It's So Nice to Have You Back Where You Belong

It is fun to be a girl painting intimate little pin-ups. And giving them silly broadway show song titles. I like strings and phrases that don't quite match up or are a smidge sloppy. Just a few more dribbles from the studio I guess, but appealing nontheless. I have a few more in the pipeline, and some piano glamour shots too.. See you soon my dear blog!

But Soft

This one cuts a sharp silhoette. Impressive stamina, these ladies. Well, just one more for you today. But expect more narrative drawings shortly. Again, the idea of daily, for me, might be a bit of a stretch, but every now and again, I'm gonna pop a few things right up here and wash them right out of my hair.

I'm doing swell

I was reviewing some of the earlier posts on these ladies, thinking about starting a blog (err.. a while ago) and what it means, perhaps the daily practice of something.. and how I struggle with the idea of daily. I recently reread Gerhard Richter's The Daily Practice of Painting and I'm still no closer to the ideal of daily-ness as a painter, except in terms of frivolity. These almost silly little drawings keep me moving. I'm making a pile of Marilyn Monroes right now, and I think the girls keep my hands moving, keep me from being overwhelmed by detail and miniature. And also overwhelmed by the idea of the death of painting, in whatever form I choose to encounter it. I think I choose labor as an end run around the death of analog-making question, but again, most of it is just failure of the hand stuff. I love the way these things are rough and how that somehow bolsters a sense of nostalgia even when I'm most concerned with appropriation and color.

Sweetie. Darling.

Here she is, girl number two. I think she's an alternate. And a bag lady. I'm not sure anybody is going to want her. The paper she's on is dirty. Oh well. She's kind of funny too.

I Got My Own

Its been a while. I had a few lovely comissions. Here are some of the results. I think that working from Sears catalog images, however loosely, has really given me something to chew on. I wonder what is going to happen when this reaches the larger drawings.

Slightly Anemic

But for the cut of this dress, I don't think it would have made the cut here. Sometimes failure in painting is a kind of badge of courage, sometimes it is just clumsy. Failure as an operating principle is not my end goal. I am not pushing to failure in mechanical execution but instead to a kind of elegant clumsiness. The hand-made has the ability to be much more evocative in its execution. That said, I think this drawing is just darn clunky. But as I am posting a drawing a day, I figure this is my a makeup drawing, and I am forgiven, I hope.

Beauty School Drop Out

It is hard to tell what is more saccharine, her dress or the paper. And yet, the dress fits like a potato sack. I like these drawings as they get more plain. I didn't remember how much I liked flat color. The way slight tonal variations lay next to one another is infinitely pleasing. Muted, whited out pinks sit well next to one another.

Casting About

Yet another girl to add to the collection.

So I was drawing this little lady today, trying to think why I'm doing such frivolous work. I'm making a catalogue of 40s Sears Roebuck catalog girls and zoo and farm animals. I am working in my studio on woodland scenes (CT woods!) with food deposits and silent offerings. What the hell am I doing?

Well, not pouring paint. Not caving in to the romantic urge to replace religion with art making and viewing. The musuem as temple or mausoleum, no more! The pour or splatter is not longer an apparation in my world. The pour, the splatter, the shaped color, no longer a stand in for the bodily and the ether, the toxic explosion and the apparition, a cipher for bodily movement and its excretions, a rote for faux inspiration and a mere excuse to take on "I am nature." And yet, so appealing is the urge to talk to that kind of romaticism. Maybe I should be caving in. I think I might. I don't want to be coy or someone-forbid snarky! And supposedly irony is dead, so what have I left but absurdist romanticism and action.

Well, I have archive-building. But now I have a way to deal with these archive images. Central casting. I hope to cast drawings and paintings from these archive drawings. So we shall see. There may be humor and irony in the juxtaposition of different cast elements, but all shall be painted with straightforwardness in the archive. This makes me feel more honest.

Miss Lollipop

This drawing reminds me of one of John Weiners' summertime poems fantasizing about Miss Lollipop. She was so wicked and alluring in a sweet and sweaty way. I believe the poems are actually in a journal from 1959 that Weiners published late in his life under the title 707 Scott Street.

The flower paper is supposed to be presented in a lozenge form (diamond) but I cannot figure out how to scan it that way. The diamond shape doesn't quite fit on the flatbed and I have yet to buy my fancypants Adobe Photoshop program for the Mac which would help me flip it to full lozenge power. Sigh, too much complaining and not enough loafing.
I like the slowness and familiarity of summer at home on a lawn chair.

