love

celebrating the every day awesomeness of light and colour and velvet and roses and trees inside houses and you, my loves.  Celebrate the winter holidays, however you do.  xo

a dreamer in vivid colour

 But still it is not yet enough to have memories.

One must be able to forget them when they are many and one must have the great patience to wait until they come agian.  For it is not yet the memories themselves.

Not till they have turned to blood within us, to glance and gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves -  not till then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes from them.

Rainer Maria Rilke - blood remembering

brave shapes of colour, not sad

to go beyond what I know

to make without a firm plan

these little squares of colour lead me.  I place them next to each other, and then listen to hear how they like their neighbours

I notice how they each have a presence, whether bold or quiet, and how the diagonal pathsthey make either blend in with others to create a firm yet gentle ground, or stand out boldly and are perhaps too loud

I have to wait until more colours go up

sometimes there is too much darkness and greyness.  how did that happen?  I am still the boss

I want to make something brave, not sad.  I often have to un-pick and re-sew.

The bravery of these colours, and these neat square shapes hand-sewn one to the other.

These colours and their paths are the subject today.  The SUBJECTS.

The object I end up with deals with these subjects, and that's all it does.

And while I sew them, I listen to the book about animal rights and astrology.

(Journal entry today)
 

Be defeated, carry on

 Art work is hard.

Artwork is a working through of disappointments and a growing recognition of failure to the point of defeat.  But still we wake up, and there is inspiration, and we go on.

Be defeated.  Carry on.     Agnes Martin

my town studio again

She was inside and the outside was alive and separate.

My solitude is my treasure, the best thing I have.

I am my own riddle.

O sir, you must not seek to steal away my solitude.

It is a thing we women are taught to dread.

O the terrible tower.

O the thickets round it.

from Possession by A.S. Byatt - found in November 1991 journal

we are in the midst of a revolution that will ultimately change how we see

We are in the midst of a social revolution that will ultimately change how we see everything, as radically transformative as the smashing of an atom.  There is a re-evaluation of the female principle in religion, in psychology, and in the quality and relationship of humanity to the planet we live on.  Artists who restore the iconography of the sacred female to contemporary culture are healing the imbalance between the masculine and the feminine that plagues our social fabric.

From 2002 journal.

I think these words are by the intelligent Canadian art critic Robin Laurence because I was reading her book about Gathie Falk at the time.  But I am not sure.  If you know who said these profound words nearly 20 years ago, please comment or email me. The words resonate still.  xo

existential questions

Her singular approach arises from the soul, her inner core, unrelentingly feminine, yet with a deep concern with universal themes, existential questions, and the passage of time.

Making is intuitive, exploratory, and without catering to market pressure.

Her innovative manipulation, trial and error process, poetic perception of the matter....the materiality of her projects.

Diane Charbonneau's beautiful writing about glass artist Susan Edgerley in Studio 2019 spring summer magazine