Chasing Rabbits, Rabbits Chasing Me

In a story recounted by the director Kevin Smith regarding the advice Wayne Gretzky's father bestowed on his talented progeny, he shared the anecdote, "Don't chase the puck. Be where the puck is going." Kevin Smith, talented bastard that he is, understood immediately upon hearing this that chasing the puck is exactly what he'd fallen into doing. The alternative is to use your creative thinking, your artist mind, and innovate for the future. If you allow it, you can help dictate where the puck goes. If you've thought of it but haven't seen it before, it might be worth innovating, oui? He used this advice to make the movie he'd been wanting to make. I think you know the painter's equivalent. The goal is to find a place where honesty pushes one past the place where things are on a grid, past the place where things are already cataloged, and try something new. It might not actually be new, but it will be one's own version of never-before-seen, and that is enough, I think. Following what's fun is one way to do it. Following what's uncomfortable is another. Which direction yields more/better/stronger results? Are they separate at all? Making people uncomfortable can be fun too, you know. What's important is that the lines of communication stay open, and that when it's one's turn to speak into the receiver, the language is truth. I keep dreaming paintings. Faster than I can create them, they keep coming.

Thank you for reading.
-L

sun rise...sun set, and in between I learned to keep learning.

Across a yoga mat from eachother, in "mountain pose", hands together over the heart, this instruction is given in stage whisper:

O: "Alright. You must listen the kung fu master."
Me: "Okay"
O: "You must listen the kung fu quiet"
Me: "Okay"
O: "You must listen who talk to me and hear who talk to me"
Me: "Okay:"
O: "This is the inconuium (sp?) of the kung fu. You must be quiet of the eyes and of the ears. This is where I will be and this is where you will be. So now we have to do stretches, kung fu master."

She leads me in various stretches.

I wonder what keeps people afraid of themselves. I wonder why the constant tug of war between the side that enjoys the bed and the side that thinks ice camping sounds fun. I guess that's just life, the struggle is the education. With regard to artwork, the options are infinite; at the very least, as many ways to do it as there are people to try to do it. I've always been into weird, but it doesn't mean I have to be one of those to produce it. Or maybe it does. What are the requirements? Be honest. Be as pure in your execution, in your conviction, as is humanly possible. At all times? At all times. All of that and none of that is true. I don't actually have to do anything. I think I was surprised to find that out. I don't have to show anybody anything, or impress anyone, or make anyone's eyes or mind expand. Not really. But in figuring that out, I also figured out that I really actually do want to. But I want to do it right. If there were fewer artists in the world, then those who produce would be able to produce less meaningful, less honest work and maybe convince people the opposite were true. With such a crowded field, what are the reuqirmeents to stand out and get noticed? Technique is good, tenacity is better, but there really is nothing like honesty. All my heroes were fans of it. It's what made them weird, and what made them black sheep, what made them ostracized, and what made them heroes. I don't feel any kind of need to blaze a trail, but damnit, I am tired of being so predicatible to myself. This, my friends, is what they call the box boundary. From here, I am lying to myself if I stay where I've been. From here, I must expand or be untrue. I want my art to matter, and for that to happen, it has to matter to me, I guess is what I'm getting at. The shift might not be recognizable at first, so I'm not really sure why I'm saying anything about it. I love and am very proud of what I've done. I happily add my stamp to any of it. What happens next will have to use that and travel deeper is all. I look forward to making some people uncomfortable. For the first time in a long time, the art feels like work again, the good kind. I feel my chest expanding against deep sea pressure to stay closed, dragging myself up. It feels good. I ask only to recognize the right kind of pain when it happpens, and sit inside it until I come out the other side. Stronger.

macho garcias.

laurelin

My Diagnosis

Last night was the last night in a very troubled weekend. I won't get into all that here, but I will say that it happens occasionally that life seems to flush me right down and out. Yes, I know that sounds more than a little self-pitying. Regardless, it's hard for a lot of people to remain positive when the negative is so loud. But it doesn't take much. For example, I have a tiny little 3 year old 40 pound miracle living in my house that, while many times is a challenge, does also sometimes reward me with pearls of glowing wisdom just when I need it. My kid has been known to lay a gentle hand on my cheek and say something profound just when I had forgotten profound happens. Last night she was sitting with me and her dad on the couch and pretending to be our doctor. She diagnosed David first, placing a light-up pen against his arm and proclaiming that she knew what he needed to feel better. "You need to live for mommy and for me." is what she said. And to me, after pressing the pen to my forehead, she looked in my eyes and held my face and said, "I know what you need to feel better. You need to live hard...and love people." I have been thinking about this all day. Live hard. Love people. She was not privy to the conversations her dad and I had been having earlier, or to the moment I spent on the front porch alone, talking to the memory of my father, but this felt very much like an answer to unasked questions. Live hard. Love people. It's simple, but it's everything. She's a good egg, that one. I got up this morning feeling energized, feeling awake and alive, feeling ready. I jump in with both feet, with my eyes open, with my arms outstretched. I declare 2011 the Year of Living Hard and Loving People. What about you?

