Let Love Rule

 

Down to Earth

Earth and Trail, 1

Earth and Trail, 2

Earth and Trail, 3

Earth and Trail, 5



Earth and Trail, 4

Earth and Trail, Down to Earth

Earth and Trail, down to earth, head in the clouds, feet on the ground, grounded, air head, ethereal lightness of being.  Straight and narrow.  The road less traveled.  I did it my way.  Straighten up and fly right. 

 

This year I have painted most everyday, but slowly, with lots of breaks spent outdoors. I have ignored trying to market my art and have had no shows this year.  I have vegetated, and grown my roots.  Tendrils strong and weak probing the moist Louisiana earth. 

I painted the series, "POP Religion", in about 2011 to 2014.  A series that occupies a small corner of slanted thinking, A niche of convoluted confabulation.  I invented a multilayered charming theory, a personal pantheon, a fantastic theology, and communicated it with pictures and words.

http://janetboydart.blogspot.com/p/pop-religion.html

So, I spent a few years on an idiosyncratic body of work.  I had two small shows in 2014.  A solo show of about 18 POP Religion pictures at Donna Duffy's beautiful Tripolo Gallery and two paintings included in an Antennae Gallery show curated by Gerald White.  I received a lot of good and satisfying praise from these shows. 

But...but...people often made comments about the strangeness of the work.  And,  "Why don't you paint landscapes?"  To which I huffily replied,  "Everyone paints landscapes." 

I have a close connection with nature.  I live on acreage in the deep country and take walking meditations in the woods, swamps and creek banks here.  Landscapes have frequently popped up in my work over the past decades. 

And, so, I began to paint landscapes more seriously.  This gave my poor overwrought mind a bit of a rest.  That inner radio still buzzes, at times, with arabesques of thought knots, but not as cacophonous as before.  The pictures still suggest a depth of experience.  I spent the whole year painting landscapes.  Gently absorbed with layout, color, brushstrokes and portrayal of subjective material imagery. 

I hope you like these pictures.

 

 

The year 2015 is closing with short sunny days and long dark nights.  My best time is spent pruning the woods.  With hand tools I carve trails and small fields in the fervent, fertile Louisiana jungle.  I dream of collaborating with nature to create a paradise of beauty and wild food.  My collaborator has her own ideas. Canopy falls and flooding and febrile unstoppable natural growth oft go astray from my impossibly idealistic plans.

 

With hand tools, pruner and large branch cutter, my current gardening project is carving out an elder patch.   In the rich and damp soil close to the creek, Elder grows wild.  She grows wild, but competes with the devilish privet and the aggressive wild grape.  Elder is beautiful, provides food and medicine.  Her ancient reputation asserts majical powers.

 

 

I believe in ten impossible before breakfast.  I believe in the impossible, because belief in the arid rational, that which consensual reality considers real, depresses me.  What with the warming climate, and the twisted politicians, and the immeasurable number of refugees running for their lives, things that I know I cannot change.  I believe in my own self created, voluntary delusions to get me through the day. Out damn spot.  Text message Mr. Clean.

 I believe in creating a belief system with roots and branches. I believe in keeping your belief systems lite.  Because, we are frequently wrong.

 I believe that one small person with a few hours a week and small tools can create a natural wild food garden.  I believe that I can encourage the wild plants that I want for their beauty or utility, that I  can make a trail flourishing with wild nutrition, there for the picking. Come see, you can walk and nibble delicious wild things, until your tummy is satisfied.   Bring back Eden, make friends with the snake.

 Maybe, I have a thousand years to encourage the useful plants and "weeds".  Well, no, that wont happen, my brain, though flexible, cannot ignore insidious insipid decrepitude.  Impossible dreams.

 I believe that I can be compassionate and loving in all my encounters with fellow humans.  Well, I try to be compassionate, but true deep understanding is beyond  my abilities to love, so I will try to just be kind and present.  My intentional attention, my focus and eye contact, will assist a dear person to jettison their sincere belief of finding the savior in a bottle. Sure, I believe that. 

 I believe that I might not be totally human, but an alien high bred. Scratch that one, I don't want you to think that I am a nut.

 Is that ten?? Ten impossible beliefs?  Impossible things, but necessary for me, for a mind set that keeps me on an even keel, that hides the confusion inside, that may even pass as consensual reality sanity. 

