A Poem for Wednesday, and a New Painting..."What Lies Beneath"

"What Lies Beneath"
24" x 36"
Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas
The original painting is for sale and prints are also available on Etsy.


Feeling a little somber today...maybe it's the cold.  Snowed in for the fifth day in 2 weeks, I pulled out some sketch books from high school and found this Sylvia Plath poem on one of the first pages.  Yes, going back to my teen-angst-ridden, Plath-quoting days is always an interesting place to revisit. Despite all the years that passed when I first stumbled across her poetry, the words are still so powerful to me. The poem spoke through my new work and let me see it in a new light.

"Elm"

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root; 

It is what you fear. 

I do not fear it: I have been there. 

Is it the sea you hear in me,

Its dissatisfactions? 

Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness? 

Love is a shadow. 

How you lie and cry after it. 

Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse. 

All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously,

Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, 

Echoing, echoing. 

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? 

This is rain now, the big hush. 

And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic. 

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. 

Scorched to the root 

My red filaments burn and stand,a hand of wires. 

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs. 

A wind of such violence 

Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek. 

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me 

Cruelly, being barren. 

Her radience scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her. 

I let her go. I let her go 

Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery. 

How your bad dreams possess and endow me. 

I am inhabited by a cry. 

Nightly it flaps out 

Looking, with its hooks, for something to love. 

I am terrified by this dark thing 

That sleeps in me; 

All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. 

Clouds pass and disperse. 

Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? 

Is it for such I agitate my heart? 

I am incapable of more knowledge. 

What is this, this face 

So murderous in its strangle of branches?-- 

Its snaky acids kiss. 

It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults 

That kill, that kill, that kill.

New Paintings, "You Make Me Feel", "Joy on the Inside, Peace on the Outside"

 8" x 8" x 1.5" each

Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas

 "I love her and that's the beginning of everything."

--F. Scott Fitzgerald

I posted these two together because they just seem to go together. They are a continuation of my hear series, as featured in Daily Candy, but here I experimented with making the hearts pop off the canvas by sculpting them with  a ploymer clay, then attaching them.  They have an organic, raw, simple feel.  In the pics below, taken in my studio, you can get a better visual of how they look from the side.  

It is truly a joy to be able to create from a place of love. I always tell my 4.5 year-old that the biggest gift God gives you when you become a mommy is that He helps your heart open and grow in ways you never thought possible and you learn to love more and more each day. I love it when paintings just flow from a happy place, and this was one of them.


Go get one for yourself or your loved one.  Just in time for Valentine's Day, or as we call it around here, "Love Day". These paintings are currently on display at The Cameron Gallery in Dallas' Design District.

The Cameron Gallery...one degree away from Michalopolus.

This afternoon I just dropped off a bunch of new paintings at The Cameron Gallery on Dragon Street in the Design District.  They requested my work be featured there this month in their "Made for Love" Exhibit opening this weekend. This is wonderful for a number of reasons:


1. It's the Cameron Gallery on Dragon Street in the Design District.  'Nuff said.


2. Kristi Cameron and her right-hand girl Lea Andrah have it together. Professional, smart and share a passion and integrity for the visual arts.  


3.  The Cameron Gallery represents James Michalopoulos in Dallas.  He is absolutely my hands-down favorite living Artist. I fell in love with his work while studying art at college in New Orleans (where he's from), and I have followed him ever since. The color and texture and feeling in his work moves llike no other. Here's a pic of Mr. D. and I at his Octavia's Haze Gallery opening in San Francisco back in 2008, where I had the pleasure of meeting him in person.  Getting to meet him and seeing what an effortlessly cool, down-to-earth person he is only re-inforced my little infatuation.

And here's a bit of a shameless pic that I took of the paintings I dropped off today at The Cameron Gallery (forgive the shabby iphone pic). My works are along the bottom not yet hung, but merely to have them touching the same wall and being shown in the same gallery as Michalopoulos brings me so much joy and such a sense of arrival in my career that I feel like my heart is overflowing.  

New Paintings, "Connected and Detached"

22" x 36"

(2 canvases, 18" x 22" each)

Oil and Mixed Media on Canvas

"In the space of letting go, she let it all be.  A small smile came over her face.  A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and moon shined forevermore."

-Safire Rose

I worked on these canvases at the same time and simply cannot decide if they are supposed to remain connected or not...they work both separate and together.  All this thinking about connection led me to the title, and got me thinking about the meaning behind the connections between all of us.

I think the easy part about manifesting/creating those things that we want in our lives is the desire and the imagining.  These are the fun parts. For me, the hard part is detachment.

Often, we get attached to how we expect certain things to come to us, when or where. Or we are attached to how certain things/people "should " or "ought to" be.  And of course, these expectations hinder us. We get in our own way.

