Coprolalia dept.

I'd like to thank all those who sent brief email examples of personal foul language. Ha ha, funny. I know you're not really like that. Foul language is of course resorted to by those who are unable to express themselves properly. While there are (to date) 34 examples of foul language in the studio inbox, there are more than a hundred expressing how connective and informative our last clickback was. Thanks to Andrew for the bloody good work.

Getting through the chaos

I tell my students I feel a painting that goes through a very abstract stage or "chaos"

floral Original painting  click image to enlarge

is a better painting in the end and the longer it stays abstract before the defining shapes are added, the better the painting. Getting through that chaos stage is very hard for some students and it is hard to teach by "feeling" a color or shape should go in a certain area. It could go somewhere else but it "feels" right where it ends up. This relates to the casualness of proficient painters.

"Art appropriating life"

I experience a process similar to "ordering chaos" as a songwriter. Songs are

Lorelei Loveridge ruins of Medain Saleh

typically word paintings (images painted into words and music), landscapes of experience and imagination. As a world traveller (I am Canadian, but live in Saudi Arabia) and a songwriter, I absorb and take pleasure in the images and textures of life around me. The chaos of people in places eating, talking, selling, dancing, driving, working, all inspire some process in me that eventually manages to hook an idea or combine several and distill into a song. Sometimes it can take years, though, and that's the rub. I am also well served by going into a gallery or by flipping through a book of images, painted, drawn, or photographic. There's a magic in chaos and over-stimulation. My company motto is "Art appropriating life." And we all know just how ordered life is.

Doodling mindlessly

Starting with a mess and turning it into something is what I call doodling almost mindlessly; putting lines and colors on the canvas and letting the picture paint itself. Some of my best work started this way but sometimes it has ended in disaster. It is how I connect with my muse. I nearly always get a painting I like even if I have to paint over it and do it again. It seems to be a way to accomplish a looser, freer work (something I love but can't always relax enough to accomplish).

Mansions of our thoughts

I believe the "commit and correct" really works to pull out the initial feeling we

Cypress Gardens Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches  click image to enlarge

have deep inside. To spill it out with wild abandon and then stand back… move in, pull a few key elements into focus and then stand back again… My trips to the kitchen for cups of tea or crackers etc. are quite valuable to me. When I enter my studio again, I often see the whole picture and know whether it has the initial impact I envisioned and if so, how necessary is it to say more?

As mentioned by other artists, the current film, What the bleep do we know is incredibly creative. There are several physicists, psychologists, and even psychics who speak in it. The message was how Quantum physics works to prove that we really do create our own world and environment and that, with desire and tools we really can reprogram our brain and our world. Amazing film! The phrase "Mansions of our thoughts" really stuck with me.

Escaping the initial formality

I usually start my landscape paintings in a traditional manner, linear composition, drawing, tone and atmospheric perspective, etc. Then I feel impelled to try to escape this formality by undoing and breaking the image up to create an impression of loosely applied paint using a knife or whatever, to achieve a painterly impressionistic image.

Spontaneity

I usually start a new painting by dripping, splashing and throwing handfuls of my leftover paint from the painting I've just finished, onto a new canvas. I may do this two or three times before I see a subject appear in the paint, and then the challenge for me is to make the entire painting seem as though it was literally thrown together. I try to keep the feeling of spontaneity while I draw and create depth and solidness in a subject. I like the energy of the painter to be there on the canvas. It is not necessary to see drips and splashes though. Energy is created through color, composition and other means by the artist. Even Frida Kahlo had an enticing energy in her work and she often painted flat on her back!

Alternating methods as subject dictates

I term your "commit and correct" as "dash and rehash" and I alternate between this

Peekin' Duck Graphite drawing  click image to enlarge

and "slow and steady" as the subject matter dictates. Thanks for your letters. You have a great insight into the way we artists work -- too great (and scary) sometimes as I feel you can see inside my head…

Abstraction in order and chaos

"Ordering chaos" method relates to abstract art at some level. I have visited your quotations page about abstract art and it is very interesting in the sense that artists have so different, if not contradictory opinions about it.

