The Third Muse

photocredit: bev korenwaser

My creative life is orchestrated by three muses, Art, Poetry and Music.  As a working mom this can be a bit of a juggling act to pull off.  To appease the art muse I paint all day Saturdays.  The poetry muse has a different timeline:  every two years or so I come out with a collection of poems and that seems to handle it.  And as far as music goes, I have for the past five years been able to get away with a weekly women’s middle eastern drum class up North Bloomfield Road.

That is, until now.  Suddenly (even though I have felt this coming for awhile), music is demanding more and more of my attention.  Muses are wily and opportunistic, but I suppose they would have to be to get on these days.  Having just sent one of my two children off to college, freeing up just enough of my time and attention for something, music moved right in.  I have come back to the piano, playing keyboard in a very special improvisational group (that’s another story), and also have returned with refreshed interest (after a brief hiatus) to my drumming class.  I am eager to improve my basic skills and have so much to learn I’m not sure how I’m going to go about it.  I will be formulating a plan for 2010 that I see right now will be filled with Tchaikovsky, maquams and boogie woogie.  Going back to the piano is like going home, back to the seascape of my childhood, my family, my parents and grandparents.  And for me, music is, like art, all about feeling.  It’s about the chords and intervals, the beauty of the transitions, the energy of the rhythms, the poetry of the phrasing of the notes, the inner connections playing with other musicians.  It is a vastenergetic landscape to explore and where the spirit can soar free.  Music is a tonic and just so much darn fun, which is what we all need more of right now.  And right now at this particular time of maelstrom, it seems to me there is a whole lot of creativity energy to tap into, right under the surface of our daily lives.

Music was actually my first muse, poetry flourished in college and art has been hitting me hard for the last decade.  So art is really the third muse but at this point won’t give up its central presence in my life.  I have already been informed by these unseen forces (which seem to have some communication with each other) that I am not to think I can let any of them go.  I will just have to find a way to blend them together, to give each its due and make it work.  Needless to say I am looking ahead to a very musical, poetic and artful year.

My Big Fat Painting Day

Weaving the Universe by Lil McGill

Last Saturday I had a really long and full painting day.  I wasn’t expecting much of anything from it.  And afterwards part of me wasn’t all that impressed with the results of all that effort.  And sometimes I wonder why I spend my time this way.  And what else I could be doing instead, etc.  These are the usual tendencies I have come to recognize as artistic resistance.  There are an infinite number of reasons why not to follow a discipline of artistic work.  And just a very few reasons to come back to it, over and again.  But these reasons that I have slowly been discovering and collecting along the way are what I am finding to be most extraordinary.

Gift from the Sea by Lil McGill

Out of the ordinary I should say.  Not normal.  Paranormal?  Supernatural.

First of all, it has become quite clear to me that when I am painting, I am not painting.  It is not ME who creates a work of art.  Yes, I get myself there, to the painting chamber.  I order the paint and stretch the canvas.  .  I mix up the paint.  I put on an apron.  I turn on the music and try not to answer the phone.  Then I try just to get the heck out of the way.

It was with great relief last Saturday to recognize and remember this phenomenon as I was faced with a full long day of work.  Eighteen blank canvases stretched out before me, spread out on tables and on the tarped, concrete floor.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.  I was way behind in the inspiration department.  I was barely able to make time for this one day, how was I going to get anything good done?  And then I remembered, and relaxed, and let the Artist do it instead.  Thank goodness I didn’t have to come up with all that inspired work (or any work at all).  I just had to let the colors start flowing, let the energy through my hands, my whole body moving and mixing and pouring. I am as if an instrument.  Perhaps imperfect, with limited skills and experience relatively speaking, but a willing instrument nonetheless.  As if a spirit out there has recognized that I show up in this particular painting studio on a regular basis and whatever set of skills I have that artistic spirit will work with it.  What I have will do for now as it is what’s available.

Passion Hado by Lil McGill

I feel mostly like the assistant in there.  I get to finish off some of the edges, and clean up the spills and fill up the water jars.  I get to watch the glory of the colors flowing together and finding their forms and formlessness.  I must squelch my judgment about the final product as best I can.  What I don’t see right away often appears to me later.  Others may or may not see what I see in the work, but I protect the image that comes through as best I can, with respect for the artistic spirit  that created it.  Allow it to be the way it is.  When I am titling the works I look and look at them until I see.  I have written before about seeing animals in these images, most often birds.  On Saturday I saw a cat, two bats, a lynx, an eagle, several condors and horses, and the ever present llama.  I saw a giraffe, three goddesses and two mythical creatures.  Several pure abstract impressions of the vibrations of words such as passion, affection and thankfulness.  I saw the woman who weaves the universe eternally, I saw a conch and a Hawaiian island.  A shark and two female spirit guides, and one primordial flying creature from another galaxy.

