ArtiphyTheHeart

Finished

The first ten minutes of this page can be seen HERE.  I finished it with multiple layers of collage and warmed it with an overstain of tinted walnut.  

I keep a lot of different types of art journals, but I use my collage journals primarily as a means of exploring color, pattern, and composition.  I have no problem combining unrelated materials, and I consciously try to mix whimsical mass-produced commercial elements and magazine pages with my own artwork and lettering.  It's a playful, experimental dialogue between things from my hands with things from the hands of others.  I work with these and other types of art journaling pages as a daily exercise, and they are for the most part, what I choose to share on this blog.  

I plan to begin sharing more of my other work, maybe as soon as tomorrow.  Not finished pieces of art.  I don't put those on the web, and have no plan to ever do so.  But I keep lots and lots of sketchbooks, and I have some favorite subjects that I revisit so frequently that they each have their own books.  From time to time I think I'll pull pages from these sketchbooks and let you have a look. 

But for now, today's page is enough.  Feel free to click on the image and enlarge it so you can read what I've written.  One of my favorite artists, Katherine Dunn, posted a quote from one of my favorite books yesterday on Facebook, and it fits the theme of this page so serindipitously.  The quote is from Love In The Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez:

"He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over to give birth to themselves."

How appropriate, since the theme of my journaling deals with discarding childish ways, embracing adulthood, and growing ourselves as an on-going process that is not an angst-ridden death to play, but is instead, a liberating process of gaining new insights, refining abilities, developing talents, discovering endless new avenues of productive pleasures, and enjoying the increasing freedom that is earned when we choose to take adult responsibility as opposed to chaining ourselves to youthful pranks and displays of power.  

To grow ourselves, we are indeed obiliged to give birth to ourselves over and over . 

Without Limits

I'm working my way back and forth between various journals, taking a short break from the Connections journal that I've been showing in blog posts the past few days.  

This is page 17 in Marvel: Your Precious Life.  It has to do with some of my childhood aspirations for adulthood, and nothing at all to do with fashion models.  More than anything, I aspired to a life without limitations.  Not without reasonable boundaries.  There is a difference.  I was taught from an early age to beware of people who say "can't," and to positively reject those who dare to say, "you can't".  

With A Flourish

Recently I've read a lot of commentary against the use of flourishes as decorative elements in artwork and collage.  I'd like to weigh in on the subject and add my 2¢ worth, because I feel that it's expressly un-artistic to discriminate against any design element, ever.  It's just wrong.

You don't have to like flourishes, and if you don't like them, don't use them.  If you think they're over-used, don't use them.  If you hate looking at them, turn away.  Or resolve to tolerate them.

Because the absolute truth is that the story of art is one of inclusiveness.  It will never suit everyone always, and sometimes it may even suit no one.  But the expression is always valid.  

I personally applaud the use of the flourish.  Even the name itself.  To flourish is to thrive:  To be fully present, alive, and in a state of excellence.  How appropriate.  It is the state of being that one is borne up to in the creative process.  

And with that said, in practice, I use the flourish sparingly, and usually not at all.  But in the midst of every drawing, every book I bind, and every collage, there's always a flourish in my heart.  As cliché as that may sound, it's the truth.

Adding Stitches

 

Just playing.  I wanted to see how hard it would be to add some hand stitching to something in a spiral sketchbook without ripping out the page.  Not difficult at all.