Time Traveler

'Time management specialist' will be added to my resume after 'artist' and 'caregiver.' As a kid, I never kept track of time. I often got 'stuck'. Friends had to break my trance for me to stay current in our fast paced childhood world. I'm paying now for all that random dreaming. Glad to have the extra hour today! Never enough time is turning into a problem.

Wall assemblage tracking time at home  ©robinrkent

Viewing problems as creative challenges can be successful and usually fun. Here's my plan for rolling one solution for time and art together:
I want to create simpler art - whether assemblage sculpture (a la Marisol) or painting (Milton Avery). Being mindful of editing and simplifying might also take less time.    Bingo!

When asked recently 'how long does it take to make my art,' I described how some works can be unruly throughout. Not a linear process; many sideroads to get to the end envisioned. They thought differently recalling how they watched a family friend/artist start a huge painting and finish it the next day. Hmmm. I know artists I admire who can do that also.

I'll give it a try. Nothing to lose but some time.

Favorite Artists, part one

From previous generations or present day colleagues, there are artists that resonate with me. Finally got to a point where I can look at work and know immediately if it's for me or not. As much as I love my category (contemporary folk, outsider, naive or brut art), not all are my cup of tea. But the art I like in whatever category ( abstract, representational; painters, sculptors, assemblage artists, etc.) I love!  I see a common thread. Even if the medium and eras are different.

Milton Avery, 'Conversation'  (courtesy bjws blog)

I wake up daily to my print of 'Conversation' (1956) by Milton Avery. What a great way to greet the day. Never tire of looking at it. I like the simple edited form, large feeling of volume, subtle colorful colors (the color is off on this image).
I feel I can mentally paint along side him when I look at his work. Here's the best site I've found so far on him:

http://bjws.blogspot.com/2011/04/paintings-of-american-milton-avery-1888.html  

I'll add more of my favorites in future posts. Who do you love?

4-Eyes View the World

Vermont Ain't Flat  Acrylic on Masonite

copyright Robin R Kent

I just got new glasses. With all the bells and whistles. These lenses do everything but wash the dishes. First, they are the new and improved prescription which had been longed for for too long. (Newly retired ones were circa 2007.) Have you noticed when you get new glasses, your eyes are not in sync? Gives me a 'fresh eye' when objects look like they're in a 3D movie. Everything slopes downhill. The ground sure ain't flat. They also change color with the sun and the lens line disappears between the distance and reading part.  I'll look like a movie star and a lot younger in these babies. Especially when I take them off to check. Yep, still dewy complexion with no age lines...
But I've always loved my earliest memories of not seeing well. Such sweet fuzzy views of the world. I finally got glasses around the third grade and what I saw wasn't pretty. I was forced to face reality. These were not your rose colored glasses.
Gone were the soft-focused pastel colors of sky and clouds, of tree leaves and grass. For the first time, I saw the grass and all its blades.  I could almost see each santoku edge and imagine my father sharpening them one at a time during Sunday's predinner ritual. All nature had turned against itself - diamond reflections on the water that cut, and again too bright; light and dark colors competing against each other. No more blending into one. Why can't we all get along? It hurt to look.
That experience has made my contemporary painting style what it is. When I'm creating in my contemporary folk art world, the favored element is volume. Guess it has to be when I do sculpture. OK - in painting, I like mass the best. And blending. Milton Avery paints how I choose to see. Big blocks of mass with soft edges. Nothing persnickety. No minutia. Well, can't resist some dots or graphic additions at the end...but I never was an edgy person.