Canvas

Last night I cleaned the garage to get ready for painting class. Since Scott and I continually fought over whose garage it was; his dance studio or my art studio, well he is gone and in Austin and the GARAGE IS MINE. Enough said.

Part of my goal last night was to take a survey of the stretchers and frames I have. All I can say is if I were to die and people had to sort through my stuff, they would just scratch their heads and when they found:

one 42 x 30 stretched canvas with gesso
one 35 x 25 stretched canvas with gesso

pairs of stretchers
48" 0ne pair
34" three pair
36" one pair
24" one pair
16" 40 pair, yes, yes, yes 40 pair

Finished frames without canvas or gesso

one 36 x 48 frame
seven 12 x 26 frames
ten 12 x 12 frames

I know this gets weird. But I had this idea last time I took class that I never got to called Skywatcher. I was going to make a grid of canvas with different "captures" of the sky.
Now I am really at a loss as what to do with them. Maybe I will try to capture bits and pieces of the sky that capture my attention and place them on a canvas grid. I think I had some words to go with them. I might be able to find it in a notebook. Something tells me it will be worth the while.

August 25, 2007 (from my other blog, which wants to be an art blog too)

Sky Watcher SeriesMoon Motives and SkyNow for the works in masonite. These will be on a grid. They are the first of what I am calling sky watcher pieces. I got this idea over the summer as I was riding my bike. I am a sky watcher. I wanted to start photographing the sunsets and do them in a painting with each grid piece a different day and piece of the sky at sunset. Then when I wrote the moon poem I decided to do one of the moon. Years ago I did one of the moon and haiku. It was a watercolor and was accepted into a show at the Brevard Art Center in Melbourne FLA for the juried exhibit they have each year. It was a big deal. I got in, but my friend Kathy didn’t and neither did my watercolor instructor. The judge was looking for different. That was me.
It is late... more picture in the a.m.

So I have been looking through old notebooks looking for the genesis of these ideas. What I found was the poem that gave me the line Deep Down Inside My Soul the Moon is Full which means I am soul satisfied. But the how to how I get there was through the poem which is life. I somehow get to soul satisfied but it goes way of my heart which is full of all kinds of things and distractions. My heart is messy, but over flows. It slips me up, but draws me to God all at once.

My heart right now is a mess but closer to God than it has been for while, so I am thankful for that.

The poem for all it is worth...

Motives

The moon


marks out time


it mocks me


measuring


my hearts response


it waxes


and it wanes


it never stays the same


never lies


always wise


and it shines


it's light


on me


surrounded in


mystery


knows my hopes


my fears


my relief


it enters in


my peace


explores


my motives


lays my


heart bare


then


it waxes and wanes


it never stays the same


it never lies


always kind


opens my mind


to see


this mystery


called love…

So maybe I will pick up this idea, maybe I won't. I am not a blank canvas, I am like one than has been used and cover up. There is lots of texture there. I just need to work with it because it makes the painting interesting.

I am going to paint about a vision I had. I will post the reference photo I want to use and link the blog entry about it.
Here is the link Burden. So very, very weird. I danced to this song this a.m. like I had to. Worshipped like haven't for awhile. I just shared this song with someone who just wrote me off.

Advance Painting

OK.

All summer I thought about and planned for mixed media. Now I am taking advanced painting and I have some thinking and planning to do as I hit the ground running...

The assignment is 4 to 5 paintings exploring personal identity. Since I am self portrait mad, I think OK. However, I want to do something fresh and with some depth. So I am going to have to brood about for awhile, some alone time, some letting my mind go time, some sacred direction I would hope.

I wanted to do a mixed media piece about being crushed emotionally by a series of events, being really low and then being raise up in hope by the strength of Christ. That image came to me when my name was called out, the night I won first place at the Park Cities Presbyterian Church Art Show. I saw myself curled in a fetal position as I looked up at the stage and listened to the speaker briefly talk about my work. The Lord said in the still small voice, "I was there with you then, I am here with you now." I thought my next piece of art should be about that. Maybe it is a dyptic. I have done something like that for John Pomara, my professor before called Shame and Worship.