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Deborah J. Brasket

~ Living on the Edge of the Wild

Deborah J. Brasket

Tag Archives: artists

Tapping into the Unconscious – The Art of Sohan Qadri

16 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art, Human Consciousness, Spirituality

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

abstract art, art, artists, Consciousness, creativity, inspiration, personal, Sohan Qadri, spirituality, the creative process

sohan-qadri-yogi-poet-and-painter-01

When I first encountered one of Sohan Qadri’s paintings, I was plunged like a pebble into a still pool, radiating ripples of bliss.

An overstatement? I don’t think so.

The effect was profound, even if the words I use to capture it fail.

“A synthesis of emptiness and peace, radiating power,” is what Qadri is trying to express in his art, he writes.

”Art can have the same effect as meditation,” he tells us, “but only if we drop our constantly interpretating mind and learn to simply see . . . . This can happen if you grasp the painting at a subliminal level, let it filter in through your pores.”

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With me at least, he succeeded.

His work is made from thick soft paper deeply saturated in brilliant colors, punctuated by ragged tears and rips, wavering furrows and trails of tiny pinpricks, like scattered drops of light–or bread crumbs — leading toward the vast unconscious.

“When I start on a canvas,” he explains, “first I empty my mind of all images. They dissolve into a primordial space. Only emptiness should communicate with the emptiness of the canvas.”

“People are always interested in dreams. I am interested in the question: ‘Who is the dreamer?’” Qadri writes. “I would like to know: ‘Who is the artist behind the artist?’”

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When I entered his painting, I felt the presence of the artist behind the artist.

I think I was drawn to his work because when I’m writing, in some way, I am always trying to do that as well, tap into the writer behind the writer.

At my best writing, I feel as if it’s not “me” writing, but something writing through me, beyond me.

As writers and artists, I think we are seeking to move beyond ourselves, dip our pens and brushes into the deep storehouse of the unconscious, the rich field of the imagination, where colors and forms and images and emotions flow.

We tap into it and let it flow out through us, filtered by our experiences and sensibilities, onto paper or canvas.sohan

Readers and art lovers are also seeking to move beyond themselves, to be swept away into other worlds–magical realms or gripping tales created by words, or rich fields of form and color beyond conceptual thought.

horan232 Sohan Qadri purusha

The best writing, the best art, for me is when we feel the presence of the creator behind the creator, and recognize, if only for a moment, the face of our larger selves.

This post was first published in a slightly different format in June 2013.

 

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The Mystical Mindscapes of Matthew Wong

03 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art, Human Consciousness, Nature

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

art, artists, Matthew Wong, Paintings

Matthew Wong, 'River at Night,' 2018, oil on canvas

“River at Night” by Matthew Wong

I discovered a new favorite artist on the day he died–too young at 35, Matthew Wong. A tribute to Wong’s artwork and an announcement of his death appeared in my feeder early in October and I was captivated by what I saw there. His work defies description for his influences were many: van Gogh, Matisse, Munch. But his vision was uniquely his own, a lush surreal mysticism, so richly complex that at first glance I missed the small mysterious figures or structures that are often hidden within, as we see in the painting below with the figure in a canoe.

One of my favorites comes next, and seems almost prescient: a lone figure looking across a white void to a tiny house set at the base of a green flowing mountain. An exotic red bird, wings spread, looks on, as if poised to fly him home.

It’s tragic to lose one so gifted so early. But something of his essence survives in his artwork, and continues to excite and inspire. And perhaps, to invite us to look more deeply into our own lush mindscapes to find what’s hidden within.

“The Beginning” by Matthew Wong

“See You On the Other Side,” 2019. Oil on canvas.

“See You on the Other Side” by Matthew Wong

“The Realm of Appearances,” by Matthew Wong, who had been painting and drawing seriously only since 2013. But critics, impressed by his striking canvases, invoked Vincent van Gogh, Édouard Vuillard and other familiar painters in assessing his work and its impact.

“The Realm of Appearances” by Matthew Wong

“The Kingdom” by Matthew Wong

“Starlight,” 2019. Oil on canvas.

