LIFE FORMS: like a bird

In my last post, I detailed the thinking, methods and materials that I used when making the work that comprised my last online exhibition, in spring of 2016, and I mounted one suite of those drawings in that post (last month). Please visit that post to read about that process.

For today, I will just post the six drawings that made up my suite called "like a bird."

As always, if you open the first image, you can click through in a lightbox form that enlarges the images a little, so you can see them better.

©Ravenna Taylor, "like a bird, 01," 2016, graphite, 15 x 11 inches

©Ravenna Taylor, "like a bird, 02," 2016, graphite, 15 x 11 inches

©Ravenna Taylor, "like a bird, 03," 2016, graphite, sumi ink, 15 x 11 inches

©Ravenna Taylor, "like a bird, 04," 2016, graphite, sumi ink, gouache, 15 x 11 inches

©Ravenna Taylor, "like a bird, 05," 2016, graphite, sumi ink, gouache, acrylic paint, fabric collage, 15 x 11 inches

©Ravenna Taylor, "like a bird, 06," 2016, graphite, sumi ink, gouache, acrylic paint, fabric collage, india ink, 15 x 11 inches

More About "LIFE FORMS"

Last year around this time, I decided to approach my work with different tools, objectives, and materials. I wanted to make my project a literal demonstration of my process.

The impetus began with a few pieces from my series (Many Rivers) exhibited online in spring of 2015; this was a group of oil paintings on paper which carried on my concerns with the nature of time, eliding with my fixation on passage, maps, water, and rivers.
Generally, my paintings are made with a technique of layering in varyingly transparent glazes or scumbling, with some drawing in paint. In that process, much time passes, as I often have to let the paint dry, and live with a layer before I am ready to obliterate it. Late in the series, I found myself allowing the images to be more thinly painted, with much less veiling and obscuring. This piece, "Natural History," is an example; the visible white is untouched paper -- Arches Huile, formulated for oil paints without priming.

©Ravenna Taylor, "Natural History," 2015, oil on paper, 30 x 22.5 inches

The following painting, "Ravel," is another which I'd expected to carry much further; but when I came to this image, I didn't want to cover it up, I wanted it to stand as a completed work.

©Ravenna Taylor, "Ravel," 2016, oil on paper, 30 x 22.5 inches

This painting, "Untold," is an example of the more heavily painted process in which I had been engaged; complete paintings existed as layers, and were obliterated, to contribute history to a simple image:

©Ravenna Taylor, "Untold," 2015, oil on paper, 22.5 x 30 inches

For my next online show, in spring of 2016, I conceived a group of works that would allow the layering of my process to be a subject in and of itself. I also chose to eliminate color, to use only white, black, and greys, to challenge myself to find a new point of entry into my images. And I decided to rely on materials I had in my studio; I wanted my approach to the work to have a self-sufficiency about it. I wanted to feel as natural in my activities as the birds that build their nests, as the insects that pollinate, as natural as water pooling and flowing. Hence the show came to be called "Life Forms," and the individual suites of works "like an insect," "like a bird," and "surface tensions." 

My process was this: I selected papers, enough to have 6-8 pieces of identical dimensions for each suite. Then I performed a step that would be an image, but also the first layer of an image, which I repeated on each of the sheets; each of my pages had the same drawing or wash executed on it, at the same time -- but each one was individual, this was not an edition, as in printmaking. (I was surprised, considering my usual avoidance of repeating myself, how much satisfaction this gave me, it was pleasurable.)
Next, I selected one to keep at that stage, and performed a different action on the next 7 sheets. 
And again, I selected one to keep, and performed a new act upon the next 6; and so on, until I had 8 pieces (or at least 6), each one a resolved work unto itself, but with increasing complexity in the suite, through layering one image upon another, always intending that each of the eight could have been a valid stopping point. This made my usual process, which is familiar to me over decades of development, finally visible to my audience.

Here follows the complete suite called "like an insect." The first drawings are very minimal, and although this is not the kind of imagery knowing viewers might associate with me, my work always begins like this, and I'm a little envious that some artists feel this is enough; I always feel I have to go further, and to give more. I end up completely covering the early layers, and they aren't even visible in the last piece. But in each of three suites, the first layer and every following layer, although obscured, is a part of the whole revealed at the end. I see this very much as a way of demonstrating the self-containment of a moment, the passage of time, the flux of seasons, and the forces of nature.

