My email group shut down completely Vance died we grieved as families unable to console one another

It feels ironic having my opening on that anniversary date I can remember life did go on

A Thankyou

2010-09-01T16:05:00.003-04:00

This morning I ran across an announcement In The Sault Arts Council Newsletter congratulating me regarding my upcoming show in Toronto. This is the second time they've given me a vote of confidence about what I do. The first time was in a newsletter they put out when I had the Journeys show at the art gallery. At that time they wrote: "our own Karin Doleske" in their events listing. That felt so good to be claimed, warts and all, by my own people.

Now, today, with this acknowledgement, I hardly know what to think. I really appreciate the emotional support. Thank you.

Legacy

2010-08-05T09:14:00.010-04:00

Last night I watched The Lion in Winter for the third time. I've watched it in my 20's, in my 40's, and now in my 60's. I was a different person each time. I went from enjoying and noting how people got back at each other in my 20's , to sadness at seeing familiar patterns in my 40's, to this now-grinding realization I am embedded in familial conclusions that I had little power over.

I remember reading a history of the Ottoman Empire based on Western travellers' accounts written at that time. I was reading it in Constantinople aka Istanbul. I remember reading fratricide was part of that Empire's game of power and control. The Topaki Palace was rife with schemes. I also remember how it was the custom of the palace to sew warring harem women in bags and throw the bag into the Bosphorus. So much for brotherhood, sisterhood, motherhood, fatherhood.

I emailed my middle sister yesterday too. I told her I thought of her and that I hoped she was happy. She disappeared from view leaving no forwarding address, but I can find her anyways because of her line of work. She doesn't answer. This beats her raging replies anyways. I try again every couple of years. Giving up hope is hard.

At least now I can understand why we can't be friends. It's larger than both of us, possibly hard-wired. We come from a warring race I think.

Artmaking

2010-08-03T07:12:00.004-04:00

I figured part of artmaking is learning about art. Part of it is being aware of what's going on generally. Part of it is getting out something that needs to. Part of it is connecting to others. I used to want to just find others like me. I kept expanding my range, or trying to anyways.

Maybe I don't have to worry about finding others like me. Maybe it's enough to just inform whoever I can about what's been done and then let it go.

The War Department

2010-06-03T12:34:00.005-04:00

That was her nick name. I'd worked at a restaurant in Iron Bridge with her and I knew her kindness and honesty. I also knew she'd worked at lumber camps, cooked, did any number of things to keep her children safe and fed and housed and clothed after her husband died. When she died I went to her funeral, and amid the weeping relatives and friends, I remembered her glory. There in the wind blowing fiercely in the sunlight, was her spirit rising to the blue. It's a similar day today.

I have two post cards of war posters from Churchill's War Room gift shop. They say, " Keep Calm and Carry On," and "Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory." He was, to me, of the best the British Empire produced.

I'm in pain. I overdid it on the houseboat trip, and also because I got into the feeling work of "Canadian Identity." I feel so crippled (my hip and back.) It's hard to sort out which pain is mine and what belongs to the past, to other people. These are my people too.

These things happened. There are reasons, and, ironically enough, this also speaks of triumph. In some strange way, I'm celebrating. Go figure.

Emotional Labour

2010-01-08T09:42:00.011-05:00

I'm back from London. What a heady trip! Picked up an interesting book at the British Science Museum: 50 Psychology Ideas by Adrian Furnum (Quercus Publishing, London: 2008.) The book is a survey/update on the psych trends thus far, at least to 2008.

Those who like my recent paintings have spoken to me about the impact of the paintings. This quote from the book seems to cover the points they made.

Emotional Labour

Many jobs require physical and mental labour but some require emotional labour. Service staff are required to express emotions they do not necessarily feel. They are required to smile, to be positive, to appear relaxed whatever they actually experience. This is called surface acting. In some jobs you are almost required actually to feel the emotions you display. This is called deep acting. Some customers can spot the false display of emotion so you have to learn the inside-out smile.

Some service workers whose emotions are managed and controlled by their employers become alienated from their real feelings. The sorts of emotions are showing patience, friendliness and curiosity, while suppressing boredom, frustration and anger. One way to do this is through the use of scripts. Service staff are encouraged to act: to learn their lines; to portray a character. This teaches them the appropriate emotion. Similarly, uniforms can act like stage clothes. They can inform and protect.

