A visit to the local independent video shop can be the art treat that sets the tone for the work week. Of course, Netflix can provide a similar result, but will lack the visceral enjoyment of the hunt for an art DVD accompanied by fresh popcorn from the in-store popcorn machine.
I rented
art:21 just because
Susan Rothenberg was one of the featured artists.
A few weeks ago I made a couple of monotypes of Thimble Peak from a photo I'd taken while on the Mt. Lemmon highway, thirty miles north of home. Today, I worked on the ghost image and played with print ink and oil paint. It occurred to me that I am about to find out what kind of artist I am. Actually. Really. Truly. Without Permission.
This is the first monotype straight from the press with only the one pull. The second photo is the first layering and the third photo is the working of the ghost image that I may consider finished. When I took a photo of the second one, the lighting cast a kind of sepia tone on the image and I liked it so much that I went back and changed the sky color and scratched a little into the mountains with the end of a paint brush.
(12 1/2" x 16 1/2") Usually, after such a venture, I would announce to myself (and anyone within bellowing distance) that I have no talent, that I have no idea what I'm doing, mostly because it doesn't look like the work of...insert favorite artists' names here. I didn't do that today. I decided that this is okay.
Why do I love
Grace Hartigan,
Joan Brown, and Susan Rothenberg so much? I'm starting to see. Without angst, without fear, without apology.
Yes, it's true. The open studio tour left me dazed and confused. I spent several days staring at mud, a few days asking what kind of weed is a actually a weed, and where are the hidden treasures in all of the brush. I came back with some stickery but healing aloe, something shiny I still can't figure out, and two paintings. Wished I'd had a saddle.
Here's the thing, the stickery thing. If women artists are the most prevalent artists in any generation since 1850 (okay, kinda guessing on the year, but I'm close), why aren't we studying them more, quoting them more, experimenting more with their processes? Even male artists are quoting and emulating male artists of the 1800s instead of artists more recent than that. And, the ones who are mentioned most often shouldn't necessarily hog all of the notoriety. Even if one wanted to stick with the 1800s, there are: Julia Margaret Cameron, Elizabeth Adela Armstrong Forbes, Lilla Cabot Perry, Suzanne Valadon and Berthe Morisot. These artists are worthy of more looking! Then, there is the 20th century, and, oh yes, the last decade of the 21st century. You'd think we didn't have access to more sources. That's the bur. Well, at least one of them.
Grace Hartigan's, The Persian Jacket, 1952.
Grace Hartigan (included in the New York School of Abstract Expressionists): "Well, what we get down to finally is the ultimate point. What in the world is the reason for painting? Life is complete in itself. What can the painter add to it aside from presenting formal problems of my trade--space, projection, surface, contour and all those things. Rather, I think art comes out of an inability to understand the life that you are living and the hopeful desire that out of the chaos that is given to you, you try for a brief period of time to make some sense and order."
Couldn't have said it better.
One of the paintings I've sold recently is quite abstracted. This got me to thinking how right it felt to paint that way--and that someone responded positively to it. Here are two more experiments. The first is a landscape in which paint is for paint and image is a close second (oil on panel 5" x 7").
The second one might be a bit of channeling Grace as I think about our better angels of art or more graces (oil on artist's board, 12" x 12").
I'm gonna keep asking you, kindly and with gentle prodding (sans burrs), to seek out women artists, support them, talk about them, examine their process and dig a bit into the weeds once in awhile. And, those guys? Gotta love 'em. Gotta make 'em share the canvas...
