The Value of Negative Spaces

"Vernal Equinox II"
the negative sky shapes
holds space for the trees

Recently I attended a meeting of a local critique group.  One of the participating artists had some very nice pieces with good use of clear color against neutrals and large negative spaces. The paintings were of children in various poses.  In my opinion the artist had a nice sense of placement of the figures on the page, both in size and location, creating lovely “negative” spaces that contributed to the “story” the piece was suggesting. Many of the critique group suggested that the pieces cropped, tighter and tighter, in towards the figures.  I disagreed.  I felt the artist did a great job of creating more interest in the subject through her use of generous negative space.  For instance, one painting was of a very young child seated feet out as toddlers do, finger drawing on the ground.  The figure was in the bottom part of a vertical sheet of paper leaving the top half empty.  To me that space told the story of the child growing and standing and filling that space. Cutting that space out lost that part of the story and reduced my interest in the painting. 

"Wishes On The Wind V"
lots of negative space
at play here

 Later I was thinking about the value and contribution negative spaces can make in a painting.  A simple definition of “negative space” might be the areas around a subject. Not all paintings have a “subject”. Not all have a “focus” either. For those works that do, the negative space is what is left if you cut out the subject.  It can be very little or a lot.  There are artists whose work is as much a work in the negative spaces as in the positive, or subject matter.  A few I can quickly name are Will Barnet, Milton Avery, Modigliani and Mary Carlton. Is negative space a component of design? Yes! It’s part of “shape”. Composition is simply an arrangement of shapes. Shapes themselves can be busy, quiet, light, dark, soft, hard, small, large, simple, complex, organic, geometric, singular, repetitious, etc.

As an artist I LOVE shapes. They are spaces that can be empty or be filled with color or texture or to contain line or to be defined by line. They can blend smoothly into one another or contrast sharply. After the experience at the critique I am more aware of the positive value of a negative space, that space I'm creating with all my other shapes. I will use them, create them, more thoughtfully in the future. 

New Thinking - New Learning

I just finished reading "Big Magic" by Elizabeth Gilbert. I found myself nodding, smiling, laughing out loud, and most of all agreeing with what she has discovered and written down, that embracing creativity for itself and for the joy it brings is the biggest and best thing you can do with your life. Don't look to some goal, like being in MOMA or at least in the next local show or paying the bills with your art or selling something, anything, ever. You might. You might not. Look instead to the incredible joy and creativity art brings into your life, think how empty your life would be without it, and just go for it.  You will be less if you don't.

This month has been one of great personal learning. I mentioned in my last blog post that I'd bought "Storytelling With Collage" by Roxanne Evans Stout. I have several new Facebook friends because of this book and I am enjoying their creative posts. These friends routinely post things they call "assemblages" or "bundles". These can be permanent or very ephemeral. I challenged myself to create a new one every day for a month. I find I do them at the end of the day, that they are impulsive and creative and that other people like them when I share a photo on Facebook.  Which I like.  

Along with this new practice, I've taken up reading "verse" or poetry, especially that by Mary Oliver and writing something, some verse or saying or some words, every day. in a small book I dedicated to that purpose and called "Verse A Day". I decorate every page, and every day I write something, either in verse or perhaps something I wrote down long ago. I find I do this in the morning.

I'm 67 years old right this moment.  I think I am learning more every day than I ever did in my life except perhaps infant-hood when I had to learn to crawl, stand up, understand words and feed myself. It's what Elizabeth Gilbert tells us in her book: if you embrace, accept and love your art then it will embrace, accept and love you right back.

Where will this take me?  Who knows?  Who cares? Will I be famous, make money, accept awards?  I don't think it matters.  What matters is that every day I show up and every day my creative spirit shows up and every day we commune: this, how about that, and then what and so on and on. And it gives me great joy.  

Understanding Myself Through Art

I finished a collage today.  The collage came together rather suddenly after waiting up on the shelf for almost two years when I had woven paper cut from an old watercolor into a mat, fastened it to tin foil, glued it down on a sheet of 300# watercolor paper, 30" X 14.5" colored with tinted white gesso. And then I had no next step.

A new book arrived the other day, "Storytelling With Collage" by Roxanne Evans Stout.  Inspired by what I read, I went in the studio and immediately saw objects I'd kept because I felt an attachment to them.  I got the collage off the shelf and added the copper bird and the origami sun.  I knew I wanted to echo the copper, the silver and the green so I called a friend who uses fabric in collage.  She arrived yesterday with an armload of possible pieces and I began my first collage work with fabric.  The collage also had another "first": using a lovely purple thread my same friend had given me earlier I had stitched the copper bird and 4 wooden beads onto the paper. Stitching on a collage was something I'd never considered before reading Roxanne's wonderful book.

