Forming inspirations

I'm a firm believer in giving the past equal consideration when exploring new avenues for work. In my life, the Christmas season is always a time for merging the three aspects of time- past, present and future. I thought I'd share how I get some of my inspirations for new bodies of work.


Trees have always been in my life. From my earliest days when I could venture from my yard to the woods behind our house, I knew I had a secret place to walk, hide, and play. I loved the smell of damp earth, the moss covered rocks and the rough bark tickling my hands as I moved furtively from tree to tree playing childish games.

Some trees beckoned more than others...

with their tangled roots creeping along the ground,

their low hanging canopy of branches making an inviting cave,

their hanging lichen beards,

their perfectly spaced limbs for climbing,

I even loved the old, bare, ghostly one long past its prime.

There are new trees in my life too, ones that have been around for hundreds of years, those windswept relics that refuse to give up the survival battle.

I know that my love of texture comes from my early contact with the natural world. I crawled into, over or on so many rocks, lichens, branches and pebbles that the memory of their touch stayed with me. When I look at photos of my past haunts I still get tingling in my hands and the exact smell and feel of the place is conjured up immediately. The sensory memories are so strong that I am grabbed and thrust back in time.

Sometime in the future I know there is a body of work to be discovered in these experiences. What it will look like and how it will be executed remains a mere thread in my mind, unformed but tugging gently.

Attachments

Hinge (2008) 14 x 7 in. acrylic on board

Toggle (2008) 14 x 7 in. acrylic on board

An attachment can be simple or complicated, a feeling, or an object /device. Considering just the root word it can be an action. Often what we choose as content in art is based on attachments- things we are attracted or attached to, things that add to our life in some way. Attachments also serve as a vehicle for moving images of our work and ideas to interested parties. What a useful word!



One of the most prevalent attachments in our lives are locks. They provide a sense of safety by keeping undesirable "elements" out. Locks also work in the reverse and have a captivity role.

Through the centuries the development of locks has moved through many phases ranging from rope ties through wooden locks, metal locks, to the keyless locks of today. I was struck by the changes in how we protect our homes the other day when I brought my three year old grandchild home. I was getting ready to ring the bell when she lifted a flap on their new lock and poked her finger in to open it. It was like a science fiction action to me but to her it was how you opened a door. It was so removed from what I knew of locks in my childhood. We didn't even lock our doors at night. We had locks but the keys were lost!

In my wanderings I've found sheds and their modes of protection interesting. In small communities there doesn't seem to be too much thought to keeping others out. You won't find any hi- tech solutions here. In the community where my summer house is located usually a movable latch or a bent nail through a hook seems to do the trick.


This is really a timeline of security. I bet the lock is the most recent addition to this door but is seems almost useless. It makes me wonder when it was opened last. The paintings above were created from source material I found among the remains of my Grandfather's old fishing shed.



This collection of items brought me back to a time when things were simpler and personal attachments were probably more important than what would be found behind any locked door.

Endurance

My love of pattern usually causes me to trip, lag behind my travel mates and sometimes get downright lost. Because my head is often down, I've bumped, tripped and fallen. My friends see this behaviour as a natural part of travelling with me. When we get home I have few photos to share with the group because I rarely document people or anything in the distance. I'm attracted to texture, pattern and flowers.

My "art pictures" as my friends call them are precious to me and I draw great inspiration from them. They relate to my subject matter and they allow me to move beyond my present work to a place where I am free to sort and re-sort and develop new ideas. Some of them I will never use but considered together they have changed how I look at things. While these pieces from modern and ancient Italian towns are beautifully patterned they also represent endurance and the cycles of time.

Continuum

Continuum (2009) 10 x 24 in.
mixed media ( photo transfer, acrylic mediums &paint) paper) on board

There is inspiration in the simplest things. How many times do people walk by aspects of nature intent on their own inner world and completely miss what is happening around them? At times I feel I have the opposite problem - a continuous bombardment of stimuli that must be filtered out or it becomes overwhelming to process. This rose shrub is a good example of my usual " nature experience". I was strolling along in the Millennium Garden, Birr Castle Demense, and was beckoned by both the buzzing of bees and a glorious smell. Drawing nearer, I could see that some rose blooms were still in tact serving as landing pads for bees busy playing out their role in nature. The thing that really interested me as I looked more carefully was the presence of every stage of blossom development in a rose. It was like the passage of time caught in action and I was there to experience it. Two days later and all the blooms would possibly have disappeared, an hour before the bees might have been busy with other concerns.

