by Susan Lobb Porter | Art, Process |
Arty Life sez:
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.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Kids, Process |
I called my friend Harriet once, around the time FirstBorn was thirteen. Maybe fourteen. Whatever…he was feeling his soon-to-be manly oats and was a total, absolute pain in the ass.
I wanted to kill him.
Oh, indeed I did. But first I needed to find out if a jury of my peers, i.e, mothers of teens, would put me away for life or give me a high five and send me to a spa. Prison was out, horizontal stripes make my ass look fat. But a spa? I could handle that.
So I called Harriet and asked if it was against the law if I did away with my son. Figured her kid, a few years older than mine, was still alive. I wanted to know if it was by choice or grand design.
She told me it was perfectly alright to kill him, as long as I ATE him. She said it with conviction, without any hesitation, so I knew it must be true.
But there wasn’t enough Maalox in the world to pull that one off.
I’m kind of glad I stuck it out with FirstBorn. He turned out okay. Pretty good, actually. And now when he calls and tells me what’s going on with Princess GrandDaughter, I find myself laughing and wheezing and enjoying myself immensely.
Because grandchildren are the best payback.
And now that we’ve established that, I’m going to put on my Arty Life hat and tell you to gather ’round. Because I don’t want to shout, not on the interwebs, not where everyone can hear me. Because they might not understand when I say artists must kill their children.
No no no…don’t jump to any conclusions and call me as your defense witness. The children I’m talking about the ones that bleed paint. Or clay. The ones you’ve put your heart and soul in and then one day you look at them and think you suck. Or maybe just I can do better than this.
The number one lesson I teach my students is nothing you do is precious. You need to be free to experiment and push beyond your comfort zone in order to find your creative boundaries. And once you find them you need to push past them too.
It’s incredibly liberating to create without attachment to the outcome.
This was an assignment from Judy Wise and Stephanie Lee’s Plaster Workshop. I carved a portrait of a young girl into a plaster covered board and then painted it. There was nothing wrong with it, I’m sure someone would’ve bought it some day. But to me it was an assignment. I didn’t feel my artist voice. So after letting her hang around the studio for a couple of months, I whipped out some joint compound and had my way with her.
Looks like buttercream icing, doesn’t it? But it’s not, I assure you it was death-in-a-can for the poor dear. But her passing gave rise to this…
One of my all time favorite pieces. Something from the sweet creative spot.
The title? Portrait of a Young Girl, Revisited. Of course.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art, Process |
Or…This is How I Do It
Holy creative FREEEEAK-OUT, Batman! A BLANK canvas!!! Oh noooooooooooooo!
I am blinded by the whiteness. Blinded. I need to scuff it up like a new pair of sneakers. But first…
MUSIC! I need MUSIC!!! Loud and rockin’. Something to take my mind off the ARTIC artistic purity before me. Because it’s too precious. Paralyzingly so.
Must. Be…heh heh heh (rub hands together here) … defiled.
With paint! Caran d’ache! Mindless SCRIBBLES!!! Rockin’ to da Boss, dancing the colors. Making marks.
Eventually I’ve got layers. And a bare wall because I get a little…rambunctious while painting. But I think I wrote about that before.
And more layers. This is where it sits for a few weeks because it’s NOT talking to me. Not telling me where it wants to go.
Until the day it says Tone. Me. Down. So I do, with more layers and collage. And then it starts talking. I see a tree in the upper left.
So I work it. Go with the tree theme.
And then I see a bear, lower left.
This is where it’s at now. Not quite finished but almost there. Definitely influenced by where I live. The river is just a few miles down the road, the forest wraps itself around our house. And bears? Chit, I’ve written about ’em.
By the way, this puppy is 40 x 40 inches, gallery wrapped canvas.
Now all I have to do is come up with a name. Any suggestions?
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art |
Oh my sweetums…something SO ECXITING is happening in Arty Life Land. Yes, EXCITING!
It’s called Comment Luv.
Allow me to explain. Those of you who already know about CL, well…go put on a cuppa tea or something. But do come back to look at the pictures. The rest of you gather round because I have something to tell you. Important something.
It’s about sharing your luvvv on Arty Life. And building community. You know that comment box down below, the one that encourages you to share your two cents? Some of you do, some don’t. And that’s okay. I love you all, even when you read ‘n run.
But now if you write a comment and click on the Comment Love box right under the little box you write your comment in, you do that and this AMAZING little plugin will dash over to your blog, retrieve the link from your latest post and invite readers to check it out.
Comment Luv will put in a plug for you right here on my blog!!! Should I repeat that? RIGHT HERE!!! Is that a community builder or what?
So be sure to leave a comment.
And now, YO! Tea drinkers– come back and check out what I made this weekend.
I began with a work in progress that had been languishing, languishing, on a shelf. This is acrylic, by the way.
Got all finger painty until I read the label on Golden’s liquid Bone Black. The label that said blah blah blah cancer. So I washed my hands and put on gloves.
And then I cut up paper. Threw on some more color and began writing with a regular graphite pencil. Just because I could.
More paint. More writing. More stuff. This is not the final version. But you have to wait to see that. I’m writing a guest post for Michele Bergh and the painting will be part of it. I’ll let you know when it happens.
And now I think I’m going to sit back and have a cuppa tea.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art, Studio |
Coyotes are back. They summered elsewhere with the kids. Not that they sent a postcard or anything. Hello Porters. We’re dining on tastier bunnies down the hill. See ya in September. Love Wiley E. and Fam.
No. One day there were here and then one day they weren’t. Sure was easier to sleep. But now they’re back hunting in the woods and fields around the house. Waking us up in the middle of the night. Not a gentle dreams interruptus, more like the soundtrack from a horror movie. I wrote a post about them last year, complete with a few photos. You can see them here.
When I finally did get up, I had a leisurely breakfast, alienated a number of people on FaceBook (there’s an election coming up, remember) and then headed out to the studio where I cranked up the music.
And painted.
And collaged.
And scribbled.
'Sophie' by Susan Lobb-Porter
And ended up with this.
And these. Although they were all (and some still are) works-in-progress.
And at the end of the day… a tired girl. Happy girl. It was a good day and I can’t complain about that!
