Susan's Art and Sketchbook Blog

Hemispheric movement

Susan Cornelis — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:54:41 +0000

Ink, gesso and acrylic on watercolor paper, 15 X 11″

Yesterday at Chops Teen Club I was doing my artist-in-residence gig, which was supposed to be “Fantascapes”. Anything I paint these days has a strong fantasy element and so could be called FANTAsylandSCAPE. Not that I start out with a fantasy in mind. Actually I was more focused on my “audience” than on what i was actually doing with the paint. Good thing, because then my conscious mind wasn’t meddling with it. I started out dropping ink from the dropper and globs of gesso onto wet paper. Meanwhile the teens and staff were doing their own cool things and having a good time. And when I looked at it this painting today, the face appeared and certain things became soooo obvious to me. Feel free to draw your own mind pictures. Here’s mine.

Can you believe that brain up there with the golden right hemisphere?! All this talk about brain hemispheres these days. Everyone and her brother knows of Jill Bolte Taylor and her stroke and most of the people who read my blog have done the hemipheres test. And just check this out - my score was 60% right hemisphere and just tell me if that globe up there in the picture isn’t 60% gold on the right! See, this is what I mean about vision painting. It’s like a personal weegee (sp?) board. Gives me goose bumps. Honest to god I was just playing around with the paint. There’s a lot more going on for me in this painting, but i don’t want to interfere with your own imagination with it. And I would love to hear what you see.

Can’t wait til this weekend and the Vision Painting Workshop when we’ll be doing lots of this kind of painting together. If you want, feel free to join in too.

Bird Lady Tickles Me

Susan Cornelis — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:01:31 +0000

Pen and ink, tea, acrylic, lichen and paper collage on sketchbook paper

Back in my studio today after some time out for visiting with Janet and Leon who are in town from Maryland, and for welcoming Andy home from his Costa Rica trip. Time to hike and cook and look at pictures and reminisce. Janet was my best friend in 8th grade and we have remained loyal friends - almost sisters - for more than 4 decades now.

So last night at dinner I pulled out my version of how we met and she pulled out hers. Both of us were from New England and our parents had the complete lack of good sense to move us, in the middle of 8th grade no less, to the foreign country of California. My first day at lunch I was completely unprotected from the monstrously observable differences between my own awkward, too tall, too red-headed, too curly haired, too dressed up Eastern adolescent self and the casual blond surfer-looking kids at this school. I knew I would have to either find a hole to crawl into to avoid this life disaster for the next few years or I would have to stop curling my hair, get new clothes to wear, and find a group to hide in. Having heard that this girl Janet had also moved to the school the week before from Massachusetts, I swallowed big gulps of shyness and approached her at lunch where she stood, well protected, in a group of girls. Being shy herself she had little to say to me at first, and I thought I had made a very embarrassing error. However the differentness we both felt was so pronounced, and our similarity to each other so profound, that we became inseparable. Her version is that I arrived on the scene first and then rescued her from these boring California girls. In any case we definitely rescued each other, and will be happy to do so again at any time either of us need rescuing (which we don’t, at the moment).

So does this story have anything at all to do with this art piece? Of course! Actually just this minute it occured to me that good friends are meant to tickle each other to get the other moving in some way. Maybe that’s how we protect each other now, by eliciting the belly laughs that come with old memories so we can feel the exquisite lightness of life.

Bestefar: My Norwegian Grandfather

Susan Cornelis — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:48:11 +0000

Collage, photo transfer, tea, pen on sketchbook paper

“A Bird’s Eye View”

Now here’s a good question: How did I grow up (an only child) never once meeting another person with my thoroughly odd last name - Loffswold (try spelling that on the telephone)- when my grandpa Lee had 11 other siblings? Well, maybe as a child when my family visited the relatives on their farms in South Dakota. I do remember eating lots of delicious corn and watermelon and thinking those cousins were a lot luckier than I, who lived in the boring old suburbs back east. But did any of them really have my thoroughly weird last name? I mean, it’s not even Norwegian. The ancester from Norway arrived at Ellis Island and was asked his name, “Amund Andersen”, and where he came from, to which he must have given the name of his farm in Gran, Norge which I believe was “Loft vold” or maybe he was just saying “the house on the hill”. And so the immigration guy probably thought he was doing Amund a favor by giving him a really nice American sounding name (and avoiding being yet another of those Andersens), “Edmund Loffswold”. And so began my confusing search for my roots which ended in Norway, when, after 2 years of living there, learning fluent Norwegian, I gave up on trying to be Norwegian with that name, or any other for that matter.

