contemporary painting

How We Built the Trojan Horse: A Four Hands Collaborative Painting Process

| Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Trojan Horse, "Final" Version. A Four Hands Painting.

The Trojan Horse was surprising to both of us.  Just how did this image develop, seemingly independently of plan or will?  What was happening behind the Oz-like curtain of the studio process?  Follow us through our start and stages.

Trojan Horse Part 1: The Start. A Four Hands Painting

The Start: We poured ink, gesso and paint. What a figure emerged! I named him The Prophet in my mind. It was off-balance composition, with emphatic marks and lines hovering like bats, and Halloween colors. Edgar Allen Poe might have been proud.  We had agreed that we would work with large curves,  a vertical or upright form somewhere, and calligraphic marker lines on this series, and all those forms were there– but– like a “bad” child, acting out.   It wasn’t pleasing from the very start the way some of the abstract pours were; it was not initially not beautiful. However, it did invite radical action, which was fun. 

 Each Four Hands painting seemed to have its own soul or being trying to emerge.  When two people work together, control is lessened and gaps are created where fate or luck can enter.

Trojan Horse Part 2: The Development. A Four Hands Painting

Each “problem” became an invitation in the next stages.  Too warm?  Add purple shapes.  Periwinkle violet rectangles began to pop up.  An “arm” of the form was eliminated.   More gesso was combed on with one of Susan’s notched forms and a “coliseum” emerged.  Horse + ruins =… oh dear, a Trojan Horse was emerging, that gift that kept on giving.  The foreground aquired areas of blue and white as well.  Torch forms, cakes, candles started to light things up with red.  The canvas was very messy at this stage, with many distracting marks.  Time to remove and transform.  Heave-ho!

Susan had been exploring horses in her work, and I had just returned from Italy, where I bathed in Greco-Roman art and lost civilizations, so I supposed both of these elements emerged.  Like a dream, though, it was more than that.  The painting seemed related to Timeline in style and form, and was grouped with it in the show.  Trojan Horse and Timeline share some aethetic of “event” or chronology, time on wires.  You can see them together in the show.

Trojan Horse, "Final" Version. A Four Hands Painting.

 More blue added, orange cut back, violet reduced, pure red accents.  Opaques calm . A few greenish and brownish neutrals to rest the eye, and an iconic horse moves, as Joni Mitchell put it, on the “carousel of time.”  Or a child’s hobby horse thumps through a field….What do you see? For another Four Hands painting, visit Susan Cornelis’ Conversations with the Muse.

I’ve posted a picture of the Four Hands Collaboration below and an invitation to the event at Phantom IV Gallery this Saturday afternoon and evening. Come celebrate with us if you can.

Ira Glass, Semiotics, Studios, and Salamanders

| Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Salamander Winter, acrylic combined media on Fabriano paper, 23″ x 23″, Suzanne Edminster

Last night I closed my open studio after an impromptu party with three muses , one rather hairy, in which the absinthe bottle of La Muse Verte was emptied. Scott, Ed, and I ended up at the Ira Glass show at the Santa Rosa Wells Fargo Center.   Ira Glass, a semiotics major made good as creator and host of NPR’s This American Life, spent a long time giving out his trade secrets of storytelling, or story cultivating, or story minding, or whatever it is he does so well. 

I felt like I was watching– or rather, hearing, as the show celebrated the audial life of the radio–  an alchemist giving out his “secret”  recipes for turning lead into gold.  Open secrets: everyone can hear them, but only a few can use them. Storytelling, he said, is a semiotic pattern. One thing happens, then another thing happens, then another thing– an Ariadne’s thread out of the labyrinth– and it doesn’t matter a bit what the story is or who’s telling it. At the end there’s a bump, a pause, and a moral.   The elements of the story are the abstract bones.  If the substructure is strong, any story propels us into the other world.  Anyone and anything might work in these stories.  And you can tell thousands of them, like Scheherazade.  Or Ira Glass.

This reminded me of abstract painting.  We move away from the subject, and into bones of pure visual  action.  The structure of the painting carries us along even without subject matter or explanation.  First one painting element happens, then another, then another….  it’s fashionable to avoid the word “narrative” with abstract or non-objective painting.  But there’s a story embedded in every piece, if we know how to read it.  The composition rocks and rockets us toward meaning.  

Glass paced the stage, IPAD in hand glowing like magic tablet of a new Moses, as he expounded on the world’s oldest art form, storytelling. In the story of the painting Salamander Winter, you may find Scott building salamander “houses” in our back yard.  We lay down boards on the damp winter ground on purpose to be salamander homes.  You can find two kinds of California salamanders in our yard, little wormlike Slender Salamanders and classically newty Arboreals.  We encourage them to raise their tiny, slimy, cute babies there, and we lift the  check their progress.  We identified them through this wonderful site, Identifying California Salamanders.

I'm Branka's painting now

My Ariadne’s thread is tangling here, so I have to quit. The Open Studios went well. Paintings bumped their way to new homes:  I’ve posted one here.  My thanks to all who visited and to my collectors.  The semiotic form of the blog requires that I ask you a question or two, to encourage socializing.  So I have some:  did you like my studio? huh? huh?  and, hey, did I invent the worst blog title ever, or not?  And the moral: Know Thy Salamanders.  Do you?

