Percolating in The Between

My Ancient Twisted Karma
Watercolor on Arches, 22" x 22" © 2013 Kristine Fretheim

All of my ancient twisted karma,

from beginningless greed, hate and delusion,

born through body, speech and mind,

I now fully avow.

I'm in limbo, unable to get moving in the new year. I've no shortage of ideas for new work, yet I'm just percolating here in my studio, hanging out in the uneasiness and ambiguity between paintings. Do I take the familiar path— and immerse myself in a realistic painting with a clear end? Or jump into something new and untried? Instead, these past few weeks, I've been cleaning and puttering in the studio. My palette was getting moldy and some of the pigments had turned to a gravely sand-like consistency, so I decided it was time to forfeit some of them. I washed out the wells, saving what pigments I could, and cleaned dried puddles of color off the center mixing area. Washing these puddles away revealed the mixing area has become stained with sepia and winsor violet. I can work with it, but if any of you know how to get rid of these stains, please let me know! 

I replaced the old, crusty pigments with fresh, new, wet ones, filling up the palette again with colors I've grown to love. Verditer blue, lavender, naples yellow have caught my fancy. They're not transparent and in fact have a white base that adds a translucent fog to whatever image you apply them to. I didn't stop there. I also purchased a set of Daniel Smith granulating pigments and their own little palette, and a new ground by Golden Acrylics to experiment with. Texture is the name of the game! Staining, lifting, scraping, scratching, sanding, glazing, layers upon layers. I guess that is a bit of a new painting direction for me.

As I worked on this painting, the words, All of my ancient twisted karma, drifted through my mind. I don't know why. Maybe they came to spring-clean my psyche, preparing me for another leap into some new unknown. We'll see.

May your new year bring happiness, health and well-being.

Playing in the Gap

For a while I thought my realistic images were my real paintings, and that the time I spent playing between them was a waste. The gaps between are filled with uncertainty. There are no maps— just vast possibilities as far as the eye can see.

I call these paintings the In-Betweens because I work on them between my realistically rendered paintings. The In-Betweens are a reprieve from the intense concentration necessary for realistic artwork. They are a breather, a break from normal. They fill that period of time between completing a realistic painting and beginning a new one. In-Betweens are an exhale. I just let go. I paint with no preconceptions. They are a dream world where colors are emotions, smells, tastes and sounds. The colors define shapes and create a rhythmic composition. To simply follow the colors and shapes with complete abandon is the greatest fun of all. It's satisfying to be lead around the picture plane that way after exhausting myself on a realistic piece that requires precision and unwavering attention to detail.

The In-Betweens are a total change of pace and method. I begin with an old painting (you know— one from the “I wrecked it, I quit pile!”) and scrub off most of the old paint. I like the paper to show a hint of whatever image was there before. Then with pencil I draw a pattern of skewed shapes and creatures. The real fun is glazing one color over another to create patterns and rhythms dancing around the page. Every new layer changes the composition. As layers deepen and colors become richer, the picture plane develops depth and a surreal landscape appears.

If you think about it, we are always in-between. We're between waking and sleeping, birth and death, between this thought and the next. And what of the gap between each breath? There is the space between you and me that we call relationships. While seeming empty, those spaces between are alive with potential. Inevitably we fill them up with the expectations and desires that create our world. When you meet that vibrant potential, how and what do you choose to fill it?

The Sweet Peace of Being Unplugged

For a brief time this fall, I was a person without a computer. I'm amazed at the calm I felt the day my hard drive died taking five years of data with it. At times I felt so carefree, a kind of déjà vu, like a child running barefoot in the summer sun. Peace. Freedom. No entanglements. Design client files— gone. My new web site— gone. Scans of my painting inventory— gone. No Facebook, no blog, no news readers, no email. I couldn't even get into my back-up disk. Just me and the great wide shimmering world alone together.

