Completing the Circle A creative journey of a life time.

 

Spontaneous Combustion, 36" X 72", tryptych, oil

Throughout my artistic life, from the time I was a young adult, I craved to find the center of my heart, my truth and my passion,...through art. Looking at great art took my breath away and I wondered if I would be able to ever make incredibly beautiful art, as others had done before me. Would I ever create art that took someones' breath away?

In this time of copying photographs, competitions and the pressure to be "successful" (whatever that means?!?-that's another blog post), how can my only reason for painting be to take someones' breath away? It's so easy to be swept away by the pressures of promotion. 

I've had some personal and professional goals that I wanted to accomplish in my lifetime. It's been the reality of life to put other peoples' needs ahead of your own. I have no regrets -- Mom, girls. While running around in life for others', my imagination would run wild, thinking up all the ways I could take my own breath away, creating beauty. 

I did have the choice to not teach, and just get really ambitious with my painting, but that would have been so much pressure, and let's face it, many people will agree -- Once you start selling your artwork and working with galleries or even just the buying public, the pressure to sell can change who you are and what you say in your art. 

So I could be angry that it's taken this long to realize the dream,.. but it's been happening,...slowly,...for a very long time. It's hard to say I've finally landed, at the tender age of 62. 

This spring was a very busy challenging time. I'm still renovating my house. This year, I painted the exterior (stucco!-not easy!), parged the retaining wall and foundation, and much more! Teaching, public art commissions, and private art commissions all kept me hopping til the end of July.  Then life took a turn and I began a journey into landscape that I had been planning for a long time. 

Spontaneous Combustion,...a starting place. 

I've always been turned on by mosaic, geometry, math, and their place within art. So splitting the picture plane arbitrarily, based more on intuition and less on logic was a very new place for me to go. 

These 4 girls were found at the local public pier in Shanty bay. They were having a ball jumping into the water together. My thing, painting the figure in unusual positions, them  all jumping together. magic! I am thrilled with how the water turned out and feel this expresses more about what I wanted to say, than a realistic painting. The colours create the excitement. 

It was kind of crazy, after not painting anything important for months, to start with a 18 square foot painting, but this is what my intuition was telling me to do. Over the years, I have learnt to trust my intuition. 

French River Rock, 22 X 28 $1350.00

The next piece I started was French River Rocks. I knew I wanted to  follow the contour lines that were in the rock, creating a division of the rockface. But it was what I did in the water that I feel was such an interesting contrast to the organic lines in the rock treatment. I was thrilled with the water when this happened and love the contrast between the rock and water. 

I've described the first two paintings in this series, which I am calling New Directions.  I'm closing the circle and completing the goals and dreams of a lifetime. I've created 12 new paintings in this series since the end of July, and have many other ideas of how I'll be extending other thoughts and creative ideas into future work.  Not too significant, eh?

I will continue to post more about this series,...after the open house and tour, this Thanksgiving weekend, 2022. See you on the other side! 

Margaret