All service staff have a backstage in the gallery, the kitchen, even the cloakrooms. Here they can be themselves, let off steam, react how they would naturally. Behind the scenes they can mock difficult customers. They can get their own back and enjoy the camaraderie of the oppressed. Rest breaks are times to become the real self; to take off the makeup; to recover a sense of self-worth and take some time off emotional labour. (p.59)

Observation: who isn't in the service industry? X, an executive in a corporation, appreciates the paintings because he has few, if any, people he can really be himself with. He likes my paintings because they are truthful about what he sometimes feels.

Nancy Spero, Judy Chicago, Eminem

2009-11-10T07:19:00.004-05:00

Nancy Spero's been dead since October 18 and it's taken a while to realize what she meant to me. I've been remembering her work and looking at the images on the web as well. I'm revisiting the questions I had.

I did so want to know the woman beyond the anger. I wanted to know the joys she carried: did she know them? I found her public persona and the art frightening at times. Was there more to her than that? It seemed so much was given to her, as a birthright so to speak: education, opportunities, a sense of self. Her anger and her sense of woundedness seemed historical and general, but to me, the arthritis told another story.

I wondered what she could have painted had she attempted to face herself from a position somewhat a hair's breath beyond the churn of emotion.

Her anger turned me away, but I kept going back to her. I couldn't face my own anger, much less deal with hers. Years later, when I first heard Eminem's music I was surprised that his anger and woundedness didn't frighten me. This may have been because his gender was different? Maybe, maybe not.

Judy Chicago's anger and woundedness had a historical and general feeling to it. She used that in a way that felt empowering. I remember walking round and round the Dinner Party, crying my eyes out with relief and joy. I felt a sense of history, my own history.

I've known many angry and wounded artists, not just women artists. The work may be compelling, but there's a sense of hatred and bitterness too. There's more to me and my art than those emotions.

Worlds of Temptations

2009-11-09T09:05:00.005-05:00

After getting swept away by each cornucopia of information: I'm sitting still right now. I'm thinking other people might have this feeling: there's so much, everything is equally important, I might miss something... .

Right.

I was addressing that in the paintings too, but also painting my resistance to overwhelm and confusion. My choice and focus was deliberate; it took effort to resist fears, insecurities. I'm satisfied that I kept my focus, some feeling of integrity.

Wanting to rush in all directions, take in the whole (as if!) doesn't work, at least for me. A curious feeling: dare I call it "trust?"

Finished Paintings

2009-11-05T13:14:00.005-05:00

I've finished another body of work. They need a protective coat (June or July) when the paint film is a bit more firm. It's been interesting giving myself the challenge of working on a specific number of canvasses and working on them them in groups. I've been able to experiment and test as I go along.

The emotional component is more general now. It was a good jumping off point, but formal concerns are becoming more interesting. I've learned a lot. There are some things I want to try out now that I couldn't have imagined before. The galleries in London will be helpful. I have new eyes to look at other paintings now. The colour of it: There's still a lot to try. I'm curious about the work of other painters. Abstraction too, there's more to explore there too.

I'll photograph the remaining next week. The paint won't be so drippy by then. I'll carry over the Ricoeur reading for the next body of work. I've been studying the art of women painters and there's also a reading list developing on these. I don't know if my work can be considered in terms of gender, or if I would call myself a feminist. I've been very aware of the art of women since my days of living in Toronto, visits to various feminist art shows in Canada, the States and Europe over the last 35 years or so. I've done some reading on feminism, but maybe I'll study some more on that as well.

This curious feeling.

"Course," To Be Able To Say

2009-10-28T07:49:00.004-04:00

The illocutionary character of a simple constative in the form "I affirm that" is grounded on a tacit request for approbation that can serve to reinforce its self-assurance. Self designation receives more than a strengthening of its illocutionary force from this call to others. This plays a founding role, in the sense that an attribution of a proper name, following the conventional rules that govern the distribution of first and family names, as well as the pronouns in any given culture, constitutes a veritable founding of a speaking subject capable of saying, "Me, my name is ... ." p.96

My Thoughts

I've had a lot of difficulty with naming myself, being open about what's really going on inside. As well, living for 30 years in Iron Bridge was a solitary experience for the most part. The non-urban landscape has been traditionally "thin" for people like me. I can understand today's culture of tweets, etc. as a way of keeping encouraged.

The Course of Recognition, 7

2009-10-21T07:42:00.006-04:00

Section: A Phenomenology of the Capable Human Being. This is part of the Recognizing Oneself chapter.

