The Girl Who Doesn't Want to Grow Up.

Lately I have been looking back on my childhood and my inevitable progression into adulthood. It happens so gradually that you don’t realize that you’ve matured or grown until it’s long since happened. I remember myself as a child eating a bowl of some overly sweet cereal like Lucky Charms and being so disgusted by my parents choice of healthy and taste free nonsense. I declared that when I grew up I would still eat sweet cereals and not give a hoot.

Years and years have passed since then and all of a sudden I have realized that I am eating healthy and non-sweet cereals. Worse, I can’t even stomach eating Lucky Charms! What the heck happened here? When did this change happen?! How is it that I ALLOWED this to happen?!

This change happened so stealthily that I didn’t even realize it until it had already happened. Like a thief in the night, my childish ways were stolen from me and replaced with the common behavior of most adults. How horrible! This has begun to make me nervous about other things that might change as I get older and older. I recently finished re-watching the Avatar: Last Airbender series. The movie left such a bad taste in my mouth that I had to remind myself of why I had loved the series in the first place.
I am one of the few adults I know of who still enjoy watching cartoons. (This would be another one of those things that I vowed to never give up as an adult. Also, I am not including adults with children. They have a lovely excuse for watching the cartoons that their kids enjoy)

While I have (so far) stayed true to this vow I am beginning to wonder… Will I wake up one day and realize that I haven’t watched a cartoon in years? Will my favorite thing to watch become the news?! When you’re a child, you look forward with eager anticipation to the days when you will finally be deemed an adult. As an adult, you dread the unending progression and cling to whatever memories of your youth you can. What a funny thing life is sometimes!

The Lady of Shalott

Lately I've been really missing my days back in college where my knowledge, talent and intellect was constantly growing and being challenged. I especially miss my art history classes where the knowledge learned often inspired artwork within me. I've decided to spend a few minutes once a day going to museum websites and choosing one painting to examine and learn about. I decided to go to the Tate Museum as my first online art museum "outing" and couldn't resist going to visit one of my favorite paintings in their collection. I was fortunate enough to see this painting in person at the Tate over 2 years ago and it was a life changing experience.

                                           1888


John William Waterhouse's  Lady of Shalott is often deemed to be one of the most famous and well-known paintings of this period. This painting illustrates Alfred Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shalott. Waterhouse was so enamored with this tale that he painted three different versions of this character, in 1888, 1894 and 1916. Draped over the boat is the fabric the lady wove in a tower near Camelot. But she brought a curse on herself by looking directly at Sir Lancelot.With her right hand she lets go of the chain mooring the boat. Her mouth is slightly open, as she sings ‘her last song’. She stares at a crucifix lying in front of her. Beside it are three candles, often used to symbolise life. Two have blown out. This suggests her life will end soon, as she floats down the river.

For your own enjoyment, I have included the two other versions that he painted of this character...

                                                           1894

                                                     1916


For your own museum outing to the Tate...http://www.tate.org.uk/collection/

Shockingly Unshocking

                                            Ingres (1780- 1867)

                                                      Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)

Is sex really a source of shock in our society? I have been thinking about this for awhile and it was exacerbated by the ”Shock Art” episode on Bravo’s Work of Art. ( I realize that this was aired awhile ago but I have been out of town and dealing with more important family matters lately) I have included a link to the artwork from this show for anyone who doesn't watch the show.http://www.bravotv.com/work-of-art/season-1/photos/rate-the-work/episode-4-rate-the-work A majority of the artists on this show chose to do something sex-related as a way of shocking their audience. America is one of the few countries who still seem to find sex and our sexuality “shocking”. For most countries this is simply a daily activity. For centuries artists have shocked their audiences with sexually based artwork. I have included some within this blog and trust me when I tell you that this is in no way even scratching the surface. If this is the case, is it really shocking still? Seriously? After all of this time?

                                                          Schiele (1890- 1918)

I almost wish that Work of Art extended themselves to include artists from other countries. I feel pretty sure( though I may be wrong) that their shock related art would be about quite different subject matters. I personally think that the atrocities of war or tyrannical governments are shocking. The fact that we have become so desensitized to violence and that we want to see actual live executions broadcasted on the television is pretty shocking. The buying and selling of young girls for sex is pretty shocking. The lengths to which we are willing to go for beauty and sex., the disfiguration, pain and even death… these are shocking ideas. Yet no one seemed to touch these ideas. I see it time and time again whenever an assignment like this is given to artists at school and now I’m seeing it yet again with artists who have long since graduated. The world is falling to pieces around us and is progressing in new and sometimes dangerous ways, but all we can think about is what’s in our underpants.

