On a walk yesterday, I was walking around trying to figure out how my neighborhood works. What street connects to which street and where is the big house that the man who won the lottery bought and where are the schools and why so much silly trash here and there and especially how can it be so lovely and so almost spring? The miracle of the sun, the almost 60 degress, the daffodills...

And anyway, I had my sketchbook and I would stop here and there and note things and draw stuff and I felt like my secret would come out for sure but I really needed to draw that tree, note that shadow, decide whether or not to pick up the ice cube tray for pressing into clay. And I noticed a pack of teen and almost teen boys sitting on the steps of a house. They noticed me and asked, "what are you doing lady?"

"Drawing"

"What for?"

I'm not saying they are wrong, I'm not saying I'm wrong, but I tried to explain why the tall tree with bare branches that is taller than any of the houses around here and was so starkly contrasted against the 4 oclock bright gray sky was worth staring at. It was worth drawing. It was worth seeing. One of the kids looked at me with almost recognition and a bunch of them laughed, but I didn't stop them and they didn't stop me. And that's what I like about America...

There's good stuff around the blogosphere that's been up a while but I haven't had slow time to explore:

Tracy Hegleson has a helpful post about how she tracks her work. I'm getting better but long to have a system that efficiently efficient.

radio interview-er sounded so gosh darn excited I wanted to ask her to shush and listen more but that's not really the point, I guess. And then there's Charity's story which is the true stuff...


And finally, there's Peggy Bacon's interview with the Archives of American Art. I liked reading it but then I wander around drawing trees so, go figure...
take care,
Rachael

The other day we sat down for the reason you sit down in a bathroom. Not to read so much as to do what needs to be done but on flushing I heard a snap. I lifted the toilet bowl tank and found a broken cord. So I pulled the part I could pull and manually flushed the stinker. We own this house, though, so we own this problem. So began a week long process of research and development. We bought a kit and last sunday, instead of going upstairs to paint, I took the toilet apart. Yep, I took my toilet apart.
It was pretty exciting for me and in lieu of making art, I made my toilet work.

That's been the feel of it around here. Not so much active art making as active living, observing, and idea gathering.

I'm waiting for some filberts to come in to work on drawing with my brush. I'm reading again about William Gropper, and Peggy Bacon, and Thomas H. Benton and all things art and politics in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. And I'm obsessed with reading the Fast Company and New Yorker magazines (today I read Dan Baum's chilling and fascinating story about the collapse of the police in New Orleans).


I'm still learning not to worry about the not exactly active periods of art-making, the moments when it seems I'm filling my head not filling pieces of paper with marks and meanings. Even if I ignore my sketchbook for a couple of days, if I am brewing, stewing, fixing and filling up with ideas...it oughtta be OK.
More soon, friends, but all of a sudden, I'm itching to make some art...
bye,
Rachael

This day was a rare treat. A day off, alone time, time to do laundry and sit in my studio looking and thinking and feeling for a good long time before I actually made any marks. I have been wondering why I paint the way I do but then when I do paint the way I do, it is right. I can't intellectualize this. I am an instinctive, trust my gut, follow the colors, do what I believe in painter.

That is my strength even as it is the thing that often gives me pause.

When I am crazy busy at work, when I am sitting on the bus, when I am forming friendships, I'm not worrying about being a failure or a fake or a fraud. But sometimes when I am alone in front of a blank piece of paper that ridiculous freezing fear comes back.

Today I fought it off by running downstairs baking bread, fortifying myself, and heading back to the attic and attacking the paper. Once I got started, the paint flowed, the colors got together and started fighting. A painter I much respect as a teacher and friend told me the other day to embrace my "contrasty explosions" and they came out today. But so did the more subdued slips of shapes and the revision revision revision that was drilled into my process early. The thing I simply have to remember is to go up to the attic and engage. When I avoid it, when I over-worry it, when I get wimpy and make little steps but no bold actions doing the stuff I love to do...well, yick. I don't want to do that. I will paint. I will instigate.

Yes, so, I have no pictures to show of today's fight but I will link to more info about the Starbucks show because that's been requested and they are very much for sale, for show and tell, and fabulously framed (thanks Jody!) and hanging around as further proof that when I fight the good fight, sometimes it even works.

take care, troublemakers!
Rachael

It's been thin and quiet around this blog but I've been day-jobbing and re-prioritizing family and reading and writing. It's enough to get up in the morning, get showered and out into the world with my to do list in tow and my sketchbook in hand. I draw, I dream, I listen and I wonder when the news of good people dying too young is going to stop. The untimely death of my kind and caring, warm and wonderful aunt-in-law (mirroring as it does the untimely death a few years back of my caring, warm and smart aunt) has me thinking anew about the true uncertain of live. How we could go at any moment. It's a true truth and a scary one and I'm not suggesting that you stop what you are doing and get all morbid.
I am wondering how we go from the quick silly wit of kids (think knock-knock
jokes) to the way poets think about death ( knock knocks get mortality in this essay by Donald Hall).
And you know how we never have enough time, never have enough money, never have enough ideas to make art? We make the best we can in the time allotted sometimes and othertimes, we (and this is the royal pronoun have you, when I say we, I really mean me...maybe you, too?) make nothing for days on end until it kind of hurts. And then the art burts out and some of it stinks and much of it makes no sense but we remember that the making matters and the truth is in the living and we have to go on living.
So we do.
Thank goodness, meanwhile, for poets, for painters, for Cezanne's Apples , for my wonderful husband and for good mail lately. And because Mark asked nicely a while back, below is a glimpse of my coffee shop show...


That's about it for now my friends, we march on...
Rachael

Our niece is a very talented young artist and she left behind a fabulous unfinished drawing of a pufferfish.



We love you, Nora!

best all,
Rachael