Flying High!

I'm flying high over here and having a great summer!

playing in the irrigated pecan orchard

I've had my grandsons this week and they are getting so big and learning to do so much more around the farm.

of course there is still time to sit around in the grass and just visit

The Three Muses on plaster   (click on image for more detail)

I'm enjoying my plaster class in short breaks. I drew this a little too quickly (stealing short burst of time from the boys). Some of you may remember when I drew it in my journal. This is a piece that I plastered on burlap and then cracked and tried to make a pseudo-fresco look. A little rough today but fun, fun stuff. I love the coolness of the drying plaster, the way you can sand away for different textures and the way plaster soaks of your paint.

The thousand-paintings journey continues.....

passio / cum passio

I had a couple of days to paint and it felt glorious. I would paint a little and walk away- which is not like me. I'm usually so impatient that I won't let the paint dry. I can tell that all the Italian history and renassiance history that I've been listening to on my IPOD as I go to sleep is really affected my painting. Well, at least I hope so. I used Sweet Farmer's eyes for the Jesus portrait- because I wanted them kind, yet penetrating. You can click on the image for greater detail.

It's not finished (i'm going to clean up the lines on the madonna's face) but I'm preparing this madonna style painting for a small show in December so I still have some time. I find it very humbling to do religious art.

I, of course, would love any ideas, critiques, etc. to push the painting further as this seems to be my wall at this time. I'm still on my thousand-paintings journey, but I'm seeing progression and that's all that matters.

The Passion/ The Compassion

passio  /  cum passio

I get  a descent rough sketch done and then I began, what for me is initially, the tortuous desire to paint what is in my mind's eye, my vision. This is when my passion for art makes me feel helpless, dizzy, disoriented. It's what makes my heart wildly beat , the unquenchable desire to achieve something higher than my current skill level. This is when I ask, no I beg, for divine assistance.. FOR Something transcendant, something beyond myself. Something in collaboration with the One who created the first art- and the passion that requires all or nothing of myself.. I am not enough without His touch in my art, in my life.

But, there is no guarantee of a safe landing. The root word for passion (passio) actually means suffering/endurance. The struggle to release, unveil, bring forth that unseen vision, only known to that place beyond the back of my own eye-lids, my heart space. The "ME + HIM'' work, the art that only WE can create, today, somehow, someway. The struggle is exquisite and scary. I give up the fight in trade for the miracle moments, the divine appointment, to share in something brand NEW, created from nothing. The work I want see and enjoy in art, the work He is just waiting to see from me. The passion / the compassion -it's all there.

No one has to like it. You just have to do it. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. Right or rough, where you are NOW. We do what we can, and give what we have. In the end it is just between you and Him anyway.

 Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. the rest is the madness of art. - Dana Gioia