Ricoeur digs out the evolution of meanings regarding self and self recognition over time. I found his archeology very interesting. However, the passage most relevant to me and my concerns is:

In recognizing that they have done something, these agents implicitly attest that they were capable of doing it. (p.92)

He then calls it " ...the grammar of the 'I can' ..." (p.93)

My Thoughts

I did a lot of things, some of which I deeply regret, and some of which I can be proud of. With these and other memory events a picture of myself emerges: a woman named "Karin."

As a child she thought and acted out of a sense of right and good, however ignorant and flawed her thinking was. Later memories reveal her taking the skills she learned as a child and failing and succeeding and modifying as she went along. She was a maker of worlds, her world. She lost hope and regained it. I think she succeeded in finally viewing herself as a capable human being. She was also a fighter in a closed system, a basic unit: the family.

What was she fighting for? It seems she fought for a sense of independence and agency, some feeling of freedom and control, a sense of herself as a separate, yet connected human being, a desire to participate and be known.

Reality Check

I slept and read most of yesterday. When the freezing came out from the dentist, there was a lot of pain.

John (ARTCRIT): I realized I was more interested in why he was interested, than the subject he was interested in. I think I asked an honest question.

The Google search on deep structure: the search goes into many fields, all over the globe. I'm wondering about how much I can trust other peoples' opinions.

Realization: I have limited time for reading. What will serve me, my interests best?

I'm longing to finish my paintings. Drying time means reading time. I expect it will work out. I feel like I've been carrying this project and what it represents to me for years, decades, most of my life.

Ideas of deep structure: the pain and suffering of humanity is historical; it affected everything. I am just one of humanity, but I think I'm sort of representative. I am human. I suffer. There is also beauty. I'm part of that too.

I am: human/ author/ doer/ capable person. I am an agent rather than an object. I've proved it to myself. I think that's what I've been doing these two years.

Sigh. It seems so simple. I guess it's not that simple for a lot of people, maybe.

War Games, 2

2009-10-16T09:56:00.004-04:00

We left. They were still going at each other or working. Grandchildren came and the games were altered.

They attacked my bother and sister-in-law mercilessly. The child needed to be raised the "right way."

This repeated with the other siblings. I stood by. I thought the grandchildren were getting the attention I never did. I thought they had good intentions.

Reality Check

I played monkey in the middle. I should have known better, but I didn't.

My nieces and nephews had their own harsh times. They're adults now and capable of making their own lives. I'm glad about that. I wish them well.

War Games

2009-10-16T05:57:00.006-04:00

My brother usually had my youngest sister on his side. I usually had the other on mine. We would run around the house taunting and beating up on one another.

My brother was the object of his rage. I would keep quiet through the beatings and taunts. I don't know where my sisters were.

My brother found the gun. He knew how to use it. We searched the house for the bullets, but we couldn't find them. I was relieved. I was only twelve and he was ten. I knew we would have gone to jail or maybe hung.

My brother left at age 15. I left shortly after. My sisters stayed until they finished high school.

It must have been harsh for my sisters. They were so quiet as children. Maybe they were planning their own escapes? If so, they finally made it. Good for them.

I have regrets. I don't know how much I am to blame.

The Course of Recognition, 6

2009-10-14T07:38:00.016-04:00

In this this section, Aristotle: The Decision, Ricoeur examines what the writings of Aristotle added to the enterprise of recognizing oneself.

Key questions: how does the self decide what to do? What motivates actions, activities?

Aristotle thought generally actions and choices aimed for some good. His writings examine what is good, and to him, the highest good for most people, is happiness. He examines what happiness entails, and Ricoeur quotes him: For human beings, it is said, there is something above and beyond every particular task, a task proper to them ... which is to live a "fulfilled" life. (p. 81)

Ricoeur adds: With this, the idea that happiness comes only through divine favor or luck is excluded. Happiness has its source in us, in our activities. (p. 81)

Aristotle: For the good we are seeking is human good and the happiness we seek is human happiness. (p. 82)

Aristotle links our desires with virtue: Human virtue will also be (just as vision makes the eye good) a state that makes a person good and allows him to guide his work to a successful conclusion. (p. 82) He then argues that moderation (the golden mean) rather than extremes are the responsibility of the self when thinking about and taking action on what one wants.

Generally then, self recognition requires knowing one's self, being the expert on one's self, and also taking responsibility for one's own actions.

My Thoughts

I've been an adult since I left home at age 17. I can, I did make myself happy. Sometimes it was at the expense of others. I regret that.

