little news, big news

If I had a nickel for every sentence that pops into my head and tries to become a blog post, I'd be, well, I'd be a well-paid and prolific blogger, that's what.

But I can't even sit down at the computer anymore without a squirrely and button-pushin'-y kid demanding to get up into my lap and wreak havoc with the control key. You know, demanding without words, which sounds like "eh! eh! eh! EH! EH! EH! EHHHH!" Which I can handle for all of none seconds before reeling back on the rolling chair yelling AHHHRRRGHHH OKAY let's read a book or push a truck or rip up some paper or hide the phone under the couch cushions or ANYTHING but go near the computer and anything related to it. Ahhrgh. I don't know why I think I can get anything done when he's awake.

So that means naptime is the time to write, except that naptime is also the time to feed myself, clean the house, make phone calls, and possibly make art. And diddle around and read stuff. I really have a lot I want to talk about, you guys, but it'd be easier if you could just come over, k?

So while I want to write a novella, what you get is a list:

• Auden is now using sign language to tell jokes. Like, he puts a piece of hot dog on his head, signs "hat," and then grins and shakes his head no, no, no. It slays me.
• The only thing he says with any consistency is "dahw-wayyyy," which I think I figured out is his best imitation of the Itsy Bitsy spider song (you know, dahw came the wayyyy and washed the spider out) It's totally cute.
• He's also discovering temper tantrums! Like, WHY hadn't I thought of this before now? I'll fling myself to the ground and wail when I can't get what I want!
  
• I finally got my motorcycle repaired, and rode it home the other day for the first time in TWO YEARS. I am a bad-ass, people.
• I sold a painting from Starbucks last month. I'm not supposed to be associated with them IN PRINT, so you didn't read about that here.
• I'm showing this painting at Hanle Production Studios for Milwuakee's gallery night on July 24th.
• Oh, I'm putting more stuff up on Etsy soon.
• Oh, and I'm pregnant.

Ack!

Yes, it's true. Whew. I've been sitting on that one for a while.

I found out about six weeks ago, so I am more or less adjusted to things (read: I have gotten past the shock and HOLY SHIT of my first reaction), but I am still of two distinct minds on the whole subject.

One is like this: ooh yay I love being pregnant and wow magic and cute belly and people love you and ooh tiny baby and gurgly nuzzly soft sweetness and maybe this one will be a girl and ooh!

While the other one is more like this: Now I'm REALLY never going to make art. Or sleep. Or bathe on a regular basis. Crap. And why doesn't anyone tell you what's going to happen to your boobs after you stop breast-feeding?

But okay, really. It's awesome. Auden gets to be a big brother a few months shy of his 2nd birthday. Errr, wait a minute... terrible twos + brand new baby. I'd better blog now because you are not going to hear from me after February of 2010.

there are no mistakes in painting

...but there is still plenty of pain.

That's my new motto!

A few months ago I finished a commission that I had started before Auden was born. I remember stretching the canvas when I was hugely pregnant, and I remember carrying a tiny sleeping Auden in the Bjorn for hours while I slapped paint around, week after week. The piece survived the move -- oh the hand-wringing of packing your own art -- and hung around, neglected and not changing, for months while I tried to find my groove again.

I had a stormy relationship with this painting for most of its evolution. I fought with it. I pleaded with it. I resented it. I got sudden bursts of creative clarity, tried something new and bold, and then just as quickly changed my mind and despaired of ever finding a resolution. Have you ever read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? It was kind of like that.

Sometime around February or March, the piece quietly found its equilibrium. After a few weeks of seeing it on the wall, I realized I didn't want to do anything else to it. Not only did I no longer hate it, I was surprised at how luminous and textured the colors had become. And just like that, it was done.

Now the painting is safely in its proper home with its new family, so I can share with you the process in all its gruesome glory.

Here is the first step, a thin wash of color to map out my composition. We were going for an abstract landscape. I actually kind of like this one the best:



Originally I planned to break up the ground area into several cells of warm colors, contrasted by spots of cooler greys and blues -- an idea similar to a series I did years ago inspired by the lovely and translucent stained-glass look of petrified wood (from the forest in Arizona, of course):



That looked too tight and constrained to me, so I started to break up the field a little, and also lightened it up. This is where it started to get circus-y:



Ack! Time to turn it down a notch:



It was like that for a long time. In fact, we have a picture of me in labor with the painting, at that stage, in the background. You can imagine that after BABY OH MY GOD BRAND NEW TINY BABY there wasn't a whole lot of painting happening for a while.

So maybe it was the postpartum hormones that made me take this next step. There was too much red and orange, I wanted to bring in more earthy greys and tawny browns with just highlights of bright color:



This next phase was affectionately dubbed "massacre on the beach" by Jason (he always comes up with clever titles for my work):



Yeah. So obviously that was not the right shade of red. Or maybe it's the red plus the yellow ochre that makes it look like a fractalized Ronald McDonald? Meanwhile the sky area was getting lighter and more opaque, mainly because I am heavy handed with the palette knife.

