Thank you!

I just want to send a thank-you out to the cosmos for all the people who so graciously accommodated me today - they won't likely be reading this blog, but I felt the need to express the gratitude in my heart (beyond the feeble words I gave them).  

Thank you, and I hope I can pay the good karma forward :)

Oh fleeting youth....

It's official... I'm old.

It's not that I celebrated my 38th birthday last week.  Moreso that the birthday gave me an opportunity to hang out with members of my family who are, let's say a level or two higher than me in this RPG we call life.  That, combined with a looming deadline for the upcoming ISSA show, made me painfully aware of something that has been creeping up on me for some time.  I'm getting old.  Or at least my lenses are.

Last summer at a conference I noticed myself occasionally leaning my head back to look at people I was chatting with.  Meh, whatever... I work from home and don't usually have to stand and talk to people, I was probably just getting more introverted right?

Then in the months that followed I started slowly picking up momentum on my various (and, oh, there are many... but that's another story) scratchboards, but I was finding the task more tedious and less fun than I remember.  Was I just spreading myself too thin with other activities?  Was I losing interest in the medium? Not really, I still loved the idea of scratchboard but the execution was becoming a bit of a drag.

Then I go do dinner with my family and amidst the typical showing of photos on various phones I was confronted with a new frequency of the ladies pulling out of glasses to facilitate the seeing of said photos.  "When did you first start getting farsighted?" I asked tentatively, recalling the familiar scene of my mother holding something at arms' length in order to read it.  The reply was a chilling "Oh, around 40".

* sigh *

Then I came home and started to prepare for the ISSA deadline... and it became uncomfortably clear (or rather... blurry) that I can no longer focus on scratchboards at my typical working distance, and so what I've been doing is working further and further from the board.  For some forms of art that might be okay, but with the fine detail of what I do there is a distance where I can focus on the board but I just can't see the subtleties of the lines!

So I will be making an optometrist appointment.. but in the meantime I picked up a pair of cheapo reading glasses at the drugstore, and lo... I can see my scratchboard!!  Scratching when I can see what the heck I'm doing is a LOT more fun, and I was able to get a TON of work done in the past couple of days.  Unfortunately I look like this...

 
With these little glasses I could see the scratchboard but then I also had to look at my reference... suddenly I understood why the iconic 'old lady' always wore her glasses on the end of her nose, she just didn't have bifocals!  To anyone over 40 reading this, go ahead and laugh.. I honestly have never thought about the concept of bifocals or what it would be like to need them.  To anyone under 40 reading this... your turn will come!! Also, get off my lawn!!  * shakes fist *

I hope to post more often as I have some great things happening with my art this year...  I'm on a mission to develop my 'artist's voice', I'm revamping my website, I'm hoping to start taking pet portrait commissions again at some point - but it's all going to be different than how I've done it in the past, and I'm SO excited about it all!  But more on that to follow... for now, to prove that I ~am~ working, here's a quick shot of my current workspace (with a portion of the works-in-progress that I'm currently grappling with).

Now, however, I need to go have some fiber and get to bed.

Life Drawing Day

Finally I was able to hitch onto a life drawing class locally, it's been quite awhile but it was as enjoyable as ever.   Nothing helps you loosen up like a bunch of 1 minute poses! 

I keep meaning to do gesture drawing of my cats... it occurred to me today that they'd probably be happy to give me a dozen 30 second poses followed by one three hour pose.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Here are some of the final sketches from today's session (I won't horrify you with the gesture drawings! (The paper size is 18 x 24" for reference).

Madeleines and neuroscience

I just finished reading 'Proust was a Neuroscientist' by Jonah Lehrer.  Not as quick a read as 'Zoobiquity' (Barbara Natterson-Horowicz) but one of those books that would sit on the coffee table or nightstand and just stare at me, beckoning me to pick it up again and read the next chapter. 

I find myself fascinated with intersections - East meets West, Tradition meets Innovation, Art meets Science.  I would have to say that Lehrer's book is the ultimate Art meets Science study.  He reviews the works of avant-garde artists like Cezanne, Igor Stravinsky and of course the titular Proust and discusses, in-depth, why they were so out of place in their own time and field; but also how their work fit in (or rather didn't fit in) to the scientific paradigms of their day.  Then he brings it full circle, discussing the advances in scientific knowledge in the field of neuroscience which tell us today that many of the old paradigms were incomplete or downright incorrect, and how those revolutionary artists' ideas were closer to what is the current scientific 'truth'.

It goes both ways - it's amazing what we have learned in the last few decades, and I am very proud of modern science that it is able to grow and adapt, to change its paradigms as new evidence comes forward and not to settle with the status quo when it doesn't answer the questions it's supposed to.  However I still get frustrated with those who have tunnel vision - on either side of the fence.  Those who can't see that as great as modern science is, it doesn't have all the answers, and those places where it intersects with other areas... Art, Religion, daily empirical experience... are where there are opportunities to learn more.  I hold those 'other areas' to the same standard... Art and Religion that refuse to budge or listen to Science are, in my mind, no better.  Which is probably why I love the Dalai Lama, a man who can see and discuss the similarities between buddhism and quantum mechanics, who is a religious leader that is not afraid of science but excited about it's potential.

In 'Proust' it seems that Lehrer's main points are how Art may have more to it than many enmeshed in Science like to think.   I think there is another dimension though; it is fascinating that those artists - many of whom (if not all) were rejected by their contemporaries in a most derisive way - have come to be regarded as pioneers over time and are now classic icons.  I'm sure there are many artists out there who are rejected as untalented or just plain weird who actually ~are~ untalented and weird.  Some of the reasons Lehrer discusses may be why with a little time we came to not only accept these radicals, but to exhalt them.  They were tapping into some basic human truths, and as a species we love things that feel like they resonate with our humanness.

Or maybe I'm just addicted to finding common ground.

Some days I look at the books I'm reading and wonder if I should have been a psychologist, or philosopher, or neuroscientist.  But during more lucid moments I realize that me, being me, might not have been able to enjoy a book like Lehrer's were I an art historian or a neuroscientist.  I would get too caught up in all the details in my own head and whether my opinions on his opinions were 'correct' - even though the notion of 'correct opinions' sounds so utterly ridiculous to me at this moment.  

So I guess I'm glad I'm not a neuroscientist, though I suddenly feel psychologically introspective again.  Maybe I'll go get some Carl Jung books out of the library (though my husband might kill or divorce me if I start talking about cognitive function theory again :D),  and I'll see what else grabs my eye while I'm there, and I'll continue to investigate these intersections and marvel at the world around me.  At least until 'Last Ape Standing' comes out... good thing I'm not a paleoanthropologist!

~ Pb