If you read my blog last week, and I sincerely hope you did, you will recall that I was in Texas. There are not many reasons a fresh veggie lovin’ liberal from northern California would visit the land of everything-deep-fried-including-Oreos, certainly not for the foot long corndogs or the politics–no, no–NOT the politics, but I had a VALID reason to go to the lonestar state, the BEST reason of all … I’m a grandma.
Now go read that post so you can see how seriously I take this grandma stuff. You have to do that so you can understand how leaving the munchkin would’ve been hard, would’ve been devastating, would’ve broken my heart in a thousand little bitty pieces…if I didn’t have something to look forward to…
A side trip to Las Vegas to visit an old friend. A friend who knows me well enough to know that rocks and sun and light and big sky would feed my soul. Feed hers as well.
It was a quick visit, 48 hours, nearly every one of which–when we weren’t sleeping—involved driving around the desert.
Chasing the sun.
And falling in love with a landscape stripped down to the basics. A landscape that makes you reach deep inside and pull something out you didn’t know was there. Something...holy.
Long before the gamblers, the silicon titties, the wild and frantic seven deadly sins check-list that is the Vegas strip, long before that, THIS was here.
And the ancient ones who painted their lives, their gods, their hunts, their stories on the walls of rock were here.
I’ll be back. I HAVE to go back. Have to experience this more deeply. I want to camp. And hike. Take photographs. Make art. And I want to share this with you. The seeds of a workshop have been planted.
Now I just have to figure out the logistics.
And listen to da muse who was WAY inspired. Inspired enough to play with charcoal on a whole ‘nother level.
Primal # 1. Susan Lobb Porter. Charcoal on paper
Primal # 2 Susan Lobb Porter. Charcoal on paper
You up for joining me? It will be quite the arty adventure! Promise, really. Pinky swear even.
As always, would love to hear what you have to say in the comments below.
Oh my sweetums, I have a confession, indeed I do. Your favorite-best-beloved-kale-swigging artist, AKA Moi, has been dining on Reese’s for the better part of the day. But not because I WANTED to or gained ANY pleasure from doing so at all. No no no!!! I was taking one for the art team, you see. It’s all considered Open Studios prep, a quick source of proteinnutrition, something to tide me over while painting–no, NOT JUST PAINTING, painting my hiney into the arty frenzy that comes before a show.
Which is a grand and glorious way to impress you with my creative productivity, as opposed to leaving you shaking your head and tsk tsking at the thought of paint smeared gobs of peanut butter and chocolate finding their way straight from my mouth to the aforementioned hiney. Because that’s the way these things work.
In the end it’s not sugar and fat, it’s body sculpture.
And Muse Magic. Because I’ve been on FIRE. Oh yes, FIRE all day. All week. Got so many works-in-progress going right now I can’t even guestimate the number. Lots. Not your average lots. We’re talkin’ the kind of lots that really means LOTS.
It’s so exciting!!!
I’m going to show you a couple of ’em right now. Remember last week’s post, Between the House and the Barn. I posted some photos I took that I considered to be inspiration for paintings.
Disclaimer: Inspiration DOES NOT DICTATE creativity, it merely kick starts it.
So don’t expect my paintings to look anything like the original photos. Just sayin’…
Original photos:
Works in progress derived from above photos:
Work in progress SLPorter
This one is oil on top of other things. Acrylic. Collage. We’ll call it mixed media. Small. 8×8 inches. Maybe 10×10.
This one is oil and cold wax on top of collage and acrylic. I believe it’s 24×30 inches. They’re both on cradled panels.
Work in progress oil and cold wax SLPorter
Not the best photo in the world, color is a bit off. I’m thinking I might experiment with some shellac on this. Maybe. Get some nice honey drips going. That’s something from sister Marjorie Ellen’s bag o’tricks.
We’ll see….
