It’s Saturday afternoon and the week is winding down this week… this really wonderful week. I’m so happy to have had this experience, and I’m sure everyone else who is here feels the same way.  I’ve gone around and taken pictures of everyone in their studios.  Perhaps I’ll make some kind of photo collage.

I was completely open when I came here; I didn’t have a plan and brought only blank paper and blank canvases.  I think that worked out to a good thing because it made me completely open to experimentation.  Yesterday afternoon when I was finishing “Awakening,” the one with the rainbow hair and the overt symbolism, I had an epiphany; I felt like I I was free and expressive.  At that point, a few people came by said that they really liked it.

This gave me such a feeling of affirmation… like I really was in touch with something inside of me.

Later, I decided to use a new medium, a watercolor canvas, with the geometric painting I’ve been working on.  I had begun that one very very methodically, and some of it had to do with the readings I’ve been doing on visual intelligence and the way the eye sees and interprets certain objects.

Part of my planning and process was the study of it all.  This, in turn, opened a cognitive door that has brought me in touch with my own process, which tends to break down into a lot of planning and investigating various processes, such as photographing, looking, touching, reading, studying…  all the various sensory approaches I can use to communicate the topic and environment of the painting.

Usually it’s an emotion or a feeling.  It can be quite tricky sometimes, but I now feel that, at least, I’ve identified the process.  An example of this happened when I was working on this geometric painting.  I had begun with the portion I’d planned out methodically in advance, but new ideas began to appear and overwrite what I’d planned to do with each section.  The painting was interacting with me.  It was like being in a Jazz dance with each new move flowing organically from what had come before, but in a living, dynamic and unexpected pattern.

I’m looking forward to trying this with an entirely new image.  Now, that it’s happening there is so much potential and I want to do something different with it.

Of course, I still have the rainbow hair one to finish; I’ll always see it as a treasure because of what it gave me.

I’m going to top off this week by getting a massage.  I noticed one of my studiomates this afternoon strongly resembled toffee in the warm sun.  When I asked her about it, she told me our life model is also a masseuse who is offering a special price to the Vermont Studio Week people.

That is just too good to pass up.

Main Street Johnson, VT

I’ll get the massage, finish up my painting tonight, drop in at the readings being done by the literary arts people, and tomorrow is Open Studio… then back to the real world.