I didn’t get as many paintings done as I would have liked this year, but since I was sick in September and most of October, I still feel like I did enough. I like putting together end of the year lists and collections, because I can look back and see that I actually added to the creative spirit of the world, even if some days and weeks I didn’t get anything done.
We live in a culture that is very production oriented, and I like to make goals and schedules, but often as not, life interferes. The arts and creativity don’t work that way anyway. As I look back over the year and the problems and strife we’ve all had to deal with, it’s amazing anything was created at all. But creatives keep creating, opening our eyes, inspiring us, and reminding us of beauty, individuality, and hope. Creative work is always hopeful, it’s an investment in the future, even it’s only in our own small life. A schedule, a practice, is a good thing, but we have to be flexible when life doesn’t allow us to stay rigidly in our schedule. And part of the creative process is just thinking about things, looking at things, and processing things.
This year, I started out by making gift paintings for the people who support me on Patreon. I was enchanted by moonflowers, so I did a small series of paintings of them.
Moonflowers in Nandina Bush
I did two portraits this year, both of Memphis creatives who have passed away:
Etheridge Knight, Memphis Poet, Teacher and inspiration to generations
Lou Bond, one of the few acoustic musicians recorded by Stax records, 1945-2013
My biggest painting this year, 30×40″, was on our obsession with new devices, our ignorance about cyber-trash, and about conflict metals:
Mandusa
I also painted 3 more pieces for my Look Closer: Disability and Sensuality series:
The Color of Air
Ever After
She Unlocked her Door
So, a good collection for 2021, I think. What do you think?
I feel like I’m growing with each painting. And I so appreciate your support and thank you for following my blog. I have added some of these paintings to my Redbubble print shop (see link below) if you’d like to get cards or copies of them.
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Thanks for reading my blog. Feel free to share it, if you’d like.
This blog is brought to you by the generosity of people who support me on Patreon , buy my art, and who support me in so many different ways.
If you’d like to make a one time donation, you can do so at paypal
Cards and prints on some of my art is available on Redbubble.
You can subscribe to this blog by email in the link below this post.
If you find a typo, let me know, and I’ll send you a postcard.
I started this painting when the ginkgo trees turned gold. I wanted a simple celebration of yellow leaves and I painted the whole canvas different shades of yellow, then squirted the paint with water to get a kind of feathered textured. I planned to paint in the leaves on top of that, just a rain of ginkgoes and a few maple leaves. I planned a relatively precise representation of the leaves, but the feathery texture I imagined didn’t happen, all the yellows leveled out into each other.
Then I started sketching a woman in the right corner. Precision flew away and everything went intuitive. I followed no particular plan, but I worked with the colors and autumn and ideas about aging.
Leaves have the colors that we see in the fall all summer long, but green is dominant, because the leaves are making chlorophyll. When the days begin to get shorter, they stop making chlorophyll and the green recedes, and the colors of other elements are revealed.
This thought kept me company as I worked on this painting – and all the color and pain and history we carry with us as we age.
Her Secret Colors, by Joy Murray, 20×24″, acrylic on stretched canvas
Her Secret Colors detail
Her Secret Colors, detail
What do you think?
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Thanks for reading my blog. Feel free to share it, if you’d like.
This blog is brought to you by the generosity of people who support me on Patreon , buy my art, and who support me in so many different ways.
If you’d like to make a one time donation, you can do so at paypal
Cards and prints on some of my art is available on Redbubble.
You can subscribe to this blog by email in the link below this post.
If you find a typo, let me know, and I’ll send you a postcard.
I didn’t paint anything in September and for about half of October. I feel like it’s been a longer time than that, though. I think when I’m not painting or writing or creating in some way, time seems to expand. Well, it expands and contracts at the same time: days go on forever and speed by with a whooshing noise (thank you Douglas Adams).
I was depleted for many reasons, and I couldn’t get my creative mojo back. I began to play a caricature of myself. I thought, what if after all these years, I just became a person with no creative goals? What if like most other people, I just existed, lived, and enjoyed the creativity of others? I’d still love the arts, but I could not have goals, I could just take care of myself, see my friends and family, and let all those beautiful troubled goals fly away.
Years ago, when I was in college and writing poetry, I got to meet the poet W. S. Merwin. I asked him how do you know if you’re a poet? At the time (and perhaps through my whole life), I worried I was faking and any insight I had into the arts was a fluke. He said, “Try to quit.” As my life went by, I changed art forms, but I didn’t quit. I had dry spells and blocks, but it’s always been my goal to get back into my creative flow.
