Mother's Day-Pt. 2- Artist as Mom

My life is never seperated from my work and I have created a plethora of paintings around mothering as I journey along in one of the greatest adventures of my life.  I thought I would continue with this subject in this month when mothers are celebrated. 

Most of my paintings come from a very personal place. Even some of my cow paintings tell stories about what's going on in my life, such as in "Eat Your Broccoli" which depicts a momma cow and her  calf in a surreal field of raining broccoli. (A nod to Magritte) This painting was inspired by my Kayla who wouldn't eat broccoli as a little girl.

Before I even knew I was pregnant, I painted "My neighborhood", which depicts myself, my husband (in between the two houses) and our neighbors on their respective porches. There I am talking on the porch, very preggers, while my husband looks on.

 When I was actually pregnant, I painted this one, "Pregnant Artist." I have to laugh when I recall my pre-teen girl begging me to take it off the wall so her friends wouldn't see it. So much for being sophistcated about a little artistic nudity even though I tried to not actually show much :0) Note the Van Gogh calendar in the background and the rooster in the window. Van Gogh is my favorite and the rooster is symbolic of my husband whose last name in German means "rooster".

Sometimes I run into women who tell me that they were artists until their kids were born and then they stopped. I would just as much have stopped breathing. I don't know how they could do that, maybe they were less driven than me, but I never stopped. It helped that she was such a good, easy baby. I used to get up around 4:30 in the morning before she woke so I could paint a little, or sometimes she would sit and watch me in her little bouncy chair. At 19 months, she had her own plastic easel, paint and tam. She too created very colorful works, though she was an abstract expressionist at that time :0)..

As wonderful a baby as she was, just the shock of becoming parents can be overwhelming. The shift that takes place in your life from self centered to other-centered, and the responsibility of it all is all encompassing. I have depicted these feelings in the painting "New Baby", where the beautiful little diapered one is a giant in the space, overtaking the picture and the lives of the Mommy whom she holds in the palm of her hand and her Daddy by a string.

Having a child also was bringing up a lot of stuff for me as she grew. It was like she was holding up a mirror that reflected my life, causing me to worry and wonder about if I could make her life bettter than my upbringing had been. In this painting "Toddler" she is a hybrid of herself and me. She stands, again overwhelming the picture, but she is standing off the curb in a street between two houses, representative of the New Jersey street where I grew up. (Boy, did I have fun painting that bunny)

I painted her many more times as she has grown up, less as she approached her pre- teen and teen years when I could barely get her to be near me or smile, until this one (Flying through Life) which I painted last year, when she was leaving to go to college. It was so hard to let her go and I couldn't believe that that she was leaving already.

She and I are depicted flying through the air in our matching Mommy-Daughter dresses that I had made, through a world of things that I had taught her about or that we had discovered together.

 As I write this I am tearing up again......I know there are plenty more paintings to paint and the journey with her is not over. I just miss my baby.

My Mother in my Art

As Mother's Day draws near, I am thinking about my own mother and how she has impacted my life as an artist, mother and woman. We are a product of our environment for good or bad and the one person in the world who tends to have the most influence over you if you grew up with her is your Mom. My mother, Elizabeth Helen Slovinski, died  in 1984 when I was 25 years old, 3 years after my father.

 
These are the things I remember about my mother.

1. She had a big laugh and sparkly eyes
2. She smoked a lot
3. She drank a lot.
4. She worked hard.
5. She could be cold.
6. She loved me.
7. She had suffered a lot.
8. She taught me how to make things
9. She said one encouraging, memorable thing to me in my life and it was near when she was dying. She said "I always new you were going to do something special but I don't know what it is."


Well, here I am, 54 years old and still trying to figure that out. Am I already doing it, writing books and making paintings and pottery? I don't know. Maybe it was a Mom's wishful thinking, putting her lost dreams and wishes into me. Anyway, I miss my Mom. I got married without a Mom, had my daughter and raised her without a Mom around, had Christmases, Birthdays, failures and triumphs without a Mom to cheer me on or show me how. Maybe my Mom wouldn't have been all that anyway. Sometimes she wasn't very good at being a Mom. I have painted her from memory a few times trying to get a grip on her, my struggle most obvious in the painting below called "Mother, Saint or Sinner?" in which I am trying to reconcile my feelings about her.