In The Deep End

Being unplugged is such sweet peace. That experience lead me to a personal credo: Question everything. I don't know what compels the questions. I prefer to think it's healthy curiosity. Anyway, now I'm questioning the value of being plugged in. Because I'm so mesmerized by this electronic miracle in a box, I paint less, my eyes hurt, my shoulders ache, my brain cells are tense. I feel like my life has been swept away by a tsunami of craving for attention. It's not just my craving. It's bigger than that. It's the craving of friends of friends ad infinitum. I want to support them all with follows, thumbs-ups and likes. It's impossible, of course, yet I'm still overwhelmed by the desire to help. I could unplug from the dream world on my computer screen. (Maybe I'd get more painting done.) I do have a choice, but here I am again, back in electronic samsara, wrestling with this new dharma gate. Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to friend and like them all.

Oft spoken rules of art-making get my questioning hackles up. How about the one that speed improves skill? Working quickly does create its own unique artistic characteristics. So does a contemplative approach. There are merits to using both ways of painting as learning exercises. We live in a culture that breeds speed. Bigger, louder, brighter, faster everything. It's easy to be swept along believing faster is better, aware only of maybe some tension in a shoulder, or an anxious feeling. But what if you stop with the hurry-up-all-the-time routine? What if you examine your inner world through the process of painting? What will you find? Possibly you'd feel excitement, then thoughtfulness, or then "Yikes, this is harder than I thought", or "I've wrecked it! I quit." Over time you might begin to see a pattern to your creative process. How many paintings have you tossed in frustration? The —I've wrecked it so I quit— stage is pivotal. It holds the potential for the greatest amount of learning and self expression to take place. That's when speed demons move on to a new painting forgoing a great opportunity for growth. We can choose to dig deep or skip along the surface. Sometimes we need to metaphorically unplug ourselves from all the chattering of workshops, art instruction and well-meaning advice, and reconnect to that still point within. From there we can see more clearly our own unique way to paint through the —I wrecked it— stage and in that process develop confidence to meet new creative challenges whatever your medium.

It's important to explore, practice and hone your technique as an artist, and examining your state of mind can free you from creative hang-ups or blocks. We are indoctrinated to speed by the culture we live in but we can choose to investigate the unconscious habits that rush us through a painting, relegating yet another one to the "I quit" pile.

To Simplify— Focus On Design

Design principles must guide every thought and mood while your subject is being smelled, tasted, touched, listened to and looked at. You paint with all 5 senses. You must be emotionally and sensually involved with your subject. —Edgar Whitney

Every time I hear someone suggest simplifying a painting, my mind goes numb. The simplify instruction is so commonly used by instructors, it's almost a mantra. It shouldn't be. It won't make you a better painter. Simplify! What does that mean!? Sim•pli•fy: make (something) simpler or easier to do or understand. Try to follow such a broad, vague instruction without knowledge of design and you'll put us all to sleep with your paintings. So what to do when you encounter this instruction? Dust off your design tools! The elements and principles of design will show you how, when, where and most importantly why to simplify. So wake up those brain cells, peeps! Get thee to designing your compositions.

We make art to visually convey our unique personal perspective. To identify that perspective, one needs to be able to call up feelings and emotions relating to the subject of the painting and express them visually. This is where your understanding of the elements and principles of design can aid and develop artistic expression. It's the interplay of design elements and principles that guides the viewers' attention to the expressive meaning of your work. Simplicity per se doesn't function well on it's own. It shows up best when partnered with detail. You need them both or you'll end up with a painting that's too uniform— in other words, a sleeper. So how will simplicity and detail interact in your composition? Will you use contrast, create rhythm, balance, repetition or harmony? Or will one so dominate that the overall unity of the composition will be destroyed?

There are so many dimensions to a painting— far more than the obvious two dimensions of the paper or canvas. Design tools open up all those other dimensions— emotional dimensions that are so difficult to express in words are magically unlocked using pattern, line, shape, value, color or size. The way we use these elements creates an emotional resonance with the viewer. The design principles themselves seem to have an emotional resonance.

As the foundation and building blocks of good art, design is a topic that deserves ongoing study and discussion. My purpose here is to point out that simplification happens very naturally when working with design principles. Simplicity is not the first law of painting. Without design as a guide, simplifying by rote dulls creative expression. Shift your focus to design and simplification will take of itself.

