Let it Flow!

Happy New Year to all of you! 
May 2015 bring you happiness, bring less suffering, and lets you live with joy and ease!
I have been busy creating woodcuts over the holidays. However, I am feeling stuck. I am stuck on developing the backgrounds. Woodcuts can be somewhat flat. Mary, my partner, says that they are flat. So, I am looking for backgrounds which are adding depth to my woodcuts.
This has evoked an internal conversation in me about my artwork or how my artwork reflects my life. I always thought of myself as an emotional painter, but have currently chosen a medium that expresses itself very flat. What is happening with me? I have been looking at my anxiety, anxiety I have never felt before in my life. Like a frog sitting on the rim of a boiling pot. Will I jump off? In which direction? Is there a need for being flat at this moment? I have not yet brought the courage up to experiment with different backgrounds. Fear, what kind of fear is holding me back. Mary has giving my for 2015 the word- flow-. Staying in the flow, letting it flow, letting myself flow.

 I  have been using my left hand to cut the woodcuts which has been rather interesting. I have hurt my right should and are not able to cut woodcuts for a while with my right hand. The left hand makes the process slower, more intense. I wonder what kind of affect it will have on my brain? So, you see the holiday session has been a bid of a struggle for me. Let it flow!!

Art Production

Once a year our Pugwash Art Collective is having an art-show. We meet, we talk, laugh, and eat but finally we vote on a theme. 

Usually we write down nouns and verbs on different papers and put it together in a hat. We each draw some and read them out loud. Hopefully inspiration strikes us and we come up with a great title. This time we came up with 'Lore'!

I don't work with title's the best of times, but ' Lore'. Well, it had me stamped. Nevertheless, I set out to work. 

While listening to my favourite music I am creating new artwork.

 Recently I have started to explore with mono-prints and woodcuts. I like the intensity that woodcuts give me and the unpredictability of mono-prints. I think of myself as an artist that likes to uncover emotion hidden underneath the surface and the medium of woodcut and mono-print fulfill these requirements without me having to dissect the subject on the canvas.  

I always thought I would create more art in the winter but the opposite is true. Summer is my time to create art. My spirit sings when the sun is blazing through the window and I am sweating while cutting into the wood plate. 

 After having worked on cutting the image into a wood-plate, I do a first cut, roll ink on the wood plate and make the first print on inexpensive paper. I am examining the result and decide if I have to cut more or if I have to compensate with ink something I have cut away by accident.
 

Drawing and some cutting

First print

Woodcut plate

With the mono-prints it is different, I am still using for the first prints inexpensive paper but the mono-print is one of a kind so even though, I am doing numerous prints as a warmup at some point I will switch to better paper. For this show, I have decided to do again a print by wiping the ink of the plexiglass and printing what is left on the surface. It may be hard to understand. Let me explain in more detail. 

I have a photograph of the object I want to print. Further, I have a plexiglass plate and ink. I am mixing the ink with a slower drying medium (which makes the ink dry slower, not right away, rather than, in a couple of minutes). Then, I take tissues or cotton swabs and start wiping the ink of the plexiglass plate. Basically I am drawing with the tissues and the cotton swabs, till I feel I have the desired result. I have the paper ready and put it on top of the plexiglass plate and rub with my hands the paper so that the remaining ink prints on the paper. 

These two are done the way I decribed it up top. You can see the difference. 

In this blog I will not reveal my new artwork which will be shown starting with an opening on August 15 at the Fraser Cultural Centre in Tatamagouche at 7 pm. Hope to see you there!

The Life that could have been

I have been reflecting on my parents and my mortality and have come to the conclusion that I need to prepare myself in any way I can for the unavoidable in life - death or dieing. I will keep you posted on how I make out.
I have looked at my father's life and created some mono-prints and woodcuts. Let me know what you think. When I read it to my partner she went, "Oh, it is great, but so dark". So, here it goes.

The Life that could have been

Hungary in the late 1920’s, twins are born. 

The father, a loyal country man, the mother not well,

something to do with the heart and the lung.

There was one more brother, however, he died.

Also his mother and his twin brother died - He was alone with his father. 

His father took another wife, and the twin became one of many -twelve half-brothers and sisters.

The Second World War broke out,

 the twin was too young to take part in the fighting,

 he had his own war to fight;

his father defended their home country.

 Defeated ,they were deported from Hungary to Germany.

The twin was a young man by now, what is in his future?

What kind of life can he expect, having experienced the amount of lose he had felt?

Striving  toward security;

he needed possessions  -

identified himself through his possessions.

He was a sensitive young man,

but was there place in his life for this sensitivity.

Hurt by life,

abandoned by his mother,

 not protected by his father –

while feeling alone within the crowed of his half-brothers and half-sisters.

What could have been?

 A twin celebrating his sensitivity, trusting in life and the goodness of people.

Creating meaningful relationships with his children, friends, and half-sisters and brothers.

 Understanding that possessions are not what a person is remembered by.

Taking life by its handkerchief and swirling it flamboyantly around,

 but how could he?

 With his heart filled with sadness and not understanding.

Now, he is living his life out with a diagnosis of Dementia,

 remembering his early years with tears in his eyes.

How hard life can be.