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. 

Old Work Inspiring New Work

I just had my hard drive from my old broken laptop transferred to a brand new machine, and as a result, I got all my old pictures back. In looking at some of my older work, I realized that there is a lot there that I want to get back to. Something about the reality and straightforwardness in some of the figures made me really excited, and I'm hoping to make some new work inspired by my older work.

soft ground etching 22x30"

ink and pastel on paper 22x30"

charcoal and acrylic on masonite

linoleum print

gouache and paint from tibet

It's a little known fact that I did learn how to do paintings of deities in Tibet from Monks who didn't speak very much English. It's not really my usual thing, but they were lovely to work with and it was a lot of fun to learn.

I also used to assist a biological illustration class for kids, and almost went into medical illustration. I still have the urge to become a tattoo artist sometimes, and this work seems to relate to that desire more.

Ariel

My princesses are slowly all finding their homes.
"Ariel" has just sold.

Ariel, oil on wood panel, 3x4'

Love and Resentment

                                                 (new painting in progress)

I've been thinking a lot about where I keep my emotions in my body, and how crazy it is that we can bury resentments in our organs and connective tissues. I've been realizing just how much a quiet angry child can store in there, and how is seeps out in unexplained discomfort and uneasiness. I've been thinking about defenses, and how it feels when something has gotten in and realized you were just a sack full of organs; realized that there was no magic or mystery there. Like rotting inside, like worms in your guts, like someone getting too close and trying to open you up for the world to see. Like having a camera snaked through your bellybutton, and having your inflamed appendix removed. Like being examined in front of a room full of family members and strangers. Like being 15 and unconscious on an operating table you'll never remember. There is an anger in me that requires extreme reserve or extreme gluttony. It makes me feel like Saturn devouring his children. I think Goya showed it best-

                                                    Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son (1819)

SHOW IN PITTSBURG

I will be showing several of my small paintings in Pittsburg next week in the show-"Art of Consciousness: Creative Expressions of Spirit" on July 2nd at the International Children's Art Gallery (5020 Penn Avenue). Anyone in that area please check it out!

Drawing in Mirrors

Imaginary Mother

Sometimes when I'm working, I get a phrase stuck in my head, and with the left piece the phrase has been "imaginary mother". It might end up being the title of the piece, or inspiring the title, but we'll see. I see these pieces as mother and daughter.

As my twenties roll on I start feeling the tightening of my reproductive organs, threatening to strangle me if I go another month without reproducing. It's making me think a lot about my life in big, long-term ways. My mind works like this: if you really like something about your life, it'll just be like that until you die. You may as well just fast-forward to the end.
That makes me antsy and makes me question everything.
The imaginary mother isn't comfortable with being done yet.

Self-portraits

Self Portrait, 30"x44" pen and watercolor on paper- in progess

I am the model in almost all of my work, but I don't consider most of my pieces to be self-portraits. Usually I'm trying to embody a feeling in my art, and looking at myself helps to take me where I want to go with the piece. I think the human body can hold a great deal of emotion, and that is interesting.
A few days ago the drawing I was working on gave birth- a piece of paper came out from under the drawing after I had been working on it for several weeks. I starting this piece with the urge to draw something more real- maybe draw more like I know what I'm doing. The piece I have been working on is messy and frustrating, so I began the new daughter-drawing. After a few minutes I realized that I wasn't using myself as a tool in this drawing, I was drawing myself. It's distinctly different, and I like the piece very much. It makes me excited about drawing. I could write volumes about myself and the flesh and the blood and the eyes, but I'll try to let the drawing speak for itself for a while.

unidentified

Sometimes the urge to get something out of my head and onto a piece of paper is overwhelming. So tonight I was there, tearing my crinkled paper and putting it up with duct tape I found in the kitchen.

I had a dream the other night that I kept finding a body covered in horizontal cuts. The memory of picking the limp body out of the dirt was very real. The image of her sliced up legs was very vivid. I don't remember her face or much else about her. The killer knew I would always find her body, so he wanted to kill me too. Things like that aren't as scary in my dreams, because time doesn't always move in  a straight line, it skips around. I was trying to lock him out of my house, and I was trying to call the police without him noticing. I always do things like that, and I can't help but see that I even love being sneaky in my dreams.

Work in progress

I've been working on this piece at home, which has been a lot of fun. Today it reminded me of falling backwards down my friends stairs and cutting the back of my heel as a kid. It was rainy and cloudy like today. All summer sand kept getting in the cut, and it took months to heal. It reminded me of my dream last night, where I pulled a little straw out of my heel. It was folded in half under the skin, and I had been wondering why my foot was bothering me.  It reminds me of my numb sleepy hands and the way they don't work in the morning. We'll see where it goes now..
I see a bunch of wiggly strings getting tied up at the ends.

Sleeping Beauty

Goodnight Sleeping Beauty, This piece SOLD in my last show (coming down this evening). I'm glad she's found a good home. :-)

The Power of Self

So if you scroll down down down down, you'll see my name, Kathryn LaRanger, as an honorable mention in the "Artists Wanted- The Power of Self" competition. It was a good experience, and I'm hoping to do more juried exhibitions/online art competitions.

http://www.artistswanted.org/self/

New work is on the horizon..

SHOW COMING UP 2.4.10 -111 FRONT ST, BROOKLYN: GALLERY 220

Fee Fi Fo Fum oil on linen 30"x35"

Next Thursday, February 4th at 111 Front Street in Brooklyn. This show will include myself and 3 other figurative artists, and should be a really fun event.

http://giacobettipaul.com/

The opening will be going on Thursday- 5:30-9pm

Let me know if you can make it!

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Fee Fi Fo Fum is my latest painting. I still think it could have a ways to go but we'll see-
Blood trapped in the face is a very loaded image for me. It reminds me of being a kid and popping the heads off the dandelions. It reminds me of my humiliation at just being a person, at any hint towards how   alive and seething I was. It's hard to live in a social world with rules and cues you have to pick up on. It's the feeling that I had no idea how to be a person- the feeling that everyone else had someone to tell them the secrets to it- the feeling that I was obvious. They can smell the blood in my face, and I am the giant. The idea that I was the clown. The way I wanted to devour everyone, the way I wanted to be ground up hamburger meat. The way I wanted to reveal all my flaws and guts and shit so that I could do it on my own terms.

political vs personal

When people describe my work as political, I get a little thrown off balance. I think that this is probably because I'm not sure what political means to other people, and what that implies about my art and my motives for making it. My art is intensely personal, and perhaps this makes it political in a way that I am not aware of. However, I am probably one of the least updated people I know when it comes to actual politics, mostly because I find it unbelievably boring and ugly. In my mind politics is a bunch of gross old men feeling very important about themselves, and I couldn't care less. I know that is narrow-minded, but those are the feelings I have about it

 I'm interested in the biology of the body, a person's relationship to eating and excreting, and the way their relationships with other's affect them. It's about how it feels to live in a body that is open and constantly taking in and releasing parts of it's environment. My art is very self-centered in this way, and I accept that this is where my interests are.