Underworld

Screwtape for Artists, Letter 3: On Originality

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Monotype experiment, Suzanne Edminster
Monotype experiment, Suzanne Edminster

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C. S. Lewis

Stormy weather outside, for California, that is. There’s a beautiful grey light against the too-early bloom of the magnolia petals outside the classroom door. magnolia

This C.S. Lewis quote really spoke to me, especially as I flounder about in a new media for a while. Reduced to the status of a beginner, questions of originality pale against simple technical ignorance. As I get older, I feel less unique and special, less original, as a person. I share experience with so many, and, as and adult, know it.

Dear Wormseed,

Congratulations on  the recent sale of the Gauguin for 300 million dollars. A flood of artists will feel discouraged in their own art, and the price obscures the painting itself completely, making it nearly impossible to view with fresh eyes.  Corruption rules!

The Subject-Artist recently proposed making a tableau of dream images.  This is very dangerous, as these inner vapors carry far too much information and spirit, and may speak to others as well.  Keep her in the familiar territory of easily understood beauty, like your recent Artist-Subject Thomas Kincaid.  You earned a sizeable bonus on him, did you not?

You are on still on shaky ground with the daily studio visits.  You must redouble your efforts to keep her away, or you will feel the consequences.  Keep your team on the streets with graffiti– it was brilliant to unify the art impulse with vandalism.  Keep it up.

In Venom–

Screwtape

Archived:  Letter 1 and Letter 2

 

Screwtape for Artists, Letter 1

Image | | Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

Suzanne Edminster, mixed media on paper
Suzanne Edminster, mixed media on paper

The Screwtape Letters, written by C.S. Lewis in 1942, is a series of wickedly funny and ominous letters from a higher demon, Screwtape, to a sub-demon, Wormword, who is in charge of corrupting a human soul or “patient.” Of late, it has been fashionable to read of “gremlins” who want to steal your creativity, block you, and so on. I’ve never been fond of the word gremlin. It’s actually a 20th century coinage used for mechanical problems on airplanes, and is “imaginary.” It trivializes and reduces temptation to a cute, manageable,  pet-like critter  and whitewashes the tempters’ fierce battle for your art.

Artists deal with the shadow; it comes with the territory. But I think we need to correctly name our underworld enemy, and honor it with a measure of gravitas. In this spirit I have hacked the cosmic mailbox to expose some new Screwtape letters for artists, written to a certain Wormseed, who has been assigned the soul of my art. Read the original: it’s a fresh as ever today. I write these to discover what I might have to say to myself about my life and art.

My dear Wormseed,

I see you have been making good progress with the Artist.  She’s slowly slipping into a low-key despair, which is always a highly desirable state.   Since the advent of the Internet, which I had a gargoyle eating manlarge role in creating, your job is so much easier!  In some senses, the progress from the medieval artisan to the 21st “artist” has been our major achievement in the Arts.  Ironic, isn’t it, that those stone masons, as hungry and poor as they were,  accurately carved our likenesses as gargoyles. Portraiture was not dead!  Despite oppression  and all the fabulous  corruption of that  Church,  they were often closer to escaping us than the sleekly fed, well-medicated artists of today. The Cathedral of Technology holds so many new opportunities for us!

But I digress. I see she’s starting a new project.  This is your chance to make more progress.  Please amplify the level of distraction in her life.  A turn to “reality”– money, job, status, looks, and so on– is one of the best methods we know, because it is so supported by the society at large.  Involve her in her own reality show drama, as opposed to her actual life. By all means, keep her from daily walks and home cooked meals, as these fortify her, stopping up those wonderful chinks and holes through which we enter.  And DO NOT LET HER OPEN JOURNALS OR SKETCHBOOKS.  As soon as she creates even one word or line, our power begins to ebb.

If you keep her in this state of stasis, you will soon see a satisfactory decay.  Best of luck to you.  Sorry about the turn to non-toxic materials in her studio.  You can’t win them all.

Your  Master,

Screwtape

Painting Journal 2: Over Underworld

| Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Over Underworld, acrylic on canvas, 36" x 48"
Over Underworld, acrylic on canvas, 36″ x 48″

The Over Underworld series features high horizons and chaotic, rich undergrowth. You can climb up and down the layers of it, and the black ink spatters underneath sometimes look like animal forms. The top has modern, intereference paint; the top invokes architecture, the conscious mind, technology and civilization. It’s shiny and bright, while the underpart is rough.

The concept behind each art piece is as vital to me as the finished work… often more vital. Abstract work has its own demands because it is unmoored from the anchor of representation and floating out at sea.

Students ask me, “How do I know it’s finished?” I think my true answer is that it’s finished when your dialogue or conversation with the painting is somehow complete. This is true whether or not the painting is a “success” at the moment. Ask your questions not ABOUT the painting, but TO it. If you can know it as complete, whole, and satisfying, your viewer will as well. Knowing an abstract painting is finished is also an abstract idea!

