A Week of CreAtive Sparx in McCall, ID This Summer!

We are all so excited to be participating in the first summer of art events at the brand new McCall Art & Commerce Center in McCall, ID!  

Classes, events, exhibits and open studio time - something for everyone!

Don't miss the Art & Wine Pairing because it's a  delectable, delightful and delicious way to tickle your tongue and your eye!

The CreAtive Sparx 20/20 Vision will let you peek into the hearts, minds and souls of some artists in a stimulating and unusual way!

Visit the exhibit in the Gallery and see sculptures, paintings, glass, pottery, jewelry...and maybe even some surprises!

Join us for this inaugural event at MACC (and if you are a member, don't forget to ask for the discount on the class fees).

Finding Meaning in Texture, Giving Texture to Meaning

This painting is one part of a group installed as a large horizontal installation (though spaced individually about 6" between each).  Because I paint from texture and color, I depend on those elements to give me the information I need to develop meaning, or theme.  Some would say image, but since my work leans to impressionism or expressionism, I discourage the sense of finality that "image" conjures for me.  "Image" comes from the click of the digital camera, the slick magazine page torn out at the dentist's office, the picture our minds make because that is our ocular-cerebral function.  I have never spoken with anyone blind from birth, but I would like to know how they describe what they "see", or "imagine" when presented with a physical object.  That may be where "image"(likeness) reverts to its origin "imagine"(to picture to one's self) and retains a floating, ephemeral quality, not needing to be crystallized (unless of course the object presented to a blind person is something like a knife which would need to retain some mental impression of possible danger). If, in fact, this is the way in which blind people see, I can "imagine" an exciting working relationship between sighted artists and blind wordsmiths co-creating visions tossed back and forth like weightless dandelion heads till, scattered, they grow into a new kind of experimental verbal/ocular garden.  For me, then, to stay in the realm of "imagine", I need to push "image" aside and find the birth of idea, theme or meaning, another way.  Another way, and by no means the only way, is via texture and/or color.

Recently I signed on for an Essay class taught by Andrea Collier, a member of my new favorite group, SheWrites.  Among a list of questions posed to each student was "what do you see as your biggest obstacle in essay writing?"  I answered that it was in not knowing where I would end up, or less vaguely put, the obstacle looked like a brick wall, behind which hid the answer, the conclusion, the "image" that an essay needed.  I can see the meadow of a general topic; I can see the path of personal experience, the atmosphere of a wider implication of the experience; what I cannot see is the clipped image, the 8 x 10 glossy of the conclusion.  So, I do not begin. 

Happily Ms. Collier told me that I do not need to know.  I need only to begin.  We chatted about my art process and the curtain parted;  easily visible was beginning with the kernel of concept and then, in the writing, both distill and clarify with texture and color - rather like the opposite of how I paint, but viscerally acute.  I begin.

Check back for progress and for other notes on art processes and musings (voices from the Muse)http://www.whitneypeckman-painter.com

Grace

"Grace" found a new home this weekend at Common Grounds Birmingham, MI. I had just finished her the day before we left for the show, so I was fortunate to have good natural lighting to take this photograph in. I thought the texture and color was leaning towards flowers, but then I dropped the rusty red in and her cheekbone appeared! Magic! And she was there with her swept back hair and slightly tilted head, full of knowing. I love her!

The Zen of the Now

94 degrees today in NC and the first day of fall.  Can you hear me  pounding my head on the dashboard of my van, as I wait in the drive through line at Starbucks waiting, waiting, WAITING to get to the window, with van windows open?  We are fully loaded with artwork, show tent, walls, chairs, bags, tent weights, computers, chilly weather clothes (and WHEN WOULD THEY BE NEEDED, I scream in my head), couple of totes of misc. show gear.  It’s 9:45 am and THIS LINE IS NOTNOTNOT MOVING – the man with the cool, golden, smooth skin smiles at me from the driver’s seat which is in the #%^)0**^-!* SHADE and says (something like) “Patience, Whitney”, or was it why are you so irritable honey, or, no, I think it was more like what’s the matter? Too warm?  TOO WARM??? It’s been in the &$%#@@@** 90s for three $%@*#$^$ months – I can’t STAND this for one moRE DAY (read with escalating volume) – and yes, of course I GET (and that guy I just mentioned pointed OUT to me) that such escalation simply causes my body temperature to rise another several degrees which, now that we are three hours down the road and the air con is ON, segues into my thoughts about the zen-ness of being in the Now. 

I read the occasional personal growth book.  I have friends who meditate.  I breath in and out several times a day.  I know what a moment is and that I am supposed to be in it.  Riding along through the rounded green and gold and russet mountains of Virginia, just the hum of the road and lightly cracking sound of that guy (mentioned above) opening sunflower seeds (little rustlings of the cellophane bag as he reaches in for a few more), van gearing down as we start another incline, swishing sounds as cars pass us slower traffic keeping right – riding along in this way, it is simple to be in the moment, attuned to the slightest variation in timbre or temp….change in temp? Change in temp?  Why are you turning the air OFF?  Climbing, he answers, between seeds.  I look up.  I see cerulean sky filled with cumulus pillows in shades of white tinged with varying degrees of palest blue echoing into the vastness of VA skies.  Quickly we have ascended, are skimming the ridge and turn the air on again.  My brief relapse over.  VA. WV.  I gaze out as the cumulus sky becomes forest mounds. The radio tunes in again.  Amazing Grace.  I kid you not.  We must hear Amazing Grace at least six times each way whenever we make this trip from NC to The North (draw a line anywhere above Washington, DC to central IN).  A bit of Alizarine showing.  Dark Cadmium Yellow.  Heavy blood red-brown Sumac heads. (Are they poinsonous?  Some interior voice raises the red flag of warning whenever I see Sumac. I don’t think I would hear the red flag if I were’nt in the moment.)

