Changing times

We Are Neighbours (2009) 9.5 x 10.5 in. encaustic mixed media on board

What's going on here? No flowers, no peeling wallpaper, no rusty objects, no family imagery. Where did this work come from? Is it from the same person as the work in the previous post? I did mention not censoring my experiments in a new medium, but I wasn't expecting a whole change in content. Although this work might not look the same as most of my other work, there is a subtle link to the passage of time and its effects - my consistent theme.

My mind has been immersed in child like things lately because of my two granddaughters. I'm buying new children's books and games and talking about childlike things. I'm seeing the world through innocent eyes. A child's ideas about the world and how to exist in it develop early through family and schooling. While most parents try their best to model positive treatment of others and provide experiences that will develop a social conscience, the world that children grow up in doesn't always fit their upbringing. Things can go wrong, lessons can be forgotten and a new beliefs formed. We are not always neighbours.

Learning Curves

My life as a visual artist has been relatively short when compared to my chronological age. As a result of starting later in life, I always have this feeling that I don't have a lot of time to waste. When confronted with new learning, I tend to really dive in the deep end. First I read obsessively, then I order the materials (too many), and then comes the long process of experimentation. That's where I am now with encaustic. I'll remember October as the wax month.

I've certainly run through a lot of encaustic medium and I've learned quite a bit from my experiences. I try not to worry about the end product in the beginning stages because needing a product makes me work more cautiously, and that is not what you want before you've found your stride. I've been working on small boards mostly and trying all kinds of things, some successful and some not. I've found out that I like using wax for its transparency, and when I use colour is is applied in glazes rather than full strength. It is the delicacy that appeals to me most. Last week I completed a piece that I am satisfied with so it's time to share. Today I drop off this work and four others for a group show at The Leyton Gallery which opens on November 13.

Moments (10 x 24in.) encaustic with photo transfer & paper on board
(Only my photography is skewed )

I like the fact that I am finding my voice in encaustic. Even though this is a new medium for me, the result is still recognizable as my work, but it seems to be more delicate and ephemeral than my acrylic work. These are photo transfers from shots I took during my stay at Birr Castle Demesne. It is so much easier to do a transfer from a photocopy directly onto the wax. It give such a floating effect and I think that is why my work is looking more delicate.

Below is one of my mixed media acrylic paintings from my Reading a Garden series that is really saying the same thing, but it has a very different look. I even used one of the images in both works.

Ephemeral (2009) 10 x 24 in.

photo transfer, paper , acrylic mediums and paint on board

The answer

My last post left you with an artist statement to consider and attempt to imagine what the artist's work is like. Here's the artist statement:

"Through themes of childhood, sexuality and recollection (the artist's) work reveals narratives that are divined from her dreamlike world. This invented place is a fount from which (the artist) has drawn from since her childhood and which she is continually mapping and exploring. The work is a compendium of lost feelings, half dreams and landscapes that seeks to evoke a sense of intimacy, familiarity and wistfulness. Inspired in part by fairy tales by the forests and lakes near her home in Ottawa, these mixed media collages unveil a strange enchantment, one shared between nature and imagination."

And the guest artist is...

Amy A Thompson who was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1971. She studied Fine Art at York University and graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design with honours in 1995. Amy is represented in Ottawa by Dale Smith Gallery and currently has a solo exhibition there called Glint.

I've selected three of Amy's mixed media works to highlight here. I hope they fairly represent her work over the last three years. For a more complete listing of Amy's work visit her website where all the works are categorized by theme/series in the lower left corner under menu.

I was particularly taken with the series: Lost Albums II , Fortune Birds, Have a Good Time and Smut. As viewers we respond to work based on our own experiences and interests, I know Amy's work speaks to me because of its delicacy and references to childhood and imagination. It plays directly into my past experiences as a primary teacher. Her use of patterned backgrounds , mostly in subtle hues, adds safeness, predictability and a child like innocence to the scenes . At times this innocence is juxtaposed with more serious, adult content as in Smut which is an interesting treatment of sexuality. I thought is represented this adult world and a child's discovery of it very well. These pieces brought back memories of my first introduction to 'the birds and bees" at age 9 when another child provided very descriptive images of exactly what went on in the bedroom. But my understanding of it was still influenced by my innocent life up to that point. The works in Smut brought me back to that time in my life.

