Hug them close whoever they are....

This is oil pastel on card stock. It's rather old. It's also cut out and ready to collage into something else. I do like it all by itself as well.

Had a scare today. Something about a large pickup blocking the view of a crosswalk. Not using that location again, neither for walking or driving.....  Things could have gone differently. Tragically. So glad the outcome was the status quo. 

More drawings, this time a life drawing

This is quite a few years old - something on paper. It might even be from a drawing class at Western Ct State U.  That was several decades ago. Life drawing is term used for drawing from a live model. If you have never tried it - it's really not what you might think. While working you find you are following the relation of line, form, volume, and contours receding into other contours. Really, the model becomes a human landscape or a still-life.

Since that time I've also done clay sculpture from a model during classes with Janice Mauro and with Alexander Shundi, among others.

I am quite behind on my posting.

Gee, I wonder if my blog will get a PG rating now... hmmm.  Looks like a human being. Of course human beings do need parental guidance. At least for a while.... haha.

Painting: Anyone

This is my 501th post on this blog. Woohoo!

Humans hold many kinds of commonality - via inheritance as well as history. We are connected over centuries by the tranmission of handed down culture as well as hand me down genes. We have a common animal nature and energy that expresses itself in countless individual ways. We are many and one. Any one.

The materials here are watercolor pencil and gesso on paper.

Painting: The Riptide Within aka Brain Chemistry

UPDATED WITH NEWER VERSION OF THE PAINTING in Feb 2011

A human being, torn in multiple directions,  struggles but is unable to break free!  To me this is a visual representation of how I felt the greater portion of my early adult life: caught in a subtext of hormonal machenations, fighting overwhelming emotions. It's inspired by the mood swings of my youth... So much of what we are is about brain chemistry and DNA.  Studies of identical twins separated at birth are quite bewildering. Some marry women with the same first name and buy the same style of eyeglasses. Yet nurture and experience alter the brain as well, alter our paths. The brain, once thought immutable rewires itself, its chemistry can change.  So much is still unknown...  This is an oil painting on canvas board. It was begun around 1990 and finished late last year.

In The Museum: on our relationship to art

Our relationship to "art" (visual, literary, musical, theatrical etc) is complex, if we have one that is. Some don't ever look . If they did they might be surprised and find they relate to at least some of what they see. Is there possibility for us in works of art? A vision of  our humanity of our world of beauty or ugliness?  Is there a nobility we aspired to but didn't realize? A tarnished part we hide from everyone?   Are we more alive after facing and acknowledging these odd truths about ourselves? Just asking questions.

This is the first of a batch of works I've finished recently  but have not yet posted. This is an odd one.  It's oil on canvas board.  Below is a very rough sketch of mine on which it is based, though it differs considerably from the sketch. As stated, the visual metaphor here are about our interaction with art our relationship to art.

- Mar  Walker

Painting: one last tweak on Blue Velvet - the cat

What did I change in this painting?  Yes!  The cat didn't fit. No cat I have ever known would sit with its back to two persons as they approached it outside. Most cats would skitishly prepare to run somehow, then look back to see if they were still approaching, stopping if the people involved made a friendly noise. With everything else so delicately poised, it seemed wrong to me to have the cat so solid and seated. So I fixed it. The lines work better now as well with the cat's tail leading to the arm, leading to the faces...  Note the cat above and the cat in the version below.

The original drawing was called Bad Date as I mentioned in an earlier post. As you can see, it was energetic and threatening. Needless to say, the feeling of this painting is a gentle one, and does not follow the sketch. See my earlier post for commentary on that change.

Drawing: the groper

This is an old sketch. I like it though. He is surely a groper - but she doesn't seem to mind and clings to him as they slide. I made the jacket rather too splashy and check out the blue suede shoes! Have always had a visual fascination for dancers of various kinds. There are quite a few sketches of bodies in motion here on the blog.

I was bummed earlier because someone was on the blog looking at the drawing category and I realize only 5 old drawings were properly categorized. There are actually 24 plus drawings on this blog...  I have fixed it and the drawing category now calls up everything it should.

three sisters dance

Though this is based on a family of sisters I know - today, right now, this is how I feel. No matter what I do, I am hemmed in by some imagined necessity.. No matter how I dance I am not doing the right step and meeting with disapproval on every side.

There is a ton of paperwork I am behind on and somehow, despite my efforts and worry I can't seem to do it right.  I forget things. Am beleaguered beyond reality today.

This sketch started in pencil then other odds and ends were used to add color.

Painting: The Competitors, some dancers in conflict

This is an acrylic called Competitors which dates from the days when I was associated with the Connecticut Conservatory of the Performing Arts. Though it was voice I studied there, most of its students were dancers. Before that time, I never really thought about the competitive aspects of dance - I just enjoyed watching it.