Hearing With Our Eyes, Seeing With Our Ears

Dancing With The Mystery

The Tergar meditation group that I've been sitting with takes a different approach than the zen center. There's a relaxed casualness about it all from the space we sit in to the actual meditation itself. The simplicity is refreshing. There are no robes, no altar, no candles and incense. But it also gives me pause. A bowing gassho in the doorway as I enter the room is second nature, and here it's starkly out of place. The lights are bright and colorful meditation cushions dot the floor; no neat rows of black  zafus and zabutans arcing around the instructor. Opening and closing recitations sound wooden compared to the rhythmic chanting voices of the zen community. Sometimes there is a small bell signaling the start of meditation; sometimes not. The same is true at the end of meditation. When there is a bell, everyone moves and stretches and talking begins immediately over the sound of the bell.

Hanging from the wall of the zendo of my old zen community is a large hand-made bell. It's approximately 12 inches tall and darkened with age. The doan (meditation time keeper) must strike the bell just so. Hit the wrong spot, or strike it too hard and it klangs with a dull, metallic noise. Hit it too softly and it's signal is lost in the expanse of the zendo. As a new doan, I wobbled back and forth for months making variously abrasive gongs and klangs to signal the beginning and end of meditation. The stillness of the zendo received whatever the bell and I gave without complaint. I was humbled by the bell, never knowing what it would say when I struck it. I admit there were times when I thought of jazzing it up, playing a little tune, to make light of my ackwardness. There was no hiding in the silence of the zendo. The bell told all. It pinged with my insecurity; it bonged with my over-confidence. It took a while, but eventually the bell and I sang together, making unique new sounds that grew more clear each time the bell was struck. With each peal of the bell you feel as though you have been struck; one's whole being vibrates with it. No one moves in the zendo until the last faint echo of the bell disappears. I'm confounded sitting in this new meditation experience that seems so casual and indifferent to the sound of the bell (when there is one). Confounded and curious to explore it all including the surprising pangs! of emotion that have come up around the new meditation approach.

Like striking the bell, I never really know what will come from my brush to the paper. There is a certain joy in not knowing, in nurturing curiosity and learning to embrace and work with whatever evolves. Forever humbled by what comes out on the paper, I'm learning to let go of expectations and paint with the flow of the water and pigment instead of muscling my way through a painting. In addition to it's luminosity, the fluidity of watercolor never stops teaching. Much like the breath in meditation, when you let go of controlling it and follow, new fountains of creative energy open up.

We can experience vibrations of sound and the rhythm of our own breath, but what of vibrations of color? Do you associate color and sound, or how about flavor or smell? Russian artist, Wassily Kandinsky wrote about the scent of colors, the tactile sensations they can evoke, even ascribing tastes to colors. (Please do not ever munch on your pigments! They are toxic!) He is said to have experienced synesthesia, a kind of mixing of the senses. Sensory words are juxtaposed for effect in poetry (like loud perfume or an icy voice); the visual artist is challenged to use his/her senses as well. Kandinsky is said to have painted music using color as counterpoint. A painter, writer and poet, Kandinsky once wrote, "The sound of colours is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would try to express bright yellow in the bass notes, or dark lake in the treble." I am not so musically inclined (maybe it was arrested by those 5 am piano practice sessions or the horror of recitals), so I find the idea of color vibrating as sound to be very curious indeed. Working with design elements— line, shape, value, color, pattern and size— we can create rhythms, and to fully experience these rhythms we need all of our senses. But I find it more difficult to hear these rhythms than to sense them. Curiously, as I delve into meditation, I find more and more, that distinctions between the senses blur into one whole vivid experience. It's as though we can hear with our eyes and see with our ears. "I shut my eyes in order to see," Paul Gauguin supposedly said. T. S. Elliot wrote about, "music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music." The more we paint, the more we realize the senses are not the distinct, definable things we thought they were.