Far Off Destinations by Lil McGill

No mind altering substances involved here, I swear.  This is just what happens when I keep returning to the same space over and over with the intention of completing a set of paintings.  The more I see the more I see. I become more and more sensitive to the subtle energies of the spirit world, the vastness of time and space, expanding consciousness, the form of a thought, the temperature of a color.  I become more and more attuned to how everything is alive and has its own vibration, its own magic and message.  And the exploration of this great mystery goes on and on….

Notes from the Studio: Happy Through Painting

Happy Through Music by Lil McGill

The last time I painted was the end of June before I went away for a month to visit the ocean.  I had canvases stretched and waiting; I had a plan.  An old friend, Danny, reminded me of a piece of music, John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,”  that was loved by our dear professor and friend of ours, Jerry Badanes, who is no longer with us in this world.  He had said that when he listened to it it was like God talking.

I have had many powerful experiences painting to music.   When I paint to a piece of music I tend to listen to it over and over until I am immersed.  Once I painted to Charles Mingus’ Prayer for Passive Resistance, and I couldn’t believe it.  I’m not exactly a jazz fan – it takes me awhile to appreciate the intricacies and dissonance and all that is going on between the musicians.  I’m a simple ballad kind of girl.  But I am curious about jazz, without fully understanding its complexities, the way I am about say, quantum physics.  So when I listened to the Prayer for Passive Resistance what I was knocked over by was the power of the prayer.  The music I felt was not soft and yielding but steady and driving—a determined support, a wish of the spirit to give strength and perseverance to all suffering beings.  I had tears in my eyes by the end of that painting day, and the paintings that came out of it are not nearly as important to me as that moment they represent, although I am interested in learning how to better capture feeling and mood in visual form.  It is one of my basic interests in this painting life and what I am always striving toward.

So this painting session was about Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.  I downloaded the four tracks from I-Tunes, burned a CD and played it all day long.  There is a simple, four-note motif that repeats throughout the suite.  Four notes that correspond at one point in Coltrane’s vocal tracks to the four syllables, ­A Love Su-preme.  Repeated over and over in various forms throughout, it becomes a mantra that folds me up like origami.  Coltrane’s liner notes describe this piece as his culminating work, expressing his deep gratitude to a higher spiritual power. The four parts of the suite are: Acknowledgement, Resolution, Pursuance and Psalm.  Some day I would like to paint four large canvases corresponding to each section.  But in this session I was just working up to that, getting a feeling for the music, grokking its depth, vastness.  I painted all the canvases I could find, while I had the chance. I read the liner notes in which Coltrane writes:

“During the year 1957, I experienced by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music.”

Right then I was struck with my own artistic epiphany.  I twirled around to catch it before it went away.  Happy Through Music.  Happy Through Painting. If I can add to the happiness of others through painting and teaching painting then perhaps I have found the spiritual component I have been looking for.  This is probably what has already been happening without my being aware of it, but if I can intentionally direct my efforts toward the service of others through the beauty of art, I can tap into a wellspring of energy and inspiration that will sustain this work forever.  I could see it all in that one moment, how everything, everywhere fits together as one whole. This moment was brief, ephemeral, but it was so real, like finding a pearl down in the depths and bringing it up to the surface.  Enough, for sure, to keep me going, certainly to be clear that now is not the time to give up.

It is too hot to paint here in July.  The air is so thick in the long barn that the colors either disappear altogether or become mud.  So it’s a good time to go away from it for awhile.

When I am away visiting family by the sea I don’t work much on art, not outwardly anyway.  I did some experiments, painting fabrics (and watching the kids painting fabrics) out on the beach.  A sarong, a velvet shawl, a lettuce-edged skirt and top, a satin pillowcase, t-shirts.  But mostly I come here to sit in the breeze and look at the waves, recharging my inner batteries.  There are early morning beach walks and all evening card games.  We swim with all the kids and make dinners and having extraordinary meetings with old friends.  We eat my mom’s pie, every night a new flavor, peach, blackberry, nectarine, strawberry, blueberry.  We are in pie heaven.

When I return to the hot August I miss the cool ocean but I quickly remember and am grateful to be back where I can work.  I start to pick up the threads where I left off, beginning with Coltrane’s affirmation, the four notes repeating in my consciousness, a love supreme, a love supreme, weaving together the path of ongoing, opening awareness, with the daily activities of a working artist.  Happy through painting.

