YLC #12, copyright Jo Ann Brown-Scott, not yet titled

“You breathe; new shapes appear, and the music of a desire as widespread as Spring begins to move like a great wagon. Drive slowly, some of us walking alongside are lame!”  Quote from Rumi, born in 1207, Afghanistan

Of course it has everything to do with my mood. The day was gorgeous, took a long walk, ate some great food, listened to some upbeat music and there we were – arrived at a brand new place from the scariest storm experience of my life just 2 days ago (see the previous blog about Mutha Nature).

Let the games begin….

Lots of minor changes were made, but larger ones too, such as Lady Magenta making an appearance, dancing across everything just for pure fun, and a second (or third?) sun showed up in the unexpected sun color of purple….that’s what you call artistic license, but of course you knew that. I first took artistic license when I was in kindergarten, and teacher instructed us to finger-paint a tree. My tree was purple and she had an absolute fit, being the realist that she was. Even at that young age I knew she was dead wrong – how could she know anything at all about art history and object to a purple tree!? I have been getting her back ever since, sinking at least one “artistic license” thing in painting after painting for many decades now.

I am here to tell you that abstract art does not have to be profound and serious. Since I am working on this canvas for a solid year, I felt free to be light-hearted and free spirited. I can always get dark and brooding at some future point if I so desire. The changes made in this work session were begun with an eye for balance. The upper left area needed some action to be weighed against all the color and motion in the upper right. What to do, what to do. Circles seem to be a repetitive feature, so I thought I might just capitalize on that. Another sun, in PURPLE, could get attention. Not tooooo much attention, however, or the focal point on the right side would be severely compromised. Where is Homare when I need him? I am going to have to fly by the seat of my own pants this summer.

The changes made today were accomplished in less than an hour, and I used my fingers while wearing a latex glove. I seldom use paint brushes anymore – preferring plastic palette knives and oddball kitchen tools like a plastic BBQ sauce “mop”, scrapers and other stuff I find. I often use the dried acrylic paint that has globbed around the top of the paint tube, picking it off and pushing it onto the composition for texture – you can see one of those in about dead center of this painting, sticking out almost like a button. I love bumps and wrinkles, and I like to use acrylic very thickly but I also love to thin it down with lots of water and paint like a watercolorist which is how I first learned to paint. For Homare’s classes in advanced contemporary art I used purely paint, without any exotic collage papers or mixed media techniques, or matt medium to build up a textural affect. I am a mixed media artist at heart but I wanted to go back to my roots and see what happened there. That was a good decision because I have enjoyed it and found that I am still able to paint without any of my favorite bells and whistles. The method in my madness of returning to the classroom was to see what I was made of – to rediscover my earliest training. Doing that could only be for the good, I thought.

The YLC has a journey ahead. She will be thick with paint by mid-Fall and difficult to deal with. Unruly and short-tempered from all the indecision and abuse she has endured. She will have screamed at me to leave her alone. Making anything good happen will be a huge challenge, because everything that has gone before will have been sacrificed and lost and I will mourn those versions. I will be sick and tired of re-inventng her. She will be fed up with me as well. It will be like any other relationship!

But of course you probably knew all that.