Beauty, Shadow and Reflection

Beauty, Shadow and Reflection  watercolor 9x12

I saw this tiny colorful beauty drinking from a puddle on a cold January morning when I was out on a walk.  I stopped to admire. I am  also drawn to shadows and reflections and  I was immediately attracted by the three shapes that intersected as the bird cautiously watched my movements.  I, as cautiously and slowly, took out my camera and managed to capture the moment as he/she continued to survey the scene.  Finally this week I painted this as a reminder of that wonderful encounter.  I used my favorite Canson Montval cold press watercolor paper, a small brush along with lots of patience to complete the painting :)

Shadow Play

A Day in the Life   page 10 color pencils

At the rate I am posting the sketchbook pages from my book A Day In The Life  for The Fiction Project, I will have fodder for my blog for a couple months :)  As with the reflections, shadows also intrigue me.  A Conrad Hall quote says it eloquently: There are infinite shadings of light and shadows and colors... it's an extraordinarily subtle language. Figuring out how to speak that language is a lifetime job. 

I came across some beautiful shadows that were artistically created by manipulating various objects and light.  The creativity behind these shadows is mindbogging! These are a long way from the wall shadows my brother and I did as  children with flashlight and fingers on our hands on rainy mansoon nights when  there was no electricity and we were looking for entertainment! 

Always Reflecting

 Reflecting watercolor on Yupo 7"x11"

I, like countless others, have a fascination for photographing reflections.  I am intrigued how the reflections are sometimes mirror images and other times diffused and forming beautiful abstracts. To me, the play of light, color, patterns echoing the reality in its own terms - when an object is reflected off glass, mirror, water or any other shiny surface - is a mystery and miracle at the same time. Fortunately or unfortunately,  quite often I  find I become aware of the beauty of the surroundings as I catch the reflections. 

I enjoyed working on the yupo and now I want to explore this same image on a larger size regular paper soon!

Growing Art

A Day in The Life. Page 9 color pencils

One of the things that fascinates me is how ideas and creativity come about. I especially like the instances where science and art collide to produce the most wonderful discoveries and artwork.  More than ever this illustrates that we can all learn techniques- be it scientific methodology or how to lay down paint but to have a breakthrough, to make big discoveries seems to require something almost magical! I came across three  different stories about Alexander Fleming and his discovery of penicillin. There is much more there than simply happenstance. 

A Smithsonian article explained that long before Alexander Fleming discovered the antibiotics, he was a painter, a member of the Chelsea Arts Club. He used watercolors, but that was not his favored medium.  He painted ballerinas, houses, stick figures fighting and other subjects by using bacteria! The  article says :"He produced these paintings by growing microbes with different natural pigments in the places where he wanted different colors. He would fill a petri dish with agar, a gelatin-like substance, and then use a wire lab tool called a loop to inoculate sections of the plate with different species. The paintings were technically very difficult to make. Fleming had to find microbes with different pigments and then time his inoculations such that the different species all matured at the same time. These works existed only as long as it took one species to grow into the others. When that happened, the lines between, say, a hat and a face were blurred; so too were the lines between art and science."  Further down the article is the revelation :"On that fateful morning, what Fleming actually discovered was, in a way, a version of one of his paintings. Each of the colonies of Staphylococci bacteria that he had inoculated on the plate had grown into a small shape resembling a planet or a star in a night sky. But there among his wild planets was something else, a larger, lighter body at the top of the dish, the Penicillin fungus. Around it the sky was dark, where the bacteria were dying. It was his masterpiece, his “rising sun,” the painting that would save more lives than any other discovery."

Read the Smithsonian article: Painting with Penicillin: Alexander Fleming's Germ Art  and then listen to PRI's Studio 360 story : Godfather of Bacteria.  On PRI's link Painting with E.Coli,  there is also a photo of one of Flemings paintings :) 

A blog Growing Impressions-Gulden/Baldwin records the collaboration between artist Amy Gulden and scientist Dr. Kristin Baldwin :"...we have enlisted a natural organism, E. coli bacteria, to generate images that resemble paintings or prints, but that have a unique set of patterns that could not be generated using non living materials. We hoped that by letting nature generate its own patterns we would trigger the interest of the eye and the visual brain, which has evolved to pay attention to the irregular patterns generated by natural growing objects."  There is an amazing collection of 'paintings' in that site!

This goes to show that we definitely need to nurture curiosity. Arts and science is a very artificial seperation of  knowledge!

In Search of Beauty

A Day In The Life - page 8 color pencils

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not." Ralph Waldo Emerson's words ring in my mind quite often, especially when my wants and needs rear up their heads! This past week in Chicago was no exception. These days though, finally, more often than not, I use my camera to bring home the beauty. (The airline luggage restrictions help too!) And, more importantly, I understand what he meant. 

In the past couple of days there have been two stories on NPR about art, beauty and collecting-  'World's  Richest Man Opens Flashy Museum in Mexico' and 'Chasing Aphrodite and Other Dirty Art World Deals.'  The stories mentioned 'object lust', 'because they wanted it', 'they lose reason', 'minor and mediocre pieces by big name artists.'  When I finished listening, I was quite disillusioned by the elitist  mindset of some of the museum directors, curators, professors and one reporter whose tone I definitely did not care for.  I realized how easy it is to judge another or lose one's way when dealing with issues of ethics, art, culture, and greed.   I love going to the museums, admire the collections, but, I was once again wondering about the ethics, pros and cons of collecting, standards of beauty, value of art pieces etc.  