I completed the collage and photographed it, rather roughly since I plan to frame it and keep it.  I posted the photo on Facebook and a wonderful artist friend, Margaret Stermer-Cox suggested it could be a "totem".  I sat down and examined that idea.  A "totem" is a spirit being, sacred object, symbol, or spirit guide.  A "totem pole" (and therefore a collage) has no religious significance and can feature numerous designs and can tell stories.  My totem is "bird" and has been since I first identified it years ago.  I had forgotten this and did not connect my use of a copper bird with my own totem.

In this collage a bird tops the design and is tied to the work, literally, with seeds or eggs.  I would say that's me.  Next is a clear geometric pattern, warm over cool, copper over green over blue/silver which ties to the words: "Thoughts of Spring.  Rebirth. New Growth. New Beginnings.  Coming Summer Heat.  Retreating Winter Chill" which follow.  Next is the origami Sun in the green of new spring growth with a sparkly gold center.  Finally the fractured pattern, a reminder of the fragility of life, how easily torn apart it can be.  This echoes what I've explored in my Desert Series, the lesson of the earth.

This collage most certainly is a "totem" and a story type.  Roxanne pointed out in her book: "A collage is a story of this moment in time".  As I studied this collage I realized I've been ahead of myself and of my conscious thought all along.  I knew this was the trend two years ago.  I just didn't know how to express it.  So I learned a lot about myself and my art today, through the help of my friends.

Heavy Thinking - Too Many Questions, Not Enough Answers

"Feather Moon 1" 14" X 21" poured watercolor

Oh, the questions!  Is this painting too simple?  Is this complex enough to draw interest, inspire "stories"?  Can I do this another way?  Will a juror notice this or dismiss it?  In the past two years my work has gone through many changes.  The most radical have been in the past 9 months as I have begun to use pouring both watercolor and acrylic pain to express my thoughts through simplified representational shapes.  Along with that change I began to self-evaluate at a more intense level.  How can this be better?  What can I change to make this work more engaging?

A few days ago I was writing exactly these thoughts in my journal.  There are several good offers of workshops I could attend in 2016.  I was considering a couple of them.  At this stage, I do not want to learn how someone else paints or thinks.  I want to learn how to make my own work better.  I want to learn to answer all these questions.  If there are methods I do not know now, that's what I want.  I turned on Facebook that morning and saw a promotion for a workshop that actually echoed the exact words in my journal.  A new, to me, instructor, Linda Rothchild Ollis, is giving a workshop in May at Menucha, a retreat on the Columbia Gorge.  It only took a few minutes to decide this is for me.

"Untitled 4" 21" X 29" Poured Acrylic 

Menucha is associated with the Presbyterian Church.  Rooms are shared, at least 3 per room. Meals are provided with a selection of 3 or 4 choices.  The bathrooms are shared .  There is wifi.  There's also coffee both in the rooms and in the central hall (cash only, they caution).  I am such a creature of habit.  I get up around 5AM, make my k-cup of coffee with heavy cream, spend 45 minutes to an hour in my chair writing my journal.  Then I depart to my computer for news and then into my studio for early morning work.  All of this is done in quiet, no talking, no music, no noise, except for a morning greeting with my husband, perhaps comments in passing.  By going to Menucha for three days I will not have my normal routine. How will that go?

As happened this time last year before ISS at Taos, NM, the thought of this workshop commitment is already pushing my work, answering some questions, raising some new ones.   I have the materials list, I am guessing at some of the uses.  I have more than 3 months of painting between then and now. Given how swiftly my work changed in the past two years I cannot begin to imagine where I will be by mid-May.  Which raises a final question:  how can I possibly plan?  I see now, more than ever, that "be here now" is the best advice.

Changing My Perspective

"Untitled I" 21" X 29" acrylic on paper

I've been really "stuck" for almost a month.  I'd run out of ideas, enthusiasm, and energy.  The holidays were busy and I wasn't in my studio enough to continue the creative process that had carried me through 2015.  When I was at work, I found myself "pushing paint around" with no real ideas, no inspiration.  It became a frustrating cycle and I couldn't see a way to break out of it.  