Making myself happy is my job. I've gotten good at it.

There are people who want me to make them happy. As if that's my job.

Thinking I was responsible for other people's happiness led to trouble for me and the others involved. I regret that too.

The Course of Recognition, 5

2009-10-12T06:19:00.007-04:00

Section: At Colonus, Oedipus Retreats, pp. 75 - 79

A king with the furies comes to the end of his life, accompanied by his grieving companions who are his daughters. One daughter leaves. The other clings on.

Ricoeur quotes Bernard Williams: "... in the story of one's life there is an authority exercised by what one has done, and not merely by what one has intentionally done."

Oedipus: " No one could have loved you more than the father you are about to be deprived of for the rest of your lives"

He sends his faithful daughter away and dies alone, off stage. She has plans to go help her brothers who are at war with one another.

My Thoughts

The old king left a mess behind. What I found sad was the daughter trying to fix things afterwards. She was trained, and she learned, to focus on other people's problems rather than her own life.

This story isn't so old.

The Course of Recognition, 4

2009-10-09T06:05:00.005-04:00

In the section, Ulysses Makes Himself Recognized, Ricoeur focuses on Ulysses. Penelope was my interest. She recognized Ulysses by "secret signs" of the marriage bed. After the deed, supposedly, they talk. Ricoeur quotes the conversation --

Ulysses: O woman, do not believe you are at the end of your trials! I still have some day to brave a complicated, dangerous, boundless labour... .

Penelope: If for our old age the gods have truly reserved happiness, let us hope we shall escape our trials at last. (p.74)

My Thoughts

Ulysses is honest: she's got further trials coming; he's got missions and labours of his own.

Penelope is still wishing and hoping instead of thinking. Her plan sounds like giving her life over to the gods and hoping for the best. She uses the word "escape" regarding "trials."

I want to shake her, like I want to shake my younger woman self. I used to carry such a plan of action in my mind.

Hope and gods don't cut it when the nights are lonely and long. They certainly don't tide you over when support systems fail. Problems do come up, mistakes do get made, and there are times when you just feel like giving up. Other people will try to run your life for you. As well, your giving, accepting inclinations will work against you.

I do have regrets. I regret not having been clear, really clear, about what I needed, wanted, my abilities and talents years ago.

Ulysses had scars, talents, and he passed tests to stake his claims. Penelope has scars of her own, but they're not obvious. Ulysses is out doing what he needs to do, but will she realize her own scars enough to claim her own ground?

The Course of Recognition, 3

2009-10-07T08:53:00.008-04:00

Ricoeur traces the idea of recognizing oneself from ancient Greek literature. The elements involved: responsible action, justice, motivations.

He also points out that through the awareness that oneself is capable of certain accomplishments, a person recognizes responsibility.

Recognizing (self) responsibility happens thusly: wondering what to do, making conclusions, taking action.

In other words, reasons motivate the actions. The self makes things happen.

In the literature, characters' reasons are motivated by "movements of the heart," and the actions are done reluctantly or deliberately.

He notes that, despite the beliefs that the gods took part in the process, "the character holds himself responsible for an action that he does not dissociate from himself." (p.71)

He also notes that in the early Greek literature, action has these components generally: cause, intention, reasons (normal or abnormal states,) and results, which, in turn, require making up via blame, punishment, compensation.

Ricoeur concludes the section by noting the problem of intention as it relates to evil, and as it relates to the idea of freedom of will. These were not addressed in any depth in that literature.

My Thoughts

I took my brother and sister by the hand and walked away. I said we would find a better place. We walked for a while. I kept looking at the faces of the passersby, looking for someone who might want us. My sister started to cry. She was tired and frightened. I tried to shush her, but she kept on crying. My brother got scared too. A crowd gathered and asked us our names. I pretended I didn't know what they were saying. Somebody found our parents. We were returned. I was so angry and upset about going back.

My baby sister cried and cried. My mother was working. My father shouted to leave him alone. I snuck in anyways. The soother didn't help. I thought comforting her might help, so I lifted her out of the crib. She was heavy and I dropped her. Now she was screaming. I was frightened. Had I hurt her? My father stormed in. He yelled and yelled about how I'd deliberately tried to hurt her, that I was an evil child.

The Course of Recognition, 2

2009-10-05T07:31:00.007-04:00

The road to recognition is long, for the acting and suffering" human being,

that leads to the recognition that he or she is in truth a person "capable" of different accomplishments.