I am a believer of "All art is an abstraction to some degree" as said Henry Moore. No two artists can draw the very same thing, even if they are looking at the same thing. Likewise Ben Shahn pointed out: "To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter. To abstract in art is to separate certain fundamentals from irrelevant material which surrounds them." Picasso, on the other hand, said: "There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards you can remove all traces of reality. There's no danger then, anyway, because the idea of the object will have left an indelible mark." Abstraction draws a subtle line between order and chaos.

"P.O.S." stage shortened

All artwork goes through many stages to its final completion. Here, that chaos stage is affectionately called the P.o.S, or "Piece of S___!" stage. In my mind, the serious artists will work through the PoS stage, learn, and eventually shorten the longevity of that stage in future works. Amateur artists will frame it and come up with a catchy new genre name like "Bungalow Art" or maybe "Biffy Art", or something along those lines. Then they'll have an exhibition at the Soho, and make millions, but what will they have learned?

Chaos and control with oils

After several years of watercolor I have been painting with oils and have missed

Lobster shack Watercolor, 11 x 15 inches  click image to enlarge

that loose, "let's see what develops" approach. Thanks for your letter on doing just that with oils. Watercolorists have always been able to wet a sheet of paper, drop in colors, tilt it around to get some blending, let it dry, look to see what emerges, then with some negative painting - voila - an interesting work with excitement and harmony. I never thought of doing the same with oils by placing strokes of good color, tip canvas upside down and add more. What fun!!

Same thing but backwards

I live for the complicated scene that is begging to be put in order and the more

The shade garden Oil on linen, 24 x 36 inches  click image to enlarge

complicated the better. My husband David Lussier is a wonderful painter who makes a solid compositional plan. Simplifies things right way… Loves a strong light and dark plan that works from the first 10 minutes of his painting. I think his way makes sense, but it is not my way. I feel like my way is riskier, but in the end I might get something that is a little more feeling and less just a cliche landscape. David gets the poetry too, but he starts with order and then goes crazy with colors and brushwork. I guess he does the same thing but backwards.

Seeking our humanity

I find myself amused sometimes when we artists try to label our personal traits or

Gemini Bronze Sculpture  click image to enlarge

working habits as some sort of disorder (especially if we can support the theory by aligning those traits with those of the proven dead masters). Is this our way of trying to fit in with the rest of society? Non-artists already see us as unlike themselves. It is an interesting relationship--artists need the appreciators and the appreciators need artists, but we each do not often understand and then feel separated from the other group.

If we are seen as handicapped, does this aid our acceptance into society? Are we willing to hang this label on ourselves? Then again, maybe it is something else. I find that I am attracted to wonderful, but non-perfect people. I like strong, attractive qualities in a person, but then I like to see some quirkiness or awkwardness so that the person seems approachable to me. Maybe we are simply seeking our humanity.

Place of no fear

I recently saw a great quote by Miles Davis that said something like: "Do not be

Three Peaches Mixed media  click image to enlarge

afraid of errors. There are none." This kind of thinking allows for greatness because it comes from a place of no fear. Fearlessness expands and creates possibility whereas fear constricts and restricts. It literally kills joy and creativity. Fear makes us feel small and uncertain and most of all uncomfortable and separate.

Art-exchange blues

Regarding your recent inquiries about the on-line art promoter Art-exchange, I

Home Oils on canvas 30 x 24 inches  click image to enlarge

signed up with them in 1999 for a hundred bucks. Their salesman was good. I sent in my dough, saw some teeny weenie images on their site - and never heard a thing again from them - no sales, no requests for more art, no PR - no nothing. I never had a good feeling from them, and chose to disregard it and pay anyway. Shoulda listened to the old intuition. I don't recommend them.

(RG note ) A dozen or so artists noted they had been approached by art-exchange. Several more said they had signed up and had no results. So far no one has reported success with art-exchange. One artist who wished to remain anonymous wrote: "After contacting an extensive list of the artists represented by a similar company, I found the majority to be extremely disheartened, feeling as though they had wasted their money, gotten ripped off and had been taken advantage of. I got into some trouble with the owner of the company and had to send out a recant to the list of artist contacts he provided, as he threatened to sue me for snooping around, relaying information from others I had emailed and asking the artists too many questions."

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