Collaboration

My writing area and my painting area are literally arranged along one long desk setup that can be navigated by a roll of my desk chair wheels. It is the perfect creation centre for me: author and painter.

I have been on a bit of an adventure in both mediums trying to discover what my preferred writing genre just might be AND also that place in my painting where I can say, "Yes, that is me." So often I have painted pictures because they are lovely scenes of what I enjoy most. My bicycle series (can one call 3 pictures a series?) opened up a window of thought for me as I considered how my creative self is evolving and spilling out onto my computer screen or flowing onto watercolour paper. 

As the emotions from my writing boil over I find myself wanting to capture them on paper - not as a scene from a happenstance discovery of reality along a path or beach but as an emotion, ready to break free from conceptual brain activity comprised of words colliding with brain matter, struggling to find a place to become. In the writing genres this could be many kinds of fiction or even poetry. But oh to capture this beyond a camera's perspective or a writer's story and find the colour or the subject to convey it to - well, I guess it doesn't matter to whom! For me, I suppose - to live on my wall for a short time and then, hopefully, to be shared with those who connect to it. 

I have forayed into this before with the following pictures:

Mountain on Fire

Autumn Joy

Winter Moonlight

Reaching for the Stars

All filled with the beauty and destruction somehow as it formed in my mind. That came out of close encounters of the flame and smoke kind as well as being mesmerized by the visual of moonlight streaming down through a winter forest, golden mixed with purple and blue shadows. I splashed some paint around to see how that might "happen." Winter Moonlight did not garner much response from others but there is something there, simmering under the surface, that may emerge as it sits in my "box of possibilities" (right on top of other three!), that I keep tucked under my desk 

So, now I have a new one. I have been struck over and over again with pictures of people - women most specifically. Bright or dark, quiet or loud (mostly quiet!); pensive or active - I want to paint them with colours instead of words. I want to see the essence creep out not in a perfect rendition of a photo or image but rather, in an impression of the emotion surrounding it. It has come, to my surprise, through a recent exercise I embraced to literally try to make sense of my many little doodlings I have started and tossed into my "box of possibilities". In a rush to get some moved to an "odds & sods" box in our garage sale this Saturday, I gathered all together and proceeded to force them into dollar store mats. I cut some pictures into pieces, framing them separately into tiny fragments of a scene - more perfect by being isolated. Some were merely practice backgrounds for bigger projects or even technique mastery. I grabbed one yesterday like that - a technique for watercolour washes: wet on wet; graduated; dry. I had experimented with these to emulate the sea or the lake, capturing wave movement or sun sparkles with technique rather than tiny brush strokes. The following painting evolved. 

I have a love affair with the sea or large bodies of water in general - big enough to get wavy and dramatic as well as mirror-like and calm. Water draws me into it and fills me with peace and gratitude for life. Even the drama of storms hypnotizes me into a place of contemplation rather than terror or excitement (as long as I am beside the water and not on it or in it!). This picture came together from that place. It is a simple design. There are only two actual colours in it. The Sea and Me, where I am invisible; where I become as one with the water, full of the yearnings and sighs of the deep.