Journal Entry

I need to get re energized with my art projects.  How do you re energize when you are running on empty?   Am I just dragging because it is cloudy and gray and spring just will not come soon enough.  We keep getting these gray and windy days.  How do you feed your soul when it is hungry, but you don't know what to feed it.  I have little 20-30 minute chunks of time and I think I need a longer chunk.  I will be starting a life drawing class in May but still don't have a babysitter for that chunk.  I feel like I have to work really hard to be able to do anything, which when you have little energy to do something you don't what to use it all up before you get to the fun part.  I don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me but that is OK because this is a journal entry.  Maybe I am just tired because I am just getting over being sick.  This feeling doesn't seem to be a new one.  I have felt it before.  It is maybe most comfortable to not do anything so I don't fail.  Is it failure I am afraid of?  But if you don't try you have failed even before you have done anything so that doesn't make sense.  OK positive thinking ---- I am successful at everything I do.  Yes that is right, I am successful at everything I do.  I am not doing, OH maybe I am afraid of success? That is an interesting twist now isn't it.  What positive thinking statement can I come up with for that one??????

New Painting

This is not the best photo of my new painting.  I had a lot of fun with this one.  I like abstract expressionism,  I will be looking for a new artist to study.  Anyone have a suggestion for a May artist?

Springtime

Springtime is so busy.  I have not done much painting but have been to a couple museums.  I love looking at art.  Sometimes I get it and other times I wonder what might have been going on in the artists mind that I just don't get.  I went to the Art Museum at Colby college, it was great.  They have a collection of John Marin paintings.  My favorite painting at the museum was one called Night Rain, I can't remember the artists name but plan on going back and finding out.  I always think I am going to remember things then I forget.  I hope this is not a sign of me getting older.  I also went to the Portland Museum of Art.  That was fun but I was starting to get sick so it was not as much fun as it could have been.  I was not as impressed as at the Colby museum.  I am working on a painting and will post a new picture soon. 

Grace Hartigan

Grace Hartigan was a painter during the time when abstract expressionism  was just moving from Paris to New York.  She was a struggling artist in New York and became friends with Pollock, de Kooning and more who were at that time also struggling.  I was curious about Grace Hartigan because she was also a mother, but she gave her son to her ex-husband to raise and really hardly saw him if ever.  She lived a life of poverty and made are history by being the first woman artist to be internationally known.  The Museum of Modern Art bought one of her paintings and she is known for moving Abstract expressionism to Pop Art.  The love of painting took over her life completely.   It was her great love.

I don't know if we would have gotten along.  I do not understand how someone can give up parenting to do painting.  Love doesn't run out, it grows.  I have a hard time not judging on this one.  I like to think of myself as non judgmental but sometimes it is hard to understand the diversity.  I do like some of her art work and I respect her passion for painting but I can't get past some of the personal choices that she made,  I guess I have some growing to do.

Now the search for a woman artist who is a mother and an artist at the same time.  None of this one or the other crap.

Circles

I had fun painting this one too.  I guess I will be moving back to the more challenging work and my artist study.  Grace Hartigan here I come.

Finding Order in My Life

Well I needed to find some order and have fun with paint.

This is what I made.  It was fun. 

Now circles.

April Funk

Please help me get out of this funk.  I had a beautiful sketch and then ruined it with paint.  I hate that.  I was too attached to an idea.  This growing into an artist thing is hard.  I haven't had any time to paint except at night, then the colors are not right because I don't have good lighting.  OK I am done complaining for today.  I am going to try to repair the painting, or just paint it all white and start over.

Grace Hartigan

So I missed yesterday.  We had a blizzard for April Fool's Day and we lost power for the whole day and still do not have power back.   I can't use the internet at my house, so I made a trip to town so I could post my April Artist.

Grace Hartigan is a woman abstract expressionist.  She was not professionally trained.  So I can identify with her a little.   I will do more research and post what I find in the next week.

I will also be getting some more pictures posted as soon as I have internet at my house.