Hard Times Make Great Art

Nov7

Some folks – maybe a lot of people – are hurting right now. Feeling angry. Feeling devalued. Feeling that their voice doesn’t matter. Feeling powerless. Hard times are… hard. Hard times make great art. Always have.

…The world feels like it’s on fire, and there is war and destruction everywhere…

When I came home from Desert Storm, my painting style had changed (rather a lot), and the things on my mind began to percolate up through my art. I painted the war. I painted the chaos. I painted the things I didn’t have words for. I’ve used art to give voice to the things I don’t have words for “all along” – at least for the whole time I’ve been an artist.

“Kuwaiti Oil Fires” 20″ x 48″ oil on stretched silk, 1991

Shortly after I returned from the war, I gave up oil painting entirely, in favor of acrylic and pursued an abiding fascination with abstraction, and the use of nontraditional pigments and mixed-media elements in my work.

… And events just kept delivering hard times and trauma to reflect in art…

“9-11″ 18″ x 24” acrylic on canvas, 2001

Hard times come and go. Trauma is inflicted and endured, and trauma heals. The art remains.

I guess I’m just saying inspiration comes in many forms. Sometimes a beautiful sunrise on a favorite trailhead is enough. Sometimes events and circumstances provide inspiration of a different sort. I don’t know what to expect of my work from here, I only know I’ll keep feeling – and painting.

“Drone Strikes” 5″ x 7″ pastel on pastelbord, 2024

Sunrises, Sunsets

Feb18

I’m enjoying a weekend in the studio, and finding much of my inspiration in recent sunrises and sunsets. Quite a bit of new work in progress. Details to come, once pieces are finished, but here’s a sneak peak…

Not yet titled, 6″ x 8″ acrylic on wood panel with glow

“McMinnville Sunset 2022″, inspired by a recent sunset, 12″ x 12” acrylic on canvas

“McMinnville Sunrise 2022″, inspired by a recent sunrise, 8″ x 10” acrylic on canvas with glow

Just started on the cloudy sky background for this piece, very much still work in progress, 8″ x 10″ acrylic on canvas with glow.

I haven’t made enough room in my life lately for long weekends painting. It feels good to be back in the studio working creatively. I’m eager to see how these pieces develop, and getting them up for sale.

Every Dawn a Beginning

Nov2

New work. I spent some time in the studio this past weekend (overdue). Filled with inspiration, I wasn’t at all sure my time would actually be productive. Decision-making paralysis is a real thing, and I had “too many ideas” and struggled to steady down and work on just one or two.

“Every Dawn a Beginning” 12″ x 12″, acrylic on canvas w/glow, glitter, and resin details. 2022

This particular small piece was inspired in part by the collaboration with my partner (a different sort of artist), who shot several airbrush backgrounds for me recently that got set aside for later use. “Later” finally came around, and I sat down on a somewhat stressful autumn afternoon to think things over and put those thoughts on canvas. I selected this unusual orange-yellow-peach blended background because it threw my usual color selections out the window and forced some fresh thinking on me. New perspective, and a fun result.

Once this piece is fully dried, I’ll charge up the glow and add an image of that alternate perspective on this largely very hopeful piece. Inspired by love, and gray autumn days, and an old love song.

Here’s the piece with the glow charged…

California Poppies & Summer Sunshine

Oct9

I recently went wild re-organizing my studio. During the pandemic my studio has also served as my office (as is the case with many artists, I have a “regular” job to keep things steady), and working from home has turned out so splendidly that it’s become a professional preference and a lifestyle. I was overdue to put real thought and permanence into how my working space is arranged. With that done, I have also found myself feeling more inspired. Feels good. I’m hoping to make a more regular practice of posting here, new work as it comes, and also getting some of the older work uploaded and made available for sale.

Yesterday I spent time painting and thinking about my “workflow” in my studio. I finished one small piece and started a couple others. It feels good to be back in the studio. The feeling of joy and creative energy hit the canvas as “California Poppies & Summer Sunshine”, a small 6″x6″ acrylic on canvas, with glitter and glow. I’ll photograph this piece again with other light sources once it has completed dried (there is a lot of glow on this one).

Small piece, small picture. “California Poppies & Summer Sunshine”, 2022

This small piece is intentionally playful. It’s been a lovely summer, and feels worth a little celebration. That’s what this piece has in mind. The smaller image above is intended to provide a perspective a bit more like walking past it (hanging in a corridor, perhaps). If you’d like a closer look…

Closer image showing glitter details. “California Poppies & Summer Sunshine” 2022

I’ll update this post with the glow-in-the-dark charged up, later this week.

