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2003-09-15 @ 11:52 p.m. |
| Well, after attending the big hippy shindig yesterday, I signed up for an art class at a local hippy place starting in October. I'll be taking Expressive Painting Circle, which begins with centering and grounding techniques and then will move into spontaneous expression! It also promises that I will be able to translate this into a sense of play and freedom and discover my own intuitive mythological and spiritual aspects and rekindle my innate urge to create. Do we get to sing Kumbaya and drop acid too? I make fun, but these are my people. I'm an artist, and I do enjoy getting together with other creative types and creating shit. If they want to discover their mythological aspects while slopping some paint around on a piece of butcher paper, that their perogative. What ever rings your windchimes, Maddie Peace Wings. I remember last year I took a class called "Discovering Your Self Symbol". On the first night you had to think of something in nature or life that most represented the real you. It was an all female class, and we all sat around looking at pictures in magazines, trying to find ourselves. One perfectionist chick just couldn't decide if she was a rose or a deer. She fretted and sighed and twisted her highlighted bleached blonde hair around on her finger. God forbid, she should make a mistake on something so earthshakingly important. I didn't even have to look through a magazine however. I just knew I was a tornado. All smooth on the outside, all wild and chaotic on the inside and sure to destroy everything in its path. I was actually a little embarrassed when I looked around at every one else. They were all bunnies and kitties and puppies and mine was a dairy queen/mobile home destroying tornado. What I secretly enjoy about these little junior college classes is that I'm usually one of the more talented people in the class. I think I do that on purpose since I don't get much praise in real life. And I do enjoy art and I know I'm good at it. Of course, every art class contains those who say I'm not very good at art or I can't draw. And then there are those so obssessed with making every image perfect they can't even enjoy themselves (I let THAT go a long time ago). And then those who keep saying, "Oh, I made a mistake." Well, in art, there really aren't any mistakes. And sometimes something perceived as a mistake is actually a stroke of brilliance. I do that a lot. It took me a while to get over the fact that I can't draw realistic looking people or buildings. I tried for a long time. I never could get perspectives right. One eye would be bigger than the other. One ear would be higher than the other. I was constantly frustrated, so I finally created my own style. It's a bright colorful, whimsical style. Pictures of alligators in fields of flowers. Snakes in the Garden of Eden. Houses about to be hit with purple and pink tornados with stars coming out of them. I do most of my work in felt pens and pencils. I've yet to pick up a paint brush, so this upcoming class may open new doors. I was talking about framing some of my little drawings recently at Married Guy's house during dinner and his wife offered to cut some mats for my prints, but I'm actually a little embarrassed about letting her see them since she's an accomplished artist. These are literally like cartoons. She draws huge canvas paintings in early Impressionistic style. My pictures are in pencil and measure 4 X 6 1/2. She would just love having more ammo to put me down after I left. To non-artistic people my drawings are fun and colorful, but I could just imagine what she's saying behind my back, snickering at my amateurish attempt to be "artistic". I don't know. I can certainly kick ass in photography though. I was always an excellent photographer growing up. Always had an eye for things. Had my own darkroom. Got better with age. Shot some great show business photos of comedians like Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Bobcat Goldthwait, Rob Schnieder, Will Durst (I discovered one of MY photos featured recently on his national website). One night I had a front row seat at Robin Williams show in San Francisco. This was back in the 1980's. I was shooting pictures with my telephoto lens (200 mm). Suddenly Robin spots me, jumps off stage and grabs my camera and did 10 minutes of improv with it, including a bit where he stuck the lens down his pants and shot off a few rounds (though not really). And he did this great bit, about how this girl at the Photomat would be bored one day, and be looking through the pictures and suddenly come across this one picture of..."a throbbing python of love" (Robin obviously) and would be so overwhelmed she'd have to be revived. It was pretty funny. And what was nice, was that Robin played the rest of the show to me that night. It was really intoxicating. Being artsy takes you many places. So I look forward to "finding" the intuitive mythological aspect of my personality. After all, I've been looking for that damn thing for years. Older Entries |
Lyrics by Lennon/McCartney. All angst copyright by awittykitty |
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