The Other New Painting

I have this one stored in my portfolio folder under the title Dawn on the Ortiz but rather like Listening to the Clouds better after a poem I posted here before. I posted this one on Chats with Charley too and the finished version of the painting in the blog below is also posted there.

This painting is a bit of a departure for me in subject matter. It is not a church or a visionary canyon but closer to pure landscape of New Mexico. It is visionary only in color and a certain dream like reality. But I rather like it. Am tempted to keep it for myself because of the memories associated with this piece of highway for me.

Today I am beginning work on two far more visionary works: one a church with ghosts and the other a canyon with goddesses and a gecko.

Are We There Yet?

This is my newest painting. I don't think it is done yet so I photographed it. I find that when I see the image on my computer screen it allows a distance and objectivity I cannot necessarily achieve with the canvas. This is especially true of my medium to large works. This one, as yet unnamed, is 20 x 24.

This is one of my Goddess series paintings and as such should have a one named title (without the The). Previous ones in the series have been The Journey, The Source, The Passage, The Sentries. I am thinking of Font or Spring.

I experimented with some glazes in this work. All my watercolor friends talk of glazes. I used a white glaze over the canyon walls beyond the central figure to provide distance. I had a watercolor teacher in college that was very fond of the white glaze. And I made greater use of lettering nibs and ink instead of "sharpies" or Pentel pens. It gives a variance of line I find I prefer even if they are more difficult to handle.

I think I would like to approach this subject in a vertical canvas at some date but I have awaiting me an unfinished landscape and two large churches with a paranormal theme. So later. Then of course there is decided whether this one is done.

At Last

The first two paintings of 2009. Oh, what is it about January? I have sketched, plotted, traced, laid out on canvas and not dipped a brush into paint until yesterday. And these two paintings are in actuality experiments as they are on a gesso canvas instead of a watercolor canvas.

It was quite a different painting experience. And I wanted at first to force them to look like my other paintings. But gesso is not absorbent so paint behaves differently. And as most gesso prepared canvases are for acrylic or oil paintings it has a coarser tooth. That would be the painter term - tooth. Costume designers would talk about the weave or strands per square inch.

The tooth made it not unlike painting upon a rough watercolor paper. There is more "white" that is not covered and which adds a "light" to the painting. And the courseness stiffles details. The non-absorbency of the gesso surface made paint want to bead off the surface. That was a bit bothersome and time consuming. But the plus part of this more paint resistant surface is color could be lifted off back to the pure white of the canvas.

I particularly liked this in the skies. The clouds could have very white parts. And with a brush of clean water or a cue tip paint could be lifted off and the clouds sculpted.

So will I paint again on gesso canvas? Yes, I think I will. I think it will lend itself to vast canyon landscapes with huge skies.

Creative Void Or Avoidance

I started doing some painting today. Doing the skies on three new church paintings. All of them are experiments of sorts. Two being on a Gesso canvas instead of absorbent ground as I usually use. And one was a Gesso canvas that I applied thick and textured layers of absorbent ground too.


Churches are a good subject for me to experiment with as there is not that much experimentation in the subject matter as with my canyon pieces. I am not entirely sure how these three paintings will turn out but I had to jump start my creative juices somehow even if I dressed it up as a lab experiment.

So there I was getting into the different way the liquid watercolors were behaving on these varied surfaces and along comes the real world with an urgent legal issue that must be addressed. But surprisingly I went back to painting after making some calls and faxing some documents. So where I had a void of creativity I now was using creativity to avoid.

The above picture of a non-Catholic church in a little rural town was in my file of "churches to paint". I took it for the spire detail. Just one of those bits and pieces lying around the studio waiting to be picked up and worked into something creative.

The Voice of the Clouds

Today has been one in which I have been blown here and there off the course I had set for the day. The choice is to resent that or realign my goals to the universe as it would have.

Voice of the Clouds

Just a leaf
Blowing in the breeze
Loose
Relieved of all Choices
Fully
Letting Go

I drift
Devoid of thought of direction
Bobbing upon the ripples
Of a cascading stream
The Direction I take
Not of my control.

A leaf
In the wind
A seed pod
Upon the waves
A mind free floating
Letting go
Be.

Only be
This
Go as a feather
Softly
So you can hear
The voice of the clouds.

(c) J. Binford-Bell February 2009

Camp Craft

When my sister and I get together be it at my house or her house we always have fun. Days are generally spent in very active pursuits like four-wheeling or hiking or power shopping. Evenings include Yahtzee and Casino tournaments and what we term camp craft.

Camp craft can be making our own spruce Christmas Wreaths like we did in November or beginning a new crochet project or stringing beads. In the photo above I did the three necklaces on the left and my sister, a new convert to the hobby, did the rest. It required two trips to Mama's Minerals for supplies and a couple evenings of dedication.

I am not sure what about stringing beads I find so relaxing but it begins walking through the racks of beads and continues through to the finished product. It is almost like Zen meditation. I don't think that would continue to be the case if this was a business for me as opposed to just a hobby or camp craft, but recently I realized I had strung up far more necklaces than I can wear. Yes, friends have gotten some for gifts in the past. And upon occasion I don't like my creation and cut it apart and begin again. I have been known to do this even with jewelry I buy - suddenly seeing them as supplies.

And with every project I always seem to be left with beads enough to compose another creation. Often I like the second better than the first. All this lead me to take some into the gallery that handles my paintings recently and see if she would like to see if they sell. I just want my costs out so I can do some more. Hmmmm, this may be where I began on mask making almost two decades ago. Or even painting more recently. No, that was wall space issues.

What camp crafts do you do? In the creative journey I think it is important to tithe some of our energy toward play. Stringing beads is play for me.

Visiting Memories

Visiting Memories

Somewhere near here
We used to fish
I was just a kid then
More interested in the color of doors
Than the next turn to take

Dad did the driving
To another secret fishing hole
We three kids sat in the back
Playing I spy or I claim that
But the poor towns had nothing we wanted

Still even then
With an undeveloped artist’s eye
I recorded the patchwork of roofs
The weathering of wood
The windmill with missing blades.

Was it this town
Or the next village
Where the car would go first right
Then left through a gate left open
Across a field.

The pond was large
For a pond but small for a lake
The important thing was the quiet
And the empty shores
As we fished.

But where was the right
Is this the village
Where we left the road?
Is the pond of my youth
Just beyond those cottonwoods?

Or the next town?
Or the next right turn?
Is that the windmill that always squealed
When the wind came up at noon?
Is that the house I remember?
Tin for roofs now rusted
Windows all cracked
Doors swinging ajar
Was it that way then?
Has the pond blown away too?

Gone like the residents
Of yet another ghost town
Leaving behind just memories
Of a child in the back seat
Going fishing.

(c) J. Binford-Bell January 2009