“Starlight” by Matthew Wong

To find out more about Matthew Wong or see more of his artwork, check out these links:

https://www.artofchoice.co/matthew-wong-reflects-on-the-melancholy-of-life/

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/art-world-remembers-matthew-wong-self-taught-painter-vibrant-landscapes-died-35-

1671937https://www.artinamericamagazine.com/reviews/matthew-wong/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/obituaries/matthew-wong-dead.htmlhttps://originalart.xyz/matthew-wong-whose-indelible-canvases-charted-new-paths-for-landscape-painting-is-dead-at-35-

artnews/http://www.artnews.com/2019/10/07/matthew-wong-paintings/

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Pied Beauty, Poem & Paintings

19 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art, Nature, Poetry

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

art, artists, beauty, Gerard Manley Hopkins, inspiration, music, Nature, Paintings, Pied Beauty, poetry

Wassily Kandinsky, Waterfall II, 1902. Saw an exhibition in Washington DC, he is one of my favorites!

Wassily Kandinsky, Waterfall II

Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

What is it about “dappled” things that so dazzles us?

I ran across this poem, a favorite of mine, not long ago, and was reminded once again of how much nature inspires and excites us. Painters as well as poets have been praising that pied beauty through their artwork down the ages.

A few of my favorite paintings praising dappled things follows.
Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889. Oil on canvas, 73 × 93.4 cm / 28¾ × 36¾ in Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. As reproduced in Art in Time.

Vincent Van Gogh

The Athenaeum - Study of Salmon (John Singer Sargent - )

John Singer Sargeant

Sargent

John Singer Sargeant

John Singer Sargeant

'John Singer Sargent Watercolors' Presents 93 Works From Painter's Lesser Known Medium (PHOTOS) | HuffPost

John Singer Sargeant

Gertrude Fiske (1878-1961) American Impressionist Painter ~ Blog of an Art Admirer

Gertrude Fiske

Anne Redpath OBE (1895–1967) was a Scottish artist whose vivid domestic still lifes are among her best-known works. Redpath's father was a tweed designer in the Scottish Borders. She saw a connection between his use of colour and her own.

Anne Redpath

Immersed  | oil on canvas | 54 x 36

Rick Stevens, Immersed

Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt

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Musee d’Orsay, Eye-Candy for Art Lovers

26 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art, Culture

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

art, art museum, artists, Impressionism, Musee d'Orsay, painting, sculpture, travel

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I could have spent weeks savoring up all this museum has to offer, instead I had five hours. Still I was in heaven. The structure itself is a masterpiece, a renovated train station with a magnificent clock tower set on the Left Bank of the Seine River across from the Louvre.

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This was the most visitor-friendly art museum I visited in Europe. An enormous hall was surrounded by various rooms on several floors all flowing into one another. I was forever lost in the Louvre and the Prado, but here I always felt gently guided as I roamed from one room to another in my exploration of all the artwork.

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While the Louvre features art created before 1850, d’Orsay picks up from there, featuring an impressive array of Impressionists, both pre and post, including Van Gogh and Gauguin, Monet and Manet, Derain and Degas, Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir and Cezanne, among others, along with a powerful selection of sculpture, and artwork less familiar to me.

Below is a random sampling of some of the work I loved seeing.

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What I loved too was being able to get so close I could see the individual brush strokes. See if you can guess whose paintings these came from.

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These are just a fraction of the photos I took, which are a small fraction of all the wonderful artwork on display at the d’Orsay.

I leave you with a painting by only American I can remember seeing, although there may have been others. I was bewitched by this Winslow Homer I’d never seen before. It captures something of the enchantment I felt dancing in the arms of the masters on that magical day.

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Artists & Writers in Their Studios

02 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art, Writing

≈ 33 Comments

Tags

art studios, artists, creative workspaces, creativity, inspiration, lifestyle, painting, quotations, writers, writing

"Calder at Home The Joyous Environment of Alexander Calder" by Pedro Guerreo

Art studio of Alexander Calder

I’ve been collecting images of artist studios and writing spaces as inspiration for creating my own art/writing workspace. Some of these images are of famous artists and writers. It’s been so interesting to match the creative mind with the space that inspires it. Most of the creative spaces that have been most inspiring to me belong to people who are not famous, or at least unknown to me, and perhaps I’ll share those another time.

