Collateral Damage

Collateral Damage water media 9x12"

The Gulf oil disaster needs no explanation. Recently I read the delicate plovers are migrating back right into the mess which prompted me to paint this piece. I have only seen photographs of pelicans dripping in oil and I don't know how much oil the plovers will get on them since they are shore /wading birds. So this is done purely from my imagination. As an artist how much license should I take ? Does it take away from the message if I decide to be faithful to the spirit of the idea, to the emotional content and go with my imagination? Recently there was a story on NPR about Michelangelo drawing a brain in God's neck in the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the discussion centered upon why there and what did he want to convey? Artists have always wanted to make philosophical and political statements. My hope is that, the messages doesn't get swept away in the debate about realistic depiction.

Ignorance

Ignorance mixed media 12x15"

The explosion of violence, hate and extremism around the world is very very scary. This piece in a way painted itself. Its beginnings were innocent enough but before long as I was listening to radio news of bombings, terrorist plots and raging wars, I found myself painting dark figures, smoke and a war zone of a city. Apathy is as dangerous as hate. How do we give non-violence a chance? Will we all ever learn to live and let live?

Dragonfly Delights

Dragonfly Delights digital photography

This morning I spent my time stalking the dragonflies with a camera. I was clipping the dried flowers off the rose bush when the shimmering wings completely distracted me from the chore at hand. In no time at all, I abandoned trimming the bushes but was back in the yard with my camera trying to capture the ever active dragonflies as they danced from flower to leaf to flower. I marveled how elegantly and effortlessly they were flying and landing and taking off again and again -even though that made it hard for me to focus and shoot. I admired their exquisite form and the beauty of the shiny delicate wings. I couldn't help but wonder : how do they fly with those gauzy transparent wings? And I was especially happy that all those dragonflies means we won't be swatting at pesky mosquitos when we are outdoors this summer:)

Imaginative Reality

Rose Pencil 9x12"

Yesterday as I was working on the Rose, I heard a discussion on NPR about "Scientists Pinpoint Monet's London Balcony." According to the reporter, artist 'Claude Monet spent the winters of 1899, 1900 and 1901 freezing on the balcony of London's Savoy Hotel, painting a famous series of images of Waterloo Bridge and Charing Cross Bridge. Now, the scientists at Birmingham University have used solar geometry and historical weather data to figure out exactly which balcony Monet was standing on and what time of the day he was likely working.' I chuckled to myself as I followed the conclusions. I am sure if anyone tries to figure things out from my art work they would be in for a surprise because I do take a lot 'artistic license' when I sketch, draw and paint. I change or eliminate things often to match my technical abilities(or rather lack of) and to change the composition to suit my taste. And I started wondering how many artists really faithfully follow the original subject (other than for illustration purposes) and how many viewers think an artist is true to the subject's every detail :contour, shadow, value, color etc. ? Should we come to major conclusions about historical facts from an artist's creation or are these just fun exercises - not major theses. Along the same lines, earlier there was this piece on "High Art: Were Boticelli's Venus and Mars Stoned? " The object of discussion here was the identity and effects of a fruit that was in the hand of one of the little satyr in the painting. Click on the highlighted words in the blog and you can hear/read the scoop.

Rose is done using 2, 4 and 6B pencils and some Prismacolor cool greys here and there in the background leaves. It was an exercise in values I came up with. I had taken color digital picture of the rose from our garden. Then using the photo-software changed the color to black & white and played with the settings for light and shadows. I then printed it out for sketching using grids. The final piece is an composite of all that and my imagination as I simplified the background.