But what I really wanted to discuss is this thing with the Now.  The whole thing of Being in the Now.  It’s not that I can’t see the value of this Way of Being – my friend Leah seems to float in the Moment most of the time.  Pretty unflappable, not given to fits of  anxiety or rage.  Now, I’m not saying that she doesn’t experience these, just that it appears to me that she is able to dilute them, to extinguish them, probably during the act of mediation, which, to my amazement, she does daily.  I’m just saying that for those of us who are not so far along the road to that more highly evolved state, there should be more discussion of the value of understanding that sometimes the value of being in the Now is knowing that if you stay in the Now you will explode, possible doing bodily harm to oneself or others, and that the more prudent, some might even say more evolved, choice, while still being IN the Now and making choices from that place, would be to rapidly, expeditiously, and without passing Go, EXIT the Now NOW.  And, blissful in the lower regions, deny that particular Now of 90 something degrees for three long running months, buy a ticket to good movie in a large and very cold Cineplex, sit in the dark and be in a different Now.  Just till Fall really shows up.

Look What the Muse Left

So here's what the Muse left for me after yesterdays session.  I took this pic on the floor mats in my studio at about 6 pm with no direct light, so it looks pretty flat.  I'll take another tomorrow and you can see it and other new paintings at www.whitneypeckman-painter.com.

Echos IV

We'll be heading to Common Grounds Art Birmingham on Thurs - better clean the studio up and finish stretching those large canvases I started yesterday.

And this isn't the real mess...that's behind me!

Part Two-Working Backwards on Visions

It's been a curious week working on four paintings that came to me in a Vision - full blown (but not easily adaptable to my process...see earlier posts).  A Vision is a willow-the-wisp when it comes to getting it down in concrete form.  Waking with the image in my head, I knew I would probably fail - too etherial, too much in the dream state.  So, I went back to sleep.  That's dangerous.  Happily, the Vision locked itself in pretty well and I sat for a bit, eyes closed, dissecting the layers of paint, setting them in my inner eye as though they were open pages on my Mac screen.  Hmmmm.  That was a new experience.  I am so NOT analytical - never thought of actually mentally dissecting work!  Maybe Syed's wearing off on me!  Still, not ready to actually get to it, I wandered around, physically and mentally, for a while.

So, here are two of the pieces.  Are they the Vision?  Well, close.  But, they are definitely sketches for a direction I have been wanting to go for some time...guess my subconscious just decided I needed a kick-start.

Echos I

Echos II

Sometimes Backwards Doesn't Work

Breaking into pattern, destroying the flow, jumping the groove can disturb one's life in subtle ways.  I was rolling along, really into painting gardens, botanical themes just pouring out of me, blooming like they were July in a Friday Harbor meadow, loose and buzzing with movement, life, sun, rain...my process of beginning with texture and color birthing visions of poppies, iris, fields of wild grasses working like second skin, third eye, fingers like dancers, quick, weightless, singing memories.  Then, stepping off the ride, off to do a show - mode reversal to the max - out of my subconscious and into the now of connecting with audience - and by that "now" I am not talking about the Now of Now - the zen flash that comes with touching someone's heart or mind with the painting they are gazing at - that grace filled speechless slow-motion conversation of souls when it matters not if it culminates in sale - matters only that the connection happened.  No, not that "Now".  The small n now is that space I often find myself in at a show - the polite but forgettable "beautiful work thank you great colors thank you hmmm nice thank you i'll be back great thank you - (oh god, is it 5 o'clock 6 o'clock dinner over yet?).  Small n now is death to the artist, to connection.  It is equivalent to drinking hemlock with your (maybe not) free bagel and dirty water coffee at the check-in table.  It is equivalent to stabbing the words "beautiful work great colors hmmmnice i'll be back" with a rapier and putting them and their speakers into the ragged, stained Bag of Trys hanging at your side (perhaps grafted there - no need anymore for the shoulder strap).

So, when I returned from the show, the garden energy petered out, I busied myself with Other Things - that would be all the stuff you dread about FB - I cleaned the fridge today, yuck! Did anyone see the red sweater I left at the...etc.  Then my muse returned, thank you Muse, and in the form of a Vision.  A Vision is when an idea erupts, full blown and crystal clear, into my mind.  This is not a frequent occurrence and it's a good thing.  Sounds like a great thing, right?  What's to do but get it down?  Not a great thing, and here's why, which brings me to the title of this post - Sometimes Backwards Doesn't Work.

I've written before, about my process of putting down texture and color, tuning in and waiting, looking for what evolves out of this method.  Something virtually always comes bubbling forth, inspiring a train of thought/work, energizing me.  The energy usually stays with me when I take the work to a show and enter into the small n now, naturally lifting me into the Now of Now.

The Vision doesn't fit well into this paradigm.  So.  How to get the Vision down without destroying it in the process?  And that is where I am today.