In Fortune Birds, Amy integrates fortune cookie sayings into bird collage portraits. I love the lyrical line work that represents bird song. I was fascinated with this execution because I am working on a painting in my Reading a Garden series where I wanted to represent birdsong, I'm still thinking about that and now nothing will be good enough because I loved what Amy did. I also collect fortune cookie wisdom but up to this point I've never done anything with it.

Old Shool 1, 2009, mixed media on board 18 x 18.5 in.


Moonchild, 2008, mixed media on paper , 35.25 x 28.5 in.

Haunt- Ladies Night Out, 2007 , mixed media on paper, 23.5 x 14.5

All three images found on Dale Smith Gallery , used with artist's permission.

Did your impressions from reading Amy's artist statement and her work match?

I would love to hear my readers responses to this work which made a mark with me.

The reason why

The world of the internet has made viewing art possible by a simple finger click. Artists can prowl the web to their hearts' delight, visit different countries, and view art that they might never otherwise see. There are positives and negatives connected to this unlimited display of artwork. As with reading an art book, you can never get all the nuances of a work, the size/scale, the manner of application, material choices, textural subtleties, layers, etc., when looking online. You can, however, get a good sense of overall style and content.

One thing I like about web exploration is the presence of artist bios, artist statements and an archive of work. It is easier to "place" an artist on the web than when you see one exhibition. My online education certainly helped me when I was struggling with the larger themes in art and trying to place mine within a larger context. Reading so many artist statements also helped me write my own.

One of my favourite web activities is finding an artist, and reading the bio and artist statement before I look at the gallery/portfolio. Why would I do this? I like to envision how the art would look based on the statement and other aspects of the artist's history. Am I a good predictor based on this information? Not always! I find it very interesting that words often do not help us predict art style and content, but they do inform our viewing once the work is in front of us.

I thought I would set up a similar exercise for my readers. Here is an artist statement from an artist whose work I discovered on my last trip to Ottawa. Read it and try to imagine or describe what the work might be like. I will reveal the work in the next post.

Artist statement :
"Through themes of childhood, sexuality and recollection (the artist's) work reveals narratives that are divined from her dreamlike world. This invented place is a fount from which (the artist) has drawn from since her childhood and which she is continually mapping and exploring. The work is a compendium of lost feelings, half dreams and landscapes that seeks to evoke a sense of intimacy, familiarity and wistfulness. Inspired in part by fairy tales by the forests and lakes near her home in Ottawa, these mixed media collages unveil a strange enchantment, one shared between nature and imagination."

In my search for artist statements for this activity, I initially went to artists whose work I am very familiar with and in many cases their statement did not help to elaborate the nature of their work . I think there is a lesson in that. If someone read your artist statement would it provide an inroad to what you do as an artist?

Why floral art ?

I am attracted to floral imagery because flowers, like people, change with passing time. The passage of time and its effects on nature, objects, memory and identity is a consistent theme in my work . Flowers offer a different perspective on the passage of time , one that carries the hope of renewal within the rhythmic pattern of growth and decay.

Flowers are a perfect metaphor for our lives. Artist Simon Bull has a similar take . "Flowers speak to us about our own human experience; they grow and go through different phases of life just as we do," Bull says. "They tell us stories that can be connected to ourselves."

One of my first artist statements noted that "flowers are insignificant in size and blend into nature's overall design. Their worth is often assessed by fleeting glance and a momentary recognition of beauty." Some artists like Georgia O'Keeffe deal with the insignificance of flowers by greatly enlarging their scale to put them in your face as it were. I have a much more subtle approach , keeping my work small and intimate and inviting the viewer to come closer to see the complex world I create by using colour, texture and subtle layering. Flowers have their own language, one of subtle nuances and subtexts, that goes beyond external appearances. Meaning is found in colour, shape, location, stages of growth and historical connections. I invite viewers to look beyond the obvious to determine what flowers tell us about life. Ryall 2004

The genre of floral art has a long history with origins reaching back to the art of ancient Egypt where flowers were painted on vessels and clothing. Many paintings from the middle ages and onward in Europe use flowers to symbolize various aspects of religion, and in Dutch still life works flowers were often reminders that the delights of the world are transitory. During that time when Dutch vanitas paintings were popular, varieties of flowers were available because of exploration in the far east and the new world. There seemed to be an endless supply of subject matter with the exotic being highly sought and represented through art.

