Self Portrait in Egyptian Cat Gear

Self Portrait in Egyptian Cat Gear, 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas

We interrupt our ongoing creature feature for a creature of a different kind.  

I woke up one morning a while back with the bright idea that I should do a self portrait to replace the one I've used for years on my art websites.  Like many of my brainwaves, it turned out to be rather unruly. 

My history of self-portraiture is neither extensive nor distinguished.  I've attempted few and kept only one.  Getting a likeness with my limited drawing skills seemed an insurmountable hurdle for many years, and I always thought it was a fluke that I got one to actually look like me.

But my drawing has improved, so I decided to have another try, and proceeded to beat my brains out for a couple of weeks producing one hideous image after the other.   

I really do draw better now than I did 20 years ago, so I don't think that was the problem; I've produced enough likenesses of other people.  I think the problem was in seeing myself.  

Twenty years ago, by definition I looked better than I do now, by the standards of our youth-obsessed culture which I am as brainwashed by as the next person.  I'm horrified at times by an inadvertent glimpse of myself in a shop window or mirror in harsh light, or from an unfortunate angle, or in almost any photo -- who is that old hag, anyway? 

Some women look great at any age.  Alas, I am not one of them.  Women who age well tend to be tall and really skinny, with fabulous bone structure and generous mouths, which I do not have.  Think of Jane Birkin, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Lauren Hutton, and numerous models from the 60's who are currently enjoying a resurgence of popularity in the fashion press.  

My inability to produce a creditable self-portrait now, I think, is because when I look at myself in my (ill-lit) bedroom mirror, I see the same face I've seen since I was a teenager.  I see my face every day, and changes happen imperceptibly over time.  

It's a trick, one of the few kind ones Nature plays on old folks.  After all, you feel just the same as you ever did on the inside (I'm not talking about aches and pains, but of personality, character), so it seems completely natural that the same person should continue looking back at you over the years.  

Who knows, maybe among all those attempts I made, I actually did get a likeness or two, and found them too unacceptable to reconcile with my own image.  

Thus, my solution to this dilemma:  Voila, boys and girls, my new self portrait!  Regard it and weep.  

What can I say? It feels as much "the real me" as anything else these days.   

Feline - Creature Feature

Feline, 8 x 8 inches, acrylic on canvas

Another creature, this one an indeterminate feline.  Somebody tactlessly inquired if it was a cat or a dog, and it's a cat.  I painted it so I get to say.  Drawn from memory/imagination.  It could be a wild cat, a house cat, or a dream kitty.  

It's got the primitive look I aspire to these days, and I like the colors.  

Sometimes I feel limited painting such small pieces, but given the expense of sending things from here, it's really my only option at the moment.  

Oddly, this image on the screen looks to me like it would be of a much larger picture.  Maybe it's something about the scale of figure to ground?  Or maybe it's the stocky, muscular look of the cat.  A mystery.  

Pink Coyote - Creature Feature

Pink Coyote, 8x8 inches, acrylic on paper

Speaking of coyotes, here's a pink one.  Despite using a reference photo to draw this, it still came out with that primitive look I'm so enamored of these days.  I must have been in a really devil-may-care mood, to paint it on watercolor paper.  I also omitted to leave a border around it, which is going to make for display problems. 

I like his hungry, slinky look, at once furtive and defiant.  I regularly used to meet coyotes when walking or pedaling along the Santa Cruz River when I lived in Tucson, and always took it as a lucky omen.  Lucky for me, not for them, the poor creatures are losing habitat by the minute to the uncontrolled development ravaging that beautiful, fragile Sonoran desert region.  

Tyger, Tyger - Creature Feature

Tyger, Tyger, 8x8 inches, acrylic on canvas

Another critter.  I really like this guy, he has a spontaneous, primitive quality that I'm always trying for when I paint, but which all too often proves elusive.  Maybe the fact that I painted him in December, whilst half-freezing to death in my drafty workspace, precluded any temptation to overwork the piece.  

It probably also helped that I drew it without use of any reference, except for a quick check on the internet on the shape of the ears:  I thought they were roundish, but could I be sure?  No.  Like many essentially untrained artists, my visual memory sucks.  Maybe that's the secret, to draw from memory/imagination, but I wonder if it would work out so well with animals less familiar than cats; I've lived with cats for many years and sketch them endlessly.   I have no such intimacy with coyotes, say, however much I admire them.  

Whatever the difficulties, I do think working this way is one of the more promising lines of inquiry I've happened on in a long time.  It feels exciting, and that's one feeling I'm always ready to go chasing after.  

Creature Feature - Blue Bear

Blue Bear, 8x8 inches, Acrylic on Canvas

This bear turned out to be a harbinger of more critters to come.  I liked it right away, not least because it's one of those rare pictures that happened quickly and without thinking.  Thinking usually screws things up, I start second-guessing myself and end up overworking the thing.  

I identify with bears:  I hibernate in winter too.  My earliest imaginary friend in childhood was a bear called Rupert.  I've kept a small hoard of bear icons through countless moves in an otherwise tchotchke-free house.  Maybe my subconscious was trying out some sympathetic magic with this picture, hoping that like Mr. Bear, I'd emerge from my cave again in a not-too-distant spring.

Winter is for Watercolors

Kitchen Corner, Sonora
5 x 8-1/2 inches, watercolor on paper, NFS

..... and drawing, and scrolling through old photos on the computer, and anything I can do sitting in front of the feeble output of the space heater.  The door to my studio the room where I paint is firmly shut against the brisk east winds blowing off Lake Chapala and straight through my leaky windows.  Freezing in Paradise!

The dreaded season is upon us.  For me, the winter holidays are always a time to be endured.  But even they pale in comparison to the cold.  Here, at 5000 feet elevation, it begins in November, and lasts through mid-February.  Outdoors it's fine, you can walk around in a light jacket; it's the houses that are cold.  Mexican houses are of masonry construction, and leak like sieves.  Most are dark and gloomy, especially in downstairs rooms.  A day in which the temperature gets over 66 F inside is a Good Day around here in winter.

The closed door to my workroom reproaches me.  (And it must be horrible Feng Shui.  I worry about these things.)  But I can no longer manage to stand for hours in a 62-degree room with a wet paper towel in my hand. 

And so I do watercolors.  I've played with them for years, but the last few winters they've become an annual ritual.  My watercolors are crude and amateurish, but I love them.  They save me from despair while fighting hypothermia three months of the year.

Because it's winter and I'm holed up in the house hibernating, I often paint my immediate surroundings from life in watercolor, which gives them an intimate, diary-like quality.  Subjects I've never had much luck with in oil or acrylic, like interiors, for some reason yield to watercolor.

My Kitchen Door, Sonora
8-1/2 x 5 inches, watercolor on paper, NFS

I work in front of the computer, (and the heater).  It's a bit crowded, what with the mouse,  keyboard, water glasses and paints and all, but it's worth it because it's the only warm spot in the house.

I do my watercolors in the same sketch pads I use for drawing.  I've remained loyal to Reeves's sets of 12 pan colors, which I first found at a Hobby Lobby in New Mexico.  I tried some colors in tubes, and liked their richer colors, but found I'd become addicted to the convenience and portability of the cakes.  (I always take watercolor gear on trips, although I don't always use it.)  I've collected a few brushes for the cause.

For a while I thought I might sell them, and started using real watercolor paper, but it took all the fun out of it.  I've given a couple to friends, but mostly I prefer to hoard them all for myself.  They're a private, kind of guilty pleasure, a comfort and a consolation, a small spark of light in the endless gloom of the season.