Best Laid Plans

Best Laid Plans, acrylic on canvas, 14" x 18"

With the posting of this painting, my first impulse is to say, like William Kentridge ,  "My job is to make art - not sense."

But that wouldn't be quite true.  I almost always find meaning in my abstracts.  All I pay attention to as I paint them is the marks and colors and textures and shapes - yet meaning appears.  They make sense to me.

Go figure.

I'd say more, but I've decided not to.

What do you see?

And if you can't quite beam to wherever I'm at, never fear, I have some representational paintings in the works right now.

Dark Ladder

"Dark Ladder" acrylic on 8" x 10" canvas

In the fading light I examine my walls, scraped bare,
Some, but not all, of their guts exposed -
A stew of colors, a few palatable, others putrid;
Glues from coverings best forgotten;
Telltale signs of holes and gaps and vulnerabilities.

Yet the scattering, the dissonance, is attractive to me.
It is perfection that is disturbing.
I think of this as I scale the ladder in the dark
And apply my first coat of
Smooth, aromatic white
Paint.

* * *

PAINTER'S NOTES:  Mari of Colour Blob who, by the way, is doing beautiful work of cold - very cold - winter days, commented and asked how I got the texture in the painting, whether it was dry brush, so I thought I'd add my response here because the result was a surprise to me, and the process of painting was a bit of an adventure:

The painting began with an exact, almost photo-realist painting of the ladder. I am impressed with but not a big fan of photo-realism. It was properly done, but uninteresting, and I did not like the colors or the composition. So I stuck it in a drawer where it stayed for months. 

The other day I pulled it out, felt wild and wooly, and decided to start painting over it in a very free manner. Some was wet and some was dry. I was all over the place. I believe I was mostly wet first, and then went dry on top. Not sure. I thought I was going to ruin it frankly, and I didn't care because I didn't like the first "draft" and could always use the canvas again. Maybe that is when you do the best, I don't know. 

Then I pulled out the tool that I have truly begun to relish in my acrylics (which worked very well for me in another painting - not quite finished - that I haven't posted yet) - a rubber sculpting tool that looks to all of the world like a spatula. It could be viewed, I guess, as a soft painting knife. I love what it does. That may be some of what you see. 

Thanks Mari!

Can I Write Haiku or Can I Write Haiku? Can You?

I don't believe it! I entered Diahn Ott's giveaway at Art by Diahn. She was giving away two of her beautiful paintings - one of a snowy egret and the other of a sparrow (above). The tricky part about the sparrow painting was that you had to write a Haiku. Diahn even provided a how-to lesson. Her (discriminating and obviously very artistic and talented) boys chose the winner. And I won!! Thank you Diahn - it was fun - and thank you Derek and Joshua! (They have a blog too here.) But they must be careful - they are stroking my writer's ego.

Anyway, my Haiku was about the Snowy Egret. You can see a stunning photo of a snowy egret here. The Haiku:

Royal stroll, alone,
Snowy steps of sun on sand,
Crown of white tendrils.