Painted plein air in Rocky Mountain National Park

          

When I paint, I aspire to have everything relate to everything else in a luminous energetic web.  I feel shapes and colors connecting with other shapes and marks and colors.   My goal is to create a light and atmosphere filled space in which everything corresponds to everything else through mysterious rhythmic connections.  Sometimes, changing one thing can collapse or connect the entire structure - that is part of the thrill. 

I've begun to play with another energetic web - the World Wide Web.  That play has brought an amazing amount of joy and opportunity into my life and made me focus on the sweetness and power of connecting.

Friday night I attended two openings and both made me think about the attention the artists had paid to connecting and making things happen.  They are shown with their work in the above photos.  On the left is Margaret Bobb at Calvary Church in Longmont, CO and on the right is Mike Brouse mikebrouse.com at St John’s in Boulder.   As I’ve watched them both over the past few years, I have been impressed by how they have attended to connections.  They seem to know that  being “discovered” is not a random act of the Universe. 

Memories flooded over me as I prepared to participate in a panel discussion about the movie “Who Does She Think She Is?” shown at the Boulder Valley art educators’ conference last week. If you would like to see the trailer, go to:
http://www.whodoesshethinksheis.net/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5lqg81eXo8<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5lqg81eXo8

The movie is about the forces from within that compel some women (men have it too, but the movie is about women) to become artists and the forces from without that attempt to keep women from such self expression.  It is a topic that I have given much thought to during decades in the art world.  The pressures against professional women artists have lessened enormously during this time – but only because of those who did it anyway, even if it did rock the boat.  They suffered but they didn’t drown; they got in the boat and sailed into a storm of prejudice due to inner necessity.
They knew that their spirits would die if they stayed tied to the dock of conventional gender roles.

Men as well as women are confined by the status quo.  The force of these negative pressures often capsizes my little boat, but eventually I get it back upright, climb in, and go out again. I now have the strength to say, “If you want to get on the boat, get on; but if you choose to stay on the dock, it’s ridiculous to get mad at me for not staying there with you.”

When alone in the studio and unsure of what I’m feeling, if I just start singing the truth comes out.   Spontaneous song making seems to open a clear channel to the heart.   As I worked on this painting, I had trouble with the person in the boat.  What was the meaning of the figure?  This was my song that day:

You sail away - I stand and stare.
Who you are; I don’t care.
I only know
I want to be
Just like you are - Sailing Free.

What are your thoughts?  To leave a comment, click on Comments below the title at the top of this post.

         This detail of “Winter on Gore Creek” shows the section of sky that I changed.
Above: “Careful Where You Step”  20"x 16" (Boulder, CO -  Flatirons from Chautauqua).  
Private Collection: Knoxville,Tennessee.

I needed to mix a color and apply it in a way that would express moving air and miles of space.  I didn’t want to tamper with the spirit of the painting; I just wanted to push the sky back so that it wouldn’t stick to the mountains.  The paint had to be put down with fresh free marks that would connect to the rhythms of the composition.  It could go wrong, and sometimes one thing leads to another and a painting slips away.  What was I thinking?  This wasn’t my painting!  But I did it anyway.

The painting had sold, the check had cleared, and here I was… painting on it.  This could be illegal or morally wrong.  But I HAD to do it.

I don’t stand alone (among artists) for this behavior; there are stories of artists sneaking into museums to “fix” something on one of their paintings.  Can you imagine a car dealer sneaking into your garage to make improvements on your vehicle?

Art is more of a Calling (or Nagging) than a business.  It was not between me and either my checkbook or the lovely collectors who bought the paintings – no, it was between me and some mysterious urge to do what I could to give a more full expression to my vision. 

Questions: Does your Muse drive you to try to improve your work even when it doesn't seem reasonable?  Are you ever completely satisfied?  To share your thoughts double click comments at the top of this post.

NYC lost its lawsuit that they had filed to try to prevent the sale ofthe Park Room mural.  Permission was given to auction it off with the other relics and memorabilia, but just when we expected it to come up for bidding, it disappeared from the board before the action started.  What happened?  
At the last minute, a behind the scenes deal was made and the New York Cit Parks Department purchased it.  I am thrilled that they wanted to keep the mural in its current position for the public to continue to enjoy.

Whew, for a moment there, I thought that no one wanted to spend $5,000 - the starting bid. 
The story is n the 1/20 New York Times. 

What a celebrations of painting! Bravo to all the Club Tuesday Painters.

