To See Beyond the Dogma

Digital painting, created 2/21/13

 

 

To See an Angel

detail of To See Beyond the Dogma

 

 

detail

 

 

To See Beyond the Dogma was created, according to my files, on 2/21/13.  I have been painting in the studio, so do not have a new digital image to post at this time.  This image was created about 14 months past and illustrates, especially by the title, my enduring concern with religion and spiritualty. 

 

After a childhood of physical abuse in the name of THE LORD, I had a plethora of hungry issues.  I foraged in the hills and the valleys, in the cities and the wilderness, grazing on food for my soul.  I have been a Methodist, and a, I forgot what you call it, an extreme form of Christian, oh yea, a Fundamentalist.  I have been an agnostic, an atheist, and a pantheist.  A freethinker and a Buddhist and a New Ager. If I had only stopped at agnostic, my brain would not be as overstuffed as a Kardashian Kloset.  A vague, freeform pantheism best satisfies my spiritual hunger.   

 

I have had "spells"  of mystical states since childhood.  I don't know why some people, like me, are inflamed with a spiritual itch, and other people think that the whole searching endeavor is ridiculous.  I am resigned to being confused in my verbal mind, but fairly content in my soul.  It is more than words.  It is the occasional experience of ecstatic states that convinces me there is more to life than concrete reality.

 

And, you know, I try to be kind and loving.

 

A few weeks ago Second Son and Grandgirl and I were in the feed and seed store shopping for parts for the wood burning stove.  I said to Son, within earshot of Grandgirl, "We brought you here to sell you".  Grandgirl thought that this was funny (funny points for Gramma).  I thought that it was very funny because it was so daring.  Son was not pleased.  I need to apologize.  Later, I felt ashamed, and resolved to edit my speech better.  I resolved to be kinder. 

 

I was reading, "Anna Karenina" by Tolstoy.  Near the end of the one thousand pages, Levin, (the character that Tolstoy most identified with), had a spiritual epiphany and decided that after all the philosophical catastrophe could be easily solved with simple kindness.  He resolved to be more kind.  Shortly after that he was riding in his buggy and berated his servant driver over an insignificant incident. 

 

The next time I saw my son I ganged up with his wife to gently pick on him.  This won me much needed points with Daughter in Law, but Son was annoyed.  This kindness practice takes practice.  I will keep trying. 

 

The angel in this picture was downloaded and worked in Photoshop.  She is a vintage ceramic piece.  I salute the people who designed and created her, whoever they are.  Her eyes are rolled back in her head, eyes rolling back can signal a mystical trance. 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 



Mary Ascending

Digital Painting

 

 

Hey Y'all,

 

 

I haven't been posting lately because it is the busy season for obfuscating and extrapolating.  I downloaded a daffodil and damaged my Dingbat.  After an indecent week of intensive introspection, I am glad to report that Dingbat has recovered to a previous level of deliberate denial. You know, it is just one glitch after another.  Giggling seems to help with a gaggle of glitches.  I have also been having trouble with incurable incompetent alliteration, if anyone knows a cure for this please leave a comment. 

 

 

 

 

Here's hoping that all your glitches don't constipate your gizzard,

 

 

Janet

Sandra Blair, A Time Warp Portrait

 

Sandra Blair, A Time Warp Portrait

 



A few weeks ago Sandra posted an 80's photo of herself on Face Book. The wide shouldered dress reminded me of pictures of my mother from the forties.  Sandra and I FB chatted.  I quipped that with Photoshop, I could put my mother's 40's hairdo on Sandra.  She said, "Oh, do it, that would be so cool!"  I thought about doing the px for a few days, because I knew, that once started, it would be a time commitment to complete.  Soon, I knew that I wanted to do the portrait. 

 

Why do art??  There are many answers to this question.  One of the most compelling is curiosity to see how the picture will develop.  There are surprises involved in working a picture.  A hundred small decisions, color, line, texture, and composition decisions add up to something that has never been seen before.  If the inspiration is viable then the time spent crafting an image is rewarded with a beautiful NEW creation. 