Hey, thanks for dropping by. As always, let me know what you think in the comments below. And if you like what you see, please share with your friends. xoxo
Oh my sweetums, I’ve been spinning my wheelsuber busy in ArtyLand, so busy I neglected to post last week. Imagine that!
If you’re impatient or have a short attention span, you may scroll down now and watch the video. But if you’re here for a good story, stick around. You’ll get to the movie eventually.
It’s not that I forgot you, au contrair, you (my most best, BEST beloveds), have been on my mind CONSTANTLY. I’ve thought of you even more than I’ve thought of CHOCOLATE!!! Which is a lie, by the way, because nothing comes between me and my chocolate. But it sounds good, like overtime devotion in bloggy land.
Have you ever gone from point A to point B via points M,Q and X? Well, that’s what I’ve been doing. And getting nowhere fast in the process.
It all started when I got this idea for a blog post. I was scrolling through my iPhoto library, grumbling about the BAZILLIONS of photos I’ve taken and have yet to organize… yada yada… and I must be NUTS to think I can ever find a specific photo. Getting a wee bit frustrated because I’m not exaggerating the number of photos (well, yes I am because I don’t believe bazillions is an actual quantifiable number) when it dawned on me–ping–like a light bulb in the brain–that a lot of my arty photos resemble a LOT of my paintings. I don’t consciously take photos of rocks and paint them. And I don’t consciously paint pictures and then go photograph things that remind me of them–
But you’d never know that from looking at all those photos.
Never. As in NEVER. EVER.
So I thought it would be cool to post photos I’ve taken that inspired my paintings. Or at least resemble paintings enough to see where I drew some inspiration. I began picking and choosing photos to illustrate that point, saving them all in an album. Then I thought what the heck, let’s see how this works as a slide show. And then, since I liked the way it was working, I needed to find music. Music that was legally MINE to use and wouldn’t get all this work kicked off FaceBook or YouTube. That meant half a day pouring through license free music sites. Which is a mega time suck, believe me. I finally found something I liked, tweaked the timing so it would work, converted the whole shee-bang to a movie file, did the YouTube upload and went to bed.
Where I lay there thinking of how I could make it better.
The next morning I got up and did it ALL OVER AGAIN. New music. More bounce. Tossed out some photos, added others. Rearranged EVERYTHING. And then I added text because WHY NOT?
And when I finally got the video I was REALLY happy with, I thought the heck with a blog post, this is going to be my HOME PAGE on my website, the one that showcases my ART. The site I basically ignore.
Ah, but if I’m inviting people to see my stuff I’d better clean things up. Like get the galleries updated, the store open. Things I’ve been ignoring because they’re H.A.R.D. Technical. Not.Fun.
So now you know where I’ve been. I’ve been herding ducks. That’s right, getting all my little duckies in a row. You ever try and do that? It’s like herding cats on quack. (I’m high fivin’ myself for that one, yes I am!) What began as a simple blog post, turned into a video, a revamped website and a functioning store. Holy crap, I’m even impressing myself.
All because of this:
Do me a favor, if you liked this post PLEASE tell your friends. Share it on FaceBook. Give it a tweet. And, as always, stop in and say hi in the comments. I love it when you do.
When I was a kid, maybe 9 or 10, Mama came home one day and said she’d run into her friend Marion at the grocery store. Or some other mom hangout. She knew Marion from Girl Scouts. They were both leaders. Cookie chairmen. Badge honkers. District council mucky-mucks.
A chance meeting where Marion mentioned she was an artist and was teaching classes out of her home. A chance meeting that turned into years of Saturday mornings in Marion’s magical rambling arty house.
Saturday morning lessons with sister Marjorie Ellen. Because in the beginning it was really about her. She was the blazing art star, I was the tag along little sister. But those Saturday mornings with the Dunkin Donuts and the comaradarie, the kneaded erasers and the charcoal smudged fingers…those Saturday mornings set me on my life path.
Because Marion taught me how to SEE.
