MIND BODY AND SPIRIT

It’s hardly a new concept. It’s always been reality but not necessarily forefront in my reality. Of late I have been giving this phrase quite a bit more thought or attention.

I’ve become more mindful which in turn has made me more spiritual. I understand that I am a spiritual being having a human experience. I am a spiritual energy with a body. I feel the truth of this statement to the depths of my soul. My soul - my spirit - my truest essence.

Just recently, I had a realization. More than being limited by my body, I am limited by my mind. The opposite is also true. For when my mind is unlimited so is my body.

As a child is full of wonder so should we be. Drinking in each experience as it comes. Waking each day with excitement. Discovering our own truths, climbing as high as we can with out fear.

Don’t let your mind get in your way and hinder your opportunity to experience the joy and glory of life.

fun to look at

That’s what I decided today. Everyone of my paintings should be fun to look at. Looking back I believe most of them are, but today I proclaimed

fun to look at

to be a necessary ingredient of every Debra Clemente work of art.

That proclamation made out loud in my studio before God and two my cats, immediately changed the direction of an iris painting that I have been dancing with for two months. Two months? Yep, on and off. I can’t let it go. I keep thinking I almost have what I want then look back at it a few days later and I’m dissatisfied. In a short time I’ve worked back over every inch of the canvas (it has occurred to me I should charge for my paintings by weight – as this old gal is getting pretty heavy with layers of oil paint).

Well anyway, the news is that working with that insight breathed new life (a.k.a. fresh –vibrant -unexpected color) to the iris portrait. Yes, I really think she might be about done.

Look here

 “Look here. Right here. EXCITING ISN’T IT? A little longer, l o n g e r .  Now notice over here, uh huh, pause a bit . . . then look up. Up here. I said UP HERE! Yes, that’s the way. No keep looking here. Yes, I know that’s interesting but let’s enjoy this part first, we’ll look at that later.”

 

I’m assuming we’re both in agreement that my yapping and pointing as you approach my work would be totally annoying. My mother taught me better manners than that and my Dad taught me to always have a few tricks up my sleeve. So I will trick you, a little hocus-pocus.

I will direct your eye to exactly where I want it go first. Then draw your attention up the canvas where you will want to pause for a millisecond before your eyes are pulled diagonally down to the right. Continuing to scan the painting you’re drawn in. Stepping closer, then closer as the painting begins reveals it’s self anew. A symphony of brilliant color textures the surface. Surprising and seemingly random, yet delightful the layered and mingled hues taunt you touch them, but as you extend your hand forward your body is pulled back to start. Where you once again rescan the entire image with a new eye and …

I said it was a trick didn’t I. A trick of the trade. I just might give you a few clues sometime soon but I’ve got more painting to do now. I make my living as an artist not a writer after all.

Later Gator - Artistdeb

My Artist Statement

Making art is a very solitary experience for me. My studio is my sanctuary where I escape the rush and noise of life and make myself whole again. I release my built up creative energy wielding a palette knife thick with oil paint across a canvas.

I was born this way. An artist. You can ask my parents. I always looked at life differently and noticed things others quickly passed over. I’ve been learning to see for almost fifty years now and at the same time learning to express my visions so I can share with others. These visual recollections continually dance in my head until I give them another place to live.

Just as I have never been able to follow a recipe while cooking, each painting experience is a new creative challenge I set for myself. Can I capture the brilliance of the color, the intensity of the light or the subtle details tucked in the shadows? Each painting is a lesson learned which is in turn applied to the ones after. It’s quite often not fun. It’s hard and I’m hard on myself. I won’t quit until I’ve been able to say what I intended to say. It’s funny isn’t it, that I speak as if my painting speaks? That’s the way I think. My mind says, “this is what I’m trying to say”, not what I am trying to make something look like.

“Where is that?” I’m often asked in reference to one of my paintings. I don’t mean to seem flippant but the reality is that it was here (pointing to my head) and now it’s here, (pointing to the canvas). More and more I paint that way. In fact, I start many paintings flat on my back. Lying quietly with my eyes closed, I design paintings in my head drawing upon my memories. Choosing to include just enough detail to express the scene.

Lately, I’ve decided that no painting leaves my studio until it “sings”. They don’t all have to sing the same song but each painting needs a strong voice and an enchanting melody. It always delights and interests me when someone is drawn to my work. It struck a chord within them and resonates true to some experience in their own life. The painting makes them smile, just as the process did for me. It’s a good thing to feel good. We each need to be reminded of all the good in life.

There was a time when I didn’t feel so good. Not good at all. But when I was painting all was right with my body and the world. My art is my therapy but I also believe it has a purpose and life beyond me. I believe I am put here as an artist to share the joy I feel and perhaps others will find themselves looking at the world around them a little differently and find themselves smiling.