I believe we shouldn’t dwell too much on the underworld, the unconscious, the uncivilized. We don’t need to invite it. It will always come to us unbidden, as these paintings did to me.

Small Work, Big Impact: 40 venues go small at SOFA Sat. Feb 2, 5-8 PM

| Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

Suzanne Edminster, Sea Garden, acrylic on paper, SOLD

Small does not mean diminshed  intrigue or impact. A good small painting reads big.  I remember that in the Denver Art Museum that you could see the Georgia O’Keefe small painting from across a vast room, before we could even identify it as hers.  It just shone.  I’ve been working on larger pieces for a while now. It’s an interesting lesson: large is NOT small scaled up somehow. The dimension changes meaning. This one will be on display this Saturday.

Confession: the very small works are often traces of projects that lead to larger works for me. My own sense of detail is not robust; I prefer the BIG. Even my handwriting is large and scrawling. I like to work small on paper– it feels more open and free. But sometimes I do “smaller” canvases: 10″ x 10″ is one of the smallest. I like mixed media on smaller canvases to make more of an impact. Everything is small-ized now. Just think of your Iphone and Ipad.

Suzanne Edminster, Days of the Dead, combined media on canvas, 12 x 12 inches
Suzanne Edminster, Days of the Dead, combined media on canvas, 12 x 12 inches

Small can be very expressive. I did the piece above when my dad was diagnosed with cancer. I wanted to make a response that expressed sacrifice and rebirth as his living spirit started to transition.  The Little Sun Cow below was just pure play and joy.  We all have our art totems.  Cosmic and regular cows are  mine.

Suzanne Edminster, Little Sun Cow, acrylic on paper, SOLD

One artist who has a great sense of the small is Susan Cornelis.  You can see her latest cool “fossil” smalls here. Come visit me this Saturday, or, better yet, start your own  small series. Small can lead  to big things. Surprise yourself!

SOFA Small Works

Over Underworld Vacations in Graton

| Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio
Over Underworld, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48, Suzanne Edminster

Over Underworld is going on a vacation in Graton.

This painting is part of a meditative abstract series on the links between worlds. I’ve always found it fascinating how much of our lives are lived in fantasy, dream, reading, and contemplation.  These are whole worlds that float beneath us. I wanted to paint the notion of a thin “skin” of organized thought, houses, civilization, geometry, over a beautiful chaos of creative form.  Ladders link the worlds, so, that with focus, we can climb up and down from one world to another… ladders without the chutes!

Painting process:   I established a horizon line for the three paintings, then started a gold and orange spatter process underneath, working on all three paintings simultaneously.  I tried various stages for the top.  You can see some of these in October Underworlds.  I opted to paint the whole thing rather than adding on the black and white paint compostions I had considered mounting.  Then I used areas of intereference paint mixed in with other paints over large areas of the painting, so that they would shift with the shifting light.

The Underwood, 5 x 7 watercolor collage sketch, Suzanne Edminster

I’ve spent little time in Graton, but the painting is currently on loan to Catherine Devriese and Isabelle Proust.  That’s mighty fine company, I would say.  And I did have a drink at the Underwood with Susan Cornelis last night, resulting in this immortal masterwork of a sketch.  Overworld, underworld, Underwood–  after my martini and some fun with Susan, watercolors, and ripping up the Underwood menu to collage, the horizons between them seemed to become , delightfully, more permeable.

Tell me, what lies Under your Overworld?

Mythic News:  I’m going to Rome this Christmas, and had forgotton that in one version of the Trojan myth,  the last of the remaining Trojans fled to found Rome.  I don’t know how this fits in with Romulus, Remus, and the Wolf Mom, though.  I’ve been feeding my soul with the classical warrior heroes, and only periodically get patriarchal indigestion.

Studio News: my new weekend workshop is called Spontaneous Construction and will be offered in the spring.  More soon.

October Underworlds

| Suzanne Edminster at Saltworkstudio

October is the month where the borders and boundaries between the worlds become a little thinner.  I love the lengthening days and cooler weather.  Growing up in the Central Valley, October provided the first respite from stifling heat. It’s been a long year… my father passed away in August .

 I painted these for my June show, wanting to evoke the flow between the thin crust of overworld and the bulk of the underworld, how we are a skin on a much larger being.  I started with spatters and the determination to use interference paints over large areas.  In the end, I kept them near the top horizon, where the “city” is.  I liked the look of my studies mounted at the top, but wanted these pieces to be all paint and no collage elements.

I’m reading Greek mythology now, realizing that there are many entrances to the world that is not our waking world:  a dark lake, a crack in the earth, a dream, or a painting.