Art making – Page 7 – follow your nose

Broken Rock Face

May 23, 2015September 14, 2016 Katharine Asals33 Comments

Friday afternoons are sketching class – the best day of the week.
Each week we go to a different location, a park somewhere close by, in the ‘hood, and set up to draw whatever presents itself.
This week was the Scarborough Bluffs.

Such an amazing place – I’d never been this far east and south before, and wow, what a fascinating, strange place, almost like being at the ocean with the strong winds, the sound of waves on the beach, the gulls and kingfishers diving for fish –

A place to come back to when the sun is low on the horizon and the skies glow orange and magenta.
But it was interesting too how harsh and desolate the cliff faces looked in the bright afternoon light, the ravages of time and water on the shapes of the rocks –

My drawing companions tease me that no matter what I draw – a rock, a tree, an animal – it ends up looking vaguely like the human figure.
A drawing of a cliff face also seems to hold a variety of human faces, snouts and orifices –

Another rock drawing suggest reclining figures, hairy crevices and the folds of flesh –

A drawing of tree hints at perhaps a headless torso, arms, a belly-button –

Another tree could be an underarm, or a knee –

That is my hand, my mark, apparently.
Out in the sun and wind, facing these cliffs, blown away by the sheer force of the place, it’s hard to even put pencil to paper, the desire to simply soak in the splendour of the day is so overpowering.
Yes, this too is Toronto…
Weekly Photo Challenge – Broken

Expressing

January 24, 2015September 14, 2016 Katharine Asals23 Comments

There was a mess.
The mess needed space.
A place to make mess.
A place to put messy things all over the floors and the walls and any surface I can reach stretching on tippy-toes on top of the chair.
All my socks are covered in paint and glue and fragments of unknown ancient dirt, remnants of previous tenants.
Some angles look deceptively tidy, but people stop at the doorway and say “Hi!” without coming in because the mess is wall to wall.
Some corners have recent experiments – here drawing a wolf large on synthetic, tree-free paper, a gliding delicious sensation.
Other walls have the well-established themes…the Cats.
At a drawing group earlier in the week, someone said, “Animals are really your thing, huh?”.
And although I hadn’t noticed it happening – it snuck up on me through dreams and metaphors and the occasional crossing of paths – it appears to be true.
Weekly Photo Challenge – Express Yourself

Working on Art

May 17, 2014September 14, 2016 Katharine Asals34 Comments

For a month or two I’ve been inviting friends over for dinner, wining and dining them into the night, and, when they’re relaxed and off-guard, I lure them up to my room, blinking and confused, and force them to sit on the edge of my bed and look at my art.
I’ve been so hungry for feedback, ravenous after many hours and days and weeks over the winter of experimenting with different forms, jamming around with the photos, the painting, the collages – I need need need to see what people respond to.I’d invited a bunch of people over for a barbeque last night, a little seasonal fair, and as I was tidying and mopping and vacuuming in anticipation of their arrival, it occurred to me – I’d have them hostage for hours, could put art all over the house and see what people might say.It must be some core piece of the need to make art is an element of communication – it’s like you’re looking for a way to talk about something.
And sometimes it may be a private correspondence with the Universe – like cave artists making shamanic magic on the walls, calling to the spirits of the animals to reveal themselves and where they can be found in abundance.
Or it may be a conversation you are having with a friend in your mind as you do it, a kind of running dialogue that informs what comes out. And then when you talk about this image that has sprung from somewhere, it’s part of how you connect as friends – you see more about who they are by what speaks to them.So when Bea said she really loved the alligator – a drawing I’d hesitated to put up, cause it’s just a loose rough kind of sketch of a piece – it gave me some sense of a place in Bea that resonates with this not-pretty, not-girly kind of image.
But Tom kept remembering something I hadn’t put out, a picture I’d shown them several weeks before when I’d had them on my bed and forced them to look at things, an experiment with drawing and painting on a photo – That one! said Tom. That one was his favourite.
Sometimes taste seems to cut along a shared medium, as in sometimes the painters like the paintings, responding with a visceral part of themselves to texture and colour – Maria, a month ago uttering a low hum when she saw the blues and drips and bumps in this piece – And showing no real interest in the experiments of drawing and painting on photos –
Whereas Nicky, a non-visual artist, an actor / dancer / director, was very drawn to these experiments, and felt the one of the magnolia was the most realized, the most successful integration of photo and paint – And while some people have a more textural inclination, others are more figurative, they don’t care for abstraction, they like to always recognize what the image is, to always see a familiar shape.
Sometimes when you’re kind of on that edge, a title can help, can indicate a figure to be found and known – so for example, if I were to say this is a butterfly –
Would you believe me?
What’s your favourite, Dear Reader?
(Weekly Photo Challenge – Work of Art)