Skies - in th beginning they were all blue

A sampling of skies

Haven't written a blog on the creative process lately so figured I was over due. And since yesterday I was working on some new 12 x 12 panels for the up coming Rio Grande Arts and Crafts Holiday Festival my mind was on skies. I begin with skies. This is in part because my skies are mainly poured or floated using the liquid watercolor I prefer. And it is partly because the sky sets the tone for the painting. And because while the scenery in New Mexico and the Colorado Plateau is awesome the skies are without parallel.

When I first began painting back in college I stuck with blue skies and they were a bit of an after thought. Frankly skies scared me because many a great painting (in my mind) was ruined by my treatment (or non-treatment) of the sky, as I saw it as merely a backdrop for the subject of the painting. Pouring skies was more than a technique change. It led me to a totally different approach to the entire painting.

Beginnings

 Of the four church panel paintings above the top two are going to be night scenes and the churches will have luminarias lining the path to the doors, and large rising full moons. The metallic glitter was another happy accident in my attempt to capture skies filled with stars. The bottom left is a sky I have done before and like for "hot desert days." The bottom right is a new sky. I am trying this one out. It is prompted in part by the top picture in the opening photograph, and in part by a photograph of Laguna Mission with a very stormy sky behind it.

My Tres Cruces triptych was an adventure in skies that worked. And difficult because it was on three separate canvases but had to look like one sky going from dawn to sunset to dusk. You may have noticed my skies are no longer blue.

Tres Cruces Triptych

Sometimes my adventures in poured skies work and sometimes they don't. I blogged previously about the struggle I had getting to that top pink sky with clouds. It really was an accident. Lots of my skies begin as accidents and then liking the effect I seek to repeat it. I have tried for sunset and gotten dawn as in the first time I did a yellow sky. Starry night skies are thankfully very repeatable as they are very popular. But while it is "repeatable" they are seldom exactly alike. Water and liquid watercolors have minds of their own even if I can urge them in different directions from time to time.

The skies make each painting unique, even when I repeat a subject, because they dictate the time of day, the light on the subject, and, most importantly, set the mood of the painting. Ergo they are seldom just blue. It always works better if I follow the sky rather than try to force the painting to a preconceived idea. Mind you I do have an idea of where I want a painting to go, it is just that sometimes the paint wins and those can be very happy adventures.

Mag 39 and a Late Poetry Wednesday

Kill the old Red Rooster

My father in the closing days of World War II had read a popular book of the times about existing and thriving on an acre of land. He bought two and begun a house that in my memory never seemed done. We had a "truck garden" on half an acre and raised all our own vegetables and sold some too. And he raised and field trained Beagles and Irish Setters, and because of the training hunted for rabbits and all manners of birds. And Mom raised chickens and sold eggs. I was trained in egg gathering before school. God, how I hate chickens!

Kill That Old Red Rooster

Chickens little peeping in my skirts

Chicken shit on the bottoms of my feet

Egg snakes trapped in the fence

That big red rooster stalking me in the coop

Gathering eggs on a damp Missouri morning.

Eggs hatching in the incubator

Fluffy yellow chicks for Easter

Fried chicken for dinner

Scrambled eggs for breakfast

Hiding broken eggs that fell from the basket

I had swung at Rooster Red.

Washing eggs clean of chicken shit

Putting them gently in cartoons to deliver in the wagon

Dipping beheaded chickens in boiling water

Getting plucked feathers all over my face

Up my nose and all over my clothes.

The smell of warm blood and wet feathers

The squawk of the hens and the thud of the axe

Echoing in my dreams with the slithering egg snakes

On butchering day

But smiling that at last

That ole Red Rooster was gone.

J. Binford-Bell 2010

On blogger Magpie Tales has a weekly writing challenge. It is always nice to stretch our wings. Magpie Tales posts a visual or written prompt every week that a host of bloggers take up and develop into short tales and poems. This week the prompt was the picture of the Rooster above. I encourage my readers to go to the link above and read some of other entries linked there.

Julia's Goodbye

Last of the Cape Lions

Goodbye

Julia forever young

Would lie in her plantation bed

Praying to hear

Her beloved lions

One last time

Before she slept.

Now I lay her down

Beneath the African soil

A simple stone to mark

Julia's so brief life

Broken by the paw

Of the last Cape Lion.

Julia A. Wilson

Passed this way

November 1858

And the lions she so loved

Left this earth with her.

j. binford-bell

Historical note: The long black maned Cape Lion was last reported seen in 1858, the year of Julia A's death and the carving of her head stone.

Awakening

Fall's Leaves in Winter's Ice

Awakening

Pull myself from under 

Winter's covers

Seek my slippers

My warm joggers

Feed the fur kids

Start the coffee

Boot the computer

Check the woodstove

For still hot coals.

