The Pace of Life and Art

Sometimes I feel that my life is racing by and I can hardly keep up. Other times, it seems to crawl or be stuck in a Groundhog Day mode. This past month has been a slow period in which I seem to be picking up that boulder for the long trudge up the hill again and again. And, of course, my work in the studio is what guides all the sensations. It feels like the work has been coming together at a snail's pace. In the end, I'm happy with the result so I guess it just took as long as it took to make.

As Sweet As Honey, mixed media with dominoes and encaustic on panel,
36"x36"x1.5" (click on picture to enlarge)

As Sweet As Honey is one of three pieces I made that use dominoes to comment on the theme of pollination. They will be shown in Pollination:Beyond the Garden at the Brush Gallery in Lowell, Mass. in the fall. That show has been curated by Greg Wright and will include work interpreting pollination by eleven artists who work in encaustic. Below is an ad for the show designed by Lynette Haggard that appeared in Art New England this month.

In addition to the art, the cultural importance of the theme will be broadened by inclusion of the film by Laura Tyler, Sister Bee, and a talk by Tony Lulek, President of the Norfolk County Beekeepers Association. There will also be a catalog of the show available.

My piece As Sweet As Honey will be shown with Dark Companion, a piece of the same size that I had finished some months ago. I have been using it as the opening page for my website. Somehow the first piece that I made, before As Sweet As Honey, was not working for me. When I had it hanging up and it didn't look any better to me over time, I finally tried to improve it. That didn't work either, so I just started over. Sometimes a dog painting is just a dog and remains that way no matter what you do. The trick is to recognize that before you spend hours trying to make it into something it will never be.

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A Facebook comment on this piece by Joanne Mattera:

I love the rhythms going on, the underlayer of lyrical line overlaid with the tap-tap-tap of the nails, and the purposeful meander of the dominoes, their dots an echo of the nail's staccato. That yellow grid is very "sweet" compared to your usual palette, and a lovely counterpoint to the black and white.

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