Artists are often asked how long it took to make a painting. Less often are they asked about materials, techniques, theme, and concept. I’ve decided to tell you what it took. My story is not unique; every artist has hundreds of these stories. Most artists are polite enough not to bore you with them. Here goes!
Materials: Golden liquids. Flourescent Nova colors. White acrylic ink and gesso. Huge to tiny brushes. Canvas prepped in 2010-2011 with gesso, lightweight spackle, and hand-carved forms. Masking tape to establish horizon consistent with previous series of 10 paintings. Then swaths of translucent red, then swipes of flourescent red-orange. Allow canvas to sit for 14 months to mature, and because you don’t quite know what it wants to be. 5 books on Hindu motifs, 2 books on symbols, 2 hours of research to establish authentic Warli painting examples. Notebook with notes. Film called “Upside Down”, an Indian movie not yet released in the US. Brushes borrowed from Karina Nishi Marcus. One glass of cognac drunk in her studio.
Techniques: pouring, stamping. Gesso applied with gloved hand, no brushes, for smooth yet organic texture. Mixing of whites to achieve varying translucencies for folk painting. Wiping back with variety of materials. Acrylic inks applied with brush and pen, water-soluble wax crayon scribbles, and 2 different varnishes, one spray and one applied by brush.
Experiential and conceptual development: one marriage, 1991-1998, in which I lived in Bangalore, India for several years and collected both fine and folk art. Conversation with Indian woman who decorated the threshold with gorgeous rice flour designs daily at 4 AM so that her husband could step through this blessing on his way to work at dawn, her paintings destroyed and rebuilt day after day. Color vocabulary from photographs and memories of India. Conscious decision to paint naively. Memories of circus and thoughts of Ganesha, a major presence in South India. Wanted to use a sort of ‘tumbling down the rabbit hole” theme used in previous paintings, where animals float and turn in a metaphorical world, Chagall-like. Mythic theme for paintings and series size established in the Terra Incognita series, 2011. A sadness over a recent death and a desire to use forms drifting up and away, or birds to symbolize soul in release and in captivity. Threw out color balance and let the colors blend randomly, as in India.Memories of elephant festivals and ecstatic dancing.
And luck.
Questions?
Studio Note: You can see “Upside Down”, both my painting and the film, at the Santa Rosa International Film Festival, which runs Sept. 12-21. Visit http://www.sriff.org/ for more information.
I always wanted to be offered a summer art residency. You know the dream. It involves perfect food at a lovely dining room table or magically appearing at your door. You have a cozy little cabin or an urban warehouse studio in an exciting part of a large city. Ocean, desert, mountains, lakes, or forests surround you. You have no real responsibilities except to your art. A convivial group of fascinating, talented artists would provide incisive feedback and hilarious, refreshing evening play. And of course I would blissfully, effortlessly, and ceaselessly create my new theme. And the Art Gods would say, “It is good.”
I wanted the feeling of leaving home, but underneath that, what I sought was a support structure outside the ordinary for creating art intensively for two weeks. Heck, I’m an artist, with a good studio and great arts community. My job is to create, so why not create my own summer residency? My colleague Karina Nishi Marcus and I devised the Caerus Artist Residency.
Caerus runs from July 8 through July 21, 2012. It’s a work-in-your-studio residency, shared virtually. I was inspired by a Philadelphia artist who created his own summer residency in his own studio, and Nanowrimo, National Novel writing month, when writers all over the country commit to writing 50,000 words in a month period, receiving support and sharing online in a specified pocket of time.
Caerus (Ky-russ) is a lesser-known godlet. He’s the slippery opportunity in time, as opposed to the linear clock. We might call him inspiration or flow. Artists seek him. Sometimes it seems that time for creating art is being devoured in our consumer culture. We need to invite Caerus, or Kairos, sacred time, into our studios. Who knows which windows of inspiration might open for us?
We’ll focus on creating time for art for two weeks, minimizing other commitments as we can. At the end of two weeks, we’ll celebrate. You choose how much time you can devote to your art and fill in the free application form to join us. Caerus will be a forum for posting comments and photos on your process.
I’ve chosen to commit four hours a day in-studio. I’ll be working on the large pieces of the Dionysian project, and a new project I’ll reveal during the residency. As in a residency, I’ll have special arrangements for food and recreation, and minimize my other life duties.
Come on, it’ll be fun. Whether your studio is a computer or a dining room table or a beautiful atelier, whether you have 15 minutes a day or 8 hours a day, you can participate in the Caerus Artist Residency.
