change

Life is very simple when I am in Mexico.
My days are pared down and I begin to think it might be possible to change my work.
I begin to think "what if I stopped doing what I usually do?"

"Strip everything away to the minimum. 

 When you start over, leave only what is truly needed."

Gertrude Stein

and it rains

dreaming 

Q  what is the most important thing?

A  time,   there isn't enough

Q  what is the difference between thinking and feeling?

A  i don't know

a recent dream

I made paintings and they were beautiful,
and I wrote a poem along the bottom of them
and bound them all into a book

then I started over
and dreamed some more

in the continuing dream
I photographed the beautiful large wide country field of my childhood
and each photo came quickly and easily

that dream field from my childhood was beautiful
In my dream, the seasons flew by
and I took photos

fresh green spring
dark green summer with daisy and buttercup dots
tan brown sparse autumn with red leaves
amazing vistas

and I bound them into a book

last week I was listening to CBC
and learned that the Quaker community
is comfortable with uncertainty
because they gather and sit in silence.


Q  what do you believe?
A  I don't know

They figure out what they believe by being silent.

I want to work from my heart trusting my self

my hands are the way to let my heart out

aili with lady bug

I think about Paterson Ewen and his work
He used power tools to carve large images inspired by the power and wonder of nature

judith evelyn grandmom with maia

and his images feel like something
as much as they look like something

more on the edge between what we know
and what is unknowable

and it rains

sincerely

I'm obsessed with the stitching I'm doing these days.
I fall into it.
I need to hold myself back from doing it all day.
Diagonal marks with wool thread,
alternating straight lines with curved,
I consciously attempt to make an eye bending experience.

I want to reach
a place of texture
that is untethered to conscious thought
like a dream is

like when you close your eyes
and retreat into your own body
and slow way down

"I want to get to non art.
non geometreic, non anthromorphic, non-notthing.
Another kind.  Another vision.  Another sort.
From a totally other reference point.  Is it possible?"
Eva Hesse

this stitching has driven me further into solitude

I feel guided by something ...

its out of my hands

The piece I'm working on is the second daily practice.  The other two are shown above (their backs)
(see here for story)  (also here )

I'm also reading old journals again

and then wrapping them gently with wool cloth, stitching them shut

I read today that:
interiority
reflexivity
craft
sincerity
are what makes Canadian art what it is.

"Something in me loves works of art that have within them the sense that they have only just survived their making.  In the end, you shouldn't know what is fiction and what is not. " Robert Frank

tangled brain

I had this small red journal at the cottage.
Began it July 12 in Liverpool, and finished it August 18 at the family cottage.

but since I stayed at the cottage for another eleven days,
I had to find spaces in that little red book to keep my thoughts and sketches.

It became so crowded and tangled in there that I couldn't think.

I could not think!
and thought is the 6th sense, Boetti says.

My journals encourage the 6th sense in me.
They give me a place to listen to my self but more than that....
They encourage me to think.

 My brain became so tangled when I didn't have enough empty pages.

Louise Bourgeois said this.
I wrote it into the red journal twice.  Once July 24.  Again August 18.

I had written Tracey Emin's comment about solitude on July 19.

Solitude is like a new blank journal for me.
It gives me space to think.