Well then, even with the best of intentions I have not been able to sit down and write in this blog for what feels like forever. I have little to offer other than the story of what I've been up to and a snippet from my sketchbook. I bought the 'good kind' again which has lovely watercolor paper and I've been packing my waterbrush and magic markers on the bus.

While not excuses, I'll tell you there's a whole helluva lot going on in balduffington land:

I'm mildly obsessed with reading and growing stuff. I ate my first garden harvest tonight (mesclun salad mix) and can't get my nose out of a book.

A week from right now I will be in Penland with a little more than 2 weeks to explore my art, get more connected to making work that connects to the world, and making more friends.

I've been getting up early or staying up late painting on the back porch trying to sort out a couple of things before I get to Penland.

I'm re-reading all flavors of art history, appreciation, and criticism (but mostly of the Gombrich and Panofsky and Schapirosort) as planning for a class I'll teach in the Fall. It's funny but re-visiting ideas I first found 10 or 15 years ago is eerie as mostly they've played true in my experience. Thing is that these guys really looked at and really loved art and were seeking ways to mesh it with their lives even if they mostly wrote in an authority voice. It's a warm authority voice.

I've been working on big change at the day job (we implemented a fine new system this week that simply changes the every process we go through while keeping the core values we have and hopefully helping people more.)

And maybe there will be more words soon and maybe there won't be but I'm feeling good about work and play and my real work of making art and instigating necessary change.
onward and upward, I suppose...
Rachael

Just the other day I was talking about being unsure creatively and that hasn't totally gone away but I am more than pleased to report that my confidence is rising. I have a little bounce in my step and it's hard to keep my pencil away from my sketchbook. I want to get these ideas out. I want to keep trying to get to the best of the new ideas while salvaging the smartest of the stuff that's been hanging around. So what changed in a week?
I recently sold 8 paintings. Each person looked carefully and chose paintings which I was pretty fond of myself (such as Pastoral below). They understood key things about the work and made their own meanings and connotations while patiently listening to me and mine.
And the very fact that folks I am not related to happened upon my work and like it so much that they will make an investment in my paintings...well, it's proof.

Maybe I oughta be doing exactly what I am doing even if I'm not always sure what I'm doing. Maybe I don't have to know.
This is not the first time that smart people have bought my art and (cross your fingers) it won't be the last. But because I don't show with a gallery and because I don't invest the kind of time I used to in marketing my work, it's a real thrill to sell work.
When making (sometimes, not always) the doubts set in. When I walk by the paintings, I worry, do I know what I'm doing? But I love to paint. I like to make the silly things work and I have a lot to get out in those colors and forms. When other people love my work, when they love it enough to buy it, when they love it enough to tell me, when they are inspired and excited to make their own work...dang, it's a great feeling.
So, then, a warm and wonderful thank you to everybody who ever bought a Buffington or a Baldanza or ever gave me an honest compliment. Your words help me push past the doubts and keep me futzing along with these paintings.
And it's about time, too, that I step outside of my little coccoon and start looking more at the art and artists around me. There are some very talented and hardworking painters and potters in this part of the world and I promise to tell you about them. I just have to carve a little time to look and a little time to write about it.
Tonight, though, I'm going to clean and futz and enjoy the high of knowing that my my paintings hang and are about to hang in other people's houses and make some sort of small impact on other people's lives.
That said, there's a practical part of any art sale for me. I get to buy more art supplies...
Glory glory fabriano!
goodnight,
Rachael

By far the best thing I heard today was Muriel Rukeyser reading a poem about soda and hot dog stands at the end of over-worded days and social conventions and binary oppositions and what language means. It's worth the 47 cents or the trip to the library and it reminded me that words aren't definite even if we need them to be.
goodnight,
Rachael

Seems like, feels like, smells to me like I've been off my game lately. Creatively, my friends, I've been feeling out of sorts and off kilter and uncertain more than I have felt confident about the art I make. So I wonder, how often do you feel off-kilter with the work you are making? Why do we wake up wondering and go to sleep wondering what we are making, why we are making, and what it matters in the big bad world? I'm trying to pay attention to my gut and to break through the un-sure but sometimes it's not so easy...
I've been sparse in part because of a big project at work and a lot of teaching and preparing to teach. Each time I approach a teaching situation (whether it is giving a talk about process and painting or teaching teachers to integrate art into their lessons or teaching art appreciation) I follow the same pattern: excitement, research, planning, over-the-top unneccessary research, anxiety, over-planning, more research, and then when I walk into the class, I wing it. Improvisation, my friends, is a lie. There's a lot of plotting and planning that goes into being able to be loose, talk on the spot, and meet the needs of the students in front of me.

More learning from plants then...

As I tromp through my garden (some of the seedlings got their little heads lopped off with the pouring down rain this weekend but others are coming along nicely. Resilence, even in the plant world, is an important trait.)

I'll leave you, then, with one of my paper clay products, a moody little guy who now sits by the window wondering. Wouldn't we all if we could...

I'll be resilient, searching for my true marks, and paying attention to the plants and the paper and the clay.
take care,
Rachael

So with all that said I am scribbling away in my sketchbook, thinking about all the art I haven't seen in all the cities I want to get to (like Chicago, or New York to see LaFarge's Buddha, or the visionaries in Baltimore.)
I will travel soon enough and I'll harvest my vegetables soon enough and I'm painting again with the promise of a real bloom when I have time and space and inspiration all at once over two well wished for weeks in the North Carolina mountains.
Until then, sure, my bliggity blogging might be short but my days and dreams are long. Yours?
take care,
Rachael