ARTIST V. PAINT: I WON!

Janet Towbin, from the Milano Series, mixed media on canvas, 2007, 24″ X 24″.

I think I finally hit my stride in the studio. Last night I completed a new canvas that I am very happy with. The square format works well and the colors turned out better than I had hoped. I think it’s a winner. Hopefully, this painting (and others) will travel to Santa Fe at the end of the month to be in a new gallery. It’s all in the works and I don’t want to jinx the negotiations by giving out too much information. I will post again when things are more certain.

It has been a struggle these past couple of weeks and it didn’t seem like I would win the battle of paint vs. artist. But I got over the hump of working in a small, cramped and horrendously messy space and found that ever-elusive sweet spot of creativity. Whew! Whenever I face a blank canvas, I am never certain I will be able to find my center of creativity again. It is like searching for a valuable gem put away for safekeeping, and then freaking out because you can’t find it right away. You know it’s there, you hope it’s there, but where is it??? Well, that was me, freaking out in my studio just days ago.

Now that I’ve found the “gem” again I am worried I will have to stash it away as classes begin in two weeks and I have tons to do to get ready for them. I need to plan my classes week by week, organize materials, books and projects, prepare syllabi, compile art supply lists and all the other organizational paperwork necessary to begin. I am also reading several books on feminism so I can properly discuss this topic in conjunction with a collage project I intend to assign my students. The project will be to read Herland (a book about a feminist Utopian society) written in 1915 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and to create a…. Ah, I don’t really want to say exactly what the project is, yet. I will eventually divulge the information, but not until my students hear about it first. But here’s a hint: it involves flags…

Bathed in War’s Perfume by Walt Whitman, 1900

BATHED in war’s perfume—delicate flag!
(Should the days needing armies, needing fleets, come again,)
O to hear you call the sailors and the soldiers! flag like a beautiful woman!
O to hear the tramp, tramp, of a million answering men! O the ships they arm with joy!
O to see you leap and beckon from the tall masts of ships!
O to see you peering down on the sailors on the decks!
Flag like the eyes of women.

Finding a poem that compares a flag to a woman is brilliant! I love Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. How serendipitous that I came upon it just now as I was writing this post.

There is a saying in medical schools and teaching hospitals about how to become proficient at a task: “See one, do one, teach one.” Teaching is truly the best way to learn anything. I just worry I might be learning more than my students!

Content and photos copyright 2007 by Janet Towbin.

WHOSE STUDIO IS IT, ANYWAY?

My studio is a mess. I work best when my space is organized and fairly neat (it is never very neat, but usually neat enough). For the last month we have been having our house painted and repaired. Remember Murphy Brown’s live-in painter, Eldin (Robert Pastorelli)? Well, for us, that fiction has become our reality. Our painter (he’s a fabulous and hard-working guy) shows up at 6 a.m. and is here until 5 p.m. Even though he goes home at night, all his equipment stays. It has been stored in my studio for weeks–power tools, paint cans, 2 large ladders, brushes, tarps, scaffolding, shop-vac…you name it, it’s there. I freak out every time I go into my studio. Just looking at all the stuff annoys me and I have to leave before I blow a gasket.

I couldn’t wait another day. It’s been 4 or more weeks, for goodness sake! I just had to work there. I need to paint, too, and dammit, it’s my studio. So I ignored “Eldin’s” clutter and (I have to be honest here) a goodly amount of my own. I got out some stretcher bars, hammered them together to make 4 frames, stretched canvas over 3 and gessoed them and started to paint on one.

It was a struggle for me to work in that cluttered, cramped space. I couldn’t gain momentum, couldn’t reach that place where I can feel my creativity flow. I am used to working on my studio wall and because of all the crap on the floor in front of my wall, I had to work on the table. So, I mostly made a mess with the paint but I don’t think I can place all the blame on “Eldin” even though it is easier to do so. I guess it’s been too darn long since I put a paint brush on canvas. I’ve been preoccupied with drawing and printmaking; and my painting has taken a back seat for months. All considered, it is a wonder I accomplished anything at all! And this is what I have to show for my efforts: one unresolved, mediocre painting, severe exhaustion, paint up to my elbows and an even messier studio.

Oh well! Tomorrow is another day, and at least I can say I got started today, in spite of everything feeling so off-kilter. “Eldin” and I will both be pushing paint around tomorrow. He, on a ladder several stories up; me, in my cluttered, thoroughly messy studio.

See what I mean? This is just one small area…