New medium
Robbie tells me that if I keep doing the same things I'll always get the same results.That is so true; in life and in art.
I stopped at a Value Village and bought some random oil pastels.I've never used oil pastels before.So this was it then, I grabbed those pastels, put on the ring Chloe made for me for strength, sat in the desert at sunrise, and tentatively made a stroke on the paper.
About 20 minutes later I decided there must be more to these pastels that I don't know about. A way to smudge them together and decided to grab my chalk smudge sticks for the next day.
But this first day painting in the desert with those oil pastels was amazing and freeing.
I drove around from place to place stopping, walking, painting, sketching...exploring.
Slowly, the sun is staring to come back to my soul.
Attempted crisis management: hunkering down in the desert
On an impulse I drove south.South for days.I came to the lowest place I could think of: Death Valley.After all, if one is at the lowest place, any move one makes has to be up! There's just nowhere lower to go.So I've come here to stay for a few days and sort myself out.
The soundlessness is huge. It's heavy.So is the air at 282ft below sea level, and that heaviness rushes into my lungs.I can finally take a deep breath. All the way without that horrible feeling of not being able to breathe.
The enormity of Death Valley is overwhelming.Miles and miles of sedimentary deposits, huge granite canyons, sandstone, sand, salt...
The sensation here is unlike anything in the forest.Some sort of power eminates from this harsh, unforgiving vastness.
Hiking here is nothing like the plodding down a green and wet forest path that I'm used to.Here the danger of being out of cell range and trapped by the heat without adequate supplies is very real.But the rhythmic dry crunch of the grit and sand and salt underfoot is comforting.
I'm going to stay here for a while.
I'm happy in this silence.
Read: The Wisdom of Donkeys by Andy MerrifieldListened to: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Attempted Crisis Management: Alone in the Cascades
There's this meditation guru who says, "if you are breathing there's actually more right with you than wrong with you."
My wellness Dr asked me to think about what it would be like to wake up one morning as just myself. Not Veronica the artist, the mother, the daughter, the partner. Take all the identity stuff and strip it away.Can you do that in your mind for yourself?Strange, right? And frightening.It's like taking off all your armour and then all your make-up and then all your clothes.It's protection, right?
In this cute little tourist town, there are all these cute little shops with cute little touristy things, and I saw this flowery sign which reads, "Grow Where You're Planted".I'm thinking about that sign a lot these days. Like when I hiked pass this log. It's a banquet table for some squirrel or chipmunk who strips the seeds from the pines and scatters the remains around. Or maybe the wind blows them somewhere.
And the seeds are watered and then they sprout and makes the best of the situation and grow...
I was hiking thru these beautiful forests of huge douglas firs and ponderosa pines. Strikingly majesting 200ft tall trees.Are they the lucky ones or did they try harder than the rest?
Below a bridge across the Icicle River is a small rock island and on that island is a ponderosa pine.He will probably never reach his potential. Or maybe he has. Maybe that's his potential.I stood on the bridge looking down and wondering what is keeping him grounded. Wondering if he ever thinks of letting go and allowing the icy lullaby to put him to rest.Wondering if he ever laments his fate; his cross to bear for being blown onto this wretched rock.Maybe he's connected to the rest of the forest somehow thru the rock.Maybe the rest of the forest helps keep his spirits up.Maybe he doesn't have spirits, feelings. Maybe he's ok with that.
I can pretty much guarantee I'd let go if I was that tree.Good thing I don't have to grow where I'm planted.I'm not sure what I'm getting at, but I'll keep thinking on it for a few days and knocking it around.
Hiked: 17.5 milesAte: SchnitzelRead: Eaten By a Giant Clam by Joseph Cummins, and I Am Her Tribe by Danielle Doby
Crisis
Brief explanation:There is no art and there hasn't been in quite a while.I can't make myself "do" art. I end up staring at a piece of paper, tools, lino...whatever, spend four hours trying to "do" art, and end up throwing the thing away.The regimented push-pull of my days have become so extreme (with mom's recovery from her broken hip, with my relationship with Robert and my children, with my must-do-art-and-not-just-any-old-art-meaningful-art mindset, with finances, cats, housesitter, house, Trump, a burning planet, isolation, disillusionment) that I was just managing to hold it together without tearing myself apart.And then, a routine mammogram revealed a shadow.One more week of tension while I waited for further testing, a couple more days of tension while I waited for results.Turns out the shadow is a fibroid which attached itself to some tissue.Then, relief, tears, a crisis of the soul.I tried to keep it together. I tried just to pick up the broken pieces of my soul and carry on.