The use of flowers during Victorian times to send messages connected to emotions or personal characteristics has always intrigued me. Rather than directly impart the sentiment to another person, it was all said with flowers. Such a safe, discreet way to behave! Sometimes a whole bouquet needed to be interpreted together to understand the message from the sender. Certainly, this was a very different kind of text. If you received a bouquet of daffodils, pansies and periwinkle the sender would be commenting on your thoughtfulness as a friend and expressing the highest regard for you. Similarly, Chinese flower paintings represent specific emotions and are given as gifts to convey a range of sentiments. The orchid represents a refined, noble or beautiful person, and the peony symbolizes wealth or good fortune.

I often use this "language of flowers" to impart messages to my viewers. I am sending the messages in a language that is now defunct to most people. I don't see this as a useless activity. It is a statement on my part that communication is often a one way affair with the other party being unwilling or unable to receive what is communicated. This theme of communication and how different "texts" can or cannot be read reflects my experiences with students who struggled to make sense of the written word. For them written language was a one way street. My latest body of work "Reading a garden" treats a garden as a text and explore how we make meaning from gardens based on our background knowledge. This work goes a step further and also explores how what we come to understand from our experiences fades quickly with the passage of time.

Painting for the market

Everyone has an opinion about what kind of art sells best in the marketplace. My dealer tells me red sells. Most people say flowers don't sell, but I know differently. Such statements make me feel contrary. I can honestly say I have never created a painting specifically to sell it. I don't think about art in terms of sales. First and foremost, my work has to be important to me. My friend says such statements come from artists who can still eat and pay the bills if they don't sell work. She is probably right about this. For me, it is about creating work and having someone care enough about what I have created to take it home. I think it is impossible to determine what will sell, and if you go down that road you are lost forever because your work ceases to be something that comes from the deepest part of you. It makes art a product defined by the marketplace.

It seems that the kind of work I like to create is often in a category that is supposedly more difficult to sell. Take my penchant for floral imagery. I've had a love hate relationship with flowers as content in my work. How can something so beautiful and delicate be the stuff that serious art explores? Now everyone knows that such subject matter isn't important, not!

The changing face of red flowers in my work

Breathe 2004

Connections 2007

No red lately.... but still lots of flowers

My next post will explore the use of floral imagery in art.

Thoughts on beauty

"All artwork is about beauty: all positive work represents it and celebrates it. All negative art protests the lack of beauty in our lives." (Agnes Martin , 1989)

"When I think of art, I think of beauty," she wrote. "Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye, it is in the mind." Agnes Marin

"I think that our minds respond to things beyond this world. Take beauty: it's a very mysterious thing, isn't it? I think it's a response in our minds to perfection. It's too bad, people not realizing that their minds expand beyond this world." Agnes Martin

The art, life and musings of Agnes Martin gave artists much to think about. When I want to rebut anyone who questions the role of beauty in art, Agnes Martin is one of the artists I depend on to help me in the debate. Her life and her art were one and she spoke bluntly and often about the role of beauty in art and life.

Born in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada, she was a contemporary of Georgia O' Keeffe, and a strong woman who lived her life and created art her way. She was never swayed by current trends in art. Matt Schudel, Washington Post wrote in her obituary.

"Ms. Martin was admired for the purity of her artistic vision and was considered a symbol of integrity in the materialistic, sometimes venal world of modern art. In addition to her deceptively simple, gridlike paintings, she also wrote and spoke of the deep spiritual purpose of the artistic life, saying that an artist's goal is not to make political statements but to create lasting beauty ...... She also disavowed politics and any connection with the feminist movement. In 1967, when she was honored by Harper's Bazaar as one of 100 "Women of Achievement," she came to the luncheon wearing moccasins and an unironed skirt and blouse."

Hilton Kramer, critic and editor of the New Criterion, described Martin's work as "like a religious utterance, almost a form of prayer."

It seems Agnes Martin found her artistic voice and continued to produce in a very minimalist style until she died. I find her work strongly patterned in a structured, austere way and it gives me the same sense of peace that I spoke about in previous posts about art that uses pattern. You become one with the work by focusing on the repeating elements; calmness pervades the experience. It is beautiful in a profound way.

You will find these letters written by Joanne Hunt in response to Agnes Martin's work and life" teachings" very interesting I think. They are posted on Red Revine blog.

See more of Agnes Martin's work, a bio and a critique here.

You may also want to check out Katharine Cartwright's blog post on The Role of Beauty in Art . We have been having an interesting discussion back and forth about the role of beauty in art. Where do you weigh in?