The Muse Doesn't Care About Money At All

My muse, oh, Muse! For about a month, when I think of painting, it is always life-sized figures on a large canvas sheet. 'But, Muse, I can't afford that, and have nowhere to staple such canvas, no walls free at all!' Does The Muse care? Not a whit. Never does. Then this and that happened, and today I bought some double-primed canvas, 60" wide and 2 yards long, or 6'. I carried it home in a roll the actor who works part-time at the art store kindly insisted on rolling it in for me ('primed canvas is fragile, it remembers crinkles,' he said). Where I will hang it while the muse has her way with painting, I don't know. I suppose call the lumber yard tomorrow and see how much 5' x 6' thin plywood boards are, and if affordable, see if the truck might happen to be in my area and can drop it off.

I would have bought more - 12' long, enough for two paintings - but had to discipline my muse. 'Enough! I need to eat, too.' And placate. 'We'll get more canvas if this one works out, ok?'

The last thing I need is more canvas piling up in the bottom of the closet. Last year I actually sewed all the strips of unprimed canvas I had lying around and made what is essentially a stage set with it (as you can see in the image I posted).

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Hey, I'm Ariadne's Thread!

clew 1  (kl) n. 1. A ball of yarn or thread. 2. Greek Mythology The ball of thread used by Theseus to find his way out of the labyrinth. 3. clews The cords by which a hammock is suspended. 4. also clue Nautical a. One of the two lower corners of a square sail. b. The lower aft corner of a fore-and-aft sail. c. A metal loop attached to the lower corner of a sail. tr.v. clewed, clew·ing, clews 1. To roll or coil into a ball. 2. also clue Nautical To raise the lower corners of (a square sail) by means of clew lines. Used withup. [Middle English clewe, from Old English cliwen.]

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clew 2  (kl) n. & v. Chiefly British Variant ofclue1.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Definition found at The Free Dictionary.
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My last three paintings

My latest paintings. Mandate: sit, paint. Without preconception, or any idea of what I will paint. It has to be fast, because that is how these paintings are. Not overworked, this so very important. Fresh, the brush of inspiration.

"Untitled", 2012, Brenda Clews, 18" x 24", oils, India and acrylic inks on triple-primed cotton canvas sheet.

"A Palmistry, a Psalm", 2012, Brenda Clews, 18" x 24", charcoal, oils, oil pastels, oil sticks on triple-primed cotton canvas sheet. I am working on a videopoem of this poem and painting.

She Rests on Pillows in the Grass, 2012, Brenda Clews, 24" x 18", 60cm x 45cm, oil paint on 90lb archival paper.

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An untitled painting of a man

Untitled, as of yet. I just painted this. An iPhone photo taken with a daylight bulb. 18" x 24", oil on canvas sheet.

I have been deeply troubled, as ever, by Syria, the refugee camps, the deaths, the conflagrations. And the miners in South Africa, their horrendous treatment, not just the shooting deaths, but the survivors being charged with murder (withdrawn as of today, but it influences). This is a -just-sit-down-and-paint-woman-whatever-fucking-emerges-let-it-be- painting. From the inner self, where the cauldron burns.

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Test clip for 'Palmistry, a Psalm'- an underlayer

direct link: Test clip for 'Palmistry, a Psalm'- an underlayer (another unlisted videopoem of 46sec)

This is a 46 second snippet of 5 minute clip of the writing of the whole prose/poem on parchment paper to see if it would fit on the final painting, and I think I will make the clip the underlayer of the video, what is returned to again and again as an underlying metaphor amidst many more layers, a greater visual complexity. My intention is to include images of the hand: an x-ray, a painted hand, a real hand, a hand wrapped in a black brace. And the painting in its stages and the final with the writing. Also, some other public domain footage. The final 'video painting poem' could take a few months to finish.

Here's a blog post with the prose/poem, a recording, and images.

The sounds of the pen? Moi. The beautiful bird song, however, is from Alban Lepsy's album, Relaxation Nature vol.1.

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The Airport Lounge

             

My friend, Stephen, had a short stopover in Toronto yesterday, and I met him at the airport. He had two small bottles of wine from the flight, so we drank those at Starbucks. He showed me many quite incredible photos of his trip to Spain, abstract images, the kind an artist takes. He's currently working with glass, and was looking forward to turning his kiln on when he returned home and putting some glass in to make magic overnight (he's preparing for a group show in September). I returned the Picasso catalogue (we had seen the show at AGO together on the stopover on his way to Europe earlier in August), which, alas, I did not get to in the last few weeks to write about, and the Surrealist one, which he texted me from the Departure Lounge about - apparently that was a gift for me, ah, well, at least I went through it over a few enjoyable hours. We last saw each other 7 years ago. Who knows when next. It's a lovely friendship of mutual admiration of each other's art.

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A small sketch of my mother

Today she was restful. Probably 2" x 3" in a little old Moleskine I keep in my purse. I've been afraid to sketch my mother, who had a stroke last March. She's very thin, about 70lbs, and so I'm not sure how much my sketch resembles her. It perhaps has the quality of this difficult time, for her, for us, though.

Certainly emotionally difficult to draw, and yet, as frail as she is, there is a beauty, her skin so thin it is waxen, translucent, the capillaries, the bones evident, an inner light emanating.

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