All we have is time to give our art. Join us. Apply for the Caerus Artist Residency here.
Nature Walk, 12″ x 12″, oil paint over pinhole photos, Suzanne Edminster
Painting can take you to strange places. I offer these older paintings as a travelogue of a surreal journey through spontaneous image.
Some years ago I mounted blown-up, cut-out photocopied images of my own pinhole photos on Masonite. I had a photo series of a small, two-inch Mummy, an Invisible Man model, a Barbie doll, and a plastic toy lizard. Keep an eye out for them, as they pop up in various combinations in all four paintings.
I varnished the black and white photocopy mounts with clear acrylic varnish as a protectant, letting it dry. I then covered each panel completely with oil paint. The images disappeared. That was scary! We love our figurative images, and to cover them makes us feel like we have lost our way . But it is important to completely cover the surface, so you can’t see the original images any more. Just choose a few analogous colors to start.
Oil paint stays open, or wet, for quite a while. Using a soft rag, I would rub parts back to the original photo, then add more paint, and repeat this, over and over, until new images started to form. It was like watching a mysterious image develop. I had no plan for the original mounts. The images just appeared. The first one was Eye Boat, below. You can see the guts of the Invisible Man, and the lizard became a sort of surfboard. They are led by the Eye Boat–led by the eye, or vision–which tows three fish. Maybe they’re the next three paintings.
Eye Boat, 12″ x 12″, photos under oil paint, Suzanne Edminster
Okay, I had a start: two figures in a sort of journey. The second painting was Nature Walk, at the top of the blog. A giant gorilla peered over the horizon at the two small figures enjoying a stroll, and the Mummy got a cigarette. I loved the thick, greasy, slippery feel of the oil paint, and the sharp smell. Shapes and images surfaced and submerged. It was mesmerizing. It took a long, long time. Apply, rub away. Add, subtract, change, cover, lose it, reclaim it: hide-and-seek with images.
The Sacrifice, 12: x 12″, oil paint over pinhole photos, Suzanne Edminster
The Sacrifice is the darkest of the series. The couple becomes androgynous, with the partner becoming a sort of butler or servant. A table appeared in a desert. Hooves and feet were scratched into cartouche forms. A smiling cow head appears on a table with two glasses of red wine. This has a forsaken feeling; I thought of Shelley’s poem Ozymandias. Motifs kept repeating: the high horizon, the pillars, the animal forms. I was dreaming in paint.
Belly Thoughts came last. A world of landscape appears inside a cow, and the Mummy has become a sort of householder or landlord, surveying his domain. There’s a snake in the garden, though…
Belly Thoughts, 12″ x 12″, oil paint over pinhole photos, Suzanne Edminster
These turned out to be important paintings to me. I think they may have actually foretold my future: a kind of before-sight rather than hindsight. Obliterating the image is very freeing, and moves the painter rapidly toward increased abstraction. Meaning won’t be lost; it reasserts itself constantly . You never have to worry about that.
Studio notes: This is my favorite method of painting with oils, because it fully exploits their oily quality and reluctance to dry. Oil paints have a mystery and resonance with film– all those chemicals! (Black and white photos used to be colorized with oil paints.) I did these during the last class that Holly Roberts ever taught at UC Santa Cruz. The painting studios had a view of the Pacific, and I had a key to the studios to come early and stay late. She taught us how to paint in oils without turps, using linseed oil as a medium and baby oil as a brushcleaner. Holly’s work is superb: mysterious, intelligent, passionate, and completely expert. I am grateful for the series of classes I took with her.
Spidermen Original Holga Photo, Suzanne Edminster. Pre-Instagram!
As I was going through my overcrowded art storage area, I came upon my nemesis– the art collage box. It was full of things I collected at one time. I was sure I would use them some day.
I won’t tell you everything I found, but there was Monopoly money from a broken antique set, German fortune-telling cards, a work on rice paper by an artist from Bangalore, India, and Mexican loteria cards. Out fell ancient notes and antique photos, a Virgin of Guadalupe print and a Holga photo of Spidermen, and a paranormal magazine I got in Prague in the 90’s.
Collage Box
I thought I might tell you what I kept and what I discarded, but I found I was reluctant to list things I threw away. Hey, it felt like a taboo. Why?
I’ve always said that collage itself had some connection with destruction and death, the dark side. Things are dismembered and removed from their original space, time and context, often by cutting or tearing, actions that have an air of violence. There’s an air of secrecy about them. That box felt like a coffin for dead ideas combined with a treaure box, a graveyard for things that had once compelled me.
