The Little Book

I had been waiting with great expectations for the sketchbook to arrive, well it did, late but it is here. I had had some vision that I would have the project all ready mentally and proceed to put the pencil to paper, boy I was delusional. I feel like a dear in headlights, frozen, what should I do? How should I do it? What if it turns out badly? I would have thought age might have been an advantage, yet I am just as unsure as many of my fellow artists doing this same project. I have given great thought to, "Its Not Easy Being Green", my sketchbook subject. To many ways to read into that. Is this to be contrived or free flow work? I know it is whatever I want it to be. So I will take the weekend and Sunday I will have a plan, no I will start to sketch.

White Noise a poem by S. M. Smith

White Noise

As I sit before this big white mirror

Textured canvas of the seer

Does it reflect a vision dear

Perhaps bright light of moments past

Will this be the matrix of such thin and fragile glass?



This blank slate awaits

It craves my brush with human lust

Shall the mark I make be filled with hope?

Shall it state all that cherished fate?

Perhaps that moments passed

Now it is too late

In waiting have I lost my faith



A white solid door

Behind wide closed eyes runs the pigment of desire

Passions lost

Paid at such a human cost

I can paint no more



Texture rough with tooth

This shall hold such naked truth

Reaching from creative core

Paint

Paint until there is no more

Paint the greed

War that

Turned man into its wretched whore



Stark and white

Foreboding wall rising high

I hear your demanding cry

You'll leach from me until I am barren and devoid

Of empathy

A brush held worn and muddied

Shed hairs of youth

Glued in bondage

A creator's truth of lost creative

Time


White noise of conscience

Driven to produce

A golden mean

A perfect vision

Balanced and pristine

The value humanity has lost

A palette of such wanton waste

Paint

Paint the lines now etched into

Earths face

S. M. Smith

The Barn, a night in this artist's life

The Barn At Night
Unable to sleep, the whole night has crept closer to dawn and the dogs' snoring has become annoying, no longer that white noise I needed to sleep. "It's not easy being green," just what does that mean? Green such as the color or green? Or green as in environmental practices? Perhaps it is like the "Sound Of Grass Growing At Night," an out of the box phrase to call on the creative instincts of the artist. No matter what it means it is costing me good sleep as my mind flashes images of Kermit the frog to solar and wind power. Even a 7-up can at the bottom of some lovely babbling brook in the forest, a green glint of sun bouncing off that can and reflected back towards the heavens. Once the mind starts there is no slowing it. "Just shut up" I whispered at the soundly sleeping dog in the dark. Like that dog could have heard me anymore then I could see that black Labrador, Pandora, snuggled in the jostled blankets on the bed in the darkness. My feet found the floor as I groped and found my empty water glass, a drink of water just might help I thought. I opted not to turn on the light, no need to wake my bed partners for my lack of sleeping ability. Glugg glugg, a huge bubble of air thumped against the plastic five gallon cooler bottle, I squeezed that spigot harder and watched the water flow into the glass. It was so loud that my busybody mare at the barn heard me up, her nicker sounded in the darkness and of course that rattle of metal bars followed as she struck the fence with her front foot in her defiant demand for attention. Sassy-Brat, she had been appropriately named, like most mares she could have the "tude." People who are not in the company of horses think that the stallion is the ruler of his herd, nope! Mares, the lead mare to be more exact, makes all the decisions and establishes the chain of command, that stallion is just kept around to donate semen and run off predators. When your daily life is with horses you can not keep from learning their ways. It is interesting how others who are not horse people interpret horse's actions; even their calls have a tone and language. I walked slowly in the dark as I picked my path to the barn carefully, barefooted was not the brightest of choices, but my footgear was in the bedroom and I knew the dogs would get startled if I retrieved them. All that barking would wake the dead. As I reached the feed room I switched on the light and voiced a soft hello to Sassy as she greeted me at her gate. Pressing my palm against the wire her exhale felt warm and moist as she pushed her muzzle to my hand. I sipped my water and we both stood together in the night, peaceful companions. I could tell it would be dawn soon, that light was on the horizon now and my eyesight was much keener. I could now make out Poe, he had been clanking in his cage and chuckled in that raven voice of his, followed by his clicking like the latch on the stall doors. Poe poe poe poe, he whispered softly. I had said that to him thousands of times as I had fed that injured fledgling while I stuffed his craw with enriched ground round. Poe had been raised in the house but as he grew he had become very messy, being a carrion eater he loved to let his meat ripen, not a smell I cherished for a room freshener. So now Poe has a large flight cage by the barn and he very much enjoys making all the barn noises, he is very good at it and chuckles often over his performances. Beware little children; I should make a sign for Poe's cage as he loves to sucker them into poking a finger through the wire. "Ah a little worm just for me", as the child runs off crying, Poe chuckles. I think ravens are smart, Poe is. Walking back to the barn proper, I stopped at the first stall. Quietly I peeked in on Chexy with this years foal; we call Pockets, both resting in the stall together. I started past Shug's stall and she nickered asking for a bit of feed, I stopped and kissed her soft lip as she pressed it through the bars, which looked like a camels lip. Lingering a little longer to take in the smells of the barn and the damp night air I could hear the noises of the world around me waking, our rooster crowed in his rough raw call, not very pretty sounding like that cock-a-doodle-do you expect, but still I can hear the beginning of distant road noises of those driving long distances to get to jobs in big crowded cities. I peered into my glass, now empty and thought "It's not easy being green," that was a strange statement and I felt the need to do some sketching, the light was now fully dawn and my barefoot path-picking was much easier.

