A Poem: Instructions for Painting

 Instructions for Painting

Immerse yourself in the dark

As it makes its appearance

that by nature absorbs all the light

Explore the dynamic

As it bleeds out its rivulets toward light

Let go, no need to control

Protecting the precious places

That sometimes conspire 

To be essential to the composition

But also stop the whole from reaching its potential.

So grieve the beauty that was there, 

declare it right 

For another and different painting

Go back in as much,

As often as you need/desire/explore/see differently

Expose another dimension,

Another aspect of your truth

When you hit the wall

Sit and rock, watching your painting, and ask

“If I were going to make one more mark, where would it be

What color,

What mark-making tool to use?”

When the answer emerges

Trust and do that

Do not be fooled by aspects of

elements that bug you

Nag you

Catch you up and lie unresolved,

There’s trickery in convincing you

they work

trickery that belies a truth.

Some part of it will continue

calling out for attention.

Eventually you will heed, 

What won’t be denied,

hear them telling you what 

They need. 

You will see a way toward resolution

And follow through.

Celebrate the moments

Adding into spans of time

As you spread the paint,

Making your mark.

Immerse yourself in the now,

Engage with what is,

Flow within spirit-canvas-paint

Exposing your truth.

Let yourself into the becoming

With All That IS, 

Has Been

Or Will Ever Be

Learn when to stop

when to begin again

when to start anew

Stay curious

Trust your process

Remember who you are doing this for

Maintain your integrity

Stay truthful

Keep doing it

Even when it seems absurd

Seems meaningless

Keep doing it

It saves your spirit

Redeems your life.

So live these instructions

For creating/

For life.

     --karen frances 10/21/2023

Through the Spyglass 1

Through the Spyglass 1

18"x18" acrylic and Posca acrylic pens on canvas

I am re-working a series of 4 paintings that were initially created in a time of chaos. But the paintings were too chaotic to find a way into and throughout. They were composed of light gesso washes, gesso, perfect grey, red, violet, and a little gold. They were created in a time when I felt like the universe was taking me for a nauseating spin. So they were not easy paintings for anyone to look at. Created years ago, no one even commented on them as they hung on my studio walls. 

So recently, I had the idea to cover the compositions with blue-green that I had mixed too much of for my last completed painting. I felt calm, like I could create something meaningful from the chaos. Since the compositions were circular in form, I had the idea that it was if I were looking at chaos through a spyglass. I broke down the larger forms with small marks using the Posca pens. It was fun to spontaneously follow the acrylic paint marks that lay under the surface of the blue-green. Interlocking forms emerged in the light-dark dynamic. There's a lot for me to learn in the process. (I'm calling it "exploring the spontaneous quirk.") There's a lot for me to learn in seeing and accepting the chaos, in transcending and transforming.

 

ferox virago~Reimagined for Whatcom Museum's National Call to Artists: Acts of Healing and Repair

"ferox virago" 28"x12" mixed media on stretched canvas and acrylic pen on teabags attached to canvas panel (currently on exhibit for art studio events)

I first read of the Whatcom Museum's Call to Artists, months before the deadline. So many of my paintings deal on one level or another with healing that I thought choosing what to submit would be easy. It wasn't. I did think of two paintings as possibilities to submit, but I also was contemplating the word "acts" as I thought about my paintings. How could I create an "act" of healing, I wondered. One week before the entry deadline, I had the idea. I would adapt, and make prominent, the drawing of ferox virago that I had created during the covid period of lockdown and isolation in early 2020. I made that drawing to represent protection for us, particularly during that time to protect us not only from disease, but also to help us transcend and transform during this time of extreme uncertainty that amplified collective and individual fear. It has symbols of the triangle, spiral, stillness, world spirit, the scarab, the turtle, head of spiral horns, and hooves. (See the blog entry from 2020 for details about the inspiration, creation, and meaning.)

Loving glyphs and cave drawings, I decided to use Golden's Coarse Molding Paste with its sandy texture to suggest a rock-like surface. I painted a foundational color I made to look a bit like pinkish-orange feldspar (is my college Geology class paying off?), thinking I could add blue-green veins as I finished making this look as if it was taken from a cave wall. I played with ideas of what to add to the left of the predominant ferox virago, glyphs I had copied from symbolism books and ancient symbols I could find online, as well as what I had seen in rug and embroidered motifs. Some I made up as I played in my sketchbook. This was grand fun and left me with the delicious problem of having to be selective. I think I would have loved doing a whole wall of these. I drew the glyphs and ferox virago with watercolor crayon and went over these drawings with matte medium to stabilize them. 

My idea of "act of healing" was to draw the image of ferox virago onto a teabag with my pin type black Uni-Posco acrylic pen. I ended up attaching these to a tea-dyed, raw canvas panel with one stitch taken with the teabag string. The idea is that the viewer, for whom the art and the ferox virago image resonates, creates the act of healing by removing one of the drawings from the canvas panel and takes it for themselves to their homes or to pass on to another. 

I finished the art piece late the night before the deadline (took as good of a picture as I could given the poor lighting situation) and submitted the work. On September 1, I participated in Downtown Bellingham Art Walk and gave "ferox virago" a test run. About 10 people took one of the teabag "ferox virago" images home with them. Viewers overall seemed receptive, and we had many rewarding conversations around the art. In addition, one person told me that the act of pulling the stitched piece from the canvas gave her a profound positive feeling. I am grateful for that feedback and all of the feedback I received.

So whether the art is accepted into the show or not, I am most grateful for the inspiration I got to create it. And that came from reading the "Call to Artists" and contemplating the theme.

 

July 2023 Bellingham Old Town Art Stroll~Because walls require art

 

A lot of my paintings are hanging on the common walls at the Waterfront Artists Studios for this month's Art Stroll.  For titles, details, dimensions, substrates, you may have to go looking through old posts. Or, if it's easier, you can contact me and describe it.

(Edit 12/2023: Some of these paintings are no longer in inventory)