Here I’ve matched the spaces with famous quotes from the inhabitants. See if you can guess who they are. If you can’t, the names are listed below.

  1. “With age art and life grow together.” 

"With age art and life grow together."  ---George Braque

2. “I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.”

Matisse, paper cutting. We both love Matisse, especially the cut paper works of his latter days. I actually made two quilts based on those artworks.

3. “My library is an archive of longings.”

40 Inspiring Workspaces Of The Famously Creative

4. “My fan mail is enormous. Everyone is under six.”

Alexander Calder in his studio. I want those rugs!

5. “All sorrows can be borne if you can put them into a story.”

Danish author Karen Blixen (1885-1962) at her desk in Rungstedlund | Lindequist

6. “I think of my studio as a vegetable garden, where things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. You have to graft. You have to water.”

Joan Miró, Son Abrines, 1978, Photo Jean Marie del Moral

7. “I believe in deeply ordered chaos.”

Francis Bacon in his Studio 1977

8. “What you do when you paint, you take a brush full of paint, get paint on the picture, and you have faith.”

Willem de Kooning by Thomas Hoepker

9. “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

Jack London famous author desk, famous writing desks, writers at work, photos of writers

10. “Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?”

E eu que era tudo ou nada ao meio-dia: FRIDA KAHLO - VIVA LA VIDA

11. “Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?”

writer hc-annie-dillard-born-april-30-1945-20130225 Getty Images July 1987

12. “In the arts, as in life, everything is possible provided it is based on love.”

Marc Chagall in his studio, 1955. Photo by Mark Shaw

Artists and writers: 1-George Braque, 2-Henri Matisse, 3-Susan Sontag, 4-Alexander Calder, 5-Karen Blixen, 6-Joan Miro, 7-Francis Bacon, 8-Willem de Kooning, 9-Jack London, 10-Frida Kahlo, 11-Annie Dillard, 12-Marc Chagall

 

 

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Sailing with Sargent and Homer

22 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art, Life At Sea, Sailing

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

art, art criticism, artists, boats, John Singer Sargent, painting, Paintings, sailing, watercolor, Winslow Homer

Winslow HomerRecently I discovered the watercolors of John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer, two great American artists that I had known primarily for their oil portraits and landscapes. But each in their later years, especially when travelling (Sargent the to Mediterranean, Homer to the Key West and Bahamas) preferred painting in watercolor and created some astonishing works. Each was drawn toward capturing the dazzling whites and blues of the sea, the lights and shadows and reflections thrown up on the hulls of boats and mirrored in the water.

“To live with Sargent’s water-colours is to live with sunshine captured and held,” writes one biographer. Another calls Homer “the poet of the sea.”

Sargent was born some 20 years after Homer and outlived him by about as much. But at the height of their careers their worked overlapped each other. Yet while working in similar mediums (oil and watercolor) and drawn toward similar scenes (boats, the sea, light on water) their styles, while equally masterful, were unique. Each captured some unique aspect of the sailing experience, and each captured the spirit of the thing they were after. But they were after different things.

I lived and sailed on the sea for many years, both in the tropics and the Mediterranean. I spent long days in tranquil coves and landless seas, as well as busy ports and colorful quay-sides.  I know that balmy bliss and dreamy languidness. I know the thrill of that chaotic energy.

Sargent’s watercolors capture the boldness and busyness of the ports, the dazzling brightness as the sun dances across the hulls of ships and scatters into the sea, winks among the rigging and splashes upon the warm decks. His paintings capture the sweeping rhythm of hull lines and mast tilts, of sails fluttering in the breeze above swaying decks.John Singer Sargent, White Ships on ArtStack #john-singer-sargent #art

Shipping,Majorca 1908. John Singer SargentImmersed in that chaotic noise, the eye is too dazzled, too overcome with the busyness and beauty of it all to separate out all the chaotic details. One sees only the mass and movement, the lines and curves, the dazzling light and cool shadows. That is what Sargent captures in the watercolors here. Immersion in the moment. When I enter his scenes I’m immediately transported back in time. I’m there standing on the docks with him . . .

