I LOVE that Artrageous supports artists and has several extraordinary pieces for sale at the shop: LINK
I’m looking forward to seeing how the shop frames the fabulous esteem hearts created by participants in the Team Training workshops I co-facilitate withBeverley Pomeroy (yes, a relation- Bill’s sister)!
Bill and Pamela Pomeroy have owned Artrageous since 2000 and after purchasing Ostersons Framing in August of 2013 have now renamed this location North Shore Artrageous.
Bill was a framer at Ostersons for 10 years during his twenties before owning Artrageous. He has now come full circle by purchasing Ostersons, the store where his career began in the community he calls home.
Bill’s beagle Lucky and the squirrel. K. Thorsen, 2016, chinamarker on newsprint
I love that I can have a sit down with my heroes on a warm Saturday night and just shoot the shit. Tonight we contemplated creativity, the artist and the why.
Here are some highlights:
Twyla Tharp (china marker on newsprint)
I believe that we all have strands of creative code hard-wired into our imaginations. These strands are as solidly imprinted in us as the genetic code that determines our height and eye color, except they govern our creative impulses. They determine the forms we work in, the stories we tell, and how we tell them. I’m not Watson and Crick; I can’t prove this. But perhaps you also suspect it when you try to understand why you’re a photographer, not a writer,or why you always insert a happy ending into your story, or why all your canvases gather the most interesting material at the edges, not the center. In many ways, that’s why art historians and literature professors and critics of all kinds have jobs; to pinpoint the artist’s DNA and explain to the rest of us whether that artist is being true to it in his or her work. I call it DNA; you may think of it as your creative hard-wiring or personality. – Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit
Henry Miller (china marker on newsprint)
The practice of any art demands more that mere savoir faire. One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love. In love self is obliterated. Only the beloved counts. Whether the beloved be a bowl of fruit, a pastoral scene, or the interior of a bawdy house makes no difference. One must be in it and of it wholly. Before a subject can be transmuted aesthetically it must be devoured and absorbed. If it is a painting it must perspire with ecstacy… The anatomy books will tell you one thing, or many things, but looking at an eye or an ear to render it in form, texture, color yields quite another kind of knowledge. Suddenly you see– it’s not an eye or an ear but a little universe composed of the most extraordinary elements having nothing to do with sight or hearing, with flesh, bone, muscle, cartilage. – Henry Miller, To Paint is to Love Again
Alice Walker (china marker on newsprint)
… these grandmothers and mothers of ours were not Saints, but Artists; driven to a numb and bleeding madness by the springs of creativity in them for which there was no release. They were Creators, who lived lives of spiritual waste, because they were so rich in spirituality- which is the basis of Art– that the strain of enduring their unused and unwanted talent drove them insane…. What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers’ time? In our great-grandmothers’ day? It is a question with an answer cruel enough to stop the blood… Our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see; or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read. – Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens
Philipe Petit (china marker on newsprint)
There is no such thing as motivation in my world. As an artist, I am driven, I am compelled, I am thrust forward by a force so rooted inside me, so convincing, that it seems futile to try to explain it. Although it has a name: passion. Passion is the mortar that holds my creative assemblies together. It is the motor of my actions. Because it is in perpetual motion, it has an impatient edge to it. It is urgent. And because it invites my arts to grow, it is essential. – Philipe Petit, Creativity- the perfect crime
It is time to develop the new product line and solidify our company branding to expand our international presence and we need your help!
Today we launch a 45-day Indiegogo Campaign to raise $5000 in order to fine tune the brand and create our next apparel collection. We had an incredible first year of developing the company, but we now find ourselves at a crossroads.
Today think about the space where you create. Maybe take a photo of where you are when you create. Personally, I can be anywhere as long as I have some supplies. Being a mom, I have trained myself to work “in total seclusion” in the midst of total chaos and I have no problem with noise and distractions. Maybe I thrive on it?
But that being said, I must remind myself that silence is important.
So today, sit in you creative space [wherever you happen to be in the moment] and be silent. Then start to write or draw. It can be anything. But I suggest a bird. Or a cat. Stream of consciousness. For at least 15 minutes. In a quiet space.
And mediate on Picasso. His creative space.
I was so lucky to find the book The Silent Studio (1st edition, 1976) by David Douglas Duncan at Vancouver’s Macleods’s Books (451 Pender Street) a few years ago.
The book itself is a work of art. Filled with photos by Duncan of Picasso’s studio after his death in 1973. Haunting, sad, magical, silent. The book (no captions and mainly photos) is a love letter to Picasso’s last wife Jacqueline Roque.
today, at Notre-Dame de Vie,
Jacqueline’s flock of sheep
grazes beneath olive trees
of a studio now locked,
while Igor appears to watch
for someone he never knew
Jacqueline nearly perished after Picasso died Sunday noon, April 8th, 1973. For two years she languished in total seclusion…
Everyone tried to shield Jacqueline from the obvious agony of having professionals, court-ordered, inside her home cataloguing everything, even the contents of Pablo’s and her clothes closets. Only rarely was a voice heard in that enormous house, then it was muted. The experts have now returned to Paris. Now it’s over. She seems so relieved and exhausted. (from Preface)
We have looked at Frida’s works and have viewed some of videos about her and saturated ourselves by breathing with her and reproducing her.
