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Seven Seas, Seven Skulls

Seven Seas, Seven Skulls
12"x12"x12" Oil on birch panel

New work in progress

Door to Illumination

12"x12"12", oil on birch panel. My first painting in a long, long time. I've found that starting in ink and then doing thin glazes of color on top allows me to retain detail much better than just going at a canvas with brushes. For my next, I want to let more of the wood grain show through.

Something new

Her name is Thora. I intend for her to become a painting, but I like the look of the ink on wood... I think I might experiment more with that in the future.

A quiet place

Last August I moved from a loud, chaotic suburb, where endless construction noises made it extremely difficult to concentrate, to a hidden cabin on a large, mostly undeveloped farm in a semi-rural area. The difference that this change makes to my state of mind is hard to overstate... I always thought that I would feel frightened to live in a dark forest with no neighbors within screaming distance, but it doesn't bother me at all.

Certainly, there are bears, and snakes and coyotes - in fact, a four-foot rat snake slithered through our bedroom window within weeks of moving in and we had quite an adventure trying to gently scoop it up and get it back outside. And while I consider ill-intentioned humans much more of a threat than wild animals, the likelihood of one of those stumbling upon this place is so low that I've been able to relax. There are those nights when my Boston Terrier/Black Lab mix growls at something he sees or hears outside and that can definitely be disconcerting, but I have felt little reason to fear anything.



Instead of car alarms, I hear wind chimes. Honking horns have been replaced with the hoots of owls. The sound of rain drops hitting the metal roof are more prevalent than the yells of loud neighbors. And while we do hear the occasional siren or train, they aren't nearly as common as the contented moos of the cows in the pasture up the hill.

During these cold winter months I've been curled up beside an old wood stove drinking tea and reading book after book, but in the spring we'll have bonfires in the backyard, and pizza fresh from the outdoor cob oven, and friends camping in the field.

It's my little writer's/artist's retreat and I'm not sure how long we'll get to stay here, but I'm going to enjoy every moment.

On the current of inspiration

Inspiration can be a fickle thing, flowing strongly for months in one direction, then shifting, then slowing to a trickle or growing dry. Some artists never lack for it, others find themselves utterly bereft of it for months or years at a time. I've had plenty, though you would never know it from my portfolio - because in recent years, instead of coming to me in visuals, it has come to me in words.

As a child, when I wasn't outside climbing a tree, I was either reading or drawing. That I would become an artist never seemed to be a question among the adults in my life (though the comments I usually received were along the lines of, "someday, you'll be a Disney cartoonist!" Gee, I'm so sad that that didn't happen...) But by the age of 14, I discovered that there was another activity, borne perhaps of my voracious appetite for books, that came very naturally to me, and that was, of course, writing.

In high school, like many students, I was under a massive amount of pressure to choose what I would "be" - my English teacher and art teacher actually argued with each other over which subject I should study in college. I ended up choosing both, double-majoring, though I never finished (and I'm not sad for that either). For a while, I had enough creative energy to do both at once, starting a novel at 17 while spending every other spare moment painting or sketching. But somewhere along the line, I found that I couldn't split it up anymore: it was one or the other. It came in phases.

For a long stretch, images came to me unbidden, and my drive to translate them from my thoughts to canvas or clay seemed unstoppable. I still have sketch after sketch of ideas that never physically materialized. But in 2008, I suddenly found myself a freelance writer after losing a semi-corporate copywriting and graphic design job, and it seemed as if this new course diverted all of the creative juice I had. I wrote and wrote and wrote, five days a week, driven both by a desperate fear of failure and a passion for my subject, which is mostly environmentalism with a little art and culture thrown in.

Then, in 2010, I began to feel a persistent knocking, a tug, a call that I couldn't ignore. A story that began with the seed of my own experience was sprouting into an entity of its own and it demanded to be recognized. It literally began to pour out of me. Sometimes it's like automatic writing, where I go into a trance and type and type and barely register the words that are coming out. Later, when I read over what I wrote, it is surprisingly cohesive. The story weaves itself into a complex tapestry - it's like I am just the medium, the apparatus for its birth from the ether into the world of reality.

I'm still working on that story today, and it consumes me, to the point that I wake up several times each night thinking about it. I have sketched here and there, and started a few paintings, but these images are almost always related to the characters that have become an intimate part of my life.

There is still a pressure on my chest - a feeling that I'm supposed to do both, that I'm letting too much time pass without acknowledging that other very vital visual side of my creative force. I feel as if I've been neglecting it. My hope for this year is that I'll find a balance. But if I don't, I must admit I am content curled up with my laptop, staring out the window of my little cabin in the woods, letting the inspiration flow as it may.