Art Meditations

Posted on | November 16, 2009 |

I’ve been very delinquent about posting.  Sorry.  I’ve been immersed in exploration.  There’s always that fallow time, I find, between big projects when I need to restore myself and clear my mind. It’s often when I just want to play around with art.  For me it can be like meditation—a place to go to where all the regular thoughts disappear and I’m just there with the art.  It’s a great way to charge the energy up again and also have fun.

Anyway, I’d been thinking about doing these abstract pieces for months.  I painted some paper with gouache way back in the spring and cut out shapes.  Every once in a while I fiddled around with them to see if I could make something that felt pleasing and alive and provocative.  But I couldn’t quite get there.  Everything seemed to fall short as sometimes happens. And we can’t force these things but I like to try again.

Last week I spent an afternoon painting large sheets of paper with gouache again in all the colors I love until I ran out of paper.  I tried to include some colors I don’t care for also because too much of a good thing goes nowhere, as life has shown some of us at least.  Live and learn!  But, as I said, I did run out of paper so didn’t get to the muddier colors.  Next time!

Then came the fun part—days and days of cutting and pasting.  Here is one of them.  I find it very beautiful and evocative. The series is called “Over Our Heads” because I was thinking about the larger dimensions of life which are incomprehensible, of course, and because abstract art is “over our heads.” There’s no way to  fully interpret.  We can only feel, and possibly guess at meaning or possibility.  It takes us out of control and into the place of acceptance of the unknown which is rather exciting really, at least to me.  It was a very meditative experience to make this art and the art itself seems to provoke ideas for me and also perks up my energy.  I hope it does this for other people too.  I shipped about 15 of these out to a gallery just outside Washington on Friday and this week will do more to sell at the shop at The Arsenal Center for the Arts.

Meanwhile, I’m chipping away at my new website.  It will actually be here at catbennett.net and the blog will move back to the old artwalaroad.com.  This site will be dedicated to my art and I’m designing it on iWeb.  The new version of iWeb is much improved and, with luck, I’ll have the new site up and running within the month.

I hope all is well in your world!

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