This was a difficult painting to execute. It lay around my studio for six months in various stages and configurations of elements. There were so many elements to include that I could not get the composition to work. I used a great deal more paper than in the other paintings in this series. The evidence of the original photo transfers is almost totally obscured by the inclusion of additional information from my memory. The work grew to be much more sense bound and less about the actual rose bush itself. With the addition of each element, I felt I was building my own understanding of the the passage of time.

Change

Always observing

There is one constant in life- nothing stays the same. Sometimes change is so subtle it is almost non existent to the casual observer and sometimes it blares like a horn. With the passing of time, physical changes in our bodies become more obvious, but our inner worlds remain vibrant and multi-layered.

Change

Sitting with tea
cooling into death,
contemplating,
clinically aware of passing days
charted through body changes,
life's tracks on skin,
elasticity once supporting
grows tired from other uses -
holding raging emotions
supporting a smile with no inner voice
dropping tears for no obvious reason
linking inner and outer worlds
fueling creative juices
rejuvenating a smoldering love
silently remaking myself
in ways not obvious
to those who critically assess
my outward package.

2004

We are works of art.

Working process

The process I am using to create the work in my Reading a Garden series physically reflects the erosion of memory we all experience with the passage of time.

I begin each piece with photo transfers of a particular place in the garden. I consider this "the real". Then through a series of manipulations using paint and papers, I combine and alter the photo transfers into a blended "summary impression" of a place, feeling or event experienced in the garden. While the work still looks highly realistic when completed it has strayed greatly from the initial transfers and morphed into a composite of photo images and remnants of frayed memory. As more time passes and the details in my memory are less distinct, the nature of the work is also changing subtly. There transfers are less visible and the invented sections are taking over.

I began with the wildflower meadow because I've had an intimate relationship with meadows since my childhood. The wildflower meadow at Birr Castle Demesne had a wildness and simplicity when compared to the more controlled and cultivated Millennium Garden where I always felt slightly out of my element. The meadow was nature left wild and wanton; I felt free there.

When I start a mixed media work I never know how it will look when it is finished. The process of adding things moves the work along in its own direction. It is as if it is leading me and not the other way around. The end result is always a surprise for me. I would love to say I have it all figured out beforehand, sketched, with a tonal study completed etc. While I am very organized in most aspects of my life, I cannot imagine working in that manner. I love surprise of what my conscious and unconscious mind produces!

In this piece, I began with roughly 30 image transfers from photos I took in the meadow. Different sections of the meadow had different wildflowers and different feelings. Some photos were close up, others more distant. I laid out all available transfers and begin to sort and resort them until I had ones that I felt worked together. They produce more of a hybrid of the meadow area than an actual representation of it. I then use medium to attach some of them to the board.

In the next step I connected the transfers with a dark background that gave me a working surface with lots of contrast to fill in or connect the disparate sections using papers and paint. These areas represents my" sense" or memory of the meadow and could be considered invented when compared to the photo transfers.

I work back and forth without too much thought and the painting slowly emerges. I like to combine abstract elements with the realistic imagery. The small circles are reminiscent of seeds and also infinity. I've played around with certain letter representations in Morse Code that are created using dots. They allow me to insert messages in the painting without using text.

Looking through

Several years ago I visited a number of ancient ruins as part of a guided tour . There were many instances where my view was directed through openings that were once windows or doors. While I was looking back through history as I went from site to site, when I looked through these openings I had the feeling that I was looking from the past into the present.
These are very concrete examples of the passage of time, the theme I explore in much of my work. Others may have different reactions and I'm curious to hear what they might be.

Evolving ideas

I wrote this before I left for my mini vacation when I discovered I could schedule it to post by changing the post time under post options. Imagine that!

In research on characteristics of creative people , the pattern of one idea leading to another features prominently; it is referred to as evolution. This is the method of incremental improvement where new ideas or solutions grow from previous ones. Constant incrementation of ideas accounts for many of the discoveries in the world. Other "thinking"characteristics work in concert with the evolution of new ideas from old. They include:

• willingness to try new things/take risks
  
• ability to see relationships and make mental leaps
• curiosity about new things
• broad interests in many unrelated areas

I see evidence of evolution (of ideas) in every aspect of my life, but especially in my art practice. I can use my last post about the use of a vintage post card in a mixed media work as an example of how you can move along with an idea. Originally postcards were a logical extension of my interest in memory, passage of time, culture, identity and family connections. I didn't think much beyond them as an example. If I want to build on this topic/idea there are strategies I can use to increase the number and range of responses.