This recent plan to quit only held for about 4 weeks. Then I started sketching a little. Then I started watching an open studio presentation by Gwenn Seemel. She’s working on a series on Mental Health in 2 one hour long live sessions per week on a platform called Twith.tv. One session is Monday 7-8 p.m. Eastern Time, the other is Thursday, Noon to 1p.m., ET. She paints live, and those watching can type in comments and questions. It’s fascinating to see how she makes decisions, what she changes in compositions, and what she conveys through her colorful style.
At first, I just watched and commented. Then I started sketching. Then I started painting. By watching Gwenn and seeing her ideas take shape, listening to her talk frankly about mental health during the pandemic and about a wide range of other subjects, I couldn’t not create anymore.
I felt rusty and like I’d lost some of my skills, but I have to say, I’d forgotten what a pleasure painting is. And what a great pain reliever creating is. I don’t notice pain as much while I’m working. And if I am hurting at night, I can re-focus my mind on what I think I should do next with my painting, and it takes my attention away from the pain. It’s still there, but it’s in the background.
Before the pandemic isolated us all, I was looking for some kind of art partner, someone who’d meet with me regularly, share the studio or go to a coffee house with me, and talk about art. Some one to help me stay on track, and to have accountability with. Showing up to watch Gwenn create her incredible art has been a way for me to get a similar kind of structure. And thus a creative practice has started again for me, and I was not able to quit.
I started by sketching moths — sphinx, hawk, and hummingbird moths. I was on the phone on the porch one evening, with a person who talks a lot. When the conversation ended it was dark. I was going inside when I heard the distinct buzzing sound of what I thought was a hummingbird, but it was a huge moth pollinating my moon flowers. It flew from flower to flower, a blur, hovering above each bloom. I tried to photograph it but it was too fast. And then it was gone.
I’ve seen one once again since then, but to identify it I had to get on the internet and look in my Butterfly and Moth identification book. At first I was sketching very carefully, trying to get an accurate, realistic picture of the Carolina Spinx and the Pink Spotted Hawkmoth, the two most likely to be in my area. But I let go after awhile, stopped looking at pictures and used memory and imagination to come up with the painting.
It begins
Queen Night Pollinator by Joy Murray, 8×10″ acrylic paint on stretched canvas
I also started one of my 5×7″ faces for my “It’s Written All Over Your Face,” series. I’m working on small pieces while I watch and listen and talk to Gwenn, because of the space I need to set up the computer on my painting table. (I also work on them when I’m not watching.)
This one didn’t come together as I’d hoped, I thought the colors and didn’t blend well enough, and I thought the stars and comet on the face threw it off balance, so I’ve painted it back to a blank canvas and will start over. This started as just a face, as they usually do, with lots of color, but then it became about the debate on Critical Race Theory, which is so troubling and infuriating.
During Gwenn’s Live Open Studio, we talked about the forgiving nature of acrylic paint. During the conversation I came up with a way of coping better with the need to repaint so much of time: The paint forgives me. And the paint stays there, behind the correction, supporting the change. So layers are now even more important to me. Mistakes are layers, adding to, holding up the final image.
Talking with others who are kind and generous adds so much to my internal conversation.
Lastly, I’m working on a tree on 20×24″ stretched canvas. I’m splashing and twirling around in color. I’m adding in metallic colors and having fun. It’s a tree of exuberance so far. My studio is in my bedroom, so it’s nice to wake up and see that this tree has grown a bit more each day.
last week the tree was plantedThis week it continues to grow
When I began blogging, almost 15 years ago, I titled the blog Chronically Inspired, on using the arts to help manage chronic illness, aging and mental health. The blog has gone through many iterations since then. Recently, I thought about changing the the subtitle of my blog to art*stories*disabled life, but changed my mind. Life itself includes disability, mobility aids, mental health problems, mental health support. We’re all broken in some way as we make our way through this confusing and often scary world. But there is love, and there is healing. When we forgive the broken parts and incorporate them into our lives, they give us texture and add unexpected color to our lives.
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Thanks for reading my blog. Feel free to share it, if you’d like.
This blog is brought to you by the generosity of people who support me on Patreon , buy my art, and who support me in so many different ways.
