Working The River: Toledo, Acrylic on Canvas, 30x24"
New work in the series "Working The River." The longer I work on this project, the more closely I observe operations like this, the more concerned I am for the earth.
She speaks...
She Speaks From Both Sides of Her Mouth. Pastel on archival paper 9"x12".
I've been doing a massive clean out of the studio and surprised to discover how prolific my work is. This commentary was made in late evening, the time of walking between the worlds when the subconscious directs the impulse rather than the daytime mindful push forwarding a body of work. Late night expression is so different from the "real" art I make. I've dismissed most of it, not showing the work, not acknowledging these outliers. Images tucked away until I forget about them. Time to let them live and breathe.
That was then...
That was then... Acrylic on canvas. 40 x 30.
Fractals and factions...
Deep in the corner of a Christmas box, I found a kaleidoscope, an inexpensive trinket bought on a whim to remind me of childhood. The magic is in smoke and mirrors, creating fractals. As I turned the barrel, I had a fleeting thought of how the planet and people on it resemble the toy. We are each a beautiful color, part of the world design. Yet, we divide into factions, each group believing their cause is the one to "fight" for the right to be right for. We classify and categorize and specialize each other and our alliances. We scramble to compete for cash to fund our pet project. The Big Bad Other isn't destroying us, they don't have to. They are using the divisiveness between us to their advantage. What if we took the word fight entirely from our vocabulary? What if we channeled the same level of energy to respect each other, rotate our opinions a few degrees, and coalesce into a bigger picture of cooperation, consensus and unified whole? Technically fractals go on forever and don't end at the edge of our myopia.
Wyeth's at the PAM
Three generations of Wyeth's at the Portland Art Museum. Newell Converse is hands down my favorite of the work represented in this exhibit. He apprenticed with Howard Pyle. His illustrations join many artists of that era - Maxfield Parrish who influenced Fred Machetanz, Minerva Teichert who studied with Robert Henri - in the pursuit of narrating history and their social/cultural experience.
