Can You Be Fired or Laid Off Without Notice?

Cling to the thin breast
of stars grazing your hair;
starlight shines vacant 
in your eyes.

On this globe revolving in mad
abundance, careening
off-course

in our dreams

where spiders feed us silk
from their mandibles;
and the strawberries are sour

studded with green eyes
watching from red lanterns.

What light to see by is this?

Scattered unripe fruit, the world
overtaken by insects.

Push the shopping cart through
the storm of shredded light.

Let breaking branches scratch
your face. The wind is your voice.

Night spins hallucinating
a starry nest.

We are broken illuminations
falling.

Dust of starlight.

Caught in a web
spun in silk fire fibres.

Pull your hair
from your dirty face.
Wipe off stardust, like grime.

Magic is a spider eye
in a world of compound debt.

Survival, man, woman,

is the song
to spin singing

on dangling
thread.

Solar Eclipse

Solar Eclipse, 2012, Brenda Clews, 28" x 22", 71cm x 56cm, oil on canvas. 

I just took the photo in bright sun and the upper left corner is too shiny, bright (someday I will get a better camera to take photos of these paintings I promise). Overall, the colours are quite good. If you've been following these posts, you might notice that I've corrected the arm - the model had it over a pillow but I didn't paint it that way so it seemed too large - I've shortened it so that it is now in better proportion and also painted in more indication of the hand. Later on I may add a few more colours to the bottom of her sarong, which seems to enclose her as a fitted cocoon-like sleeping bag somehow, to make it more 'landscape,' or that a nightscape river is flowing through her. 

The whole painting is Surreal, figures in a psychic landscape of the dreaming imagination.

A painting with a textual history, meaning a history of texture. It was another painting before. On my wall for half a year, and I couldn't look at it anymore. (See album of earlier painting here: (https://picasaweb.google.com/103243515693467499824/MidnightSunWindOverGrass?authuser=0&feat=directlink) Deciding not to sand the canvas, or even prime it, I began painting over the original painting on Saturday afternoon. 

At this point, I do like it. So it may be done, not sure. Back up on the wall it goes. The true test is how liveable is it?

Solar Eclipse

Solar Eclipse, 2012, Brenda Clews, 28" x 22", 71cm x 56cm, oil on canvas. 

A painting with a textual history, meaning a history of texture. It was another painting before. On my wall for half a year, and I couldn't look at it anymore. (See album of earlier painting here: (https://picasaweb.google.com/103243515693467499824/MidnightSunWindOverGrass?authuser=0&feat=directlink) Deciding not to sand the canvas, or even prime it, I began painting over the original painting yesterday afternoon. 

At this point, I do like it. So it may be done, not sure. Back up on the wall it goes. The true test is how liveable is it?

Midnight Sun (a new figurative painting)

Midnight Sun, in-process, 2012, Brenda Clews, 28" x 22", 71cm x 56cm, oil on canvas.

A painting with a textual history, meaning a history of texture. It was another painting before. On my wall for half a year, and I couldn't look at it anymore. Deciding not to sand the canvas, or even prime it, I began painting over the original painting this afternoon (see the album of what is underneath here: Midnight Sun). It may be done, not sure. The true test is, how liveable is it?

(The colours are pretty good, but the main figure has pink in her body and that is not appearing.)

Origami and the pets (34sec)

direct link: Kitten Plays with Origami

My niece is always busy with her hands. As she chats, she makes origami birds, and even balls like the one you see here.

Not having any 'real' cat toys, only string and such, I tossed one of Freya's origami balls on the floor and it was an instant hit!

However, the video clip, which I had grabbed my iPhone to record for my niece, was not to be about the origami ball after all.

It reminds me, rather, of days of management - like being a mother of young children again. The kitten is adorable, and fast, I think my older dog (who's mostly deaf) doesn't know what to make of her. Is she a squirrel to chase?

That's sort of what's happening today. But Keesha wouldn't harm her - Songa would be more likely to cause damage with her sharp little claws and the way she can aim a hiss spit right into the eye.

She sleeps on my pillow at night purring and first I thought, I'll give this 2 weeks, then, no, a month, but now I'm thinking give it a year. They might end up the best of friends.

(At the end, you'll see a tiny yellow origami bird lying on the floor, what I originally gave to Songa to play with, which also was made by my niece.)

Video taken with my iPhone 4, and edited in the iMovie app.

A Deer Trapped in a Backyard in the Annex in Toronto

direct link: A Deer Trapped in a Backayrd in the Annex in Toronto

A frightened, lost deer leapt over a fence into a neighbour's back yard around 6am yesterday. A fellow walking his dog saw the deer leap (you can hear his voice in the video, which was taken near sunset).