©Ravenna Taylor, "like an insect, 01" 2016, graphite on paper, 15 x 11 inches

©Ravenna Taylor, "like an insect, 02," 2016, graphite, chalk, 15 x 11 inches

©Ravenna Taylor, "like an insect, 03" 2016, graphite, chalk, collage, 15 x 11 inches

©Ravenna Taylor, "like an insect, 04" 2016, graphite, chalk, gouache, 15 x 11 inches

©Ravenna Taylor, "like an insect, 05" 2016, graphite, chalk, gouache, india ink, 15 x 11 inches

©Ravenna Taylor, "like an insect, 06" 2016, graphite, chalk, gouache, india ink, acrylic paint, collage, 15 x 11 inches

Here is a shot taken of my studio wall, with all three suites of this series, Life Forms, together -- top to bottom, "surface tensions," "like an insect," and "like a bird":

©Ravenna Taylor, studio view: the series "Life Forms" 2016

As always, if you have the website open in your browser, a click on one photo opens a "slide show" of all the photos in this post, with a better view.

Round

In the dark times

will there also be singing?

Yes, there will also be singing

about the dark times.

--Bertolt Brecht

 

Source/Notes: Motto to the 'Svendborg Poems' [Motto der 'Svendborger Gedichte'] (1938), trans. John Willett in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 320 - Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

I return today to this project, to this threshold, to this passage, to this vein, to this lagoon,

to begin, again, to offer only this, to end the silence of a year.

R.T.

 

 

Maybe I am Traveling (from The Book of Hours)

 

Maybe I am traveling, like some secret ore,

through the hard veins of a mountain, alone.

and no distance: nothing but a single core

that draws in all things and changes them to stone.

 

I don't have much wisdom about sorrow.

The vast darkness has made me smaller, it's true.

Are you the one solid enough? Come break through,

so that all of your touch might happen to me,

and all of my tears might happen to you.

 

Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Translated from German by Paul Weinfield, © 2014

See more translations from Paul Weinfield at his website, HERE. 

 

 

 

Many Rivers

Just the day before yesterday, I was performing Brahms and Beethoven with Princeton Pro Musica; it was a glorious program on a glorious fall day. Gratification was the word of the hour.

Tonight we'll rehearse and move on from those compositions, alternately legato and percussive, into the precise textures of Bach for our next program.  I'm singing a new part in the Magnificat in the large chorus; and with the Chamber Chorus, also a section of the Christmas Oratorio new to me, all for a December 20 concert. Notwithstanding how much time I will be putting into all that, I think working on Bach's music for the next 7 weeks is going to benefit my work in the studio. I would even say it is the perfect accompaniment to the new direction I started to take this summer. I've enjoyed some new imagery coming out of some new processes and ideas, about which I might elaborate at some point; but not yet.

 

©2014 Ravenna Taylor, "Many Rivers," 2014, oil on paper, 24 x 22-1/2 inches (for JWR)

Once I get my gardens put to bed for the winter, that will be good for the studio work too. Today is a beautiful day and I hope to make good use of it.

I wish for what I always wish: no crisis to interrupt my flow.
It's always something, but I keep hoping for nothing - some things never change.
But when things go badly, change is a certainty to be cherished.

I've said it already: Long live mortality. Without it, would a body heal? Would it need to?
Without mortality, would summer turn to autumn, would trees become orange and translucent yellow? Would a garden ever sleep?

MEASURE

Two points
describe a line.

-- my eye and that red stone --

Between two points
an infinite number
of unseen points
is presumed.

-- my ear and that bird's lilting flight --

Also it's been said
that Nature will not draw
a line that's neither curved nor crooked;
but if the line waves

-- as streams and music meet --

it is a form of locomotion
for sound, or light, or water,
for cold drafts of air,
or the spray of a storm

-- so shifts a wind to change a scent's direction --

Maybe time travels in waves.
Other means of transport
might be, for instance, feet
if you're lucky,

wings, or wheels
or thought.