What is more, this self-recognition requires, at each step, the help of others,

in the absence of that mutual, fully reciprocal recognition

that will make each of those involved a "recognized being"... .

The self-recognition ... will remain not only incomplete, as in truth mutual recognition will,

but also more mutilated,

owing to the persistent dissymmetry of the relations to others on the model of helping,

but also as a real hindrance. (p. 19)

My Thoughts

Suffering seems to be a human constant. Knowing my suffering may be a positive step.

I've had trouble realizing myself as a capable human being. I'm still discovering that I'm capable and human.

Those who told me I was a capable human being in the past: I either did not hear, or I did not believe.

I recognized others' suffering more than I recognized them as capable human beings.

My model of "helping" was therefore skewed.

I also actively sought and accepted "help" from people with a skewed model of helping.

Sigh. I took a long time getting here.

The Course of Recognition, 1

2009-10-01T08:07:00.006-04:00

John calls the turmoil of modes "processing". Well, let's get on with it. I have spates of realizations/memories and weeping. This is another clear day maybe.

The what and how and why of my childhood experiences: childhood suffering. Maybe we all suffered, some more, some less. I'm processing now. Better late than never. Main feelings: anguish and a broken heart. It's time I mended this.

What I wanted, what I got, family wise: I guess I wanted Dick and Jane. It didn't happen, no matter what I did or didn't do. I did the best I could. Actually we all did.

So that leaves me to The Course of Recognition. It was interesting how Ricoeur traced the meaning of the word over time. Yet, it was, and it still is to a great extent, a man's world, perhaps a man's meanings. I'm wondering what women would have, would now, add to the enterprise.

Ricoeur notes the urgency of the enterprise. He uses the word "demands." His words:
Is it not my genuine identity that demands to be recognized? And if, happily, this happens, does not my gratitude go to those who in one way or another have, in recognizing me, recognized my identity? (p. xi)

Right. What about women? What about me?

I'm a woman now, of the "senior" persuasion. My battle for recognition started on the home front, and now it's for a self beyond that.

I wonder when I see women in Burkas or I read the news, particularly that awfulness where a woman and her husband and sons killed the aunt/second wife and their daughters perhaps because they were getting "too independent."

I wonder about the self awareness of women in general.

Brand New Day

2009-09-25T09:56:00.003-04:00

It feels as if a spell is lifted.
The day has brightness and colour, even though it's cloudy.
There are sounds, ordinary sounds.
There are smells, just ordinary smells.
It feels wonderful.

I know now that as a child I was bright and beautiful and curious.
That hasn't left me; I am still that
Only older, and perhaps wiser.

My paintings: a dicovery: It's now, I am here. I'm a little battle worn, perhaps
but that's OK.

I think I've painted a celebration.
I feel excited, and calm.

I feel gratitude.

Gifts

2009-09-23T09:58:00.009-04:00

My grandfather led me through the streets. Instead of houses, there were piles of rubble. It was incomrehensible to me. I kept asking, "What? ... Why?"

He kept saying, "Krieg...Krieg..." over and over. I couldn't grasp it. One small word, such overwhelming destruction... .

He pulled a pair of child's sandals from the rubble, saying, "These will fit you." He hid them in his jacket and told me not to tell anyone. At the time I remember wondering what happened to the little girl who'd worn those white sandals.

Opa painted the sandals black. I was expected to wear them. I was adamant in my refusal. My mother finally gave up trying to make me wear them.

...........

When I was small She would tell us about her happy childhood in Romania. After haying She and Opa would lie on the hay stacks looking at the stars. Years later She would tell about the escape to Germany, escaping the advancing Russian armies. Germany would give them haven because the family had originally come from there.

She also told me about a classmate, a friend, a Jewish best friend, back in the village school, the friend who stayed and had been marched to the edge of a gravel pit, along with her family, and had been shot. Dead. Just like that. No more.

I learned "She's" losses one by one over the years. No wonder she couldn't listen. No wonder she held on so tight... .

When I moved to the Sault I gave she a book on how to listen to children. I said," I'm studying this, maybe we can learn together."

She said,"How can you give that to me after all I've been through?"

Right.

Gifts: if anything, these paintings are a gift to myself. I'm learning to listen... "Me" is coming into focus.

"Them"

2009-09-21T08:59:00.002-04:00

Old dreams die hard.
It feels gut-wrenching.
Facing reality feels gut-wrenching.
I'm a human being. I have needs too.
With "them," there's nothing there for me.

