Here Comes the Sun

So, I love sunshine.  I need sunshine.  I live for sunshine. Without it every little infraction on the day is quite simply exacerbated exponentially.  So I am happy to say the sun warmed my soul today.  It lifted my heart and blessed me in some way.  I am so thankful for it (especially since my kids can be loud and active OUTSIDE for a change).

This brings me to my newly posted painting.  Here is an abstract I painted a year ago or so.  To me is has warmth and “galaxical” depth.

What cannot be seen from your screen is the metallic overtones the painting carries.  The sun itself its warm with golden luster and the light rings swirling about it are layered in highlights.  I loved making the circular motion with the paint brush.  If you have never done this I recommend picking up some paints and a good brush and practicing circular motions.  It is in some way therapeutic.  The repetitive motion simply relieves, refreshes, and gives a feeling of refinement to your muscles… That is until you do it for too long and wear yourself out (something I am not recommending, but to each their own).

It’s interesting how I take on abstract thinking… The sun had a limit.  The aura around it does too once it hits the darkening boarder.  It’s funny, even in my abstract views of objects I cannot help but find comfort in boundaries.   But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Surprise

So, for Joe’s dad’s 60th we all pitched in to get him a nice Nikon point and shoot.  I made him a card with a painting of the camera he got.  The card read “G-pop you’re 60!  So smile….  (inside reads) While you still have your own teeth.”  Cheesy, I know.  But funny.  :)

That Which We Become

So, my plan is to archive my art history.  Anything I have that I have made through the years will end up in the Gallery.  I have works from high school on.  Although I have done a lot since early childhood, I didn’t really hang on to too much.  I think as I got better I decided the old drawings were too unrefined to keep.  Which is sad because I would love to line it all up and see where I have I come from.

I was fortunate enough to take some art classes as a kid.  I remember drawing a pastel picture of a sitting rabbit.  Its front legs were really long and out of proportion (… Like it’s creator.  I used to get called “daddy long-legs” for it.  Just by my family, but still it skewed how I saw myself).  I also remember getting to draw a pair of hanging apples on a branch.  The paper we used was wooden.  It rolled up like paper but was wooden on the front.  Completely smooth with grains and varying hues of yellows and browns. I remember very distinctly that I made some mistakes that I could not reverse. And every time I looked at it I felt so frustrated because I actually was very happy  with it at one point during its construction. But somehow I decided it just needed a little  something more.  I went out of the lines and totally hated what it was becoming.  I wanted so badly to make a new one.  I wanted to have a chance to prove to myself that I could do it just right.  But, alas, no such luck.  That portion of the class was over. And my picture was what it was.  For years, I held on to that picture in my closet.  And every time I looked at it the frustration came back.   So, I guess the disgust got the better of me one day and out in to the trash it went.  There were others like it as the years went by.  Things that I knew could be better but for what ever reason didn’t get the attention they should have.  And they too, ended up getting tossed out.

So, now here I am in my thirties creating in spare moments (which are far and few between but becoming more available as my kids head off to school).  If I finish something and do not like it, well, I feel all that treasured time is wasted.  So, I rip up or destroy that which took some time/life from me and gave back no satisfaction in return.  I want no remembrance of it.  No trace of the frustration it caused me to feel.  Sure, it isn’t the object that offended me but my own mistakes in creating it.  And that is a feeling I do not want to revel in.

Sometimes I wonder just how much I would find pleasure in creating had I just gotten that degree in Fine Arts.  My parents wanted me to, but I felt so driven to make people’s lives better. I figured a degree in Social Work/Counseling would really be beneficial to the world.  Afterall, I didn’t want to end up a starving artist.   But in the end I have only used that aforementioned degree in varying moments. At the time in which I chose my area of “expertise”, I felt compeled to get that degree for the shear fact that God had delivered me through counseling I had received and  I should only do the same for others. Besides, at the time, my view of artists was that they were so free in their thinking and loose in their morals.  Not to mentioned far too carried away with passions of varying kinds.  (Yes, I was a bit sheltered, immature, unlearned, fearful, you name an excuse and I probably used it).  I knew that I was too weak for that kind of challenging.  I didn’t want to sink.  I didn’t want to get carried away.  I didn’t want to be led into temptations.  And even worse I didn’t want to express things that my peers would have scolded me for.  (Take that however you want)

The years have taught me well.  There are many ways to bless and heal a hurting heart.  There are also many ways to express oneself.  And if others find offense in what which one creates that is their own feeling to deal with.  Some believe artists can get carried away, but in many ways they free themselves from inner turmoil and allow themselves to see the world in the many grey areas it actually dwells.

For me, I find peace in creating things that are peaceful reminders of the gentleness of the world.  I enjoy illustrating and painting the things that are free from the weight of this world.  I like dwelling in the simplicity of their lives.  I believe that there will come a day when I will dig deeper in to my abstract side and produce things that are bizarre at best.

But all that said… There will be more to look at in the gallery as the days go by.   The picture enclosed in this post is one from college.  It is not nearly as in-depth as I would prefer, but the colors are peaceful nonetheless.