Toss in a log or two

Carefully saved from the evening's fire

Pour myself a hot mug of coffee

And settle in at my computer chair

Pulling my afghan around my legs

Good morning etherworld

Still hours before my dawn

And the studio warms

Today I paint

But now I awake.

Slowly the morning unfolds

The night melting

Like the thin new winter's ice on the pond

The new logs catch

I sip the second cup of coffee

Fur kids arrayed around my feet

In the circle of warmth from the fire

We all await the coming of the sun

A new winter morning.

J. Binford-Bell 2010

Cry The Sorrows - Poetry Wednesday

Cry the Sorrows

Cry the Sorrows

Weep for me

Mournful cliffs

Let the wind

Sing of sorrows

And on this day

Filled with loss

Of promise gone.

Cry the sorrows

Of loves and lives lost

An those that have moved on

Beyond the canyon walls

Sing of the memories

Etched in the cliffs

The sorrows of ages past.

Let the cliffs weep

For all they have seen pass

Cry the sorrows

Faces of stone

For all that has been

Cast off

Weep tears for love gone.

J. Binford-Bell October 2010

What's in a Title?

A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet

Spirit Flight

The problem with doing new paintings is coming up with unique titles for them. I rather loathe the habit of some artists of Untitled. I think it is a cop out. I admit to having done the Roman Numeral thing of Dawn I and Dawn II. I rather got into a Dawn thing at one time. Dawn over Abiquiu Mission or Dawn in Bryce, etc. Painting the same missions at different angles and in different lights does tax one on original titles. And with my cactus blossoms I have just called them Blossoms Large or Blossoms Small. But basically I think a title can make or break a work of art.

Let's take Spirit Flight above. It is of White House Ruins at Canyon de Chelle National Monument and certainly could carry any of that as a title. But I have done White House Ruins before and since and no doubt will do them again. So if I went by that I would be in the I, II, III thing. I named it Spirit Flight because of the ravens against the cliff wall. Inuits in Alaska believe that Ravens carry the spirits of the recently dead so they can rest before being reborn.

But since I have ravens in almost all my daylight pictures than any of those pictures could be called Spirit Flight too or Two and Three and Four. I did a small detail version of this painting and called it Tucked Away. Now there is a title that got me in trouble. Any cliff dwelling can be named Tucked Away, and unfortunately, without thinking, I used it twice. This tends to confuse galleries. And when they call to clarify their inventory it then confuses the artist. I reasoned that one out with size as one was 14 x 11 on artist's panel and the other was 16 x 20 on canvas.

I prefer my title cards to carry the size and medium and platform information as it solves a lot of problems most notably being a more expensive painting going for a far too cheap price. But I generally like my titles short. Lately I have been into one word titles like Cry, Reverence, Worship, Celebration, etc. From there they go to Cry the Sorrows, Reverence for the Dawn, Worship the Day, Celebration of the Moon. That occurs on what I call the second generation of a concept. But I frankly refuse to carry it to Celebration of the Moon II. But there have been Study for Rainbow Reflections, a smaller version of the larger Rainbow Reflections I did in order to work out color choices and compositional issues.

So what makes a good title? Short I think. At least short enough that it fits on one line of a title card (generally business card size). But also short enough to be remembered by the patron (seven words max), but unique enough it doesn't get confused with other works. It should also be in good English (following the rules for titles) and not misspelled. And if your painting has been lucky enough to catch the eye of a prospective buyer you don't want to turn them off with a negative title.

All that said I have a few new paintings to name today. I have gotten into the habit of writing titles on the back so if I forget what I named it and the title card goes amiss I can solve the debate with the gallery.

Poetic Journey - Had I known

Thunder storm building

Had I Known

*

Had I known

That March day

As you prepared to drive away

I would not see you so again

Would I have

Hugged you tighter

Begged you to stay

Not merely waved?

Farewell

**

Had I known 

That day in July

When your call took me away

From my painting

We would not talk again

Would my words Have been sweeter

Not so in a rush

To get back to my brush?

Love you bye 

***

Had I known

That December move away

Your life would be so short

Without me there

Would I have stayed

Endured more

In hopes to prolong yours

Not been so impatient

To get on with my life?

Divorce

****

Had I known

That day in August

Standing beside your bed

You would so soon die

Leave me crying

Would I have made

More time

To spend with you

Should I have forseen

My last glimpse of you

Would be my last chance?

Awaken

*****

Had I known

That long ago day in May

I said I do

I would not be able

To change the course

Our lives would take

Would I still

Have tried

Would I still have

Loved you so?

Goodbye 

******

J. Binford-Bell October 2010