-- a pencil traced around my foot --

I, for one, can draw a line
but it might not lead to anywhere.

©2014 Ravenna Taylor

Salon: Plot Twist

After my last post here, I became very busy with finishing up new work for my annual online-only exhibition, hosted by Joe Walentini at his Galerie Cerulean. In addition to completing the work I wanted to exhibit, I also learned how to photograph it digitally with a new camera I bought for the purpose, and how to process the images in my computer. It involved a lot of hair-tearing! But I'm happy to have crossed that threshold at last, something I'd meant to take on for the last few years, while I had continued to hire out my photography.

For my project, I prepared eighteen images, although I would only need twelve for the show. So today I am presenting here the six works that I did not select for my online show, titled Plot Twist, which is on view now in the "Archive" section of the gallery; the show ran in the "Main Gallery" through April 13, 2014.

The very small painting below, oil on wood, with an attachment for hanging that was cut from an antique kid glove, is a pared-down image that has fed many of the ideas I have worked with in the last year. The undulating line has two references for me: my love of rivers and streams, and all they represent to me; and the action of sand falling in an hourglass, which is an iconic image I have been preoccupied with for the last five years.

©2013 Ravenna Taylor, "Limbo," oil on wood, (with leather and pins), 7 x 5 inches

This next piece, a watercolor on toned paper, also makes those references, while employing the game-board grid that I have enjoyed for some years; it makes oblique allusions to my preoccupation with time, and the matter of choice vs. chance.

©2013 Ravenna Taylor, "Holding Sway," watercolor, gouache on paper, 19 x 20 inches

The following piece is an oil painting on paper, using the Arches "huile," a new material for me which I have been enjoying very much. This image brings together the game board, the central flow idea, along with my pleasurable preoccupation with road signage, in particular the diamonds that give graphic indications of curves with arrows and side roads breaking off.

©2014 Ravenna Taylor, "Retort," oil on Arches "huile" paper, 22.5 x 26 inches

The next is a small oil painting on linen over wood, and was also derived from road signage.

©2013 Ravenna Taylor, "Either Way," oil on linen on wood, 5 x 7 inches

It has been observed that my new work, especially what I selected for the online exhibition, has become very involved with holding the center, which is a departure from recent years where the eye was being led around the edges. I am even reminded a bit of work I was doing in the 1990s, where my focus was very much on the meetings of edges, and particularly in grids or even one horizontal line in reference to sea and sky. (Please check out work pre-2003 on my website: click HERE.)

In this following image, my sadness after losing many trees in my area to the winds of Hurricane Sandy allowed a gestural line to be the conduit of expression. From this work, other more linear ideas developed, and I think there will be more ways of bringing linearity back into my work in the coming year.

©2013 Ravenna Taylor, "Apostrophe," oil on Arches huile paper, 22.5 x 26.5 inches

Here is the last work I finished before turning to the photography project. This is also oil on paper, and it conflates the gestural work above with the central undulating line I began with in this post. 

©2014 Ravenna Taylor, "Broken Chords," oil on Arches "huile" paper, 22.5 x 27 inches

I pared down my "statement" for the show this year. Over the years, I have grown impatient with artistic statements generally, and I would almost eliminate the whole idea of writing one at all! But to sum up this post, which invites you to visit my exhibition online, I will offer you these 85 words:



In oil paint, watercolor, or collaged torn materials, I compose pictorial abstractions. Colors and geometrical forms are derived from nature, and from my fascination with systems, as can be found in measures, time pieces, gameboards and maps.

I delight in color, harmony, patterns, and ambiguities. In haptic terms, I am more a visual composer than a gestural one, working through layering processes with material and color; but always in the end I mean to reveal the trace of my own hand, a single human existence.
©2014, Ravenna Taylor

October 29, 2013: “Remember friend, as you pass by, as you are now, so once was I....”

This photo, taken a few days ago, shows how much remains of the dirt that lifted with the roots, when Hurricane Sandy hit last year on this date, heaving thousands of mature trees onto the ground, throwing many from their homes, and many others into grief. For me, living in the country, our hardship was limited to a week or so without electricity, during a cold turn of season; but the fallen trees have remained a continual reminder of losses. I was relieved when summer foliage put many of them behind a shroud of green.

