Sneak Peak...

I am attaching a picture sample of one of the paintings I will be showing this weekend at our three day Holiday Sale. I am really looking forward to the weekend. I love it when the hallways are buzzing with guest artists hanging their work - there is always something so special about it. Like a great gathering! Then comes the audience: I love that the building fills with those who share such a great love for the arts! I love the variety of people who appear in our studio, and engage with us about our work. And I love it when they find pieces of art that were made just for them, and happily carry them home. I love that each studio in our building is like walking into an entirely different world. Well, I am clearly filled with a whole lotta love for these shows, and I hope you are too. I am keeping this post short and sweet, as I have a lot to prepare for this weekend and it is already 3:06 am. (of course) Below is a detail of one of my newest paintings, and yes, I love this painting.

I have a great deal of new work to share and I am really looking forward to sharing it with you. Please come, bring a guest, invite others and share in art, entertainment, wine, warmth and a whole lotta love.

Here are the details for this weekend:

Flat Iron Arts Building, Studio 352

1579 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago

Friday, December 11th from 6:00pm until 11:00pm
Saturday, December 12th from Noon until 10:00pm
and Sunday, December 13th from Noon until 6:00pm

See you this weekend! Love, Liz

Time Warps

Currently listening to Os Mutatnes and the music is providing a lovely back drop to my evening. What a night. I mean that fully. I went to bed at sunrise and I literally awoke at sunset. I guess I got the day a bit backwards. But it was wonderful, I left the house shortly after waking up to find the most beautiful blue sky in the world. It still had traces of the sunset and what was even better is that it was hosting the most amazing full moon. It was just rising and sat in the eastern sky illuminating everything so sweetly! Ah.

When back home, I went into the hallway and found a couple wandering around the building looking for art. They were from Portugal and had heard about "wicker park". Chance had it that we were to meet and they were to fall in love with a set of three paintings I had created called "The Three Sisters", which they took with them. The night went on with a series of surprising visitors appearing in our studio. Well it is now 12:55 am, and I have just finished eating a delicious dinner, prepared by yours truly, and am getting ready to paint. Sometimes I really do have to move by my own beat. And that beat can lead to some really great chance experiences.

That has me wanting to write about what I have been thinking about lately. That something feels different in the air these days. I am not sure if it is my own feeling, or if others share it, but something is changing - and for the better! It feels as I enter into the last month of 2009 (can you believe it?) there is a need to remove all the excess baggage that really doesn't work anymore. Its like the final spin cycle of the year - a time when I really really have to think about what it is that I want to be, have or become and aim only for that. Over my couple of decades, I surely have picked up some extra stuff I surely don't need anymore, and these days have me asking myself "why wear this on myself if it no longer fits?" I feel a certain joy when I ask that question because it really means that I can and will begin to re-create myself consciously. It almost feels as if time is starting over for me and I really like it.

I am also thinking a lot about my direction within my own artwork. I have been moving in the direction of working on a larger scale. I want to grow within my artwork and I feel that it is not something that should be forced, but something that will emerge itself in tandem with the new direction I am pointing myself towards. I love change. Secretly it can be a bit terrifying to move into the unknown with only your dreams and desires as your compass, but would our dreams ever lead us down the wrong path. I guess it has to do with a certain confidence within. Funny little word I have also been thinking about lately. I took it apart and thought mmm con and fide...with faith..when I looked it up online, I found this "The origin of the word confidence is the Latin word confidere (to trust, to have faith in. Hence the original meaning of confidence is literally "to have trust or have faith". So, simply put to have self confidence is to have faith in yourself, to trust oneself. With that idea in mind, I move steadfastly in a new direction, and I look forward to seeing the art that will emerge when I get there.

**Congratulations to November and December's Winners! I hope you enjoy your beautiful little paintings! Subscribe to my blog and be entered to win a sweet painting of your own. xx

The care and feeding of an artist

Listening to the new Basement Jaxx album, cooking a reminder dinner (as in i forgot to eat) while painting and blogging. I tend to whirlwind. But isn't life a wonderful whirlwind of activity sometimes. It can be so slow for a while and you think "mmm..where has all the action gone?" Only to find that within a short matter of time, it all speeds up again and you think "hey, where has all the time gone?!". I am on the former end of that stick right now, but it is a great gift. It's making me come up with all new ideas and inspirations. I am taking chances with paintings that I once felt timid to, I am re-thinking action plans, and drawing up new ones, and just being content with my home. (Update, I am now listening to the new Yacht album and checking it out...). I have a studio, its where I paint and live with my boyfriend, 20 plants, one fish, and a wonderful gallery of paintings. I love the care and feeding of all of us, paintings included. It is a friday night, and while the world of party and bar hoppers swirls outside my window, I am at home, warm and pleased.