All the art was appreciated and several pieces sold.  My studio had never been so packed with happy people.  Next time we will stage it in warm weather to make use of the garden - stepping back to view the art was not an option this time.

The class was offered another show (opening March 4th at the Haystack Mt. Clubhouse).

We express our gratitude to those who attended and to Ciatano Vineyards of Lyons, CO for donating the delicious wine.

With a tap of the wand and hundreds of taps of the hammer, the Club Tuesday art show was dressed for the ball (tonight's opening).  I suspected a fairy Godmother, and had been told to stay out of the studio. 

Isn’t this the way we always dreamed it would be?  Fairy tales put it in our craw.  I’ve slacked off,  kept my fingers crossed, and waited for this. I don’t mean yesterday while the FG was here; my entire career I have waited for that tap on my shoulder.

This time there was a Fairy Godmother, but behind the wand stands a real woman who has developed her skills for years (Tisha Wood of Casalta Design), and behind the labels and announcement stands another real woman (Mike Reynolds), who has also worked on her skills for years.   Hum … talent + “have-at-it" effort = Fairy Godmother.

It is such a magical transformation that I am going to keep the show up through noon, Tues. Jan. 19.  Call first if you want to come by and see it (303-541-9506), but you only get wine and cheese tonight from 6-9.

Enough about the space - the artwork amazes me.  I feel honored to be a part of such creative flowering. The artists have worked hard while they had fun and support in Club Tuesday.  They were busy tapping themselves, each other, and their canvases with magic wands.

To participate in the conversation, leave a comment.  Scroll to the top, and click on COMMENTS under the title.
Questions:  Do you wait for the Fairy Godmother?  What do you think of the CT show?

Floating in the blogosphere is best when friends stop by. I’ve only been out here five days, but by inviting the world to drop in, I’ve become aware that most of my friends get nervous exploring this terra incognita.  Me too, but I am so curious about this place that I have stood up to my technology terrors.  The crannies and codes I had feared turned out to be the portal into a magic land. 
You have gotten this far and found our virtual salon - do you want to seize the day (as the fish on my shed door in the photo recommends) and put together a Blog Post of your own? The Virtual Salon will be hosting guest bloggers! Whether or not you are aware of it, you are so creative and I’ll bet there is a lot you would like to write about.    Most of you have been letting me know in private that you would like to blog.  Here is a chance to try it - but it needs to be related to your life as an artist or lover of art. You can include photos.  
If you want to share your ideas with me privately, send me an email: Lillian@rockfire.com .  If you want to share your idea with the other Salonistas, click on Comments just under the title of this post.
To read the comments on previous posts, click on Comments below the title of those posts.

Questions: What do you want to rant about concerning art?  What do you want to share about making your art or loving art with the others who come here?  Does it inspire you to think of writing a post?

 
I was preparing my studio for the Club Tuesday Art Show when a storm blew in and knocked me into the blogosphere.
I had taken everything off the walls (even the pithy quotes intended to change my life someday).  I had found and dusted my desk and made little arrangements on its wide open spaces. Tidy stacks of paintings faced the wall as if in time out.  I sat down, looked around, and all that space seemed to be looking back asking, “What now?”  And that's when the blog blew in. Just like that, my studio started taking on an alternative life – invisible to the naked eye –it became A Virtual Salon. 
Whomever and wherever you are, if you are reading this, you are my guest here, so please, come in. Can I get you a cup of virtual tea?  I hope to create (with your help) a gathering place to discuss our creative lives.
This Salon may be in Cyberspace, but it really is here/ there – warm and exciting: a place for artists and lovers of art to come and enjoy themselves. 
Above is an invitation to the Club Tuesday Art show. If you are in town (Boulder, CO), please join us. It will be held in my studio on Jan. 15 from 6-9 p.m.  
By cleaning up for this show and putting my paintings and paints our of sight, this blog came into existence, so what happens when you change your space?

Today’s question: When you clean up / organize your work area, does it make space for something new in your creative life?
To read comments on this or any other post, look beneath the title of that post and double click on Comments. 

The photo above and the quote below are taken from the following on line article in the Bloomberg News.  http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aIn1uUVYKnfI

"The parks department said in an objection to the auction that it has a right to items including the wood paneling, custom plaster ceilings in the Crystal and Terrace rooms and a 19th- century Central Park scene by Lillian Kennedy.

The items “have become affixed to the premises and cannot be removed without irreparably damaging the space they occupy,” parks department lawyers wrote. Under a 1985 licensing agreement with the agency, any items considered “fixed equipment” belong to the city and not the restaurant, the lawyers said."