"Staying Engaged Outside the Studio"

Since January, I began doodling and sketching at nite instead of keeping up with my journal writing.  This cold winter in my Los Angeles loft cut my studio time short and a new strategy developed.  The anxiety of shortened studio days of working on paintings led me to a funny idea of my "I can't sleep pages" as well as a "One Sketch A Day" process and discipline.  


Staying engaged with art is extremely important as I have experienced many cycles of stopping and starting.  The personal life challenges and big transitions continue to push-- keeping me digging deeper and learning faster and faster.  


As artists, we can become limited by our inner and outter life disturbances.  I've discussed this in other posts -- these changes whether positive or seemingly negative have an impact.  The limitations when these unexpected periods occur, create feelings of failure and sometimes a loss of purpose for our intended dreams of wanting to follow the work with discipline, honesty and enthusiasm.


The longer I stay distanced from working, the more energy it takes for me to return.  My return is about the regularity, discipline and engagement.  Working within my sketchbooks has become an enjoyable and different kind of engagement.  There is no pressure, no feeling of failure and a new format to explore.  


Staying engaged with these art journals is cultivating patience and motivating a flow of discipline during a workflow adjustment.  A type of waiting without feeling idle.  As we know, waiting is a big part of the art game -- responses from the world frequently takes a very long time....if and when it comes.  Making art requires waiting and very often while you're waiting, staying engaged is everything.  


It would be nice to know what will happen with our work and our life, but we can't know.  I find staying close to your work, whatever it is that works for you, facilitates maintaining one's mental health!  Who hasn't experienced mood swings -- ups and downs... The shifts in our circumstances and mistakes in decisions and executions --not to mention lots of rejection and experiences of feeling dismissed. 


 Always a constant updating of your plan, especially now with the intensity of the internet and social networking media.  Adjusting to our day to day life is more constant than we realize.   The cold navigating comes when we are forced to be tougher with ourselves and forced to personally establish stronger boundaries to survive.  More energy is demanded when adding in the factor of detaching from the work that is out of our reach, and making that shift to committing to new work that wants to come.  Or, coming to terms with the reality that we can't make that shift or take that risk right now.  It's never easy but showing up is still the ultimate bottom line.  


Here are some of the images from my pages that I feel most connected to right now.  This one was my first entry.    

I keep showing up because it's much harder to stay dis-engaged.


The next post will be about the "mini-processes" going on with this personal dialogue, and my experiential feedback from the composite of drawings and sketches.  There's an active element and observation seeking to unfold.  


  "All space is space in which to create -- go directly to work!" 
                                _Eric Maisel, author "Fearless Creating" 

"R&F Encaustic 101 Workshop & Open Studio" - San Rafael, CA

RileyStreet Art Store

1138 4th Street

San Rafael, CA

415 457 2787

"Encaustic 101 and Open Studio"
Instructor: Cyndy Goldman
3 Fridays: March 11, 18,  25
1:00 - 3:30pm
$90 per session
(please bring 6 encausticbord panels - maximum size 8x8)
All paints and tools included. 

Mini Encaustic Workshops are designed as a hands-on introduction to painting in this medium.  You do not need prior experience in this medium.  

30 minute demo and safety followed by open and assisted studio session for painting and working with tools. Mini Workshops are not comprehensive. This is for the artist who is curious about encaustic painting, has worked with hot wax, wants to experiment further, or artists looking for a refresher.

Full payment is required to register for this Mini Workshop/Open Studio. Workshop size is limited to 8.

Recent paintings on the new

Encaustibords.

Graphite, Wax & Thread

12"x12"x2"

Cyndy Goldman of R&F is a mixed media abstract painter. She has taught Encaustic Painting Workshops since 2006 and has comprehensive training at R&F Paints in Kingston, NY. Cyndy has been painting with encasutic paints since 2003. She is in the October 2010 issue of Art Works Magazine. Featured is her "Border Line" painting.

Graphite, Acrylic, Oil & Wax

36"x36"x2" on panel

Visit her website at html://www.cyndygoldmanstudio.com
Please contact Cyndy with questions or to register: (415) 806 5103 or sassypainter@yahoo.com

Encaustic Workshop-Sold Out Tomorrow! March in San Rafael, CA

Encaustic Techniques Workshop 

SOLD OUT

Saturday February 26th 1:00PM to 3:00PM

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 Cyndy Goldman of R&F Paints will be discussing the history of encaustic hot wax painting and the contemporary resurgence of encaustic. Cyndy will cover equipment, tools, supports, grounds, surface effects, layering and fusing methods. This demonstration will allow you to experience encaustic paint firsthand. Attendees will be provided with an Encausticbord and encaustic paint to experiment with.
Each attendee will receive a coupon for $10 off of a $50 purchase of R&F Encaustics from Art Supply Warehouse.
Registration is $10 per person.
Space is limited, so sign up today!

Cyndy Goldman is a Geometric Abstract Painter living and working in Los Angeles. You can see more of Cyndy's work and read her blog at http://cyndygoldmanstudio.com/

Art Supply Warehouse - Westminister, CA
http://www.artsupplywarehouse.com/catalyst.php

i

Intro to Encaustic Mini Workshops

Rileystreet Art - San Rafael, CA

Ongoing Fridays - 1pm - 3:30pm

March 11, 18, 25 & April 1st

contact Cyndy at sassypainter@yahoo.com

The" Groove" & Painting

"Root"
20"x 20"
Acrylic & Oil
Canvas on Panel

"Modal Change"
24" x 48"
Acrylic & Oil
Canvas on Panel

The "groove" is a key component in my painting process.   

