Illustration-land

 

 

Little Gurus by Olaf Hajek

This beautiful book (thank you, Sibylle and Timo!) is a feast for the eyes and a treat for lovers of yoga and art. I love the exuberance in Olaf Hajek's work. And to me these images are not only life-affirming, but also affirmation of the joy that creating such work must bring. I had been feeling a bit overwhelmed and stressed about various projects and commissions, but looking at these illustrations (as well as other artists' work, new discoveries and old favourites) has made me re-focus on the pleasure that is art-making.

After a week of knitting, reading, walking in the winter wonderland that appeared just after Christmas and letting ideas develop (or rather, resting enough for my brain to be able to come up with new ideas), I searched my mom's house for acrylic paints and spent this morning painting:

 Detail, work-in-progress

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Speaking of illustrations, the second Jumbo book is out now (more information on my website. Blog post to follow!)

Making - eat, bathe, wear

 

|  Eat: Christmas cookies, as per German tradition: very rustic-looking Elisenlebkuchen (my sister's are perfectly round and smooth) and Engelsaugen (angel eyes), and with the leftover egg whites I made coconut macaroons (not pictured).  The Lebkuchen have all the Christmas flavours - ground cloves, cinnamon, mixed peel and rum. I also made several loaves of hazelnut-studded Apfelbrot (recipes for that and the Lebkuchen to follow in time for next year's seasonal baking - I have been meaning to add a page with recipes here, for archiving purposes - the internet is chock-a-block with food blogs, so I'm sure the world isn't waiting anxiously for my contribution, but it will be nice to collect some here, as a back-up to my notebooks and folders).

|  Bathe: These bath truffles were easy and fun to make. I used six drops each of geranium and lavender essential oils and both rose and calendula petals. Due to the coconut oil, they create quite an oily bath, which some people don't like, but it means no need for moisturising. They were sitting on the kitchen counter, which confused visitors to my house, as they look edible (white chocolate and rose truffles sounds good). I love having baths with Epsom salts - they are a good way to absorb magnesium via the skin and have numerous healing properties.

|  Wear: I knitted this simple scarf for John a while back; unlike many other projects (where did this year go??) I managed to finish it in time for the colder weather. He knew exactly what he wanted; he picked the colour and requested the white strip. Sometimes I like being given instructions.

Making things has been an antidote to the stress of the last few weeks. Using my hands is so therapeutic, a way to get out of my head - the thoughts it stimulates are of a less frantic kind. I have prescribed myself daily doses of knitting for the holidays.

Goldfinch

I am finally reading The Goldfinch, which is serving as a reminder to always have an absorbing novel on the go, especially in periods of high anxiety, and reassurance that it is ok to take your time with projects (Tartt famously spent about a decade on each of her novels, though I would never compare the pitiful fruits of my labour with her output). It had been on my to-read list for a while, but the physical copy of the book came into my life as part of a chain of goldfinch-related occurrences that I would like to believe are more than mere coincidence.

The goldfinch - Fabritius's - has been a steady companion to my home life for years, gracing my pinboard ever since the day a friend gave me this exhibition brochure (other items on the board come and go, but the goldfinch is a constant, along with sketches and notes by my mom and sisters). I missed the exhibition and have never seen the painting in real life, but it is one of my favourite works of art. Always in my field of vision when I am working on the easel, the outline of the goldfinch inspired a painting of my own.

A few weeks ago, I was at my desk in my studio/office room when a goldfinch hit the window (I have ornaments hanging in the window, but unfortunately they weren't enough to deter birds). I ran outside, and it was on the ground, still breathing. I brought it indoors, hoping it would recover, but the poor thing died in my hands, which was very upsetting. I kept it in my house for another day or so and took photos to maybe paint it later, wanting to preserve its beauty somehow (I briefly considered taxidermy, but though I admire it from afar, I doubt I will ever attempt it), before we buried it in a compostable coffin, along with yellow flowers. [This window death was also the fate of a finch at a local artist's apartment a couple of years ago, and it was the trigger for an entire hauntingly beautiful exhibition.]

And then yesterday in class one of my students brought in a set of photos from a bird calendar, and of course there was a goldfinch among them (I realise that in itself is not extraordinary, it being a bird calendar. But the timing of the bird pictures appearing seems to be yet another "sign"), now repurposed as a bookmark.

