Making Art: Resolved, or Smoke Signals From the Far Side

Another Retrospective

A River Runs Through It… Well, Actually A Canal Runs Through It (study #2) by Lynaea Brand
5″ X 7″ Oil on panel

I wrote this piece way back in January.  Feeling mildly disillusioned and angsty, I was sure that I’d never post it.   Rambling, fretful monologue— why would I.  But I rediscovered it just a couple days ago, and remembered how I was feeling in the winter when I wrote it, and though the struggle to find time (and courage) for making art (or writing) still vexes me, my outlook has promising shifts sometimes, and I’m once again grateful for the journey.  In general, anyway.  Which journey is worth recording (I believe this fervently, dearly beloveds– but it isn’t always easy to live what we believe, is it).

I realize I’m developing a tic here:  pieces written in the cold grey dead of winter, published at last in summer’s verdant warmth.  It’s probably a metaphor for something– but we’ll let it live on undisturbed.

Making Art, Winter Blues Notwithstanding

Winter Paperwhites in Her Summer Sky by Lynaea Brand
oil on linen on panel (5″-ish X 12″-ish)

This was in January:

So, I’m making art again.  I wish I could say that it’s going great, that I remembered where I left off and have only improved from there.    But I haven’t.  I’ve given up finding my place and am resolved to learn stuff all over again through trial and error and Google.  Resolved to keep painting,  investing in the theory that tenacity (aka enduring failure) will inevitably lead me to brilliance and marvelousness.  Or something like that.

Afraid to disappoint myself with clumsy renderings of people (my favorite subject), I’ve been painting landscapes.  Little barns and houses and trees.  And pears.  Also a cemetery, which I guess counts as a landscape.  To my chagrin, it wound up looking less Sargent-Monet-Pissarro and more like an unsuccessful Thomas Kinkade knock off.   I found the irony  almost comforting.

Grave Matters, study #1 by Lynaea Brand
oil on board, 5″ X 7″

My daughter Maurya looked at my cemetery and said, “Why don’t you actually on purpose paint it like a Kinkade?  That would be so funny.”  We laughed together, which eased my cemetery sadness for whole minutes.  Later, I found it on Pinterest, a painting done in Kinkade’s idyllic style: sweet cottage in the background,  Darth Vader fishing irrelevantly in the fore (Google “unwanted paintings by David Irvine” to see it– I don’t want to infringe on anyone’s copyright) .

I thought of Margaret Mitchell, perpetually convinced (in her scrupulous avoidance of typewriters and pencils) that someone else was writing her book.  It happens, I guess… especially if we’re not writing (or painting or whatever) anything ourselves.

Smoke Signals From the Far Side

little girl sketch by Lynaea Brand

Today, (still January) I clicked on a drawing tutorial for beginners.  An articulate You-Tuber half my age invited me to draw circles and ellipses for thirty minutes every day to improve my sketching fluency.  He even shared a link to free printouts of circles and ellipses.  To trace, over and over and over again.   Hand-eye coordination, cell memory.   Wax on, wax off.

I sense that there’s practicality and possibly even wisdom in this bright young man’s method (yo-ho-ho, sensei).  Value in repetition, glory in practicing.  But frankly… thirty minutes a day? of circles and ellipses? seems sketchy (pun intended).  Like trusting in a rabbit’s foot, a lucky feather, freckle juice (Porcelana Fade Cream, remember that?  Did it work?  Where has it gotten to, now that it’s relevant?).

Lean on Me (another pear study) by Lynaea Brand
5″X 7″ oil on canvas

Still, I think I’ll try it (drawing circles and ellipses).  Why not.  Then maybe branch out, draw circles and ellipses in the form of fruit.  Using real subjects: Citrus, apples, pears.  Also eggs.  Then I’ll paint representations of fruit and eggs on an archival ground, applying modern color theory, sophisticated lighting, lab-tested oil paint.  Maybe after a while I’ll change it up, dressing my egg and fruit models with little roundish bits of gumdrop for facial features, and then, I’ll draw and paint egg fruit gumdrop people, jewels glowing against Rembrandt-dark backgrounds.  So that by the end of this trial of faith (in what, ten or twelve years?), I will be an adept sculptor/sketcher/painter of anthropomorphized fruit.  The egg head artist.

P.S. (Somewhere, Beyond The Blue)

Shady Spot by Lynaea Brand
8″ X 11″ mixed media/oil on canvas

Post Script today in July:  While I painted more or less doggedly through winter, I didn’t practice circles and ellipses.  I did sometimes sketch people, with hit and miss results.  My discouragement, combined with an avalanche of household distractions, led to a gradual dwindling of focused effort by mid-spring, when I once or thrice played with cold wax, encaustic, and collage.  I’ll be honest– this spattered dabbling was mostly further dithering.  Avoiding the awful but necessary moments (moment after moment after moment) of facing my ineptitude and soldiering through it.  I tell my kids all the time that we can’t learn without trying and failing at least a little (usually a lot)… but in fact, it is so wrenching!   I’m tempted to throw a tantrum.  Middle aged and menopausal and averse to entitlement as I am.

And yet.  Not having painted for weeks now, I looked through my stack of attempts the other day, and was surprised.  Both at the volume– they’d added up to quite a few, and at the quality– I like some, actually.  Inoffensive, companionable, quirky little things.  It made me think… Maybe I never really lost my place.  Maybe I’m just traveling so slow, my progress is imperceptible in the moment, noticeable only from a great, blue distance.

A Small White House Again, study #4-ish by Lynaea Brand
8″ X 11″ oil/mixed media on panel