On a much simpler note, having just completed my sketchbook Fiction Project for Art House Co-op, A day in the Life, I was also very excited to see on display,  "Color and Rhythm: Henri Matisse's Jazz " at the Art institute of Chicago. 

  

As I had mentioned before, working on my book has given me a new appreciation for others' efforts and I marvel at the end results! 

Completing the Circle

Poquoson Public Library Artist of the Month May 2011 

I am always excited to exhibit my paintings at our city's Public Library.  It is a wonderful opportunity to display a collection of my paintings. I get a sense of  how all my paintings look framed and next to each other.  I am really grateful to have a venue to just show my work and  for a very compelling reason to keep painting, knowing there is one place once a year I may have my month of  audience :) Please swing by the library if you are in the area.  I would love any feed back!

This my 200th blog post and my heartfelt thank you to all who visit my blog.  Your interactions have helped me grow and evolve! As the artist Anish Kapoor said: There's something imminent in the work, but the circle is only completed by the viewer.

Comfort or Boredom?

A Day In the Life.. Page 7 The Fiction Project color pencils

I completed the fiction project last week and mailed it off to Art House Co-op in Brooklyn, NY. In the end I filled 30 pages with sketches and writing - that includes an author page, and two pages of tid-bits and explanations. I had initially torn off two pages to experiment on, and another three pages when I had difficulty with the page with the rangoli. I scanned the pages to my computer so I will be posting them slowly on my blog :) I sprayed the completed pages with Krylon acrylic clear coating so the color pencils will hold up and not smudge on the remote chance that it will be handled and looked at a number of times!

The project was exciting, fun and stressful all at the same time. I was sketching, drawing and thinking about  the book every single day and I felt daily practice definitely improved my skills. I am looking into another project to keep up the daily practice :). Giving my best and not being hung up on perfection freed me to enjoy the process. The project pushed me to sketch things I would have overlooked or afraid to tackle. I hope to give some of the sketches full treatment in larger versions.  I was excited to see the end product - a book authored and illustrated by me - not perfect or amazing, but a small accomplishment! Strangely, I did not mind mailing it off.  

Now, about  page 7: on a daily basis, I do not care for chores - will gladly by-pass them whenever I can!  Over the years I have noticed how my elderly or unwell relatives and friends have fiercely insisted on doing the daily little chores as they negotiated their days, and that made a great impression on me. I wonder, why, when, how or if, the perspective  will change for me. 

Circles on Wheels

digital photography 

To understand is to perceive patterns.

-Isaiah Berlin

Drawing Fire

Delicate Dance  watercolor on Yupo

Last summer we enjoyed many Calla Lily blooms in our garden. This past week, I finally got around to painting one on yupo sheet many times before I was satisfied.  It was a tremendous learning experience to try out different colors and varying backgrounds simply by repeatedly painting and washing  off  until I settled on this rendition.  I am experimenting using only washes and water for texture. 

I borrowed the title of the post from a series of articles in New York Times  by Michael D. Fay. On June 6 2010, in the introduction to the series, NYT explains:  'In 2005, then Chief Warrant Officer Michael D. Fay traveled to Iraq in his capacity as official Marine Corps artist. There he fought with Marines engaged in Operation Steel Curtain against insurgents along the Euphrates River, and documented the events in sketches, photographs and audio recordings. Mr. Fay describes that experience here in “Drawing Fire,” to be published in five consecutive parts this week in Home Fires. It is based on material from his memoir, “The War Artist,” (earlier drafts appeared on his blog in January), and includes artwork and photographs from his time with Marine units in Operation Steel Curtain.'  His accounts of the war and the accompanying sketches paint the horrors that is deeply riveting and moving. Check out his blog 'Fire and Ice' and also the Joe Bonham Project, where you will find more sketches by 'group of illustrators dedicated to recording the faces and experiences of America's returning wounded warriors.'  Kandhahar Journal  has sketches and accounts by war artists in Afghanistan.  The artist soldiers give a different picture of the war. 

Happy Vishu

A Day in the Life-page 6 color pencils and pen

Happy Vishu - New Year to all. Today is New Year for most of the people in southern India. I did this page in my sketchbook for the Fiction project 'A day in the Life - in Blue Jeans with Gold Embroidery' a few weeks ago and waited to post :) The entry describes a ceremony from most Hindu households in the south on Vishu-Ugady day.

The copy reads:

I light the lamp on my altar. A mirror is the latest addition -a reminder of a special kind. In southern India where I grew up, the New Year is ushered in with a ceremony many centuries old. The night before, a special shrine is assembled in prayer room/corner with season's first fresh vegetables and ripe fruits, arranged around a mirror draped with fresh flowers and gold jewelry. The next morning, each family member is led to the shrine with the eyes closed. We open our eyes in front of the shrine looking into the mirror, now surrounded by lit lamps. shining in the midst of this beauty and abundance is our own face in the mirror. It is a beautiful reminder of the divinity in each of us. The same divinity that pervades all. I wanted to have that reminder everyday of my life.

I did assemble the special 'kani' shrine last night and looked in the mirror  this morning :) And a mirror has been a permanent addition in my altar since January 1 - the new year in the western calendar.