Figurative
Archived Posts from this Category
Dreams from a Counter Pop Evolutionary Artist
Posted by isis on 02 Apr 2008 | Tagged as: Anti Pop Art, Figurative |
Photograph for oil painting called “Wondering” 2008
Today I dream of a Counter Pop Evolution, where Artists concern themselves with their origins instead of mass productions. I want art to slow down to a snail’s pace so that I can really really think….
Slow Art
Art that is made with loving hands….Like you used to do when you were a kid…working with your father on a craft project like building a car…or with your mother like building a cake…
You know…art that takes time to make.
Now I have time to appreciate!
They are two different places in which I exist so differently:
One is public, the other is private.
One is passionate, the other is pensive
One is objective, the other is subjective
One is secular, the other is spiritual.
But one thing that they both share in, is that they will always be separate but united.
Like Adam and Eve, I co exist with their legacy.
“Regalo w/Still Life” oil on wood panel 75% finished
EVE, THE FIRST LIBERATOR OF MANKIND
For had it not been for the Apple that Eve gave to Adam, we all would surely have remained infants of HeShe (God), hadn’t we?
God punished Eve, as the “fall guy”, with childbirth pain, monthly PMS and worry. Eve sacrificed her own freedom so that Adam could enjoy his. He fought against this injustice by God and showed his gratitude to Eve by becoming the expert in science and psychology. Continue Reading »
A statement From Laura Molina on the death of Dave Stevens, AKA “Naked Dave”
Posted by Laura Molina on 13 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: Paintings, Digital Art, websites, Figurative, Death, Muse, Dave Stevens, Naked Dave |
A statement from my internet art presentation, “Naked Dave”.
Dave Stevens died March 11, 2008.
My Naked Dave series has been a way for me to work out the anger, grief, and loss that my unfortunate relationship with Dave Stevens brought me. I was only 18 when I met him. I was not too much older than that when he fathered my child in 1978. The way he tried to bully me into getting an abortion during my pregnancy was nearly unforgivable. When I lost my baby through a miscarriage, the emotional pain I went through was so intense that I tried to block it out for several years afterward. But the psychic injury would not heal. I have been dealing with the effects this loss has had on me all my adult life. The whole situation made me despondent and depressed for many years. Dave helped me through none of this. Just knowing this person almost killed me.
In 1990, Dave began seeking me out again. He held out the possibility to me that we could reconcile and "carry on in a more positive light", as he put it. Seems we were at cross purposes. He attempted to apologize for trying to avoid his responsibilities in making me pregnant, but I wanted him to apologize for telling lies about me after it happened, the greater transgression in my eyes. Neither apology was accomplished. Instead of acknowledging the past and putting things right, he withdrew once the damage was done. Cast off the opportunity for forgiveness and reconciliation because I did not perceive that a brief embrace between us was supposed to serve for the entire apology and I was not supposed to press him for more than this. It wasn’t what happened in 1978 that inspired the series. We were young and stupid and that can be forgiven. No, it was the failed "reconciliation" of 1991 that lit the fire. I had been betrayed for the second time and I had to do something to save myself. I couldn’t walk the earth with murderous rage in my bosom and let it destroy everything around me. Naked Dave originally began as a way I could cathartically extract the poison this man brought into my life with his cowardice. Projecting his own unbearable guilt onto me and dismissing my existence by perpetrating a calumnious myth he invented that I am some kind of dangerous psychopath (like his dear friend, Bettie Page). These paintings became an entire genre of my life’s work, one that has brought me recognition. (Though, not the only recognized thing I’ve ever done with my creativity, that’s for sure…) The publication of my project brought a healing flow of empathy from others, but also vilification from comic book geeks and others too emotionally shallow to understand why I had the need to make this art and disseminate it on the web. Many missed the irony and took "The Angriest Woman in the World" dead literal as a personal vendetta as if there wasn’t enough to be angry about, just having to live as a woman in this screwed-up world. One woman’s revenge is another’s individual justice.
