Resonating Within

(Red dot skibbling away)

I painted this a few years ago, waiting, waiting for someone to see and embrace it. The other day she walked in and she did. She always does, through the 30 years I've known her. She's an innovator, a visionary, brilliant. She sees with instant clarity. The simple, the complex. Always has. And when she can, she embraces, takes the connection home with her.

Real connection is rare, but when you find it, pause and pay attention. That's were the beauty of life lives.

A second person came in and recognized the following painting. I don't know her personally, but for me to see her connect so deeply (tears!) and so accurately to my vision (she described her feelings out loud, so I could tell she completely got what I was doing with the painting)... ahh, again, the beauty of life at its most rich. (This painting has most of it's wealth in viewing it from a distance of one foot... sorry you can't experience that here. It is part of the point of the painting, that treasure is everywhere you see it... you just have to know how to slow down and pay attention.)

Yes, with these two connections I know I am one lucky giggle-thwort.* It took me years to figure out this paint language, and I know it's somewhat esoteric. I don't expect the general populace to completely relate, but when they do... "Treasure Within."

 *March 20, 2013.

That Old Charmer, Charisma

A guest cracked up in laughter over a chaos cartoon contraption I made ~ 5 mini chaos scenarios displayed in a row. Above is one of those chaos delights. The original of this power-hungry-happy-chaos-creature is actually about 1.5 inch in diameter. (Real chaos creatures can be tiny, tiny, tiny!) Doesn't it beam delight?! Charisma?! But watch out it doesn't burn you... Those dark shapes on the outside are unhappy-power-hungry-chaos-creatures.The war is on. As soon as they connect: Friction! Jealousy! (Mixing black and yellow can make a rather lovely earth green...)

Below is the full load, and an article by some disreputable newspaper someone sent me.

Clearly the journalist had a bit too much of the following:

Cup Full and Spoon Full of Chaos

Wouldn't it be Great

"Three Percent Contained" (red dot)

Wouldn't it be great if life was as calm as some of my drawings. It's not. It's as chaotic and confusing as those other of my drawings/paintings.

Some people think my art is all about myself. When you think about your own life work and philosophies do you think about your life in relation to only what you, personally, do and feel? Or do you think about it in relation to how other people come and go within the sphere of your life, influencing your thoughts and feelings, closely, or even abstractly. Do you think about the decisions they make within their own lives and how this affects others? When you think about your life do you think what you read (reality as seen through the eyes of others) is a part of you? that what you watch on TV becomes a subconscious part of you? that what you watch, perceive, and feel in movies might color your world? that the music you respond to (the heart beat of others) might fill your head so much you can't see yourself? that the people you are fascinated by or are repelled by are just as much in your life at particularly intense moments as your own conscious thoughts might be?

No, my art, though often about emotional topics, is not all about me going through my own personal moods. It's about you and me and them and all that physical, virtual, natural, trippy movement that surounds us all, day after day, year after year, and on into the decades of time.

EB, a person from my husband's life and someone whom I've never met, just called, desperate. Three sentences from this man and I was sitting more closely inside this guy's spirit than he'd ever want me or anyone to sit. It's a place I have noticed many people can't acknowledge. It's a bit scary there. But it's also a beautifully human place. I make art about this inner place. Thank God it's not always desperate! But it's always intense, vibrating, resonating. It is a human something that is alive, fertile, hopefully hopeful ... and downright fascinating.

So now I am imagining that EB might be feeling a little bit like what the above painting looked like when I first began painting it (out of control, desperately wild paint strokes flying all over the place). Or maybe like the one below. I just hope his chaotic reality gets safely contained, as I have done in these two paintings. Maybe he will be able to make calm sense out of the mess, just as we all strive to do in our chaotic and sometimes very brutal existence.

Just a thought.

More Meaning or Not?

One of my favorite contemporary artists, Suejin Chung, you will find linked here.

In Chung's book she says she likes the shapes and colors of the objects she puts in her work, so she paints them. She says there is no psychologically intended meaning.

Part of me sees what she means, realizes that she is enthralled with certain shapes and patterning so much she seems unable to stop painting them. Another part of me wonders if she is playing a game with us. Another part of me wonders if anyone can not see themselves through a psychological consciousness.

Then I remember my dad, who could create wonderful cartoons. He is one of the most psychologically unaware people I know, but still he loves to play with perception of reality, especially through joking with word rearrangement. So perhaps Suejin Chung really is unaware that she is painting more than what she says she is painting. The sound of the tree falling in the forest can be a loud crash to some, and just a whisper of the wind for another.

What is Going On?