Quick Footed in the Morning

Not much to say here. I think I'm just collecting cliches as characters. I dig the limited palette and the pink craft paper. I'm not so quick witted in the morning.

In Sweet Fragrant Meadows of Dawn and Dew

One more for today. A second sweater girl, with a nod to 40s Sears Roebuck catalog fashion (oddly related to German fashions as well). I guess I'm collecting the greatest generation and making them into a flip book. I have this tendency to create an archive of images to use for later. Maybe this is what this blog will be for. I got kinda stuck right after I started, I think I was afraid of the permanency of the web. Of putting out these drips and drabs of myself over and above a kind of packaged ideal. But maybe these little driblets and throw away ideas are much more interesting than the work itself, the total package. I dunno, but I'm still going slightly incognito. I'm still slightly embarassed by my work and my dumb photos.

Sweater Girl Wears a Trench

This is my favorite. I suppose I enjoy the sweater as wallcovering almost as much as the ruby slippered dame waiting for a passing single engine plane. I like that because her gaze is so animated, she could be watching a spy sidle up to her or she could be waiting for a bus. Waiting is a Hitchcock thing, as is the single figure in the expanse. Maybe decadent interiors are too, although I think I would rather align my sensitivities there with Neo-Baroque.

Wool Skirt

There is something kind of gracious about this pose. As if she is patting something or somebody on the head. Again, the dress is a riff on 1940s era clothing, with some of my own additions. Many of the templates for these girls may be found in Sears Roebuck catalogues. I appretiate the girls stocky legs and rounded faces. The way I'm handling paint around the faces and in the skirts is a little bit clunky, sometimes multiple layers of Gouache, an opaque Watercolor-type paint (a little explanation for the uninitiated). I like it when such a refined medium gets awkward. I have no interest in accuracy, more deviation from cleanliness for emotional affect. If something optimistic and forward-looking is handled with clunkiness, a touch almost bordering on premature wear and tear or faux nostalgia, then I feel as if I may in fact push against the crispness of the scrapbooking paper support underneath. My husband despises nostalgia in many forms, I'm not sure what I think about it. These drawings are escapist at their very core, but I don't think I can embrace the notion of nostalgia as a moral good either. Something about wishing for my grandmother's problems and fashion sense gives me the willies.

New Drawings

I just started a series of drawings. You shall see more of these in the next couple of days. I'm using the trappings of 1940s era clothing to signify optimism and solidity. Why is it that wartime women always look heavier? More literaly present? Willing to take up space and wear more practical dresses? I have paired these women with one of my old favorites, a support of craft paper or scrapbooking paper. I am tempted to resort again to the language of stickers and gel pens, but I'm trying to hold myself back. I like that the color palette for the models stands in front of the bright pop of the ground. It is almost as if their more conservative palette and styling could stand in front of plaid or paisley in astrobrights. Well, enjoy. This is my return to the blog. My return to steady work. I got bogged down in preparing egg tempera surfaces and pigments, which I have yet to use... sigh.

Glorious

Record of dinner: Chicken Lentil Soup with red wine. Birthday cake from a few days ago. Charming.

Pile for You!

This is Pile with Race Horses. Someone I know once told me that the saddest thing he ever saw was a dead horse. Or maybe it was a dying dog? I can't quite remember.

Repetition and Juxtaposition

I am fascinated by food and Dürer's Large Turf. These photo contributions may betray a myopic eye, but no matter. I tend to want to make the small things monumental, sometimes iconic.

What kind of structure do painters normally lay on their photographic pursuits? I want to create a visual dictionary for my work and I feel that having a time stamp upon my interactions with this site will create a reason for continuing to ask more of my own visuality and archive sensibility. I have created a diaristic "history of my visual consciousness" in grad school, some of which will probably reappear here. I'm more interested in covering new ground in painting and drawing through a reinvestment in the daily and its appearances.

I have been making drawings about the fantastic with reference to the mundane and the bodily. My last post is an example of the type of riffs on classical still life which have been my bread and butter for the better part of a year.

Hello? Is it me you are looking for?

I need some sort of structure for my studio practice. Here is my opening contribution. These are some work photos from my most recently completed drawing. Finished photos to come.