xoxo
Laurelin

Positively Charged

Yes, it has been a while. I think I'm settling back in piece by piece and finding my way back to myself. So here we are again, and the year is nearly over. The natural inclination is of course to revisit, reminisce, rewind and remember. But I think it's also about assessing where your feet are planted now, and what direction they're pointing. Not only should we ask, "Where have I come from, what have I done?" but "Where am I and what do I want?". These questions may be of even greater importance.

It's easy for me to say that this has been an incredible year of successes, and just as easy to say I have disappointed every expectation. So how should I decide? In which direction should I point my toes? Well, I suppose that depends on whether or not I am motivated by a resentment for things not accomplished or encouraged by a solid string of minor successes, and the possibility for more. I don't exactly trust either of those options. I am not convinced my first five months of freedom were a waste since production is at an all time high. I am also not convinced that I've actually accomplished anything since I am broke and unknown. So what I have come up with is that I am right where I should be, and sitting here with my eyes open, and that is all. I can't worry about what comes next, only prepare to be there to meet it. My point is that all the time I spend thinking about this life path just bounces me from disillusionment to bolstering and back and forth again. It is exhausting. I don't blame anyone for getting tired on this road. So instead of the ricochet danse macabre tugging me slowly toward crazytown, instead of keeping my head on a swivel from backward to forward and back again, I am just going to look down. I'm going to look at my feet and know they're still planted beneath me. I can't say what's been, because memory shifts reality, and I can't say what's coming because I can make no map for a road lost in a fog bank. Who knows what happens up ahead?

What I can hope for is that I stay here, inside my self looking out through these eyes and translating experiences to thoughts with this mind. For example, music is the voice of life. I love music. I love to draw, and I love to paint and I love to write and I love to love. Love feeds on love too, you know. So I chose, at the end of 2010, to be a positive. I choose to let life be life and find a way to be happy I can record it. I might get it a little twisted, a little crooked on the paper or canvas, but I am here to record it. I think I'm going to do what I can and let the rest go. It's too heavy.

Jealousy is an ugly, diseased thing. It doesn't even work for kindling. It just smolders there and smokes up your vision. Better to feed my fire with trees lovingly sown and long cultivated in fertile soil. I feel a peace setting in with the waning year, like I have my hand on the right rope now. I feel like I can trust it to pull me down an often foggy road to where things are suddenly, perfectly, clear.

Happy endings, happy beginnings. Congratulations! You get to be a child of the universe.

Peace. Bliss.
Laurelin

In Triplicate Veritas

Having come around to the fact that this art business thing does snot necessarily come easily to me, I have spent a lot more time than usual venting to my friends. Venting is as healthy as it sounds. It's not complaining, commiserating or whining. It's letting off steam, right? Letting the cloud disperse. And outside all that noise, I can get a little bit of clarity, a little perspective. During one particularly unpleasant steam-letting session, I discovered I need to organize this thing into shifts if any of the me are going to get any rest, and therefore do a good job. I thought this information might be helpful to another person who may be struggling with competing professional desires in the same mind. I have labeled these three me as follows: The Artist, the CEO/Gold Digger and the Santa Mariposa. They are each signed in the headspace check-in sheet, and let no one step on the toes of another. That means one at a time. That means when I'm in a business meeting, my head is present, all of me is present. And when I'm in front of a canvas, I'm not thinking about being anywhere else. The Gold Digger doesn't come on til two, so I have a few hours to just be a painter, you know? Between the three of us, I may actually keep this little vessel bobbing above the deep.

The Artist: This one seems fairly self-explanatory, but maybe it gets forgotten a little. Beneath all the networking, marketing, research, bookkeeping and schmoozing, the art is all there is. This is the meat of the whole sandwich (giant grilled portabella for the rabbit-fooders). They say it's only 10% talent, but garlic bread is probably only 10% garlic. So, above all else, if I have energy for only one of me, it has to be the Artist. I never want to talk myself up a good game and have nothing to deliver when it comes due. But my Artist has no interest in spreadsheets and business plans, in even leaving the house. She has to clock the f- out at some point or this just stays a very passionate basement hobby.

