Past to Present. I heart this medium so much.

photos: 1. becoming your art  2. homemade play-doh with brown rice flour and jello  3. homemade sidewalk chalk paint and getting messy with cornstarch  4. creating textures with watercolors and salt  5. observational contour line drawings with permanent marker and acrylics  6. simple printmaking with potato and hand stamps

These days, I can't seem to get the type of images above, out of my mind. They are quite a departure from anything I've done before, however at the same time - they are not. I feel like it has been here all along, but has taken time and a lot of growing up to get here. And right now, the thing I am most looking forward to (besides Spring finally showing her pretty face) is the oil painting class I just signed up for. Learning how to paint with oils is going to be a challenge, for sure. The process is one that takes time and patience (a trait which I do not naturally possess). It's important to keep learning, to be a perpetual student, to keep working at your craft. I want to make refined works, moving on from the amateur endeavors of my youth. I am at a place now where I feel ready to turn this corner. It is all new and it is exciting, yet at the same time it is frightening. I see arrangements and wall installations and small paintings on masonite. I see progress. And I see a new artistic chapter about to open.

All images via Pinterest.

This is how I'm feeling lately. Everyday. Always. It's March now, yet Winter still has us in its grasp. The routine of our days has become just that. Routine. It's mundane and it's boring. And we are all bored. Even the kids. I dream of a place where we can spend each day outside, basking in the warmth of the sun. But that is just that, a dream. And for now, we are all going a bit stir crazy. This is what happens when you don't have any time to yourself. I am a mother, a wife, an artist. Many times, the artist needs to be put first in order to satiate that need to create and explore. All times, the artist gets put last and at the end of the day, no time exists. This makes me incredibly cranky ... and in turn, not the best Mom I can be. I have wanted to learn how to paint with oils forever. And they are offering a Spring class through the Recreation Department. It is affordable, unlike most continuing education courses ... and although it may turnout to be quite amateur ... it will give me the time each week, out of the house, without kids hanging all over me, to learn and to explore and to paint. Hopefully, it will also give my future goal of Graduate School a bit of a jumpstart. I still have that goal in mind, as I believe it will give me the time I need, to take this further.

A glimpse of what I've been up to lately ... have somehow found time to work painting into the daily domestica. So many ideas, yet as usual ... not enough time in the day. Little baby will soon turn 2 and then 3 and then preschool. Only a year-and-a-half until I am able to carve out some "me-time" again. Gotta keep focused. Soon enough, soon enough.

Fast Girls ...

Currently obsessed with Florals, Pale Pinks, Green Plants, Camping, Yosemite, Redwood Forest, Roses, Old Botanical Illustrations, Ocean Blues, Mood Boards, Vintage Landscape Paintings, Polkadots, Ivy, and Photo Collage Wall Installations. So many ideas for new work, swimming crazily around my head.

All images via Pinterest.

The other night, in the midst of Vera's bedtime routine, we were caught off-guard by this documentary on PBS, Beauty is Embarrassing. It was one of the best (and most inspirational) films, I have watched in long while. We were all riveted (and fascinated) by it's subject, artist Wayne White. Not only that, but the cinematography, soundtrack, and editing are all truly fantastic. A definite gem! Watch the trailer here.

{Photo | 1. My computer screen, a still from the film, Beauty is Embarrassing}

I have a lot of work to do. In order to get there. In order to be. I want to make a profound contribution to the world, through the art I create ... and thus be recognized for the artist I am and have always been. Because it's always been there. I am writing this in an attempt to get my ideas out. As a record. As a sounding board. Just in case I would happen to forget. Which is always possible. A note to myself. So here goes ...

I want to make experiential works of art. To surround the viewer. The viewer as subject. Large-scale and grandiose. Larger than life, or rather larger than me. To create something huge and fantastic. I want people to have the opportunity to interact. To be within. I want to catch people off-guard, throw them off their day-to-day mundane routine, even if just for one moment. Make them stop for a second. Do a double-take. Thinking "hey, what is that?!"

I want my work to be thoughtful and smart and sweet and intelligent and insightful. I am a thinker. I align myself with the human condition, or rather the study of it. To understand. To be. We need more compassion. More connection. More meaning. Less busy. Less distraction. Less phone. Less screen. But it is a new world now. A new normal. And that is how people will choose to be. I can only choose my own way. My own path. I can offer commentary and only hope that somebody will experience my work in a way that helps them to remember. To remember a life before all of the noise, all of the clutter, all of the distraction, all of the lights, all of the messages, all of the media. To remember back to something more simple. More tender. More meaningful. When we played outside in the world, with each other, rather than aligning ourselves with random characters on a screen. We built forts. Childhood homes. We played tag. We stole corn from the field. I remember running through those fields. Huge towering stalks of corn reaching up to the big, blue, endless sky. Running. Laughing. Hiding. Finding. And we would run so fast that the leaves would leave cuts all over our bare skin. And they stung. Badly. And that was real. The feeling was real.

On the land that my parents bought, we made a fort. I remember making a circle of large rocks. Rocks we had unearthed from different places in the ground. And we dragged big sticks, fallen trees, to that same spot now with the rocks. And I wanted to make a tipi. A magical home, just for us kids. And we worked and we worked and we built and we worked. It took more than one day, but eventually it stood. There, in the middle of the woods. In the forest. With light shining down through the canopy of trees. And it stood for many months, maybe even years. And as we grew older and played less and less out there, in the dense brush and wooded land, the trails my Dad had made - now overgrown and slightly forgotten - I would sometimes try to find that same place where the fort once stood. And as time passed, it was slowly reclaimed by the earth below. Until one day, it was impossible to find. Morphing back into the ground, it once stood upon.

I want to find that space again. I want to recreate that fort. The one in my mind. The one I can still see. A faded memory. Building it back with the same materials I used as a child, on that now untouched land.

Childhood Fort, Number One

{Photos | 1. Wild Mushroom, Shayna, 4-years-old, 1998 | 2. The Land, 1998}