My Creative Comfort Quotes

I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.

(Claude Monet)

The creative person finds himself in a state of turmoil, restlessness, emptiness, and unbearable frustration unless he expresses his inner life in some creative way. (Silvano Arieti)

How difficult it is to be simple. (Vincent van Gogh)

I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it. (Vincent Van Gogh)

Difficulties increase the nearer we approach our goal. (J.W. von Goethe)

Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter. (Jessamyn West)

I have made some progress. Why so late and with such difficulty? Is art really a priesthood that demands the pure in heart who must belong to it entirely? (Paul Cezanne)

I haven't yet managed to capture the colour of this landscape; there are moments when I'm appalled at the colours I'm having to use, I'm afraid what I'm doing is just dreadful and yet I really am understating it; the light is simply terrifying. (Claude Monet in Bordighera, Italy)

In an artist's life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing. (Vincent van Gogh)

Anyone that witnesses my agitation and frustration in the final hour of a painting would wonder why I even bother. (David Oleski)

I had gotten to the point where I was either going to play the violin much better or I was going to break it over my knee. (Ellen Taaffe Zwilich)

I've spent so long on some paintings that I no longer know what to think of them, and I am definitely getting harder to please; nothing satisfies me... (Claude Monet)

Unless your work gives you trouble, it is no good. (Pablo Picasso)

I have once more taken up things that can't be done: water with grasses weaving on the bottom. But I'm always tackling that sort of thing! (Claude Monet)

It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven. (Alexander Solzhenitsyn)

It seems to me that when I see nature I see it ready-made, completely written -- but then, try to do it! (Claude Monet)

I am frequently out of control and, of course, run into lots of trouble. I think I like to create problems for the love of solving them. (Ann Zielinski)

If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's. (Joseph Campbell)

Exasperation

I find painting and the act of making art exasperating.
It is such a lonely path and yet so totally fulfilling.
Shouldn’t all great art just happen and be a process of great joy and ease?

Until just recently these contradictory feelings have haunted my artist soul. My burdens were eased with the discovery of a catalog of art quotes, http://www.painterskeys.com/quotations.asp . I quickly went to the subject of frustration and found the writings of such noted masters as Monet and Piscassro like scripture before me.

The ideas expressed in these writings confirm that I am not alone in my frustration and hardship. Even the great and honored Michelangelo stated that his life might have been so much easier if he had taken a simpler path early in life. 

“Painting and sculpture, labour and good faith, have been my ruin and I continually go from bad to worse. Better it would have been for me if I had set myself to making matches in my youth. I should not be in such distress of mind.” (Buonarroti Michelangelo) 

There have been times that I have also secretly wished that this burden to create and express had not been laid on my heart. Often another will express how they wish that they had my talent and that they would give anything to be able to paint as I do. “Ha, I think to myself, you think this is all fun? It is agony!” Painting is a process of great problem solving. I am always struggling to express the idea in my head and heart, pushing into uncharted territory, not being able to step back and relax until all of the problems I have created are solved. I never had a special interest in math or science in school. In fact I hated them. I just wanted to draw and paint. Now, as I stand in front of a blank canvas I often rethink my choices. At least in math and science there are right and wrong answers along with certain commonly known formulas to achieve the solution. 

That is not the way in art. The artist must express his own ideas and forge his own path to resolution. The fact that there is no one right solution makes the path even more challenging, and mentally tasking. Even with all of the exasperation I just expressed, there is another side that is ultimately prevails in the heart of the dedicated artist. The deep need to create, to express unspoken thoughts, to release oneself from the daily reality of life and delve into a deeper reality almost on a spiritual level with ones ideas and chosen materials of expression. I live to create and I create to live. 

Although the process can be exasperating it can also be a Zen like experience, as if I am being used by some greater force as a means of expression and I am letting the idea into a new reality through my act of creation. When a painting flows like this it is an awesome magical experience. I had expected all my work to flow gracefully from my heart to the canvas, but alas it doesn’t and most paintings are struggles. 

After discovering the writings of other artists whose work I admire, and hearing the same thoughts of frustration and exasperation as well as the constant deep need for creation and expression, I felt great comfort. I felt a new closeness to those who walked this walk many years before me. I am not alone, this is they way it is supposed to be – not easy. Last week I had the joy of sharing my art and process with a new acquaintance. He had admired my work from afar for sometime. I also shared a bit about my trials and doubts. He was quick to admonish those thoughts in my head. “You have to paint! What a shame if a talent like this was wasted!” Those are the same thoughts I had after finding the quotes of Monet and Pissarro. Their persistence and determination has now become part of my inspiration. Alas, I can move on.