For many years I assumed that Dave was merely annoyed by my paintings of him but I was wrong. In recent years I discovered that he was deeply affected by what I had done. The only friend we still had in common beseeched me in an email to forgive him, but I found it impossible to do so without face to face reconciliation. In 2005, when I offered an olive branch to Dave through a go-between, he refused. True to his real nature, he claimed himself as the sole victim of this tragedy. As if my justified resentment sprang unmitigated by anything he had done, and that he bore no blame. Now that he is dead, face to face reconciliation and forgiveness between is not possible. I have to live with this reality and find the way to forgiveness without the reconciliation that I knew long ago I would never see.
My motives for this project have been the same since I started. To heal from the injury inflicted and diffuse my anger by having fun with my past pain. The issues this unfortunate relationship brought to my life, and my ability to process them through my art, still inspires me. When that changes, I will be done with this series. To aspire to make great art one must know truth, beauty, and love. My muse, as unwilling a subject as he may have been, was a muse nonetheless. The English Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti had a muse, Elizabeth Siddal. A recent book about her life has the following quotation from John Ruskin which took my breath away with it’s truth: "And yet Elizabeth had been loved tenderly, loved by the man and by the artist, which is to be loved twice, because painters have a tenderness for the creature that suddenly realizes for them, in an exquisite and living form, a long cherished dream, and lavish upon her a gaze that is more thoughtful, more intuitive and, to put it plainly, more charged with love than is possible for other men."
Below is a study for the last painting of the Naked Dave series. I have known since February of 2005 that Dave was ill with cancer. I was sworn to secrecy and struggled with thoughts of continuing the series altogether for this reason, but the heart sees what the conscious mind can’t bear to know. The monarchs are in the painting because the Aztecs believed they carried the souls of the dead. I started this latest painting in July 2005. I will continue to paint Dave until I am done and I can bring peace to myself.
The Fantasies From The Indigenous I
Posted by isis on 26 Jan 2008 | Tagged as: Anti Pop Art, Figurative |
“Believing “pastel on paper 45″x55″ 2008
What are our fantasies as Indigenous/Multicultural/Mulatto/Mestizo Peoples/Artists?
The history I received in public schools, the Hollywood sitcoms, tv dramas, and movies that I watched, the museums that visited, mostly iconicized and exotified Native Peoples….I enjoyed this portrayal because it mythologized us. They made us look beautiful, spiritual, strong, but always ultimately defeated, which I resented deeply. To continue seeing one’s culture as defeated, is destructive to one’s consciousness and self esteem. This was my Indigenous Reality.
Looking back at my previous art endeavors in art school, I drew and painted about my Indigenous Reality: oppressive government laws concerning women and native peoples, reproductive rights, and failed relationships with boyfriends. My Indigenous Reality was hopeless and depressing. I continued working this way for over 10 years. I think part of why I painted such things was because I couldn’t be motivated to paint unless I feel. And so the topics that I chose to paint about in those days, deeply effected me. It wouldn’t be until the late 90’s that I began to paint from my Indigenous Fantasies.
It started with the LMA Series (Little Miss Attitude Series).
Wonderwoman LMA 8.5″x11″ graphite on paper study
LMA Series was an exploration of behaviors of empowerment. The cartoon has always been a creature typical of emotion and so are women. In our chatty conversations with one another, we expose so much about ourselves, go in depth about relationships with others, go into minute details about sex, love….When we aren’t conversing, our quiet moments are psychic, still attentive to each other’s emotions, knowing what the other feels, because we collectively know what makes a woman happy and what makes her bleed…So intoxicating is this awareness, that my research was already done. All I had to do was paint. And so I did 16 paintings, 8 studies, 8 paintings trying to understand what attitude was as a factor of empowerment in us ladies…This was the beginning of Indigenous Fantasies because I was painting what what my ideal of a woman was.
