Happy Birthday Granny!

Saltwater #6, acrylic, 14x22, 2004

It was my grandmother's birthday on Friday.  She has been an inspiration and a rock of stability throughout my life.  The reasons for choosing to make pictures of Salt and Water remind me of Granny.  Life if about balance.  We need salt, but not too much.  Water is essential for life, but an ocean of saltwater is not going to quench your thirst.  My grandmother taught me to use warm saltwater gargles to cure a sore throat.  Salt and Water are simple and they are complex.  You need to figure out when and how and how much to use.  The white square on the plate is a saltine cracker.  They sort of remind me of communion, which is also simple and complex at the same time.  I guess what I am trying to say is that Granny seems to me to be a person who has figured out something about life.  Her outlook on life seems to be that we should get out there and DO stuff.  And help people.  And take care of ourselves.  And have fun.  Happy Belated Birthday.

Happy Birthday Denise!

perfect day, acrylic, 16x20, 1999

This is a day late for Denise's birthday, and there is another important birthday today that I will post later today.

Denise, this is called perfect day and that is what I hope you had yesterday.

Happy Birthday Jill!

Duluth Again, pastel, 11x14, 2006

Here is a drawing of a waterfall in Duluth in honor of my friend Jill's birthday.

Study for more Rocks and Water

study, 2007 or so, watercolor

It is early and I need to get to my coffee.

Rocks and Water

Emerging Worlds of Rocks and Water, pastel, 22x28, 2004

I made this on my way home from a Split Rock Art Program workshop in 2004.  It felt like it worked.  It was wonderful sitting there in Jay Cooke State Park just me and the landscape and the pastels.

I've been reading that Kandinsky book a few pages a day because it is a heavy read.  He talks about color and form and representation as three elements of painting.  If I understand him correctly he says that the only way to get at the essence of color and form is to eliminate the representation of known objects.

I tried to make a picture with no representation the other day, the shapes looked too much like hair to me so it turned into a portrait.  I'll try again perhaps.

technology whine

study, acrylic, 2006

It annoys me when people whine about their technology not working, but MY TECHNOLOGY IS DRIVING ME CRAZY!  Updates to things that were working fine before the update make no sense.

More later.

Bridges 41 and 43

Bridge #43, acrylic, 7x11, 2005

Bridge #41, acrylic, 7x11, 2005

I am in a funk lately.

On a positive note, I finally checked a book out of the library that I was interested in.  "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" by Wassily Kandinsky.  I was following the discussion about it on Katharine Cartwright's blog.  I hope the discussion is still going.  That is what I will check next.

Bridge 38

Bridge #38, watercolor and ink, 7x11, 2004

I was trying to get to the bare essentials of the bridge.  I like the contrast of the black on the watery swirls of color.  I'm not sure why I made the lightposts marching across the bridge, but there they are.  The curved form under the bridge looks like 80's hair to me.  HaHa.  80's hair.  marching.  makes sense.  For those of you who don't know, I was in marching band in the 80's.  Earlier bridge pictures were about my high school years, some were about my young adult years, this one seems to be about college.

Salt.

Saltwater crackers, acrylic and pastel, 14x22, 2004

Saltwater #3, oil pastel, 14x22, 2004

I'll get back to the bridges.  At church yesterday it was all about salt.  Too sleepy now to get into describing the whole idea.  Ye are the salt of the earth.  You've probably heard that before.  It reminded me of these pictures from back in 04.

Bridges 34 and 36

Bridge #36, pastel, 11x14, 2003

Bridge #34, pastel and acrylic, 7x11, 2003

I think when I created these I was close to figuring out why I needed to keep drawing these bridges.  In #34, I was thinking about the teacher's question from the year before: "What's under the bridge?"  I never did know the answer to that question during the class.  In these two pictures I am exploring what it might be.

#36 has never been shown before.  It rings very true to me, and yet it also seems cheesey.  I did not explore that idea further in drawings.  Perhaps it is a good place to start as I pick up my artistic journey again.

Bridges 32 and 33

Bridge #33, pastel, 11x14, 2003

Bridge #32, pastel, 11x14, 2003

The house I lived in in St. Paul showed up uninvited.  It pushed its way in and sat there.  It forced me to deal with it.

This is my Thursday morning post.  Next post scheduled for Saturday morning before I go deliver girl scout cookies with my daughter.

Bridges 29 and 31

Bridge #31, pastel, 11x14, 2003

Bridge #29, colored pencil, 9x12, 2002

At this point in the series, the class is over and I am back home in my busy life and even though I kept at it for awhile, shortly after #29 I stopped creating new bridges until the next year.  Looking around my new house in the suburbs, I saw the garden and that wishing well.  The bridge became background, but it is still there.

That might mean that #31 is actually the beginning of a new series.  It is hard to tell.  Isn't all of life a series.

The next ones are quite obviously bridges, so no use fussing over the name.