The deer was there all day, and may be hiding under a bush in the downpour of the evening.

Animal Control said to leave the deer, that it will find its way out the way it came in.

My neighbours are quite alarmed, but waiting to see what happens, and what to do next.

We live in the Annex in Toronto, a downtown neighbourhood.

The deer is scared, as I realized when I was taking this video, and so hid myself from her, but he or she is also simply magical.

A magical visitor.
_____

It poured heavily last night, and I worried about whether the deer had any shelter, how it was doing. In the morning, it appeared to be gone from my neighbour's backyard, though I haven't seen them to ask what happened.

James Kalin on G+ said it was probably a juvenile male with rudimentary horns.

An elegant animal, and an extremely unusual sight in the density of an inner city.

Morning Pages: Starlings

what remains after the starlings have flown?

leaves shaking to stillness
where they held
caucus

____
Every day, with my morning coffee, I shall try to write a few lines in my 'writing' Moleskine. I have not made this task more difficult by insisting on an image as well. :)

After reading the news, and the issues that come up in Toronto City Hall's Council, which we are hearing far more about due to our strange and contrary mayor, and sitting by an open window, I wrote this little poem.

As if Death Were a Passion

As if Death Were a Passion, Brenda Clews, 2012, 12" x 16", graphite and acrylic on triple-primed cotton canvas sheet.

outline the skeleton
in red
make the lines of the bones
red

alizarin crimson, cadmium red
flame red, poppy bright

ok, blood too

the passion of death

as if death
were a passion


_________

It's taken many weeks for me to watch this great little instructional video on how to draw a skeleton. I've never taken anatomy, so I fully appreciate teaching tools like this (thank you Kenny Mencher!). I'll have to get myself a wee skeleton at a Medical Supply store at some point. :)

I meant to take a photo before I started working it. Ah well. It's not perfectly drawn because I don't want that.

The instructional video is here: http://kenney-mencher.blogspot.ca/2011/11/video-drawing-skeleton-front-view.html?m=1 (if, like me, you'll probably watch it later do bookmark it since it's an unlisted video you won't be able to find it on YouTube without the link)

I took the photo with my iPhone 4 using Camera+ and then a Clarity filter - later I'll blog it without the filter. It's just kind of neat with the tones the filter gives it.

Celestial Dancer V put out on the street and taken!

I've been clearing out a lot of stuff the last few weeks, many bags of clothes to the drop-box, lots simply to garbage. This painting was one of the first I did with water-soluble oil paints in 2004. I did it on a canvas board - dumb, the cardboard warps, impossible to frame ever - and I didn't really like it. I drew it from an image of Nijinski in a dark body stocking, so always felt, though I love the richness of black skin, that this painting was a bit misleading even though it was grouped with my Celestial Dancer series and called it Celestial Dancer V.

Last weekend cleaning up my art supplies, I came across it wedged behind my desk, where it's been stored for years. I pulled it out, not sure what to do with it. The thought of standing on it to crack it in half for the garbage was too much at that moment.

On impulse, I took it outside and put it against the fence on the sidewalk. When I looked 5 minutes later, it was gone.

I hope whoever found it either likes it and has hung it on wall that needed 'something,' or has painted over it.

I'm so delighted that I did this that I'm considering what else I can put out! :)



When I looked for a photo of the painting on an external hard drive where the contents of my old computer are stored, I found it, not only easily because labelled, but that I had, as usual, taken images all along the way. And I even found the original image I drew! How wild is that. I have not, as yet, been able to re-locate the Nijinski on-line to see which ballet he was leaping about in a dark body stocking in! He had a slick of glitter on his costume that I did not add to my painting. :) This piece was done in my studio in Vancouver - as you'll see in the final image (they work backwards). I also used a wet-on-wet technique and so lost some of the detail in one of the arms that clearly turned into a lake of paint that dissolved out and in the detail of the hands.

Two Lamps and a Pot of Orchids

This is a sketch to toss. Part of my enterprise this year: to go backward to go forward. To return to before I got sidetracked and see where a more natural route would take me.

Two Lamps and a Pot of Orchids, Brenda Clews, 2012, 13" x 10", acrylic on archival paper.

The charcoal sketch.

Retreat to Beautiful Objects

direct link: Retreat to Beautiful Objects

When I retreated to my world of beautiful objects.

She was a dream, not the mask but how I composed her in Tangled Garden.

