Musing.

My art muse is riding my ass lately. I think I've been a disappointment to both her and to myself the past few months. Very little art has been created back there in the twilight zone that has become my studio. I don't blame her for being pissed. I'm certainly not happy about it either. In fact, I'm down right cranky.

I want to paint. I really do. I get a bazillion ideas flying around my head while I'm busy trying to do other things that require my attention. There is so much to do I'm having trouble balancing it all. My house doesn't clean itself, nor will the laundry jump up and take itself to the washing machine. These new kittens, while unlike a puppy that is freakishly needy and has to be attended to like a small child, still need care and attention. The store takes up a huge amount of time and I expected it to be that way for the first few months of being open. Family and friends can't be put on a back-burner either. All of it has taken priority over being able work on creating art.

Something's got to give a little or I'm going to hurt somebody. Art is my outlet, my creative, meditative, introspective, hermitish way of getting along in this life. I may not be a Rembrandt but that isn't the point. Doing the work for the way it feels is the reason I do it. I can't imagine my life if I'm not creating, not painting. I simply can't. There is almost a "Why bother?" feeling at the thought of not being able to mush watercolors around on some paper. If you are an artist, you'll understand that feeling. Same would go for anyone else who has a deep love of doing something meaningful whether it is painting, making music, or whatever. Just try to imagine never doing that thing for the rest of your life. Kinda' scary, isn't it?

So, okay, life has temporarily sidelined my art. It's happened before and I'm sure it will happen again sometime down the road - hopefully way, way, way far down the road! For now, I feel that the sidelining has got to stop and I need to get busy mushing paint. Question is, what to paint? Aarg! It's a dilemma. A conundrum. A thorn in my side frustration that my bazillion ideas got lost somewhere. Damn.

Well, maybe that's not completely true. I have an idea floating around. I'm just really stuck on how to accomplish it. I've been looking at the work of other artists, mulling things around in my head. There are a number of artists I admire. You've got the golden oldies: Michelangelo, Dali, Mucha, Rackham, Rockwell, Wyeth, Klimt, Waterhouse and a host of others. You've got current artists: Helena Nelson Reed, Stephanie Law, Brom, Daniel Merriam, Linda Ravenscroft, Maxine Gadd, A. Andrew Gonzalez, Brian Froud, Kasey H. Moran, Linda Joyce Franks, Johanna Pieterman and a slew of others. Then there are literally hundreds in between. I could create pages upon pages of the names of artists whose work I admire right down to my toes and back again. And I've been cruising the internet checking them out.

It's both intimidating and inspiring. Then again, spending time looking at other artist's work is also keeping me from being in the studio creating my own.

Thing is, I'm still looking for that "personal style" my art is missing. Take any one of the aforementioned artists and you'd be able to readily identify a painting as theirs without even seeing their signature on the image. The frustrating thing for me is I know what I want to do, I just don't know how to do it. Ain't that a lovely thing? One of my big self-imposed problems is that I have a hard time just 'testing the waters' and 'giving it a whirl' when it comes to painting. I always seem to need a plan of action, a layout of what's going to go on that paper or canvas. It's very hard for me to be spontaneous when it comes to creating much of my work. Abstracts are the exception. Everything else gets hours and hours of thinking and planning. I spend so much time getting reference material, figuring the overall scheme, and other stuff before I ever put brush to paint.

My best buddy and compadre artist, Kasey H. Moran, whose work I'm a huge fan of, just kills me sometimes. She can doodle some ideas in a sketchbook, pick one to start from, draw it off on canvas with a stick of charcoal, and then starts slingin' paint. She works very intuitively, letting the work tell her what to do and she just goes with the flow. If it isn't working for whatever reason, she'll just whip out the gesso, cover it up and start again. She doesn't get wound up over whether or not the proportion is exact, whether or not the highlighting or shadowing is exact, or even if she paints a woman blue instead of natural flesh tones. And her work is amazing to me. I have one of her paintings hanging in my living room and I can stare at it, awed, for hours.

Her work is so expressive, so very much her own, and has a wonderful "Kasey" style. Yes, I envy her, but in a good way. Let me show you an example of her work ....

Blanket Girls
Acrylic on canvas, 36"x36"

Key Lady
Acrylic on canvas, don't remember the size - something like 36"x48"

These web photos don't do the originals justice. Not by a long shot. I think they are wonderfully vibrant, interesting, exciting, beautiful pieces of art. I wish I owned them both. Hell, I wish I owned all of her originals. Of course, if I did I wouldn't get anything done for sitting around staring at them.

Speaking of sitting around ... sitting here is also a deterrent to being in the studio. Maybe I should just shut up and go paint ......

Namaste, y'all ...