Autumn is here. Blew in a day early, when summer was just on the way out. Came in with rain and wind, lightning and thunder. She who wears flip flops all summer now wears thick socks. Hoodies. Tonight I heard the coyotes yapping somewhere out in the forest beyond the back fence. It was early. Not early as in 2 AM. Early as in 7 PM … and it was almost dark.
So long daylight, see ya next summer….
But even more than the turning leaves, more than the mice moving back into the pantry, more than the extra blanket on the bed … the biggest sign of autumn for me is Open Studios.
To be more specific, the frenzy before Open Studios.
O. M. G. Breathe…
She who has more than enough paintings always feels she needs to make more more MORE. Like da Muse is on steroids. Somehow she is not called upon to clean the studio, not until the day before last minute.
But in the end it will all come together. Paintings will be finished (or not). Prints will be printed (or not). Matted (or not). The door trim I’ve been meaning to paint since last year will be painted (or not).
Did I ever tell you this is my FAVORITE time of year?
And now for a work-in-progress peek behind the process. I almost want you to close your eyes and don’t look at this first photo because it’s so b.a.d. but that would defeat the purpose of the rest of the post. So go ahead and look at it and know we all make mistakes.
This was a sucky painting. Oh, indeed it was. That’s because my head entered the picture. Said, hey do a river scene for the Open Studios. Ka-ching. Ka-ching. A nice abstract river thing that someone will B.U.Y. Because everyone loves our river.
So I did this thing of turbulent water and boulders. Cold wax and oils and it looked like shit not what I envisioned.
So the next day I went back and eviscerated the sucker. The top layer of oil and wax was still tacky, easy enough to remove. There was no moving the earlier layers but I liked the way they stained the plaster. This is on a plastered cradled board, BTW.
I scraped it down to the nubbins. All except an arbitrary triangle of gray that said Oh no! Not meeeeeeee!
When a painting talks, you MUST listen.
This bears repeating.
When a painting talks, you MUST listen.
And then, since I had NO IDEA where this was going, I began scribbling. Pardon moi, making marks.
Because marks are my creative breathing space. This is the point where the music and the physical movement of the mark making take over. I’m singing loudly, most likely off-key. I’m dancing around and frantically scratching into the painting with pencils, skewers, a scrub brush…whatever’s handy and GET DOWN with da muse.
Sunrise Over the Mountain Susan Lobb Porter
This is where it stands now. Is it finished? Bets me, probably not. Am I happy? Oh my sweetums, I am indeed.
Blatant Plug #1: If you’re anywhere in northern California the first two weekends of October take a nice scenic drive to the gold country. Because really, what else are you doing when you could come and see me. There’ll be chocolate. And art. Lots of art, my own and that of 73 other artists all tucked away in our mountain studios. It’s free and if you didn’t already click on the link above you can download the map here.
I can only guarantee the chocolate at my studio.
Blatant Plug #2: This January I’ll be launching my first e-class. Holy crap, YES!!! I’m doing it! YAY!!! I’ll tell you more in future posts.
As always, I’d LOVE to hear from you in the comments below.
Oh my sweetums, I have a confession, indeed I do. Your favorite-best-beloved-kale-swigging artist, AKA Moi, has been dining on Reese’s for the better part of the day. But not because I WANTED to or gained ANY pleasure from doing so at all. No no no!!! I was taking one for the art team, you see. It’s all considered Open Studios prep, a quick source of proteinnutrition, something to tide me over while painting–no, NOT JUST PAINTING, painting my hiney into the arty frenzy that comes before a show.
Which is a grand and glorious way to impress you with my creative productivity, as opposed to leaving you shaking your head and tsk tsking at the thought of paint smeared gobs of peanut butter and chocolate finding their way straight from my mouth to the aforementioned hiney. Because that’s the way these things work.
In the end it’s not sugar and fat, it’s body sculpture.
And Muse Magic. Because I’ve been on FIRE. Oh yes, FIRE all day. All week. Got so many works-in-progress going right now I can’t even guestimate the number. Lots. Not your average lots. We’re talkin’ the kind of lots that really means LOTS.
It’s so exciting!!!
I’m going to show you a couple of ’em right now. Remember last week’s post, Between the House and the Barn. I posted some photos I took that I considered to be inspiration for paintings.
Disclaimer: Inspiration DOES NOT DICTATE creativity, it merely kick starts it.
So don’t expect my paintings to look anything like the original photos. Just sayin’…
Original photos:
Works in progress derived from above photos:
Work in progress SLPorter
This one is oil on top of other things. Acrylic. Collage. We’ll call it mixed media. Small. 8×8 inches. Maybe 10×10.
This one is oil and cold wax on top of collage and acrylic. I believe it’s 24×30 inches. They’re both on cradled panels.
Work in progress oil and cold wax SLPorter
Not the best photo in the world, color is a bit off. I’m thinking I might experiment with some shellac on this. Maybe. Get some nice honey drips going. That’s something from sister Marjorie Ellen’s bag o’tricks.
We’ll see….