A friend had given me a couple of inflated exercise balls to try out as a desk "chair".  I've just started using the smaller one to do passive reclining back stretches.  When I'm doing a stretch, everything in view is "upside down".  As I was stretching yesterday morning I looked back at a line of coats hanging in the entry and noticed a rather pleasant abstract composition created by the bottoms of the coats and the wall.  I got my camera, took a photo, rotated it 180 degrees.  Then I took a pen and drew the idea onto a 300# full sheet that was covered with paint from previous days.  I made changes, of course, but I finally had an idea, a direction, a goal.  The painting was completed in a matter of a couple hours, paint nearly mixing itself, happy accidents occurring all over the place.

Coats as viewed from my exercise ball

I put the painting in a mat and was considering it this morning.  It inspires me with a number of different ideas, approaches, interpretations.  All it took to break out of the stagnation I was in was a different perspective, an upside down view of things.  This painting is a very simple "compressed space" or layered composition, one of the most basic designs, often used in landscapes.  To me, it suggests rocks, perhaps a canyon.  Certainly not coats viewed upside down!  

Now I have a plan forward, ideas to work from.  How this will all fit together remains to be seen but at least I'm out of the mud, figuratively and literally speaking.  Happy New Year.

Year End Treasurers

"Desert Sky II" 21" X 30"
acrylic on paper

Winter Solstice is a natural time to look back at the year passing and plan for the year coming.  In thinking about what I have accomplished in 2015 I turned to my sketch notebook where I record ideas, workshop notes, experiments and 5X7 photos of completed paintings.  I also have a different sort of record that I can review, a summary of thoughts, in this blog, which is what is prompting me to write this post.

A year ago this time I was anticipating our trip to southern Arizona in February and preparing for the Intensive Studies Seminar in Taos, NM in April.  I was also transitioning from multi-layered non-representational painting style used in my Journey series to the more simplified representational shapes evident in my Desert series.

During the year and without my really noticing, I was making dozens of new friends, many of them fellow artists.  I met them at workshops, art fairs, art conventions and through social media.  I began to look forward to opening Facebook in the mornings because my news feed has become a gallery of incredible art as well as photographs from my traveling friends of places I might otherwise never see.

In looking back over 2015 I realized that my old and new friends, with their thoughts and ideas and experiences, are the best thing about the year, and their friendship is a treasure I find becomes more valuable with every passing day.  I am looking forward to 2016 with anticipation.  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you.

A Time To Reflect

"Adrift on the Energy Sea"
 aka "I bumped into Bob yesterday"

Last night was the opening night of a month long show of my artwork at Sage Gallery in Bend, OR. The gallery owner, Denise Rich, hung the show earlier this week.  We put out some snacks and opened some wine and people started to arrive.  During the evening there were numerous moments, talking to people, that I felt a deep connection, as if what I was saying or showing was of incredible importance right at that moment.  Eyes would "light up", heads would nod, swivel, cocking ears towards me. Afterwards, when I recalled some of the conversations, I realized I was not only connecting with other people, I was connecting with myself. I talked about where my thoughts are now in the desert series and I realized that I'm presently moving back into more abstracted painting because I don't yet know the symbols I will use to discuss the disruption of the land and peoples and for the faith I have that the overriding spirits will hold it together.   Those symbols will come out as I paint.  

I believe I exist for a purpose.  It may have absolutely nothing to do with me.  I might be here to say or do something that in turn helps someone else move along.  It's my "bumped into Bob" theory of how energy works.  During the height of the evening I was talking to some guests when an unaccompanied child came in.  She stood uncertainly, looking around.  After a few minutes, she moved shyly to the table, picked up and ate a single pirouline, and then did something that caught my eye - she picked up my business card.  I know that at some festivals children will "collect" things like business cards.  I've heard vendors comment about the practice.  The child was really looking at the artwork.  I regretted I was engaged with someone else and could not speak to her.  I wonder who else will pick up that same card.  I wonder where and how that bit of energy in the card will spin off.

"The Lesson" Transformer teaches chick
how food is energy and energy is food

By talking to visitors about the paintings, about the series, I have come to a much better understanding of why I'm painting this series.  I realize my new interest in weaving baskets and using fibers is to better understand the peoples and culture of the desert.  I want to rise into the sky and look over all the lands, desert, mountains, forest and sea and find the commonality, the binding spirit.  Kachina, after all, exists in one form or another all over, not just in the desert.

To those of you who came to see the show last night, thank you.  I had a great time and I hope you did, as well.  If you couldn't make it and are in the Bend area during November stop in and see it (834 NW Brooks Street), say "hi" to Denise and maybe buy yourself a little christmas present.