If I were to imagine sound emanating from this painting, I think it's deep, quiet notes, reminiscent of the bell in the zendo. Do the yellows vibrate in the treble notes or base? It's a mixed media piece, comprised mostly of acrylic paint, and scrubbed with alcohol to reveal underlying layers of color. The density of acrylic paint smothers the surface of the paper with shiny plastic, and the alcohol dulls and dissolves the plastic creating a pitted surface opening to the colors underneath. Tough, sinewy acrylics coat the paper with a kind of plastic armor, while watercolors merge with the surface allowing the paper to breathe. They each have a unique character— perhaps one is a string quartet and the other a brass band! A brass band made of plastic instruments?

I'm curious if the more musical among you, attribute sounds to colors.

Meditating With The Four Immeasurables

May All Beings Enjoy Happiness

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This fall I've been attending a Tergar Meditation Group under the guidance of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche  and my meditation practice has been rejuvenated with a fresh taste of beginner mind. Blissfully anonymous, I soak up meditation instruction and commentary by the students in this new group. For several years I was actively involved in the busy-ness of a local zen community; now I am actively uninvolved. I'm just sitting, cultivating meditation practice.

The Tergar group has been meditating with the four immeasurables— loving-kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. These meditations seem like kin to western psychology's cognitive therapy in that they transform thought patterns. This is a very different style of meditation for me and I'm encountering some ambivalence. Currently we're working with empathetic joy, rejoicing in the happiness of others. It sounds simple enough. But meditating on empathetic joy is not all sweetness and light. Do you ever have a sense of not being good enough, smart enough, creative enough? Do you know these not enough feelings? We all encounter them from time to time. Critical feelings like these can permeate our lives and block feelings of joy for ourselves and others. Thoughts and emotions, critical or positive, are not who you are and struggling to change them into something more desirable will not end the cycle of not enough. In my experience, looking at the mind, examining the thoughts and emotions passing through, is the most helpful way to loosen their grip. You have to see them for what they are— intangible,  and you can only do this by continuous examination. I wish for anyone who delves into this meditation, courage and resolve, because there is an endless supply of thoughts and emotions! That in itself is key. Like waves on the ocean, thinking is the natural function of the mind. Where do waves of thought come from? Finding a living breathing meditation teacher to guide you is best, but if that's not possible there are many good books on meditation. One of my favorites is Turning The Mind Into An Ally by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche; Ken McLeod's Wake Up To Your Life is invaluable as is The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.

It's also important to question— what is joy and happiness? I spent several months on the painting you see here, May All Beings Enjoy Happiness. It was a year of turmoil and tragedy in the world, but I wasn't aware of painting with any concept of joy and happiness for all. Words get in the way. I just paint. Concepts usually come later in my process, sometimes not revealing themselves until the title of a work emerges if at all. Though most of my artwork appears realistic, to me everything is abstract. I learned methods for breaking the white of the paper, for taking that initial leap into an abstract painting, from artist John Salminen whose work I admire. This piece started with cut out shapes from old magazines and scraps of paper. Some were glued to the painting, some were simply used as guides for the painted shapes. I also used stencils and lifting techniques. The light bursting through the heavy dark shapes, feels to me like a heart or mind breaking open. The light depends on the dark shapes for it's form and identity, just as joy and happiness depend on suffering. What does happiness mean to you? Can it include those experiences you define as suffering?

Of course everyone wants joy and happiness. We think we've found happiness, then it slips away again. We wish with all our heart, the best for all beings, but sometimes the good things we wish for lead to suffering. So it really is important to consider, what does joy and happiness mean to you? Superficial trappings of happiness, all the stuff we work so hard to get more of in order to feed these insatiable desires, keep us mired in dissatisfaction. When we wish for all beings to know joy, we are really wishing for hearts and minds to break open to the freedom beyond concepts of happiness and suffering.

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, 
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

—Jelaluddin Rumi

May all beings know immeasurable joy.

Thoughts Come & Go

I participate in a Buddhist study group that meets monthly. The group has gone through several metamorphoses over the years, including new faces and new formats. It seems to be in stage of quickening. With a core of people who have attended regularly for some time now, a bond has grown out of the nurture and support we find together. It's a gratifying experience to grow together in spiritual study and practice, and especially so when disagreements arise and are embraced with such patience and care. I have been on the receiving end of that patience and care more often than not, and I can only pray for the capacity to give that gift back to the world.

