Cool Old Lady Painters

 Last night I got caught up in learning about Rose Wylie; 90 years old - a British artist who has become the critics’ new delight with her Phillip Guston like cartoon paintings and her messy house.  Her and Isabella Ducrot are the latest thing in the art world.  I think Isabelle is 92.  

I love Ducrot’s paintings of flowers and dots and her use of old textiles and their sensibility, and I think I would be interested in Rose’s too.  Old lady painters.  Cool old lady painters. The world has finally noticed them. 

In the studio with no plan

Today:

Clean fridge.

Plan menus for 3 days and make grocery list. 

Walk with cane all the way to Cricket Hill. 

Recover from trips.

Water my plants.

Go into my studio for one hour with no plan. 

In a garden, beside the dark

 The sunlight must be spilling since one can see where it plunges into the river and spreads out bobbing on its broken surfaces.  She didn’t want to go on by.  But to stay.  

Lyn Hejinian

Standing is the hardest thing

My brain desperately wants to run and get on with it.  My body needs rest and time to recover.  Putting together a solo exhibition is demanding but my passion for painting keeps me buoyant.  Helen Booth 

thoughts and memories and dreams

It’s 1 am.  

I just sit here.

I finished stitching one bundle.  I want to go to bed, but I sit.  

And stare and don't think.

A cushion between you and the world

 My work surfs between showing the plain and the fancy.  Or is it like the middle? It’s mercy or sorrow or compassion.  It is about loss or something like that.     Kiki Smith

Softer and Dreamier

 

Each day seems like a little boat and all the days are swept and tilted back and forth across an immense and distant bay of blue, grey, green.  

Lyn Hejinian