Sidelined

The Flu sidelined me last week. It was like getting hit hard and being out of it, and sleeping through it. Kind of like the physical equivalent to a creative dry spell.  I intended to post everyday in March something amount woman artists. I will get back to it and make up for lost time. But for now the topic is: The dreaded Creative Dry Spell and recovering from it.

There is no use trying,” said Alice. “One can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” — Lewis Carroll



The key question isn’t “What fosters creativity?” But it is why in God’s name isn’t everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why do people create? But why do people not create or innovate? We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything.” — Abraham Maslow

Joan Mitchell

Joan Mitchell was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1925 and died in a Paris suburb in 1992. Her expatriate years began in the late 1950s and continued uninterrupted until her passing in Vetheuil, France. She occupied a celebrated stature in the generation that succeeded Pollock and Rothko. She declined the theoreticism of her European counterparts, and remained throughout her career the empirical American, personally accountable for her memories and emotions. Her work is characterized in many developments from the 1950s to the early 90s shortly prior to her passing. She usually worked on multiple panels or large scale canvases - striving to attract a natural rather than constructed rhythm from the composition, a rhythm emanating from the expansiveness of the gesture or from the unrestrained use of color and the pervasive luminosity. The titles of her last paintings suggest the abstract valleys and empirical fields of her beloved French countryside.



(taken from the Joan Mitchell Foundation website)

Joan Mitchell

Grace Hartigan

Grace Hartigan gained her reputation as part of the New York School of artists and painters that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and '50s. She was a lively participant in the vibrant artistic and literary milieu of the times, and her friends included Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Frank O'Hara, Knox Martin, and many other painters, artists, poets, and writers.[2] She was the only woman artist in the Museum of Modern Art's legendary The New American Painting exhibition which toured Europe in the late 1950s.[3](wikipedia)

In Honor of Women's History Month

This month I would like to focus on Women Artists. This is a group that has been overshadowed for way too long.



Suzanne Valadon (23 September 1865 – 7 April 1938) Modeled for Renior and Lautrec. She was a skilful artist and mother to Maurice Utrillo (painter). Valadon painted still life, portraits, floral art, and landscapes that are noted for their strong composition and vibrant colors. She was, however, best known for her candid female nudes. A perfectionist, she worked on some of her oil paintings for up to 13 years before showing them. She also worked in pastel. Her first exhibitions, held in the early 1890s, consisted mostly of portraits.

(Wikipedia)

Rejection

How you react to rejection is important. It is not the rejection of others that truly affects us, the problem occurs when... that rejection by others causes us to "reject" ourselves. (Chris Tyrell)

If I need someone else to validate me that I am not committed enough to who I am.

inspiration

do less with more

There are a few schools of thought out there. The predominant one is: "Do more with less". The problem with this is that we are always seeking for more and we a steeped in a scarcity mentality. Why is more better!
There is another idea that surfaces every once in a while. "Less is more".
And I would like to purpose a third thought process, "Do less with more".
Here is how that works.
Do less thinking and more creating.
Do less whining with more smiling.
Do less, consume less, with more satisfaction.
Do less judging more complimenting
Do less, breathe more.
Do less, need less and be more happy.


We pile on our self a more, more, more notion of success.
Where does that get us? Cluttered and encumbered.
In art the minimalist embraced the notion of less--and it proved to be a great statement.

And the famous designer Coco Chanel said it best:
"Before you leave the house look in the mirror and take one thing off."