Mythic News:  Theseus dumped Ariadne after she saved his sorry self from the Minotaur, but a god (Dionysius)  ended up marrying her, so it all worked out.  She traded up.   The Alchemical Salamanders in my painting go through fire unscathed, faith enduring after earthly passions smolder.

Studio news:  the Open Studios were successful.  The Barracks Artists, in the old Finley Barracks in Santa Rosa, are emerging from the mist.  Guerilla artists in the mist.  Come visit me by appointment.

Open Studios, Open Hearts: 24 Barracks Artists in Santa Rosa

| Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

 Opening a studio is like cleaning  a window into the inner life of the artist.  Down the rabbit hole we go!

Saltworkstudio Nov. 2011

It’s more intimate than having people into your home, because you give your hospitality to everyone.  They can luxuriate in your colors, drink in images, and dine on your line.   The public sees the traces of your best effort and your worst nightmares,  the deep and superficial.  The artist tries to be fully with each question, from sublime to inane,  without falling into the pit of sales obsession. It’s quite the wine-and-cheese marathon.  Unless your heart is open, it can be nerve-wracking .  But when someone really sees your art– and really loves it– there is no greater high. 

 A few times people have burst into tears in front of one of my paintings.  James Elkin explores the phenomena in his Pictures and Tears:  People who have cried in front of paintings.   The book is a strange and fascinating  exploration  reactions to art when the eyes in our hearts have opened.  Museums used to have nursing stations where patrons overcome by art could recover… I think the Louvre still does.  Have you laughed or cried over a piece of art?

 Turquoise Window World is a sort of threshold or sill where the everyday table starts to tip over into the extraordinary, like the tables that the spirits move.  Strange fruit converse.  Flowers march and sprout angels, and a grove of spirits wavers in the background.  The painting expands domestic motifs as an un- still life , animated.   The turquoise paint, that bright opaque, came from my time living in India, where houses are unabashedly brilliant blue as a Kodachrome sea.   

Saltworkstudio and my friends the Barracks Artists are open  November 5-6 at 3840 Finley Ave, Santa Rosa, California.  Drop by to visit 24 artists in one location.  I’ll be painting.

In a Mythic News today, I introduce  Jeremy Joan Hewes, Caren Catterall , Mardi Storm, Paula and Cliff Strother, Kathryn Kelsey, Maris Peach, Claudia Rhymes, Monica Lee-Boutz, and Chuni Anello. We will be having a party on Saturday between 4 and 6. All our studios will be open.  Join us!

Jeremy Joan Hewes

 Jeremy Joan Hewes is a dynamic, subtle printmaker, photographer and my friend.  In her words: Sometimes you walk into a room and a discover an alluring mystery. That’s how I think of this image of subtle colors, dynamic pattern, and silhouettes, which I made at a recent workshop in Coupeville, Washington. I kept returning to that room as the day wore on and the light changed, each time taking more photographs. Color and light, with a little bit of “what is this?” thrown in.  Come see this photograph and some new mixed media pieces in studio 250 at the Barracks Artists open studio on November 5 and 6 – this weekend!

Caren Catterall ,  master printmaker, is a guiding star at the studio.  She produces a wonderful moon calendar  for gardening , as well as her  mythic prints.   Visit the beautiful print studio  for goddesses, coyotes, ravens and giants.  For a treat, relax with a cup of tea and her delightful video, The People with Spirits Strong as Stone.

Mardi Storm’s art is colorful and ethereal, with delightful Animal Angels.  She just started a new Etsy store.  Her partner’s group, Outlaw Dervish, will be playing at the reception at 4 on Saturday. See her new studio next to Caren and Jeremy! Visit Mardi Storm Artworks for a preview.

Don’t be fooled by Claudia Rhymes’ pixie glasses or shy demeanor.  Her new series of urban landscape grids over bright backgrounds rocks, and she’s a gifted, secret graffiti artist. She also has one of the new, larger downstairs studios.  Claudia is our hidden wonderchild in this Open Studio.

Paula and Cliff Strother share the studio with the most beautiful outlook on the hills.  Paula paints in acrylics and Cliff in oils. Visit this newly established studio to enjoy lush landscapes in a room with a view.

Kathryn Kelsey’s fascinating mixed media work changes every year.  Dedicated to wild animals, the environment, and indigenous peoples, her textures and materials are a delight.  I love her mixed media with dried radishes.  She is the Editor of the Barracks Bulletin and writes a blog.  Her downstairs studio is filled with the calm green light of nature, one of my favorite places to sit and relax.  

Maris Peach is our very own Joseph Cornell. I own a piece she made, the Alchemist’s Arcade.  In her words:  I tell stories using the flotsam and jetsam of life’s leftovers. Sometimes I begin with an object, sometimes I build from a concept, sometimes I fiddle and nuture a dream memory until it becomes an elaborate narrative. Othertimes the story is sparsly simple or even hidden, revealing itself through the beholder’s eye. Don’t miss her intricate, fascinating workshop and studio.

Monica Lee-Boutz is an energizing force of nature!  She paints in watercolor, is an accomplished collage artist, and has had several recent exhibitions.  Visit her studio upstairs across from Paula and Cliff.

Chuni is from Madrid, has a new studio downstairs, and absolutely unique mixed pieces using fabric, fiber, and wool.