I cleaned my fish tank today, the rocks, the filter on the bio wheel and scrubbed the algae off the sides - the poor fish was so stressed out to see this looming hand come in and out of his home, he excreted something that for a second I thought was his whole intestine! I know that is gross, but you have to understand that this is our second fish: the first one we got at the county fair in indiana with my boyfriend's little boy, Bacchus, and I really worked hard to keep that fish alive. When it died, i cried. I cried over a goldfish! After that incident, we went with Joe's little one to the Old Town Aquarium to buy a new fish, and we picked a beautiful gold fish, which Bacchus named painty, after looking around the room for a minute. So once again, I have taken on the extreme care of this fish, and it looks like the dust has settled on his stress levels tonight and I think he is happy again.

I write this because I have thought a bit about my blog recently, and I realized that I never really write on it, because I don't want to just talk about paintings, I want to talk about my life, my artist's life. And i wasn't sure if this blog was the place to do that. I realize though that it is. Why? Because everything that goes on in my life comes out in my artwork. My artwork is a reflection of all of the internal, all that I feel and think while processing the world I live in. As viewers of my work, I want to share that with you. So you can begin to know more about the work and the artist and the care that goes into it all.
Stay tuned.

Loyal Paintings

Paintings are so patient. They just wait for you. Like loyal pets, they are. It has been a while since my last painting time, in a flurry of life like activities, I have not been painting as I so should have. Tonight, I re-did my studio, made it so so cozy and came back to a painting I haven't played with since forever ago. And there she was, just as I had left her, waiting for me to put new colors, new layers, new gestures of myself on to the canvas. Weeks of experience come out in slow patient brush strokes with no purpose only than to be content within themselves. Swirls of colors, layers of the painting are built as layers of myself are finally shed. Ah, sigh, deep breath and contentment, sometimes I wish we could all be painters.

Doorways

Its been a while. The spiral of activity lately had me a: not painting and b: feeling low. I was tired and even though the best antidote for all that ailed would have been painting, i simply hadn't done it. My studio was in pieces as we cleaned it all (and hid most of it away) to host shows. Well, I got it all sorted out, re-organized and ready to paint. And then another distraction...mmm..how funny. Needless to say it wasn't until last night that i got my grit into it and began painting again! And it was awesome. Brilliant! I was totally on, totally in the painting feeling the focus, not painting with my mind, but painting with my heart. It felt great. Not only that, but once in that wonderful place ideas kept coming to me and inspirations. It was actually quite emotional and liberating and emotionally liberating.

I was working on a commission for a fantastic woman who runs an artists tele-summit seminar once a year, and i was combining elements of two paintings that she liked. I had begun working on this painting weeks ago and was not quite feeling it at that time. Something inside me knew that i had to gain more experiences in my own life before I was truly able to paint this painting. And I was right. I have gone through a roller coaster of feelings, activities, work, and mental ping pong. I had to and I had to come out of those experiences with a new self born before I was able to create this work of art. Each time I create art, whether for myself, or for someone in particular, I bring all of myself to the canvas. It's like each new painting is a door to a room. A new room of myself. Each of these doors has a code and the code unlocks the door and the door opens to a new path in my life waiting to be discovered. The sum of my experiences when I approach that door is my decoder and until I have the experience necessary to open that door, i will not be able to clearly decode its lock. This is a great thing. It is as if each painting asks me, what have you learned so far and it is an ability for me to digest what i have learned thus far, purge the items within myself i no longer need and leave them at the door and take into this new room only the elements of my life that are the most exciting and joyful. I wish this was totally the case, i am still quite human and i sometimes bring along items that no longer actually serve me, but can't quite get rid of yet. Nonetheless, the door to the new me is always available. With practice one day I know I will reach that one door that I open and only only only bring the most beautiful and good with me into that room. Until then I will happily continue finding new ways to decode my own locks. Here's to painting!

shows and shows and so

after a marathon of shows and no rest, tonight i feel like this

and yet i say, the unlived life is not worth exploring.
sure wouldn't mind a vacation though. x

Good Morning!