 

Sandra Blair was organizer and the sizzling Queen of Krewe of Clones for about seven years in the 80's. Krewe of Clones was a large and popular artist Mardi Gras marching parade connected with the Contemporary Arts Center.

 According to my understanding, the Crewe of Rex (the oldest Crewe) was established to parody the royalty of Europe.  Krewe of Clones was established to spoof Crewe of Rex. And now, Crewe de Vieux has inherited the out of control satire mantle of Krewe of Clones.

 

 What a wonderful decade the eighties were for me and mine.  We, an excitable pack of good friends and family, hot children in the city, were the "Hemorrhoid Marching Klub", creating costumes and mobile "sculptures" for the parade!  Why?, you may ask, as many other baffled people have questioned, did you call it "Hemorrhoid  Marching Klub?  The answer is simple, "Because hemorrhoids are disgusting".  Yes, that was the decade when I learned how to avoid "good taste".  When I graduated from being hemmed in by appropriate behavior rules, a bigger world opened to my consciousness.  This gave my art the freedom of a rebel, made me a committed nonconformist supported by a band of unruly misfits.   

 

I am sorry Mother, and I apologize to my loving Aunts,  you taught me well, but I had to escape the prison of being a good girl.  Decades have passed, if you, careful teachers and role models, are still turning over in your grave, then you must be very dizzy.  But, I imagine that you are looking down from above, lounging on a cloud, wearing elegant angelic palazzo pajamas, flipping through the channels of your descendants (the saints and the sinners) reality shows.  I imagine that you "get it" now, that you understand why I needed to explore outward from the strictures of good breeding.

 

Sandra Blair, as Queen of Clones, was chief guide to the outer limits of wicked bad taste. Costumed as an over the top drag queen, she broke every rule in Miss Manners' stuffy book. She created her own blow your mind costumes.  Crafty woman, that Sandra.  

 

Somehow it is ironic that I would mate my mother's 'every hair in place' do with the face of the Queen of Divine Bad Taste.  Now, this is art, mashing up seemingly antagonistic elements.  And, this, is another good reason to make art.  Sometimes creating helps me to reconcile antagonistic elements of my life.  Better than therapy.  Better than chocolate.  Almost better than sex.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sandra Blair in the Eighties

Isnt she beautiful?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Angelina Jolie, Queen of the Night

 

 

Angelina Jolie

Queen of the Night

Happy Mardi Gras!

Belushi Bacchus

Oil on canvas, 36"x48", 2013



 

 

Jagger Devil

Acrylic on canvas, 36"x48", 2013

 

 

Happy Mardi Gras!!!



Katherine Hepburn Endures

 

Katherine Hepburn Endures

Epson inkjet print, recently completed

 

 

Katherine Hepburn's beautiful profile and stratostar cheekbones, digitally painted from a publicity portrait.  The background is a checkerboard perspective which references op art.  Using a continuous, mirrored pattern not only gives depth to the picture but also expands outward from the central vanishing point.  The pattern goes in and also expands outward, a trick for the eye, it replicates the movement of breath. 

 

Her celebrity face is transparent, uniting her with the vibrating checkerboard, so that we see her ethereal and eternally breathing.  An everlasting goddess. 

 

Katherine Hepburn made many movies and won four Oscars, a record for most Oscars ever won, that is still intact.  Her mother, a suffragette, raised her to be strong and independent, which imbued her life with unique, independent personality characteristics. She lived to be 93 years old and wrote her own life script until the end.

 

She was in the first film that I ever saw, when I was an impressionable, porous six years old.  The African Queen, with Kate playing a feisty missionary navigating a dangerous African river in a rickety boat, during WWII, with hunky Humphrey Bogart, has stayed with me all my life, humming a theme song in the background of my mind. 

 

 Katherine Hepburn's strength and independence align her with the Greek Goddess Diana. Maybe, she was a human incarnation of the mighty huntress Diana? 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Tube Head, DiVince/Digital

Tube Head

Da Vinci Goes Digital Series

 

This is a skull sprouting old TV vacuum tubes.  The inspirations was a very fine sketch of a skull by Da Vinci.  The background is a redesign of vintage French wall paper.  Hope that you enjoy it!