Someone would be sure to ask, “Why did you throw that out?” Even worse, they might say, “You could have given that to me. I would have liked that.” I would be responsible for disappointing someone. Another person would become implicated and entangled in my decision. I’ve encountered this a lot. People really do not like it when one simply disposes of things. A taboo has been broken. Improper burial? Disrespect for objects? Then the discarded object comes back to haunt you through the remonstrations of others. And now, with the advent of eBay, all junk has been acquired a false patina of consumer value.
I bought this in Bangalore when I was rich. Now I’ve lost the artist’s name. Perhaps Rashika Thakur?
Each item is really the representation of a certain dream, experience, or longing. An object then has become a literalized metaphor, carrying meaning far beyond itself. If I discard the object, do I discard the idea? Or does the object become a substitute for fresh experience? Each item becomes a love letter from a past idea-affair.
Nowadays I use only two kinds of collage: text and black and white non-copyright photocopies of drawings or my own photos. Often the collage vanishes completely, or is torn to become an area of texture that may have figurative associations for me, but not for the viewer. I’ve never liked using “old” or “failed” paintings as collage parts. It seems disrespectful to the original impulse, a Frankenstein construction that I am forcing to life.
I think I’m just as happy putting this flotsam on the floor and photographing them, and then letting them drift back to the strange ether of discarded objects, or the garbage. But then, again…
There, I’ve revealed my collage underbelly. What’s in your boxes?
Worktable with 3 “Drafts” for Larger Paintings, Saltworkstudio
Where am I now? What’s next?
I’ve been incubating this Dionysian series for a while. I have three 2 foot by 4 foot canvases waiting for paint to develop these themes, colors, and forms. The starts shown above are meant to act as “thumbnails’ for the next phase of larger paintings on canvas.
I have the best luck with my finished pieces when I am purposely experimental, uncontrolled, and unfinished in my draft paintings. I’m groping in my own darkness when I paint. I don’t want the whole process to happen even before I hit the canvas. I don’t want to pre-paint it in my head, my notebook, or anywhere else.
I found a useful new metaphor for thinking about any creative project, whether it’s painting or cleaning out the junk room. These ideas are from The Path of the Everyday Hero, a book about mythic themes played out in life. The six phases of creativity are preparation, frustration, incubation, strategizing, illumination, and verification (or manifestation).
Dignified, precise language allows us to reframe creative pauses or lapses. It’s interesting that frustration comes immediately after preparation, right at the start. Frustration is the failure stage, the belly of the whale, the so-called “block”. What now?
My friend Karina Nishi Marcus is very clear on the idea that “block” should be eliminated from the artist’s vocabulary. She says creativity is more related to nature metaphors, like “low tide” for the ocean, or “fallow” for the land. It is a necessary part of the creative process.
Frustration stops us from action, and makes us incubate our ideas, like an egg. It’s on the back burner, in the nest, warming, passive on the surface but active underneath, mysterious, the seed under the ground. To incubate properly we also need to strategize, to try things that might nourish or warm the invisible idea. Some might work, some not. But the passive time is needed, yin to the yang of action. Paintings can stay successfully in this stage for a long time, even years.
“The Great Ones”, acrylic combined media, Suzanne Edminster
The painter or artist may have to go back and forth in the frustration–incubation–strategy realm for a while, then illumination, the “aha moment” strikes, and elevates the venture to a different level, perhaps to completion. The creative round, like the phases of the moon, will start again with a new idea.
“We Have Purposely Kept It”, acrylic combined media, Suzanne Edminster
These paintings are not done, but after some months of incubating, I am strategizing. The notebook helps keep me on track. When you find your way through an art dilemna, the solution often seems absurdly simple. Still, it took time to get there. The cycle may play out in one painting, or in series spanning decades.
The Dionysian metaphor is one of unbounded spring growth and ceremonial theatre, among other things. Perhaps I should drink a glass of wine to Dionysios, and return to the paintings. A flash of lightning, a sprouting vine, or a Greek chorus might illumine the way to the next act of painting.
Mythic notes: The Dionysian mystery cults tried to loosen the bonds between the worlds through sacred intoxication, theatre, dance and ritual. The Pompeii Murals, with their glowing Pompeii red, were thought to have depicted aspects of this.
What’s the difference between selling out and simply selling?
I found myself arguing with myself over this post when I put it up last week or the week before, feeling oddly insecure and conflicted. I ended up making it a draft again, unposting it and pulling it offline. Yes, there were typos, but I think it was more that I had some problems with feeling authentic addressing the issue. My success in the arts is modest and my own skills at using the internet to market are certainly not advanced. Who am I to tell you what to do? Some of my advice goes against common consensus on internet marketing.