I Gesuati - John Singer Sargent, c.1903

Drying Sails (also known as Venetian Fishing Boats)  John Singer Sargent . . . or approaching the scene from a dinghy.The Athenaeum - The Dogana (John Singer Sargent - )

I’m seeing what he sees, feeling what he feels. I am right there at the center of it all.

Some insight into Sargent’s style and method can be found in a publication about his watercolors:

“Sargent’s approach to watercolor was unconventional. Disregarding contemporary aesthetic standards that called for carefully delineated and composed landscapes filled with transparent washes, his confidently bold, dense strokes, loosely defined forms, and unexpected vantage points startled critics and fellow practitioners alike. One reviewer of an exhibition in London proclaimed him “an eagle in a dove-cote”; another called his work “swagger” watercolors. For Sargent, watercolors were not so much about swagger as about a renewed and liberated approach to painting. His vision became more personal and his works began to interconnect as he considered the way one image—often of friends or favorite places—enhanced another.”

Homer’s watercolor scenes have a different style and feel. There’s no “swagger,” no startling viewpoints.

While Sargent’s watercolors have an abstract, impressionistic feel, Homer’s paintings feed a narrative. They aren’t so close up and chaotic. They have a writerly gaze. A “watching from a distance” feel. Rarely do you find a painting without people visible. Without the sense that you are watching a story unfold.

Fishing Schooner, NassauYou see the wide sweep of sky and sea. You feel the heavy humidity in those clouds and the heat from that dazzling brightness. You see a crowded deck with people raising sails. You see an unfamiliar distant vista. You see a story unfolding. And while you see only one moment of that story, his paintings invite you to imagine more.

Winslow Homer, Sloop Bermuda,  Owner/Location:	Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York, NY  (United States - New York)      Dates:	1899 Medium:	Painting - watercolor

Winslow Homer The Coral Divers WatercolorIn Homer’s painting, the viewer is right there–we feel the heat, the hot sky, the warm water, the hand gripping the deck–but like a reader immersed in another’s story, not like we are there personally ourselves.

Homer’s paintings can be as exciting and full of movement as Sargent’s, as we see below.

Winslow Homer,  American, 1836-1910,   Schooner - Nassau, 1898/99.   Transparent watercolor, with traces of opaque watercolor, rewetting, blotting...

Winslow HomerBut Sargent’s are rarely as full of human drama and emotion as Homer’s.

Or as dreamy and wistful.

Winslow Homer, Boys in a Dory 2, 1880And that’s a criticism made of each. How so many of Sargent’s paintings, while artistically masterful, fail to evoke human emotion or even a sense of what he sees as “beautiful,” as one critic complains. While on the other hand many of Homer’s paintings can be seen as nostalgic, or bordering on the sentimental.

As for me, I see something I love in each. Both speak to me and my experience in powerful ways.

As we were sailing, every leg of our journey was a story unfolding, for my family personally, but also for those people and places we glimpsed along the way. We were voyeurs as well as voyages. We saw scenes unfolding around us that never came to a conclusion. Long lazy days and balmy nights invited us to wonder where they might lead.

At the same time we were immersed in our very own chaotic and exciting sense-experiences, void of narrative, but full of feeling. We wafted between that abstract intensity and the dreamily nostalgic.  As perhaps we all do, immersed in the moment as the long thread of our lives unfolds.

Which artist speaks to you? Do you have a favorite among those shown today, or ones you’ve seen elsewhere?

You can read more about these artists and see more of their works in the links below.

Winslow Homer (1836 – 1910) 

https://www.artsy.net/artist/winslow-homer

http://www.winslowhomer.org/winslow-homer-paintings.jsp

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) 

http://www.johnsingersargent.org/

http://watercolor.net/john-singer-sargent-watercolors/

 

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Trying to Capture the Light

13 Saturday May 2017

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art, My Artwork, Nature

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

art, artists, Big Sur, Franz Bischoff, inspiration, Joaquin Sorolla, Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, light, painting, watercolor

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Capturing light in painting is one of the artist’s greatest challenges and deepest joys.