A vegetative force, Nature, birth, life, death, decay, mulch, compost. Beautiful and frightening. Strange dreams, the unknowable body itself. Life consuming life to live, plant or animal. Cells fuse to make new life, new connections, new hybrids. Wood/trees; metal/circuitry; bone/grafts; skin/love. Teeming presence.

I come from a jungle, the nature I write of is not pastoral, pretty. A fibrous network of vast connections. Natural processes. We are Nature looking at herself through her own eyes. This slip of consciousness viewing the universe for a knowing moment, soon to be lost. How can we forget the hungry ghosts, the floral opera singing in us?

An ecology of consciousness. An understanding of the parasitical and angelic. Leave the savageries. Our worlds of beautiful objects call us to retreat.

_________________________________________________________




What I wrote at YouTube:

...to celebrate the unexpected popularity of my long videopoem, Tangled Garden, http://youtu.be/OG37qWh4rTM, a slow art film of a triptych of earth poems, Surreal, mythopoetic, a rhizoma of images, metaphors, explorations, philosophies (with English subtitles). I had originally thought to paint a Tangled Garden painting to give away when the video reached 1500 views (my daughter's claimed the painting, so some other celebratory gift), and began making a video of the process of the painting.

There's lots of aspects here - from the drawing and painting itself to photos of the making of the papier-mache mask, to a dance in the woods which inspired the figures in the painting. The fishnet gloves - don't you adore them! - will now be featured in any future art videos. I just love them!

The writing came out of a dream I was having during a nap when I was considering what to say in the video. It's more of a piece about the poetic process in the poems in Tangled Garden, what sort of consciousness is holding sway. I woke up laughing. I felt a bit strange laughing all by myself in a dark room late at night for the recording for sure!

Prefer the video without the subtitles, but they're there for the hearing impaired, those who like to read along, and for YouTube automatic translation into one of 25 languages if the viewer is not fully conversant in English.

Music is Pierre-Marie Cœdès' 'Whirling Thoughts,' from his album, "Insomnia": http://www.jamendo.com/en/list/a94667/insomnia (with his permission). It is a great album, do go and listen.

Torn

Torn, Brenda Clews, 2012, 11" x 15", charcoal and watercolour on archival paper.

Everyday I am going to try to work on a drawing or painting (I've been working long hours on a painting video; other times, I'm reading, or writing).

Today I tested charcoal and then drew a skeleton from which emerged a woman. Since she has a basket of fruit, which are probably apples, she's come in from her tree, whose shadow I almost drew next to her too.

After I made the little drawing I understood that the woman was shredded in some way internally, where you can't see. The paper was torn deliberately along certain pathways to enhance the internal state in the way that you see here. I will glue it leaving those edges detached so that the shadows of the paper itself remain.

A few sketches and a cleaned-up back yard!

A very few pieces this week to share.

A poem should go with this. :) 

In my little charcoal sketch book.

 (Lovely orchids my niece gave me for my birthday nearly 3 months ago drawn in charcoal.)

'Woman at the Window,' 2012, small charcoal and watercolour sketch. Really just a doodle, like the above post.

I have a blister in the middle of my right palm from digging weeds for a couple of hours! I neglected my tiny bit of back yard, and then the heat, and suddenly I want to have it - only the weeds! Eeek. They produce burrs by late summer and I have a doggy whose fur is a favourite of burrs. Mostly they're all dug out now - my son came and raked too, and we filled about 4 garden bags - and a new bag of shady grass seed bought - to be spread just before a rain storm (no water out back). Doodles, heck, yes! Even with blisters in the middle of your palm. :))

So pleased with myself! In 2009 I smartly stapled up two bamboo mats to block the view from the lane way into my little back yard. They began seriously shredding last summer and were fast becoming mulch after this last winter. I mulled a trip to Chinatown for more mats, which, with my wrist, I would need help with carrying back. I checked tarps at the hardware store. The young sales clerk there had the very good idea to weave it into the planks of the fence. The colour though - bright white! Definitely no! Then I found camouflage tarp at the dollar store for considerably less. And I wove and stapled it by myself! Without straining my wrist - getting a very strong right arm! Now my son won't have to help. And I'm sipping a strawberry rhubarb cider on a chaise longue in wonderful privacy!

Tangled Garden painting finished!

Tangled Garden Painting, 18" x 24" compressed charcoal, watercolour pencils, a touch of acrylic but mostly oils on triple-primed 100% cotton canvas sheet.

My Tangled Garden painting is finished. Or is it? I painted without have any pre-conceived notions about how I wanted the final piece to be and so I am having to accept what has transpired under my paint brush. Yet it works in the video of this painting's process that I have been concurrently working on. Can't believe I've been painting this painting for over a week! Usually I'm done in a half a day's hours, with some tinkering later.

