Blue on Blue

February 4, 2016 / skyevans / 7 Comments

PCT in the Goat Rocks Wilderness, WA A field of blue lupins echo the deepening sky as day turns to night. (Based on the photo by Gabi Fulcher 2014)

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When I started this painting I had no idea how blue it was going to go. I had been doing a lot of inner work, thinking about my inner self, my concepts, my ideas, my integrity, my weaknesses. Why do I think this way, what lessons are there to learn from our emotions… when I get frustrated or upset, what does that come from? Does it come from the situation at hand or from a lifetime of similar situations that make the current crisis seem bigger than it is? I examined all my inner wounds like a forensic investigator, trying to make a case for guilt, innocence or acquittal. I had no preconceived notions of the outcome but one word rose to the surface and I followed it like a flashlight in the darkness.

That word was compassion. That I find the compassion in myself, that I nurture the compassion and choose the compassion rather than the hard edged anger and meanness that was trying to gain a foothold. I don’t like the hard edge… though I admire the strength anger has given me. Anger is a good emotion, it’s a powerful one, but not one that should be driving my car. You can’t make anger go away, but you can recognize it’s usefulness. Anger is the fire that burns away the pain and takes you down to ash so you can rise again, clean and new and reborn.

Anger turned inward is depression. There were too many times I had taken that anger and smoldered the flame with my body, inhaling the toxicity, allowing depression to take a toehold deep inside. And so, with the gray skies of the Pacific NorthWest dumping their seasonal load upon my home and myself, I found a deep blue streak staining my life. I had a hard time getting into the holiday spirit. I just couldn’t do it, that blue funk was everywhere.

But then there was compassion. And compassion led me to stories and places and videos and chat groups and forums and a greater understanding. I followed every lead, turned over every rock, searched in all the drawers, cupboards and forgotten shelves. The anger that had masqueraded as depression was swept out and dealt with. The light began to shine again as we rounded the equinox and the sun literally returned to my part of the world.

With gratitude, I stood before a blank canvas and painted yet another in my Wilderness Of Women (WOW), a series of paintings from the trail. All paintings are from photos taken by women hikers. So far I’ve only done one from my own photo, the rest were taken by other women hikers. This image of the PCT is from the Goat Rocks Wilderness in Washington State. It was sent it to me last winter by the photographer/hiker, Gabi Fulcher. It’s been hanging in my studio for some time now… and well, now seemed to be it’s moment.

All these WOW paintings have a vivid saturation of color that connects my deep love of these wild places to my heart. This one was the same in intensity, but different in just one word. The word is “I”. As in “I” painted it, because it doesn’t feel like “I” actually did. I stood before the canvas after sketching it out in my normal fashion. I was between the 6th and 7th chakra painting in my last series (see previous post) and using the same palette of color I was about to start when I hesitated. I’ve done this before, and usually with good results, so I trusted the pause. And I said to my muse: go ahead… you got this one. Do what you like, I’ll just hold the brush. And so, she did. Or he… it doesn’t matter, my muse is gender neutral.

Blue on Blue can speak for itself. It’s so much more than me. Just like the word compassion.

Wait?! Summer’s over already?

September 14, 2015February 15, 2017 / skyevans / 9 Comments

Hello everyone!

I was going to title this How I Spent My Summer Vacation, but after seeing the title of my last post… well, I just had to go with the theme. Quite the span of time, from late June thru to mid Sept, and while I may have committed the blogging sin of allowing too much time!! to go between posts and losing readership… well, consider me a sinner then. The weather was beautiful and there was just too much to do outside than sit inside hunched over my laptop. As it was, I barely got around to paying the bills and keeping our financial world afloat. What I did do, was pay homage to my love of all things Laura Ingalls Wilder by making jams, juices, canning and drying assorted veggies/fruits, pickling and other homey pioneer type chores.

We rebuilt the pump house, upgraded our water system, fenced the garden. I fixed gutter, gate and shed as well as replacing porch boards and molding around doors and windows. In between the myriad of chores and duties of the small farm owner, there were the half a dozen or so camping trips (with horse and without), visits with friends and family, a new puppy and the 24 chicks in my coop that are growing up to be our new layers and fryers. All amidst the crushing drought and crazy ass wildfires of the Pacific Northwest.

