From the studio

One of the things I was most excited about when the realtor first showed us our house last summer was the potential studio I imagined as I stood in what was then a messy, detritus-filled, very neglected and dark basement corner. And the fact that the high ceilings and space would finally allow me to paint to the scale I wanted and find out what would happen. For years, I have painted in shared and fairly tight spaces. My last studio, for example, was a converted small attic space with a low ceiling. It was also the cat room, the spare-book room, the yoga space, an office, the room where the weights were, and the place where John and I would go to hangout on beanbag chairs, watch Netflix on the computer, and drink tea. There was just enough room to paint. And I got a lot done and made it work because that's just what you do. But there wasn't enough room to try painting larger canvases the way I wanted or with the freedom that comes when you don't have to worry about spilling mineral spirits on a cat's head or watching as paws and tails track oil paint throughout the rest of the house.

With the move to our house in the woods last fall and all the tasks that go along with such happenings--coupled with yoga teaching, my day gig, and just life in general--hours in the studio over the past year have been too few and far between. But over the past few months, I've finally gotten back down into the studio for some real work. And back to the 7 x 10 foot canvas I prepared and mounted on one of the studio walls back in the early spring that was starting to jeer at me anytime I went by. I finished it this weekend. It's called Split-leaf Wind and was inspired by the split-leaf philodendron I brought home from a local nursery in May. At the time and even though it's a fairly common houseplant, I didn't know anything about philodendrons, but was simply attracted to the aesthetics of it. What I hadn't realized when I bought it was that the plant's arching, heart-shaped leaves would split and crack open and eventually become a leaves with holes and rippling, jagged, fan-like edges and points. I didn't know I had a plant that essentially tears itself into pieces under its own pressure. On the flip side of its beauty, there's a tumultuousness about the force and energy of the new fissures, cracks, holes, and wild unfurlings I see week after week. Something unsettling in its feral beauty. Echoes of the violence of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, maybe. Or the sharp edginess of T. S. Eliot's April: "April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain."

This fall, as I feel myself finally getting back into my groove and exploring new directions while taking in the environment and landscape around me, I am grateful for the new studio. For years, I had to squelch my desire to work on a bigger scale. Now, I get to find out how it feels to paint full tilt without thinking about the size of the room. I have to admit to being really daunted by the canvas before the first brushstrokes, but once I got to work, my body, the paint, and the philodendrons led the way.