This Artist Life

Birth Of A Soul

"That explains it" I have heard this comment more then once in a conversation I am having with a person I have just met. To this day I am not totally sure exactly what they mean. "Explains it," that I am doing what I am doing or how I see the world around me? I have never been able to muster up the courage to ask them what they mean by that. Of course, I like to think asking might in some way be thought rude. Maybe I have just sort of assumed it meant I had some little quirk they had thought they noticed, an eccentricity that was setting me apart from most. That artist badge one might think sets one apart from the norm, from the average flow of cloned humans. Or I might think even more, deeper thoughts of somehow being special in some way. Yet all thought a bit self absorbed and somewhat meaningless in the whole of daily living. Its interesting what society has deemed different about artists. An Artist, I've been one all my life, like my gender, it just is what it is so I would not notice even if it was different. Never questioned who or what I am, I am not suffering from artist dissociative disorder. I am undertaking an exploration into this artist's life and at my age that is a vast amount of ground that needs covering. And you the reader, welcome to my journey. The image is titled Birth of an Artists Soul. It is the first in my blogger sketchbook. I am free flow drawing, just letting the drawing thing happen with no expectations of subject or outcome.

As I study this the image is coming from the darkness forward, into the light. Light is a key factor to my work, it is for most artists. I am a big fan of eyes, yes all the chatter about windows to the soul, pools of passion, as cliché as those phrases are I find they are fact. Eyes are expression and that magnetism feature of the face we are drawn towards. As an infant is pulled to gaze into it's mother's eyes we are drawn to the eyes of a subject. As artists we struggle to capture the depth and breath of the eye. My own attempt to do the same, capture and search for answers, those answers that my own mother has taken with her. She taught me to draw eyes, I relayed that at her memorial a few years back, after I found out about her death by accident. A phone conversation with an ex in-law who related her mothers own passing two years prior to mine. That had been two years before that phone call, I would have thought time would have made her passing less painful, but it was at best a childish wish.

I held a memorial for my mother in our back yard pool side. She would have liked that I thought, she enjoyed the seaside and sunning herself. I shared the story about the drawing of eyes. Remembering once finding an old black leather folder with fashion illustrations in my grandparent's basement, my mother's maiden name neatly printed in one corner of the yellowed brittle paper. A slender fine featured lady in an emerald period formal gown stood poised like a model posing on a stylish runway, her eyes deep blue, seemed to focused on you with a pursed provocative gaze. Mother taught me how to draw those very eyes.

A photo of my mother and me in a frame surrounded with vases and several dozen of the deepest red long stemmed thorn-less roses I could find sat on a pedestal draped with white. Only two photos to chose from, one a black and white of the two of us lounging on the lawn with a big white cat, taken by my stepfather or the photo of my mother in front of Fairview hospital, after one of the few visits to see my brothers and sister, taken by my father, the one I chose. I was standing next to her, looking rather pensive as she stood in her beautifulness, hair pulled into a lovely French twist and her high heals, my mother turned many men's heads when she passed.

I had spent time the night before the memorial pressing a white linen tablecloth to set the photo and vases on. I thought of the time she had taken to teach me how to iron and the little secret of a drop of my father's aftershave in the iron water as I steam pressed his shirts. I know that thought made me smile as I carried on that tradition when I ironed my husband's shirts. As I told the story about the eyes, I focused on the still-life, red roses, old photo and the whiteness of that cloth, free of creases - a still life.

Memory for visual detail, I call on it frequently when creating works; wood grain, light refraction through water and the effect of light on objects. All this recall for detail has supported my love of capturing it's essence in my works. I don't think as an artist I am unique in regards of a good memory. Having had the good fortune of spending time among fellow artist's observing them creating with little need of reference material while working proved that details are pulled consistently from the minds eye and gives the viewer a glimpse of the artist's perspective. Getting lost in detail, detail like the inside of an abalone shell, each different in pattern and the reflection of its pearly iridescent colors. Soap bubbles have the same colors swirling around on their external surface, creating a pattern that is only in existence for seconds. Two things so different yet share such an uncommon detail of color patterns. Memories, times change yet we keep a vision as tack as the best photo and recall the simplest and most complex of images, feelings and thoughts through our lifetime, like the works of the masters. Moving forward constantly from darkness into the light. An art term I keep in mind that has made a great impression on my work is, "It is the darkest before the dawn." How bright the light, can only be known by its value next to the dark. Darkness gives depth and breath to lightness. In the memorial still-life it is the darkness of the rose that gives such light to the cloth and the eyes in the photo pull us closer and hold our attention - if only for that moment.

I like using my fingers when I paint. Pushing a little pigment that needs blending or an edge that may need softened to fall back from the foreground, less significant, but just as important to the finished work. Perhaps it is an attachment to the fingerprinting I did in my first years in school, the feel of the pigment moving and forming images.