Horse Sampler,#1, for Dave, realistic

digital, 1/2020

Horse Sampler,#2, abstracted

digital, 1/2020

Dave asked me to make a picture of a horse.  I puttered around a while before deciding to do it.  I set my creative intention to be realistic, because that is what Dave likes.  After making the realistic horse in Photoshop I wanted to abstract the picture.  So i made up some loose guidelines.  I thought of diamond shapes, I thought about Harlequin patterns.  This was a lot of fun.  

Today, I worked on another pair of pictures, but with female figures instead of horses.  The realistic figures are almost done and i started abstracting them today. I am exercising my style tools, and doing something rather new.  I follow my muse.  I keep the art interesting, changing my guidelines, a bit here and a bit there.  I never get bored photo-shopping and painting.

The next thing that I want to do with the horse, is to blow him up.  I am excited to see how that will look. 

If that is not enough, working on four px's at once, I am also doing another thing even more out of my usual zone.  I have made some painted drift wood sculptures that looks fantastic.  I need to buy a new camera to get quality of photos of the sculptures.  Been doing the research on that.

Three Graces, Good Vibrations

Three Graces, Good Vibrations

digital, 12/14/19

Three Graces with Cardinals

digital painting, 12/2019

References an ancient Greek marble statue.

"Nike Popped"

Close up of "Nike Popped"

See my new series.  Floating World  Click link  to go to new page.

https://janetboydart.blogspot.com/p/floating-world.html

 

Floating Couple with Baby and Deer

acrylic on canvas, 30"x40", 6/19

 

Detail

Detail

 Floating Couple with Flowers

acrylic on paper, 18"x24", 6/19

 

 

 

 

Floating Couple in Pencil

pencil on Strathmore paper, 9"x11", 5/19

Flower of Life

acrylic on cold pressed paper, 9"x12", 4/19

These few pictures, record the recent evolution of my visual ideas.  I chose these px's, out of many, to summarize an artistic exploration of several visual, artistic, ideas.  The top picture shows my latest picture, the emergence of a painting, the flowering, the growth, of an artistic stream. 

My work continues to lead me along a wide and wandering path of visible invention.  I will be 75 years old soon.  Art has been my most steady friend.  Always available, like a listening ear, but visual, a conversation with myself.  Making art, expressing the essence of my existence, an escape from the box of conformity, to mold my mind, to reinvent myself, as I transverse this particular (and peculiar)  time/life of unique experience.  A piece of paper, a canvas, is a small piece of real estate, where I make up the rules.  A white rectangle of material offers unlimited freedom of expression.  Yes, it is about me, me, me; but I want to communicate, to reach you, and you and you.  To let loose the babble of my mind. 

Here am I.  What ever that means.  Here I am reaching out to communicate with you.  We are all both the same and different.  Our individual minds are a blob of almost incomprehensible jelly packed with a jillion  neuron wires sealed in a bowl of bones.  Art is a way to transport ideas from my bone bowl to your bone bowl. (OK, that was funny. Sometimes I just cant help myself.) We are each alone until we courageously  perform authentic communication. 

OK, enough of that cacophony.

These four pictures are a summary of the progression of ideas.  Starting with the bottom picture, and progressing to the top picture.

 I became interested in the "Flower of Live".  A basic pattern that is part of "Sacred Geometry".  I watched  a lot of You Tube videos.  I played with the pattern, using a compass and other devices that had lain useless for years in a studio box. The Flower of Life penetrated my dreams.  I awoke slowly in the morning with visions of the flower dancing in my head.  The videos explained that the flower pattern illustrated how everything, material and immaterial, fits together. 

The bottom acrylic painting illustrates the pattern. 

Next, I played with pencil on paper.  As I sketched, casually, I wanted my art to be happy.  Much art is angry.  Ugly art is trendy. There is too much anger in the world.  Buddha said,  "That which you attend to grows".  I want to grow joy. 

I reexplored the work of Marc Chagall.  His floating couple is joyful.  I riffed on his couple.  Making simple lines and shapes.  I wanted it graceful.

 The couple wanted a baby.  So I brought in Keith Haring to birth a baby.  Then the baby needed a friend, a sitter, while Mom and Pop floated ecstatically in the heavens.  A gentle deer volunteered and was added to the picture.  A protective tree grew grounded and womb like, around the deer and baby.

Chagall and Haring reached across the years to help me with this series.  We are so blessed to have a glorious banquet of art history to enrich our lives and art.

 

Alter Altar

digital, 2015

 

 

This file was created in 2015, a few years past.  I began using this computer in 2012.  In three years I had created a collection of maybe a hundred or more visual images.   I chose my favorite characters from the collection in order to create these alternative altars.  Altars are places to worship divinities.  Since I am so confused, not sure who or what to worship, I created altars that cover many belief systems.  And added a few idiosyncratic characters just for fun. 

 

Am I really confused.  No.  Yes. 

 

Previous to 2012, I had another computer.  Since it crashed I have been unable to access the few hundred images files on that computer.  Buddha said, "Everything changes but change itself". Get used to it, Grasshopper.

 

Did you know that Marilyn Monroe was the reincarnation of Venus and Aphrodite?   This was Hot News!  just a few years ago.  Subject to a big controversy between different belief system factors.  But what was Hot News!  just a few years ago has almost passed into oblivion.  You know the news cycle,  topics flick in and out like a Bic.  So, I brought up the subject so it wont be completely forgotten.   

 

I know that some people will find these pictures offensive.  It is hard to know what to say to those people.  I would have to start with my strict fundamentalist Christian childhood.  Very strict.  My parents tried to beat the devil out me and my siblings.  They tried to cram me into a very small box.  Finding my own way has been a long and continuing journey.  I know how judgmental and narrow self righteous people can be.  Me, with a bit of PTSD going on, with my Christian programming going on, my mind is on the alert for criticism. 

 

So what can I say to critics??  I want to expand your mind.  Stretch out. Humans have made many stories to explain human existence.  No one mind set can explain it all.  There is truth in many places.  Truth is more than we can comprehend with our rational minds. 

 

We are one.  Love one another.