Notes from the Studio – Adventures in Monoprinting

Last week I spent all day making monoprints at a workshop at Wet Hill Studios in Nevada City. This is the home studio of Gwyn Stramler and Richard Downs, both successful artists and printmakers. Their beautiful workspace, expert instruction and enthusiastic hospitality made for an inspiring and rewarding day that has jumpstarted my adventures in monoprinting. I have been interested in learning how to make monoprints and monotypes for the last few years. At the DeYoung Museum, I saw the monotypes of Helen Frankenthaler and I was fascinated by them. Two friends in San Francisco have been taking a Saturday printmaking workshop at the City College there for years, and I have been longing to join them. When I heard of this local workshop I signed up right away, without thinking much about it. It was a strong artistic pull that I did not question. My art buddy Douglass Truth attended with me and we had a really great time exploring this new medium. Not surprisingly, Doug’s imaginative work yielded immediate awesome results.

It took me a little longer to get the results I wanted. Translating my watery, flowing abstracts with the oil based inks was a surprising challenge, and by the end of the day I concluded that I would need to experiment with the various water based inks and paints and mediums and come up with my own unique process to achieve what I was looking for. This again, was no surprise, having spent years developing my own process for my acrylic paintings.

All of this is immensely exciting to me, but the real draw for me about this art form is The Press. Oh, The Press!! The paper is wet then blotted, and covers an inked plate that bears the artist’s drawing, painting, design, etching, etc. . The paper is then covered with a felt blanket and gently rolled through the press, which compresses the paper against the plate , creating an embossment at the plate line and a delicious, deep transfer of the image to the paper.

So I am launched into the world of printmaking, thanks to the generosity of Gwyn and Richard for sharing their knowledge and allowing a glimpse into their artistic life and work. The workshop was truly inspiring and just what I was looking for. For more information about these printmaking workshops visit http://www.wethillstudios.com/

Douglass Truth and Gwyn Stramler

Monoprint Workshop at Wet Hill Studios

Abstract Laboratory Report #2: The Value of Gray

My two students, J. & V. arrived with scones and tea, raspberry jam, butter and honey to celebrate my birthday. This is one of the unexpected benefits of my reluctant submission to being a teacher – you get treats. You get love. You get this feeling like you’re doing something of great value. J. also brought a sprig of Winter Daphne that had such a scent it sent us swirling. This was all extraordinary in itself, and then we started painting.

Continuing our exploration of Jenkins’ pouring technique, this time with Golden Fluid Acrylics (recommended as BEST by Bette Ridgeway), we loved the intensity of the color. J. & V. worked on the same piece, alternating pours, to explore the effects. The crucial part of this lesson was the discovery of the value of gray. Grayed tones. We are working with such a vibrant palette that initially we crave the clarity and transparency and intensity of the pure color…quinacradone magenta, phthalo blue, hansa yellow, that we don’t want to muddy it in any way. HOWEVER, there is an amazing spectrum of colors that occur through the combination of these three colors, the primaries, as we all know from 7^th grade art class. An infinite array of grayed-down tones. Beautiful ochres, khacki greens, dusty mauve. And what we discovered is that allowing these colors into the painting, even adding them back in allows the vibrant colors to be even more vibrant.

I learned this lesson in 3 major ways. My painting teacher, EJ Gold, in his You Can Paint Classes would always reinforce the Three Dimensions of Painting: Light to Dark, Warm to Cool, Intense to Gray. As a beginner I took that in as much as a could, being more concerned with getting the paint on the canvas at all. With his encouragement I got a whole lot of paint on the canvas.

A few years later I had started producing a lot of very bright paintings. And just about then my artist friend Zoe Alowan walked through my studio and mentioned that I might want to balance the vibrancy with some gray. Oooh no, I thought. Not gray. Gray is dull and muddy. Mud is bad. I want brightness. No gray for me. Then a few days later, my artist/animator friend, Lin Larsen, walked through and said that I might want to add some grays to balance all the vibrancy. Okay. Okay. Okay.

So I set myself to color explorations, making color charts with grayed tones next to pure colors to see how they “popped”. I read color theory books and understood some of it, and I deliberately mixed grayed tones and tried them out. And finally, while reading a coffee table book about Jenkins –there is a section describing exactly how he worked on his canvases –I learned that when pouring, pools of paint would form, and Jenkins would carefully mop up the pools of mixed color with a rag, squeeze it out into a coffee can, and reuse that mixed color elsewhere in the painting. This color harmonized with the rest of the painting because it was a mixture of all the other colors already painted and it added a dimension and contrast to the vibrant colors, which added greatly to the depth and power of the final painting.