Good morning! I have 6 mins left to say that. It was a late night for me last night, but i had a list of goals and a lot of motivation. Wicked combo. We have a lot of shows right now and for me the trick is to continuously add creativity to the mix. When it becomes all business and busy work: setting up shows, moving and hanging paintings, organizing the studio, putting finishing touches on paintings, sending invitations and hosting or attending parties, I find sometimes that two weeks will have gone by and I haven't painted! I of course, start to implode and the once beautiful world, turns dark.

For me being creative is to be able to express myself. This is crucial. I take in so much. I almost inhale the energy around me, the people, the events the feelings. Moments have their blueprints and they tend to leave certain impressions on me and it is important for me to translate these out of my body. Basically, I will store emotions until I have a place to put them. I have this theory that the human body can house only a certain amount of experiences. When we reach our capacity nothing more can get in. That is why it is important to release old energy and experiences - to simply make room for new ones and to grow. For me, my ideal way to rid of these old experiences is to put them somewhere. That somewhere is my art. Which, for me, is so wonderful because sometimes an experience will occur and I am not even sure how it is being digested. When I paint out the emotional elements, i get to see it. i get to see what this event really meant to me. not just the way it appeared to be, but , but how i processed it. whether the experience is good or bad no longer matters, it is now healthy and transformed because it is out of me.

Anyway with all that being said, i have to remind myself of the importance of this. I can easily get caught up in the business side of the work and forget that familiar feeling of relief and satisfaction of creating, which brought me here in the first place. So last night..er um..5am this morning I had just finished adding pages and uploading my website and i looked over at this unfinished area of my canvas that was calling to me. My head was heavy and I could have crawled into bed, but i knew I had to finish that part. and i did. I knew that if I did, I would feel better. Feel. Better. Feel. Better. And i did. And then I realized I could have painted all morning...funny. Here is the section of the painting from this morning. Enjoy. x

2:22 perhaps?

how long is it going to be before i get my arse painting tonight. well, 2:19 am sounds like a fine time to really really really start thinking about it. oh, even the things we love to do sometimes take motivation. x

An Everyday Portal

Today, while joe ran errands, I waited for him outside of his various locations wanting to absorb as much sun as chicago could offer. At the first location I honestly stood there thinking, um ok, I am standing here now what? As if I needed some sort of activity to validate myself being standing there without purpose. Then I saw something. I saw a tiny garden, planted by the city. It was so simple, green leafy surroundings, red plants, yellow-green bushes, light green stalks with off white blooms still in their cocoons. One flower in all of this had bloomed. Fully. It was like the first solider surveying the area, making sure it was safe for the others to come out. And as I stood there, tiny details started appearing everywhere. The depth of the veins on the plants, the variations of the colors of the earth, the rainbow of greens, the sharp lines of the leaves, the soft wrinkles of that first bloom. I walk down this street all the time, how many times have i passed this garden of beauty and ignored its visual gifts. How often do I skim over the beauty which simple strolls have to offer? Often, I imagine. I actually had my sketchbook with me, which is quite rare, unfortunately, and i started to sketch this garden. The more I sketched, the more I saw. Honestly, it was so beautiful. I felt so blessed to have had to stop there. Suddenly I began to notice more things, the people who passed by (none really glancing at that garden, by the way), the sounds of their voices, the bells on the collars of dogs, the babies in the strollers, the cacophony of the traffic - all of a sudden everything became so vibrant. It was like a portal in a new universe, right there, and available to me every day. The more you see, the more you see. The more I saw the beauty of that corner, i started to see beauty and richness everywhere else we walked. Today was a gift. There is such a wealth to receive in the simple details of every moment. I hope to remember this more often, its' so easy to get caught up in the day to day walk in life, I can easily forget the beauty of each step.

prayers

Some people go to church every single day. That is amazing to me. Their sinless souls cleansed each day by a whisper in a darkened confession booth. Their faith, their connection so tightly knit, in the mind of this devoted disciple, is there any doubt that surely heaven, or or some peace like it, awaits their departure from this mortal coil?

There is no confession booth waiting to cleanse me. My sin rests in my own hands. My church is my canvas. My prayers are my brush strokes, my chosen colors outline my confessions and my tears are the drips on heavily stained alters. I confess that I have not been to church in many days and the weight of it is so heavy that it alters all types of normal activity. I feel closeted, chaotic, unavailable even to my own self. So far removed do I feel, that I wonder if my church will even remember my name, hear my confessions or allow me to pray? So, in a humble moment of genuflection i pick up the brush i left drying for too many days, stand in front of my canvas and try to find the place on the path where I stopped praying. There is a silent verse waiting to be recited and, if i allow it, a voice, maybe some prayer from a distant part of me, will be heard. and answered.