Surface Tension (detail), ©2011 Deidre Adams

New Year’s Day is my favorite day of the year. Starting with the prior November, the craziness of the holidays takes hold and makes me feel anxious, and I kind of just hold my breath until it’s all over. Normally, I don’t watch a lot of TV except for Stewart & Colbert on Hulu and movies on Netflix, but in the past couple of months, I saw a lot more than usual, and the holiday commercials were just surreal. Somehow, our priorities got very out of whack, and everything feels forced and fake. The bulk of what I saw seemed to be about enhancing one’s experience of having one’s eyes glued firmly to little screens at all times, enjoying who knows what inanity and making no attempt to connect with live humans in one’s vicinity. Or if not that, how to make your woman feel special, because hey, we all know that every kiss begins with Kay®. The defining moment of our sad slide came last night, when we briefly turned on network TV to find a countdown to midnight, and there was Toby Keith singing an ode to a Red Solo Cup, while mindless plastic-faced automatons in the audience waved their red cups in unison.

Now, finally, we have a new year and a chance to refresh, renew, or just plain restart.

I’m really glad 2011 is over. It was a good year for me personally, but for my country, it was unbelievably terrible. I hope that in 2012 we can find a way to come together and start caring about one another and about our planet before it’s too late. I don’t really know where I’m going with this train of thought, but I’ve been feeling guilty lately about enjoying making my art in my own happy little world while so much is going so wrong. Making art can be a very selfish endeavor, as I do it for myself alone, and I don’t attempt to use it for any greater good. I want to change that in 2012, but I don’t know how. Any ideas?

We all have different definitions of success and happiness, but whatever yours may be, may you experience them in the coming year.

After finishing the Anythink commission, which had occupied the better part of my time for about three months, I felt a little rootless. I tried working on another textile piece, but it just didn’t want to cooperate. So I brought out all of the paintings that I had started but not finished in the preceding months. During the contemplation of them, a couple in particular were calling to me more emphatically than the others.

Not unsurprisingly, when winter in Colorado sets in for the long haul, my mood turns away from color and yearns for something subtle. I love winter and snow; I love to go for a walk in snow, when everything is covered in uniform whiteness. And I’ve long been drawn to create what I think of as “white” work. Even though there are many colors in the work, on first look they read as “white.” Last winter, I started a couple of white paintings, but set them aside as other things became more pressing.

According to color expert Kate Smith, white aids mental clarity, encourages us to clear clutter or obstacles, evokes purification of thoughts or actions, and enables new beginnings.* White has connotations of purity and cleanliness, which could be a source of ironic comment in context of my own immediate surroundings, but putting that aside, what I enjoy most about working with white is how interesting and challenging it can be to work with subtlety.

 Sublimation, detail, ©2011 Deidre Adams

I’m exploring effects of depth by varying the transparencies of the whites and by adding layers of mediums and glazes in between. I’m also using small amounts of interference colors. They don’t show up in the photo very well, but when viewed in person, they create an interesting reflectance effect that varies depending on your point of view.

My fascination with whites goes back several years. My first “white” piece was Shades of White, done in 2006. I was thinking about the appearance of old walls that have been painted over with white in an attempt to obliterate something, but despite someone’s valiant effort, what lies beneath is often still visible like a kind of determined ghost.

Shades of White, 48 x 48 inches, mixed media textile, ©2006 Deidre Adams 

This one also has a landscape feel, so it’s ambiguous. It could just as well have been a Horizons piece, but that was secondary to the white idea.

Shades of White, detail, ©2006 Deidre Adams

Here’s another one, not technically a “white” work because of the strong dark circles and a bit more color, but never miss an opportunity to show some older work, I always say. This is the first of what later became my Façade series, based on walls.

Façade I, 38 x 62 inches, mixed media textile, ©2006 Deidre Adams

We’ve had what seems like a lot of snow so far this winter, but since it’s been in the high 50s for the last couple of days, it’s melting fast. That’s the great thing about winter in Colorado.
 

*All About the Color White by Kate Smith

Before I say anything else, in case people don’t care to read all the way through this, I would just like to point out that I’ve added a lot of new work to my website. Please take a look and let me know what you think. Now, on to the story.

While working on a 12×12 series (see here and here), I got the idea that it would be fun to work even smaller, so I bought a dozen 8×8 panels. So far, this hasn’t turned out as expected; it’s been a struggle trying to get these tiny paintings to a satisfying state. I don’t know why this is, but it’s the same with textile works. (At least a painting on a wood panel doesn’t have the placemat problem.) But I can’t force it, and so those have been placed aside for the moment.

