The 1/2 point

I love paint!

Looking over the last 50 days is interesting. I am getting bored with "paper, scissors, glue." but have no other ideas. Perhaps I am in a 7th inning slump.
I have worked in the studio as well and that is more interesting.

The house is filling up with 100 day project work and we have gained one new member and lost a few along the way. Here is J Renee's project.
jrbenda

Inspiration

I was recently sent this quote from an artist friend. It fits well with the theme of habit and "stick-to-it-ness".
"Inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time". Brenda Ueland

The sounds of silence

"It is a time of tons of verbiage, activity and consumption. Which condition is better for the world at large I will not venture to discuss. But I do know that many who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where they can root and grow. We must hope they find them." Mark Rothko

Discipline and Habit

Is there a difference between discipline and habit? I usually think of discipline as something I have to do, that I consciously decide to do but that that I resist. And habit as something I do without much thought, like a bad habit. Good habits may start out as disciplines and morph into habits; some good disciplines never make it to good habits and are still struggles.


Over time, as the daily routines become second nature, discipline morphs into habit. (Twyla Tharp)

Old habits die hard. (proverb)

Discipline in art is a fundamental struggle to understand oneself, as much as to understand what one is drawing. (Henry Moore)




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Meaning

Philip Guston
I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.
Philip Guston

The circles are everywhere. They are hanging here and there. They are on the floor, spilled over with the scraps of my 100 day project. They are in my paintings. I think they are about unity and possibly and more importantly about self.
But, when I read the above quote by Philip Gunston, I think more and more that they are about painting.
Homeward bound-cbenda

New work

This is part of an artist's 100 day project. Every day she makes a wooden sculpture from scraps of wood, twigs and sticks.

Getting there

In the book the Journals of Grace Hartigan 1951-1955
she writes
Paraphrasing Henry James. "The highest creative act is to go into the studio."

She then writes. "It seems like I must first complete chaos on a canvas before I can find any order."