Spending Time
SGHolland muses about dots..
These days, in mid 2020, the days are large, as if magnified, by their simplicity.
We are free to stop being in a hurry, unless we are fighting a war of some sort.
As I stop to think about it — the isolation, the heavy news, the real
death count of this corona-virus war, the dangerous uprisings about justice in a hair-raising election year, potent, angry protests — all of this is really heavy to bear day after day.
~~~~~~~~~~~But if we can find a plus in this heavy time, we might discover that we are having a sort of re-visitation of our carefree baby years! Time to spend! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once the tasks and chores are done, and the news heard, we have unusual hours free of “shoulds and musts” in our quarantined homes.
Today, for me, I am finally naming my current experimental watercolor —
far from done, but the painting coaches me as drawing might grow under the hands of a three year old child coloring on a piece of fragile paper.
It seemed appropriate to spend time dot by dot.
Sometimes I get a ‘dud’ experiment and save it in case I have a day like this.
This paper has already been subjected to water and color and a brush, but it signifies nothing, and so nothing is required of it but to be either re-used as if it were the backdrop for some sort of drama, or thrown out.
Reusing is what I’m doing today. Inserting dot by dot with pretty much primary colors.
Pointillism is what the art historians call this sort of mark-making. A way of painting springing forth at the end of the Impressionist Movement, it was, famously, a choice of approach tried and ACED by Seurat, and a whole bunch of other artists who are my favorites, really.
I suppose The Starry Night by Van Gogh is the most recent impressionist work I’ve looked at and what intrigues me in his approach is the directional placement of the rows of dots. They make the stars and the planets seem to literally spin!
There is no way I can compare my doodley efforts this day with The Starry Night masterpiece by Vincent Van Gogh. But what if I tried making spinning objects of many dots on a discarded piece of paper. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
It seems appropriate in the unscheduled day I am spending to just TRY it.
My attempt above is not “finished” in so many ways, including excellence.
But it is teaching me. I am sure what I am trying today will inform future paintings of mine. Some of them might even be “good.”
And my mind is on spirals on paper, rather than frightening things I keep hearing and seeing, even living, based on the news from the rest of the world.
I need no mask here, by myself in the studio.
~~~~~~~~~~~Making dots seems a good and useful way to spend time. The beginning of a learning curve!~~~
Copyright 2020, SGHolland , for The Story Hall