I fell in love with the dazzling white lights in the paintings of Sorolla. And later the warm, buttery light that infuses Franz Bischoff’s California seascapes. I couldn’t help but be tempted to try my own hand at capturing even a fraction of the light they capture in their paintings.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to come close, but you can learn so much from your failures. You learn what is possible, what doesn’t work, what your limits are, what you still need to learn.

I decided to start by trying to capture some of that warm buttery feel in Bischoff’s paintings, before moving toward Sorolla’s dazzling white light.

These first two attempts are from photographs I took on a trip to Big Sur at the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park along Highway 1. Before donating the land to the state, the original owners had a house on a bluff overlooking the ocean. These are the views from her home. On one side the coastline and Highway 1 snaking northward. to the south a private cove with an 80 foot waterfall. In their backyard are the redwoods. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to have lived in that magical place, to have woke each morning to these views from their windows.

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I’m not unhappy with the results. When I compare my paintings to photographs of his (below), I think I captured some of that warm, buttery glow.

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That encouraged me to try a study of one of my favorite Sorolla paintings, changing it slightly–a different boat and adding a swimmer snorkeling. I could not capture his dazzling white rocks, so I settled for a something more colorful, abstract.

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I’m happy enough with the results, although it’s nothing like Sorolla’s. His secret is still safe from me. Still, I’m more in awe of him now than before.

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His blues are so much deeper, his lights so much brighter. And his reflections! His colors! How does he do that? I get drunk on his colors. I want to dive in and live there.

Here are links to more of Sorolla’s and Bischoff’s paintings where you can see them in greater detail. They are artists you could fall in love with. I did.

Images of Franz Bischoff’s artwork on Google

The paintings of Joaquin Sorolla Y Bastida

 

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Still Playing – Landscapes, Dreamscapes

02 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Ann Oram, art, artists, creativity, inspiration, painting, PeterDoig, the creative process, watercolor

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I’m still playing with my painting, copying artists I love or using their vision, their palettes, for inspiration. Still trying to learn the art of painting and its craft. Trying to discover what I want to do with my painting, what I want to capture, and how.

The two below were inspired by the paintings of Peter Doig. I think of them as “dreamscapes.” They are nothing like what you would really find in the tropics, and yet they capture what it feels like to be there at night in that dark/light denseness.

The first I painted is a near likeness of one of his paintings. And I have to say I’m pleased with it. I like it almost as much as his, meaning that I recognize the quality of mine doesn’t match his, but it does capture, at least for me, the “feeling.” You can almost smell the humidity, the damp earth and folliage, feel the balmy stillness of night in the tropics.

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The second was inspired by his painting of the milky way reflected in water, but mine is not like his at all. I created a different version of the Milky way, and a different land and seascape below. It’s very much its own painting, and I’m pleased with it.

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The next two were inspired by Ann Oram’s paintings of the Mediterranean. The first is a close copy, mine in watercolor and ink, hers in pastel and ink. You can see her original at the top of this page. I liked the way she used candle wax as a “resist” to add texture to the rocks and water. I liked the way the ink defined splashes of color into buildings. I hadn’t used ink or wax before, and now have started using them in other paintings as well.

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The second is my own creation, and not as successful, I think. I wanted the cliffs in the foreground to be the focus, but I think I strayed from that. I’m not unhappy with what I created, but something doesn’t quite sit well with me. I’m not sure what’s off. Someone suggested the buildings on the far cliff are too large for the perspective, and she’s probably right. But even if I shortened them, I don’t think it would “fix” it. Maybe you have some ideas for me.

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Sometimes I have to sit with a painting for a long time before I see what I need to do to complete it. I put it up where I can see it whenever I enter the room, and stop to study from time to time.  And slowly I come to realize, oh yes, that needs to be darker, that lightened, that edge hardened, that one softened. But sometimes, even after studying it for a long time, I realize this painting is as good as it gets, at least for now, and I put it away.

I still don’t know what “my style” is when it comes to painting, or even my medium. I’ve been mixing collage and watercolor recently and will share some of that with you soon. Right now I just like playing, tying new things, discovering new artwork that I love. When I love it enough, it’s too tempting not to at least try to see if I can recreate something remotely similar.

Most recently I’ve been trying to capture something of Sorolla’s light. I’ll share that attempt soon.

