Reblogged from Abstracts by Taintor:

The following works were primed Thursday the 11th with a tinted salmon pink gesso that was not subtle and presented a challenge for me today. There are two works on paper and three on wooden panels. I’ll start with the smallest and move to the largest. The daily progression of the larger piece will be added to the end of this page until I am done. Keep on scrolling! This one is @ 3 inches by 4 inches.”Infinite” This one is about the same size. I call it “Salmon Falls Small” This one is about 9 by 6 inches. …

If you have already seen the beginning of this post take note I have added the latest image capture of UM.

Since then, local artist, Taintor Davis Child has been assisting local illustrators, painters, photographers, printmakers and other fine artists with exhibiting their works in this lively and well lit venue.

Depending on the size of works, one can usually hang 8-12 pieces. Works need to be ready to hang from our moulding hooks. Wire and hanging assistance is provided on the last Sunday or Monday of each month.

For more information, call Taintor,  at  603-970-0018.

So my string theory is launching today from an awareness of inert object abundance and self preservation. Whenever I hear the old yankee joke about “saving pieces of string too short to save” my mind wanders to look up the back stairwell at my grandmother’s house while looking for the milk, and then opens the door to her jam packed refrigerator. What I find are minute pathways between material vestiges of her mysterious life. The milk is not in it’s rightful place but on the floor in the unheated porch – laden with ice crystals – a jug of white slush. A tasty treat that complimented a fresh piece of fudge or penuche, if I could find the right tin.

The work above is nearly done, I can’t horde many more marks in this small space. So I ask you to look for the pieces of string too small to collect!

Some reflections from the week to follow here.

Several wonderful conversations with fellow artists and writers this week. Topics; returning to the self, not losing the self, repetition is death, how can math be taught/imparted in a more engaging and meaningful way?, why aren’t math, writing and reading and art etc. taught in our schools without killing the subjects? why do we have to qualify through payments and hoop jumping? what makes women feel the need to be adored in relationships and why do we fall into the traps of looking for external validations? why do we have favorite numbers? what makes me want to create visual images and why do I continually learn from this process? the necessity of working at what we love…

Food and I are taking a turn into a renewed approach to preparation and consumption. After several mediocre meals with meat as the staple this week I have come to the conclusion that I don’t like the way meat has been tasting, I don’t like thinking about it’s preparation for the meat market, I don’t like the way it smells in my house after cooking and I don’t believe in supporting this unsustainable and often inhumane approach to food. I don’t like the way it feels in my digestive tract either.  I have been thinking more clearly about meat. I was wondering if meals centered around a meat staple had lost their joi because I haven’t been drinking wine, perhaps because I am not drinking wine I am just thinking a little more clearly about how I eat. What led to drinking less wine? It was getting in the way of my growth and I needed a break from the habitual pattern.

In the studio there has been some breakthrough, I have been forging ahead into larger scale works while following my hand and heart. The intuitive force is getting more air time! I am reminded again of how we (humans, artists) are by necessity at work in a dance of two selves, Resolute Solitude (in order to create some form of understanding and connections to life) and Open Heart (the best aspect of self that we employ to engage with the external world). It is striking me that as I work on the art my belief and understanding of the Spirit grows. In a conversation with a fellow gardener from the Rollinsford Community Garden yesterday (on my way out from a Town School Budget hearing) we spoke of hula hoops and hoop shaped jewelry. She said she loves the circle, that it is a calming shape, and I couldn’t agree more. It is no wonder that the peace sign manifests in this calming shape, and it’s central linear aspect is defined by two symmetrically balanced roots. It is no wonder that women are really getting into hula hooping. If we had a visible grounding chord we would look like peace signs as we do the hula!

Thinking about chromosones after talking briefly with my son about current topics in his Biology class. When I began looking at images of chromosones it appears that the chromatid is shaped like the infinity loop and then a chromosone is like an x. “All chromosomes are in the same shape: a long arm and a short arm separated by a central point: the centromere.” When I started looking for images of chromosones on the internet I ended up here, first listening to some of the words of the teacher Ramana Maharshi and then looking at the following video. It is so timely and I think it is really worth sharing on this Sunday Morning!

The new work in the studio is intuitively responding to some information that I have begun to gather about young women going to court  in Kenya to confront and seek justice for having been circumcised and raped. It is incredibly hard for Kenyan women to find their voice. How can we continue to allow rape to go on anywhere? I believe that the seeds for harmful and destructive acts come from unchecked self defeat. I believe that the rape of black women by white men in the Early days of the U.S. was an act of genocide. Are parts of Africa self destructing? Is this a direct result of European Colonization and then abandonment? Unchecked and uninformed population growth? What will happen?