Impossibly, I believe, that nature will provide if you give her enough compost and kisses.  Some strong, but weak idea that I can get a divorce from the consumer role at the grocery store, I want relief from trying to choose the softest and most economical tissue paper from a cacophony of choices. I believe that I can eat wild leaves with ten times the nourishment of canned spinach, and ten times the taste bud satisfaction.  See me ambling in the woods, eating a leaf here and there. My  feet barely touching the ground.  Almost levitating.  Well, not really.

 

 

Elderberry Plant

 

Elder berry plant, sambucus nigra, is a small tree that grows prolifically when give its own space.  The flowers are beautiful, perfumed, and make a heavenly cordial.  The berries are used for wine, jam, and medicinal preparations.  The trunk  has a hollow core that is made into flutes.  But the trunk is poisonous and must be dried before putting to the lips. 

 

http://www.sacredearth.com/ethnobotany/plantprofiles/elder.php

 

The mythology of elder goes back to pagan times.  The plant was, sacred, used in ritual for the Goddess.  See the above link for details.

 

Well, dear friends and readers, I will go now, with my small tools, and labor to remove the undesirable privet and grape. from the Elder patch. I will assign another patch for the delicious wild and sweet grapes. Then after an hour or so of gentle exercise, I will go to the studio and put another thin wash of translucent paint onto thick pebbly textured paper.

 

 

These paintings "Earth and Trail", have been created in this year of 2015.  They are 16"X20", acrylic on Strathmore paper.  I hope that you like them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

Iris and Rose

 

 

 

 

 

Alter Altar in Amber

Alter Altar in Amber

 





Notice:

I just read an important notice from Google, something about Europeans and cookies and that I should confirm whether or not something or other is working.  I am putting this chore on my to do list and will complete it when I have time.  Since writing this blog is about the limit of my computer literacy, complying with this notice will take a lot of time. I may be able to find time between nap time and couch potato time. I think that I have some time in my closet.  I will put on head gear to protect me from a potential product (stuff) avalanche, before I open the closet door, to search for more time.  Please bare with me until I do get around to regulating what ever rigmarole ragtime riff raff that I should rig up.  I am pretty sure that I have cookies in my kitchen, so I will go and take care of them now.  I am giving notice that I may or may not have cookies on this blog.

Cate Blanchett, TimeSpace

 

Cate Blanchett, TimeSpace, Dissolving

Digital painting, 5/15

 

 

Cate Blanchett, TimeSpace, Squared

Digital painting, 5/15

 

                                 Cate Blanchett, TimeSpace, Elvin Queen

Digital painting, 5/15

 

 

 

 

Cate Blanchett, Close Up

Digital painting, 5/15

 

 

 



Cate Blanchett, Magnetic Eyes

Digital painting, 2013

 



 

Cate Blanchett as the Elvin Queen, in Lord of the Rings, knocked my socks off.  So ethereal!  Airy. Ethereal as in from higher plane of existence.  Cate and the movie crew made me FEEL the ethereal plane.  Facilitating the experience of being knocked into expanded consciousness is, to me, the highest function of art. 

 

I am subject to alternative states of consciousness.  Isn't everyone?  No, I guess not.  As a child I had "episodes" when I saw ethereal energy.  My mind checked out of consensual reality and went to a different place, maybe a holy place?  When people around me noticed me "blanking out"  they often did something to jerk me back, like swatting me.  As if to say, "Get with the program". 

 

So, now and again, art will knock me out.  Especially visual art, paintings. 

 

The idea for the primary picture here, "Cate Blanchett, TimeSpace Dissolving"  came to me with images of the speed lines of cartoons.  I first saw a face, broken up with speed lines.  Then I knew to paint it with the face of the Elvin Queen.  I downloaded several Blanchette faces to Photoshop.  Studied the faces to find the features that best fit my vision.  I digitally painted the face and then proceeded to chop and dice it into speed lines.  The "dissolving" part is the disassembled face illustrating how time and also the space we inhabit, comes and disappears. 

 

Even spaces change, the space of a moment disappears as slight changes make a different space.  Even your bedroom looks a bit different every time that you look at it.  The light from windows certainly changes.  The wrinkles of the bed linens change.  In addition,  your perceptions change with changes in your mental state.  A happy mood gazes on sunshine, and sunshine lifts your mood to happier.  Inversely, blue mood = faded perceptions.  Perceptions in the particular miniscule piece of time, are fleeting.  Every second reality makes small or large changes, and the previous reality is lost to time.  If the experience makes a lasting impression, then you may have the partial recall of the event with memory.