The secret is in the allowing and the understanding and with that, the letting go.

Perhaps today, right now, is finally the time just to let it all go, and let it all be.

This painting is currently on display at Momo's on Knox in Dallas and available for purchase. Fine art giclee prints available on Etsy.

The Great Blizzard of 2011, a Testimony to True Love

It's snowing in Dallas. This happens once in a blue moon and the city goes haywire. Snow on top of ice is not something The Big D was designed to handle. We are on Day 4 of cancelled school and stir-craziness has set in but we are also enjoying the coziness of being together imposed by conditions beyond our control.  I have gotten out once to go to the grocery store (which was nearly ransacked b/c no trucks have been able to get in) and thank goodness Exhale has been open because the zen I derive from my yoga practice and wonderful teacher is largely contributing to my calmness and good spirits this week. My little A loves the snow, but her two younger brothers can't get away from the cold stuff fast enough.  I must admit, I'm with them.



Still painting away when I can, but the little space heater in my garage art studio lovingly referred to by me and my students as "Mr. Toasty" just can't hack it. I have moved a bunch of stuff inside to our dining room, which my neat-freak adorably OCD husband is really having hard time digesting. Here is a picture of a bunch of new works in progress. I am a bit schizophrenic in my process, often vacillating between 5-7 pieces at a time because I work in layers and each one needs to dry. 

Mr. D has yet to ask me to move it, b/c he knows I am working on commissions with Valentine's deadlines, but I see him shuffle by it and wince...as if the paintings and supplies are physically hurting him by being in our space.  If that's not a testament to true love, I don't know what is.

"Turn down the noise.  Reduce the speed.  Be like the somnolent bears, or those other animals that slow down 

and almost die in the cold season.  Let it be the way it is.  The magic is there in its power."

-   Henry Mitchell  

Thursday's Other Creative Soul: Maura McGurk

 Thank you for joining me today as I interview New York-based Painter Maura McGurk. As a creative person meself, I love to see what makes other like-minded souls think. Here's Maura's story...

Name/Location

Maura McGurk, New York City. I live in New York City, but I’m a Massachusetts native, so it still feels a little weird to take the train past Yankee Stadium to get to my studio.

Education

I majored in Painting at the University of Connecticut and got my MFA from UMassachusetts Dartmouth.  (I also have an earlier degree from UC Berkeley in Spanish and Portuguese).

Describe your work in one sentence.

Currently, I paint abstractly about issues related to gay rights--most recently focusing on the bullying and suicides of gay teens.

Describe your normal day.

I’m not sure right now what a normal day is like!  Up until the end of October, I was working all day in an office at a job I couldn’t stand.  I left that job, and two days later went to northern Vermont to an artist’s residency.  I spent a month there, painting every day, getting all my meals made for me--very far away from real life!--and now I’m back home in New York...I’ve only been back a couple of weeks, so I haven’t developed a new kind of normal day just yet.  I’m moving into a new studio, and teaching art, and planning for lots of studio time once I get settled in here.  

What are your passions?

Painting and paint itself--I love looking at piles of it on my palette...color, traveling, cooking and eating, springtime...

What are your goals?

I’m a little superstitious, so I don’t think I’ll share everything--I don’t want to jinx it!  But one thing I’m working on is to make a living from art, especially now that I’ve given up the desk job.     

Who are your creative influences?

There are so many--Matisse for color, Richard Diebenkorn who does such beautiful abstractions, Anselm Kiefer, Antoni Tapies and others who have really rich surface texture. And I really admire any artist who keeps working over a long period of time like Louise Bourgeois.  Something a sculptor named John Magnan told our graduating class stuck in my mind and has kind of egged me on ever since; he urged us to use our artistic talent to make a difference in the world.  I ran across a similar thought the other day from an artist named John McCracken, who wrote:  “The only art worth doing is the art that makes things better”.  I’m trying to do that with this series about gay issues. 

Are there any other relevant experiences that shaped who you are today and what you do?

Well, being gay, everyday experiences have gone into the storytelling aspect of my work... not being able to marry my girlfriend in the state we live in, seeing gay soldiers being treated unfairly under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, hearing about bullied teenagers who commit suicide.  Yesterday, I opened a piece of mail from my bank; it said the state of New York required them to tell me that same-sex spouses are NOT entitled to benefits.  That was in capital letters.  There were 3 pages of that.  It’s already so clear that we’re not treated equally because we’re gay; I didn’t need this piece of paper to spell it out again for me in such a crude way.  I think a painting will probably come out of that letter.

Is there anyone you really look up to as an inspiration?

Right now, I’m trying to think very practically so that I don’t have to go back to work in an office, so I’m taking a lot of advice from my girlfriend on how to make it as a freelancer, which she also is.  I also find myself channeling a friend who taught me the Trinidadian saying “Drunk or sober, mind your business”.  It means no matter what, you have to know your priorities and follow through.  I love it; I’m repeating it alot these days.