Recently my turn came to guide our discussion. For most of the week I struggled to find something, some engaging topic to share, feeling pretty inadequate in the midst of these accomplished, articulate people. I pulled stacks of Buddhist books from the shelves, flipping through their pages, hoping to find a word or phrase or topic that would inspire. Piles of books full of rich, scholarly commentaries and nothing stood out to me! In mounting tension and desperation, I dropped my quest for a topic and immersed myself in a painting. Aah! Sweet respite!

Actually, I started and finished this painting many years ago. It was exhibited locally and even received an award. But the painting always bugged me; it never really felt complete. I had been reading about meditation, about the state of concentration called samadhi, and that's when this painting was born in my bewildered mind. I imagined my mind as sharp and clear and cool, hence the crispness of the still life, with it's icy blue and white. If you look closely though, you can see variation in the blue tones— some are warm and some are cool. This contrast gives depth and dimension to the sense of temperature. The harsh contrast of cool white light with the warmer shadows also contributes to the chill aloofness of the painting. For information about purchasing this painting or giclée prints click here.

I have a tendency to throw myself completely, to the exclusion of all else, into whatever I'm doing at any given time. So when I encountered zen practice my life came to a standstill. I stopped painting. I had been increasingly uncomfortable with the watercolor milieu, with it's competitions, egos and painting for shows, and unable to see and feel the great hearts surrounding me at the time. So off I went. Nothin' but zen. My new zen acquaintances stared blankly back at me whenever I mentioned anything about art making, as though they had never heard of such a thing and didn't really care to either. But I have digressed.

All those books I pulled from the shelves in search of a discussion topic and none of them spoke to me! But the painting I pulled out to assuage my worries about having nothing to share, did speak to me. A vision of a bright orange butterfly had been appearing in my cool aloof painting for several weeks. And so that's what I did. I put away the books and painted the butterfly. I imagined the cool vajra mind transformed by the fragile lightness and warmth of this butterfly. Small as it is in the expanse of icy blues, the warmth it embodies is a personal reminder of patience, compassion and joy. All it takes is one tiny movement of the mind and the balance shifts, the whole picture changes.

When I came to the study group I felt relief— I had let go of my striving for a topic and brought just myself and my meditation practice. I came with a bell and one simple intention— to sit still, looking directly at the mind. I read a few instructions from a mahamudra meditation manual and we sat together. Meditating on thoughts may sound crazy, but just try it. Can you see a thought? What color is it? What shape? Is this a thought? Who is that voice in there? Does it have a sound? When we discussed our meditation experiences my relief deepened, seeing the kindness and patience of them all, as they received my earnest and at times overbearing beginner mind.

Playing With Color

There's a reason I paint— words do not come easily. And words are much more ambiguous than images. I much prefer the stillness of the crows and cicada in the yard today. Never the less, in the next few weeks I'll be writing some simple tips and exercises for beginning watercolor artists. There's an artist in all of us. Finding him/her can be as simple as quieting down and listening. Give yourself five minutes to just sit still and focus on your breath and see what happens.

I'm playing with color again. With this new painting, I'm pushing the local color of the image out of it's conventional boundaries. We're all affected by color and often in ways we're not aware of. Our consumer-driven culture is ablaze with flashing color, much of it unnatural on tv screens and computer monitors, and quite over-stimulating. Is it any wonder we're so stressed out? Warm colors in the red spectrum are known to excite the appetite. (I've painted my kitchen a soothing, appetite-discouraging, blue-gray.) Our perceptions of color are often muddied by emotional response beyond initial perception. For painting though, conjuring an emotional response to your subject matter can bring it to life. Imagine the taste of a color, the sound, the smell, the texture. We each perceive colors in our own unique way and try as we might, we can never truly share that experience with anyone else. We can paint with intention though and in so doing energize our whole life.