1. Brainstorming is a great way to see where an idea can go. Here are my thoughts on postcards:

Postcards

• art of the ordinary person
• intimate in scale
• inexpensive, economical
• commercial
• thin cardboard
  
• travels
• special events
• photo size (4x6)
  
• used across cultures
• souvenirs
• transportable
• topic based
• not age specific
• long history of use
• nostalgic
  
• present positive views
• collectible
  
• sites of interest
• messages
• public
  

2. Sort and re-sort
Create a list of words (as above), phrases or drawings from you random thoughts, look for connections and sort your ideas, then resort. One way is to write all your random thoughts or scribblings on sticky notes and continually rearrange them. You might want to record your connections. This usually yields general themes. My list above could be sorted into characteristics, uses, types, etc.

3. Extend categories
Then try to generate new ideas under each general heading. E.g. uses (exhibition announcements, used for political advocacy, humour, etc. )

4. Extend your list
Give more examples or ask questions.

Postcards

• art of the ordinary person (is there a way to make them elite?)
• two sided
  
• intimate in scale (is it still a postcard if the size changes? )
  
• inexpensive, economical (make them precious, expensive)
  
• commercial (create personal, one of a kind postcards)
  
• thin cardboard (what other formats are possible? canvas, small boxes, video, puzzle format, metal)
  
• travels
• special events
  
• photo size (4x6) (what about same content in large sizes, same impact?, no longer economical or intimate, use of video? )
  
• used across cultures (examine styles of postcards across cultures- ideas for styles?)
  
• souvenirs
• transportable (what happens when you alter the size?)
  
• topic based
• not age specific
• long history of use
• nostalgic (political, spiritual)
  
• present positive views (pose questions, highlight significant issues)
  
• sorted and labelled
• sites of interest
• messages
• public
  

5. Research beyond your ideas
This is where you link with the ideas of others. Be careful here because there is a fine line between copying and extending.

From web research, the traditional idea of postcard is certainly extended.

See various definitions of postcards on the web.

Then there is the world of Mail art where artists enter into the fray.

Video postcards accompany music, illustrate family vacations, show interesting places that are fun and real.

The history of postcards is traced back to 1490 when a medieval nun sent one leaf painting of Saint Barbara to another nun.

It seems the word postcard is part of many song titles with my personal favourite - Mark Knophler, Postcard from Paraguay . Check out many more on YouTube.

Visual art and the postcard

The postcard has been used by artists for many years to create various kinds of art. See the connection British artists Gilbert and George have to postcards.

Art of the Japanese Postcard was presented at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Themes in Japanese postcards are categorized and samples are presented.

Postsecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a post card. Very interesting...

Julianna Parr uses the postcard as a legitimate artistic medium. See her Time Stamp: A Diary in Postcards 1998-2008. This is the passage of time charted through visual imagery and much commitment .

And finally there are a half million hits on Google images for postcard art.

And yes.... this post has helped me come up with an idea for new work for a summer show I am in. Now I have to get busy creating!

For Carrie 1907

For Carrie 1907, 10 x 20 in. (2007) Mixed media collage

Can you have a series if you've created only one art work? If I can count the ideas still lurking in the mulling centre of my brain, then For Carrie, 1907 is part of a series based on old postcards. The original postcard rests under the iris painting with the signature in gold ink (a faint trace of human presence ) representing the voice of the sender who is forwarding best wishes for Carrie's birthday. I found this particular card tucked away in the corner of a box in an antique store. I dreamed up a world for Carrie to celebrate her birthday. I love the fact that I created this work exactly a hundred years after the postcard was sent. My only regret is that I didn't copy the postcard before using it in the collage. It is forever shrouded by my interpretation of it.

The postcards that I find most appealing have embossed floral motifs, lots of gold and flowing script. They remind me of a time when such objects were in direct opposition to the the lifestyle of the recipients. Life was hard and there was little time for beauty. I place these postcards in the same category as the lavish wallpapers that even the poorest women managed to acquire for their homes.

There are many sites to purchase post cards. This one has very nostalgic images that are accessible with the purchase of a one time membership .

