Mind and Body

Here is the progression of my latest painting. This piece is 30x44" gouache on paper. 

It's hard to say what this piece is about yet. It's still on my wall, making me think. I typically don't have any lesson I'm trying to get across when I start a piece, but as it develops, it reveals the lessons to me.

At the moment this feels like the inside and the outside. Mind and body. After finishing this piece today, I had sentences in my head like, "My lovely puckered skin. My supple wrinkled flesh- porcelain milky splotchy. Lovely little sores." I read some poem on the subway about a woman describing herself as an orchid, and I couldn't stop trying to imagine what the writer actually looked like. I imagined an overweight, older woman with moles and splotches and cellulite. Vericose veins. I think our bodies are beautiful in all of their disgusting detail. It's amazing that we work at all. Beautiful flesh puppets. Anyway, this just continues to amaze me all the time.

Intimate

Intimate 15x21" 

This new painting feels like a door opening. It's that feeling that my brain is moving and there are things happening that I'm not totally aware of yet. Figuring things out.
I often draw figures with no arms or one arm. This started simply because I'm almost always drawing myself, and it's hard to draw the arm you're drawing with. Sometimes I'll switch hands and draw one arm with my off hand, but it feels forced sometimes. It's taken me a long time to be comfortable with the fact that I'm drawing myself and there's no need to hide it. Giving up the arms in this piece feels like an acceptance of my situation. I draw myself because I know what this body feels like, and I connect with it. I draw it because I'm still trying to figure it out.

Thoughts during and after this painting:
I want to try to increase my iodine consumption after researching breast pain(that I've been experiencing for some months now on and off). Apparently lots of people in the US are deficient in iodine, which can lead to a slew of boob issues.. and of course ingesting chemicals like fluoride and chlorine(that the government puts in my drinking water on purpose because someone pays them) can further deplete the iodine in your system. My boobs are a mystery to me. Heavy round overflowing sacs of fat and glands that collect toxins and can make food.. that change with the pull of the moon. Very strange things to understand. They are part of me that I love and want very much to be healthy, but also part of me that feels scary... like it's just a matter of time before something goes wrong. I feel a certain amount of helplessness here. I want to be able to control my environment. I want to know what my body needs and be able to provide it. I live on the planet Earth in a human body, and I can only do the best I can do. That's a hard thing for me to accept sometimes.  Purity is not so attainable in this age of plastic and microwaves and medication and pollution, but I can only do so much for myself.

Art Show

Hi there, I've been neglecting my blog recently, but I'm back in action and ready to participate once again! I joined this online art show, and am trying to accumulate some votes for the people's choice award. Please have a look and if you like the work, give me a vote!


http://katlaranger.artistswanted.org/yr2011

Statement for new work

My current work can be put into two categories. Work with backgrounds, and work without. I have begun to see the pieces with backgrounds as reflections of waking life. They are about the individual in relation to her environment, and her experience in a physical space. Neither the figure nor the background can be separated in this instance, and the two are given equal weight. My figures are always based on the way they feel, not the way they look, and the backgrounds in these paintings are similarly created from the emotional quality of the space.

The second group of paintings I have worked on, void of backgrounds, are based on one's life in dreams. In this world the individual begins to lose her sense of boundaries, and her emotions begin to spill out into the empty space. She fills this environment with her presence, and has nothing to respond to but this overflow of herself.

I make these paintings to uncover something honest about my personal experience as a human being in modern society. They are my gut feelings manifested. Like dreams themselves, everything in my work comes from an emotional core, and the deeper meaning will depend on what the viewer brings with him.

Backgrounds

 

 Today I had my art student over, and we talked about why he likes art.. mostly in attempts to get him ready for some sort of art institute interview, and some interesting things came up. One of the things he said was "I like art because it has no limits." I think this is one of the reasons I like art too. A figure in a painting can be realistic, flat, misshapen, have missing parts, be drawn from memory, or be drawn from observation. I don't have to show things the way they look, and I don't have to keep the rules consistent. It's all about the intent. If you do it knowingly, there can be no mistakes in art. This is also one of the things that make drawing and painting so difficult. You don't have to follow any rules, and you are allowed to(and will) make a bad drawing sometimes. This is a crucial part of figuring out what does work and what is actually interesting to look at.

Something new that has emerged recently for me is the use of backgrounds. If you've noticed in the past, I kept the background pretty sparse and abstract. It has been a long run of figures squirming in their own emotional filth, which is fine, but it was time for a divergence. There is something very satisfying about this kind of structured, pretty painting, and I'm hoping it will bring something new to the figures.

The first painting here is also loosely inspired by a piece of writing by my friend and writer, Josh Amses. More collaborations between us to come!

'Hello at the Beach'  22x30" gouache on paper

'Forget-Me-Not' 22x30" gouache on paper

'London Bridge' 22x30" gouache and acrylic on paper

'The Sun' 20x30" gouache on paper

Telling Secrets

http://www.projekt30.com/telling_secrets.php

My work is featured in this online show "Telling Secrets"

I love telling keeping secrets and I love telling secrets. I love how the secrets find a way to seep out.

Plateau

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 10x12"

Before I get better at anything, it seems I have to get worse. I've had some artist's block recently.. in a way. What I mean by that is that I've been doing some really ugly drawings. It's weird to to go work for 10 hours, clean the bathroom, make food, and then do a terrible drawing while listening to my Peggy Lee radio station. 

It seems like for the last 5 years or so my work has focused on the glorification of negative feelings. Turning something bad into something beautiful and different. That has been my process anyway, but it does requires a certain amount of self-disgust (which I've had plenty of). 

I'm starting to feel tired. I actually want to feel good things, not just make the bad things pretty. How does that effect the art? Maybe it's time to draw someone else.