Craving stillness -- to think and paint

I haven't been able to paint for a few
days, and feel a bit like a race horse
at the gate, or a dog, on a short leash
with the park in sight. Eager
to get going on my next project --
two large paintings for a show.
Like much of the work I do right now,
the works will go together,
and could be hung as one painting,
or sold as two separate works.
I started painting things that "fit"
together after reading a wonderful
book about Larry Rivers.
http://www.amazon.com/Larry-Rivers-Artist-David-Levy/dp/082122798X
I wish the book explained how he
attached foamcore to canvas. He painted
huge paintings and built them up
architecturally with foamcore,
so that some sections were in relief,
and others flat like a standard painting. I've
wanted to have something sculptural
happen with my work since then, but I'm
still painting on good old canvas --
just extending the work -- with another good old canvas.

I have got to mark. It's my last class of the semester tomorrow
-- a bright and eager group -- very chirpy early in the morning,
so I need to be ready for them with suitable mirth. Sleep will be
welcome tonight.

This painting is one section of a two-part painting.
A still life joins into the left side of the work. I
can't find a photo of them joined tonight, but I'll
put one in at another date.

Meanwhile...

Have a connecting day.

How did you do that?

Step Two
Skype Diptych Mother and Child
The Mother
8 x 8 inches
acrylic on canvass
(unfinished. Working on the face,
hair, background.)

I've been working today on a small painting that will be
one half of a diptych (two paintings that can join together).
Someday I will do a very complicated painting with 10
or more pieces that work together. So far I think the
maximum number of joined pieces I've painted is five.
I'm a big fan of Larry Rivers, as I've said before, and I'm
really sorry that he died before I could meet him, because
I had a lot of questions when I started reading about him --
Mostly -- "how did you do that?"

That's probably the number one question I'd like to ask
any artist I admire. How? How did you get that light,
that luminosity, that mood, that colour, and on and on.
In Larry's case it would be, " how did you make things look
3D, and how did you join so many paintings together?"

In the blog world I'm learning by looking. I stare at
the work of favorite artists, and the lessons leap
out at me. That doesn't mean I can do anything
approaching what you do -- but it does mean I can
ask fewer questions when we all meet.

Have a looking-is-learning-and-loving-it day.

Thinking about art

Girl thinking
black marker on bond paper
10 x 12 inches
Barbara Muir © 2009

Words crop up in the paintings of several
artists I admire. I love how Bob Burridge
places words on some of his paintings,
and Larry Rivers, used words in interesting
ways. In Florence we saw the work of
Fra Angelico, and some of this paintings
had words trailing across the sky, hundreds
of years before the invention of the airplane
made that an actual possibility, but he also
put the names of saints in their halos, and I
liked that. I've long been a fan of gold leaf,
and wanted to put halos on everyone, but
now I am thinking about putting words in
the halos. Not religious words, just
the words that struck my fancy at the time.

I did the drawing tonight from a photo of
a lovely model I've used for quite a few
paintings. I was just playing around
thinking about what I want to start to
paint. But I'd like to put a halo around
her head and write the word "thinking"
on it. That would be a secular halo,
like the one around the moon.

Have a thinking-it-through day

One kindness at a time

Drawing of a man III
marker on watercolour paper
8 x 10
Barbara Muir © 2009

(I admit I did this drawing
for my own amusement, because
I never draw people mid-gesture,
mid facial expression. I wanted to
see how it would look. Not perfect --
as soon as you photograph something
you see what should change, but still
funny. Why am I drawing men? Because
I paint so many women, I wanted you
to know I can also draw men. Okay --
maybe that's just one of the reasons.)

