painting

random blog post

It has been awhile since I’ve tickled the plastic ivories of my trusty laptop. Life gets busy. Or rather, life IS busy. Full stop. 24-7.

As a younger man, I never imagined myself having a full blown family. I did not regard myself as responsible enough or ‘together’ enough to manage the ups and downs of parenting and everything mundane in between, let alone maintain a career as a painter. Still, at some point (points… three of ’em), however, I became a full blown family man. It seems like a blink of an eye since my average day was concerned with nothing more than painting, cooking tasty meals with (sometimes with multi day prep involved) for Sarah and I and whatever other parentless vagabonds who drifted into our always-open-door-policy house, walking the dog and finally, choosing two movies from the corner video store in Cannington (Brockbuster… in Brock township) for the approaching night on the couch.

Cut to today and I don’t think I could adequately describe the flurry of action that occurs during my (daylight) waking hours. There is no start and no finish. A task followed by a task and then three more tasks, some of them in the middle of the night (many of them, in fact). Somewhere in there, I am lucky enough to be able to get in the the studio and pull off some coffee fuelled painting from time to time.

Please, dear readers, read no note of woe here – this is merely observation – make of it what you will. It is easy to look back on such times of bucolic pleasantries and have a note or two of nostalgia creep in, but I quickly remember the boisterous vitality that now pumps in our house’s veins. It is a lot, but it is a loving lot, so I do not lament a little loss of the Life of Riley. There may be stark contrast between the lifestyle of no children and the one with tonnes of children, but the two cannot really be compared, at least not whilst also maintaining sanity. So different are those paths that when they diverge, they never meet again and one can sometimes scarcely remember what it was like to sleep in to whatever time you once deemed appropriate.

Hangovers, once a pleasant excuse for some sweet, sweet sloth, are now scorned and avoided with alacrity. No one wants to feel the guilt of still-boozy cheerlessness at 7 in the morning with three children sitting,  wanting your special crepes while you monotonously moan and groan into the sink, trying to soothe your head with the soulless echo of your own sunken and savage torpor until the coffee is ready. No, you learn from that mistake and many more.

Such adjustment does it require to be a parent to three little children, that you can sometimes barely recall who you thought you were before the cherubic onslaught. Well, lemme tell ya, you weren’t who you thought you were. At least I wasn’t. It turns out that there is nothing better in the whole world than being smothered in your offspring while reading bedtime books. Difficulty may arise (it will) in your day to day scenarios but there remains a soothing undercurrent if you are tuned into it and can tap into it.

All 5 of us got sick over the last couple weeks. The hacking. Oh, the hacking. The wracking, stacked to the rafters hacking. After the eye of the storm had passed over us and we were contemplating the few days previous, Sarah and I both agreed in timely fashion that as shitty as it was, it was also cozy and insanely cute at times. The wood-stove worked overtime and frozen (albee’ em organic) meals were thrice employed and then reheated as leftovers.  We hunkered sump’n fierce.

The only painting I did over the two weeks of holiday action was some sporadic experimentation with abstraction, changing a large colour field into a different mode everyday. I may show the results in time if I feel them worthy of display. It has been fun, at very least, watching a painting morph and change daily into something unplanned and spontaneous – one moment feeling excited or even elated about it and the next feeling hesitation and deflation, but all the while reminding myself that I am not after specific results but instead am chasing whimsy and attempting alchemy. I’ve said before that if I really felt my mojo working in it, I may abandon representative painting altogether and embrace the abstract. For now, I’m merely playing and trying to keep the visual child in me alive.

Now that the ill-cloud of sick has lifted we are slowly emerging back into routine. I have gotten well into my next commission, and I’m chomping at the bit to get in to more pieces that exist only in in the ether of my imagination. If I can just get in to the studio at some point…..

Postscript note… This post was written in the depths of winter. It is now April and there is still snow on the ground. Grrr.

Happy ‘Spring’ everyone.

D

8x10 oil painting

A donation piece for the Waterkeeper Gala coming up

 

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landscape painting

New, small works @ Roberts Gallery

Happy Spring, Everyone…

Jacket-less weather has arrived, almost… I’m Painting while the last snow melts away. The chickens are happy that I chased a marten away. The racoon keeps coming back trying to bag himself a hen. Hopefully a bald eagle or a coyote will do what I cannot.

These three small 8″x10″ pieces just went off to Roberts Gallery, where they can enjoy freedom from an otherwise certain wild animal attack.

Best from the wilds of Kimberley,

D

 

 

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Studio time(s)

Hello,

The air is cool and the leaves are changing, dammit. Although our wood pile is full and we are ready for the plummeting temperatures there is still a delusional  desire to do summer things. I swam only thrice this whole summer despite our near proximity to various bodies of water. The trip to the zoo never happened. The new chicken coop is still unfinished. But, the studio needs me more than the chickens do. I must lay some paint eggs and bring home some bacon.