But back to my grandpa Lee. He was the oldest, just like my grandma Selma. Lots of hands needed on that farm. Can you imagine nowadays assembling 12 adult siblings to take a picture like this? And not a one of them cracking up or making peace signs or worse? By the time that picture was taken my grandpa was already sporting a receding hairline. I never knew my Grandpa Lee because he died before I was born, but I think it must have made some kind of impression on both him and Grandma Selma to have been the oldest of large farm families because they had only one child - my father Lester, the boy who you see pictured here. THe feet at the bottom belong to the heads on top. On the original photograph which we have, my father wrote, in red ink, the names of all the siblings, which you see below. I guess he named his only child after his youngest brother. Do you think they didn’t allow people to smile in photographic sittings back then? I guess they were all holding their breath. But smiling on the inside? One can hope.

Art-wise, this was fun. You make some really strong tea and brush it on your paper. THen make a copy of the pictures and transfer them onto clear contact paper. Soak it in water and then rub the paper pulp off. Then dry it and glue it onto your paper. There lots of good collage books on the market now that tell you how to do transfers. Here’s one: Collage Discovery Workshop by Claudine Hellmuth

A Woodland Bower

Susan Cornelis — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:45:21 +0000

Acrylic on paper, 15″ X 11″

That feeling of resting in and becoming a part of nature. I started by sketching a figure that must have been lurking in my imagination for a while, at least since the walk to the waterfalls at Russian Gulch. Then little by little the rest got filled in. It looks like an illustration in a children’s book - a story I haven’t yet written, and probably won’t - so, be my guest. Or just feel that weightless drapy languor. I always get that when sitting by a mountain stream with my feet in the water. My brain slips out into the water and washes away downstream, and I’m operating on the same intelligence as the minnows and the birds.

Bee intoxication

Susan Cornelis — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 03:55:11 +0000

watercolor, pen in Arches Travel Book

they say the bees are disappearing - a grave matter

yet here the lavender hums and sways. . .one lone bumblebee remained last night, too intoxicated to make it home with the others. now i’m drunk too on bee vibrations.

I’ve still got the scent of lavender all over me after clipping and gathering it by the armfuls this evening. I left most of it for the bees until they have abandoned it. They were humming next to me as I painted this, so I got a brain buzz somewhere behind the third eye where the nectar pot tipped, and I lost track a bit. Must have been a fairy in there somewhere with them. When it’s not too hot, like today, the summer garden is a mid-summer night’s dream.

I just finished listening to The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, second time through. An all time favorite of mine. My favorite scene is where Lilly get enveloped by the bees. They are lighting all over her. She goes beyond fear and into a state of serenity and total safety as if the bees are mothering her. Into the maw of nature to discover its benevolence.

My dear friend and fellow Muse, Gayle Swift, has inaugurated her new blog with a thought provoking and uplifting piece on this topic of bees, nature and benevolence. This will be a blog to keep an eye on!

Fairy Princess

Susan Cornelis — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:28:34 +0000

Watercolor ink on paper

When I was a young girl I would have given my entire collection of Nancy Drew mysteries for the costume this youthful model had on in figure group this afternoon. She was sparkles from head to toe. It was a bit disorienting at first. I usually go in the evening when the charcoal/pastel gang show up for short poses. This was the oil painter gang sitting at their easels with their smelly paints, blocking in, and slowly building on one pose for three hours. I got used to the smell and liked having lots of time to work the pose. THis was my second try when I was picking up on the brittleness of the model I think, and made her way too old. Still not getting the fairy thing yet.

Conte crayon on paper

In the last hour I changed positions and sketched on my lap. I added the wand and antennae and would have done the pointy ears of a fairy, but I didn’t want to copy Stanley, who already thought of that. By then I was sitting in the flower bower with this fairy. Her real name is Yerevan - surely a real fairy name as authentic as Tatiana. And I was remembering (this is a bit embarrassing) the fairy friend I had as a girl, who rode around in my pocket and would poke her head out to say hello and then sit on my shoulder and whisper in my ear. . .I wonder what she’s up to these days. . .Now the only thing these drawings need are some glitter. Wouldn’t you agree?

Figurescape

Susan Cornelis — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:53:34 +0000

Acrylic, conte crayon and ink on watercolor paper, 11X15″

Remember the Fantascapes? Well I’ve always loved imagining the body as a landscape. So sometimes I take an abstract landscape-y beginning to figure studio with me and see how a figure can be sketched onto the surface to become a part of it. Then I bring it home and try to finish it. The result is often a romanticising of the figure (alas, but not my intention). This one is from last Thursday’s group, the lovely Jeanette modeling. It is so far from what I had in mind that I hesitated to post the image, but it is definitely part of the process of my “becoming” and for that reason must be shared.

