oh I've been working on the silk road...

I'm still alive!  I've been busy with the end of semester, working on a few larger paintings for class, and hoping that I manage to step away from the brushes long enough for things to dry so I can take them into school without smudging them all over.  Lately it's all been about colour and fluidity... and big dots.  And wishing I had more tubes to choose from.  This summer I'm taking another painting course though, meaning a lot of focused attention and hopefully some splurges at the art store.  New brushes and solvents and surfaces, oh my!  Who needs a vacation when you can build worlds at the end of your bed/studio? :D (I'm only half joking!).  I can always do Asia after school (and that way I don't have to come back if I don't want to...)

So you probably also noticed that's a self portrait up there.  Or, um... if you've ever seen me, you'd know that's my funny face.  Appropriately sitting on my pirate lunchbox canvas perch (!) anyway, I needed to make a new one after destroying the last one in my first public performance two weeks ago.  The project was a combination "destroy something you love" and healing piece that involved Javanese gamelan music, an ancient television set, a huge pair of scissors and a bucket of white housepaint called "Moonlight".  It went so powerfully, even if the documentation video ended up being pitch black, *sob*.  Maybe I'll post it anyway, but it's really really lame and all you can see is a fuzzy blue screen and my arms flailing around.  Ah well, such is life.  I'll just have to be brave and attempt another performance, maybe this one with a light source around?  ha.

Here's also a sneak look at the kind of work I'm doing right now.  Again, very colour based...

It's very much not finished, but it's close, and my vision in pigment is starting to speak the same language as my drawings, which I'm happy about.  I'm even kind of pleased about the big blank bare canvas spots... don't ask me why.  If I had to speak inspiration... I'm waist-deep in Chinese philosophy right now, which was almost certainly a subconscious force here.  The whole Jade thing it's got going on, as well as rather perfectly exemplifying the Neo-Confucian concept of Li, which is "the underlying intelligence and order of nature as reflected in its organic forms", as quoted from Wiki.  

It's really astonishing actually, how the world orders itself into an awkward & pure perfection. The other day I found myself staring at the folds of my headband hanging off the radiator in the bathroom, remembering the dark shape and feeling almost as if I'd seen it before.  Or drawn it before.  And I probably had.  Which makes me wonder about chaos and how much our surroundings are shaped by the physical way we interact with them, and how much by our perception of it all.  Like, when I toss a book on my bed... does it land in a particularly Elizabeth sort of way, and I'm inclined to say yes?  And in that case... is making oatmeal or catching the bus art?  Holding a pencil or a lover is the same?  And when I see a book that someone else has tossed upon their bed, do I mentally alter the angle and colour to fit into what I've deemed aesthetically comfortable to MY reality?  If it doesn't, what happens then?  Who designates this Li stuff, anyway? !!

haha, okay, I shut up now. :DDDD

*doodles*