We are not out of the woods yet with that, major fires in Northern California and Washington are devastating lives and homes. We escaped a lightning strike fire just last week as fast acting neighbors and the local fire department put out the flames on a 100 foot tall Douglas Fir tree a mile from our home! We are all looking forward to the rain these days and hoping for cool weather that won’t bring thunderstorms our way. While careless people do start fires, the majority of fires out here are started by electrical storms. Hot summers, drought and thunderstorms are a bad combination.

Storm clouds roll in on my camp... this was taken moments before a storm hit my tent. Scary!

Storm clouds roll in on my camp… this was taken minutes before a severe thunderstorm hit my tent. Scary!

And so, my art has taken a back seat. The painting I started in June became a thorn in my side, so it was removed from the easel and is awaiting a time when I can look at it objectively as opposed to the sneer I give it now. However, good news on the muse front! Inspiration was found on a wonderful 4 day solo backpacking trip to the Pacific Crest Trail. After painting visions of other women’s journeys, I have found my own while traversing the famous PCT.

My backpacking art kit got some use!

It’s funny, I knew I was on a mission to take photos of the trail so I could add my own image to the Wilderness of Women series, but the one I picked to paint wasn’t what I had planned. Well, life doesn’t work according to plan sometimes. The second I took the shot, I knew what I was going to do.

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It was time to put my studio dog, Scout, into another painting. Dogs have been a big part of my backpacking experience and she especially has been an integral part of my studio life. It all just made sense.

Scout on the PCT

The balance needed for my painting however, is different from the snap shots I take in the field. Sometimes a photo is perfectly put together and I don’t have to do much manipulation, but that day, in that place, I couldn’t get the exact image. The painting is a compilation of 4 images, strung together and overlapped into a panoramic view. It captures my actual view while Scout and I sat at an elevation of 6850 feet and had a well earned lunch. It was a beautiful day and as I studied my position, I realized that by climbing up to this pass, I had hiked every bit of the PCT, from top to bottom on my map. It was a very good feeling, which must have made my muse happy because as soon as there was a lull in all my food preservation activities, she gave me this: (click on image for a full view)

Lunch with Scout on the PCT

Swirls

May 13, 2014 / skyevans / 2 Comments

Now that I am writing about my art, I find that I am thinking about the process of creating art . Not only current artwork, but projects from the past. I’m starting to see trends and themes that I never really saw before. When you have a body of work to pull from, you will invariably have threads of your creative process that show up in more than one place. Thus the title of this post: Swirls.

I had just finished an incredibly realistic painting of a wolf howling, so detailed, you could see his breath and practically every hair. It’s nice, but I think I painted it to prove to myself I could be “tight”… it was an exercise in skill. How good was I? Well,after it was done, I thought, pretty good! Here it is, judge for yourself:

Full Moon Song Oil on canvas board 18"x24"

Full Moon Song
Acrylic on canvas board
18″x24″

It was a painstaking process and after I was done, I felt the need to loosen up. To stretch a little, as it were. I built a large canvas out of unbleached duck (a grade of canvas) and set it up on my easel. Hmmm, now what? For some reason, I didn’t prime the canvas. I don’t remember what possessed me not to apply gesso… maybe I was out. It was a long time ago and we were barely scraping by, living in a run-down (read death trap) trailer and sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

I stood in front of the raw canvas and closed my eyes for a minute. Took a deep breath and hoping something would come to me, did a mini meditation. Nothing. Another deep breath and this time I said, “Ok… Whatever is in me or around me that paints through me, now’s your chance. You can do whatever you like… I’m tapped out of ideas right now, you give it a go.” Or words to that effect, it was (literally) decades ago.

I put some paint on my palette, picked up a fan brush (which I never use, so that was new right there) and began painting these swirls. I scrubbed paint into the dry and porous surface, rubbing in every bit, letting the canvas soak up the pigments and oil. I hardly used any turpentine, just some linseed to help the paint flow in places. I scrubbed and scrubbed and wore the brush down to a nub. By the time I was through, this had emerged:

The muse painting.
Oil on Canvas
2.5’x3′

It was pretty cool and very different from anything else I’d done before. I liked it! But life got in the way after that. I set aside my paints as we moved, got new jobs, had a baby. I poured my creativity into other outlets. I gardened, sewed baby clothes, drew small illustrations, took up basketry and jewelry making. One day I realized it had been almost 10 years since I had painted… how on earth had that happened?! Well, enough time had gone by, so I built an easel, set it up in my laundry room and got back at it. I painted a couple of horses and some small landscapes. And you know what? Those swirls began to pop up where I least expected.

