Painting

01.05.08

cabin fever
Daily, Ford, Home, Painting (7)

While the snow has enveloped most of the east coast, we here on the west coast are experiencing rain, in tides of wet sheets, throughout the final holiday weekend. Yesterday we were without power, but all systems are go today. The christmas tree inside glows steadily upon the manic face of cabin fever, who manifests itself in the form of one particular reckless imp, screaming like a V2 rocket on descent, fording (quite literally) puddles outside and back in again into the post-yule cosiness. He’s oblivious to inner sanctum, to either of us cerebral souls at guitar or computer, and instead vaults over sofas, boxes and amplifiers at breakneck speed.

There is one among us, tired of an arygle sweater, bringing the whole scene into sharp relief:

And the rain continues to pour, then abate, then weep again, the whole state of California in catharsis.
01.04.08

four
Daily, Painting (0)

Finding my way through this medium is like walking blindfolded down a worn footpath; there are signs and markers along the way (I have a book that’s helpful) but I still can’t see where I’m going. That’s something fresh about the medium. I’ve never tried this before. I guess I’ve dipped into many different media and found each one fairly easy to manipulate (with some practice, of course) but encaustic is so dynamic and shifting…the funny thing is, some of the oldest paintings hanging on the walls of museums today (the Fayum portraits) were painted in beeswax and have survived through milennia virtually untampered by weather and handling. But when I try to fuse one layer of wax to the one beneath it, all sorts of crazy things happen: the drawing lifts, wax disperses, colors meld and mud.
Actually, as frustrating as it seems (and as nerdy as it sounds), this is pretty exciting!
But I’m not quite where I want to be with this, yet.
01.03.08

Strawberries in January
Chas, Daily, Painting (1)

It’s oddly unseasonal.

We have strawberries growing in a pot beside the front door.

Chas has diligently plucked each one before it has blushed. But he missed one. I stole it and now it’s rotting on my studio tabletop. Maybe he’ll find it tomorrow when he raids the studio behind my back. He hasn’t done that in a while and there’s a whole pile of pillageable organized disorder, ripe for rape.

The other day, I found stabs and streaks from a dollmaking needle in a lovely unmarked portion of one of my paintings that I’d set out to cure. Chas was experimenting with intaglio. On top of my painting. So you can imagine my inner conflict, the inner art teacher catfighting the inner artist. Ack! Headache.

Sharing a studio is more intuitive to me than, say, deadbolting the door when I leave the room. I can’t bring myself to exclude them from that space any more than I can keep them out of the kitchen. There are certain illicit corners of the studio (you know, the cadmiums and cobalts, the guerilla art shelf with all the spray paint cans) that they will one day access through rite of passage, but for now are safe beyond reach. But we spend a few minutes each week together, putting things back in their own homes.

Growing up as a parent has helped me to learn to leggo my ego. If you’re a parent, wouldn’t you aggree?
01.02.08

two
Daily, Painting (0)
01.01.08

Cheers!
Daily, Damon, Home, Painting (4)

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In bed last night, the four of us baking like cornish hens between layers of flannel, we listened with sleepy ears to our quiet neighborhood as it came alive in hoots and hollers. Midnight lasted fifteen minutes, with laughter and cheers, firecrackers and booms resounding through the wooded foothills. But we lay there, in the dark, and I think I was the only one still awake, smirking at the ceiling in the dark. I started thinking about last year, when we were toasting the new year with packed bags, drunk at Polly and Evan’s, shooting bottle rockets in the middle of the road. When you have friends, you have a party. But last night, all of our resolutions to stay up, to record music and toast the new year quietly slipped out the back door. I think our livers are tired; they need a post-holiday holiday now.

I started painting over the break. The electric griddle in the studio is crowded with tin canfuls of colored wax, paintbrushes sprouting upwards like last year’s seedheads, fertile impetus to behold. I love the heady honey smell, the warmth of the medium. I can sit there at my desk, waiting for a painting to cure, and watch Damon through the glass wall as he plays guitar in the living room. He is recording an album of songs. The first thing in the morning, he gives Ford a lesson. Our house is a creative brew these days.

To myself I think, would I feel so fruitful in another life without my family, our children running circles around us? The frenetic spirit the kid’s provide the house weaves like rubber band through the fiber of my being, breaking the casts of old ideals and sprouting hopes that they will grow into creative young men without a clear path before them, save for strong conviction, brave heart and sensitive soul.

And what of resolutions for the new year?
Art, every day.
And this.

Cheers to you and your families, that you may find the time every day to feed your soul. I wish that for everyone, not just this year but forever.
09.19.06

A New Laptop Battery is Just Like Having a New Laptop
Austin, Daily, Damon, Painting (0)

I am waiting for apple bisque paint to dry on paper and listening to three seperate snores. It’s allergy season. The windows are all open and neighbors just chunked two fireworks into the sky, exploding over the oaks, hissing sparkling arcs across the driveway. I imagine a handful of boys laughing a few doors down, high-fiving over a six-pack and rummaging the garage for more things to detonate. It’s a window into the Sicore boy’s future, enough to make me wince (Watch those fingers, boys!) but also smile. It’s FUN to blow stuff up!

