CMYK cushion front

CMYK cushion front, originally uploaded by rettgrayson.

A new crochet project, finally! Will share more photos soon.

...for those wings to mean everything

The greatest challenge I have when I am working on a new painting seems to be finishing it.  I set myself the unattainable task of creating an image that will somehow, magically, say exactly what I am imagining... and of course that's impossible.

Thank goodness for deadlines... without them, my desk would be littered with unfinished pieces waiting for those perfect last touches.  Right now I'm getting ready for the Toowoomba Grammar Art Show next weekend.  Titles and prices were sent away while the work was still imaginary.  I have a wonderful framer, but I don't want to be always expecting them to do my jobs at the last minute, so the half-finished paintings were taken to the shop for a day visit, to be measured for their frame fitting, then collected again so I could keep working on them.

While I've been procrastinating over paintings, I've been reading of course... and it was wonderful to find comfort in the fact that great writers and poets sometimes struggle to find just the right combinations of words, just as I struggle with colours, lines and shapes.

"I want to think to make real this that I know and can't hold."
William Wharton, Birdy
(this quote is the first thing I have written in several art journals since I was about 18!)

"Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field - but they're all we have."
- Yann Martel, Beatrice and Virgil

"Writers end up writing stories - or rather, stories shadows - and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough.  Nothing the writer can do is ever enough."
- Joy Williams

...and my favourite - this beautiful poem by Anis Mojgani.  I kept going back and reading this...


his coat o how it does shine

he doesn't always know where to go
or what to do

there are fishhooks in his skin
and an accordion from somewhere
that he swears could be moonlight in a white mustache

sometimes he feels like a phony
that he laughs out of clumsiness
that his skeleton doesn't like the sound his heart makes at night
and wishes

to run away

out over the ridges
falling into place amongst the silhouetted woods

the trees all know to grow in the same direction
the rivers
they know these same things

he wants to write something soft and meaningful
he wants to make birds that like the feel of their feathers in the wind
for those wings to mean everything
and to give them to you

from Over the Anvil we Stretch, published by Write Bloody Publishing. Copyright 2008 by Anis Mojgani.

Anyway, for better or worse here they are, finished (I think).

Flight Path II, gouache on Arches 100% cotton rag paper, 200mm x 300mm



Flight Path II (detail)



Festival, gouache on Arches 100% cotton rag paper, 200mm x 300mm



Festival (detail)



I have set sail on a fast mountain



The Calling Under the Breath

 

Through the evening

the mountains approach over the desert

sails from a windless kingdom

 

silence runs through the birds

their shadows freeze

 

where are you

 

where are you where are you

I have set sail on a fast mountain

whose shadow is everywhere

 

W.S. Merwin

(published in The Carrier of Ladders, 1971)

 

 

Poetry and painting again... 

 

I have set sail on a fast mountain... I was in love with this line from the first time I read that beautiful W.S. Merwin poem late last year. It became firmly embedded in my imagination, where it started transforming itself into a painting.

 

Soon after reading it, I was driving one morning and looked in the rear-view mirror to see a most magical sight... low lying cloud was breaking over the mountain range behind me like a huge foamy wave. By the time I could safely pull over, I had missed my opportunity to take a photo, but I came home and googled pictures of these kinds of clouds. How magnificent is this image?

 

Isn't it wonderful how nature gives those of us with over-active imaginations so much material to work with? I imagined constellations of paper boats sailing on those waves of clouds, and this was the result...

  I have set sail on a fast mountain, Loretta Grayson Gouache on Arches 100% cotton paper, 300mm x 500mm 

 

New Found Year

new year, new art journal

It's my favourite time of year again... I love the new year.  So full of ideas, adventures and possibilities waiting to happen.

lighting candles at the closing ceremony, Woodford Folk Festival

 

This is my favourite way to start the year, and has been for a long time - a week at Woodford Folk Festival.  There is such a beautiful energy there.  Following the busy Christmas season, time at the festival with family and friends recharges me, and allows me to launch into the new year with love and enthusiasm... as soon as I manage to catch up on a week of sleep deprivation!

 

In other news - I'm not sure if I posted about this, but last year one of my artworks was accepted to appear on an Avant Card free artcard.  So right now, 10 000 - 15 000 of these cards will be appearing on free postcard stands around the country - I'm pretty excited about this!  I love Avant Card, and often pick up their artcards when I see them.  If you are an emerging artist and would like to see your work on a postcard, you can find more information here.

 

Another exciting thing - I arrived home to find that the number of likers on my facebook page had reached the next hundred - over 700 now!  At every new hundred I have a giveaway, usually one of my prints.  Just for something different this time I have decided to give away one of my vintage map covered coptic-bound journals.  Here are some images of it, and you can find out how to enter the giveaway on my facebook page.

 

While I was making this little book, I was listening to a beautiful new song from Paul Kelly... so it ended up with maps of India and Newfoundland on the covers.  Seems like the perfect giveaway for a brand new year.

 

Love this video with artwork by Lucy Dyson.

 

Hope your new found year is a wonderful and creative one :) 

Etsy update

What a busy month since I last posted here!  Exhibitions, artist markets... lots of opportunities, lovely people and wonderful conversations... it's great to be finishing the year with a feeling of being productive in my creative work, and my head already filling with ideas for next year. 

I now have prints of my latest gouache illustrations available in my etsy shop.  I'm experimenting with a new paper for some of my prints... it's a heavier weight 100% cotton fibre paper, and it's perfect for these illustrations - the prints look just like the originals - so happy with them!  I'm also experimenting with trimming these ones to fit inside a ready made 8x10 frame, and had a little photo shoot this morning - so if you check out the etsy listings you can see what they look like in frames.

