Cupcakes and Conversation: Meet the Artist at Artomatic!

Here we are for another exciting Saturday night at Artomatic! The place is abuzz with visitors, as tonight is Meet the Artists night. So far several friends and fellow artists (Michelle d. Parrish, Pat Steck, Sherill Ann Gross, Carlos Rodriguez, Jeanan Oxley, Katie Weaver, Adrienne Lynne Harris, Caren Quinn, Cindy Rentaria) have come by. Except for Michelle and Pat, all the other artists mentioned are at Artomatic this year. Be sure to stop by their spots, too.

Sherill Ann Gross (7-12)


Carlos Rodriguez (9-12)


Jeanan Oxley (9-08)


Katie Weaver (6-05)


Adrienne Lynne Harris (7-11)


Caren Quinn (3-07)


Cindy Rentaria (3-14)


Jim  Darling (8-04)

As promised, there are cupcakes. Come by and have a chat with me. I'm always happy to answer your questions about my art.

In fact, several of you have asked about the three pastel colored pieces with the red dots in the paintings. Here's the story behind them. It all began with a conversation with a friend about first thoughts in the morning. Most days, I wake up feeling more tired and achey than when I went to sleep the night before. So my first thought is "Oh my God, here I am again." And then I meditate, stretch, do yoga and muster up my energy and get on with my day.

My friend and I have had this conversation several times. Recently we had it again, and I said, "We always have this conversation, but it never goes any farther than acknowledging that I'm having this feeling. I wonder what it would look like to go somewhere with the conversation. " She responded by asking, "What would it mean to go deeper?" I said that I thought "it would need to be on the diagonal, like when my husband got a promotion at work... He didn't move straight up, but rather moved laterally and vertically into a job that was related to his previous one, but also was on a different track with different opportunities available to him. If I went deeper into the conversation it would have to be like (3,-3)."

What ????

Like math. If my starting conversation is (0,0), and I want to go deeper, I don't want to go straight down the Y-axis, as that might logically lead to death. And yes, everyone dies, but that's not the conversation I want to have. If I want to give meaning to this feeling, I think I need to move deeper by moving both laterally and vertically, hence, (3,-3).  I am not yet sure what the language of the conversation of (3,-3) is, but I have learned that the process of creating art affords me a symbolic language beyond that which words can express. If you look at the piece, it is pastel and subtle in color. It has an air of peacefulness about it. I look forward to delving more deeply into the meaning of (3,-3).

So as we continued the conversation, my friend suggested that this line of reasoning would be like an incline plane. I said that in reality is would be more like a decline plane, but I didn't want to paint that.  So I painted Incline Plane. And in keeping with theme and color, it too is in the pastel color palette and has a red dot to symbolize the (3,-3) conversation. And the more I think about it, the more deeply I delve into the conversation, the more it may be a  sort of spiritual incline plane.  Sometimes you need to dig down, go deeper, in order to rise up...

The last piece in the pastel color palette (3,-3) series is called "homage a rothko". For years I didn't understand what was the big deal about Rothko. Who cares about blocks of color layered on top of each other? What's the big deal about a black square on top of a black rectangle? It wasn't until I was teaching a class called "In the style of..." that I developed an appreciation for Rothko. He was one of the artists we studied. I learned that Rothko's motivation in his art was to explore emotion in the most basic way. By creating work devoid of imagery and symbolism, he could explore pure emotion, expressing it through color, exploring variance of emotion through subtlety of color choices and juxtapositions.

So what does this have to do with my little piece? "homage a rothko" is my exploration of the emotions I experience as I discover "the inclination to rise". Unlike Rothko's pieces, which tended toward the darker side emotionally, my piece explores that which uplifts the soul and encourages the spirit to go forth in the face of challenge. 

Thanks to everyone who came out tonight to see me. I love you all and am thrilled to have a chance to talk with each of you about my process! If you have any questions or comments, or are interested in purchasing one of the pieces, let me know.

For those of you who didn't make it tonight, and those of you who did, but want to come again (yes, Artomatic is that kind of place where several visits may be necessary to take it all in), I will be back in my space for Meet the PEEPS Artists Night (June 27, 2009) and again for brunch on Sunday June 28. I will post details when I have them.

If none of these times work for you, please remember that Artomatic is open Wednesdays and Thursdays from Noon to 10pm, Fridays and Saturdays from Noon to 1am, and Sundays from Noon to 10pm. Please stop by, check out my artwork (7-8-C-C2), and leave me a note in my guest book. I'd love to know you stopped by. Or if you like, I am happy to meet you there!