Mechanical/Expressive

Another sample week, energy brimming, ideas flowing, senses finely tuned and humming.

A week of sampling leads to discoveries – both to express and resolve ideas and anchor them in physical form AND to see aspects of our creative selves revealed in them.

Are we what we create? No, but we do infuse what we make with our energy and perspectives. The act of taking a thought and giving it form captures where we are at a specific time in relation to our ability to express pure ideas. Our works become snapshots, images of a moment in time. Our time.

Expressive language marks on painted paper. The experimental watermedia techniques I love on textiles work a bit differently on paper and canvas, but I am enjoying the experimentation.

So what did my studio time reveal to me this week? That I have two distinct and strong sides expressing themselves currently. One is gestural and expressive, the other more mechanical and structured. Do you have similar pulls from one type of work to another?

I am giving both these polar opposites time and permission to go for it. I’m also (gasp) working on paper and canvas with acrylics. This gives my expressive, gestural mark-making side new options.

You’ll see this piece evolve as I continue to learn from painting directly on canvas. The right and left edges are working for me but not the center portion.

Note how the same piece looks like a landscape with this horizontal  orientation.  The size of this is 12” x 12 and I hope to resolve and complete this.  It would be my  first actual “painting” on canvas.

My “pages” pieces have also been calling me and I’m also working on a new construction with the working title, “Clean Slate, New Chapter.” In this piece the shapes are geometric rather than fluid, the process more mechanical  than about direct mark-making.  The surface is also more three- dimensional, so casting light on it from different directions will create the shadows that I envision as part of the work. You’ll see the finished piece (I hope) soon.

That’s the update this Full Moon Morning about where my studio time has taken me this week. Do you suppose the moon was created to remind us about the ebb and flow of life, the rhythms and cycles of quiet and activity? I’d like to think of it as my own  rather large Timex! Thank you, full moon, for cranking up the heat on my creative burners and fueling a new flow of ideas and variations.