My audience has been curious about this piece. We all came up with a number of possible answers. From my perspective I see a lot of movement, so what ever is happening is clearly not static. Pay attention to the colors. Where is the joyful coloring? Where the grounded coloring? Can you find color combinations that create tension in this piece? Is there a sense of calm anywhere? One guest asked me why the man on the right is clothed and the woman on the left is not. Look at the colors again. If you click on the painting you can see the shapes a bit better.

As a side note, I painted this a few years ago. At the time I was frustrated with one part of the painting. I kept thinking it should be different, but every time I imagined changes I kept leaving it as is. Now, after living a lot of life in the past two years, I completely understand that area and it is right on about what I think I wanted to say back then, and what I know I want to say right now. Funny how one can know something even before we know it. We are always children, always growing up, no matter where we are in life. And that is a big hint about the painting.

Structure Within Chaos

"View From Above"

(Sold)

I finished the young adult book I mentioned in my last posting. The last half was just as relevant and satisfying as the first half.

I'm always one for learning something new, anywhere I can. My take away from "Okay For Now" is the technique the author used to structure the story. The world this boy lives in is in complete chaos. The author creates a type of inner thought pattern within the boy that enables this character to deal with the chaos, and us, the readers, to deal with it as well. The writing slows down the action so that we can take it all in, easily.

This is a lesson for life.
This is also a lesson for creating art about chaos.
Slowing down the swirl of chaos enables the viewer to relax enough to take it all in.
Structure, even almost invisible, is structure nevertheless.
The painting above looks quite different from the scratchboard below... or is it?

(Sold)

It's a Good Game Plan

(Detail from "One Good Book")

(...The title of this drawing being kind of ironic because I'd forgotten it's name, but wanted to put this guy in because he illustrates an idea I have about a really good book I am reading right now.)

A friend, Megan Sugiyama, has a wonderful perception about all layers of life. She gave a young adult book, "Okay For Now," to my husband as a gift, saying it was one of the best books she'd recently read. It has taken me a while, but I am finally reading it and before one chapter was over I was in tears and knew I didn't want to let these characters out of my life. I fell in love that quickly.

It's not easy to be a complex person in this complex world. The author, Gary D. Schmidt, gets a handle on this mess, simplifies it into an understandable game board of life, and shows us how every step of our game (no matter how sh***y or twisted up it might be) has room for positive interpretation.

There are birds in this book (which my husband loves) and there is art (as you know there must be because everything I put in this blog is filtered through art-brain). The protagonist is in the 8th grade and is forced to move to a small town where everyone thinks they know everyone else's business.

I'm on page 218 and the last page is 360.
I will get there way too soon.

~

You can find "Okay For Now" on the best sellers list wherever vibrant, new, young books are found.

You can find more characters who I am imagining might live in Schmidt's book in the drawing below.

"One Good Book"

And you can find possibilities for dialogue that go with the above characters here.

Working in Light Cast by Ruth Waters

I have a new art studio!
This one is fabulous. It has great light, smooth white walls, and is snugged up in a cluster of new studios housing 27 talented artists.
Right next door is the Peninsula Art Museum, presently moving in to its new home.

Immense gratitude goes to Ruth Waters, the greatest benefactor of visual artists that I am aware of on the peninsula. She created my past studio complex (1870 Art Center) and now has created this new museum/art institute facility from scratch. The generosity and strength of will of this woman is mind blowing.

Leigh Toldi
Peninsula Art Institute
1777 California Drive (Studio 26)
Burlingame, CA, 94010

We are having a Grand Opening
Saturday, March 16, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

I had lost my art studio 5 times recently ~ once caused by my own generosity and the other times caused by rather peculiar quirks of fate ~ so I'm drawing with fingers crossed, hoping that this one sticks!

Little Big

(Have you read that book, "Little Big"? It's a good one.)

Above is a detail from "Here and There Philosopher." The figures are a tiny bit larger than same size. When I am drawing so small I'm never sure what the characters really look like until I use a magnifying glass. Click on image to get a bigger picture. Click on the image below to get an even larger magnification.

Pressure to Climb in the Box

I was in the middle of this drawing, see above, not sure where I wanted to go... when I was asked to make a piece of art that has the name of a color in the title. So I skidded off in that direction and came up with the slightly noisy finished piece you see below. 

"Scarlet Horizons"

To be exhibited at CAL in Half Moon Bay in April.

(sold)

A Glimpse of Dinner

"Out on the Table" at Sanchez Art Center.

Ink drawings and eating utensils sewn onto heirloom tablecloth attached to paintings on canvas.

Playing Outside the Box

This piece is on exhibit at Sanchez Art Center, right alongside

my January 13 posted image, another small pen and ink. 