In "Party Girls", there is my mother and my Aunt Clara, sitting on the couch, doing what they did best together-drinking beer and smoking in what looks like a happy little party but, unfortunately, it would eventually lead to fighting.

There was a lot of that in my house. The alcoholism ran through both of my parents and my aunts and uncles. A family gathering could never be trusted as a peaceful, happy occasion. My parents were older when they had me. When I was growing up, she was already old at 46, white haired when I was 6. My father was 50, so I would always get asked if they were my grandparents.When she was 65,  I found some black and white early pictures of them in her apartment when she had gotten the cancer. I didn't know what to do about the cancer, about the fact that I was about to have no one, but I knew what I would try to do-I  would hold on. Hold on in paint. This was when I started to be a painter. I  bought some tubes of white and black oil paint and  a couple of canvases, and taught myself to paint the people in these pictures whom I had never known but was so curious about- my young mother and father and a brother 17 years older than me whom I still barely know.

My mother was not an artist but she could crochet and do macrame'. I don't remember anyone else in my family as being an artist, so I will say I got the creative gene from her. I got some of her other good traits and some of her bad. I think the most important thing I got from her was her strength and resilience and willingness to work hard. My mother was not a saint. What I have concluded is that  she was  the flawed, vulnerable person that God chose to bring me into this world and shape me to do and be what He intended. And as she could express it, she loved me and I loved her.

 Being a Mother is a rich gift and a challenge. We do our best most of the time and the rest of the time we just  pray. Much of the time we are going on what we were raised with, maintaining the good and hopefully, throwing out the bad.

I think I have done a good job at one thing with my daughter. I don't think she will ever doubt that I love her or say she suffered from a lack of affection from me. Beyond that, I have made plenty of mistakes as a Mom, but none I hope that she can't forgive me for. It's been such a joy and adventure raising a daughter and I feel blessed to have had the privilege.


Happy Mother's Day!

(The theme of motherhood and my daughter in particular have shown up in my work a lot and so this month, look for more posts on these subjects.)

A Grand Evening

Friday April 5,  I had the pleasure of opening my first solo show in a few years in a gallery setting at the baby grand Gallery at the Grand Opera house in Wilmington, Delaware. The Grand is a beautiful old Victorian era theater on Market Street and is host to a number of national music, comedy and theater acts throughout the year and enjoys a prestigious reputation in the area.

The Gallery that I got to exhibit in, the "baby grand" is a huge room which allotted me two 19 foot walls and two 6 foot walls for my paintings. Given this amount of space, I decided to mount the show as a "mini retrospective " of my work to showcase larger heavier, pieces painted on wood that I don't get to exhibit at my outdoor shows and paintings from the beginning and middle of my career as a painter. The room is beautiful and a wonderful venue to exhibit in. The hanging system was a bit tricky at first and due to the size and weight of most of the paintings and  I would have been lost in hanging it without the help of my friend Stacy from Storm Flight Designs.

Awesome Steve Sottung on guitar

 The opening was so much fun. My friend Steve Sottung played acoustic covers on his guitar much to the enjoyment of my guests and I got to talk with people about work that has been hidden and under appreciated in my studio. It was really wonderful to bring out some of the people paintings that I created from photos just because they were interesting to me. I gave them new frames and the respect they deserve.

 Looking around my show, I felt very proud, like a mom surveying her children and grandchildren and appreciating each one of them for their unique and special qualities. The part I always enjoy about these things is talking to people about the paintings. I love to hear their stories about what they think is going on in the painting or why they think I painted things a certain way.  That is the interaction that is so special and magical about creating art. What did the artist intend? What does the viewer perceive? I find that they are never wrong in whatever they bring to viewing the painting because that is THEIR experience with the work, so how can I say it's wrong?

