Category Archives: Art

I’m No Coward

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Would that I had the blithe wit and urbane persona of a Noël Coward, but alas, I operate on a lower and more plebeian plane. And for those who are keeping score, yes, I am a big chicken, if that’s what you were reading in today’s title. Still and all, I think of myself as being less than hideously fearful when it comes to self-exposure as an artist.graphite drawingThough the upshot of all this may be that my audiences become unwitting consumers of drivel and bilge at least part of the time, I also remind myself that there is some credible evidence, historically speaking, that the greatest masters of the many forms of art are represented in the present age only by those portions of their respective oeuvres that they or others chose to retain. Long have I wished that I might gain access to, if you will, the Rubbish Bins of the Old Masters to see something more accurately representing the whole of the bodies of work that led to the known and treasured glories. So here I am, letting all and sundry look into the underwear drawer of my art closet, so to speak. After all, I think that I’m merely admitting to what my betters may have left to the imagination.digital artworkSo I’ll keep showing off process and behind-the-curtain action from time to time, knowing as I do that not only are folk wonderfully gracious and patient with me even when critiquing but also , and more importantly, that I appreciate those of my fellow artists who are willing to share the same access to their gifts with me. We all have our weaknesses. But when it comes to showing off my work, I’m no coward.

Rancho Romantico

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digital painting from a photoIn a Sentimental Mooed

Oh, pretty little heifer cow, I think you’re cute but know not how

Appreciation paid in full to such sweet charm could seem but dull

Poor compensation for my plain bland bullishness; am I a drain

Upon your dewy calf-eyed ways; am I so silly in my craze

For you, adorable and fine, that I’m a fool to wish you mine?

Nay, let us frolic and cavort and caper ’round for joy and sport,

Let us delight in being calves and neither shrink from fun by halves

Nor ever find we’re short of hay in pasture, or get sent away,

Or be penned up, for these things, too, would make a poor calf cry Moo Hoo!

No tragedy besmirch our wooing and leave us sadly this way mooing;

Let us, instead, just take a vow to stay together, bull and cow.

The Waiting Game

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Life as we know it in the present day is characterized as a hurry-up-and-wait proposition. We tend to bemoan the pressures at both ends of the spectrum with something like a sense of martyrdom, thinking this push-pull unique to our era. But it’s always been so. One only has to study a smidgen of history to recognize the same complexities of speed and sluggishness, and note the same anxiety regarding both, in our predecessors.

Now, I’ve never been pregnant or had a child of my own, but I have it on reliable authority that that process is rife with opportunity to experience the perfect distillation of both forms of anxiety. I can say, from my years of babysitting and cousin-watching and then a couple of decades of teaching, that regardless of the legal or moral or biological relationship, the ties we have with those younger than ourselves bring out such parental fears, anticipation, dread and excitement with greater intensity than pretty much any other kind of connection can do. Terror and hope will always intermingle in the heart if we have any concern for the young, filling the stasis of Waiting from the moment of their first cellular appearance and well beyond into full adulthood.graphite drawingLife and safety and comfort are all such tenuous things, it’s a wonder we don’t all burst into spontaneous flame from the sheer tension of our worries and our desires. The only assurance we have is the history demonstrating that our forebears somehow survived their concerns over us, and theirs in turn for them, back into the far reaches of historic memory. The tipping away from apprehension and toward faith in what lies ahead is the gift that enables us to wait, no matter how illogical and impossible it may seem.

Were My Eyes Red!

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I think I had a deer-in-the-headlights moment on a recent morning. When I went to wash my hands and looked up into the mirror, a bizarre monster was looking back at me and I froze. I stared uncomprehendingly, quite unable to make sense of the world for a moment, what glared back at me from the looking-glass was a creature with the strangest pair of burgundy wine-colored eyes I’d ever seen.

digital image from a photo

BOO! [artist’s rendition of conjunctival googly eye]

A quick assessment–possibly including a bit of arm-waving to see if the monster waved back at me in perfect sync or, rather, in reply to my advances–convinced me that I was looking at myself after all. An inexplicably unrecognizable self, but mine all the same.

I wasn’t in pain. There was no horrible itching, no creepy gunk running down my face. None of my limbs seemed to have detached themselves from my torso. I could feel no symptoms of anything untoward at all, and had awakened feeling perfectly dandy, with no sense of impending doom whatsoever.

As it transpired, the red-eyed madness was evidently a friendly reminder that I’d slept the night on a hotel pillow unlike mine. Perhaps the pillow’s stuffing or even, I suppose, the detergent with which the bed linens were laundered, bestowed upon my freakish new beauty by the agency of an allergic spasm of hyper-chromatic hilarity.

The really surprising thing about this whole episode is the series of alarms it set off in recognition that I often, well, don’t recognize the perfectly obvious in front of me until its moment has already passed. Ah yes, those many times when I’ve sat talking with a person and not realized until later just whose presence I’d taken for granted–whether an acquaintance I’d not recognized thanks to my prosopagnosia, a celebrity I’d not recognized by failing to connect name or title or other clues, or any other person I’d not fully appreciated in the moment. It’s a pity we are sometimes so blind to who or what is right in front of us that we don’t recognize how fantastic our lives really are, and how much richer for the company we keep.

