I enjoy planning vacations almost as much as I enjoy actual travel. The research extends each journey as I travel first in my imagination to all the possible choices of charming hilltop villages, scenic roadways, and incense-scented churches. I collect the hours for every museum I want to see and investigate restaurants rated unmissable by TripAdvisor. When I found a private garden in Tuscany open only two days a month I excitedly squeezed it into my itinerary for the week! Planning this way ensures I do not drive right past an incredible experience. However, I have many friends who fully endorse the “happy accident” method for travel. They make no plans at all and improvise as they go, seeming just as happy as I am. One of them said “You can’t get lost during vacation. Exploring is the adventure” I am curious about the trade-offs between planners and improvisers. |
|
"Pina Colada" by Sarah McDonald |
|
|
Are planning and improvisation really on opposite ends of the rational vs. intuitive spectrum? Many artists who fully embrace play, improvisation, and freedom resist the structure of observation, practice, rules, and research. However, too much of either one can lead to disaster in your art. Too much rigidity leads to work that is derivative, predictable, and boring ...and too much intuitive freedom is chaotic, oversimplified, and unrelatable. Embracing a strategy that harmonizes rationality and intuition invites synchronicity and magic into your artwork and probably into your travel too.
Like travel planning, picture planning includes at least a hundred interwoven choices. I have a full page of questions to ask myself for my first round of decisions and then I develop at least 3 or 4 scenarios in my picture planning process to ensure my most important decisions are made and my intentions for my artwork are clear. Before going on to the improvisation stage I have already practiced painting the picture in my imagination 3 or 4 times.
|
|
Planning increases my safety and confidence in my ability to succeed. Carefully selecting placement, shapes, and values allow me to choose a mood as well as what will be perceived first, second, and third. Certain color interactions will affect my viewer’s reaction - will I choose calming blues or challenging reds and oranges? Practice lets me edit what to leave out from my first idea and what to add to my work to make it clearer, richer and deeper. And, I can deliberately include variations, riffs, and references from my research to add layers of imagination and meaning.
Once these decisions are made I invite improvisation to join the process. Improvisation is a performance that requires focus, preparation, and curiosity to respond to what is happening in the moment and to release resistance to what “is”. I turn on inspiring music and open up to co-creation with joy. I let the colors and shapes blend, flow, and co-create with me. Likewise, when I travel, I often throw out my itinerary for the day when a new horizon or opportunity presents itself.
Incorporating accidents and opportunities harmonizes the rational and intuitive experience for the viewer and the artist. Practice improves the freedom and effortlessness of performance. It invites the power of the universe to drop in and elevate my artistic and travel intentions in new and unexpected ways that are usually even better than those I planned.
|
|
I teach this planning for improvisation process to my students. Blending rational and intuitive thinking is a rewarding dialogue between safety and freedom for me, my students, and our viewers. If you are interested in learning more about this process please reach out and let’s talk. I invite you to allow me to lovingly guide, support, and accompany you in planning your paintings.
With light and delight,
|
|
P.S. If you didn't get the chance to download your free gift from me: Here is my "Inner Artist Inspiration Package" - a series of illustrated quotes in watercolor based on flower photos taken by family and friends. |
|
Quote:
Imagine, for a moment, your life without rushing, without being busy, without getting from A to B and then to Z. Imagine what it would be like to always have enough time, time to spare, time to breathe, time to see, experience, be. Imagine time slowing down so that you’re unaware of it passing. Imagine timelessness, a pause in the spinning of the world, where a few minutes might feel like an hour or an hour like a few minutes.
- Wendy Ann Greenhalgh
|
|
What to See:
Ike Ude “Select Portraits”
|
|
Where:
One East Las Olas Boulevard
Fort Lauderdale, FL.
NSU Art Museum is a premier destination for exhibitions and programs which aim to challenge viewers’ perceptions of the world around them. The Museum draws from its collection for exhibitions exploring issues that resonate with the South Florida community and contribute to productive discussions that address identity, inequalities, and injustices, encourage empathy and compassion and inspire wonder.