In the next stage I softened the colors again, and introduced some horizontal lines, hoping to create something dynamic in the middle. Still, that red, though. Oy:




By this point I was thinking, Okay, just do something bold and unusual and unlike yourself. I needed to tip the balance. However, big black splotches -- though bold and unusual and whatever -- were not the right direction:



Sigh. There's the experimenting, and then there's the recovering one must do afterward:



After that phase, I forgot to take pictures after each of the last few painting sessions -- a terrible oversight -- so the finished piece looks like it came out of nowhere. Basically I figured out that all the palette knifing had given the paint a heavy, thick, lifeless quality; and that I was really fighting to keep the red as well as that slanted horizon.

I did a small mock-up in my sketchbook, trying out some different colors so that I wouldn't keep guessing on the large scale. I tried lighter lights, darker darks, and added some swipes of cerulean (possibly my all-time favorite color). That combination looked so immediately harmonious and effortless that I knew I had to let everything else go.

For the final step I painted with a brush in thin glazes (oil paint mixed with galkyd), and only used the palette knife a little bit to create some pebbly texture right at the horizon line. A subtle brick red blended alongside a dark umber turned out to be all the red I needed. The yellow ochre, too -- thinned out, quieted down, and dispered into light bands -- found its right relation.

The grey at the bottom became more dynamic through all those layers, too, with soft variations in hue, and a few spots where the ochres are reflected from the middle.

Here it is:



I was so worried throughout the whole process that I was just messing up, over and over, and would not be able to redeem it. This, I am convinced, is why painting is so hard: it takes a huge dose of faith and self-confidence every time I sit down at the easel. If I don't like something, I have to let it dry and let it be ugly and trust that somehow -- somehow! -- it will be important to the finished piece.

And so. All that palette knifing, all the texture, all the wrong colors underneath, all the layers added up to these quiet fields of undulating and luminous colors. I swear every time it happens it wasn't me, it was magic.

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lemon face

signs abound

Oh, hello -- June? Is that you? I didn't even recognize you! Did you change your hair? No? Hmmm. Maybe it's the brisk 60 degree weather? Come on June, no need to pretend you're April. You're waaay warmer than her.

Okay. What I really wanted to tell you, aside from the fact that I've been too cold to blog all month, is that Auden is becoming a signing genius.

We've been watching baby signing dvd's every day for two months, and the only progress I noticed was my own increasing annoyance at the host's maniacal smiling. Oh, but she's effective. If I sing the theme song -- join in if you know it: baby, baby, baby signing time! -- he'll run to the TV, going "BEH-beeee, BEH-beeee," and insist on watching it. The other day I absent-mindedly sang the song about moms and dads, and I'll be darned if he didn't stick his little chubby thumb to his forehead and sign "dad."

His first and most vigorous sign was "dog" (an easy pat on the leg), which he does ALL THE TIME. He did "cat" for the first time on Monday while looking at a picture book, and then beamed at me, cleary pleased with himself. "Bird" is a favorite, too, I guess since we see a lot of them. He does the sign backwards, but we know what he means:



He does it when we go outside, he does it when he sees the fake seagulls hanging from the ceiling at Trader Joe's. The other morning, he did it at breakfast, totally confusing us, until we realized he was looking at this:

Genius!

Every day he pulls out a new one: Tuesday it was "shoes", Wednesday it was "truck". Or maybe it was "bus". We'll say any big vehicle that makes a loud noise.

It's so awesome to watch him put it all together and get excited to tell us about what he sees.

And here's this, only because it's totally cute:

fancy dance

Papa took this video while I was out one afternoon. Auden never does this spazzy cute stuff for me.

LOVE the part where he twirls with his arms up and falls down.

from the archives

It's been a few weeks of stuck where making art is concerned, and so I thought I'd amuse myself by posting some old paintings. (And then I have another hilariously cute video of my child for you to watch)

This piece is the first painting I ever sold. A friend of my housemate saw on the wall of our flat in San Francisco and wanted to buy it. He was visiting from Amsterdam, so I got to sell a painting and be international in one fell swoop. It's pretty big, about 3 x 4 feet, and is titled "Fire and Water." I know, so creative with the titles, right?

Fire and Water, acrylic on canvas 2001

This one is called "To Be in Love," and was my favorite piece for a long time. I painted it when I was falling completely in love with Jason, so it's Authentic. I held onto it for years, not wanting to sell it because it was too close to my heart, and then I had a show in San Diego and ended up selling it to a co-worker, who gave it to his daughter.

To Be in Love, oil on canvas 2002

This piece features my all time favorite color combination: cerulean blue and yellow ochre. It was just colors for quite a while, and then the figure emerged the more I looked at it. I titled it "Addiction" because I was going through an Intensely Political Phase, and wanted it to mean something. It doesn't quite fit, though, and I think I knew that all along. It was exhibited in a "political" group show in San Francisco, and the curators asked to keep it for their next show, which was erotic art. Which just proves my point. I sold it to a lovely couple whom I knew from the art & protest scene, which also proves my point and is very fitting. I'm glad they have it.

Addiction, acrylic on canvas 2001

All these dates are approximate, because I'm terrible with documentation and I'm too lazy to go search out where I may have this stuff written down. I know I did them all around the same time that I moved to Bernal Heights in SF, which was 2001.

It's funny for me to look back on these pieces... I'm glad that I've sold them, and that I know and like all the people who now have them, but it's also a little sad that they're not around any more. Sometimes I get so down on myself, like, what do I have to show for all these years of painting? Why can't I scrape together a cohesive body of work in order to have a show?

So that's why I'm taking these out: to show you, and to remind myself that I have been doing something all this time.

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baby's first word