Maybe none of this means anything, but it is in my nature to look out for patterns and repetition. I cannot even say what that elusive meaning might be. All I know is that I am very fond of this little bird that keeps appearing everywhere. And I don't want the book to end.

From the West of Ireland to Wertheim

Work-in-progress in this case meant sitting-on-the-easel-untouched-for-months, a silent reproach every time I entered my studio/spare room, a reminder that I was most definitely not "getting my stuff done"(I just watched this again... my life in a nutshell). But now it is finished, I think. And it made me nostalgic for my hometown, especially when I put the lights into the windows of the houses.

This painting is for my older sister and my brother-in-law, and a recent development means that I may unwittingly have painted the new home of my younger sister and her husband. Not the castle... somewhere beside the church. Or maybe it is just beyond the frame; I haven't asked her yet (Sibylle?). But in any case, this is soon to be their neighbourhood. So this painting is linking the three sisters in an unexpected way.

As much as I love working on the illustration projects that are more active works-in-progress, I need to make space for my own personal art-making. The last two Sundays enabled me to do that, and it's the best start to my week. The Daily Drawings shall return (my discipline for turning up here has been woefully inadequate, but there is a lot of behind-the-scenes housekeeping going on).

November can be desperately bleak, but so far it has been kind, with blue-sky mornings when I walk down to work from the Park-and-Ride and pink clouds above my house. I have finally got into the mood of the season - until last week I was still in May in my head.

Last night I resisted the urge to go to bed early - my default in the colder months - and watched a Spanish movie (another neglected thing on my list: keeping my Spanish alive) while knitting a scarf. This made me nostalgic for Spain, where I lived in 2004-05 (where did those ten years go?). So all in all it has been a week of sentimental thoughts and the resolve to be better at keeping in touch with loved ones.

Colour and emotions

When teaching drawing and painting I am generally quite articulate (or so I hope): I am confident when I explain different  exercises or talk about elements of the painting/drawing process such as mark-making or perceiving with the right side of the brain. It can be more tricky to find adequate verbal descriptions for the non-verbal language that is artmaking, though there exists vocabulary that comes very close, and language stretches and can be wonderfully accommodating. I love reading books on art and the aha moments when a writer manages to convey in words what a certain arrangements of brushstokes or a line evokes.

There naturally has to be a limit to what can be said; visual art speaks for itself, and no amount of verbal description can conjure up what presents itself in lines, shapes, colour and composition.

I encounter that boundary regularly when it comes to colour combinations. This is when words fail me in class - a few weeks ago one of my students had chosen a palette that worked beautifully and that I had a strong emotional response to, but I couldn't say what that elusive quality was.

Of course there are the easier combinations such as 'autumn colours', 'candy colours', 'fresh/springlike', 'berry colours', 'retro', etc. that are familiar and that we immediately recognise. But others, when for example the perfect dusty blue is juxtaposed with a muted pale pink and naples yellow, and the atmosphere this combination creates is sublime, leave me wringing my brain for a verbal match that will do it justice. Colour is endlessly fascinating to me, and even though an intellectual understanding or analysis may well take away from the magic, I want to be able to talk about the ways colours relate to each other and learn more. Our emotional response hinges on our individual make-up, our history and preferences, but we share our humanity, so how we perceive colour is also universal.

Colour combinations are everywhere: In fashion, design, the natural world, the way someone has placed a few books together on a shelf. Created deliberately, intuitively and by accident, unintentionally, just by how and where things are in the world. I tear out corners of magazine pages in which the colours speak to me for whatever reason. While there are certain individual colours I always gravitate towards and I have my favourites (plural; I could not just pick one), the way these work with others and the endless number of combinations possible between all the colours that exist make this an area of interest that will never cease to fascinate, that will never be exhausted.

I read this piece by Andrew Marr on the artist Howard Hodgkin recently (the day after marvelling at my student's colour composition), and it was extremely rewarding, as he talks about the effect colour combinations have on the viewer:

"Layering a vivid orange across an arsenic green, crouched under a line of cobalt, sends messages to the brain; and those messages can be communicated, however inadequately, in language.
[...]
...dark greens, particularly dappled with apple greens, and strong verticals may produce a feeling of security in a hominid species that emerged relatively recently from the protection of forests."