I loved them, still do.
I spent a great deal of my life overlooking the hurt I felt when with them.
I have a life.
Focusing on that is really hard.
I was addicted to making "it" work.
"It" didn't happen.

Me and Dave is enough.
I'm not going to die without them.
I thought I would, but that's not true.

Colour

2009-09-18T07:47:00.006-04:00

The movie: My American Cousin. I love the colours. The blues, reds, greens, and yellows are very strong. The fuzziness of the images is a nice effect too.

I've been increasingly noticing the colour nuances in the bedroom as well. The walls are banana yellow. The white ceiling, moldings, and the honey colour of the furniture, make for some luscious sensations at various times of the day and in various weathers. When it's overcast outside, the shadows and reflections have different values and intensities than from when it's sunny. The variations are incredible, as well, from morning to night.

The greens, etc. in the movie reminded me of colours in my childhood. Perhaps the Dick and Jane primers at school? I remember when I lived in Germany: a red article of clothing and a red purse that melted in the oven (I'd hidden it there.) Colours everywhere, though, were also bright in those days because they were mixed with white lead.

Then again, my mother was from the country. She'd been a farm girl in Romania before WWII. Although the pictures of her were few and in black and white, the peasant clothing would have been colourful, and in primaries with strong contrasts.

I wonder if I can mix those particular primaries: red, blue, yellow, green.

Yet, at the moment, this obsession with exploring pink has taken hold. I'm wondering at the intensity of this need to "do" pink. It's not red, not white. It has it's own colour name. The varieties and nuances have a range, but not as much as blue or green. I'm painting every rose I ever knew? As if... .

Yes, I am attracted to roses. They grew along the highway in Iron Bridge. Now, when kayaking off the Carpin Beach Road, the river channel to the big lake is rimmed on one side with rose bushes, old pioneer roses. I've encountered pioneer roses all over Algoma.

That poignancy of tender pinkness in those abandoned, beautiful and harsh places... .

Beliefs?

2009-09-17T04:46:00.005-04:00

That inner self, "it": termed the "non conscious" by some philosophers; termed "subconscious" by some psychologists. There are numerous terms for "it" in popular culture as well.

What's a personal, workable way I can work with this?

I've seen it in action within myself in various ways. Lately it's articulated as forms of resistance and stalling regarding my intentions to do certain things.

John (ARTCRIT) says beliefs are like road maps and cautions about making one's beliefs align with the actual, factual world. He makes the analogy that not believing it's raining doesn't say anything about getting wet when it rains. To him, the actions required are taking an umbrella and using it so one doesn't get wet.

There are jumps in this. To actually see, predict, think: it looks cloudy, might rain, I'll get wet, I don't want that... . Then, there's the action: taking the umbrella. There's also the possibility: I might take an umbrella and still not use it when it rains.

What beliefs do I hold to actually take these actions?

(I got confused about the map analogy actually. Coming from a culture where life was unpredictable, and learning to tune out facts staring me in the face, led to many painful wake up calls, not only as a child.)

What do I think about beliefs?

I think of beliefs as basic operating instructions, BIO's (which is sort of humorous.) My BIO"s may correlate to the outside world, the facts, the everyday. I did stand in the rain, miserable and wet, many times in my life, literally and metaphorically: that's a fact.

So, what do I do with my resistance now? Perhaps my stalling and resistance are about my beliefs? What am I feeling? Ah. Maybe I can just relax... .

Studies

2009-09-07T16:56:00.007-04:00

I'm remembering something I read years ago, in one of Carl Jung's books: something to the effect that the "female" and male" have their opposite counterparts in the individual psyche. I took it as: a person may be oriented one way or another, but the other also lives within the psyche.

I think cultural norms have a huge inpact on how much the inner "other" develops.

I recall, after working through a few of Jung's books, I started looking at my husband, Dave, differently. He was an available "male" specimen. What could he teach me about developing my masculine side? I also wondered about his feminine, softer aspects. But, that's not the point right now.

How might Louise Bourgeois or Nancy Spero worked their art had they been able to stop focusing on the "others" that had impacted their lives and work? However, they're older, times were different then. They had different opportunities as well.

Why am I so interested?

I think the cultural conditioning I experienced by reason of class, opportunities, experiences, and family dynamics had a profound influence on me. I think I share this with Louise and Nancy, many women, people in general: the locus of control is on the other rather than oneself.

When Louise describes how she brooded about her past, I think: tell me about it... . Nancy ended up rejecting painting. I think that's sad.