Drifting Thru the Indigenous I
Posted by isis on 19 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: Anti Pop Art, Figurative |
“Wind from the Sea” 1947 Tempura Painting Andrew Wyeth
“I’m not talking about subject matter but a very American quality-an indigenous thing you’re born with.”
Andrew Wyeth
I was at a used bookstore in Fort Bragg Ca, during the July 4th weekend (my second year anniversary) and found a book called The Art of Andrew Wyeth. I was captivated by the way the book was written and his paintings: the critics/historians actually put themselves into his art/shoes, speaking almost in a human spiritual way about his work…and they let the artist speak a lot. I felt like I was living thru his life, like I understood where he stood in his studio and in his world. I was never a fan of “Regional” Art. But I appreciate Andrew because of his approach to making art.
A lot of people drive thru the country and see either a picturesque beauty or nothing important. But Andrew really captured something, the feeling and reality living in a farming community. And even more importantly, there’s integrity in his work, like “this is what my environment is really like, folks.” His portraits are of his neighbors and symbolicly choses them and their landscapes to capture the remoteness, the struggle of living and the death that occurs in such a place….Their emotional power move me…And we’ll I grew up in place similar to Chads Ford Pennsylvania, where he lived, but his paintings show a time of year when his community is very stark…(I would paint Kansas differently, with more color, if I ever have the desire.) But the point is, I’ve had similar feelings he had being out in such a simple landscape: just sky and land, the vastness of it to wander, ponder, to dream…When I read his book, I had a memory of Kansas when I was a child:
“Looking out the window of a car, driving on a single road. The tall prairie grass moving like liquid gold…
The car pulls up the driveway. We get out. I go to the backyard to find something to do. A chainlink fence, a dog house, a tree…A plane flys over me… Its distant motor makes a sound so sad that I’m reminded it’s Sunday…
Sundays are sad, because they are the end of a weekend, family and friends leave and I have to go back to school alone…”
Me
I love the nostalgia more than the reality of Kansas….which is why I can’t return. I’d have to go thru another nepantla to get there, and I can only handle one at a time…. Continue Reading »
The Philosophy of a Cartoon
Posted by isis on 08 May 2007 | Tagged as: Anti Pop Art, Figurative |
“Pequeña” Cartoon Study Color Pencil on Colored Paper 2005
The cartoon is the new figurative. It is more unique than any other type of figure because it has the potential to exist in two realms at the same time. In one realm, it is created subconsciously: doodling, noodling until it forms into something. This subconscious way of drawing, is Ancient and leads to supernatural imagination.
Huichol Art made of yarn and wax on board (date unknown)
The second realm is mathematical because it is based on proportions. Proportions are formulas and techniques that require conscious thinking. Conscious thinking is Classical and it leads to a realistic imagination.
The Becoming of an Artist
Posted by isis on 29 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Anti Pop Art, Figurative |
Tuesday April 17th 2007 in my living room
I’m writing out of frustration today. I’m getting ready to give an artist talk at California State University Northridge and it’s been difficult. I had done a previous talk at Stanford University and it sucked. It sucked because I tried to conceal my fears and contradictions.
The power point presentation looks nice. I’m covering a lot of material only my last 10 years as an artist…. I have cut back considerably, but I don’t want to loose my evolution. I want them to feel what its really like to be an artist, not that romantic bullshit that we read in popular culture magazines and websites.
The presentation has to be about an hour long. I press record and I begin speaking about my art to see if I’m within the hourly limit. It’s close, about 45 minutes. I rewind and press play to hear myself speak and all I hear is the tension in my voice, my own vulnerability and I am embarrassed. I try to think of Jimi Hendrix, Quinten Tarantino, Micheal Basquit and Tupak Shakur, how loud, quite, jittery, arrogant, they were/are…they had/have a strange quirkiness in them…I don’t know if it’s the drugs or nerves? a mental condition? or maybe just that’s the way they are….