What motivates you on a daily basis?  

I noticed that I work better with music--Supertramp is definitely a guilty pleasure there.

What's your working style? 

I work pretty slowly, because I build up a lot of layers within one painting.  I also like to step back and think while I’m working, and then go back in and edit what I’ve done.  That means a lot of focus, so I kind of tune things out, especially the phone.  But I’ll always break for food!  If I work too long without a break, I get kind of glazed over and the work loses out.

What are your websites/social networking links?

http://mauramcgurk.com -- for my work and blog

http://www.facebook.com/MauraMcGurkPaintings

http://www.facebook.com/maura.mcgurk

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mauramcgurk

A Poem for Wednesday: How to Really Love a Child, by Sark

"Love is the Answer", prints available on Etsy

How to Really Love a Child 

Be there.

Say yes as often as possible.

Let them bang on pots and pans.

If they’re crabby, put them in water.

If they’re unlovable, love yourself.

Realize how important it is to be a child.

Go to a movie theater in your pajamas.

Read books out loud with joy.

Invent pleasures together.

Remember how really small they are.

Giggle a lot.

Surprise them.

Say no when necessary.

Teach feelings.

Heal your own inner child.

Learn about parenting.

Hug trees together.

Make loving safe.

Bake a cake and eat it with no hands.

Go find elephants and kiss them.

Plan to build a rocket ship.

Imagine yourself magic.

Make lots of forts with blankets.

Let your angel fly.

Reveal your own dreams.

Search out the positive.

Keep the gleam in your eye.

Encourage silly.

Plant licorice in your garden.

Open up.

Stop yelling.

Express your love.

A lot.

Speak kindly.

Paint their tennis shoes.

Handle with caring.

Gallerina on the Scene: 17th Annual El Corazon Show

Saturday night the Bath House Cultural Center was ablaze with the hustle and bustle of the opening reception of the 17th Annual El Corazon Art Exhibition. Dallas Artist Jose Vargas curated the exhibit and really hit a home run with his eclectic yet eerily cohesive mix of photography, painting, mixed media, and sculptural works. The idea of creating an opportunity for local artists to explore various artistic interpretations of the human heart was conceived by Mr. Vargas in 1993. Since then, this passionate and delightfully eclectic art show has featured diverse creations inspired by the heart (El Corazón), an important symbol in Mexican and Latin American art, and a significant theme in western culture.


This was my first time to participate in the show, and WOW, it was amazing!  The energy of the crowd, perhaps reinforced by the subject matter of the evening, was indeed palpable.

\

 Me and fellow Artist  and Designer Roy G. Vance, whose striking contemporary abstract pieces are available at Art is Art on Henderson and Dulce Interiors, among other lovely places. Find him on Facebook here!

A few photos, courtesy of Dallas Arts Salon.  This was one of my favorite pieces of the evening. I didn't catch the Artist's name, so please pass it this way if you know. 

The beautiful photography of Sharon Neal (left), and of course, my $.02 in the show, "As Within, So Without", the little painting that captured so much of my heart, mind and spirit as I used it to help me work through a difficult medical prognosis for our as-yet-unborn son. This is a true testament to the process of art as therapy. 


The show will run through the end of February, and most works are available for purchase.  The Bath House Cultural Center is located at:
521 E. Lawther Dr.
Dallas, TX 75218 
Phone number: 214-670-8749

I think we all could stand to use more SAT words.

The blogosphere is incredible. I was lucky enough to have my artwork found by someone across the world in Noosa, Australia, who used my painting, "Your Voice Was Smooth; Like Water Running Over Rocks" to illustrate her word of the week, "Mellifluous.  Thanks, Felicity, for sharing my artwork on your lovely blog and also for expanding my vocabulary.

"Mellifluous

[adj.]  flowing, like honey.

Sweet or smooth, generally used to describe a person's voice, tone or writing style.

From the latin mellifluus ["flowing like honey"], from mel [honey] + fluo [flow].

Today's word is one of my favourite, not only for the musicality as I say it out loud, but also because I love what it describes.  The artwork I've chosen to illustrate this word is by Gina Marie Dunn and is titled 'Your Voice was Smooth; Like Water Running Over Rocks' which evokes dulcet and mellifluous tones in my mind."

This painting is 24" x 36" x 1.5". This is one of my favorite sizes to work with. It is available for purchase, contact me for details. 

New Painting, "I Love You as Big as the Sky"

12" x12"

Watercolor and Mixed Media on Canvas

There is nothing that makes me happier than hearing my children say these words to me.  They inspire me even more than I think I can begin to realize. I always tell my 4.5 year-old that the biggest gift God gives you when you become a mommy is that He helps your heart open and grow in ways you never thought possible and you learn to love more and more each day. I love it when paintings just flow from a happy place, and this was one of them.  

