Worn Chair of Creation

120 hours of chaos conversion. Finished another garden painting. I start them by splashing colors onto a canvas. Out of the mess I get from the splashing of lots of different colors on a canvas, comes possibilities. I spend anywhere from 120 to 200 hours making sense out of what I see before me.  Flowers come to mind most times. I find this way of painting the most relaxing and quite stimulating. It is my way of tossing off the restriction of a subject. I do find subjects involving a living creature rewarding as well, like the nude, where mistakes are so clearly visible, even to a child. 

Teaching to me is telling a student, “It's your canvas to do what you want.” Is the subject meaningful to you? My landscapes are scenes from my past. Sunday car rides with Dad giving a history lesson of what appears to be a corn field. That painting of a barn? It’s the story of Great Great Granddad who fought in the Civil War. 

The chaotic garden growing on my canvas teases and delights my mind. That splash of blue wants attention again, I call on my past. What were those flowers Mom had Dad build a trellis on the side of the garage for? A sip of hot chocolate, a turn about in my chair and a faint vision gives me the stroke I need. A dying geranium leaf catches my eye as I take another quick spin in my worn chair of creation. Where to put it? It is just the shape for that muted red that mixed with the green running wild across the canvas. 

Richard was right when he said never pick off a dying leaf from a plant, let it fall off when it's ready. Past and present are elements in every painting. Mom's garden and Dad's stories emerge from my palette with every painting. Life is always my subject. 

An Art Exhibition in the Rain

Driving through the rain seems to be part of attending an art exhibition. Headlights and red taillights in every drop of rain, being swept away by squeaking wipers. An autumn evening at some university for an artist that either taught there, or was a student. Attending my first one-person exhibition to see the works of a local artist was my path into Fine Arts. 

Ruth Van Sickle Ford was the creator of the fine art I was about to experience. The exhibit was in the basement hallways of one of the university buildings, and extremely crowded with her former students.  

Although I had met Mrs. Ford, and she had written a letter of introduction for me to attend the American Academy in Chicago, I had never seen her work. There was  something about it that stirred something up inside of me that night. The buildings in her paintings were tilted and leaning toward cartoonish. Trees, simple and perspective off. Yet there was something there that reached people. People were talking about her, telling their favorite stories about the paintings, remembering something about Mrs. Ford with each work.

Over the years, attending exhibitions was part of a learning experience. Not all were so gripping as Mrs. Ford’s exhibition. Many were just gatherings where people munch on cheese and crackers and sip wine, with hors d'oeuvres being the attraction at many art exhibitions. Always the same group hovering around the hor d'oeuvres, some slipping treats wrapped in napkins into pockets or open handbags. Politics, the topic of most conversations, kept people occupied, or how the new mall was going to hurt the downtown. The art was incidental. 

A call for attention, an introduction, a few words from the artist before conversations returned to pressing worldly problems. With the last hor d'oeuvres gone and coats buttoned up, the exhibition was over. “Call me on that matter,” and images on canvas faded as people rushed to waiting cars.