Meanwhile some Reparations are being discussed, in North Carolina for thousands of people (predominantly poor black women) who had undergone forced sterilization between 1929-1977, and are getting me to think of the way people have been employing eugenics and other forms of genocide. Not light topics but topics that need light.

This one is @ 3 inches by 4 inches.”Infinite”

This one is about the same size. I call it “Salmon Falls Small”

This one is about 9 by 6 inches. “Out of the Box”

This is still in the works, 22 by 28 inches, on paper. “O”

more O below

The piece below is 50 by 42 inches.  I am calling it “UM”. (Still working on this one.)

and after another day…UM

and that’s all again as of Thursday 1/19 !

Um is looking like a weird Karmic Diagram. I am finding it rather disquieting and find that I am a bit on edge about this work. This feeling of being alone and out there with this piece helps me understand how some artists experience madness while in the midst of their process and pursuits. I don’t think I will go mad here but I am going in a direction that feels less familiar. I am not painting to please anyone. I am working because that is what I must do for me. Wish me luck!

I have been working on this piece while writing an artist statement for an invitational, group show in the Jackson Library Gallery at Berwick Academy. This show will be up for the month of February. Happily, five of my finished and framed works will be in this show and they are keeping good company with works by 4 other artists from the Mill, sculptures by Dave Random, photographs by Michael Penney, sculptures by Shaune McCarthy and Textile creations by Tinka Pritchett. 10 percent of the sales from the show will got to the school’s art booster.

Learning to Fly

Since December 28th I have been engaged with this new piece in Making Marks Studio! It is a work on paper (45 by 38 inches) that began as an investigation in primitive marks -the funny repetitive ladders that young children often draw- these scratchy patterns have always fascinated me. The plowed furrows on farm fields, the notion of parallel lines, longitudinal and latitudinal spaces, parallel play, parallel universes, the lines from moving through space, and the lines that music makes engage my imagination and my hand. The reality that I have forgotten how to fly, that I rarely get to in my dreams anymore, that I most certainly knew how to fly as a child, this also has occupied my creative impulses and direction with this current work. I have loved creating this bird in flight amidst all these lines that remind me of marionette strings and waves of sound. You can see the changes that the work has undergone and see a bit of the making marks dance that has been happening here. Learning to Fly comes directly from Tom Petty and is a work that builds a bridge from the old year to the new. Also, this work is very much a continuation of a visual conversation I had begun in 1984. I happen to have a painting in the studio from that time that I will try to get a picture of (hopefully w/out glare) so that we can view and note comparisons of this earlier seminal piece and the current “Learning To Fly”- which I am also calling “Solo Flight”.

On January 28th I am still fine tuning this piece and very happily engaged with the process. The photos that I post are taken from my iPhone and are meant to be teasers. The work is best seen up close and personal. So make an appt. with me in my studio and/or wait until the work is part of a great museum collection!

Wishing all gentle flights in 2012!

Here is the photo of “Wired” a drawing from 1983.

Now,  I am seeing my decision to impose the gradual changes of color in the most ordered part of the above work as my way to represent the notion of production and development, I depicted this notion as a railway heading into a black tunnel. The surroundings are strewn and disheveled and devoid of order, they are the detritus of what is left behind after the earth is manipulated and shifted for prosperity. The flattened picture plane is a field of wreckage that serves as a chaotic viewing of the results of the disturbance. So this swathe of seeming order and precision barrels through this field and disappears. I think this piece is more of an existential statement than a question at this point. The work currently possesses the tension that my Father always accused me of incorporating in my art. So be it.

Learning To Fly

This is a quick iphone pic of the work as I left it yesterday afternoon. Taken as I stood tottering on a chair and held it as high as possible above the piece. I thought I had cropped it in the download- but you’ll get the gist of it’s development.

The work is developing an aerial viewpoint and incorporating the theme of flight as I work in the complexities of it’s design. I am having a great time!

Time spent along this river is a blessing, I can get to this wooded river place on foot from my home and know that it is sacred. I feel thankful for the friends who have joined me on walks here, for my beloved old canine friend Molly who took me here for years and years. I am lighter now that I can walk without hip pain, and despite Molly’s absence I do not experience my solitary time on the path as lonely time. Like sleep, these walks are healing and rejuvenating to my spirit and body. They are wanderings that I relish.

It will be a snowy or icy walk soon, today my feet happily stirred up the leaves again while my arms gathered fallen white pine boughs and pine cones. It was a sunny afternoon in the 40′s. I imagine it will only be getting colder from here on out. In the meantime I have plenty of things to do inside as we approach Christmas. Cooking, baking, wrapping , writing, singing and just loving this precious life.

I have new works on paper coming soon that are absolutely affirmatively abiding this kind of light.

Last Christmas I video taped a walk in a light snow on the last stretch before hitting the road to home. If I upgrade the video capacity for this blog I will most certainly insert it here.

Until then I will insert another image.