 

As I was chopping and dicing the beautiful face of Cate Blanchett, I noticed that a four pointed symmetrical image appeared, I liked the eyes forming a square.  I played with that direction and created "Cate Blanchett, TimeSpace Squared".  To balance the square image in the rectangular frame I copied a square of the center of the image and fitted four of these squares into a red panel. 

 

As I was working, I came across an old digital Blanchett picture, "Cate Blanchett, Magnetic Eyes",  created in 2013, and added it to this to the presentation.  

 

Well, I gotta go now.  My programing is wearing off.  I need to watch the fear tube for a few hours to get with the program.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Vitruvian Man Riff

Vitruvian Man Riff

 

 



 

Detail



Detail



 





 

 

 

Detail



This picture of Vitruvian Man Riff, is a digital image, I also have created a similar wall art picture, formed by printing out collage sections of the digital subject and collaging them on to board with a background of acrylic painting.

The face was inspired by Johnny Depp.  I have shamelessly appropriated from Leonard da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, and adorned (or defaced, take your pick) the beautiful body with images from my original digitally painted image gallery.  Da Vinci was inspired by  De Archtectura, Book III, by the architect Vitruvius, which illustrates ideal body proportions.

I have mashed up a selection of my images (which were, mostly, reimagined from previous images by other artists) that interest me onto the perfectly proportioned body.

Post internet artists are mining classical art images and transforming, reimagining, them in creative ways. There is a banquet of inspiration in internet pictures.  When artists transform previous images it is similar to Janis Joplin performing a riff on Kris Kristofferson's song Bobby McGee. 

There is a long history of visual artists borrowing from history.  (Nothing is created in a vacuum,)  For example Gustave Courbet riffed on the Jean Ingres picture The Source.  Ingres referenced an earlier picture The Aphrodite of Cnidus.  Numerous artists, including myself, have reimagined The Source since Ingres. 

According to Wikipedia Di Vinci's drawing illustrates perfect human proportions, these proportions  correlate with classic geometry and architecture.  In modern times the drawing has been appropriated frequently, has been used in logos and advertising, so, it is a familiar icon.

I am signing off now.  Live long and prosper.

Mary, Queen of Heaven, collage

 

Mary Queen of Heaven

photoshop image for collage on canvas

 

 

 

 

detail

 

 

 

This is the image that I am working on now.  Here you see the digital work that has been done.  I have segmented this image into collage pieces to apply to a canvas.  I printed out the pieces and cut the images into collagable segments.  A background has been painted on canvas.  It looks beautiful,  cobalt blue and pthalo tint blue acrylic painted with loose and free brush strokes forming glowing rays onto the canvas. Now I am ready to glue the digital collage elements onto the canvas.

 

I am working on the canvas (24"hX16"w) and hope to get it photographed and posted here soon.  The photograph may not happen soon, because it is spring and I am enjoying working in my garden.

 

This canvas continues the POP Religion series with a Mary is My Muse theme.  It is similar to the previous work called,  Mary, Queen of All. Which is in the collection of Donna Duffy, owner of Tripolo Gallery in Covington, LA.   Both paintings are based on a common and easily recognizable, traditional Christian Mary picture. 

 

In the heart area, shown in the detail, is a picture of Baby God Crying.  Well,  I think that we all have a squalling infant bundled in a small corner of our hearts.  I am not sure about you, but I do at times experience infantile rage aching.  My inner baby still screams from time to time, frustrated when she does not get her way. 

 

Some of the input into the production of POP Religion, comes from introspection.  Other input is traditional global religious myths.  But, I am confused, still confused, trying to sort it all out.   Actually, I am reconciled with being confused.  Long ago, I decided that "not knowing" could be reframed as "appreciation of deep mystery".

 

Another theme that my work expresses is humor about the human condition.  A condition so baffling and irrational the you gotta laugh.

 

When doing a collage, I try to put it all together, I use many images from my personal digital library created over a period of several years.  Included here are  Jagger Devil (a funny image), Belushi Bacchus, Marilyn Aphrodite, Ganesh, Beatles, and my high school graduation picture which I have Warholed.  There are about 30 images arranged to fit into the traditional Mary picture.

Gotta go now, my garden is calling.  Thanks for looking.