He warns against using these ideas as a "handy visual grammar", but says there must be some truth in these colour-coded evolutionary messages. "Hodgkin uses colour in ways that may be at times highly personal and autobiographical but are more often in a long tradition, fully alive today."

Marr's article also captures something of the essence of Hodgkin's art. The first painting of his I saw (only in reproduction, but still powerful) was of a crowded hall (the audience at a concert or in the theatre - I can't find it online). It was almost abstract, but you could make out heads and the venue and how the figures filled the space, and you felt you were there with them. With just a few brushstrokes he had made the atmosphere of a crowded space palpable.

P.S.: The Howard Hodgkin page on Artsy.net is a brilliant resource.

Scenttrack

Even though I am very much a visual person and have a good memory for faces, colours and scenes - I can recall a huge amount of detail from a room I have only been in for two minutes, though I admit it can be quite selective - scent seems to have a more visceral and immediate attachment to memories, a bit like music. A particular holiday when I was fifteen smells of the probably rather sickly kiwi fruit deodorant I was using then. On a recent road trip I ate a cookie from a petrol station, and the bakewell-like alchemy of the sugar and butter in it transported me to my late grandmother's biscuit tin and afternoon teas in her apartment.

There are scents I use so much they are a constant backdrop and therefore rarely connect to specific events in my mind; they are comforting in their familiarity - geranium, rose, jasmine, chamomile essential oils. And then of course I go through phases with particular teas and cosmetics, because I also like change and variety. Sometimes it follows the seasons, albeit not always consciously - I don't give up my spring and summer scent once autumn arrives; it's not suddenly all pumpkin spiced latte in my world, although I do like to mark the change of seasons in a lot of different ways. I just love when it's time for a new soap or when I pick up a tea I haven't had before or try a new recipe; it helps with getting out of a rut in other areas of my life. It's like that new-stationery feeling at the beginning of the academic year, a new start. And later those scents will be a big part of remembering certain occasions and events or simply that phase of my life.

The scenttrack of summer and late summer was made up of gifts mostly: the Cloon Keen Atelier lindenblossom handwash and hand lotion (and there is still enough left to last through the next six months. Also their Spiced Bark scented candle), the lime oolong tea from Le Palais des Thés and a tea tree and lemon soap from the Burren Perfumery (not pictured in the photo of the stack of soaps my sister had got). The illustrations I am working on are steeped and infused (metaphorically, though it's bound to happen that one day I will spill tea on my work) with those smells; I will remember drinking a lot of kuckicha tea in one of the driest Septembers on record, lying in the garden in my bikini (and just yesterday I had an impromptu picnic outside my house with a friend and her toddler); and of course I will remember all the time spent with the person behind some of these gifts, who has been drinking late-night cups of oolong with me and who is teaching me Irish by writing a new phrase on the blackboard in the kitchen every day (see second photo).

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Interior

Ever since I painted the above for our arts festival poster and programme in February, I have been meaning to paint more interiors. And, completely unrelated, botanical illustrations. After years and years where nine out of ten of my paintings would feature a face or a figure, human or feline (the tenth would most likely be a seascape), I find myself drawn to other subject matter - though I doubt the figures will disappear.

hazy light in my kitchen

I love Hammershoi's muted, restrained interiors (and of course the enigmatic people who inhabit or pass through many of them), but my own style is much looser. This reflects real life: I like the calm a minimalist aesthetic brings, but my house is more homey than bare; I am surrounded by things, though I do my best not to accumulate stuff. Of course it does not have to be a contradiction to like both. When it comes to art I happen to also adore representations of interiors bursting with life, colour and exuberance. Like Hammershoi's paintings, they too provoke a visceral reaction (often the sense of how ephemeral everything is - not as depressing an observation as it sounds -, followed by joy, or vice versa).

So many of the objects around me carry meaning beyond their form, and I like looking at the things that fill my house and enjoy the colour and cosiness of it all and want to paint it. I will always be a bit of a clean freak and would think that living on my own for the last six years surely must have made me more set in my ways. But I find myself getting more relaxed about the level of tidiness - I no longer believe I won't be able to sleep if I leave my notebook open on the kitchen table before going to bed. I can only credit mellowing with age for this change. My hope is that this will enable me to work within a so far elusive creative chaos; my need to have everything odered and tidy before starting work must have cost me months of productivity.