So, Sarah and I have devised a practical set of of guidelines for plotting our respective studio time. We take turns getting up early with the three wee ones so that the other may sleep in every second morning. After a good sleep we can take the option of heading into the studio for the rest of the morning and then switch up at noon so the other has the afternoon for working. It seems to be a working version of sanity for the moment. I was up early this a.m. and after diaper changes, feeding everyone and making sweet, sweet coffee for myself I basically just set about trying to keep various shrieks and hollers to a minimum so Sarah can try to get the aforementioned extra sleep.

The mornings might be early but they are also hilarious and truly adorable. This morning, one of our twin girls, Hanneli, wanted every piece of wardrobe available to her to be actually on her. She strutted about  with a pair of tights, swim shorts over that, two shirts, and a raincoat. One running shoe was all she needed as footwear, apparently. On top of everything she put on a costume dragon cape and gave me the pleasure of watching her parade around with a very proud look on her face. Ineke, however, went the other way and tolerated no shirt whatsoever despite the cool morning air. She wanted to paint while Hanneli walked (yup, both walking like orangutans… no talking yet, just shrieks of varied intonation and volume). It is a couple to a few hours of important, tight family time. I truly feel sorry for families who cannot do this due to the time constraints of their careers. It is one of the trade offs that are apparent to every artist who is blessed enough to get by on what they make with their art. Would I like a bigger bank account and a dependable paycheque? Hellsya, but like I said, it is a trade off and after almost twenty years I’m used to the schizophrenic ups and downs of art based income.

So, back to the studio – I have a couple of new pieces on the go. One is of a mountain descending to the sea in Greenland and the other is of a local piece of ground, Bowles Bluff. We have back to back studio tours rapidly approaching and the amount of work available for  viewing is not exactly voluminous. In fact, I think I’ll be postponing a show I had planned for mid-winter as I just can’t foresee a full gallery worth of work materializing before then. This is no lament, but rather an extrapolation. Just the facts, Ma’am. Another big solo show will come when the time is right.

Right now I am in the middle of the big sky in the Bowles Bluff piece. I seem to have developed a habit of painting a tone or two too dark on my first pass which necessitates a re-paint. Frustrating but very learny. A little more preparation and forethought is obviously required. Still, it has been a while since I’ve done some big poofy clouds and I am reminded that there is nothing that is easy about capturing the floating elegance of a good cloud.

Have my thoughts meandered enough for this post? Before I start lamely talking about about what brand of paint I use, I’ll sign off.

Again, check out my new site featuring my drawings and doodles, https://marshakian.wordpress.com/.

And prints are still coming. Soon.

Be well.

D

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The Hiatus

The Hiatus

July has been hiatus month for me. My wife Sarah is an artist as well and I gobbled up the lion’s share of studio time these past few months getting work done for my show with Harold Klunder (at Flesherton Art Gallery until late Aug.). It is coming on three weeks of no painting and the various aspects of hiatus-ing, both pro and con are becoming evident.

Things get done outside of the studio. Not by me, except for a lawn mow or two. I mean, by Sarah. So far she has built a huge bookshelf (it had been nearly two years without seeing many of our books), finished our taxes ( I am unable to face them), weeded the vegetable garden and designed herself a new website. Oh, and she weened the girls too. No big deal. So, my hiatus has certainly provided opportunities for domestic advancement. And of course, I have been able to spend days with all three children in the yard and lolling about lazily in the living room. Good things.

But what does the hiatus do for the artistic mind? For some it would be torture. I know a few painters to whom the hiatus is anathema. Whether due to obsession or work ethic, some artists simply cannot take breaks unless forced upon them by geography or tragedy. For me, there is refreshment in stepping away. I can see what I’ve done over the past months and reflect on it in a different state of mind. I can critique my work with less anxiety. It is done, there will no more strokes. I can let go and let the critical chips fall where they may.

Is it always refreshing though? Not necessarily. It can also be vexing. If a break lasts long enough, I start to forget what it is like to paint every day and begin to feel alienated from the whole process. It becomes apparent again that it is actual work – that from beginning to end, a painting is a series of decisions and commitments. I am not complaining. I love working in my studio. I love the process. But for those who think that every artist has a dreamy floating-on-a-cloud kind of day every day in the studio? I wish.

One of the hardest things about returning to the studio after hiatus-ing is the kick-start back into action. After twenty years (woah) of doing this, I still feel like a nervous child approaching my rolling palette table. What colors? What to paint? Can I still mix? I need more reference material. The doubts tend to creep in whilst on hiatus. What if I suck? What if I always sucked and I’ve just been lucky to get by? Will my fraud be discovered? Is it over? Shall I apply for a server position and polish my manners to mine for better tips?

No. Not a chance.

I don’t know what I’m going to paint yet when I get back in to the flow. I don’t know what I want to paint. I have boards waiting. They look at me with their eager, burnt sienna toned surfaces as I walk into the studio and head for the chest freezer to get hot dog buns. They wonder what the hold up is. What’s up, dude?

I’m coming, I’m coming. I’ll be there soon and we’ll see what happens. Ok? Geez.

_TAC9230

The servant waits while the master baits.

 

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