The learning we can do about color is endless. Mostly I try not to think about it too much. Color carries so much emotion, that feeling your way with color is of great service to you as an artist. Know about grays as a balance to clear colors and leave it at that. Let the artist inside you move toward just the right color and let it be the way it is.

This J. & V. found out in one morning by experiencing the accidental effects of this pouring technique. They signed their collaboration JuVien and a new artist was born. A magical time for all.

Poetry and Painting: Two Shadows in the Shadow

“The Stolen Branch”
By Pablo Neruda

In the night we shall go in
to steal
a flowering branch.

We shall climb over the wall
in the darkness of the alien garden,
two shadows in the shadow.

Winter is not yet gone,
and the apple tree appears
suddenly changed
into a cascade of fragrant stars.

In the night we shall go in
up to its trembling firmament,
and your little hands and mine
will steal the stars.

And silently,
to our house,
in the night and the shadow,
with your steps will enter
perfume’s silent step
and with starry feet
the clear body of spring.

Two Shadows in the Shadow by Lil McGill

Abstract Laboratory—Report #1

I have two students who come to my studio some Thursday mornings to explore abstract acrylic painting. This is the real abstract laboratory where we study techniques and run experiments. I didn’t want to be a teacher. But I didn’t want to be a painter either. Now I love both.

Today we started a new phase of experimentation with a pouring technique derived from the master Paul Jenkins. We also found a DVD in the same vein by Bette Ridgeway that truly inspired us. So this morning we jumped in and loved the flow and transparency of layers of paint on the white canvas.

Paul Jenkins -- Phenomena Violet

When I get my new camera for my birthday I’ll have pictures to show. For now, this is a Jenkins painting called Phenomena Violet. I’ll be writing more on Jenkins soon because his work is extraordinary and phenomenal. My “students” (my fellow artists) and I can’t wait to resume our work next week.

Painting on Silk (Notes from the Studio)

Last Saturday I went to the Long Barn with an injured shoulder. I took one look at the pile of canvases waiting to be stretched and said Ouch. For that kind of work I need both arms to be strong. So instead I moved to a quieter project, furthering experiments in painting on silk.

One of my clients has asked me to hand paint silk that she will make into costumes for a dance performance she is producing this spring.

What I have want to do is learn to use my usual acrylics on silk. I have heard that others have done it, know in my heart it is possible. So I have been setting up experiments. That is what this process is all about. Art is so scientific. That’s why I call this work I do Lil McGill’s Abstract Laboratory. I keep a lab book. I write down what I’m going to do, and what happens after I do it. Not always, but especially when I’m trying to solve a problem.

This started several years ago after I did a series of spectacular paintings. Each one was fantastic. I had finally hit my stride and they all worked. I thought, great, now I’m on my way. So the week after, I went back to the canvas and, guess what, nothing worked. Dismal failure. I was stymied. I went back and tried to remember what I had done. What exactly was the ratio of water to paint? What was the temperature? The humidity? How fast did I work, how calm and centered? I found that all these things affected the outcome of the painting.

Now I am working out the same process with a new technique – but after trying this additive with that medium and yet another softener, I’ve decided to put aside my quest for acrylics on silk. I basically want to keep the softness and drape of the silk, as well as the intensity of the color, but I haven’t achieved my desired results in the time I have to do this right now. Not yet.

So I’ve “resorted” to dyes. I picked some up at Ben Franklin and oh! What a revelation! Oh how glorious the way the colors flow. How simple and easy, how delicious. And it makes me wonder why I’m trying to make things so hard. Sometimes when you see something so beautiful, like a work of art on silk, you think, oh that is so complex and tricky. How is that done? And you realize after trying it yourself that this beauty occurs mostly by itself. It is a natural phenomenon and you just need to allow it to happen.

Allow it to happen. Or as my friend Shawn says, “Let it be easy.”

The colors my client wants include transparent, metallic and opaque. So there are many things yet to work out, also setting the dye and checking colors, working towards this vision: Dancers on stage, flowing in hand painted silk! I’m looking forward to seeing that. So today in the studio I will progress with my experiments.

And then I’ll stretch all those canvases.

Influences: Tom X and His Entourage

Tom X in his studio. Photo credit: Till Bartels

When I met Tom X 20 years ago at an art opening in LA, he looked like a celebrity. He had the leather jacket, he had the hair, and he was surrounded by a crowd. He also had the most familiar way about him, like we had known each other for a long time – we were standing in the midst of his crowd talking as if we were cousins catching up, or the way I’d talk with a brother after not seeing him for a year. A brother who also happened to be a celebrity.

