Category: Artist

Then because I really feel best when I’m drawing I decided to work on a project I’ve had in mind for months. One day a few weeks after we’d been here we went to the Lazy K colt sale over by Chowchilla (don’t you love that name! Pronounced just how it looks.). There were a host of colorful characters there and I serreptitously snapped a few shots of terribly interesting faces. I saw this older man that I instantly fell in love with. He was with a younger man (his grandson?). They both had the same hats on. I was dying to go up to them and ask who are you you’re both beautiful and where are those hats from but I chickened out.

The photo I took, of course, was so, so bad but it had enough information for me to figure stuff out. I guess that’s the bennies of doing this for so long that you can know what is supposed to go where and you can put it in. The way is now in the DNA.

My dad said it just has to be convincing. I think this is. PS just so you know I’m actually going to put a little more work into his coat and the back ground but not much. His face is the interesting part.

What follows is one of my most favorite quotes. I have one other. A poem called “God Speaks” by Rainer Maria Rilke. This quote by Henry Beston fits my subject for today and for the foreseeable future. I am undertaking a project to draw as many of our animal brethren as I can. The first is Mr. Fox. I think foxes are lovely.

“When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit, a part of very flesh and bone, man becomes, as it were a kind of cosmic outlaw, having neither the completeness and integrity of the animal nor the birthright of a true humanity.
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the Earth.” – Henry Beston from The Outermost House

I don’t know where I got that quote. That phrase I use for the title of this post. It doesn’t matter. Good things should be passed along. I believe the originator would be happy to have it passed along without a particular credit. There is satisfaction in having things go out there no matter (almost no matter) where they emanate from.

This is a small piece. 19″ wide by 12″ tall. I’ve decided to do some pieces that aren’t big. It was as it always is. A torture and a joy to create. Now that it’s “finished” (is anything ever finished?) I’m satisfied. Maybe even pleased. Thank you for coming to see it.

An Amazing Woman

I met this person years ago. I was immediately taken with her beauty and she was taken aback that I thought her beautiful. Apparently she had been told by someone that she was not. And she believed them. It was not false modesty.

It took me a while to convince her to let me draw her. But she finally relented. I love her image so I have drawn her many times. This is the first time I’ve drawn her full color. I just let her beauty come through my fingertips on to the paper. My job was to not mess it up.

Autobiography of Eve

by Ansel Elkins

Wearing nothing but snakeskin
boots, I blazed a footpath, the first
radical road out of that old kingdom
toward a new unknown.
When I came to those great flaming gates
of burning gold,
I stood alone in terror at the threshold
between Paradise and Earth.
There I heard a mysterious echo:
my own voice
singing to me from across the forbidden
side. I shook awake—
at once alive in a blaze of green fire.

Let it be known: I did not fall from grace.

I leapt
to freedom.

I asked my sister to send me pictures of people wearing hats a few months ago. My sister lives in Colorado. She sent me a photograph of a cowboy with his border collie. You know that saying “swing a dead cat…”? In Colorado you swing a dead cat and you’ll hit a horse or a horseman. Especially if you are out on the eastern slope of Colorado up to the Rockies. So I did this drawing for her from the photograph. I made a little bit of a departure from my usual style in the use of the tortillion. A tortillion is the traditional rolled up paper stump that is used for blending. Usually I don’t use the tortillion much, if at all. I prefer to see a lot of texture. In this one I decided to blend and blend away. It turned out pretty well so I decided to put my name on it.

I haven’t been working a lot recently. I’ve been stuck. I’ve been trying to write about how this feels but so far I’ve been unsuccessful in doing that.

However, I don’t feel bad about this but it does have to change and change soon. I just know this and I’m taking steps. I once read something that I agree with. To be an artist you don’t have to be working. You are an artist. There’s nothing you can do about it. Either you are or you aren’t. When you are, you are either working or you’re not. Right now, I’m not. But I have work in mind so it’s only a matter of time and then… I’ll be working again!

The way I get unstuck is this: First, don’t panic. The waves crash on the shore and then they recede. This is the way of life. Accept it. When you’re in recession don’t start crying or feel depressed. Just be in recession. You need that. It’s this crazy world that says you must always be ON. You should not always be on. Sometimes you have to turn off. This is the natural way. The thing is this: getting upset just ruffles the surface of the water. How can inspiration rise from the bottom and be seen if the surface of the water is in turmoil? So let it be. There will be an answer. Let it be. Give yourself permission to trust in Creative Intelligence to give you what you really need in perfect divine timing. Guess what? Tomorrow or maybe the next you’ll see! I mean, literally! You will see.

Anyway, this is what works for me. And guess what. I don’t have writer’s or artist’s or anything block. Thank you. Big sigh of relief.

I just submitted two pieces, two pastels, to the Orland Art Center Group Show that is in August. I’ve  posted these two pieces on this blog. Guess which ones they are!

In the meantime here’s some old, old pieces I still like. They are from my college days when I was an intaglio printmaker.

A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.”
― Thomas Merton

This drawing is a little bit of a departure from my previous ones in that it doesn’t involve a cowboy hat. However, I rest in confidence that it joins the rest of my drawings appropriately. There is a hat in it after all. I particularly liked the image of the snow dusting the clothing and face of the subject. It was challenging. The colors weren’t as strong as in my other drawings. There were lots of little details in the cloth and the dusting of snow. I oversimplified the forest behind him. I want the viewer to focus on the subject and just get the idea of the woods. This man is a true woodsman. He lives in Sweden. I feel honored to be able to draw this image.

“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.”
― Thomas Merton

When I “finish”a painting it’s always an arbitrary point in time. Truthfully, I could always keep working on a painting. But if I let the work speak to me it always says at some where along the line, “Stop here. I’m good.” Of course, then I step back and think “well, I could keep going on that corner” or some such thing. When I look at this felt hat painting I have that thought. But then I have a second thought. It’s “what did I set out to accomplish?” With this one I wanted to give everything to the face, hat and hand. And I did. And it came out the way I wanted it to. I think about the great portrait painters like John Singer Sargent. He felt comfortable with slapping on the paint in great swirls and gestures everywhere except in one chosen area. If Mr. Singer feels comfortable doing that, well, so do I.

“Most (people) live lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” – Henry David Thoreau

I finished my pastel painting of Clay today. I’m very pleased with it.

At an art exhibition this evening a lady I know asked me what I’d been working on so I told her. Then she asked did I have any commissions? I said no but you know it doesn’t matter because I really have fun doing these paintings and so I don’t really care if I get commissions or not. How many people can say they love what they do? A long time ago after I got married for the third time I went ahead and made a choice to suppress the song that was inside me. I don’t regret my choice. Much. If I had it to do all over again I would do exactly what I did but in a vastly different way. Where my head was at was much more in a victim role. Thank god I have lived to see those days are over. The victim role days, that is. I am singing again and it feels real good. May god grant you the grace to let your voice sing. Loudly and without fear.

By the way, if you have a photo of yourself wearing a hat that you think is particularly nice and it also has a plain background I am always looking for new subject matter. Feel free to get in touch with me. If I use the photo I will give you a disk with a high resolution image on it for you to do whatever you want.

I finished my “Cowgirl Rembrandt” today. I’m really happy with it. This person is direct but hides a little bit behind the brim of the hat. My sister said “Make her have a little smile” but it was too late. The die was cast. The composition formed. I’m going to keep making these portraits as I find interesting subjects. Until I do I’m working on a landscape. I’m trying to infuse it with feeling. I’ll be sharing that with you as soon as it’s worthy.

“You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare” – Georgia O’Keefe