Leo and Vinny

It is fascinating the power that gesture holds. Both Leonardo and Vincent speak at length about the importance of draftsmanship in regard to understanding the body. What I don’t think is quite as focused upon is the follow up to that statement which is, in regard to understanding the body so as to utilize it as a vehicle of human spirit and emotion. Men trying desperately to free soul and make it visible to the world. It was never about the mathematical perfection but understanding the perfect form and adjusting for each expression of individuality. They found perfection in the natural world and humans are a part of nature.

We are obsessed at reaching a perfection innate to our existence.

I approach all subjects with this desire to capture the essence, the spirit expression of the thing, whatever it may be. Energy portraiture I used to call it, when my subjects had a more constant botanical theme.

Friday 11/8

I think I've finally distilled the nature of my work down to micro/macro. I want my work translatable from a distance, but truly seen from very close up. For the viewer to get lost in the plane of the canvas, appreciate the dramatically subtle interplay between line and shape and color.

It’s about the little things. Being so close to the piece, your view naturally abstracts the truncated perspective. To find harmony deep within the balance of composition is a delightful nesting doll and what keeps me working, falling in love with making as the ultimate act of authenticity. Art for artsake is truly art for human sake. And that is worthy.

Color Soliloquy

My whole life I have used art as a language. Colors are my numbers to a mathematician. It isn’t even just as they are, what they are….it is them in relation - to each other, to their own negative space, to texture and light.

There is grounding in color. Rules. And yet unfurling, new truths discovered every movement or so.

The act of making art, seeing and allowing and creating gives me a sense of belonging, a way to tap into the humanness that connects us all. Like birth. And color is my vehicle.

The first sketchbook drawing I did my sophomore year of high school that included color was a quick still life sketch of my bed post and various things I had hanging. My Miss Honey of an art teacher left a little post it note that just said ‘Color!! More, more!’

Indeed, Mrs.Hilbish.

I wonder sometimes if perhaps my ability to see so many colors in what others see as a single color is what drives me to create. I want others to see, too. The neurodiverse yearning for understanding.

My brain, between electrical storms and extra synapses, has been quite dramatic lately. Which is how the ER doctor described my FL41 glasses in his report. ‘Patient wore sunglasses, dramatic effect.’ Specialized migraine glasses are as dramatic as a cane or walker or hearing aid. Fuck, my dude. But of course, I am a hysterical, fainting woman.

Exits the room in Miss Piggy fashion.

Poem from Amy Bornmans workshop

White wall speckled like eggs

With dreams

Sorrow

Ailments

Definitions

Who we are, as women.

White wall graffiti

- more faery

- less shepherd

magic of motherhood

Birther of invisible lines

Ties generations.

Our sanity strung from the ceiling

A room full of lore,

As the middle school girls say.

Prequel, they all assume

But we are still children, too.

Into our next phase

Exploring

And still curious

Aimee

PlacentaRY Thoughts

What do you write of motherhood?

The stretching of skin and belief.

Rigor mortis of a woman’s dreams some would have you believe.

Purpose, others insist.

When you are an artist and a mother there is vague distinction

between your work

of knitting images and line and color

and knitting bones.

When a womans armature begins to dissolve,

leeched of calcium and

that very

last

fuck,

they form a sort of catacomb,

an empty beehive

waiting for a queen

to fill with food or

medicine or

kin.

*******************************************

Father’s carry a name

Mothers carry generations

************************************************************

A rose by anyother name

It gives life AND can kill

Septic from Sapphic

the rot that is coming

from inside the house

Then there is the lotus

gently releasing

with it’s tether steadfast

aerial and root

plucked together from that bloodmeal

Encaul,

the cou de gra,

baby AND the bath water

washed ashore

a submarine of cells and fluid

train poem

for my lining

crimson and loamy

nudging the womb to stretch

into the morning of the beginning

bladder ballooned

yet battened down and out

lungs cleaved

two great gasping gunnies

flung over your uterine shoulder

symphony of chaos

playing late for the maternal organ waltz

capped off by a second,

ne third encore

micro chimerism

all this to say

16 (14,11) years later

—Rocking pleasantly along

working the sway (clay) of the car

into a cradle

even a robber barron

craves

one last tuck

goodnight, my baby bubba—

I am purposefully spelunking

Black Sabbath

plumbing the depths of Ozzys

steel town gestation

on the recommendation

of my own

disillusioned boy-man of a musician

unbothered with the knowing

that he still

with lotus severed

can shift my organs

—-neurons long dark

—-sparking to life

—-in this mom brain

Oh Boy

Becoming a mom completely halted my practice. I created 2 paintings in 7 years. No drawings. It was as if my creative self was 100% occupied with figuring out how to create healthy humans. And then I wanted to make my husband a birthday gift, something special. And I did a portrait of him and our oldest as a baby looking out into the ocean. Something cracked open with that piece. Something irrepressible.

I find the older I get the closer I come to returning to my youth in terms of authenticity and simple expression. The message may be complex but it is clearly a message from my consciousness to the world. Allowing the hollow bone to funnel. It is a frightening thing to recognize how far down you can stuff your truth in the spirit of not causing a fuss. Simply because I haven’t spoken out I am suspect when I do find my voice. Not really sure what this rambling is for other than another outlet for the nameless whisp. I’m awful tired and yet so content.

I find now my children inspire me daily to create. I am stitching a roadmap.

New Year Same Crazy

Career, Trajectory. Discipline. Practice.

They all feel so far away from play to me. So heavy and serious and complicated. I have been chastised for daring to say this aloud. Amateur. Unprofessional. The innuendoes are enough to wash away the staunchest self-promoter. Honestly, though, it’s my truth. If I hear the word ‘Grind’ one more time in regard to how I approach my art I may just grind to a halt.

Perhaps creating in a moss clogged vacuum is jusr a fantasy world but who creates fantasy worlds? ARTISTS! Yes, I am not the first creative to wring my dirty hands at the state of practical affairs but truly this cash game is out of control. I need to create before I can market and manage and sell myself. All of those things are not authentically me, and to create GOOD work I need to be me. My head is in the game, it’s just in MY game.

Play is where the good lessons happen. So please, don’t ask me about my work. Ask me about my play.

Reworking

I’ve been revisiting some old pieces and working back into them, pulling color and shape. There is so much in surviving the last few years that has leant itself to rework… viewpoints, definitions of normal and reality, my why’s. In any time of cleansing, we are offered a chance to prune and remold and I am taking my turn.

On the rehashing block is a landscape previously published as a lit magazine cover. I like the idea of a visual maturation being catalogued, a snapshot of evolution. The deliberate reconfiguration of a previously finished piece is a liberation for me during a time of limited control.

detail of WIP