 

 

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Dare I Share? Paintings in Progress

21 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

art, artists, Blogging, creativity, inspiration, painting, personal, travel, Visual Arts, watercolor

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Family and friends have been asking me to show them some of the watercolors I’ve been working on, so I posted a few on Facebook the other day.

I thought when I first started that my painting would be “just for me” and not shared with the world at large. But it’s hard to keep things you love, that bring so much joy, to ourselves, it seems. And I’m curious to know what others think.

I’m averaging one watercolor a week, and so far, all have been deemed “wall-worthy,” unlike the pastel paintings I worked on last year. My walls are filling up fast. A year from now, will there be any wall space left to fill?

I’m reminded of an immensely talented but public-shy artist friend. She’s been painting for 13 years, but rarely shows her work and does not display for sale. “What do you do with all your paintings?” I asked her one day after class, which she attends for the camaraderie, since she needs no instruction at this point. “Your house must be full!”

“Oh, yes,” was her nonplussed reply. “My house, and my garage, and a storage shed to boot. I trade them in and out of the house to mix things up a bit and give each a chance to shine.”

What a shame, I think. So much talent and beauty hidden from public view. Then I wonder what I’ll do when my own walls are full. How soon will I need a storage shed?

What a think to worry about! Especially when I’m having so much fun, and when there’s still so much I want to paint. I have at least a dozen paintings in my head that I want to get on paper. And there’s more inspiration every time I go to my Pinterest boards and view all the amazing artwork I’ve collected there.

Which brings me back to this blog. Perhaps I will start sharing some of my work here, despite what I wrote in a previous blog post about my painting being “just for me.” I’ll start by sharing my first three watercolors, which already have a place of prominence on a bathroom wall. They were inspired by photographs taken when we were sailing on La Gitana. I’m planning a whole series of tropical paintings–seascapes, boatscapes, landscapes, all from our travels.

Lately though I’ve become sidetracked from the sea to try my hand at some more impressionistic or symbolic paintings, as well as some florals and still lifes. I’m still experimenting with style, you see. While I admire realistic, representational painting, and I think it’s so important to be able to do this kind of painting well, I find myself drawn to a looser, more imaginative style that captures the essence of things with all its attending emotions and conotations. Like the paintings from artists I’ve featured on this blog.

Of course, representational painting in the hands of talented and inspired artists can do the same thing. But I’m not there yet. And these first three paintings I’m posting aren’t there yet either. But they capture enough that I’m pleased with. Enough to inspire me to keep practicing, keep painting.

They don’t capture that “something more” I’ve been writing about in one of my last posts on art, the form and the formless. But each hint at it. Something in the shimmer of the sea with the rocks half-hidden beneath. In that white-sand serenity of a turquoise sea. Something deep and dark in the dream-like beauty of those mountains rising out of the mist during our first tropical landfall in the Marquesas islands after thirty days at sea.

They hint at, but do not quite capture what I was after. Yet viewing them with the mind’s eye I can still go there and feel it. And that to me is what art is all about.

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Snorkeling in the Bay Islands, Honduras. Watercolor by Deborah J. Brasket, 2016

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Anchored in the Isle of Pines, New Caledonia. Watercolor by Deborah J. Brasket, 2016

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Landfall at Nuka Hiva, the Marquesas Islands. Watercolor by Deborah J. Brasket, 2016

 

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Welcome Readers

This blog explores what it means to be living on the edge of the wild as a writer and an artist.

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Recent Posts

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Text and images are copyrighted by Deborah J. Brasket except where otherwise noted. Feel free to share giving credit and linking back to this site.

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Purpose of Blog

After sailing around the world in a small boat for six years, I came to appreciate how tiny and insignificant we humans appear in our natural and untamed surroundings, living always on the edge of the wild, into which we are embedded even while being that thing which sets us apart. Now living again on the edge of the wild in a home that borders a nature preserve, I am re-exploring what it means to be human in a more than human world.

Recent Posts

  • A Trip Through Time and Space with Pauline Anna Strom
  • Will Salmon Swim Upstream Through City Streets?
  • Strange Dreams, A Poem
  • Still Open to the Beauty of the World
  • A Young Poet and Rapper Throw Light on the State of Our Union

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