Purple and pink. Burnt umber and grey. Who can tell what is real or dream? Last night in a dream I walked in tall grass. It scratched my legs. Today I walked through the same grass. Little white bugs flew up but never touched me. Fiona called them flies. “Mommy” she whined. “Flies are getting on my horsy”. I walk back through the flies and tall grass. A bit of asphalt on the ground catches my eye, I hadn’t noticed it the first time I passed this spot. The area intrigues me. Old remnants of structure, of road that used to be here. A strange brown bridge Jack, Fiona, and Valentina sit on. It’s old pieces of round, dark brown, wood, it almost looks like tree branches. It’s scratchy and splintery. It goes to nowhere over nothing, as if it were transplanted from a place it belonged. “Fiona, your horsey loves grass.” I say. She got a new play horse yesterday, she loves it. Memories flood me, being a kid, playing with my horses in the grass, pretending they were eating and I was going on a ride. I imagined what I did and did what I imagined. In nature. Under the sun, the dirt, red ants biting my butt, stepping on nails, getting tetanus shots. Bugs and beetles and pollywogs. Frogs and snakes and old barns, old trailer campers. Vacant rose greenhouses where the sun shines through the broken fiberglass roof and roses still bloom. We rode our ponies through, feeling what was, feeling what the space is for us. A vacation. A dream world with real spiders and scary stories. Purple and burnt umber. Pink and white. These are the colors I chose to paint with today. It was a good, productive day in my studio. Painted in my notebooks. Pulled apart tons of pages that have stuck together leaving scars. Leaving repairs to be done. Structure. But it went well. Realized I have a lot of pages to finish in my gargantuan notebook before my show this fall. I can do it. I take deep breaths throughout the day. I stay connected. I cocoon when I need to. I got what I needed today.
Category: Journal project
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Painting. Why do we paint? What are we painting for? Who are we painting for? What are we trying to communicate in our paintings, if anything? How has Facebook changed our lives as painters, with a 24-hour audience? How has being painters altered our lives? How does it alter our day to day activities? How we look at and respond to the world? Do we have a collective voice? Are we bonded as painters? Have we become one?
Naptime. Friday. Paintings worked on, getting closer to where I want to go. The layering, the foggy, dusty eyes. Texture creating memory, on the canvas becoming a rivers edge, always changing, eroding and coming back again. On paper, in my notebooks a moment. A flash of time, a scrap of paper with paint drops from several painting sessions, a little mini journal on my studio floor. A tiny scrap, taking on a life of its own. Walked on, stomped on, drawn on, glued on. “Notebook project” taking on a larger life. Prototype made, Rives BFK, four sheets, painted on separately, folded and sewn together, is sculptural, physical. Trying to connect with the canvas in the same way. Getting closer. Not easy. Skin dry, paint spots on it, neck tired, body tired. Still have to be mom. Babies waking up soon. Need to get energy. Had crazy week. Realized I am crazy. Need to take break, need to get head clear. Dentist said I have grinded my teeth down, bad. Need to start meditating again. I lied last week when I say I don’t have moments when I say I need to do this or that, I need to change. I do still say that, feel that. Or should I accept my grinding teeth? Paint every chance I get. Not take a break? Forget to re-order my checks. Forget everything but the most essential? I need to go now. Sit outside in the sunshine before the babies wake up from their naps.
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Oh my Gosh! Tonight is the night! Carl and my show is opening at The Fourth Wall Gallery! The show looks awesome. I have made some new works for the bin, which now will include works over $250 because they are just so good! Some will now be $350, which is still a great deal. I really hope we get some art lovers who will loosen those purse strings! Buy Art! I have included two of my “Notebooks” in the show. They are “Journey into Abstraction” and “The lives of the Painters” they are part of a series of “Scrap Books” I’ve been working on since 2014. I sometimes call them my “Note book project”, or “re-purposed journal project”. Some of the books created also fall under a project I am currently involved in with GAP, “The Global Art Project”. This project is called Dis/locations; (The Lives of The painters falls under this umbrella as a solo entry)
“Journey into Abstraction” was started in December 2014. I was beginning to explore non-objective abstract painting. I would lay out 20 or 30 pieces of paper at a time, some of it re-purposed prints, some new paper; I worked mainly on the floor, using acrylic paint, watercolor, charcoal, graphite, water based oils, reacting to marks and colors. When I started thinking too much the work was ruined. I am interested in Wabi Sabi philosophies and kept the ideas in my mind as working; mistakes became the work, running off the edges, stream of consciousness, making marks from my gut. Out of hundreds of paintings I selected my “most successful” and put them in this journal. It is a documentation of time and exploration of paint.
“The Lives of the Painters” began in the actual book, The Lives of the Painters. It was an old book my mom had; I found it at her house after she had died. I always wanted to do something with it but was intimidated to work in a “Book”. I got acquainted with the process in an old medical dictionary that was part of a colab GAP book. Carl had made a few marks, then passed it to me. Every day I painted I would paint in that book as well, or draw. I passed that book back to Carl and we started two more collaborative books that belonged to the same batch of old books I found at my mom’s house. One was an Italian Poem book. Working in these books, I felt connected to my mom, I thought about how she would have loved to participate in this project. I started my solo, “The lives of the Painters” almost a year ago. The first thing I reacted to was the book was filled with male artists only. I got mad several times and too aggressive with the book. It didn’t take long before the whole binding was ruined and fell apart. I was disappointed. But I decided to use a black artists sketch book like I did in “Journey Into Abstraction” to save what I could, which turned out to be a lot. In this book I added collage and work on both sides of the pages. I would attach one side and respond to it on the other page, much like we do when working collaboratively with another person. I was very happy with the end result. I never work in my studio now without working on my notebook projects. It’s part of my process.
I would like visitors to the gallery to feel free to look through my books, take time with them, touch them.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 