That said, I found that I had the most conflicts with the section called post and publicize carefully, so I’ve included the original draft and some revised thoughts below.
Sometimes I feel sickened by using the internet to publicize my paintings. It gnaws my brain into small pieces and inflates a sort of Virtual Persona Girl who has a crabby, fragmented, and narcisstic ego. That is certainly one form of selling out, and a dangerous one. That said, I’ll begin again…
What’s the difference between selling your soul and simply selling your art?
Many of us can envision– or have experienced– life before or without a television, but few younger people today can reconstruct the era of a world without internet. The Web now reaches its tentacles into every moment of our lives and every part of our bodies. ( I have a theory that cellphones are the new cigarettes, but that’s for another day.) Artists are engulfed in a tsunami of information and marketing possibilities. It has become harder and harder to decided what to do, or decide if what you’re doing is worth it. Here are a few ideas for those who feel adrift in the flood.
The route to success is not soley through the internet, or through sales. Many masters were obscure in their own time. I’m not suggesting that this is the way to go, or that you shouldn’t bother to try to publicize on your own behalf. But I will say that the artwork has to be strongly felt, beautifully crafted, and cohesive to make a mark. Artwork that is well-made will find an audience and buyers of some kind, with or without Twitter. You do need to clarify what success is for you. There’s a wide range on the spectrum. Are you Vincent Van Gogh, Matisse, Thomas Kincaid, Bouguereau? Are you looking for a small circle of people who love your work, or do you want to make big money? Somewhere in between?
Don’t chase genre. “Landscapes sell.” I’ve heard this too often to count. The other thing I’ve heard is “I’d love to do more abstract work, but it won’t sell.” The flood of images now available online and print has sensitized us to cliché and to inauthentic artmaking. Now more than ever, it has to be your own, even if your own work is very odd.
Find your own relationship with internet marketing. Marketing online will periodically change, and you’ll have to master new skills. It will repeatedly and radically shift its form, and you will have to find your own way through the maze. No one solution will fit without alteration over time. It’s useful to ask “Who is my real audience?” Why are you doing social networking, for example? If it is to socialize, you’ll be successful. If it is to sell, it may not work for you. Use networking to build authentic, friendly support systems. They may bring far more than you can anticipate. There’s no magic equation for marketing. And if you do things which feel false to you, simply to market, they won’t work anyway. Choose to focus on a few venues that feel fun and manageable to you. Be polite. Publicize others. Spend time online doing unto others what you wish they would do unto you– viewing, commenting on, and appreciating artwork.
Post and publicize carefully. Don’t rush to show too many works-in-progress, unless that is part of a plan or goal. “Works in progress” are intriguing, but save your energy for the finished work. Sometimes work can appear more impressive online than in reality, but it needs to be the other way around. If you find yourself “tweaking” your images too much, you may be over-identifying with an online image, not your original impulse.
Here’s where I started arguing with myself. I do think we can use blogs as a journal; they can clarify direction and act as a reflection. If we can use notebooks to move our artistic process along, then we can also use the internet as a to0l to amplify our creative process. Regarding the “works in progress” riddle– what to show, what to hide, what to contain– I’ve decided to show selected works-in-progress online, but limit their frequency. In my last post, Six Phases of Creativity, I decided to put the raw or “draft” works in context by showing them sitting on my worktable. I have a strong feeling that marketing really can overtake and subsume the production of quality art. Look at Thomas Kincaid. I think we must always delicately adjust our courses, and to consider containment or withdrawing from marketing as an option.
Though painting-a-day posts have their place, posting prematurely– or too often– can be mildly deceptive to the viewer, and can rob the work of energy needed to explore the work. After all, you’ve already gotten a charge from having it seen online. On the other hand…
Get your work out to everybody possible. Make links available and write simple email show notices. Don’t get caught in the false reality of virtual approval. The statistics and numbers give us a feeling similar to gambling. They are fun, but not real, and have addictive qualities. Shows, sales, and real-life appreciation by actual, not virtual humans is what feeds us. The internet can be a net that falsely traps us in distant admiration, or it can be an open, inspiring road to reaching out to more people in an authentic way. Success may choose an indirect route, and require time, that rarest of all elements in the shifting cloud of Internet.