I love being an artist. Creativity has saved me throughout my life. I am so blessed to get to do this. I am so blessed by the friends and family that support me, by the people that spend their hard earned money on my work. It humbles me. Thank you all :0) oh, the show is up until April 30 so stop by if you can!

It was Bound to Happen

Somewhere around  20 years ago, I painted some cows. The first one materialized when I was hugely pregnant. Make your own deductions there :0)  I tried to paint them in a realistic way even though as a primarily self taught painter realism has always been something of a struggle for me, I was fairly successful and sold a few of those paintings. One day, a birthday gift arrived in the mail for me. It was a T-shirt that said, "Cows of Color" and had six cows on it with colored spots. It was from my sister. I really dug that shirt and I thought, "Hey, that could be fun".

What has materialized from there is over 100 whimsical cow paintings in all colors, stripes and situations. I have had a blast letting my imagination go all over the map with the bovines in my painted world. I continued painting my "People on the Couch" paintings and other series, but damned if those wild girls didn't find there way into a couple of those paintings too. (They're sneaky, you have to really look.)

"Red"

"B-52's"

When I wrote "Millicent and the Faraway Moon"" a few years ago, it only stood to reason that the main character had to be a cow.

In the Barn 

 Two years ago I became a potter. During one of my  open studios a year or two ago, a couple of ladies came and bought an original cow painting. This year, they dropped by my studio and offered me a commission: a cow painting on a bowl! It was bound to happen. Somehow these creatures have taken on a life of their own. Just when I think I am ready to move on to something else, they keep demanding to show up wherever I am! I am not sure if painting the cows on my pottery is a trend that will continue, but I do plan on looking for ways to incorporate my painting skills more and more into my ceramics. Of course, resistance may be futile.... the ladies are talking dinnerware....:0)

The Ten Most famous Masterpieces Ever by guest blogger Geoff Jackson

The Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo Da Vinci in the first part of the 16th century. It is a portrait of a woman who is believed to have been Lisa Gherardini. Da Vinci used oils to create the masterpiece on a panel made of poplar. In the painting the subject is sat in front of a faint landscape in the background. The painting is famous for the indecipherable expression on the woman's face, which many scholars have debated the meaning of.

The Scream

The Scream is a painting which features a figure with a screaming face in its forefront. It is an example of Expressionism and was painted by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 1893. There are four different versions of this work with each created using a different medium, including oils, pastels and tempera. The original piece is currently displayed in the National Gallery in Oslo, Norway.

The Laughing Cavalier

The Laughing Cavalier is a portrait of an unknown man, who was believed to be in the military. It was painted in 1624 by the Dutch painter Frans Hals and is famous for the way in which the eyes of the subject appear to follow you in every direction. The image has been reproduced many times over the years and the original is now displayed as part of the Wallace Collection in London.

Guernica

Guernica is a masterpiece by the artist Pablo Picasso. It was created in 1937 following the Spanish Civil War and depicts the aftermath of war. It appears to be a mass of figures and was painted in grey, black and white oils on a very large canvas. Guernica was taken all around the world on a tour, being displayed so as to bring the Civil War to everyone's attention.

The Hay Wain

John Constable painted The Hay Wain in 1821. It is a landscape painting of the River Stour in Suffolk and depicts a hay wain being pulled across the river by two horses. There is a cottage to the left of the picture which is known to be located near Flatford Mill which was owned by Constables father. The Hay Wain is considered to be a British masterpiece and is currently displayed at the National Gallery in London.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Girl with a Pearl Earring is a Dutch masterpiece by Johannes Vermeer. It was painted around the middle of the seventeenth century and features a girl with her hair pulled back from her face, wearing a pearl earring. The painting was created in oil on canvas and has been restored many times over the years. Girl with a Pearl Earring has also been represented in both literature and film, most notably the 2003 film starring Scarlet Johannson and Colin Firth.