So when small doesn’t work, what’s the answer? Go big, of course!

Now, I must work within certain limitations, the most obvious of which is that since my studio is a room in my house, working large is a challenge. The largest possible painting I can do is 48 inches (the width of my work table). Since it was the dead of winter and we were having a series of frigid days at 10° F and below, that was the determining factor.

I had 3 panels made at this size – the most I could afford at the time. And since my studio room isn’t big enough to accommodate working on these flat all at once, the obvious solution is to take over the entire house. My mostly unused living room became the site of panel prep. Here’s the first stage, after a complete dust removal with a vacuum cleaner and a damp rag, a filling of teeny-tiny nail holes, and two coats of Golden GAC100. Right now it looks so beautiful, I would almost rather make a nice table out of it than use it to paint on.

I’ve found a great local source of panels: Space Gallery in Denver. These are beautifully made, furniture quality. Much better than anything I could do myself, and reasonably priced. They also seem to have a source for the raw materials that’s far superior to what I was able to get from Home Depot. So, if it’s within the budget, why not pay for a professional-quality product and use the time and energy saved for what you really want to do, which is make art? And yes, if I never have to see that scary table saw in action again, it won’t bother me too much.

Bonus: I get a chance to check out the latest show at Space Gallery, one of my favorites, and experience the unexpectedly wry humor of the director, artist Michael Burnett. Michael also gave me a great tip the last time I was there, which is to give the back of your panels a coating of your prep medium. This helps to equalize the stress between front and back and hopefully eliminate the chance of warping.

Well, since I needed painting substrates more urgently than I needed furniture, I eventually went on to the next phase of prep, gesso.

I like to put it on in thin coats with a roller, and I do three coats, letting each dry completely before going on to the next. This gives me a very nice even surface. I’m not completely sure why that’s important, since I will henceforth do a lot of things that will make it very UNeven, but that is now my ritual, for what it’s worth. To do three at a time, I also need to use the front entryway.

Now that warmer weather is on the way, I’m excited at the prospect of being able to work outside. I have a fantastic deck on the back of my house, and I just need to get set up out there. I plan to do some larger works out there when I figure out all the logistics.

Cerescape No. 4, 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas, ©2011 Deidre Adams

Cerescape No. 5, 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas, ©2011 Deidre Adams

Cerescape No. 6, 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas, ©2011 Deidre Adams

Cerescape No. 1, 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas, ©2011 Deidre Adams

Here are a couple of my latest 12×12 paintings. I’ve decided to call them “Cerescapes.” Because it’s exhausting to keep coming up with new names, I like to give the smaller ones the same name with a series number. My last series of small paintings was called “Fragments.” I’d originally meant for them to be modular, to work together when placed side by side, so that each would be a fragment of a larger whole. It didn’t work out that way, as each takes on a life of its own during the painting process. But I kept the name because I didn’t have time or energy to come up with something new before they were to be shown (last May).

Fast forward to now. I started putting new Fragment numbers on the latest paintings, when it dawned on me that the name wasn’t so appropriate for reasons described above. After the usual amount of mental anguish, I settled on Cerescape because each of these works is the product of my own mind and its machinations, or a landscape of the cerebrum, so to speak. I also discovered, during my searching, that Ceres was the ancient Roman goddess of grain, fertility, and motherly relationships, and that’s where the word “cereal” comes from. I’m sure that’s relevant to my own work in some way.

Cerescape No. 2, 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas, ©2011 Deidre Adams

Cerescape No. 1, 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas, ©2011 Deidre Adams

A few days ago while perusing the shelves at my local library, my eye was caught by a small book called Art and Soul by Thomas McConeghey. I was immediately hooked by the first paragraph of the Foreword, written by Thomas Moore:

“We have not yet rediscovered the place of art in human life. We still marginalize artists, treat works of art as financial commodities and objects of moral scrutiny, and fail to support art in our schools. I say rediscover because once, before our infatuation with technology and science, we understood the role of art in religion, public life, and individual psychology. We knew that compared to endless studies and research programs, art was a more precise and effective way of conjuring the mysteries that define our lives. But in a relatively short time, we have been seduced away from art by the cool devotees of the machine, and this neglect of art not insignificantly has gone on hand in hand with a cultural loss of soul.”