The CEO/Gold Digger: If the Artist is the heart, this is the forever grinding gear collection of a machine where a brain should be. When the CEO/GD punches in, I can put down the brushes and take off the smock because this me is not concerned with creating art, only opportunites. I call her a gold digger, because she has income at the forefront, but she's also the one who does the scheduling, follows up on leads, researchges companies the other two me want to work with, etc. This me loves lists, notes, Post-its, emailing, composing correspondence, and formatting contracts. Don't ask this me about light source, but give her a pad of paper and we can map out my next five moves in five minutes.

The Santa Mariposa: This is the bridge that holds the other two together. This me is not interested in composition and line and texture and light and blah blah. This me could not care less about the merits of digital calendars. She is neither a barracuda nor a dandelion seed. This is where I am absolutely free to be out of either aspect of my business mind and just make friends. This is the butterfly. I actually do enjoy people, and meeting new ones is many times a pleasure. The "Santa" portion of the title might suggest some kind of higher enlightened state, which...no. I just mean that this me befriends, welcomes, engages with whoever passes in front of me. And the "Mariposa" speaks for itself. This me is social to say the least. That's not to say, a party girl. In this mindset, I can talk freely and openly with people about my art almost as an outsider, since this me had nothing to do with making it. I smile and shake hands, say a person's name three times to remember it, exchange numbers, business cards, make plans, make friends. I just can't be the kind of artist who watches a video of her opening while sequestered in her tower, you know? I don't want to be separated from my art. A person doesn't have to like me to like what I do, of course, and vice versa, but I would at least like them to know who I am a little.

And that's about it. They key to juggling these three is scheduling. I don't know how many more or less you might need to perform whatever it is you're about, but this is my basic three. That may change, since I'm really just figuring much of this out. But I was pleased to learn I had a way of slicing and serving the pie instead of everyone jumping in at once. Damn, I do use a ton of metaphors don't I? Analogies? I'm like a pole cat in a Scooby-Doo facotry! No? No. Ahem...anyway.

What used to happen is that I would have a little free time and everyone in my head would start speaking at once. I should use this time to research grants or sort through and catalog my photographic references. I should use this time to polish that painting I'm just about done with. I should use this time to call that couple back and thank them for their interest. All of those avcenues seem worthwhile, but I was going crazy trying to decide what took priority. So, here I am in triplicate. It's strange how splitting myself into distinct personality types/career skills has actually made me feel less insane. I hope that helps. For anyone in a similar position, any tips?

xoxo
L

Who's Driving This Life...Crazy

So the other night I had a dream that was so freaky it almost made me laugh once I woke up and thought about it. You know, there are a few dreams you can figure out no matter who's having it. I don't usually go in for the dream dictionaries, since I think a snake might mean a different thing, even subconsciously, from one person to the next. But...the water dream seems pretty solid in definition regardless of who you are. It sticks out as a truism because it's so vague. Water is emotion. Drowning in it? Is it following you in a threatening manner? Are you swimming happily? Found out you can breathe underwater? You can Lego snap your situation to water and you have your answer. This wasn't one of those, though I am expecting a torrent in my sleep sometime soon (not that kind). I had the other kind. It's not the same as falling dreams, which are pretty obviously about being completely out of control, sucked down ever faster by the greedy arms of gravity while the earth hurtles up to meet you and your fragile vessel, right? There's not even anything to hold on to! That's a different level of helplessness, and one I hope never to know...again. No, the dream I had went something like this:

I found myself behind the wheel of my car (do you see where this is going?). I pulled up to a red light feeling like I hadn't slept in weeks. Maybe months. I was the kind of tired that nothing can combat. Not coffee, not anything. My eyelids felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each. Like, I could actually feel my whole face struggling to keep them open. I noticed D sitting in the passenger seat, and I knew O was in the backseat, and I was roused from my stupor by the thought that I might be putting them in some danger. So I slurred to D, "Hey, maybe you could drive for a little while, honey?" And he, just as bright and chipper as a man who'd slept as long as I felt deprived of sleeping, said, patting my knee, "Oh, no you're doing great! You are doing a great job, so you got this. No problem." Well, the light turned green and I slid out into traffic with my eyes closed. But we didn't crash. We just kept driving. The car, apparently realizing I was out of commission, was driving itself. But cars, perhaps contrary to what you may have thought, are terrible drivers. We swerved, we careened, we narrowly missed, and I could not wake up. I had my hands on the wheel, but had no strength to move it where I chose. Well, when we nearly clipped a lamp post turning a corner, I tried. I grabbed that wheel and wrenched it right while stomping the brake with every drop I had left. Nothing happened. The car refused to listen to me. The end of that dream is lost to the fog, but I feel like I ended up getting it to stop, but by that time, I was alone in it.