How to narrow my focus down to a piece of the whole, And expand my world in the doing. How to find elements of design and beauty in what others would pass off as mundane. The quality of a line. Or light. The indefinable something that sets one square inch off against another.
It’s a lesson I’ve taken with me. A lesson I’ve done my best to impart to my own students over the years. Look. Look look LOOK around you.
SQUINT!
I keep a camera with me most all the time. You never know when you’re going to come across the perfect crack in the sidewalk. Or a tree root.
Or an old rusty Ford truck. I could parcel this baby into at least three paintings.
And this stack of crates, funky old weathered things that once held fruit…this will be the inspiration for an oil and cold wax piece, I just know it. The finished painting won’t be a photo replica. It may not look anything like the photo at all. But there will be elements. Texture. Color. Something…
My absolute favorite from this particular day’s photos, another painting waiting to happen…screaming to happen when I put aside the acrylics and dive back into the oils…
The potential in this one takes my breath away. Where, WHERE could I have stumbled across such beauty???
In a restaurant parking lot, that’s where. A stucco wall surrounding the dumpster. A green SUV parked next to it, the light from the sun reflecting through the windows, tinting the wall.
Adding mystery. And richness.
The wall around a dumpster….
Because once upon a time Mama’s friend Marion taught a little girl to open her eyes and see.
Inspiration strikes everywhere. Anytime. That’s why I always try to carry my camera around. Because you KNOW the one time I leave it home I miss the PERFECT shot.
Unfortunately that happens more often than I care to admit. But I’m getting better.
I live in a picturesque old gold mining town. Lots of interesting textures and buildings to photograph. But as I said up above, inspiration can come any time, anywhere. Including the sidewalk in front of a strip mall.
I look at this stuff and get so excited. Makes me want to run down to the studio and paint. The paintings will likely look nothing like the photos because that’s not what this is about. They’re for inspiration…. Color. Texture. Design. Proportion. Or all of the above. Layers and layers of oils and wax building up to the final piece.
Mystery. Depth.
That’s what makes it so exciting. That’s what makes it worth stopping traffic on the sidewalk while I whip out my camera and take pictures of the cracks.
I spent the day in Studio Grande. Show hangs a week from Monday and I’m in the final lap of the gettin’ ready race. It’s not as frantic as it sounds, just a lot of loose ends to tie up, paintings to finish, STUFF TO DO. That’s all. And when sister Margie Ellen arrives from Norway on Thursday, Studio Grande is going to feel not so grand. Gonna feel a wee bit crowded in fact. Two artists doing last minute prep while Studio Quat winds around our feet.
Mrrrrrurow…. Purring. Shedding. Being a cat.
I forgot to bring my camera today so no shots of current works-in-progress. Instead I’m going to share some artsy-fartsy photos from last night. I took lots of pics at the event but I also took some just for potential painting possibilities. Potential Painting Possibilities–I like that. Could call it 3P. Or P3.
Note: 3P/P3 photos are not concerned with focus or other technical details. They are for inspiration only. Because I’m NOT a photographer, just an artist with a camera.
I snagged a parking spot behind the foundry last night and had to hike around to the front. There was still some daylight and I had my camera. This is the winery next to the foundry. The back end of it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this same sight but last night I swear the winery called out and said, “Take my picture!”
So I did. I mean, really–look at all those luscious nooks and crannies. That yummy texture. The rust. I could spend a day there with my camera and still not get it all. Especially if I go inside and taste some wine first. Umm-hmm…indeed.
Then a quick zoom.
Aye-aye-aye!!! Is that a 3P/P3 or what? In fact as I’m writing this and looking at this I’m thinking I may have just solved a problem I was having with a diptych today. Well, what’d’ya know….
Then there’s the foundry. OH. MY. This is an old gold mining town and the foundry is where they forged the mining equipment. In fact the first Pelton Wheels were manufactured in this very building.
Maybe even in here, The Stone Hall. Love this room. Stone walls. Big fireplace. Old beams. And an iron door like something from an old castle.