During the beginning years of my zen practice, color was a problem for me. Actually, it was one of many problems. I encountered zen at the confluence of several difficult life circumstances— hence the perfect storm. At first glance, the zen center appears to be a colorless place. White walls, black calligraphy, priest robes of black or brown, novice robes of gray. There was even a dress code for student practitioners— gray or other neutral colors only, please. Color was considered a distraction. Okay. Out with the color and in with gray! "I can do this," I thought, while nursing a healthy dose of skepticism. It felt so unnatural to shut out color! When one of the zen students purposely wore brightly colored t-shirts, I began to feel like a color addict greedily drinking in the color and secretly reveling in his rebellion. His shirts were like a siren in the stillness of that environment.

We take color for granted hardly noticing the depth and breadth of energy it exudes until it's excluded from our lives. I admit that after several years of zen practice, I felt great peace and ease in those gray surroundings. When you let go of attachments to color, to the emotional response, you may discover new freedom and spaciousness in your life. Living and acting from the neutrality of gray, the vividness of my whole life is magnified and colorful takes on new meaning.

I did leave my mark on the zen center by the way. I painted one kitchen wall red... But that's another story.

Complementary Colors and those Pesky Buddhist Dualities

It's been a glorious summer in Minnesota— cool and green and lush. Our August is usually dry and miserably hot. The mallards stay down by the lake now. My fox visited yesterday dressed in bright red-orange shimmering against the greens of the lawn as only complementary colors can do. Such a delicate little thing she is! Two summers ago I chased her away, afraid Patchy the cat, in her elderly, weakened state, might be on the breakfast menu. Picture this crazed woman running through backyards in her pajamas shouting and clapping her hands as a fox dances just out of reach. Patchy has passed away now and though I miss her, I'm thrilled to see the fox has survived another winter.

I spent this summer working on smaller paintings after completing another large piece in the Hen & Chicks Series. In June I visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and also stopped in Old Town Alexandria at the Torpedo Factory, a renovation filled with artist studios where I met artist Anna Shakeeva. I'm inspired by her imaginative, fantasy style of painting and her rich visual vocabulary.

Since my little red fox brought up the subject of complementary colors, I've been pondering oppositional relationships of all kinds. Opposite means positioned on the other side of something; facing something, especially something of the same type; being the other of a contrasted pair. Complementary colors are opposite each other on a color wheel. First we have the primaries: red, yellow and blue. Then we have the secondaries or complements of each primary color: green, purple and orange.

Arranged on a standard academic color wheel, red is opposite green, blue is opposite orange and yellow is opposite purple. To find the complement or opposite of red, you mix yellow and blue creating green; for the complement of yellow you mix red and blue creating purple; and orange, the complement of blue, is found by mixing red and yellow. You can create an infinite number of colors this way depending on which color dominates the mix. Pretty exciting! Huh? Endless hours of fun and exploration.

Our life seems to be built upon opposites or in Zen student parlance— dualities, the eight worldly dharmas of gain and loss, fame and disgrace, praise and blame, pleasure and pain. Short and tall, literal and figurative, subject and object, self and other. The list could go on forever. What is the complement or opposite of a self? It must be the other. Complementary is defined as completing; combining in such a way as to enhance or emphasize each other's qualities. Duality is defined as contrast between two of something. Two complementary colors enhance one and other; each makes the other appear brighter. I'm wondering what happens when we view the opposites or dualities in our lives this way. How do self and other enhance or emphasize each other's qualities? Our idea of short is dependent on our idea of tall. Short cannot be known without tall to complement it. Does it follow that our ideas of self are dependent on our ideas about others? Colorist, Joseph Albers, demonstrated the relativity of color— how colors are perceived depending on the color of their surroundings. A color doesn't actually change, but is perceived as a new color when viewed opposite other colors. So how do two colorful selves juxtaposed in our day-to-day lives, complete, enhance and emphasize each other's qualities? In this me-first culture, I think it's worth a look.

While I'm saddened by the degenerate healthcare reform discourse portrayed in the news lately, I'm grateful that all views can be heard. Vile and ludicrous claims of Nazism and death panels, shocking as they are, cause us to look hard at how we relate to one and other. The complement to such fear-mongering is the inner voice that calls us to listen to the higher angels of our hearts. The call is to drop our self-absorption, open our hearts, and protect and care for each other. When we cherish the other, the self is transformed. That's how complements work. They make each other brighter.