Oregon High Desert
Oil on Canvas
24″x18″

The above painting used to be twice as wide and featured my horse running in the desert. But it wasn’t very good… and to top it off, I had some issues with that particular horse. One day, in a quasi exorcism from him, I cut up the painting and cut him out of my life. The best part of this painting had never been him anyway. It was this half with all the swirls and flow.

We moved again and now I had my studio set up in the one car garage. I worked small but I kept swirling about. An avid backpacker, I began to paint where I’d been.

Mary’s Peak
Oil on Canvas
12″x18″

The Steens Oil on Canvas board 8″x10″

Three Fingered Jack

I even hid things in the swirls. See if you can find the three sisters… they’re not hidden very well.

Three Sisters
Oil on Canvas
22″x28″

It looks like I went through a landscape phase here. The swirls began to get more prominent.

Purple Leaves Oil on Canvas
24″x36″

I even explored some illustrative themes. I rarely paint people. The 3 Sisters were a place, but also something spiritual. With that in mind, I painted this next piece. But it’s somehow too personal… the figure looks sadly troubled. I probably should stay away from people… they never are quite what I expect them to be. This one seems to be ignoring the spiritual wisdom that is being doled out to the fish in the stream. Yes, yes, lots of symbolism here.

Fishes and Wishes
Oil on Canvas
12″x16″

Throughout all this, the bristles on my brushes got smaller and smaller. But I kept working on prepared canvases, ones where the surface is primed. I decided to see if I could recreate the original flavor of that first swirly painting. So I stretched out a couple of huge canvases and decided to return to the original raw/scrubbed in format. By the time I got to this point, my husband and I built my studio. Right on top of the garden. I was actually kicking tomatoes out of the way as we measured off the space. Gardening took a back seat and rightly so.

Orange Swirls
Oil on raw Canvas
36″x48″

Rainbow Swirls
Oil on raw canvas
36″x48″

I was feeling pretty good about these, though they are somewhat overpowering when hung in a small room. Especially the rainbow one. So I toned it down with some smaller paintings.

Blue swirls.
Oil on Canvas
18″x24″

Small Orange
Oil on Canvas board
8″x10″

I did a few more small ones, where I explored purple and green, they weren’t very exciting, so no pictures. Believe me, you aren’t missing much. I think I was running out of steam for pure swirls. I returned to painting horses. The Red Flame horse is a prime example of swirls in my work (you can find it in the horse art gallery). They continue to slip into my paintings, so I know my muse is still with me in spirit. She does not disappoint. Most recently she returned with, well, not a vengeance, but with a will!

Kingfisher
Oil on Canvas
16″x20″

Winged Chairs

April 26, 2014April 26, 2014 / skyevans / 2 Comments

My son is going to a very nice college north of here and as I was visiting campus a couple of weeks back, he took me into his art classroom. He has never been very arts and craftsy… his creative talents run towards music, writing and performance. All endeavors I am most fond of, but taking an actual art class (for fun) has swollen this mother’s heart a bit! He showed me his portfolio, current works in progress and we began to bounce ideas back and forth regarding his upcoming final project. In the center of the room, inside a ring of drawing benches, was a solitary chair.

I was explaining the concept of “from the ridiculous to the sublime” in reference to a juxtapositioning of everyday objects to achieve an alternate purpose and theme when I gestured to the chair. “What about chairs with wings?” This idea literally popped into my head and out my mouth before I was even aware of it.

He laughed, “What would a chair need wings for?”

And that’s when it hit me… that was exactly the big question. Why would a chair need wings? So many reasons… everyone can think about and ponder that for themselves. It doesn’t even matter what your answer is… it’s subjective and important to you. It’s really the question that’s brilliant! Just think about that for a minute. Why would a chair need wings?

He decided to table that project and go in a different direction, but I couldn’t shake the idea. I rolled it over and decided I had to build one of these winged chairs. I really got jazzed up when we visited a local Goodwill store and I scored an old style school chair for $7. Just the thing that needed wings. When I got home, I sketched out some ideas.

Ideas emerge.

