old friends

The past six months have been a time of travel (Spain, Bluff, Arizona), gardening, meditation, Buddhist study, and cello.  It has not been a time of painting, though I have not particularly avoided the studio.  Rather, other things have come first, and it has felt fine.

But a four-day workshop in oil and cold wax with Rebecca Crowell here in Telluride, CO, has brought me back to active painting and to this blog. These have been full days, immersed in the painting process and soaking up the companionship of fellow artists. It is a workshop similar to that which I attended last year in Wisconsin (see posts from August 2011), with much the same objective content, but with the different dynamics of a different group of participants, and a different impact on me because I am in a different place. As the workshop winds down, I want to summarize a few of the thoughts it has brought to mind, if for no other reason than to reinforce and clarify them for use as I return home.

I have pages of notes that I can already see fall into roughly three categories: lists of supplies, websites, and other resources; techniques of paint application and removal; and conceptual/theoretical concerns.  Put more succinctly: materials, methods, and meaning.

Materials and methods were very valuable to learn about or review during the workshop, but I come away from the week with a pretty clear conclusion that it is the third category that is my current challenge.  I know in general what meaning I want my work to contain: My muse is always the Colorado Plateau. This has been clear since I began painting, and I had a breakthrough moment in Wisconsin last summer when I could finally articulate it and its relationship to abstraction and cold wax.  But I need to go further; I need to parse out from that broad concept the details to put into my work.  Talking with Rebecca and with my friend Phyllis, who also came to the workshop, I think I see a way to approach this task. As the weeks and months ahead unfold, I will use this space to record the adventure.