Preparing The Ground

Spring is here and she certainly takes her own sweet time! I am restless with anticipation to dig around in the garden beds, clearing away debris so new plants can sprout and flourish. It's much the same in the art studio— too much debris cluttering the space impedes the growth of new work. Between paintings I clean brushes in soap and warm water, sponge off my palette, sort and file reference materials and plan the next composition.

I especially like the process of preparing watercolor paper for painting. It has taken on an almost sacred dimension in my painting process. These silent preparations are the ground of new work and like tender sprouting buds in the garden, I handle the paper with gratitude, a certain reverence and attention. I soak the paper in luke warm water for ten to twenty minutes. While the paper is soaking I wash and dry a good sized table to work on. Ding! I like to use a timer because it also reminds me to wake up, breath and be here. I stretch the paper on clean gator board moving quickly around the edges to the rhythmic clack of a stapler. And then I just let the paper be. It rests, horizontally flat, drying and shrinking taut against the stapled edge. A clean slate. Blissfully clear of concept, it's white expanse is full of potential. This is our life. This is the space between breaths.

Calming the neurotic chatter of the mind allows our artistic vision to break through. Something as simple as a few moments of stillness can reconnect body and mind. Handling tools with attention and care leaves no room for chatter to cloud expression on the paper or canvas.

Painting Season

This is painting season— January, February and March. The light is superb. There are no leaves on the trees to filter sunlight and it bounces off the snow creating unimaginable blazing crystal clear light! Even overcast days are bright. I paint dawn to dusk, pushing myself not to waste a minute of this light. The series I'm working on includes some detailed images that require all of the focus and concentration I can muster. I begin with a tracing of the larger areas and as I paint along, I refine the drawing, reworking it and adding more details as the painting progresses.

I feel a change brewing in my work. Maybe it's just the child rebelling against the required concentration. But the inner rumblings are growing more insistent. We'll see.

I'm disappointed that my fledgling painting group petered out over the holidays. But I'm also secretly delighted because now there are no interruptions to my painting season. Students wander aimlessly from class to class and teacher to teacher like sleep walkers drugged by a culture that demands we continually look for completion outside of ourselves. There are not enough classes, teachers or art supplies to ever assuage the emptiness everyone searches so hard to fill.

My recommendation: Everyday, for maybe ten or twenty minutes— no, let's make that 5 minutes— simply sit still and breathe. Be vividly aware of the breath filling and leaving your body. As that awareness grows, it will become your most valuable painting tool. No one can give that to you. It's a do-it-yourself-project. A bazillion art classes can't compare. Next, pick up that brush and paint. It's just like breathing.

In The Between Time

Well, it's been awhile. I've been immersed in painting. Now I'm in the between time. This is when I wax philosophical about life and art, and clean my tools in preparation for the next painting. I'm crazy about taking care of my tools— Ha! I even wash my broom from time to time! Why clean the floor with a dirty broom?

There is a fury about this most recent artwork. The image is complicated and I had to paint it. I felt compelled to go against the mind-numbing rules artists pontificate about so often. Life is complicated, beautifully, awesomely complicated. And... paradoxically, simple. And wonderous. How does one express that?


I titled this painting "Earth Dakini". Dakinis are generally referenced as female deities or goddesses. Tibetan Buddhists translate the Sanskrit term as "she who traverses the sky" or "she who moves in space" or "sky dancer". There is an element of volatility, a kind of wrathfulness about her, like a furious storm of energy intent upon transforming minds and sweeping away obscurities.

One never knows how or where Dakini energy might manifest in your life. I see her energy here in the effulgent abundance of the garden, where all of life is so interconnected that boundaries are meaningless. Sun, rain, earth, sky— the joyous cacophony we call life includes everything you can imagine... and everything you can't.

Making Peace

So much violence all over the world. The change of season, summer to fall, seems to make it all the more vivid. Everywhere life is withering and passing away. This nature I can understand. Human nature's appetite for violence is more difficult to fathom.

