The absence of words

It's Friday again! The weeks just keep spinning past faster and faster. I can't believe it is almost September already! Today as I write the windows are open and it is a grey rainy day and the music of Joy Division fills the air around me. This is writing, making and thinking weather! My favorite!

Let's see what's happened this week. Well as you know, last week I cleaned my studio after Stewart and I worked in it this summer completing our "a place called home" series. This week, I spent time getting to know the space again and sorting through all my tools and paints, trying to enjoy the space. I also painted in the space, working on the eighteen 6x6" mdf boards on two or three occasions since the clean up. These small works consist of gesso, white acrylic, torn vintage paper, graphite, color pencil, walnut oil and charcoal powder. They are not unlike the 12x12" pieces from my "Sometimes I love you and other stories" series in their basic composition and palette but there is something missing. The typed words on the vintage paper are not there.

I wanted to get away from the words and back towards allowing only the paintings to convey the message and somehow the absence of words seems to do just that. You can feel an eerie silence in these works. You want them to say more but they don't. They aren't talking back this time, it is all up to the viewer to tell the story and squeeze the meaning out of the dusty charcoal, the white paint and the void left behind on the paper.

Where are my words? Well for one thing, I am a painter by trade and not a writer. I love words but I can't use them all the time. Also, this has been a lonely time for me as my community has gotten smaller and Stewart is no longer here and I am no longer there. There is a void, so it seems the work would reflect this and it does. The lines are still there as the basic connection is still there. Communication from these works continues through the texture in skips and sputters of paint rather than type.

I have a lot more work to do on these new small works before I put them in my etsy shop, hopefully in the next couple of weeks. After that, I will start on the fifteen 12x12" panels with the vintage maps as I explore another concept that has been rolling about in my mind. Where it will go...

Until next week, keep fighting!