Taking you back though memory lane below. :) And I'll subject you to a video of the process of this painting in the next week or few weeks too! Enjoy!

Tangled Garden, close to 900 views since Jan 25th as of this moment (unheard of for a loong videopoem featuring original poems - most videopoems maybe reach 100 views in a year), is a slow art film of a triptych of earth poems, Surreal, mythopoetic, a rhizoma of images, metaphors, explorations, philosophies (with English subtitles). -A Floral Opera (2011) -In the Hands of the Garden Gods (1979) -Slipstream, the Tangled Garden (2006) (with impromptu speaking between the poems, which each end with ~~~ in the subtitles): http://youtu.be/OG37qWh4rTM

Tangled Garden painting continues to in-process

Where it could be if I had the courage to invert all the colours! The other one is closer to the way it is. I just took these in not enough light and there is also too much shine (that's why matte fixative was invented). Tangled Garden, a painting that's not a gift anymore since it's not working the way I had envisaged. Also, I'm not really thinking about painting or anything when I work on it; rather, letting it paint itself. I sort of follow along (though I do take responsibility you understand).

I likely overdo the sharing-of-process, but here's a little clip (45sec!) from this morning (uploaded to another of my YouTube sites).



direct link: http://youtu.be/DkbvmCyWrIU

Tangled Garden painting in-process

Tangled Garden Painting, in-process (7), 18" x 24" compressed charcoal, watercolour pencils, oils, and other stuff (yeah, the catch-all: mixed media) on triple-primed 100% cotton canvas sheet.

I am not happy with how this painting is developing and likely will not offer it as a 'gift' when Tangled Garden reaches 1500 views. I'll think of something else.

Anyhow, the blue sky and green grass are painted in oils, the colour on the mask was drawn on with watercolour pencils and I can mostly rub it off if I like.

The good news is that I am working on a video that I hope will be interesting when it is finished - I bought long "Ladies Sexy Fishnet Mitts" for this and future painting videos (which alone should qualify as 'interesting').

'Tangled Garden' is a slow art film of a triptych of earth poems, Surreal, mythopoetic, a rhizoma of images, metaphors, explorations, philosophies (with English subtitles). -A Floral Opera (2011) -In the Hands of the Garden Gods (1979) -Slipstream, the Tangled Garden (2006) (with impromptu speaking between the poems, which each end with ~~~ in the subtitles): http://youtu.be/OG37qWh4rTM

Gift Tangled Garden painting in-process

Tangled Garden Gift Painting, in-process (2), 18" x 24" compressed charcoal on triple-primed 100% cotton canvas sheet.

Last post, with earlier sketch and video embedded: http://brendaclews.blogspot.ca/2012/05/beginning-painting-as-gift-for-tangled.html

Tangled Garden is a slow art film of a triptych of earth poems, Surreal, mythopoetic, a rhizoma of images, metaphors, explorations, philosophies (with English subtitles). -A Floral Opera (2011) -In the Hands of the Garden Gods (1979) -Slipstream, the Tangled Garden (2006) (with impromptu speaking between the poems, which each end with ~~~ in the subtitles): http://youtu.be/OG37qWh4rTM

Beginning a painting as a gift for 'Tangled Garden' (47sec)

I have been absolutely flabbergasted that 'Tangled Garden' has reached like 800 views already - a 22min art film of 3 long poems, unheard of - and I want to celebrate!!! So I am offering a painting as a gift. I will choose someone by raffle out of the many comments this videopoem has received. If you like the videopoem, do let me know that you've watched it by leaving a comment on Tangled Garden at YouTube:

  direct link: http://youtu.be/OG37qWh4rTM

Leaving a comment here so I can add you to the raffle here is fine... the drawing or painting I'm working on as a gift is 18" x 24" on triple primed canvas sheet that you can pin to the wall or mount on board and then frame - this video is a test run. I am going to try to make a better video of the painting in process! yes! It's quite a bit of work, a painting, and a video - but you, my audience, are more than worth it!!)

Many thanks! xoxoxoxo ♥♥♥

Little 47 second clip I made today to see if making a video of the process of the drawing/painting might be interesting (not sure if it would be of interest to you, the viewer - if there's not much of a response, I won't go to the trouble of hooking up a camera but will just work on the painting).


direct link to this on Facebook

Later: Where it's at past midnight. Cell phone pic. If you don't leave a comment before this painting is gifted, don't worry! I'll offer another at 5000 views. :)