Then I did a little image Googling. Did someone else think of this before me? Am I jumping on some old bandwagon that I knew nothing about… was there a line of winged chairs somewhere that my subconscious dredged up and presented to me as if I had come up with this cool and unknowingly unoriginal idea? And surprisingly enough… the answer is that there is not much of a bandwagon at all. I found an art installation in Europe that featured a wall mounted winged chair and another diaphanous Swedish example. Neither of which I would have seen without a Google search. And then there were the Shabby Chic-ers whose lacey old time decorating concepts sometimes attach dime store kiddy wings to dressing room chairs. (gak!) I didn’t see any Egyptian chairs in my image search, but it did occur to me that somewhere along the history of man, some ancient race may have winged-up a chair. Those ancients, weren’t they just always putting wings on things? Shoes, sandals, cats?

So I looked again… and it seems I was right about those Egyptian revivalist chair makers!

(Thanks to http://www.dnfa.com)

So while my chair may not be the first, this idea is not currently saturating the consciousness of mankind. Good enough for me! It actually never occurred to me to do anything less than build these puppies… I really could have just started a painting series, but that’s the direction the idea took. And it took off. I just tried to stay out of the way. I knew I had to build the base out of wood and use heavy fabrics for the feathers. I swear, I never saw the ironic connection between furniture and feathers made out of upholstery fabric. It was later, as I was contemplating making a cushion for the chair out of left overs that the connection was made. Wish I could claim I did it on purpose! This is what I mean when I say I just get out of the way of these ideas. They have a life of their own.

I bought some thin plywood to make a frame, then drove to a local fabric store. Econo Sales is a cornucopia of upholstery fabrics and then some. Need cushions for your boat? A new awning for your porch? That’s the place to go. I probably touched hundreds of bolts of cloth, piling them up on the large table trying to build a palette of colors. I had no idea which way my hue grouping was going… it just happened and I let it.

Oh so many pretty fabrics! You can find them on Facebook under Econo Sales

Some of the fabrics I bought by the yard, some by the inch. When it came to the bottom line dollar sign, I did exercise some control over that muse! I was not about to spend a ton of cash on this project when I didn’t even quite know what I was in for. I did spring for a very expensive ($25) can of contact cement thinking that permanence in an art project was a good idea and Elmers wasn’t going to cut it. The cement is a horrific toxic blend of chemicals that will absolutely kill experimental rats just by walking near the can. It should provide all the hold I need, right? And kill a few brain cells while it does it’s job. Home with my treasure trove of supplies, I snip off bits of fabric and build a model.

So lovely… hard to figure out where to start!

Model wing tests out fabric placement as well as providing me with a taste of fumes to come.

This is when I first notice two things about the cement. Unless the fabric is coated on one side, it disappears into the material as if it was the answer to a 1000 year drought. Sucked up and gone. You are supposed to coat both surfaces where they attach together, let dry for 10 minutes, no more nor less. The timing here is tricky. And then there’s the noxious fumes. Did I mention the dead rats? I had to work with an open door, open windows with the ceiling fan going and I still couldn’t stay in there more than 15 minutes. It was going to take me forever. And kill my muse with meticulous timing. If the miasma didn’t get to her first.

I am not yet deterred however! Hope springs eternal! What’s a few brain cells when it comes to ART??!! Pish posh, causes cancer, banned in California? I turn my sights to more important matters. Getting my jigsaw on the plywood. Draw one wing, cut it out.

Sketch is ready for the saw!

Now I am ready to head into the studio where the cement awaits my sacrifice.

Wings are taking a trial flight on the chair.

Silver paint to bind the edges. Tidies up any rough bits I missed when sanding.

After the silver edging, I apply the first layer of fabric which happens to be oilcloth.

Cement goes on both surfaces, I let it dry a bit, then ease the fabric on and use a brayer to roll it all out smoothly. All goes well. The oil cloth likes the cement.

Note brayer in pic.

Once applied, I turn over the wing to cut off excess fabric.

It takes me days to get to this point because of the fumes… I can’t work on gluing for more than 15 minutes at a time. I do lots of cutting and trimming and save all the glueing for the end but the process is painstakingly slow. I begin to curse the muse who got me into this mess to begin with. And still I press on… literally. Until the cement does the unthinkable. When I get to my next layers of fabric we experience an epic fail. The cement begins to ruin the work. It discolors some of the fabrics and creates adhesion problems with others. Feathers peel off like a bad sunburn.