Now that they are revealing themselves again, the toppled roots, I am surprised that the seasons that have passed, with freezing and thawing and rain and more rain, have not loosened the soil more.

(You can see many more photos I took immediately after the storm, in blogposts [HERE], and [HERE] is a link to a subsequent post, with more photos, along with some drawings and studies.)

This photo, above, was after the winter, earlier this year. I chose to imagine that the depressions would provide opportunities for amphibians and other creatures depending on vernal pools, and that the dirt would loosen and the roots would be a habitat for birds and snakes and insects, as below --

Below, a painting on paper, completed in my studio only this summer. Nature's workings unfold slowly; so do mine.

My many photos and drawings of the trees' root wads, upturned and exposed, have been a way of channeling the grief and sadness and loss, and have led me slowly to a dormant gesture in my work.

©2013 Ravenna Taylor, (as yet untitled), oil on prepared paper, 22 x 27 inches

In this earlier blogpost, [HERE], I wrote about the unfolding of this imagery in my work, and the friction it suggested, with the more methodical and orderly compositional style I've had over recent years. Maybe the sense of friction ignited the sense of licking flames in this image. I am open to what will happen next in my work; I trust that a sidetrack will lead me to experiences I value.


Remember friend, as you pass by,
as you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so you must be.
Prepare yourself to follow me.
- Gravestone inscription

No Passing Zone

There was a gigantic bullfrog sharing the cold spring pool with me. He looked as massive as my foot, resting in a crouch at the edge, with his legs folded under him. I stood in the water knee deep; the ripples in the pond threw concentric reflections onto the maple tree's trunk, like a thread beaded with upturned crescents, waving down the trunk as though it were swallowing many moons.

I remain preoccupied with the conundrum of time. Now we are upon the last day of July and I'm already nostalgiac for the passing of this summer - I'm seeing the change in the light, and hearing the cicadas in the mornings. My projected "most productive summer since" has had a mind of its own. I have made some new work and have not had to destroy anything yet; I've also done some work on my studio storage. I've worked on my poetry a little (less than I'd meant to), and some music (less than in the performance season). I know that I'm trying to cover too much ground but I also know how lucky I am, to have this particular way of "failing."

Newly organized storage space in my Lambertville, NJ studio

It's something very small, but I knew what I wanted to do to bring this painting to its completion; then when I went to do it, the becoming became something else. A small intervention on what looks like a small painting --  A painting is like a life: sometimes appearing in a form that can take one by surprise. A monumental image can be no larger than a book you can hold in your hand.

I painted today. I continued with a few, I finished a couple, I took photos. I need to be preparing my new surfaces, I need to buy more supplies. I feel driven to be more dense in my productivity; I'm still getting used to having that option again after so long. I think about what must be left undone, in order to do what must be. I consider what to eliminate.

It has been suggested to me that I might decide my life is already going according to my plans.

 ©2013 Ravenna Taylor, "Speaking In Tongues," oil on linen over wood, with fabric, 7 x 6-7/8 inches

 

Crows In The Hayfields, Cicadas In The Trees

These clouds have long fingers

I feel them resting on my shoulders
And the sky is trying

To keep from falling
Depending too much

Upon my spine.

  © 2013 Ravenna Taylor, oil on linen over wood, 9 x 7.50 inches

COMEDY

COMEDY

After the storm last night, the sky

turned to cadmium hues, yellows – really –

it was like peering into the throat

of a honey-colored lily.

We’d never seen anything like that,

summer sky like a glowing firefly

and to the southeast

a rainbow in reply –

We watched King of Comedy after that;

it made me squirmy, embarrassed.

I wondered about other artist friends –

might they have felt it – that Rupert was like us,

believing in what we make

while the world taps finger to temple

thinks us a touch out of our minds –

insufficiently observant

of social cues and rules, we are

– loving everybody and everything

a little too much.

I wanted to crawl back to my cave, to tell the truth.

I would never kidnap a star

and go to jail, to get the world

to notice me and what I do.

Maybe I need to be crazier.