The Art of Choosing

Sky is the Limit digital photography

I go through my collection of photographs and ideas compulsively many times before I decide on my next painting subject or what to post on my blog. Of course, every now and then I do know what, which, and how almost instinctively. I am also acutely aware that when I am drawing and painting, the ability to choose well -- the right stroke of the pencil or the brush, the correct value and color, and when to say enough is critical. Sometimes the desire to choose well is so strong that it interferes with the act of creating even as I keep telling myself its only paper and paint! This past week while at the library picking up "The Art of Choosing" by Sheena Iyengar was an easy decision to make. I am hoping by the time I finish reading it I will have insights into becoming a better and disciplined 'chooser' in both mundane and momentous tasks - and not just in my art :)

Brain and Art

Planting Paddy watercolor 6"x8"

I am experimenting with painting fast and loose as well as challenging myself not to fill my painting with pattern and color, leaving some white of the paper untouched. Earlier I had painted the same scene from rural India in Another Season. Here, I further simplified it. I don't know if I like one better than the other.

What makes us like one painting better than another? And what happens in the brain when we see a painting that we really like? NYU's Neural Science and English Department's Dr. Edward Vessel, Nava Rubin and G Gabrielle Starr's poster presentation This is your Brain on Art shows which parts of the brain light up when there is an aesthetic response (strong liking) vs a simple preference to a painting and to what extent is an aesthetic reaction mediated by specific emotional response. Dr. Vessel found there was strong response in multiple areas of the brain when subjects saw a painting they really liked. The responses were triggered in left medial prefrontal cortex, left substantia nigra and left hippocampus. Even as the subjects picked different paintings as their most liked painting, the same set of areas in the brain responded to their varied selections. 'Beauty' in art seems to engage cognitive, memory and emotional circuits in the brain. Check here if you like an easy to understand explanation of the poster.

Spring Smiles with Flowers

Bouquet With Iris watercolor 13x9

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers -- Claude Monet

Creativity Quotient

Bouquet with Daffodils watercolor 13x9"

Can what goes on inside a person's brain while he or she engages in a creative task be measured in a laboratory? An article in New York Times 'Charting Creativity- Signposts of a Hazy Territory ' outlines recent research in the field: " Creativity is kind of like pornography-you know it when you see it." said Rex Jung, a research scientist at the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque. Dr. Jung, an assistant research professor in the department of neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico, said his team was doing first systemic research on the neurology of the creative process, including its relationship to personality and intelligence."

So, what makes one creative? Is it aptitude? divergent thinking? A quirky sense of humor? Risk taking? "The brain appears to be an efficient superhighway that gets you from point A to B when it comes to intelligence, Dr. Jung explained. "But in regions of the brain related to creativity, there appears to be lots of little side roads with interesting detours, and meandering little byways." Further into the article I found this gem: According to Kenneth Heilman, a neurologist at the University of Florida and the author of "Creativity and the Brain (2005), creativity not only involves coming up with something new, but also shutting down the brain's habitual response, or letting go of conventional solutions. Interestingly, Dr Kounios defines creativity as the ability to restrucutre one's understanding of a situation in a non-obvious way. I look forward to more research that will help me capture/liberate and maximize that elusive creative spirit and apply it to whatever I do :)

Bouquet with Daffodils in watercolor was my attempt to show the burst of colors that spring brings.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!

Digital photography

Weed or Wildflower?

Whispers By the Blades of Grass watercolor 22"x30"

In this painting of the 'Henbit', I took some liberties and didn't adhere to the pink / reddish purple of the petals that you find in nature. I took the little flowering plant and enlarged it in my drawing many many times its usual size :) As is my natural inclination, I then filled the paper with color and pattern!

Living close to the water, we try to limit our use of chemicals in the yard as much as possible. This means we have pink clovers, purple henbits, yellow dandelions and buttercups, white sundews etc. sprinkled around the 'lawn' making me often wonder about the difference between a weed and a wildflower. When our daughter was a young child, she would often insist that her Dad mow the grass around the blooming clovers or buttercups and he always happily obliged giving the yard a checkered look of colors! As Ralph Waldo Emerson said " What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered." Or from A.A. Milne : " Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them."

Whispers by the Blades of Grass watercolor 22"x30"