This painting will be on display at The Cameron Gallery in February at their "Made for Love" Exhibition.  Preview for this show is 2/10 and opening reception is 2/19.  The Cameron Gallery is located on Dragon Street in the Design District.

El Corazon Exhibition this Saturday

Beginning in 1993, Jose Vargas has organized the El Corazón art exhibition in Dallas, which gives artists an opportunity to explore various artistic interpretations of the human heart. Since then, this passionate and delightfully eclectic art show has featured diverse creations inspired by the heart (El Corazón), an important symbol in Mexican and Latin American art, and a significant theme in western culture.
i am so excited that the painting, "As Within, So Without" was chosen to be a part of this exhibit. This work is a very special one to me. It was created during an incredibly painful time last year as we endured a difficult pregnancy with my youngest son. He was diagnosed in utero with a rare birth defect in his lungs that left him with a very uncertain prognosis...there was a time when we were uncertain if he could even be carried to term. Doctors gave us what seemed like volumes of medical journals to read about his condition, and after reading them I wasn't sure what to do. Throwing them away just didn't feel right, nor did leaving them on my bedside table to constantly remind me what uncertain path laid before my son...it seemed like that never left my mind as it was. So I took them out to the studio, tore them up, and literally processed this information through my artwork as I collaged them into a series of paintings. In the end, we were blessed with a perfectly healthy baby boy, our little Miracle Mack.  This painting serves as testimony of art as therapy and the power of putting out the energy in the world that you wish to receive back. the fact that this show is falling almost exactly on his first b-day is almost an uncanny coincidence. 

Opening Reception is this Saturday from 7-9,  at the Bath House Cultural Center and the show will run throughout the month of February.  I am excited to be showing at this venue for the first time and feel honored to be exhibiting works among some of the area's most esteemed local talents.

Thursday's Other Creative Soul: Designer Lindley Arthur

Thanks for joining me today as I interview Dallas-based Designer and Antique Dealer Lindley Arthur. As a creative person myself, it is so fun to peek in on what makes other like-minded types think. Lindley is talented, ambitious, funny, a devoted mother and friend-- one of those gals who really does have it all.  Here's her story:

Name/Location

Lindley Arthur, Dallas- born and raised! 

Education

Journalism degree from University of Oklahoma 

Tell me about your work in one sentence.

I'm a full time mom to two little boys, author of design blog Polish & Patina, and an antique dealer

   

Describe your normal day. 

No two days are exactly the same. I always wake up early with my boys, and depending on the day, take them to school or to meet a friend to play. When I'm not with the boys, I am working in my antique booth on Lovers Lane, going to estate sales or auctions, or exploring the Dallas Design Center. 

What are your passions? 

Besides my family and my faith, it's got to be antique hunting. I love auctions, flea markets, estate sales and the big shows like Round Top and Scott's in Atlanta. I always start with a list of things I'm looking for, and it's so satisfying to find everything on it in a single day, or to just come across something completely unexpected and fabulous. 

What are your goals? 

To eventually open an antique store in Dallas - one that mixes traditional and modern, and also offers interior design services. And, if I'm REALLY dreaming, it would also have a lunch spot (with a special area for children to be contained and play) and a small plant nursery. :) 

 
Who are your creative influences?

As overused of an answer as it is, it's got to be my Mom. She has an eye for style and can mix some of the most unexpected pieces in her home together and it just works. I also really admire the architecture of A. Hays Town, interior designer Barbara Westbrook,  and Dallas' Lisa Luby Ryan. And I'm addicted to reading Joni Webb's blog, Cote de Texas!

Are there any other relevant experiences that shaped who you are today and what you do?

I worked for several years as a fashion writer. It taught me that no matter how much you love your job, the most important thing is that you love the people you work with. I eventually realized it wasn't the right field for me, and after becoming a mom and getting my feet under me again, I knew it was time for me to try something on my own. Opening the antique booth was an easy decision - it's something I'm passionate about, and it allows me to still be a full time mom since I'm only asked to work one day each month. Starting my blog Polish & Patina was a no brainer, too - it's the perfect way for me to use my writing background to share happenings in the store and my passion for design.

What motivates you on a daily basis?  

Making my house a home - from the inside out. And not just decorating - cooking wonderful meals, working in the yard, entertaining family and friends. I love these things, but stay focused on the bigger picture - which is making sure my boys and husband have a roof over their heads that they're happy to come home to.

 
What's your working style?  

Lots of breaks. I'm always stopping to refill a sippy cup, open a new can of Play Doh or to pretend to be a race car. :) 

What are your websites/social networking links?

http://polishandpatina.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Polish-Patina/145331432154255?ref=ts