This went into a second dream about taking a retreat in a house that turned out to be a haunted old military bunker I was afraid to stay in, and afraid to leave, though there were no doors and all the screens had been ripped out. It had the look of a mansion at the end of a loamy overgrown country lane, but was, in fact, a deserted and crumbling Swiss cheese fortress set back in the middle of nowhere. But I couldn't leave. I was terrified of the ghosts, everyone else had left me there, but I was sweating bullets at the thought of walking out the door.

You might ask what part of all that I found very funny. Well, it's funny to me. I won't go back and forth about what these things might mean. To me, they are as obvious as water and falling. That first part was about my life as an artist, and that second part was about my life as a smoker. These are two ways I identify myself to myself: an artist and a smoker. These Siamese dreams may seem very similar (out of control, insecurity, fear, confinement, etc.), but are actually quite opposite.

In the car, I wanted, after I knew I couldn't just get out of the driver's seat, to take this car under my control. I wanted to navigate it, make it go where I wished, answer the pull. But life must be negotiated with, I think. Ask for what you want, really mean it, then be open to the reply, willing to receive. Life is a river [Oooh, water (emotion) again!], and it keeps on rushing, bumping over you if you're a rock, wearing you down, bending you to the current if you're a reed, and taking you everywhere you ever would and wouldn't want to go if you're a piece of driftwood. But I am a woman. I swim in the river of life, I navigate its waters in my little boat, and if I'm not careful, I can drown. The car and I were fighting each other. I was not listening to it, and it was returning the favor. My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to open the lines of communication between the me that is a person wanting to make money, and the me that is a conduit for art things. Simple, right?

That second one may be of less interest to you if you are not a smoker, and we're not really here to talk about that, so I'll be brief. Anyway it's, like I said, the opposite of the first one. If you've never been addicted to something that is bad for you, you may not understand, but it comes down to fighting against yourself. Nobody can argue a point to me like me, I know all the weak spots! I, on the one hand, am working to convince myself to stay inside on the basis that it is too scary out there without my (crumbling) support. I, on the other hand, know the "support" is haunted (full of outdated ghosts of ideas about who I am) and crumbling, and want to get the hell out of it before it collapses on me.

So while the first dream was about negotiating control so that I might stay and steer this life, the second is about finding the courage to abandon an old comfort that now threatens to kill me. Funny, right? Hm. Well, I guess you had to be there.

xoxo
L

On Human Realism/The Figurative Figure

I love to paint eyes. It's one of my most favorite things. It does occur to me, however, that some people get very uncomfortable when looking at a paining that is looking at them. When you're standing in front of a painting or drawing in which the figure's eyes are focused at the viewer, especially if the figure is life-sized or close to it, something internal is made a little wiggly. It's different than staring at a still life, for sure. And that's just it: figurative painting can't sit still. We watch a sleeping person in a painting, recognize the form, the structure of a human face and body, and because it makes no sense otherwise, we place a mental overlay on top of the image, a recording. We imagine, we make believe, the figure is breathing. Now, open that figure's eyes and point them right at the viewer, and that's why so many have trouble staring at one for long. The viewer is engaging in a staring contest they cannot win! Maybe something primal inside them taps them on the proverbial shoulder and informs them that the total insano facing them down doesn't even blink. He doesn't even blink, man! And so they cower, they look away, move on.

So how to make that moment something someone would invite into their life, into their home? Well, as much as it can tap into some human reflex to run away, that's not the only human reflex.

I think about this a lot since I paint figures mostly, and many times, the person I'm painting is not someone the buyer even knows. I try to imbue my figures with some sense beyond the obvious, each one specific and different in a way that, hopefully, different types of people will have a reflexive reaction to. Something for everybody, I guess? It's kind of optimistic, really, to believe that people will feel the way I want them to when they look at a piece, but it happens whether it's designed to or not. It's a great social experiment! I do it for me: pour something of my self into this person, this representation on canvas, and it acts like a visual for a conversation I'm not having out loud. It's very interesting for me to see who is attracted to which conversation.

Anyway, maybe none of that is real. Maybe I'm reading too far in? But I can't help it! I'm around my own paintings all the time, staring at me from out of their imagined worlds. Sometimes I do get drawn in. Sometimes I realize I'm engaging in that conversation. Since it's not a great idea to engage in too much circular self-to-self, I remain hopeful that not everyone is afraid to look a painting in the eye. Hopefully, someone stumbles upon my staring contest champion, and feels what I felt when I made it, speaks the language of that moment, and takes them home to pick up the thread of conversation. Maybe you?

Cheers!
Laurelin