I'm finding solace in a painting of my garden— another in my series of Hen & Chick mandala paintings. This one is over-the-top with gazillions of tiny images and as I venture into the painting, I'm asking myself why? This is not about some conquest of technique or skill. Though I hold craftsmanship in high regard, lately I tend to think more about the "why" of painting than craft. The gazillions of images making up the whole is about the complexity and interdependence of our life and I feel compelled to try to convey something about this. I'm swimming upstream, against the current of the watercolor milieu, where simplifying is the rule. And being a simple-minded person, who often pesters others in her life to "please simplify", I don't know where this painting is coming from!

But here we are. I'm approaching the complexity of the painting as though each tiny image is a whole painting unto itself. This is requiring new found (and quite fragile) patience with the process. I'm meeting impatience head-on with a tenderness of heart for every petal, leaf or stone. And I'm finding joy in allowing the colors to mix freely on the paper. Well, sort of freely. This is a fairly realistic work.

The series began in the garden. I composed and photographed the plants, rocks and leaves from many angles, under varied conditions of light and season. Though I'm not much of a photographer, my years of advertising design and photo direction have made me comfortable composing with the camera. I use an old projector to pencil in the large shapes from my photo onto watercolor paper and then I sit down to study the overall image and refine the drawing. I continue to draw even as I paint with both pencil and brush. For me painting is drawing and drawing is painting.

Today I worked on the first baby chick. It was tough! With my nose to the paper all day just painting shapes of color, I worried it was turning into a hopeless blob. Then, stepping back for a look at the whole, I could see my baby chick! She had arrived with all her fingers and toes. This painting experience is much like sitting zazen retreat. There is a point when you feel too exhausted to go on. You've thought all your thoughts and spun all your stories ad infinitum. You naturally begin to settle in your breath. Sometimes a clarity dawns. Like seeing your baby chick is there after all!

Sometimes.

Sometimes you still see a hopeless blob of paint on the paper. But with patience, you're learning to make peace.

Today It's Stink Bugs

Mother Nature had a good cry yesterday. She rained all day. Today is gloriously cool and fresh, and I'm beginning a new painting. I've been thinking about creative voice, wondering "What is my creative voice?" What is it that I need to express? While prone to flights of philosophical reverie, my artwork is rooted in an objective style. I want to bring us all closer to what's right here in front of us. No escaping into visual expressions of weird, subjective, psycho-babble for me. Those internal sound tracks are best left to dissolve into the ether whence they came. HERE we are! Let's not miss it.

I'm quite enamored by the rocks and plants and creatures that I live with. And being a very slow painter, in love with the process itself, I photograph what I can't carry into my studio such as the play of light and reflections. I also collect reference material like books on insects and some such critters as one might encounter in our locale. And of course, the internet is a treasure trove of information. Today it's Stink Bugs. I've perused my insect books to find a bug the right size, shape and color, as well as– just who might want to live in my painting? And so we have Perillus Bioculatus, better known as Stink Bugs. I've been reading about them and I think this one will be very happy living amongst the leaves and grasses in my new painting.

For the past two days I've been checking my drawing, removing extraneous lines, making sure I visually understand each line– does it indicate a light area, or dark? A hard edge or soft? I'll be drawing even as I paint, but still I want to be familiar with every nuance of my image before I begin. Familiar not only with the lines, shapes and patterns, but with the emotional memory of it. What draws me to this image? How do the senses react?

I aspire to experience things as they truly are. In other words, to experience directly, to let go of the story spinning, and just be here, now. I guess THIS is what my images are about. Perhaps they can remind you of what is here, now in your life and world.

My First Entry

Welcome to my blog...
Please join me on these pages for dialog about the joys and struggles of our creative life. I hope to share painting demos with you, by posting various stages of a painting's life, how they came to be, the thought process, materials and techniques.

The process of art-making is a gateway to a more mindful, awakened experience of life. It doesn't start when we pick up the brush, and end when the brush is laid down. It's our life itself.

And it requires great attention to the details of every moment.

With wishes for your peace, happiness and well-being,
Kris