Seriously -- everybody has bad days. But what I
want to learn, is how to stay kind and thoughtful all
the time. I don't mean that I want to be a saint --
I'm firmly stuck in the human form, but I want
to notice as much as possible whether or not I'm
being kind, and to choose kindness in as many
as possible of my interactions. There's the goal.
Sometimes I slip up because of poor communication --
mine, sometimes I'm over the edge in fatigue.
Now how do you stay kind, when someone is being unkind
about someone you love? I posit this challenge to
my own theory to see whether or not I can dance
on the head of a pin. I would automatically
jump to the defense of my friends -- but what
about taking that position with people who are
friends badmouthing people you love? I think
kindness dictates some attempt at understanding,
and then perhaps an "I love you, and I love X
too, so I'm not the person to discuss this with."

Would that method hold up in art circles? I
think so. Here our tastes are so varied, that
we can't go cold because one of us likes realism,
and another prefers the glory of abstraction.
It isn't personal. It's taste. That means I
can love Larry Rivers -- not want to be him --
and you can go for Warhol. We're cool.
I like Lucian Freud, and Mary Cassatt. If I'd
known Mary, would she have liked Lucian -- no
way to tell at this point.

All right. I've answered some of my own
theoretical conundrums. As One of my favorite comedians
would say," Boy I love me." Isn't that kindness
too? Loving me. We teach our students to love
themselves, so they will be able to love others.
So now -- go ahead give yourself a big old artist
hug.

Have a giving-yourself-a-big-old-artist-hug day.

Should artists own the Chelsea Hotel?

The Chelsea Hotel

When we went to the opening of the May group show
at the AmsterdamWhitney Gallery, we stayed at
the Chelsea Hotel in the heart of Chelsea in New York
City.  The hotel was built in 1883 and has been the
home to, and welcomed as visitors among others,
Sir Arthur Clarke, Thomas Wolfe, Arthur Miller,
Andy Warhol, Janice Joplin, Jim Hendrix, Jim
Morrison.  True the hotel has certainly lost its lustre,
and needs repair and restoration (note I don't say
renovation to turn it into something it was never meant
to be.)  But it is an artistic landmark with a painting of
Leonard Cohen and a work by Larry Rivers in the
lobby.  The staff are charming, the location excellent.

Jian Gomeshi proposed on Q on CBC Radio that all
the famous, and maybe not so famous artists who have
stayed there should band together and buy the place to
save its artistic soul.  What do you think?

Have a thinking-about-saving-soulful buildings day.

I know what to paint

Henriette painting
Charcoal on bond paper
14 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches
Barbara Muir © 2010
(I just starting experimenting with how
I'd work from my Skype images
and the paper was not perfectly
flat because I use it as a kind of
provisional palette, and the
paper underneath gets wet.)

A couple of days ago I looked at the two 30 inch x 30
inch canvasses hanging around my studio, and
thought I want some paintings on those. When
I stopped in at my paint store I asked a fellow who
works there, who I've been talking to about art for
ages if he'd pose for my Water Image Series, and he
said yes. He has a great face, filled with the character
and joie de vivre you'd expect in a young artist.

So he'll be the subject for one of the canvasses, but
what about the other one? The answer came today.
I was talking to my friend Henriette on Skype, and
the whole time we talked she was painting. Just
back from New York and seeing the William Kentridge
series of powerful drawings of his wife getting into
the bath, I suddenly thought it would be cool to do
a series of large portraits of Henriette painting.
(The idea of a series has always appealed to me
and more so since I read about the work of Larry
Rivers a few years ago. The power is what attracted
me to Kentridge's drawings, and the close up in
portraiture is another form of power.

Henriette sure is painting. She has paintings in a
show at the Louvre in Paris this weekend. So she's
a mega painter. She has two young children under
two, took part in the Florence Biennale, and just
had a successful show in London, England.

While we talked she worked away at a new series
she's developing, and off in the distance through
the window in her living room, the
Norwegian night gradually descended -- only
never really did, as is its habit at this time of year. And
I had great memories of being in Sweden and
enjoying the late evening sunshine when I was there
with Steven in 2006.

Have an aha-that's-what-I'll-paint day