                                                       Beardsley (1872-1898)

A Study of Crawling

I am currently on vacation visiting my little sister and my 8 month old niece, Coralie. She has recently started to try her hand at crawling and I feel so lucky to be here to witness it. I watch her little legs shaking as they strain to propel her forward. I see her fall, or lay down and cry in frustration. She's doing a wobbly crawl at best right now,but she continues to push herself forward and always gets to her destination no matter how long it takes her. Her perseverance is astonishing.

I think that there is something to be learned from this. We all, at one point in our lives, were just like her. We all started off having to learn how to do everything. We all pushed ourselves through the bumps, bruises and frustrations to get to our destination. We were fearless and tenacious. What happens to us as we get older? How do we all of a sudden let fear stop us from getting to our goals? Fear of rejection, of failure...

We often think only of the things that we have to teach our children but I definitely think that we should be paying more attention to the things that they can teach us.

Some Thoughts About Beginnings and Ends

My grandmother is unfortunately not doing very well. I had visited her at the nursing home and noticed a slight discoloration on one of her cheeks. The nurses later realized that this was the beginning of jaundice. Since then we've discovered that she has pancreatic cancer so hospice has been called in to care for her. Obviously this is a horribly conflicted time for myself and my family. On one hand my grandmother has been slowly slipping away with dementia so her passing away can easily be viewed as a blessing. We believe that there is a heaven after death and therefore see death as a way to reach better things. However that doesn't stop us from mourning the imminent loss of one so dear to us.

On one of my recent visits with my grandmother I decided to do some sketches of her. She tends to sleep most of the time that you are with her so it can be a tad boring without something to do. I didn't have much in the way of supplies with me. Just a pen and my sketchbook. So I decided to just do some simple studies of her poor arthritic hands. It's horribly brutal sometimes how aging can affect our bodies. When I was home looking over the sketches I realized that I had used the page directly across from a quick color study that I had done for a painting that I am working on. The painting is for a friend who wishes to have it to celebrate the upcoming birth of her grandson. The amazing contrast between these two images stunned me momentarily. It's amazing how we all begin as these beautiful glowing perfect little babies and then end up so fragile and deformed as we reach our death. Another thought that crossed my mind is what if we are really just making a complete circle in our lives? Going from being birthed into this new world as a helpless creature, living life and then ending up a helpless creature yet again before we are "birthed" into the next life.

Operation Clean Studio is Complete!

After more months than I care to mention, my studio is finally done! It's always difficult finding the time to do things from Nov-May as these are the busiest months of the year for my job. It's nice having the extra time now because it means that all of these unfinished projects are finally going to get done! There are still a few more things that I'd like to get done in the studio, but overall it's a VAST improvement! It's going to be really nice to finally have this space as a usable studio again.



Everything is nicely labeled and while I got rid of most of my extraneous stuff I had to keep a few fun knick knacks and odds and ends to keep my studio true to myself. It was interesting to discover which pieces of artwork were oddly easy to get rid of while other things that I thought would be easy ended up being the hard, and sometimes impossible, ones. I think that we learn a lot about ourselves during these times of purging. It becomes a time to reevaluate ourselves and our lives.

Ups and Downs

Trina Schart Hyman (1934-2004) was an amazing American children's book illustrator with over 150 books under her belt. She was the recipient of three Caldecott Honors and one Caldecott Medal. I often find myself looking to her work for inspiration when I am feeling stagnant. I found this interview with her and took a segment from it that I found particularly interesting.

Mrs. Hyman told The Boston Globe that she thought the pinnacle of her career, her Caldecott Award in 1985, was also one of the lowest points in her artistry.

"I realized that I was drawing the same figure over and over again, because I don't work from photographs or models when I do my illustration; it's all from my head," she said in 1992. "So I thought I was not only in a rut as far as my creative output, but I also just hated my work."

In response, Mrs. Hyman turned to painting models in an attempt to expand her creativity.

"Painting from life is really an exercise for me," she said. "I felt like it's saved my life several times. When you work in your studio at home you are answerable to everyone. Your work is answerable to everyone. With this work, I am not answerable to anyone."



It's interesting how public views often have little or no bearing in how an artist views their own work. Often the work that puts an artist on the map is their least favorite work. Whether it's because they feel that they aren't staying true to themselves or simply because they wish to branch out and explore something new, artists often reach points when they feel stagnant and stale. It's nice to see that even someone with Ms. Schart's talent can have moments like this as well.