Art by John Sexton

 

 

 

Tall Ships with Shortened Sail

Round House

Barton Corner

Departure

Whitby Abbey

Staithes Harbor

Racing Yachts

Blowing Palms

Maybe I have exhausted my muse, or found the bottle empty when I looked for creative juices.

 

I have been painting a great deal lately. It seems to keep me sane. I can put on some music set up my kit and for a while I am barely aware of where and when I am stuck. Few days pass w/o my having spent at least a couple hours doing something with visual art, be it actually painting or sketching ideas and working out the angles and proportions. Most of the finished paintings only accomplish my not being able to recycle the paper (as if recycling was something even available to Florida death row inmates) due to the acrylic being smeared on it, but an occasional gem slips through and I get something I am really proud of. That happened Sunday. I started a sketch Saturday night after a neighbor commissioned a tiger. Well hypothetically commissioned since, “Inmates shall never exchange any items of value.” In a stroke of luck, there was a nature program featuring big cats on PBS that evening so I was able to hit the freeze button to stop an image to source my painting from.

 

I want to be clear here, I am not a wildlife artist. I have done a few things but it’s just not my forte. However this just went very well from the start. My pencil seemed to know how to draw the image with virtually no need for the eraser. The background fell onto the paper and even my unskilled hand couldn’t screw it up. Then the cat…I don’t know how to adequately describe it. I should have paid more attention in those poetry classes I took so long ago. Everything just worked. the face, the eyes, the colors. I could almost feel the softness of the fur. When I backed away to about six feel I found I had even managed to capture a shimmering glow on the fur that hi-lighted the underlying musculature. I don’t know how it happened since the final product was beyond my meagre abilities but the image was near perfect. I always try to get an image to give the viewer a sense of experiencing the image instead of just seeing it and the tiger did just that, not just to me but also the few others I showed it to before delivering it to an overjoyed (imaginary, remember that never exchange thing) customer.

 

I did not want to part with it but had already committed so it is gone. While I sit with a sense of loss I ponder thoughts of how so very often when I finish a painting I don’t want to send it out and just keep it around for my own pleasure. Until last week I wondered if that was some strange self-obsession I have but I read a biography of James Whistler and learned he often kept finished commissioned works so long the customers were forced to start legal proceedings. One portrait he was still entering into shows seven years after finishing and receiving payment in full. Whatever you call that feeling was worse with this one. I want it back!

 

This is the fifth day now that I haven’t been able to get started on the next project. My living situation is such that I cannot leave my materials and accoutrements out except on the weekends and a few hours in the evenings. We are subject to Gestapo-esque cell inspections (The purpose seemingly to make sure everyone is properly oppressed.) which can pop up throughout the week with only five minutes notice. All personal property must be stowed inside a foot locker and there are a few other requirement but not pertinent to this issue. This has an inconvenient limiting effect on my art work but I have developed a system of quickly storing my paints, brushes, blotter pad and so forth. I haven’t unpacked since Monday morning, five days ago.

 

I never can remember which side of the brain is creative and which side is whatever the other side is but the organizational, management side is telling me I should be working. Listing reasons (rationalising?) why it is important-“Your friends and family look forward to getting these,” “It has such therapeutic value,” “You are just being lazy,”–that I paint. The other side doesn’t reply but merely hums the melody of an earworming song that I can’t write the title lest it invade my conscious mind. Management side computes the amount of time until the next meal is delivered. Other side hums’ “Picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine tree and marmalade skys mmm mmmmm….” Management makes a quick inventory of paint on hand. Hums, “mmmmmm ‘calls you you answer quite slowly, mmmmm mmmm kaleidoscope eyes,”

 

Okay, where do I go from here and how do I get there? I tend not to be a planner but more intuitive (impulsive?) than analogical by nature so when I look inward for guidance all I seem to hear is “….hmmmmm follow her down to a bridge, hmm. hmmmm hmmmmmm rocking horse people hmmmm…”

 

If anyone has recommendations to combat this or just has different song lyrics to derail the earworm, you know where to find me.