Now find her words. Quotes and letters.
I have a large collection of Frida books, but you can find lots of sources online.
I have always been fascinated by an artist’s own words. I am a huge fan of letters…
… and diaries.
of others, and they would all say: poor thing! she's crazy. (above all I'd laugh at my own stupidity) I'd build my world which while I lived, would be = in agreement = with all the worlds The day, or the hour, or the minute, that I lived would be mine and everyone else's - My madness would not be an escape from "work"
Find a quote by Frida that you resonate with.
Or maybe find a sentence in one of her letters…
Grab your journal and your inspirations.
Write out the quote with watercolour… or with fluidity using coffee or ink or just use a crayon.
Now splash it, mess it up, cry on it, rub it, age it, be in it… Use Frida’s diary pages as inspiration.
Now open your journal wide and use 2 full pages to reproduce LOOSELY the full piece or part of it.
INGEST/DIGEST/REGURGITATE it.
ART ABOUT ART.
I use coffee instead of water when I use watercolor etc. It gives a nice aged look. I always keep a bottle of white acrylic paint on hand for highlights.
Take a few minutes to write why you chose the piece and what reproducing it means to you.
People copy stuff they like. They don’t copy stuff they don’t like. The more a work is copied, the more valuable it becomes. Value isn’t taken away by fans, it is added by them, every time they copy. – copyheart.org
As we prepare for copying a favorite piece by Frida Kahlo, we’ll just have Frida as a companion as we check in with ourselves and build our relationship with our journal. Write for 15 minutes about where you are in the moment. Just stream of consciousness. BREATHING.
Tomorrow we do a “reproduction,” which I prefer to call INGEST/DIGEST/REGURGITATE. We’ll be using two full pages and color. I’m thinking watercolor for me. How about you? Gather your stuff and meet me here tomorrow!
Homework:
Pick one of Frida’s works that particularly move you. You’ll find plenty of images online.
Kahlo is THE MOST important artist to me personally- not for only her imagery, style, and personality, but for her strength and honesty and her ability to express pain. And by drawing her I have processed the darkest of depressions.
I paint because I need to paint.
Today, read up on her. Watch videos. Search online. Find a favorite image.
So we just went through a 35 part daily journaling exercise. As a final hurrah to my journal, I packaged mine up and I’m now sending it to my best friend in Stockholm. There are a few pages left in it, and we’ll see if she adds to it. It’s hers to keep and do with what she will.
This next series will be about ARTISTS– one artist a week for 10 weeks- and we use that artist as a starting point for personal exploration.
Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Lisa Larson (1931- )
George Grosz (1893-1959)
Faith Ringgold (1930- )
Jean Michel Basquiat (1960-1988)
Willem de Kooning 1904-1997
Otto Dix (1891-1969)
Sue Coe (1951-)
Lucian Freud (1922- 2011)
Why did I pick these artists? Because I can. Because they’re my favorites and, most importantly, their imagery is perfect for challenging our personal self-explorations.
INTRODUCTION:
Continue in your existing journal or start a new one, like I had to do.
I plan the following [flexible] format during the course of a week as we explore each artist:
See you tomorrow with our first subject FRIDA KAHLO! (For those of you that know me, I hear you all yelling “duh!!!”)
I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.
Understanding Picasso. PORZIO, DOMENICO AND VALSECCHI, MARCO; WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THOMAS M. MESSER. New York: Newsweek Books, 1974. First English language edition, Hard Cover.
Rebecca lent me this amazing book that I devoured by sketching. My muses let me understand through play and mark making.
“Rebecca and Jocelyn” Quick sketch (china marker and coffee on index card) as inspired by Picasso’s Silenus and Companions Dancing, 1933
“Jocelyn” Quick sketch (china marker and coffee on index card) as inspired by Picasso’s Portrait of Françoise, 1946
A comprehensive joyous monography on Picasso’s life, work, and people who wrote about him. Written shortly after his death at 91 (April 8, 1973). The celebrated Picasso creating until his death was indisputably one of the outstanding geniuses in the entire history of Western art. With so much written about Picasso, this book was conceived and produced for those that wish to comprehend the ‘phenomenon’ of Picasso in its complex entirety. A proud, unforgettable celebration of life was Picasso’s gift to the world, in his art. Numerous photographs of Picasso, friends and family. Two major sections are, a biography of the artists by Porzio and a critique of his career by Valsecchi. A revealing section called “Picasso on Picasso,” is 12 pages of comments about his work by the artist himself. The authors present 144 color plates in chronological order from his best works, many full page, along with many black and white drawings, and fold-out of Guernica. Here are turn of the century paintings reflecting his indebtedness to the masters of Impressionism, haunting canvases from his ”Blue Period,” the classic elegance of the “Rose Period,” realistic portraits of a master draftsman, the invention of Cubism, experiments with Surrealism, his collages, sculpture, and the subjects that fascinated him: bullfights, clowns, the horror of war and women in all their mystery and sensuality. Additionally 24 pages of excerpts about Picasso from the writings of Gertrude Stein, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean Cocteau, Roland Penrose, Albert Moavia, and others. Sculptor Henry Moore best summarized the man’s achievement when he said, “Picasso has taught the us above all to see the world in a new way.” Brown cloth boards and spine, gilt figure to front board, gilt lettering to spine.