I finished a painting today which shows a shift in my thinking. Ellen (ARTCRIT) turned me on to a philosopher's writings which seem to correlate to my present work. I wonder what further painting changes will occur as I study. Thank you Ellen.

Book: The Course of Recognition by Paul Ricoeur (translated by David Pellauer.)

Clouds

2009-08-19T08:14:00.003-04:00

I've been following the google trail on a topic all week. All those interesting side topics are also a spin. It feels like chasing clouds, and all over the world too. Returning to 3-D life can be challenging.

The art and artists in Iraq, Africa, Denmark, too many countries to remember: there's no one, yet, who seems to be asking themselves about themselves.

I did find an artist who slashed his canvases. I printed the text for bed time reading. Maybe there's a connection as to the reasons.

So far, my reasons for the slashing, etc., isn't so much about personal reaction. It's the mending of the material that is important to me.

Brush Strokes

2009-08-09T08:00:00.005-04:00

(Visit to The Cleveland Museum of Art)

What is the history of Western Painting but that of mark making, stroke upon stroke, through the ages? Each time and culture created its own variations, materials, reasons, proclivities.

All the paintings I'd discovered these years: I'd run my eyes and delight over their surfaces, reading the marks, seeing decisions, seeing the makers, their explorations.

Roy Lichtenstein's brush stoke paintings: he'd emptied the drama, abstracted that feeling intensity of the hand making the mark. Nonetheless, I think his work celebrated what was, to him, an old fashioned - abstract expressionist? - emphasis on direct feeling.

Jasper John's encaustic and collage painting (Usuyuki, 1977-78) threw me. The marks looked like mine, but were created by different materials and intentions, There were his strokes though, piled and placed. He'd been concerned, I was told, about thin or light snow.

To me, making my images is like making my life my own. Stroke by stroke, over the facts, over the feelings, over the past. I become part of some wonderful. Words are difficult.

Reading

2009-06-24T11:36:00.014-04:00

Colour/ Documents of Contemporary Art by Richard Batchelor, Whitechapel, MIT Press, London, 2008.

Color/ A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay, Random House, New York, 2004.

Queens International 4 (catalogue,) Curated by Erin Sickler and Jose Ruiz, Queens Museum of Art, 2009.

Matisse on Art/ Documents of Twentieth Century Art, by Jack Flam. University of California Press, 1995.

My reading focus: finding out what others did re thinking and doing colour.
Opinion: every generation sifts through the dinosaurs and comes up with what addresses particular needs. Like me I guess.

What do I need? A sense of the field, which may be too tall an order, given the global enterprise of art in this time. I want to be challenged too. I want some help in looking at my own work as I'm making it. If anything, it's inspiring to read about and look at other artists' work and words and also to read other peoples' thoughts about what they find in the work.

Kristeva's selection about Matisse's use of colour: I ended up wanting more a sense of what he said, without her emphasis. So I checked him out again. I liked what he said about art/ painting reflecting culture, but he pretty well leaves the why of certain colours a mystery. (To my mind art reflects culture necessarily, that is, it just can't help but do that, but that wasn't the point of my reading.)

The Queens work was interesting. One or two of the artists did wow me about the colour. I wanted more though. I wanted the colour to hit me in my gut, or somewhere more basic. There is a big difference in seeing colour in person and as part of an image. Matisse's colour certainly grabs me whenever I encounter his paintings.

Finlay's book on colour was sexy. She reveled in the colours and hunted them down all over the planet. Many colours I use are no longer mined and transported like they used to be, but it feels great to develop a kind of sense of belonging, a sense of lineage with the pigments I'm painting with. I seem to be following a paint trail that's really really old, vivid, emotionally charged, at least in me.

It's a mind and body thing, working colour, somwhat old brain. It feels like kindergarten play, which is actually dead serious, considering the basic neural networks being built.

Responses and Reactions

2009-06-10T10:41:00.004-04:00

I'm asked by J.L. about my earlier self in the ARTCRIT group when I called myself "i-am doleske."

I'm remembering: there's no need, no obligation, nothing owing in the way of explaining. This is my choice.

I'm feeling gratitude perhaps, that is, realizing progress happened because I worked for it.

In my sessions with John I'm learning my feelings. Also: the feelings have a history; withdrawing from others was a result, a learned reaction; the past did impact my perception of events in the present.

The old ARTCRIT days were helpful. They were part of a time I learned to "speak" for myself. ARTCRIT felt safe.

