Women Looking Off Frame

In process, not sure where it's going. A dervish in me wants to fill the space between them with pink flower wallpaper. Oh, dear. I quite like them inverted. The figure on the left is a life drawing from the T(oronto) S(chool) of A(rt) drop-in painting sessions; the figure on the right from that on-line life drawing site. Don't ask why when I have a 23" iMac, but I draw from my iPhone screen in Chrome where not only the browser bar is visible, but the drawing site doesn't allow a fullscreen photo either (so the figure is really tiny).

Women Looking Off Frame, 2012, Brenda Clews, 18" x 24", 56cm x 40.5cm, charcoal on triple-primed cotton canvas sheet.

Women Looking Off Frame (inverted), 2012, Brenda Clews, 18" x 24", 56cm x 40.5cm, charcoal on triple-primed cotton canvas sheet.

And you may recall that I used the figure on the left, inverted, in a new rendition of this poem painting a few months ago.

When I closed my eyes...

When I closed my eyes and lay back on the small, soft down pillow, I fell though it, and the sheen of white sheets, the mattress, hard foam and wood, plunging into hardwood floor, down into the dank earth, until I was falling in deep space far past the planets or our solar system or even our galaxy.

Sometimes I sleep when I nap; sometimes I don't.

Harmonies that Resist Anxiety

Cherry Blossoms in Storms, 2012, Brenda Clews, 22" x 16", 56cm x 40.5cm, charcoal on triple-primed cotton canvas sheet. Figures from a lifedrawing site, 10 min poses on my iPhone 4, didn't have my proper glasses, but it's ok.

Where I'm at today. Fighting off, well stuff of all sorts - the kind that tries to silence you - doing yoga and meditating.

Originally I called it Harmony in Chaos, but... gladiolus in travail.

Blake Man briefly became The Homeless Man, but now he's PRIMAL MAN

Primal Man, Brenda Clews, 2012, 24" x 18", 60cm x 45cm, charcoal, acrylic ink, oil paint on 90lb archival paper.

Now that I understand how important 'Optimism' is (I listened to a PODCAST), I understand I must shelve this drawing's original meaning...

Bye, bye the desperations in what I originally wrote:

I want it to be quite painful to look at, to get at feeling this... vulnerability, desperation, a hostile world internally and externally, loss ...perhaps a veteran suffering from PTSD, perhaps this is his nightmare. ...And yet. there is blue sky, patches of green grass in the dry yellow. While he seems almost praying or acknowledging the difficulties of the forces about him in a bowed position, and even insurmountably crawling forward, he also connects deeply to the ground on 'all fours.' In my sense of it, he draws energy for existence itself from the earth.

He is homeless; he has nothing, shorn of all trappings; he is still human. He maintains his dignity.

Hello another, more 'positive' meaning. Primal Man, meaning I leave it up to you, the viewer, to figure it out if you are at all so inclined.

I'm not sure about the tree above his head - though I had planned this evergreen tree from the moment I conceived him, and it's exactly as I imagined it would be in paint, a bit crude and child-like, not too neat, a little Emily Carr but not too much, sharing with the colour of the Canadian Mounties, no less.

Okay, never mind what I say. Since when is the artist the best person to talk about a painting?

See yesterday's sketch for an earlier description of what was in my mind with this painting.

Blake Man, in-process

It was a difficult day - but not in any way you would imagine (I mean it, so don't even try to guess). I drew in the midst of it, thinking vulnerable man, but there is a part of me that wants to paint explosions around him, so war man perhaps. Although I was thinking a lot of William Blake's etchings, and of a primal man, Blake's Albion or something, only he is on all fours, crawling. Does that make him a 'sub' to a 'dom,' then? Some kind of bondage image? Or can he be skinless and vulnerable, crawling while bombs explode about him? Greenery, I see that too. Can he just be a poetic image that I have imagined?

Hopefully tomorrow will allow time to paint. The paint will tell the story that is emerging, give it a direction it does not have at present.

Blake Man, Brenda Clews, 2012, 24" x 18", 60cm x 45cm, charcoal on 90lb archival paper.

She Rests on Pillows in the Grass

It's not that I am deliberately moving into 'drip paintings,' no, that's not it. I've always inclined towards a wet-on-wet style, only now the paper or canvas is upright rather than on the floor, and so the paint does not pool in lakes but runs in one direction: down.

This figure is a strange amalgam of women who do not own themselves. Painting it, I thought of a distressed street woman that I see on Bloor St  who is quite anorexic and clearly an addict, and who I sometimes see sitting on the grass in parks in the area with her alcoholic boyfriend, and then, I guess somewhat contrastingly, I thought of the buxom models of artists who sometimes bear the children of the painters (think Picasso and his women, or Klimt, who apparently always had a few naked models lounging around in his studio and apparently fathered a dozen or so children), of the sensuality of a Fragonard and the cutting of razor sharp blue paint as it slides in rivulets down the prepared paper.

She Rests on Pillows in the Grass, 2012, Brenda Clews24" x 18", 60cm x 45cm, oil paint on 90lb archival paper.

Yoga for Your Back

A sore back? This often happens to us. Our spines are very complex structures that have to support us, bend flexibly, and be the pillar for the wrap of capillaries, veins, arteries, nerves that weave to and connect every part of us. A few days ago I carried too much home on my shoulder, and the next day my shoulder blade was very sore (note: remember not to do that again!), and perhaps it spread because now my lower back is sore.

When this happens, out comes the yoga mat. And on goes the calming piano music. And I begin flexing my back, rhythmically, in an orderly fashion if you follow the chakras. I'll be good and do this every morning until my back is fine again. I did this set early every morning for about five years, from 1994-1999, and sporadically since then (though it should be regularly).

Sharing the original post that I put up in 2006. It's one of my most popular posts if I go by Google Stats. This particular set of exercises is very helpful to maintain a healthy and flexible back.


    

Kundalini Yoga: Guidelines for Sadhana (Pomona, California: Kundalini Research Institute, 1974), p.45-6. For another layout of this set, see Basic Spinal Series, and scroll to the end to read a description of Mul Bhand (root lock) and Maha Bhand (great lock).

Note: This set is in an unlisted album at Picasa and only findable with the link.

(think I should always add this when I post yoga sets)