Cow Carrying the Neolith on Her Back, acrylic on canvas, 24″ x 24″, by Suzanne Edminster
Acknowledgements: Thanks to photographer Marco Zecchin, whose wonderful premise “Art is Sacred” is the cornerstone of his marketing philosophy and workshops. I enjoyed using the magnificent, rare and unpublished photos of Lascaux in 1947 from Life Magazine. My thanks to author Matt Ellis, whose article on David Gaughran’s blog provided the inspiration and framework for this post.
There’s something compelling and fey when outdoor creatures come inside. Sandra Maresca’s narrative animal paintings move the animals into our intimate, domestic consciousness in a delightful way. Bright colors and primary forms lend a graphic, deceptively childlike look to the paintings, with echoes of folk motifs and domestic ornament. Sandra references the flattened, decorative “Les Nabis” style: iconic forms , local color, and applied arts designed for everyday enjoyment.
The paintings tell stories on many levels. Lambs on a bed make us think of the wool used in blankets as well as “counting sheep.” They also have a feeling of the “see no evil” monkeys, with secrets under the fleece. After all, they are sitting on that most intimate of worlds, the bed. When the wilderness is moved inside, on to a bed or chair, invading the private world represented by our houses, the animals begin to speak their own language of inhabitation.
The Outsider, 20″ x 20″, Sandra Maresca
Here the human is on the outside, looking into a wallpapered world occupied by the animals. The forest wildflowers now blossom on walls, while the trees have become furnishings. The green chair is like a forest floor, with owl and rabbit. Our houses used to be homes to domestic animals. When Scott and I visited Matera, in South Italy, where families lived in limestone cave warrens, the donkeys lived in the back of the cave, behind the matrimonial bed, while the chickens lived under it. I see our modern loss of connection to the animal world in a daily sense of farm, wilderness, home, and food as a wound; our longing erupts in overbred “purse dogs” and animals treated as human children. Sandra’s paintings have some echoes of Bonnard in her use of animals in patterned domestic spaces to define intricate worlds. Her animals instruct as well as entertain.
I saw Sandra’s show on the First Friday Art Walk in Guerneville in March. I was impressed by the fine gallery space that The Blue Door Gallery provided. Johanna Ottenweller, mosaic artist, has done a wonderful job of creating a Craftsman-style environment that displays art with simplicity and elegance. For more of Sandra Maresca’s paintings, visit her website or drop by the Blue Door Gallery (see details below). Sandra’s studio will be open during the Art at the Source open studio tours the first two weekends of June. Don’t miss her handmade fur and wool animal sculptures: adorable, totemic, and often beautifully disturbing, like something from the ancient days. I own one.
Blue Door Gallery
Owner/proprietor: Johanna Ottenweller, mosaic artist
16359 Main Street, Guerneville, CA 95446
Hours: Fri-Sun –Noon to 5:00pm
“So Much We Can Learn” Narrative Paintings by Sandra Maresca March 2- 31, 2012
This is Bea Tate-Endert’s studio window in the Barracks. Brushes and blossoms and Bea’s careful touch to her rich oil paintings brought an e. e. cummings poem to mind.
Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere) arranging
a window, into which people look (while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here) and
changing everything carefully
spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and from moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there) and
without breaking anything.
Here are two paintings by Bea. These sushi paintings are postcard-sized oils. Luscious!
The tobiko eggs shine and each grain of rice is deliniated. I might have to have this one.I am so lucky to have her across the hall from me. Her care and delicacy show her deep aesthetic celebrating food and the good life. Look at her Sennelier acrylic paints. Even they look good enough to eat!
AND–she invites me from across the hall to come over for absinthe, with sugar cube and spoon, in a French glass embossed with honeybees. Take your “perhaps hand” and put it in mine. Spring just got a lot better!
Scott and I kept a 5″ x 8″ travel notebook in Italy. We worked it almost daily as we traveled, finding time in cafes or on benches. But we had the most fun with Travel Flow Charts, illustrating certain common travel situations. The first one concerns travel with a partner.
It’s amazing how the other person becomes reasonable, and sulking silence vanishes. The next two charts are pieces we tried to fit in to a larger diagram, but couldn’t. They’re self explanatory.
I know some of you out there have subsisted on strange food during gaps in travel. Scott sucked on hard barley balls while walking around Annapurna. Crackers, the new hard tack. And now on to address exhaustion:
We didn’t spend all our time making charts.
Here’s an Etruscan boar I drew in the Villa Giulia in Rome. I named him Oinkos.
We did get analytical with this Venn diagram. We wanted to do as many things as possible that we couldn’t do at home, and to appreciate the strange world in front of us, like live eels.
But is it art? Probably not, but is certainly is travel.
Saltworkstudio | Suzanne Edminster 