If I need further periodic reminders, I hope the great people who are around me will kindly give me the needed nudge. So very much kinder and cheerier a nudge than, say, the appearance of an alien in the mirror. And lest I have failed to make it clear to you, this is also my time to say Thank You and express my appreciation to all of you good people who do give me the time of day, regardless of my thick-headedness or my bleary red eyes.

graphite drawing

Oh deer, what can the matter be?

The Fantastical & the Fleeting

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Stuff is ephemeral; imagination is what endures.graphite drawingReal life has enough elements of adventure, romance and mystery to sustain us–indeed, to astonish and entertain quite endlessly–but if we don’t record and celebrate such magic parts of our history they are lost. If we fail to study our chronicles and journals of such marvels, they are but dust.

So the sages among us keep what documents they can and teach us as much as we’re able to learn. What, though, becomes of all this if we are ourselves not so sage? Those of us for whom history is mostly data, steeped and stopped in the past, rely on fantasy to renew in us a sense of the remarkable. The fictional, metaphorical and colorful characters, creatures and cataclysmic events we create in our arts give us vehicles for understanding the true mystical powers in our real lives. Types and archetypes remain because they represent not Things so much as Experiences, not acquisitions but states of being. Through these avatars and our vicarious living of all the extremes that we can imagine, we revisit–and can even revere–the lives that have gone before us.

Through these imaginings, we are best moved to become greater than our small natural selves. In our better selves we have hope of living out lives that might, in turn, outlive us to inspire later generations to dream beyond, to imagine greatness and loveliness not yet known. Dream on, my friends, dream on.

Uniquely Me

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graphite drawingBe Not Ill at Ease

Around my sprockets and my spleen lurk what no doctor’s ever seen,

a plethora of arcane ills impossible to treat with pills

or pessaries, with tinctures, teas, or magic potions for disease–

not curable by overhaul of engine, tune-up, electrol-

ysis, electric shock–it’s thought by some I will infect them; not

true, though, for what seems to be feared is not contagious–

I’m just weird.

Airy-Fairy

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graphite drawingPossibilities

I think I have a hankering for things both rich and strange

To the degree that anything I love requires a change

From normalcy into a state you might consider odd

Or simply having no real weight upon the native sod

Of humankind–that is, not kin to mortals and their sort–

And if you find my life herein just makes you give a snort

Of disbelief (maybe disdain), I’ll not call it affront,

But pity you the sad refrain of living such a blunt

And circumscribed existence as mere ‘normalcy’ implies,

While I, adorned in fairy dust, take to the endless skies.

 

Tiny Terror

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digital artwork from a photoHummingbird Unmasked

My beak’s a single fang I sink in artery or vein

And none suspect me of this drink but clinically insane

And paranoid-type fantasists whom no one else believes

When they accuse the pretty bird that flits in flowers and leaves.

Though tiny as a bumblebee, I may grow round and bloated;

The nectar of your heart is how I keep my Ruby-Throated

Good looks and family heritage (and, not the least, my name),

My shapely belly and my speed of flying fast as flame.

It’s not that I’m nefarious, invidious or rude,

But merely that I have a taste for human blood as food,

And do not fear: I’d never kill you outright when I dine—

Far rather sip and savor you as vintage claret wine.digital artwork from a photo

 

Social Critics

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graphite drawingJester by Vocation

Think of me as a flitting fly;

I watch you with my ogling eye

From dusty corners and dank drains,

Always annoying–it remains

Your maddened wish to swat at me

And make the nasty nuisance flee,

But as you, saddened, quickly learn,

I stick to you at every turn,

For flies don’t go away with ease

Though you persist, and if you please,

Our lineage hews to this crime

Of stalking, to the end of time.

Lean

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graphite drawingAs I lean into the new year (or slouch, depending upon your perspective), I am past the holiday’s excesses just enough to recollect my determination to become leaner. In body, perhaps a bit–though fitter would be a better term for my desire there–but mainly in attitude. I am reminded by the delightful yet unnecessary overabundance in my life that I could and should aim for a slightly more streamlined existence.

I am no Spartan by any means, and have no particular desire or sense of need to become monkishly ascetic. But I know that when luxury is the norm I am less appreciative of it and run the risk of simply being misled, if not sickened, by it. So as is often the case at the start of a new year I will indulge in paring down rather than piling on my acquisitions, my Stuff, my lifestyle. I will focus as best I can on getting the most out of what I do have, telling myself less that I ‘need’ something that I don’t have, and sharing what I can with friends who are less over-indulged and better yet, the have-nots around me.

It may not improve my posture, but it will surely improve my attitude. I look forward to putting my shoulder to the wheel and leaning in to it for a bit.