So here at the cabin in my fortress of solitude, (read: no electricity, no phone signal, no landline), I stare into my eyes rimmed red and blue, and grey with undereye bags.
I've felt disconnected to art for the past year - indifferent and empty around it. I did not care what I painted or printed or drew. It was like being out of love.But there's a deeper problem which underpins all of that and it has to do with subjugation.I walk for miles along the railroad tracks thinking about how to take care of myself in the pursuit of freedom. I bemoan the long labour littered with incremental successes and failures. The freedom I'm imagining has no form, no prescriptive path. I can't get it if I'm better at art, smarter with my money, get a job, quit a job, lose weight. People think about freedom as lightness, liberation, but I think it's really quite heavy. The heft of absolute personal responsibility.So many of life's choices are simulated for us. Encoded in the shimmering illusion of choosing from the complex bastions of culture; fashion, religion, politics, the wellness industry...These forms tell us what to look like, what to believe, who to vote for, etc, and it's a lighter way to be in the world. And it feels safe, tribal, comforting.Real freedom is terrifying and dangerous because it opens a chasm into unlimited potential repercussions.Also, it turns out that knowing what one wants and choosing for oneself is quite hard.
Time passing is the only way to sort it out.
As I write now, (days later), I see where I want to go. I think about the power of solitary, of ambiguity, of limitlessness. This is supposed to be the way to soul healing, but it's hard to talk about. It's a slippery fish.Book read: The Book of Help: A Memoir in Remedies by Megan GriswoldAudiobook: Practical Deamonkeeping by Christopher Moore
Happy Lunar New Year
Hi everybody,The new lunar year has begun. The year of the pig; which, incidently, is my year!Here in Vancouver, it arrived with a spring like feeling...
...but don't be fooled, February is an unpredictable month here.
I went to the local asian market to stock up on the kinds of things I needed to make the most of the festivities.
While I was walking around, I spied a sweet little paper pig hanging from the ceiling. I tried to find the decoration, but it seemed that that was the last one in the store.
So I picked up a bright and cheery lantern and asked a market person if I could buy the piggie hanging from the ceiling. He said yes, but would have to wait while he fetched the bar code for the checkout. So I agreed and waited.
While I was waiting, an older Chinese lady was choosing candies and I asked her what I needed for my festive eve.She told me I needed lotus blossom candies...although chocolates were fine.Her friend beside her said I also needed dumplings...and door stickers...and orchids...
...and a money plant...and fish.
I already have several jade plants and my orchids are blooming beautifully right now, so I picked up the lotus blossom candy, some chocolates, the dor stickers, some paper fish, and my little piggie, and headed home. The whole trip was so much fun, as was decorating the house with my red and gold treasures. I understand that they will now stay up until the 16th.
I've been feeding the birds in the garden...much to Morgan's delight. But don't worry, she wouldn't know what to do with a bird if it flew into her mouth.
But while feeding the birds I'm feeding the squirrels by default, and those squirrels and getting so fat that they took down one of the bird feeders!OK, maybe it wasn't the squirrel, maybe it was the frozen air that broke the rope, but the squirrels do have a habit of sitting in the feeder and noshing down on the bird seed.I don't mind, everyone has to make their way. It's an equal opportunity feeder.
I hope some of you had fun celebrating the lunar new year, and I hope that the year of the pig brings you much prosperity, happiness and health.
Happy New Year and new art inspiration
Happy New Year everyone!I arrived home a couple days ago to a very quiet house.Too quiet, especially after the last few days!But it was also a really good time for me to do some reflecting and make some decisions about what I would like my life to look like in 2019.
And so, with the final sunset of 2018,
I lit my candles and made a list. Came up with a plan. Well, not a plan as plans go, just a bunch of random ideas expressed as words on said list.
Then, this new year, this new morning, I began putting some of my ideas into action.
I think that I would like to keep this blog going and with greater regularity.I also am committing to more art, more inspiration, more of and a better Instagram presence, also, more time to answer all you dear friends who leave me comments, and come visit you. Just be more around.
So, one of my ideas, more isnpiration, that was easy.I went to the beach and wandered around.
Right now I'm loving these winter beachy colours.
And I'm also loving the way the winter storms beat up the tree bark.
I collected a bunch of beach finds and brought them home.Then, after a few trial and Edison moments, I made some lovely monotypes with the beaten up bark.
Happy New Year dear friends. I wish you all a year of abundance, joy and treasured moments.
A winter walk in these liminal days
I love these days.I love holidays and not knowing...and not caring what day it actually is.
It's been snowing all day today, but before today's snow, I went for a walk on my daughter's property to gather some winter weeds for reference for new art pieces. (Don't ask me what day it was...lol)It looks like there was someone here earlier.
