Back in the studio

Yes, it has been interesting to get back into the studio full time again! I have been drawing the human figure for the last year and a half and working as an interior architect, taking a break from painting full time.

Initially, my studio felt like a house that has been standing empty for a while. It took a whole week of messing around, cleaning the studio, dabbling with old paintings, looking through the last year's drawings done with Roxy's drawing group and looking at my white canvasses fearing that I can't paint anymore...

It reminds me of my afternoons staring at the waves, trying to convince myself that it is possible to ride those big ones : )

Getting back into it after being involved in different disciplines, is interesting. I have definitely changed a bit. Drawing makes one work in a more immediate manner, and this is what is happening on the canvass now. Drawing also teaches that you have one chance, one moment and it is what it is.

Mostly I am amazed to see the difference in the levels of joy, the appreciation and peace since I am back. I am grateful.

I am excited to see what is going to happen on the canvass and will keep you posted!

Ray Flowered Protea

I encountered this Protea in Kirstenbosch Gardens early one August morning. It seemed completely unreal - a small, quiet universe radiating a mysterious light.

I imagined that this would be an easy painting to do. In the end I spent 3 months working on it, on and off.
I have found that in order to get the life into the work, I always need to spend this amount of time. It is a question of forgetting what I think I am looking at. By looking deeply at what it really is, I come into knowing this plant, intimately.

For me, this year has been a difficult one, but working with the Ray Flowered Protea has comforted me. In the stillness of its light, I found an eternal strenght.

THIS WORK IS ON EXHIBITION AT THE CASA LABIA GALLERY, MUIZENBERG FROM 16/11/2010

THIS WORK IS NOW SOLD 16/11/2010

Going Within

Sometimes it is wonderful to change your perspective.

The deeper we go within, the closer we come to observing that eternal joy in the relationship between light and matter. Light continously giving of itself, touching everything in its path, and matter responding silently by bursting towards the light without reserve.

This is a silent neverending relationship that takes place on every scale in Life, also within us.

Moments of attachment

Picasso said that when you fall in love with a certain part of the painting, paint over it. This comment annoyed me so much over the years, since in most cases it is true!

Often we fall in love with a spontaneous moment that has happened on the canvass. Then we are so caught in the beauty of it, that we get attached to it and it starts dominating every decision we make. Sometimes this area of painting becomes the only part that, in fact, does not work with the whole, but we are so attached that we stall. Our perspective of the whole becomes warped, and we greedily see only this moment of genius that has to be maintained at all costs.

I have some paintings in my studio that has stood there for more than a year now, and I just can't gather the courage to go ahead and paint over the under painting. There is something in it and I do not want to loose it.

This is a detail of a new work, I started yesterday. I had this lovely blue canvass for a year now. I painted the background over and over mainly with precious cobalt blue pigment, and then the expense and beauty of this background overwhelmed me. I just did not know where to start.

It seems that the arrival of the new creative cycle with the new moon has pushed me. A feeling of just biting on your teeth and pushing forward over what you have loved for so long, in order to keep moving, and to keep expanding into the whole. Knowing that you risk to never see that beautiful pristine background again, but maybe it will bring you someplace new.

Sovereignity

In the 'freedance' paintings I simply work with whatever comes up as I paint. This is a way to connect with what it is I would really like to express, but also to let go of all that has become obligation and where I am loosing the excitement and joy with my work. I use different mediums, projected images, paint over old images or just drift with my brush across an empty canvass.
This week some womb like images came up. It left me contemplating babies as they are forming in the womb. This too is a kind of growth that happens in silence. I could see how each baby I looked at already had a unique essence even just after birth. It is as if an embryo is a type of seed.

To become Sovereign within ourselves we have to surrender back into this silent seed essence and grow into the tree we are. We need strong roots, a thick trunk and we have a wonderful head of flexible branches and whispering leaves in the sky. So we each have to become a tree that can stand alone and simply be.

I encountered this queen just before spring in the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris. She was silent and static amid the branches, quietly bursting with newly formed buds.
All these works in the picture are still in progress.

Rest

If we can shed all that we are not, if we can surrender into simply being what we are, we can start shining from within - beaming out the unique light we were created to shine in this life. It is in our distraction with what others are doing, in the distraction of the noise around us, that we forget our uniqueness, that we forget to be in full acceptance of what we are.

I am now at the stage where the work will rest for a week or so. Sometimes I know the painting is not done yet, although it seems to me that it is done. So I take photos of the work like this one taken in my backyard and then I hide the painting for a few days.

I know when I look at it again, my perspective will be fresh, and I will know what it needs to complete the work.

In the meantime I am working on a few 'freedance' works : ) Painting without references, I simply paint whatever comes up -

Silence

At the last stage of a painting I find myself going into the phase where one has to 'charge' the painting with the last touches, almost like blowing life force into the work.

This requires moving into a great silence.

This is so different to the fire quality at the beginning of a painting, where it is physically more active, the smell of paint is stronger and usually I breathe fast and the focus is great.

This last phase is more like the sound in between drops of water falling into a still secluded pond. My brush is small, I work with micro puddles of paint, with great subtlety in colour and mark (that I believe only I can see!).

Sometimes I even sit down and paint. Now the painting receives my piercing attention on every square inch, and the whole image quiets down.

This is the Silence that is there as we move and rush around living life. The Silence that is patiently always there waiting for us to come into surrender, to sit with It and to remember that we dwell in the Ultimate.

I see this Silence in the unobserved activities of plants.