Incomplete, Unfinished, Work-in-Progress

Dec31

I’m in the studio working on unfinished projects and new work, on this last day of 2021. Seems a good way to mark the end of one year, the transition to the next, as much as anything is. It’s rare for me to hold on to unfinished work long – most pieces are finished within a few days, at most. One or two, over some 40 years as a painter, have lingered months (even years) before finally being finished. Complex work, sometimes, other times it’s been more about a change of context, circumstance, or emotion, that stalls the work and then, more rarely, it becomes lost in the noise of a busy life, forgotten until discovered some time later.

Currently, I have 14 unfinished canvases, in various stages of completion, and the oldest of these is a piece I began back in 2015 (a self-portrait). 6 years later, and I am still not ready to finish it (I may have missed my moment on that one). The rest of them are a mixed bag of lost inspiration, technical challenges I haven’t solved yet, and “what the fuck-ery” (where the piece somehow just isn’t coming together as I envisioned, and I haven’t sorted out what to do to recover the piece in some other way).

I hope to end this year here in the studio, in some productive fashion. I hope to begin the new year also here in the studio, productively, looking ahead with new vision. I don’t really do “resolutions” to celebrate the new year. This next year I do hope to post more of my work here, make more of it more easily available, and give a little more time and attention to the craft of the business of art.

I cue the next track on this playlist and get to work.

Black Light Art Gallery! Tonight

Jun29

It’s time. It’s really here. I’ll be with the Geodesic Art Collective at the Black Light Art Gallery! tonight. 🙂

I’ll be presenting both new and old work, including the entire “Frenzy” collection, available for sale.

Selected work, ready to load in the car

My “Frenzy” collection (three series, each of 13 images), hidden in the brown envelopes, has an interesting back story… I will have to tell it to you one day soon. It involves solitude, inspiration, loneliness, altered states, and a whole lot of running out of canvas, paint, and finally… paper. A peculiarly intense several days of continuous painting, locked in my own head until the paint ran out, about which I may already have said enough. lol 🙂

5″ by 7″ acrylic on paper w/UV pigment, “Frenzy VIII”, from a series of 13 individual works.

Blacklight Art Show! at The Geodesic Art Collective

Jun26

I’ve been invited to participate in an exciting local art show. Only days away, and my consciousness is filled with choices – what will I choose to hang? It’s an exciting “problem” to have. 😀 It’s a great space for the purpose, too, and having attended a recent event there, I’m eager to sit down and make some great selections, and see them hang alongside the work of other artists interested in blacklight, glow-in-the-dark, and color.

It’s thinking this over that has me smiling today, and awkwardly aware of how much of my work is UV reactive, or full of glow, and how little is photographed to reveal it. I suppose doing something about that would be helpful… 😉

Untitled, 11″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/glow 2017

The Return of Inspiration

Feb26

I haven’t been as artistically productive this year as I had hoped to be, but when inspiration struck I was ready, and that made quite a lot of difference for artistic ease and general quality of life. I’m glad you stuck around! There’s more to come…

20170218_110209

Potentially Anything

Sep5

“Potentially Anything” 11″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/pen&ink and glow 2015

Painted on a rainy late summer morning, feeling inspired by love, and life; I started this piece thinking about lush green forests, and new life, and finished it thinking about space travel, and contemplating the future of humankind, and how vast our potential is, viewed from the perspective of how much we do not yet know. It is a piece I find myself hoping communicates some sense of how each moment is potentially the seed of some future greatness, and how precious our uncertainty is on our path of discovery. The basic image is of a gravid woman surrounded by whirling motes of dust, imagination, atomic particles, or… really…anything.

Sunset Meadow

Sep5

“Sunset Meadow” 11″ x 14″ acrylic on canvas w/pen&ink, gold, and glow 2015

This smallish piece, at just 11″ x 14″, is the first painting on canvas created in my new studio space. Painting from the perspective of feeling inspired and in love, it is a recollection of those sun-infused summer evenings when the orange glow of sunset seems to fill all the space between things. This painting is in a style I have recently favored, with an acrylic background on which a more delicate image in pen & ink is drawn. I used a gold leaf pen to add warmth to the details, and a bit of glow to give the impression of fireflies and hints of natural phosphorescence that I remember from childhood.

This 11″ x 14″ piece is available for $150.

The Art of M. Elisabeth Howell

Capturing life in color and texture, and making it glow!

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