EXPERIMENTAL PAINTING

I really do learn from my mistakes, at least in my painting studio that is. My theory is “If it’s already screwed up there’s no risk left.”

At this point I don’t give up. I go beyond. I get bold and do things to the canvas I wouldn’t dare try on a “perfect painting”. In the process I’ve discovered many new techniques and most often the resulting finished painting has an amazing energy taking my art as a whole to a new level.

GLOBS OF PAINT

I want to eat them up. The globs of paint on my palette look delicious!

I’m in love with color just the same as a mother with her babe. Young mothers hunger for their children. They cannot get enough of their scent, their soft skin and beautiful smiles. Haven’t you ever nibbled on a baby’s toes? It’s just that kind of feeling for me.

The subjects or motifs I choose to paint are just excuses to play with color and explore all the wonderful possibilities that seem endless in my mind.

SELF-DIOLOUGE

I don’t remember Julie, though my family has talked about her for years. Did I really have an imaginary friend at four or did my parents decide it sounded better to have an imaginative youngster than a crazy kid who talked to herself? Maybe it’s all one in the same.

You see I still do. I talk to myself a lot, and aloud. Most of these animated conversations play out in the privacy of my studio. I pose and answer questions and sometimes argue to defend a point. As most focused and self-directed artists I spend a lot of time alone developing my craft. Luckily, I’m quite good company.

Cover Art

My art is featured on the cover of a newly published book. I did the oil pastel "Assisi View" while in painting in Italy July of 2001.

Emmanuel's Prayer
Filled with adventure, art, chocolate, and travels in Italy and France, this fiction story is about a cynical man's search for the existence of God and his subsequent discovery of love and the meaning of life. http://www.utopiapress.com/

“Present in the moment”

"You never look at me,"
my husband comments as we drive through the countryside between our town and Kansas City. "You're always looking out the window."

Our marriage of almost 25 year is fine, he is just annoyed with me at the moment. He doesn't know that I've been painting. I'm always painting. I paint when he drives. I paint at church. I paint as I wait in line at the grocery store. It's what I do, how I live.

I'm not talking about having a wet canvas set up before me and fresh paint squeezed out on the palette. I'm painting with my eyes and my heart. Studying shapes, patterns and colors. Understanding the truth of nature, the way a tree grows, the way the land falls, the way the light is filtered. I'm looking, truly looking, seeing.

Most people would assume I'm daydreaming, far off in another land. But no, I am truly present in the moment before me. I want to remember it all.

I use this information when I am physically standing with my palette knife in hand. I'm finding myself reaching more and more for these deep seeded memories as I paint. I'm beginning to favor my recalled memory paintings. They aren't about duplicating the nit picky details captured in a photograph and they have an entirely different mood than my hurried plein-air works. Instead these paintings are about conveying a since of time, place and emotion.

It seems that I paint these memory paintings forever. First they live in my mind and when it is their time they very slowly develop on the canvas. You know how hard it is to describe your night dreams to someone? How the images and activities seem disjointed when you try to explain them? Finding the words to convey to another what was so real to you just minutes before seems impossible and listener is never truly is ever able to relive what you just lived in your dreams. That's my struggle, my chore, my life. Except I can use no words, just juxtaposed bits of colors, chroma, hue and value.

When I have finished a painting. When I have said all that I want to say. I put the painting away. I turn it to the wall, most likely I'm sick of it. We've battled for days and come to a standstill. No one wins. We just agree to be done with it. Sometime later, before it leaves my home studio, I turn the painting around and study it with an air detachment. I do this with all of my paintings as I've found there is much to be learned from studying ones own work. This discovery amazes me. The paintings that I create from thin air, from my thoughts and my memories, the ones that I have gone to battle with for days on end, hold my attention the most. There is so much to see. They are hardly "cut and dried" images. Not "what you see is what you get". They are more. They are ethereal. I find myself getting lost in the image and once again I am present in the moment.

P. S. After forwarding this post to another artist, whom had studied extensively with Wolf Kahn, he e-mail me back this comment. "Wolf Kahn says that the better artist one becomes the worse his driving becomes." Deb

___________

Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind. (Henri Matisse)

If you work from memory, you are most likely to put in your real feeling. (Robert Henri)

The most vital things in the look of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory; memory of that vital moment. (Robert Henri)

My landscapes are non-specific, evoking a mood rather than a particular place, so that viewers are reminded of their own memories, dreams and nostalgia for locations. (Victoria Block)

Simplicity of shape does not necessarily equate with simplicity of experience. (Robert Morris)

The artist should be intoxicated with the idea of the thing he wants to express. (Robert Henri)

The painter, being concerned only with giving his impression, simply seeks to be himself and no one else. (Claude Monet)