In this piece, dancers flair into seeming conflict. Or is it seeming?

And yes, their legs are unnaturally long. Very exaggerated.

Oil Pastel & Watercolor – a little ballet with some smudgy color

This is a mixed media work of mine, created with oil pastel and water colors on paper. I think I may have posted it before - if so, I will add a link to that post. This photo is taken through the glass of the frame, so it looks a bit subdued.

Drawings: two dancers in motion

The figure in motion - that's one thing I am always interested in catching in a drawing... I envisioned these as a matched pair, and lines do seem to go well together.

Digital Paintings: Deep Rest

This is a new painting I did this week in Corel Painter, obviously not realistic, just a whimsical view, a sleeper, curled with her knees drawn up, the whole body cradled in the gardens of earth. Ironically I drank too much coffee in the morning and too much tea in the afternoon and evening yesterday, and had a hard time sleeping last night. So this looks very comfortable to me today....

Tangle – a drawing, a social statement

We view everything through the veil of our own madness...

Though we are together, we are also caught up in our own stuff... which tends to block out what other people are really doing, saying, intending.

 This is a pencil drawing of mine from a few years ago and though the people are near each other, not one actually is looking at any of the others.....  Each has a different angle, and different range of sight, each is facing in a different direction...

patchwork - a crazy life...

I think my life has been something of a patchwork like the colors on this sculpture. It's been an extended juggling event. Still, I have dropped a lot of plates over 5 decades. You can't go back. You have to start from where you are and figure how to go forward with joy. Selah and hi ho!

This is one of my small scale sculptures. It's gessoed, air-dry clay with oil paints on the surface over the gesso. It was not meant to be provocative at all, just a dramatic pose. There is a bit of gloss medium on top of it all as well.

Alien - a poem from Inverse Origami

Alien

This world is humming and busy
but i am alone,
apart,
vapor,
a trick of light.

People chat easily on balmy earth
while I sit condensating,
turning to ice crystals
out here on Neptune.

I try to speak, to make contact
but my protective helmet
takes up too much space
calls attention to itself
with its enormous nest
of convoluted filtration hoses.
The compressor
roars in my ears.

- October 1996

- a poem by Mar Walker

The picture, a custom digital drawing by the poet appeared with the poem in the book..both appear on page 16 of Inverse Origami...

from Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding

--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998

Puzzled Dragon Press

/

Art: intention and meaning involve more than viewer projection

This is a drawing from a live model, made during a college drawing class.

I like this drawing very much, but some who have seen it concluded it was something other than what it is... Two people have said to me that the figure seemed to be engaged in some sort of sexual something. In reality, the live model in class was reading a book which is out of sight from this angle.

Oddly, both persons who objected were conservative christian men, one was a born-againer and the other a catholic knights- of-columbus type. And they were so obviously projecting something out of their own minds onto this scene which was utterly innocent! See what repression breeds!!!!

Point of view, context, getting the whole picture seems relatively important to interpretation. Filling in the blanks with your own stuff, doesn't tell you what the artist was actually thinking.

- Mar  Walker

PS This drawing is on plain white paper - the redish tinge is some odd camera effect from lights at night. I kinda like it like this.

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Sleeping nymph in various forms

This began its life as a sculpture I made in a class with Alex Shundi at Wooster Community Art Center. I later painted it, photographed in an arrangement with dried leaves and flowers.

.Then I took a digital photo, pulled it up into Corel Painter 10.5 where I softened the focus  then added the greenery. In higher resolution version it looks like you are looking through water and the greenery is in the foreground or floating at the surface. I also added some long locks. I do like the result enough to use it as desktop once in a while.

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back to back imps

This is a drawing with pencil, charcol, conte crayon and gesso. I had an actual person in mind, but I was drawing the inner attitude rather than the outer detail. Oddly the person who's back is towards us is also someone who knew the imp in the front. The profile is telling. You know who you are...

Sculpture: seated figures

Both of these greenware sculptures were made in separate classes I took at Wooster Community Art Center a few years ago, one taught by Janice Mauro (may not be the right spelling) and the other by Alexander Shundi. The figure on the right, I took back to the school after it cured and it was fired in the kiln there. It became more or less white in the firing process. It's out on an end table in the living room. The one on the left took a fall here as dry greenware. Limbs flew. The poor guy fell apart. Both were made in classes with a live model.

Life drawing aids the eye

From the Metaphoratorium Gallery

This is a scanned section of a sketch I did during a studio class with a live model. Have taken quite a few of these helpful sessions, one at Western Conn State University, and several each at Weselyan University (in the GLS program), at Wooster Community Art Center, and also at the Housatonic Art League. The models have been different sizes, sexes, ages and races, in various states of clothed and unclothed. When you are trying to understand the relationships of the different parts of the body and how they move - a live model is priceless. I also like to watch dance classes and dance on TV for the same reason.