There is much that can be said about the many ideas in this single rich paragraph, but one thing that really struck me was his expression of something I see as an ongoing problem in our society. No matter what else happens or how many times it’s pointed out, there always seems to be an ever-increasing emphasis on acquisition and consumption, to the detriment of our planet. I’m no less susceptible than anyone else. I got a new smartphone last December and am still completely enthralled with the thing. Has it made my life better? Doubtful. Although I don’t get lost going to a new place or forget things on my calendar like I used to, I’m pretty sure that having the ability to constantly check my email while away from home is a net loss for my cognitive facilities.

Art, on the other hand, is a calming influence. Any amount of time, great or small, spent painting or stitching or just organizing things in my studio, is my therapy and lets me recover my balance. I’m grateful to have this in my life.

One of the dilemmas faced by artists is the multitude of available ways in which we might wish to express ourselves. Am I a fiber/textile artist? Am I a painter? Photographer? Printmaker? It’s so vexing to have to choose. But it’s so wonderful to have choices. Right now I have three textile pieces pinned up on my wall that I’ve been working on in rotation for many months. One of them is a very large piece that I entered into Quilt National. I was, frankly, relieved when it wasn’t selected for the show, because I have had that experience – enter multiple pieces, and the jurors will pass over your fabulous masterpiece and select the one you thought was the weakest and just included so you could have a body of work to submit. Since the work in question was rejected, I’ve changed it substantially several times. But it’s just not working for me, and I haven’t figured out what to do yet.

So in the meantime, I’m having a blast just painting. There is a lot of new work to show, and I’ll be posting new paintings on a regular basis for a while. Does this mean I’m not going to do textiles any more? In the short term, quite possibly. But since I seem to crave variety, I’m sure I’ll go back to it when my current love affair for squishy, swirly, drippy paint on a smooth, resistant surface subsides.

So-Called Vital Activity, detail

A note about the name: I read a lot, whether it’s news/political, topics of various interest, or science-y research for my work. I love words, especially when I encounter them in combinations that might seem quirky when taken out of context. I’ve kept a running collection of these phrases for years, saving them to use as titles when the need arises. I wish I had kept track of where “so-called vital activity” came from, but perhaps not knowing is also part of its charm for me. It just seemed appropriate for the visual aesthetic of this particular painting. So there you have it.

Organic Compound, 24 x 24 inches, acrylic on panel, ©2010 Deidre Adams

I’m finally calling this painting done. Not that I haven’t already done that – twice – but I kept thinking it needed something more. I went to a meeting of artist friends on Friday night, and the next day, while thinking about a conversation we had with the hostess while considering a painting in her studio, I was inspired to attack my own painting one more time.

My friend had made her painting over the course of a 15-week class in which the students worked on the same painting in each session of the class. I had seen my friend’s painting once before in a much earlier stage, and I was really surprised at how much it had changed by the end – I wouldn’t even have recognized it as the same painting. The final painting was fantastic, but I’d also thought the same thing about the earlier version. I asked her if it had been difficult to paint over parts of the painting that were really working. She talked about how it was part of the process to let go of attachments and learn to forge ahead without fear.

Organic Compound, detail

The notion of attachment really resonated with me, as I do have a tendency to fall in love with certain passages in a painting, and then the fear of messing with those keeps me from giving the painting what it needs. The image below shows the last documented state of Organic Compound before the above. I was really happy with the colors and textures, but the composition was just a little too “overall” for me and I felt it needed some punch. So my solution yesterday was to add the darker blue values in the upper right corner, plus the very detailed turquoise markings. In the process, I lost some really nice color and detail in that upper right area, but in my opinion the resulting composition is a lot stronger now.

Organic Compound in progress II

Prior to that, the painting had a very different look. Below you will see how it looked for several months. I was really indecisive about where to go with it, so I just decided to make a drastic change and see where that would lead. I flooded the whole thing with warm reds and oranges, which settled very nicely into the texture and made a more cohesive result. It also changed the balance, so I rotated it one turn. (Topic for future discussion: Those who say you must be decisive in choosing the orientation vs. those who say it’s subject to change.)

Some of you may not agree that what I did was an improvement. Of course it’s my work so I have final say, but I am curious to know what you think.

Organic Compound in progress I

Orthographic Rule, 24 x 36 inches, acrylic on canvas, ©2010 Deidre Adams

While considering the comments regarding my last post on the topic of meaning, it dawned on me that I never did post my final thesis statement written for my BFA exhibition, although I did go on about it at length. While my focus has become somewhat more broad in the latest work, much of what I said is still applicable, so it’s a good follow-up to my last post.