Damon and I went alone together to the gym this morning. We shared machines and grins. In the middle of the bustling gym floor I wanted to pounce on him. Watching him huff and puff drove me crazy. It was like a shot of Back in College, that undivided attention between us. So as soon as I picked up Chas at childcare, I scribbled down reservations for the rest of this week and next week–pencilling in about an extra half-hour for good measure, each day. Damon did the same. It feels like I’ve found a missing gasket and now I’ve replaced it, allowing the machinery to run smoothly again. This may have been one of those elusive missing things in my life.

We took the kids out on the lake again tonight. Austin is absolutely lovely right now, fresh out of the shower and sprinkled with joggers and children and rowers and hummingbirds. I’ve been dying to bring along a camera, but too paranoid that it might get wet (which it will); the setting sun just gilts everything on its way out. Chas and Ford shared the middle seat tonight, each dragging the little wooden boats that Damon made them, holding graham crackers opposite hands. The way it should be, we just coasted in and out of cypress coves, above illicit beds of Eurasian Watermilfoil and broad mats of Hydrilla, the boys humming Sonic Youth and we, the grownups, chuckling over cold beer. We ran a Great Blue Heron off its hunt five times, tracing its hunt by accident along the convoluted, wooded banks off the lake.

The paint is now dry. I’m daydreaming of graduate studies in painting here at the university. Priorities first, though. I close that window in my browser and step back to the table, dreaming up a series of paintings for a show. ‘Self-taught’ is satisfactory.
08.28.06

Home: A Collaborative Journal Project
Daily, Painting, Sketchbook (2)

I wish I had left the words out. Everything spoke a quiet abstract tongue to me without the embellishment, and the filigree is really grating my ribs of sarchasm right now, as I look at these pages I painted last night. I had planned on doing something completely different to weave the pages together, and then I got all sappy. I had a Hallmark moment. It happens. It might have involved wine, but I can’t remember.

Edited to add: And I have obnoxious waves of sourness, too. Like last night, when I wrote this post.

Christina organized this journal project. I’m #2 in a big group of gals contributing to the book. It’ll be fun to see the book once it nears completion, in all it’s Flickred glory. For now, it’s in a truck on the way to Houston.…

What does ‘home’ mean to you?
07.18.06

Free-Range
Daily, Painting, Thinking (2)

I was a free-range child, roaming on foot and bike throughout the neighborhood like most kids did. We were barefoot with scabs on our toes from the Big Wheels, flags forever flapping behind us on our bicycles. We came home for popsicles. There was a corner of the yard where we corralled box turtles, but we were always hunting for more. But we sold other reptiles: anolis were 10 cents; geckos I sold for twenty-five cents in class. I kept them in coffee cans. Back then, I thought the smell of the coffee cans was gross, like metallic urine.

Free-range days continued once we moved to Houston, but the experience matured quickly. I discovered perverts in fourth grade when a man approached me and asked me to follow him to his van. Sitting on the bench opposite me and my brother, he smiled confidently and touched my hand. Asshole. Sadly, he was only the first jerk to taint my adolescence, but I’m still alive and I was never seriously molested as a child. But I read stories all the time about those less fortunate than me.

I can smile as I look out the window at the boys in the backyard. They run half-naked around the house, building mud volcanoes on the deck, lava plumes in the rivulets running off into the woods.
What will I do when they’re able to bike around our neighborhood? What will I do when I can’t supervise them?
07.06.06

Illustration Friday: Sticky
Daily, Illustration Friday, Painting, Sketchbook (4)

I’ve never seen a bear do this in the wild. In fact, I’ve never seen a bear in the wild. For that matter, I’ve never seen a wild beehive, either. But I’ve read The Story of Pooh many times before. This is exactly what I believe bears should be doing all the time: raiding beehives and foraging blackberries and slapping salmon out of the water. Of course, bears eat what they can, because honey and blackberries and salmon aren’t always in supply. Have you seen Grizzly Man?

More Illlustration Friday.
07.06.06

Studio Friday: PLAYTIME: 7 Layer Salad
Daily, Home, Painting, Studio Friday (7)

It’s difficult at first, resisting the urge to keep working, but in order to create a smooth surface texture on encaustic paintings, such as these, you have to wait at least two days for the top layer of wax to cure before you can buff it. And these have been stacked and waiting patiently on my windowsill for a week (which, incidentally, is not the best place to cure an encaustic painting in the middle of summer, but it’s somehow worked so far in my home–at any rate, it’s safer than leaving them on a countertop or table, where the kids can reach them!). Now, all I have to do (if I decide each is finished) is take a chamois and buff the surface smooth. The result is so buttery soft and shiny. I REALLY dig this medium. When I’m finished with thee, I’ll share more pictures….

More Studio Friday.

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