What I remember about Tommy as an artist is his utter enthusiasm. When I was working in a gallery a year later, he would run in with his newest prints to show them off. He was sputtering with excitement, “Look at the detail! Look at the colors!” He was fully engaged in the artistic process and collaboration with the printer, and he was passionate about the results he was getting.

His studios were always to die for. I remember visiting three of them over the years, two here in Nevada City and his last one is Santa Monica. He was a Spacious Artist – he painted in all sizes but mainly large and bold. He was massively prolific — every studio had many rooms chock full of prints, paintings, drawings…he worked in many media… sculpture too. And his range of talent and skill was crazy. He had major classical drawing chops as well as the eye to transform what he saw with original vision. He created the most inviting vibrant living/working spaces. In Santa Monica each room was a different color (he loved the deep reds) and he was particularly proud of the long narrow closet/crawl space he’d made into painting storage. He lived up above a tire repair shop and had parties on the roof. All this activity attracted a crew…assistants, friends, fans… along for this great adventure. Going out to dinner with Tommy and crew felt somewhat glamorous, and he was always so inclusive of whomever his guests happened to be.

I told him on the phone once that I’d seen his artwork in the movie Reality Bites (Winona Ryder –it’s on the stage behind the band) and he said, “What’re you watching a movie like that for?” He went on to say that he had moved on to bigger things, the director of Like Water for Chocolate was interested in his paintings and he had a large scale commission in the works. But I always had the sense that he was a bit above – or outside- it all. He’d be living the artist’s life for real, working the scene, money ebbing and flowing, but even when he was “starving” he had brie with his salad. I saw it myself. He had an interview with one of the most famous art dealers in LA. Evidently the dealer was quite interested in Tommy and wanted to look at his portfolio for a second time. The dealer was eating lunch while they met, a French dip roast beef sandwich with au jus dripping all over his hands, licking his fingers. Tommy just took his art and walked out. I guess that path wasn’t for him. He was more comfortable painting in the street, which he did everyday for years in Santa Monica.

Just after he died in 2001, I had a dream that Tommy stopped to visit with us before setting off on another journey. His entourage piled out of the back of his tiny car, everyone jostled and happy, looking forward to their next destination.

Poetry and Painting: Orange and Grape

When I heard this poem read by Muriel Rukeyser for the first time last fall (on an audio CD from the library), I was deeply impressed, and I could see and feel the poem so clearly that I wanted to paint it. I have based many paintings on music before, and I’ve written poems about paintings, but this was the first of my paintings inspired by a poem.  I was immediately happy with the way it came out (that’s rare) — happy with the contrast of colors and the details of texture and the impression of a pair of lungs…

Ballad of Orange and Grape

After you finish your work
after you do your day
after you’ve read your reading
after you’ve written your say —
you go down the street to the hot dog stand,
one block down and across the way.
On a blistering afternoon in East Harlem in the twentieth century.

Most of the windows are boarded up,
the rats run out of a sack —
sticking out of the crummy garbage
one shiny long Cadillac;
at the glass door of the drug-addiction center,
a man who’d like to break your back.
But here’s a brown woman with a little girl dressed in rose and pink, too.

Frankfurters, frankfurters sizzle on the steel
where the hot-dog-man leans —
nothing else on the counter
but the usual two machines,
the grape one, empty, and the orange one, empty,
I face him in between.
A black boy comes along, looks at the hot dogs, goes on walking.

I watch the man as he stands and pours
in the familiar shape
bright purple in the one marked ORANGE
orange in the one marked GRAPE,
the grape drink in the machine marked ORANGE
and orange drink in the GRAPE.
Just the one word large and clear, unmistakable, one each machine.

I ask him: How can we go on reading
and make sense out of what we read? —
How can they write and believe what they’re writing,
the young ones across the street,
while you go on pouring grape into ORANGE
and orange into the one marked GRAPE —?
(How are we going to believe what we read

and what we write and we hear and we say and we do?)

He looks at the two machines and he smiles
and he shrugs and smiles and pours again.
It could be violence and nonviolence
it could be black and white women and men
it could be war and peace or any
binary system, love and hate, enemy, friend.
Yes and no, be and not-be, what we do and what we don’t do.

On a corner in East Harlem
garbage, reading, a deep smile, rape,
forgetfulness, a hot street of murder,
misery, withered hope,
a man keeps pouring grape into ORANGE
and orange into the one marked GRAPE,
pouring orange into GRAPE and grape into ORANGE forever.

Muriel Rukeyser (1973)