Wikipedia: 

Groove is the sense of propulsive rhythmic "feel" or sense of "swing" created by the interaction of the music played by a band's rhythm section(drums, electric bass or double bass, guitar, and keyboards). Groove is a consideration in genres such as salsa, funk, rock music, fusion, and soul. The word is often used to describe the aspect of certain music that makes one want to move, dance, or 'groove'.

Groove #1: "bass drum on beats 1 and 3 and snare drum on beats 2 and 4 of the measure...add eighth notes on the hi-hat".^[1]

Musicologists and other scholars began to analyze the concept of "groove" in the 1990s. They have argued that a "groove" is an "understanding of rhythmic patterning" or "feel" and "an intuitive sense" of "a cycle in motion" that emerges from "carefully aligned concurrent rhythmic patterns".

I have a passion for the groove!   Jazz/fusion of various genres (particularly piano).   Listening to musicians grooving with their intuitive sense of " aligned rhythmic patterns" affects and energizes my inner and outter response in the studio.  Showing up, preparing, concentrating,  a painting begins-- laying down a line, a form, a color, a surface. 

The groove of recurring pulses, structure in the pulses, repeat rhythm patterns, and the repeat of this "groove" beat transports me to a special zone.  Musicians call it "the groove", atheletes and artists sometimes relate this same feeling as being "in the zone".  Whether in the 'zone' or in the 'groove', an artist finds the hours passing quietly-- in painting, writing, performing or practicing their art form.  

 This new series  "Groove" reveals a different type of pattern and complexity. The comp and layers are appearing rhythmically repetitive and riff-like.  Some recent feedback on the work has been referenced to music.  It is satisfying to hear this response to the work. 

I use whatever paints I have and mix my own colors.  The form-color-harmony works itself out.  A lot of the time, I paint myself into a corner not knowing what's going to happen.  I have practiced not abandoning or prematurely destroying what isn't working.  I step away, let the painting breathe and return later or work on another piece.   These paintings are satisfyingly challenging as I push and pull the work to a new edge.  My work concerns making serial paintings with complex comps, surfaces and color relationships leading to a moving rhythmic field.

Here is a look at the working out of a painting.
(Below are a few evolving shots of "Compression 2").


 Process shot of a point when abandon & destroy arises.

The next session of painting my way out.

The form's influence on colors...  and, color's influence on forms....

The particular "groove" inspiring these paintings come from a long history of listening and spending time at the piano figuring out the complex compositions  of  "Joe Sample" -- an American pianist, keyboard player and composer (  one of the founding members of the Jazz Crusaders).

I am having fun with this new shift in the work & facinated with exploring more on music, color, form and painting.  

The Imperfect Art: Reflections on Jazz and Modern Culture”

Author & Musician Ted Gioia has this to say:

Errors will creep in, not only in form but also in execution; the improviser, if he sincerely attempts to be creative, will push himself into areas of expression which his techniques may be unable to handle. Too often the finished product will show moments of rare beauty intermixed with technical mistakes and aimless passages.

(Ted Gioia is one of the outstanding music historians in America & his most recent book is 

"The Birth (and the Death) of Cool").

Kandinsky's  "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" exerpt:
"Any realization of the inner working of colour and form is so far unconscious.  The subjection of composition to some geometrical form is no new idea.  Construction on a purely abstract basis is a slow business, and at first seemlingly blind and aimless.  The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that he can test colours for themselves and not only by external expressions."

"I like painting -- it's like jazz -- it goes where it takes you"

                                     -Brian Eno 

(English musician, composer, record producer, music therorist, singer and visual artist)

 "The way we respond to color is similar to the way we respond to music: words fail us"

                                                                     - Robert Swain - American Painter

"Working Progress"

How do you get the momentum of work flow going in your studio?  What warms up the creeping coldness that you sometimes naturally encounter? As artists we can't help but experience feeling hot and cold.  Whatever your cirumstances, life brings lots of distractions, sometimes stress, tension, pressures and anxiety. 


In the past few months I've relocated to a new city.  I have traveled between my  live/work loft space in Los Angeles to San Francisco for work/  family time.  It has been a smooth transition outwardly with everything falling into place easily, but the internal adjustment has interferred with working steadily in the studio.  


It's natural  for conflict to set in  between life and art when major transitions happen.  In reflecting on my process lately, I realize  a strong need for longer periods of solitude in order to settle in.  The environmental adjustment and transition carries weight, but I have been persistent  in pushing through by showing up in the studio.


There have been incremental productive sessions but mostly  chaos, studio messes, many mistakes, ruined materials, starts and stops, and frustration.  I realized several days ago that you must embrace the visceral sense that you can't skip the parts of the process!  When it doesn't work out, you can't be attached.  This attachment and disappointment brings on the coldness.  Persistence and patience can feel unbearable at times especially when you know the work is wanting to move somewhere else.  


If you have a ritual that helps you get back to picking up the  thread, or to the place that helps you enter the zone of working, then do it.  I have my ritual and it's simple.  "Circles".  That's it.  When I'm stuck, I make circles with whatever is near -- pens, pencils, paints, crayons.   It symbolized the circular flow of life.  I do it for hours, days, weeks -- until I don't want to do circles anymore.   And then, I shift.  It's a form of warming up when nothing is calling me yet.  I call my freeze an  'alienation from self'.  This  temporary disconnect that happens can disengage one from the artmaking process.  


Here are some progress shots of working -- keeping the tension outside the studio and turning my full attention to engage with the work.  

  

This is the first post from my new place at the SFAC - Santa Fe Artist Colony!  I will  be getting back to this blog regularly and hope you'll stay tuned!  




Author, Joan Didion’s “Slouching Toward Bethlehem,” --  excerpt from her "Self Respect" essay. 

It is the phenomenon sometimes called “alienation from self.” In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves – there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.