Painting Intensive – Final Day 5
Category: Classes taught by Leslie Lee or Dennis Meiners, Leslie's Doings, Painting processes
I only had a couple hours the last day due to a planned trip to Seattle to meet up with my daughter for dinner and have a “play day” with Dennis to celebrate his 63rd. We just returned, having soaked ourselves in a 50 year retrospective of Patti Warashina’s work at the BellevueArts Museum (as well as two other really interesting sculpture exhibits).
Patti’s exhibit occupied the entire third floor and at one point I had to go out into the courtyard and close my eyes for a while. My inner dialog went something like this: “Who the hell do I think I am to call myself a professional artist? I haven’t done anything but class work for an entire year. I don’t even carry a sketch book with me. I’m 65 years old and I still don’t have a handle on what I want to do or how I want to do it. Blah blah blah. I will never have a museum retrospective or even show in a major gallery Blah blah……..sigh… but do I really care? Didn’t I decide a long while ago that I didn’t have the stamina to play the Fame Game? That I just wanted to make art and sell it myself and die knowing I enriched some people’s lives with my images…?” and then I got up and went back to see the rest of the exhibit.
On the drive back I dozed in the car and by the time we got home I had made notes for a half dozen conceptual paintings I want to do. Allegory. Metaphor. New fresher painting approach with stronger forms. I can’t wait to finish setting up the studio and start painting again, everyday, like I did this last week.
So here’s the last little (8 x 10) painting of the 5 day intensive to honor the space I was working in when Variation #4 came to be.. It was inspired both by Matisse’s Studio Under the Eaves and a comment made in the crit on Thursday: “Moving out into the sun room was a really good move for you.”
Henri Matisse:
Moving my head out into the sun is also a good move. Wish me luck with that.