New Collages

As an artist I know some of you will relate that sometimes you love a new piece and sometimes you don't.
I don't love these collages, I don't hate them, not ready to plaster over them yet, so I am showing them and putting them in my ETSY shop because sometimes other people like pieces that I don't. Each collage takes from a week to 2 weeks to complete, so it seems better to see what other people think of a piece before I
plaster over them. You never know, to each his own :-).
The top piece is 16"x 16", venetian plaster, oil, acrylic, micro pen, paper, rust stains, cold wax on cradle board, the second piece is 12'x 12", venetian plaster, oil, India ink, micro pens, paper, rust stains, cold wax on cradle board. I am going back to my studio/ kitchen and hopefully I will love the next one :-).
I always love to hear your thoughts.
Have a wonderful weekend. XOXO

Kiki Smith and Why I Love Her

                                  Lithograph by kiki Smith


I am a huge Kiki Smith fan. I relate to her as a person and to her work. If you don't by some miracle know who she is go here to read about her. Go here to see images of her wonderful work. In a sea of mediocre and soul less art Kiki stands out as authentic and real.
"One tries to follow one's work rather than willfully lead it" Kiki Smith
I love this quote because it is so true, I am often surprised as to where my work takes me, sometimes I am screaming, "but wait I am not ready to go there", but go I do :-).
I have one new piece and one on the way, but I need to photograph and work (play), so I thought rather than not post at all I would give you Kiki, as it is Sunday, my favorite day and Kiki is my favorite woman in the world right now.
I hope you are having a wonderful day.
I always love to hear from you. XOXO

New Crow Collage

At least I think it is a crow, the photo I drew it from did not say and it seems a bit small and does not have a curved enough beak to be a raven, but I love crows too :-). It is titled "Crow Contemplating", 10"x 10", again not a lick of paint, just paper and rust stains and micro sepia and black pens and cold wax on cradle board.
This one was labor intensive, and a labor of love. I included detail and side views, double click to see more detail. I always love to here your thoughts. XOXO
P.S I am tumbling this image for those that like to tumble :-).

Another New Collage

This one is titled "The Music Room" 12"x 12", venetian plaster, oil, rust and tea stained paper, sepia pen, rusted bit :-) and cold wax on cradle board. If you triple click on an image you get wonderful details.
I am having fun, fun , fun. I don't want to do anything else :-).
I always love to know your thoughts.
XOXO

New Collage, "Raven's Treasure"

This is a new piece, 12"x 12", venetian plaster, oil, India ink, pen, rust and tea, charcoal, graphite, rice paper and cold wax on cradle board. A friend gave me rolls of paper that I think is rice paper, it is very thin, I have been in drawing heaven :-). I painted some with black India ink and then drew on them with white charcoal.
 I get all my drawing out and play, awesome fun :-).
 I always love to hear your thoughts.
Have a wonderful weekend. XOXO

Words to Live By

"Cease to make demands of this moment".
I was listening to the radio the other day and I regret to say I did not catch the name of the woman who was speaking, she was talking about staying calm in difficult situations, I was only partly listening, but when she said these words I perked up. It made a big impression and I wrote them down. They have become a mantra and I believe they are life changing. I believe that as hard as it sometimes is, loving my life as it is, is my spiritual practice and not making demands, not having to have things a certain way to be happy is part of that practice. I thought you might get some benefit from these words too.
I have been making lots of art, but it is all in pieces, I have boards done and about 50 drawings, but nothing that fits together yet for a collage. I  am having great fun and hope to have something to show soon.
Have a wonderful week. XOXO

Letter to a Young Poet

 I know this is long, but if you are an artist of any kind it is a must read, I came across this again after many years and it has helped me just when I needed it, I have been looking outside myself for approval, for a sign that I am a good artist and really it does not matter, what matters is that I have to paint, I have painted since I was 8 years old and I would go insane if I could not create. Read this letter by Rainer Maria Rilke and be inspired. XOXO

Paris
February 17, 1903
Dear Sir,
     Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses; for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsay able than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.
     With this note as a preface, may I just tell you that your verses have no style of their own, although they do have silent and hidden beginnings of something personal. I feel this most clearly in the last poem, "My Soul." There, some thing of your own is trying to become word and melody. And in the lovely poem "To Leopardi" a kind of kinship with that great, solitary figure does perhaps appear. Nevertheless, the poems are not yet anything in themselves, not yet any thing independent, even the last one and the one to Leopardi. Your kind letter, which accompanied them managed to make clear to me various faults that I felt in reading your verses, though I am not able to name them specifically.
     You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes a great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty Describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sound - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attention to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. And if out of , this turning within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.
     But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self searching that I ask of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.
     What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.
     It was a pleasure for me to find in your letter the name of Professor Horacek; I have great reverence for that kind, learned man, and a gratitude that has lasted through the years. Will you please tell him how I feel; it is very good of him to still think of me, and I appreciate it.
     The poem that you entrusted me with, I am sending back to you. And I thank you once more for your questions and sincere trust, of which, by answering as honestly as I can, I have tried to make myself a little worthier than I, as a stranger, really am.
Yours very truly,
Rainer Maria Rilke