Down the hall is the large installation piece mentioned in my most recent post.

Earlier this month exhibition organizer Tanya Lin Jaffe encouraged artists to bring in more than one piece of art, the gallery being such a large space, so I created this drawing specifically for the show theme ("Women Who Broke the Rules"). In my mind, we all know where the real fun is and we're breaking rules of normalcy all the time to get there. Creative thought: It's by nature outside the box.

Click on the image to see the true size of the drawing. The digital reproduction makes the lines less delicate than they actually are in person. That's the wonderment of fine ink drawing: the original is always more fascinating than the reproduction. I saw a show of tiny red and black inked lines long ago that I am still remembering, 

years later.

(Red dotted.)

Fluid music was racing through my mind during the days it took me to draw this, and still is. Can I physically play a musical instrument? No. But music is at the core (the spine) of us all. A symbol of the creative spirit we all feel when we do the crazy wonderful things we do.

Emergency Art

Had a snap decision to make last weekend. New art was needed to fill 100 feet of gallery space. The theme of the group show is "Women Who Broke the Rules."The question was: Could I create an installation piece of approximately 25 feet and have it installed within 24 hours?

28 hours later I walked out of the gallery having succeeded. I broke a few of my own rules in making the piece, including incorporating failed ink drawings and paintings with the more successful imagery. (Haven't photographed it, yet.)

Personally the piece was very successful. Breaking rules is what creativity is all about. Opens the windows and doors to new avenues of thought. The little grey cells are now snapping to attention right and left, smashing into each other, procreating madly.

Sanchez Art Center

1220 Linda Mar Blvd.

Pacifica, CA.

East Gallery

Reception 7-9 pm Feb. 22.

Show runs thru March 30.

Musing about the Muse

I've been talking with a friend about these two figures (part of the larger drawing posted earlier). Is this a man and a woman? A teacher and student? A person with demons? A person embracing the world?

Our lives are so full of change that it feels restrictive to define the bubble with certainty of words. Maybe there should be an infinity sign in there.

Heartland Tripping

Tuning In

(Unfinished drawing.)

Paying attention.

That's where it's at.

We don't always like what we see, 

or hear, or feel.

But, with time,

and awareness,

and a few thoughtful lines drawn in the sand,

we can hope to find resonance.

A tiny resonating sound

can be profoundly

inspiring.

Here's lookin' at ya, Sunshine!

Chasing After Beauty...

Ok, so I saw the most beautiful face in the world.
Now what do I do with it?

Time keeps flipping over the cards.
Sometimes they face up beauty.
Sometimes they face up all that negative stuff.

This is why I draw and paint endlessly.
There is way too much to think about
and if I capture a bit of it I can bury it somewhere
and then move on.

This means the beauty gets buried, too.
But as I said yesterday, the beauty is hopefully influencing its surroundings inside the whole.

I'm a great one for finding beauty anywhere at anytime.
Years ago Toby Covich, an art student two years older than me, made what looked like clay turds for his senior project. My mind recalls them draped delicately all over a boat.
Those turds were almost beautiful...
Well, humorous, anyway.
The main humor being that I would actually make myself think turds were beautiful.
I never forgot that lesson.
With TC's td's in mind, for years I've been finding beauty in everything.

What honest-to-G brilliance that guy had... and what a crack up that I fell for it!

Beauty

Last night I saw the most beautiful face in the world.
I wasn't supposed to see it.
I was supposed to have my eyes closed.
I cheated.
I opened my eyes and saw a woman in the throws of ecstasy.
Ecstasy of receptive healing care.
On her face I saw awe.
I saw grace.
I saw self love.
I saw pain.
I saw healing.

I know I won't be able to draw that face. It was too exquisite, too human, too fluid and alive even in its quiet submission.
But this true vision of living, breathing, sighing beauty is now in my head. I am gleeful about that. Right now I am the richest person in the world.

I am rich because each time I draw a man, woman, girl or boy, aged, perfected, or broken, I will be able to infuse that figure with the essence of beauty I saw last night. And every time I see a stranger on the street, if I take the time, I can see inside them and recognize the woman in them that is in ecstasy.

Shaboom-ping-tra-La! That's what it's all about!

Pathway to Where This is

Was sitting here discussing this drawing with a friend.
There's obviously a sense of Guru at the top.
Do we really want to know the inner story behind how anyone gets to a state of wisdom?
Or do we want to open a book and read directions for a quick way up?
Of course we want the quick way up, stepping lightly over all the inner turmoil of other.
I must remember to bring my coat, though.
I hear old monk bones get cold in the winter.