Other vintage postcard information and/or purchase source are:
TMonline Vintage Postcards ( 1907 vintage)
Joyce M. Tice (my favourite featuring the Language of Flowers)
Cottage Collectibles and Postcards (featuring tinted cards)

and of course you local antique shop or your grandmother's dresser drawers.

Regeneration

Hope

In my previous post I explored one side of life in the garden, the idea of transience in nature as a symbol of our own mortality. Mary Buek's comment to the previous post highlights another theme inherent in every garden, that of regeneration and hope. Nature moves through all its phases in a methodical fashion, immune to our impatience. Spring is nature's reward for waiting through the slow crawl of winter. When my garden sheds its white wrap and shoots appear, my energy level rises and my spirit is renewed. I long for spring.

Seeds, seed pods and bulbs are constant reminders of new life in a garden. I see them as life recyclers. Through my art, I've explored this renewal in various ways over the years.

Wishful thinking # 7 (2007) 5 x 5 inches, mixed media collage on board

Promise (2006) 8 x 10 acrylic on canvas


Awaiting spring (2005) 5 x 7 acrylic and coloured pencil on canvas

Passage ( 2004) 5 x 15, acrylic on canvas

Transience and mortality

Recurrent themes are evident in the reading I've done about gardens and how gardens are portrayed in art . A review of my observation journal kept during my two week stay in the gardens at Birr Castle reveal similar themes which in turn are evident in the work I'm creating.

Transience and mortality
Everywhere you look in a garden there is evidence of the transience of life. The cyclical nature of plants, the decay evident in plant matter below trees and garden beds etc. mark the passing of time.





It's impossible to spend time in a garden and not think about your own mortality. There are also objects in gardens that reference mortality, e.g., sundials, funerary urns, fragments of antique statuary, doors.







Certain areas of gardens that are more functional and not for visitor eyes, or ones that have evidence of neglect , e.g. collapsing fences, decaying buildings, rampant weeds, etc. also reference mortality.

.... and the setting sun.

Capturing time

This image from my 2008 Remnants series was created almost completely using gel transfers. I began the process by taking hundreds of photographs of the walls of old houses that were undergoing renovations. I then sorted the photographs into groups and created the transfers. The layering of the transfers was very effective in creating a similar texture to that found on the original walls. Once the composition was created, acrylic paint was used to enhance it. This series was a departure for me because it was created almost exclusively by layering transfers.


My new Reading a Garden series that I am currently working on is utilizing some photo transfers that are then being changed by painting to mimic the erosion that occurs in our memory. As time passes we forget many details and revamp the original image based on what is memorable or important to us. We remember interpretations not facts.


So I have revealed one full painting from my new series.

The erosion of memory

The power of the photograph to document places and events cannot be disputed. How close is this documentation to reality? It isn't as close as you might think.

Photographic film distorts brightness and color. Because film has a small dynamic range relative to our eyes, it compresses the range of darkest dark to the brightest bright creating lower contrast, resulting in an object in a photo being less visible. The amount and type of distortion depends on the film used and the way that it is developed. With color film, longer durations make scenes look brighter and short duration make them darker.

In addition to the distortion caused by photographic film, camera optics must be considered. Lens choice affects spatial relations. Wide angle lenses cause distortion because the lens is closer to the subject; telephoto lenses compress objects together. The angle at which a photograph is taken also impacts the relative size of objects at different distances. Perspective errors are caused when an image of a 3D world falls on a 2D plane.

When we examine the reality of the photograph, it becomes apparent that many changes occur from the time you focus your camera to the time you look at a photo and even after that point depending on the viewing conditions. Some information is altered subtly and some is lost depending on the quality of the technology and the skill of the photographer.

Looking at an image captured by a camera is still the next best think to being there. That is why I took almost a 1000 photos during my two week stay on the grounds of Birr Castle.

The process of reality erosion had already begun when I chose certain photos to initiate my responses to reading Birr Gardens. When we remember a place or an event without a photographic reference even more information is lost. The more time that intervenes between an event and our effort to bring it to mind, the more information is lost. That is the reality of our memory of experienced events. This is a constant element in my work and it plays a prominent part in my new explorations.

My art process physically reflects the erosion created in our memory by the passage of time. I begin each piece with several photo transfers of a particular place in the garden. I consider this "the real". I then begin through a series of manipulations using paint and organic papers to alter the photo transfers to reflect what I can actually remember of the specific place. I'm finding that only certain salient points remain.