Lesson:
I can be forthcoming without the emotions running the show.

What this means is remembering and believing:
I am actually OK, not deficient
I am a human being with agency and abilities of my own
I am acceptable
I can choose my responses (and consequences)
... among other things.

These new beliefs pretty well contradict the internal wiring.

I insist on the personal. My art and words are about me. I think realizing that others have their own realities will depend on me being clear about what my own reality entails.

Context and Content

2009-05-21T09:54:00.007-04:00

Richard Templar's book as a cultural document: it's on raising children to be confident and competent on making good decisions, among other things. What's different about his book?

He speaks from the position of being primary care-giver, and he's a man, and he's from England. Shades of the ongoing Western, Humanist project!

Julia Kristeva's work on the mirroring phase begs questions: So you weren't mirrored at key stages of your development: now what? How can you do that job, give yourself what's required?

Eminem's new CD: the relapse in nightmare. Relapse: happens, maybe again and again. It's part of the path, somewhat circular, as far as I can figure. But what about the art of it? Perhaps the content and context will burn off or wear off over time, like paint on old old Greek statuary.

I took my pre-Journey's paintings out of storage yesterday. It struck me bow vibrant and alive they felt when looking at them. I remember being in turmoil during painting, but now and here, the anguish s'been dissipated.

Whar remains: watery, wavery paths on irregular shapes, colour as liquid sensation of patches, fields, overlays. I felt swimming: cool, clear, delicious.

I could interpret all this with Kristeva's theory, but that isn't the point. Theory can expain, but it comes after, at least for me. Being in the process is difficult enough. Remembering to forget can be useful.

Full

2009-05-14T15:31:00.005-04:00

This overlap between what was & to be, or not, as in fearful yet
Exciting. One morning's flash, old news I knew, but didn't: as per
Reading about Foucault, how he rethought about desire &
Freedom, as in he transcended whatever something in his caw, his reactive
Mode, some kind of peace
He came to claim, self and care and an idea of freedom, perhaps self-
Developed, I don't really know
The words
This understanding which is not.

Someone said that art comes from culture, as in we breathe in that anyway
I'm not disputing that, as if
The whole cloth, my choice, as where to cut an outline, who I am
But here the wavery affect of snips and ravels, & the fray
Someone Like Madonna or Cindy putting on different cloth, outlines,
Times, beliefs
?for style.

I don't think it's that easy.

?what's the push, what's the desire, to find some kind of fit, maybe
As, in not too tight or loose, something just right
Presupposing an "I" which feels that, that singleness of self somewhere
An idea discounted

But this singleness, but but ... as if
Gathered all together, no longer screaming, not content, as in asleep

Aware, awake, cognizant, feeling full

Inmeanwhile, there's a play of it, a delight, in-seeing how.

And Colour

2009-05-07T09:26:00.005-04:00

Beneath the veneer I've had a lot in common, emotionally, with many colours of the human rainbow. Eminen has a new album. He's back to working with Dr. Dre. I haven't found the album at Wal-Mart. Maybe it'll be at some other local venue.

I used his lyrics when I needed help in building up a sense of self. I have stuff in common with him emotionally. My veneer is white. That used to mean something once upon a time. It means less now thanks, in part, to Eminem and many others of the supposedly white, supposedly successful, supposedly powerful persuasion.

I'm just me. The colour melts going on all over the world continue. Two weeks in Queens, probably the most ethnically diverse region on the planet, was exhiliarating. I felt part of a colour pool: a rainbow of diverse shadings everywhere.

I feel refreshed and OK.

I'm just me. I make art. I make stuff that feels like my own skin and feelings. I own that. That's OK.

Paths

2009-04-10T11:49:00.004-04:00

I'm remembering the fires Dave made. We'd kayak among the islands and hide oven racks wherever. Then, when we returned, there's be the racks to cook our food on. We'd rest and cook: food, water, wine, laughter. I would marvel again and again.

I watch how smoke rises, making trails, up and up. Burny bits travel with the smoke, one after another: brief flashes, then out, just like that.

Life is so short: fire burns, smoke rises, burny bits flash... upward to the sky. It's achingly beautiful and achingly short.

Mary cries. She calls her path "wonky." She's been dealt some heavy blows.
My paths feels like smoke. Most of the time I can hardly see.

Yet... .

There are paths and fire burns. I'm aching: it's work; it's wonder.

My new paintings: I'm making paths and connections and colouring. It's a mystery for me.