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.