I hiked all the way to the top of the 22 acres.So calm and peaceful here. Just some birds flickering in the pines.
I gathered handfuls of last summer's plants,
twigs, pinecones and grasses...anything interesting I could find.
Then I found some deer tracks and followed them back down the acreage.
When I was back at the car I dedided to drive to the beach.Oh my gosh I love it down here.
I walked along the beach to the spot the kids and I were swimming at last summer.How calm and cold it is now.This is the dock we were jumping from. This is the place Ruby took her first plunge.
I sat for a while and noticed that I picked up some hitchhikers somewhere on my hike.
So I freed them to seed down here, looked forward to next summer's swim, and headed back up the hill.
Hope you all have beautiful liminal days between now and the New Year. I wish you loads of winter joy.
Merry Christmas
Hi everybody,
Yes indeed, I'm back.
At the moment I'm 300 miles from home visiting my daughter Kerstin and her family. The great news is that my son Jonathan and his family are here too, and that means all five of my grandchildren for Christmas.
It's a big family Christmas
Our Christmas Eve was an event and a half. Over 24 people for turkey supper and it went on till
Christmas morning came at last and with that five anxious children who wouldn't sit still for two minutes together...
Well, maybe one minute!
But then all bets were off, because Santa came!
From my family to yours, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and all the best. <3
Hello from Sunday night. Wotcha doin? I've been printing my head off!
Hi everyone,It's been an intense and working summer for me so far.Made even more so because I was determined to finish my internship/probationary period at my Oxford Printmakers Guild.
So every Tuesday and Saturday I have been walking into Oxford from the park and ride with a small rolling suitcase full of papers, tools, inks and ideas, and organising those ideas out on a table.
Then I would tear up my papers to size and get them soaking before anything else.
Then I would ink up my plate, wipe the ink off, make a guide for registration, put the plate into one of the old industrial presses, grab one of my soaked papers, blot it off, lay it on the plate, and...
...cover it with tissue and the felt blankets, and run it thru.
I also learned to do soft ground etchings on copper plates.
I did three of these plates. So far it's the most exciting and fulfilling plate making intaglio process, but I have to master aquatints yet. Those I think I'd love to pieces.Here is a print of one of these soft ground plates.
This is the second one. The twigs were harder to run thru the press than the ferns were.
This is a small selection of plates you can see. I made copper plates, zinc, aluminium ones and even some plastic drypoint etchings.
Of course, all this came with a great big investment in new tools and materials...as is often the case, but the end result is so wonderful. Here is a registration try at three moth prints.
This is the third soft ground copper plate I made. All of these copper plates are supporting my wish to show how wild animals survive and adapt in the urban heat island that is our city scape.
Of course, the worst thing about printing is that you have to flatten your prints between tissue and leave them for a few days to dry! No coming home right away with beautiful works of art!But then, there's always a new plate to make at home in the meantime.I was in London recently and the trip led me to make a plate of some London tube mosquitos on a piece of aluminium I got from Robert.They're really interesting. They've evolved to stay in the tube station and not hibernate, to breed all year long instead of seasonally, they have a fresh and adequate supply of blood all year long, and they've separated into different genomes because they cannot travel thru the tubes, (except in the train itself), and there is no need for them to go outside. A whole bunch of subspecies which live and die and evolve different characteristics underground.I'm waffling on, but here is the print.
Hope you like this art.Talk soon(er)
June catch-up, in the Okanagan with the littles.
I might just have several random posts hanging in my draft folder from when my great and mighty pc died.By the way, I still don't have that pc (under full warranty and at HP headquarters) back yet, and HP is being very unresponsive (except for the social media rant...they didn't like that at all and stirred their stumps).No more HPs for me. I think I'll stick to custom built Acers like all my past pcs.But I digress. Since there are some random posts hanging about, and since all my family, (as well as me), love to reread the posts and remember the lovely times, I thought I'd get them posted.So here is one from late June.Chloe and I drove to the Okanagan to stay with Kerstie, Adam and the littles.
Late June is a perfect combination of green and hot. Not yet too hot, not yet too dry, but that first taste of warm air and cool water which will be the ideal Okanagan summer.
So, while we worked on Chloe's airstream and helped Kerstie with baby Nate, we also jumped in the lake.
It turns out Ruby is a great swimmer.She was in there solidly for 2 hours and only getting out to have a pee and then jumping right back in.
And so we spent a few days swinging,
and swimming,
and floating,
and beachcombing,
and swimming...
...and generally having fun :)
While baby Nate slept thru it all.