Japantown, San Francisco

Susan Cornelis — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:47:48 +0000

Pen, watercolor, collage in Arches Travel Book

So here’s what I was doing Saturday while Bob was taking pictures on our shared “Artist Date” in the city. This non-Japanese guard was my only stationary target - I could tell he wasn’t going to move for a long time. I mean it was pretty peaceful there and he didn’t look like he was doing this job for exercise. The pigeons on the other hand, were not cooperating, and ended up having to hide behind the origami paper. I think if there had been more of them perhaps. . .I eventually would have figured them out, but having nothing to feed them did not help. I’m thinking of adding birdseed to the small list of necessary items to bring along for travel sketchbooking, along with pen, paint, sketchbook and water. The red and white print on the lower right was cut out from my chopstick wrapper in the restaurant. Does anyone know what it says? I hope it’s not embarrassing.

Back to the figure

Susan Cornelis — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 03:48:03 +0000

conte crayon in 18 X 24″ sketchbook

It’s been weeks since I’ve been to figure group. I arrived after Jeanette had already started her quick poses and took the other half of Tom’s table. He’s a gestural kind of artist who puts so much energy into his marks that you can almost see the sparks fly off his pastels. Quite appropriate because the July 3rd fireworks show was about to commence and the party in the liquor store parking lot across from the art center was in full swing with very LOUD firecrackers. Anyway all that energy translated into a great beginning to the session. It was downhill from there, but fun anyway.

Pat handed me some water soluble crayons or something and I tried them out here. One turned out to be red! not what I expected. This was a 20 minute pose, and in the last 60 seconds of it I noticed the shadow on the wall and drew it in. That’s it! That was what I wanted to be able to do, not the realistic figure sketch I usually end up doing, but something more expressive, like her shadow form (which I also copied realistically I think) So Tom and I had a discussion about how when you’re looking at a beautiful girl, you just can’t bring yourself to distort her form, even if you want to for artistically expressive reasons. So we just churn out the same kind of sketches (it seems to us) week after week. Actually I wouldn’t mind if Tom’s belonged to me, and he said the same about mine. Artistic jealousy is a common disease. Now maybe if some odd looking person would model for us. . .

So today Bob and I went to Japantown in San Francisco, ate lunch there in a teensy tinsty booth next to a couple slurping noodles, and then bought tons of beautiful oriental papers in the stores, one more beautiful than the next. And I got a bamboo pen which has a hidden caligraphy brush on the other end - so cool! And then while I sketched in the square, he pretended to be taking tourist pictures and took lots of pictures of interesting and odd looking people for me to sketch at home. We’ll see.

Bestemor: my Norwegian grandmother

Susan Cornelis — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:32:06 +0000

Acrylic, collage, image transfer, on sketchbook paper

I was playing around with image transfer techniques (contact paper) and pulled out pictures of my father’s side of the family, all Norwegians from North Dakota/Minnesota. It’s always a little spooky to hang out with ancestor pictures for more than a few minutes. You start to get inside them and the memories start seeping out, and pretty soon you get that uncomfortable realization that in spite of all your efforts to be your own self - a totally fresh invention that bears little resemblance to your historical family - you have become in some ways, a recycled, modernized version of the clan. Theoretically speaking.

Selma Buskerud was the oldest of 8 siblings in a farm family on the northern great plains. I remembered her as a tall brittle looking woman who, though very kind to me, was not much fun. As I prepared these image transfers, I stepped into her life. What time would she have had for play, with so many younger siblings to take care of, and then a husband and son? Then I was collaging on some paper I have from an antique travel book, just a small section of print, when my eyes fell on these words (which I circled)

“we could see the outline of her features, and her large mild eyes, full of melancholy brightness looked at us”

Great description of my bestemor (Norwegian for grandmother, of course). She’s in me as the part that accepts what life brings, almost stolidly at times, and has a strong Protestant (Lutheran actually) work ethic, and can’t even fathom why people would want to take vacations where they lie on the beach all day. Her married name was my maiden name, Loffswold, but more on the Loffswold side when I get to my grandfather’s page, and the saga of my two year sojourn in Norway in my 20’s (highly encapsulated!)

We’ll be having some image transfer fun - it’s great to spark the imagining mind - in the Vision Painting Workshop I’m teaching July 26/27. There’s still a couple spaces open if you’re interested in coming!