If you’d like to make a one time donation, you can do so at paypal
Cards and prints on some of my art is available on Redbubble.
You can subscribe to this blog by email in the link below this post.
If you find a typo, let me know, and I’ll send you a postcard.
The morning glory vine is dying and yet it’s blooming more than ever
The night before my 61st birthday, I got sick. I got a kind of stomach flu, usually a 24 hour sort of illness that dragged on for days. I had meds to keep me from getting dehydrated, but I couldn’t eat for several days. I was very weak and unstable. Somewhere in the midst of the brain fog, I knew I shouldn’t be entirely on my own. But I didn’t have any idea how to ask for help. So I slept a lot. And slowly I got better. But I didn’t bounce back. I still feel like parts of my brain are offline.
Usually after an illness, I get a burst of energy, but it didn’t happen this time. In fact, I was ready to check out assisted living situations. And I did. They were all too expensive. And I’m afraid if I get into a subsidized facility, if we have another lockdown, I’ll be totally isolated from my friends and family. So now I’m beginning the process of getting some at home assistance.
I talked to a few friends about it and they were so kind and generous to me. Lots of helpful advice and offers of support. They will help me navigate into the next phase of my life, which I think may have started before I got sick, I just didn’t notice it.
There’s always been this force inside me that prodded me forward to goals. I’m not one to sit inside myself too long without coming up with a project to keep me afloat. Creativity has always been my life line. I’ve changed goals a million times, and necessarily met them, but I always wanted to make things — stories, fabric art, art. Oh art, so flexible and infinite in it’s variety, so many shiny heights to aspire to, so many golden paths to wander my way out of my struggles with my body.
But this time, the thought of getting back to my creative work exhausted me. A 20×24″ canvas seems huge. The way I tend to the paint and brushes, the cleaning and mixing rituals, none of that holds the charm it did. It feels strange, but I’m not sure I’m going to cling to my work the same way that I did before. The work is not work, should not be work, but a sublime journey, with difficulties, for sure, but it’s a way up and out of the challenges of mortality. To think in color, to capture a vision, an image — to tell a story — it’s a moment of transcendence. Of joy. But it’s hard, too. It feels quite difficult now.
While I recovered from the worst of my illness, but was still sick, I wrote in my journal about the frustration of life in pain, of all the roads in my life that have lead to weakness, but within that song of despair, I kept asking is there a way of finding joy. Both a centering emotion and my name. I don’t want the illness to take my identity, my joy.
Then I felt a shift, thinking how fortunate I am to be settling into this new state of limits, when actually, a limitless world is still available to me. Media technology may be a mixed blessing, but it allows me easy access to the entire world. I can see the whole of the planet through the window of my computer, my reading device, my phone, even. I can go places that, even if I were healthy, I could never get to. I started watching travel videos. Let me see the scope of this blue planet before I leave it.
I can text friends. I can call for help in the middle of the night. I’m not alone. I just have to train myself to remember that and ask for help.
I keep choosing life. It’s a sad old world, and so beautiful. So full of magic. A friend came over and we crossed my street to watch chimney swifts do their amazing dance as they descend into an old brick chimney for these September and October nights. There’s a big pipework project on my street that’s developed to the point where it’s impossible to get across without walking a block over, where there’s a break in construction. There are a couple of men living rough in that little park now, and I’m still in my wobbly loaner wheelchair, so I don’t feel safe going across the street on my own. (The men are obnoxious at times, but mostly stay to themselves.)
I can see the swifts from my porch, but getting closer, I see the dance so much more clearly. Sometimes, at dusk, the birds seem to just pop out of sky. It’s clear sky, then a full flock of 50 birds fly in and start circling the chimney, on or two dropping in. It’s a pleasure to watch, and also to hear the little gasps of delight from my friend. The swifts fly in a circle so big they disappear and reappear again until they all finally make it into their night shelter, sleeping with their claws clutching the walls, hanging on for dear life.
Dear life. I want to sketch that one day soon. Not today. But soon.
Self Portrait 2016
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Thanks for reading my blog. Feel free to share it, if you’d like.
This blog is brought to you by the generosity of people who support me on Patreon , buy my art, and who support me in so many different ways.
If you’d like to make a one time donation, you can do so at paypal
Cards and prints on some of my art is available on Redbubble.
You can subscribe to this blog by email in the link below this post.
If you find a typo, let me know, and I’ll send you a postcard.
joy murray art~stories~life 