Hey, thanks for dropping by. As always, let me know what you think in the comments below. And if you like what you see, please share with your friends. xoxo
“I owe it all to art books, chocolates and young men”
Artist Beatrice Wood, when asked the secret to her longevity. Her most productive years were between the ages of 80-105
Whoot Beatrice! My kind of woman!!! Handsprings and black flips My. Kind. Of. Woman!
Because I’m gonna be a kick-ass old lady myself. Yes indeed, I surely am.
I come from a line of women who are direct descendants of the Energizer Bunny. They keep on going and going and going until their batteries run out somewhere around the century mark.
Barring unforeseen circumstance, like Kim what’s-his-face throwing a temper tantrum with a nuclear warhead or maybe a meteorite landing on top of my head, I plan on hanging around for quite some time.
But not just hanging around.
I plan on BEING here.
Painting. Writing. CREATING. Dancing. LOVING. Moving. Laughing. Learning. And GROWING.
Making a damn good time of it.
There will be chocolate involved. Family and good friends. And when I finally cross over, I pray it’s with a smile on my face and paint under my nails.
Oh, and that novel I haven’t finished? It’s not too late. Beatrice published her first in her late 80s. The first of four under her own name. There were others published under the psudonym Countess Lola Screwvinsky. Screwvinsky? Hmmmm…methinks Beatrice was a kickass old lady herself.
If life was a canvas you could just slap some gesso over the poopy parts and start over again.
But don’t go squirting your husband or kids with gesso. Puh-leeze. No matter how much they misbehave. Arty Life, AKA Moi, was speaking metaphorically. Although I did gesso FirstBorn once, quite by accident. Something involving an open jar, a sudden movement and a toddler with a face full of the stuff.
Fortunately the advice nurse at Kaiser was married to a painter and understood.
But I digress. Back to painting. I often gesso over what someone else might think is a perfectly good painting. But if I feel like it sucks then it’s buh-bye. I don’t care how much time I’ve put in to it. In fact the more time I put into a painting usually means the more I’ve over thought the process. Which means the more it sucks.
Because…..Over thinking is the death of creativity. You can quote me on that. In fact, please do. Just go ahead and quote me everywhere. I’d like to be famous some day. And I promise, I’ll remember you when I am.
But don’t quote the part about the kid and the gesso, okay? He’s bigger than me now and I’d like to think he’s forgotten all about that little incident.
Back to my love of gesso and painting. It plays into why I wasn’t here last week. I was BUSY. Had a show to hang. A show that turned out to be a little more than I’d signed up for. I thought all that was needed were the two pieces I juried in with.
These two. If you’re a regular reader of Arty Life you’ve seen them before. Here. And umm…somewhere else. Top: In the Beginning. Mixed Media, 16×20 inches. Bottom: Over the River. Mixed Media 40×40 inches.
Well, guess what…turns out I had a WHOLE wall to fill. But I didn’t find that out until Christmas night when I went through my SPAM folder. Who goes through SPAM on Christmas? Really, who???
It was Christmas, y’know. And I was just checking to see if GMail thought some dude who claimed to be giving things away FREE to EVERYONE was a Spammer. Because Santa sure didn’t show his ass around here. OK, so Mr. Spouse and I agreed we didn’t need or want anything but I didn’t cut that deal with Santa. Did not did not did not!!! So there I was Christmas night, desperately seeking holiday spirit in my SPAM folder, wading through IMPORTANT!!! letters from the FBI, heartfelt financial missives from my long lost third-cousin-twice-removed-Mister George, and many many MANY helpful pharmacies promising me lots o’hair and a stiffy.
But not a hairy stiffy. Go figure.
There was also One. Very. Important. Letter.
From ten days earlier. Uh-oh…
It was… About. The. Show. And how many pieces did I plan on hanging. Because I had, like, a whole wall to fill.
Oops.
Now a visitor to my studio would see a whole lot o’ paintings. More than enough to fill a hall let alone a wall. But I got it in my arty little head that this was a challenge. Go for it Susan, create a whole new body of work in two weeks.
So I did. Sorta. I always have a number of canvases under construction. A number of them primed with layer after layer, just waiting for the Muse of Completion to arrive. Or a manic phase, whichever comes first.
I’m still not sure if it was muse or mania but I spent nearly every hour of the next two weeks rockin’ out in Studio Grande. And this is the result:
Dreaming of Bears. 40×40 inches. I’ve had a couple of bear dreams recently. They’re all over the place around here. It gets dark early and I move around the property wondering if Smokey is behind the next tree. And if he’s going to jump out and eat me or if he’ll run away when I scream like a girl. I did tree a bear once by yelling but the 105 pound dog in furious pursuit got all the credit.
If you have the time and are so inclined see if you can find the bears in the painting. Hint: there are three. I only painted one deliberately but the others acted like real bears and popped up unexpectedly. That’s bears for you.
Taking Flight. 24×24 inches. Like most of my mixed media pieces, you really need to see this in person to appreciate the depth and layers.
Feelin’ the Love. Mixed Media. 24×36 inches. This has got to be one of my all time favorites. Absolutely.
Eddy. As in, y’know, water swirling around. 40×40 inches. These were some layers, many many layers, who told me they were quite happy as is, thank you very much. And so I paid attention. I am not only the canvas whisperer, I am the canvas listener.