Ike Ude’s “Sartorial Anarchy” portraits feature the artist dressed in costumes that traverse geography and time. Through his art, Ude explores a world of dualities, blurring the lines between photographer and performer, artist and spectator. Ude says this about the series: “Clothes and accessories are after all the index of a culture - it locates one at a geography/time. Even within a specific geography/time, fashion further informs one’s class, religion, profession, habits, etc. In light of this, a cross-pollination of masculine sartorial ciphers across time and cultures bear quite a remarkable result, as you can see. Alas! This time, it is fashion, it seems - not politics - that makes strange bedfellows.” Ike Ude, “Sartorial Anarchy”
|
|
|
September Art Book Club Selection :
by Wendy Ann Greenhalgh
September 16 at 6:30 pm EST
on Zoom
|
This is not a book of drawing techniques. It is, instead, a book about the experience of drawing. Greenhalgh suggests that drawing can help us to observe the world around us more fully, rather than being stuck inside our heads in the maelstrom of thoughts, feelings, worries, and dreams that go through our minds every day. The book is peppered with quotes and exercises which encourage us to slow down, take time away from the computer, and enjoy the outdoors.
The author believes that anyone can draw. No exceptions. Anyone can do it. So anyone has access to the benefits that drawing can bring. What most often gets in the way is our self-criticism. Children don’t worry about whether their drawing is good enough, whether the colors or perspective are accurate. It's only as we get older that we start to judge ourselves. We would feel better if we allowed ourselves to just draw, without judgment - to simply be a beginner with no expectations. “Come to drawing as if you've never done it before. Come to drawing with a curiosity about the marks you could make and the world you could explore. Come to drawing as a beginner. Being a beginner is the best thing to be because as be-ginners we can simply be.”
Please join Lark Keeler and me along with friends known and new on Thursday, September 16, 2021 from 6:30pm to 8:00pm for our next meeting.
|
|
|
Art Adventure :
Dock Street
Edgartown, MA
Martha's Vineyard
Sunday, September 19, 2021 at 5:00 - 7:00pm
Formerly a sail loft, a whale oil factory, an old grain store, and a boat builder’s shed, the distinctive building now known as the Old Sculpin Gallery, home of the Martha’s Vineyard Art Association, was built in 1840. Over the years its unique shingled tower has welcomed visitors to the waterfront along Edgartown’s harbor and today its wide floorboards and hand-hewn beams welcome art lovers into its gallery and studio spaces. Incorporated in 1954, the MVAA opened for the benefit of the island community: “to increase facilities of art education, create interest in the arts, make an art center for the whole island, establish a permanent collection, and preserve an old landmark.”
Please join me for the gallery opening of my 2021 painting exhibition! My show will hang in the Old Sculpin Gallery from Saturday, September 18 through Saturday, September 25.
Entry is free.
|
|
|
Private Lessons and Events |
|
|
|
Master Classes for High School Students |
Private, highly personalized classes in mastery for artistically-minded US & international students virtually on Zoom or in person at my home.
If you have a student who is a visual thinker, willing to push the boundaries of their own work, and serious about improving their options for college, I want to hear from you! Schedule a time to discuss how I can collaborate with you to build a portfolio that will give your student the greatest chance for success.
|
|
|
|
Art Workshops, Critiques & Presentations |
Invite me to present or lead a workshop for your school, club or guild.
I can customize a program for your event or present my skills programs on composition, color theory, drawing faces, coordinating light/shadow or understanding the cues for depth. I am available for judging, confidence-building critiques and recorded tutorials.
|
|
Sketchbook Prompt:
Choose a landscape subject that is near to you and easily accessible on a regular basis. Trees make an excellent subject as do park benches or fountains. Draw the same thing every day for a week, or the same thing once a week for a year. Drawing this way will reveal aspects of your subject that a single drawing could never do.
|
|
|
|
New Artwork Available
On Display at the Old Sculpin Gallery until September 25, 2021
|
Leap Year
Now available for sale for $650
Media: Watercolor on Arches
Size: 27” x 35” in a gold frame
from September 18 - 25, 2021
|
|
|
|
What a great time we had visiting the Weiner Museum of Decorative art in Dania Beach! I was inspired by the Ardmore Safari for the Soul exhibition and the Paul Stankard Glass paperweights. Don't miss the opportunity to be inspired by all the amazing collections in this hidden South Florida gem. As always it was wonderful to be with a group who is just as excited as I am about art and to hear your impressions of the works we were seeing. I can’t wait until our next art adventure.
|
|
Weiner Museum of Decorative Art (WMODA) -
August 21, 2021
|
|
Subscription Information: You are receiving this email because you subscribed to my mailing list, downloaded a resource, purchased one of my products/programs, or opt-ed in some other way.
Thank you for being part of the Cr8V Soul Arts Tribe!
NOTE: Unsubscribing means you won't receive any more emails from me including information about your paid products and programs.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
