Tag: Van Gogh

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Is It Finished?

Sometimes it is quite hard to tell if a painting is finished, even if or probably especially if it’s your own painting. And it’s difficult even if or possibly especially if you love the painting already.

The painting above is a case in point. I do really love it. I love the movement and the suggestion of a giant gathering of birds filling the sky. But I have the nagging feeling that it needs something. Some of the more woowoo teachers will say the painting will tell you what it needs, if you pay attention. What am I missing? you might ask the painting. Or What are you, oh painting, missing? What do you need? What do you want me to do? I like to think of myself as woowoo-ish but I have my limits and I haven’t had much luck chatting with my paintings.

Instead, I stare and I think. Thinking, some say, stifles the making of art.

This is what that one, above, looked like until I stopped staring at it and painted.

What do I need at any given moment? The answer to that question can also be mysterious. Today I really needed to have some fun at pickleball in that specifically pickleball way, e.g. laughing, crying out Aiyiyi!! when I’ve hit the ball way out, going full-on after the ball, and making some great or great-ish shots. That was clear to me. I did go and I did play but I did not get what I needed, and now I’ve come home to stare at that painting off and on all day. How can I be expected to give it what it needs when meeting my own needs is so elusive?

Life can be challenging.

This one is finished, but I can’t really say why.

I do not actually stare at paintings for long periods of time. I do talk to my dogs all day long. I hug certain trees and whisper I love you to one in particular. I call out hello and wave to the moon. I quietly say Eye on the ball at pickleball to myself ten hundred times a day. So maybe having a heart-to-heart with a painting isn’t really that far behind. I will report back if there are any developments.

What about you? Where do you stand on woowoo? Do you commune with any so-called inanimate objects? Do they talk back to you?

“Painting is complete as a distraction. I know of nothing which, without exhausting the body, more entirely absorbs the mind.” ― Winston S. Churchill, Painting As a Pastime

“I dream my painting and I paint my dream.” ― Vincent Willem van Gogh

“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.” ― Pablo Picasso

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. If you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

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The City So Nice They Named It Twice

Windows at LaGuardia Airport

New York New York, what a wonderful town! I am just back from storied NYC, where I soaked up time with my sons along with museum after museum, and loads of inspiration for painting.

The bridges! The skyline! The murals! The parks! The hubbub! The art. The inimitable spirit of New York City never fails to give me a boost. We went to The Met, aka The Embarrassment of Riches, the first night and again on that last, extra day given to me by the rain and Southwest Airlines. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We went to MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, Dia (in Beacon NY), Christie’s Auction House, the Morgan Library and the Natural History Museum (full of nature’s art).

African textiles at the Brooklyn Museum

I’ve come home feeling almost too full. Van Gogh’s Cypresses at the Met, Georgia O’Keeffe’s watercolors and drawings at MoMA, the AI art of Rafik Anadol at MoMA, the huge iron pieces of Richard Serra at Dia, the musical instruments so artfully displayed at The Met (everything so beautifully displayed at The Met!), all the art everywhere. So many many things to take in and embrace. I was inspired by colors and shapes and yet I feel almost too full, not sure where to go with all of it.

I had thought I’d come home and paint a series of pieces in indigo blue and orange, having been captivated by the African fabrics against an orange wall. But what about the black and white pieces that I loved? And the sumptuous play of colors in that mind-blowing AI installation? What of O’Keeffe’s adventures with watercolor, charcoal, and pastels, one medium after another?

The beautiful Chrysler Building at dusk, across the East River

I loved ALL of it. I want to DO all of it. Yet time rushes by. Like the East River, it just keeps moving. And apparently, one needs to assimilate back into regular life. One must manage meds for the elderly dogs, schedule piano lessons for the school year, buy groceries, do laundry, somehow figure out what to do for one’s tiny business, tackle the weeds in the yard, imagine how a new floor might be put in the kitchen . . . All the things. So many things. All the things of regular life that one joyfully puts aside while off exploring.

This is how we do when we go away and come back home. And it means that we’re lucky to have the going away as well as the home to return to.

Yet the indigo blue and orange seduce me. The black and white. Glorious gobs of color, too. The urge to explore with all the media. I don’t want to lose that energy. It feels fragile, tenuous. I don’t want it to slip and fall beneath all the things.

“Did you ever have something to say and feel as if the whole side of the wall wouldn’t be big enough to say it on, and then sit down on the floor and try to get it onto a sheet of charcoal paper?” – Georgia O’Keefe

“As for New York City, it is a place apart. There is not its match in any other country in the world.” ― Pearl S. Buck

“To see takes time.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. If you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

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Creative Block

“I don’t know how to paint,” I recently told both my son and a good friend. The friend responded, “No painter ever in the history of art has ever thought that, right?” That’s right. Not Van Gogh or any of those others. No one.

So I’ve been struggling with three paintings I’m been working on. Each new thing I try seems to go badly. Or I’ll be happy with one and a few hours later, I think it’s absolutely terrible. A dog’s breakfast, I’d say if I was British. Rubbish. Deserves to be thrown into the bin. Or tossed on the fire. I don’t even have a fire. What then?

And then there are other things. The heat and other things. It’s been a general miasma over here the last little while.

As a result, I’ve been pulling out the old standbys I use to lift my mood. Went to the gym, finally. On the track, I listened to a Gratitude Walk, which turned out to be more like Interval Training with just a hint of gratitude. Kicked my butt but I liked it. Slipped back into the funk after a couple of hours, though. Later concluded I do not know how to paint. Went to the gym the following day, with music on the iPod. Nice but then I required an Epsom salts bath, a nap, and chocolate. Gave my paintings the stink eye.

This is the painting my son wants for Christmas.

Today, however, we had a lovely, breezy, cool morning. I took Miles to Stephens Park and we walked around the lake, which was absolutely lovely. And then I went back out on my own, through the neighborhood, with Ceasar Happily aka Ceasar F. Barajas, a meditation/yoga teacher, narrating “Walk and Chill” on my phone. Oh my Lord! Lovely. Wonderful voice, amazing energy, beautifully encouraging words. And then it started raining. I love being out in the rain and so this was an added bonus. And then Ceasar says, “Now imagine the miracle that is currently happening. You are a walking universe, filled with energetic channels of light and love and electricity, currently walking on an earth that is in the midst of an even bigger universe.” Whoa. And more where that came from.

Okay, you tell me how a person can remain in a funk while hearing those and many other words during a walk in the rain at the end of a very hot week during which that person mistakenly concluded that she does not know how to paint. At all. Pish-posh. I am a walking universe! And I think painting is included in my universe. Funk lifted.

And then my son calls and says he wants for Christmas TWO of my recent paintings. This makes me very, very happy.

“When I have a creative block, I take walks. I like to see what shapes stick out – so many legs rushing by at once, it can seem abstract. I don’t need to see great art to get stirred up. Music does that for me more easily.” — Caio Fonseca

“If you hear a voice within you saying, ‘You are not a painter,’ then by all means paint, boy, and that voice will be silenced.” — Vincent van Gogh

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” — Maya Angelou

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. If you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. And if someone forwarded this one to you, you can sign up here to receive the letters right in your Inbox. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”