September 18, 2015

Sept. 18, 2015

The art shows at the Prairie Art Alliance have been so wonderful in the past year and I have admired the featured artists whose body of work was cohesive. My work has always been all over the place because I want to try it all. So I decided to create a cohesive show and thought that choosing a theme would help. Sixties music has been a big part of my life, so I settled on that as the theme. I hate to say it, but the theme has not helped my work become unified. Even though each picture is a combination of paint and collage, there is very little unity. While I would like to blame it on 60s music being all over the place, I think the fault is mine. I have had a different vision for each piece. And I do mean vision. When I listen to the songs, an image comes into my mind. Sometimes I feel like I have achieved the image, other times what I have produced looks nothing like the image. If you are lucky, the art can take over, and hopefully, turn out better than what you imagined. That happened with my very first piece, Donovan's 'Season of the Witch.'

September 21, 2015

September 21, 2015

When I was driving to the family pig roast last year, Donovan’s ‘Season of the Witch’ came on the radio.  I had a clear image of a beautiful woman in a long cloak standing at the edge of a forest with 3 white birch trees behind her.  I tried to paint this image.  This led to great frustration so I decided to turn to my standby—collage.  I made a collaged face using painted book pages.  All of a sudden the witch was small and very old.  The text looked like wrinkles.  Not my vision.  The trees became a twisted thicket and the day was foggy and overcast, no clear blue skies.  Not my vision.  But the witch is a kindly woman, carrying a woven basket (also collaged book pages woven together) which has a very self-satisfied toad in it.  There are seven ravens in the thicket behind the witch.  The piece has nothing to do with Donovan’s lyrics or with my original vision.  However it became my first completed song for this show.  I have had 2 or 3 people who have seen this piece tell me that they wanted it.  So maybe when the art takes over the process and I put my images aside, I get something that speaks to someone else.  All I know is that when the art talks to me, I need to listen.