Treetops and Weather

 

Whatever they Sing

 

Tiny Forest

 

Wayfarer

City and Fireworks

6pm

Flight Path

 

Also, I've been making coptic bound and hand-painted books - lots of them - for artist markets and custom orders.  I've had some enquiries about whether they will be available online.  Postage is expensive on these non-flat items, particularly when sending them overseas, as Australia Post has recently taken away the under 250g option for parcels.  I'm thinking about how to give my customers best value for money, but in the meantime I will post about available books on my facebook page.

 

 

I couldn't resist keeping the large Wild Things journal, though... a gift to myself for 2013, and it is already home to a collection of words and ideas and sketches... will share the results of those soon :)

from the archives

... the archives of my brain that is.  Although, I imagine it might be more like the library stacks in there... a little bit dusty and smelling of old books.

A friend who was at the exhibition opening the other night, looking at Wayfarer

 

Wayfarer by Loretta Grayson

asked me if I was going back to some of my older ideas/imagery... which was pretty observant, because I definitely was.  The curly clouds and sky from about 6 years ago had been taken out of the archives and dusted off. 

Night Clouds 2 by Loretta Grayson

 

Night Clouds 3 by Loretta Grayson

 

(Incidentally, the colours, hills and cloudy night skies in the above pieces were also re-invented in this one)

 

Flight Path by Loretta Grayson

 It seems the idea of being lost at sea and treading water (or in this case, attempting to navigate my way in a flimsy paper boat) isn't new to my work... although at least now there seems to be less sinking and more soaring/traveling.  This piece is from several years ago... and when I look at it today, I'm pleased I now have more lighthouses in my life (but that's a topic for another painting/post)

 

 

Treading Water by Loretta Grayson

Interestingly, while I knew that Treading Water had influenced Wayfarer, it wasn't till I uploaded it just now that I realised it also contained the original idea for this piece from last year.

 

Small Neat World I  by Loretta Grayson

 

... and then there are the images from other artists, writers and poets that end up in the archives, all mixed in together, and sometimes not catalogued very well.  So sometimes I don't remember them, and when I do, it can be a bit of a shock because it raises that deap-seated fear of accidentally plagiarising.  Like this one, by my friend Karina Devine (who I work with) from a few years ago. This week we were looking at this image of one of her beautiful paintings from a few years back, and it certainly seems that this piece has been stored away by my brain somewhere... my little Wayfarer appears to be sailing the same sea!  (although her little boat looks like it would a much safer and more pleasant vessel to be travelling in)

 

Little House being a Boat by Karina Devine

I'm definitely not the only artist inspired by paper boats and the idea of wanderlust... here's an etsy treasury I made recently. Lots of inspiration here.

wanderlust (an etsy treaury)

 

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Likes the quote "Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World," said the Rat. "And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or me. I've never been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all. Don't ever refer to it again, please."

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Last but not least, there are the words that I keep for future use... I find that I collect words more than sketches in my journals and I often go back to them when I'm looking for inspiration.

 

I was reading Wind in the Willows when I painted Wayfarer, and it's named after the chapter Wayfarers All.  There is a beautiful scene in which Rat meets a sea rat, who recounts wondrous tales of his travels.  Rat returns home in a dazed and hypnotic state, ready to take off on an adventure, and his friend Mole has to hold him down. 

 

I loved this wonderful way of portraying the idea of wanderlust... I sometimes think that if I had wings like the Wind in the Willows swallows I quoted in this post, it would be very hard to keep me in one place.

 

Interestingly, as a cure, Mole encourages Rat to get to work on his poetry...

'It's quite a long time since you did any poetry,' he remarked. 'You might have a try at it this evening, instead of - well, brooding over things so much. I've an idea that you'll feel a lot better when you've got something jotted down - if it's only just the rhymes.'

The Rat pushed the paper away from him wearily, but the discreet Mole took occasion to leave the room, and when he peeped in again some time later, the Rat was absorbed and deaf to the world; alternately scribbling and sucking the top of his pencil. It is true that he sucked a good deal more than he scribbled; but it was joy to the Mole to know that the cure had at least begun.

- Kenneth Grahame. Wind in the Willows

My cure?  I'm not a poet, though I do love to read other people's poetry.  I guess I will keep folding little paper boats with letters to the universe and sending them on their way.  And I will keep absorbing all those beautiful images, sounds and words.

you are worthy

I had a wonderful day at an artist market in Toowoomba last Sunday, part of The Range Arts Festival (wish I lived closer, so I could be attending more events!)

By far the best part of my day was a serendipitious meeting with two lovely artists from my own region... Deanna and Christine (Hi to both of you if you happen to read this!)

I first met Deanna when she visited my Cottage Industry exhibition at Warwick Art Gallery about a year ago.  She was inspired by the mixed media artwork on display and we had a few brief conversations, and I ended up lending her some of the Cloth Paper Scissors magazines I had at home.  Just like me several years ago, she wasn't very confident in her own creativity, and would not have referred to herself as "an artist", but still felt that stirring within her to be creating something.

So it was wonderful to be setting up my stall the other day, and hear a "hello Loretta", turn around and see Deanna there - with her own stall full of her own artwork!  She was there with her friend Christine, who takes beautiful photographs.  Thank you to both of you - it was very nice to talk to you both.

In the last year, Deanna has not only explored and experimented and developed her art.. but she is now exhibiting it at a local gallery, and has even had some work displayed in the State Library!

Sometimes the biggest step we can make in our creative journey is to announce to the world, "I am an artist".  I think this lovely piece, completed in an online workshop, says it all... you are worthy.  We should all remember that :)
 

You are Worthy by Deanna Kotsopoulos
(this artwork was completed in a Tamara Laporte class)