Windows

I pulled out all my dry media materials last week for Muse Group; pencils of all sorts, pastels, crayons, charcoal. Lots of those things which I normally stay away from so my pieces don’t get all smudgey when I put them in the loose leaf books.

But there’s something so satisfying about delineating with texturey marks or coloring in, not to mention, smudging on purpose. I pulled out a piece I’d begun weeks ago, and then played around on it with a charcoal pencil.

acrylic, photo transfer by Bob Cornelis, collage, charcoal pencil on w/c paper

Windows have eyes on the world

Everywhere. Stand still and gaze out. Or

Stand outside. Pick a window that has movement beyond it. Now

You’re a peeping Tom, a busybody. So

Be discreet and tell yourself you’re just an artist, a storyteller,

A poet, a blogger looking for “material”.

Privacy no longer exists.

Perhaps it never did

For the artist.

Ah! such a one am I. Not a snoop by nature. But there’s something about looking closely at things, people, landscapes, animals – looking at the details – which leads to a growing fascination and a curiosity. And that leads to words and paragraphs.

Oh dear please. I am not a busybody, am I?

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Dry Over Wet

charcoal and pastel over monoprint, 10 X 11″

It’s a carnival, all set up for the onslaught of summer, the tipping of the year as the sun itself seems to stop and turn.  We don swimsuits, sunscreen, eat juicy plums and carry our ice tea out into a world bent on staging vacation. The strenuous pursuit of leisure.

This started out as a wildly colorful monoprint which I pulled off the shelf to demonstrate something which I rarely do: finish with lots of dry media. Mainly I don’t usually use the dry media because I put these smaller “Muse” pieces in loose leaf books and the charcoal and such gets smudgy unless you put lots of fixative on it. But. . .I had so much fun with this and wondered why I don’t do it more often!