Deidre Adams

Plane of Persistence

BFA Thesis Statement

Minutes, days, months, years — the perpetual cycle of time and the seasons both creates and destroys; it both hides and reveals. As man seeks to build, nature seeks to reclaim. Plane of Persistence captures the essence of the seductive surfaces created by this unpredictable, uncontrollable process. Abstract in form, each of my paintings is a personal meditation using the formal elements of visual language, specifically line, shape, color, scale, and balance. Texture is a primary focus, and I add marks and washes of color in layers, building a literal record of all the stages in the process. Language is evident but reduced to its essence, communicating only the need for obsessive mark-making. The visual nature of the work, displaying aesthetics of decay and decomposition, is my intuitive response to a society becoming ever more preoccupied with the manufactured and the mass-produced, the over-loaded and over-consumed.

Plane of Persistence makes reference to time and transformation, specifically to the ways in which surfaces are altered by external forces. Oxidation, cracks, watermarks, scratches and scrawls made by the human hand — these are the vestiges of change that inspire my process. My method of layering and my system of mark-making emulate the process of natural transformation. Organic in personality, my vocabulary of marks consists of dots, dashes, lines, or circles, or may sometimes appear to be a secret language that’s familiar, yet remains unintelligible. I work in an intuitive process of personal discovery, first placing objects and shapes on the surface, then using these as a catalyst for response. Elements are added in layers as I continuously adjust the composition to balance harmony and chaos. Mindful of the picture plane, I work to maintain tension between flatness and depth. Textural elements added to the surface intensify this spatial ambiguity while serving as focal points within the composition.

I find inspiration in Eastern philosophy and the accompanying approaches to art-making, specifically Zen ideas of the “empty” or “open” mind, of mindful awareness, which emphasize trusting in the process while leaving one open to new creative possibilities. Also important is the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which stresses the value of finding beauty in the imperfect and the impermanent, while accepting the natural cycle of life, decay, and death.

Plane of Persistence pays homage to forces greater than myself, while the working process allows me to find a quiet place within. Even as the decisions I make while painting are an attempt to control the result, there is still an element of chance that makes the outcome unpredictable, much like life itself. Despite all our efforts to conquer nature and the elements, we are still subject to forces we cannot control.

Disclaimer: While this was written for an academic situation and I would never write anything this long and formal for any situation I can envision now, I have to admit I was pretty proud of myself when I got it done.

Orthographic Rule (detail), ©2010 Deidre Adams

Sidewalk (Homage to Diebenkorn), 38 x 38 inches, acrylic on canvas, ©2009 Deidre Adams

This painting recently came back home to me from a temporary exhibition at the Colorado State Capitol, in the office of the Colorado State Speaker of the House, Terrance Carroll. Along with the work of other Metro art students, Sidewalk was one of two of mine chosen by the Speaker for display at the Capitol. Back in April, I posted a photo of the other one here. Sidewalk was done for an assignment in my Painting IV class. We were supposed to do a painting in the style of one of our favorite artists, but make it our own. I chose Richard Diebenkorn. There are many reasons I’m drawn to his work, but perhaps one of the strongest is an affinity I feel for the work he did while he was in Albuquerque, my home town. The colors and shapes speak to me of something I can’t name, but having lived there for the first 21 years of my life, is a part of me as surely as my own skin.

Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled (Albuquerque), 55 x 35 inches, 1951.

Richard Diebenkorn, Albuquerque, 38 x 56 inches, 1951.

The divisions of the space remind me of my beloved walls, and the colors of this second painting must surely be inspired by adobe, ubiquitous in New Mexico. I love the use of line with the bold, flat areas of color. While Diebenkorn is better known for his later work, especially the Ocean Park series, I find his earlier work more interesting. It has a freedom and movement not seen in his work of the 60s and 70s.

Richard Diebenkorn, Sausalito, 1949.

More of his New Mexico works can be seen here, and in the book, Richard Diebenkorn in New Mexico.

With Sidewalk, I wanted to try bringing some texture into the work. I was experimenting with adding joint compound and texture gels to the paint.

Sidewalk (Homage to Diebenkorn), detail, ©2009 Deidre Adams

I was working from a photo I had taken earlier, not specifically for the purpose of turning it into a painting, but I just liked it.

Bicycle Rack, ©2008 Deidre Adams

At the MCA Denver, the upper section of the building juts out from the lower section. The surface of the overhang is a reflective metal in which you can see reflected a bicycle rack on the sidewalk outside. I’ve always loved this image for its strange combination of familiarity and ambiguity.