After the Rain #2. Mixed media 40×40 inches. This is similar in feel to an oil and cold wax I sold during the studio tour, even though this is acrylic and collage and twice the size. Another absolute favorite of mine.
But where is After the Rain #1? Well, this is where the gesso comes in. After the Rain #1 began life the usual way, via layers. And when I realized I needed to make more paintings for the show it began to take on the feel of Over the River (way up above). It was a river scene with critters and people and quite frankly, it was crap.
Contrived.
Over thought.
When the muse says this is NOT something you’re happy with, you listen. Pay attention. You being me in this case. So I slapped the gesso on before I could change my mind. And then I dove right in with the paint. Right into the wet gesso. And I rocked it. Oh man, I ROCKED it! Didn’t come up for air until it was done. And then I stood back and said holy crap, I am in luvvvvvvvv… with the painting, with the muse, with LIFE!
And that is what painting should be. Absolute sheer mindless creation.
I was on such an arty high I grabbed another so-so meh piece and did the same thing, using the same paints. That’s the one you see up above, After the Rain #2. What you don’t see in the photograph, because it’s not a great photograph, is the wonderlicious crunchy texture, the bumps and bruises from collage and scraping back collage and taking all sorts of mark making devices to it.
You also don’t see After the Rain#1 because I FORGOT TO PHOTOGRAPH IT!!!
The only photo I have is the one down below, taken as we were setting up the show. Not a great pic but enough to give you an idea. After the Rain #1 is on top. It’s 30×40 inches.
OK, enough about me. Now it’s your turn to go out and paint. And remember, gesso is your friend.
And so am I. Always and forever, my best best BEST beloveds. So you’ll quote me, right? And hit all the social share buttons to help me grab the big brass ring of cyber famousness. Because that’s what friends do.
And while you’re doing that, I’m going to email my long lost third-cousin-twice-removed Mister George. From the Nigerian side of the family. See if I can get him to buy a painting our Uncle Pablo Picasso painted last week.
Oh my sweetums, I’ve been spinning my wheelsuber busy in ArtyLand, so busy I neglected to post last week. Imagine that!
If you’re impatient or have a short attention span, you may scroll down now and watch the video. But if you’re here for a good story, stick around. You’ll get to the movie eventually.
It’s not that I forgot you, au contrair, you (my most best, BEST beloveds), have been on my mind CONSTANTLY. I’ve thought of you even more than I’ve thought of CHOCOLATE!!! Which is a lie, by the way, because nothing comes between me and my chocolate. But it sounds good, like overtime devotion in bloggy land.
Have you ever gone from point A to point B via points M,Q and X? Well, that’s what I’ve been doing. And getting nowhere fast in the process.
It all started when I got this idea for a blog post. I was scrolling through my iPhoto library, grumbling about the BAZILLIONS of photos I’ve taken and have yet to organize… yada yada… and I must be NUTS to think I can ever find a specific photo. Getting a wee bit frustrated because I’m not exaggerating the number of photos (well, yes I am because I don’t believe bazillions is an actual quantifiable number) when it dawned on me–ping–like a light bulb in the brain–that a lot of my arty photos resemble a LOT of my paintings. I don’t consciously take photos of rocks and paint them. And I don’t consciously paint pictures and then go photograph things that remind me of them–
But you’d never know that from looking at all those photos.
Never. As in NEVER. EVER.
So I thought it would be cool to post photos I’ve taken that inspired my paintings. Or at least resemble paintings enough to see where I drew some inspiration. I began picking and choosing photos to illustrate that point, saving them all in an album. Then I thought what the heck, let’s see how this works as a slide show. And then, since I liked the way it was working, I needed to find music. Music that was legally MINE to use and wouldn’t get all this work kicked off FaceBook or YouTube. That meant half a day pouring through license free music sites. Which is a mega time suck, believe me. I finally found something I liked, tweaked the timing so it would work, converted the whole shee-bang to a movie file, did the YouTube upload and went to bed.
Where I lay there thinking of how I could make it better.
The next morning I got up and did it ALL OVER AGAIN. New music. More bounce. Tossed out some photos, added others. Rearranged EVERYTHING. And then I added text because WHY NOT?
And when I finally got the video I was REALLY happy with, I thought the heck with a blog post, this is going to be my HOME PAGE on my website, the one that showcases my ART. The site I basically ignore.
Ah, but if I’m inviting people to see my stuff I’d better clean things up. Like get the galleries updated, the store open. Things I’ve been ignoring because they’re H.A.R.D. Technical. Not.Fun.
So now you know where I’ve been. I’ve been herding ducks. That’s right, getting all my little duckies in a row. You ever try and do that? It’s like herding cats on quack. (I’m high fivin’ myself for that one, yes I am!) What began as a simple blog post, turned into a video, a revamped website and a functioning store. Holy crap, I’m even impressing myself.
All because of this:
Do me a favor, if you liked this post PLEASE tell your friends. Share it on FaceBook. Give it a tweet. And, as always, stop in and say hi in the comments. I love it when you do.