Sunflowers

Sunflowers is a series of paintings depicting sunflowers by the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh. There are two groups of paintings in this series. The first group were painted in 1887 in Paris while the second set were created the following year in Arles. In the Paris paintings the sunflowers are lying on the ground, while in the second set the sunflowers are arranged in vases. Sunflowers were painted in oil and are currently displayed in the National Gallery in London.

Impression, Sunrise

Impression, Sunrise is an Impressionist painting by the French artist Claude Monet. It was painted in 1872 and was the primary work of the Impressionist movement. It is an oil landscape of the La Havre harbour in France. As was popular within this movement, the painting merely suggests the landscape using soft loose brush strokes. The painting was stolen in 1985 but was recovered and has been displayed in the Musee Marmatton Monet in Paris since 1991.

The Last Supper

The Last Supper is a mural painting of the scene of Jesus and his disciples at the last supper. It was painted at the end of the fifteenth century by Leonardo Da Vinci as part of the renovations of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy. It has been restored many times as well as being mentioned frequently in literature and film, most recently in the book and film adaptation “The Da Vinci Code”.

Whistler's Mother

Whistler's Mother is an oil painting of a seated woman from a side view. It was painted by the American painter James McNeill Whistler in 1871. It was painted in grey, black and white and is one of the most famous works by an American artist. It was purchased in 1891 by the French state and is displayed at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris.

Featured images:

•  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cavalier_soldier_Hals-1624x.jpg#file
•  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Scream.jpg#file
•  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mona_Lisa,_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci,_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpg#file
•  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PicassoGuernica.jpg#file
•  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Constable_The_Hay_Wain.jpg#file
•  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Johannes_Vermeer_(1632-1675)_-_The_Girl_With_The_Pearl_Earring_(1665).jpg#file
•  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vincent_Willem_van_Gogh_127.jpg#file
•  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Claude_Monet,_Impression,_soleil_levant,_1872.jpg#file
•  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%9Altima_Cena_-_Da_Vinci_5.jpg#file
•  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Whistlers_Mother_high_res.jpg#file

Geoff Jackson is an art enthusiast and is currently working closely with Fotoviva, a leading canvas prints supplier in the UK. Subscribe to their blog for the latest news from the art industry.

Think Like a 4 Year Old

Childhood is the world of miracle or of magic: it is as if creation rose luminously out of the night, all new and fresh and astonishing. Childhood is over the moment things are no longer astonishing. When the world gives you a feeling of "déjà vu," when you are used to existence, you become an adult.

EUGENE IONESCO, Present Past / Past Present

What a gift childhood is. Coming to every new thing with wide eyed wonder. Celebrating every little new accomplishment. Doesn't it make you smile when you hear a child exclaim, "Look, I can tie my shoes!"  "Look,I can make a snow angel" "Look, I made a flower!" 

Then there are the things they say which have no basis in reality at all. They will look at you and tell you with solemn seriousness and a prideful look. "I can Fly!" I'm a superhero!"  "I can jump to the top of that building!" "My friends and I are all princesses." 

Children come to the world with no prior knowledge. Everything they encounter is fresh and awesome and wonderful the first time. Its a discovery.

Everything they learn to accomplish comes with unbridled pride and joy as they discover human powers that they didn't know they had.

Do you ever look closely at children's art? Some times it is astonishing in it's inventiveness.

That wild imagination totally loosens itself in their art. They don't know that there are supposed to be RULES. That's something we impose on them over time, killing for a while the natural inclination to let unfettered creativity show itself. It has to be rediscovered.

Why must being an adult mean losing this wonder, joy, pride and freedom?

I want to think like a 4 year old again. I want to get truly excited when I learn that I can do something new and I want to celebrate it loudly.

I want to be completely astonished by every new flower I see, every fact I learn about the universe, every simple thing that surrounds me.

I want to totally let go. I want to create art straight from my imagination. I want to forget the rules imposed on me. I want to forget any "adults don't do that" voices in my head....

I want my colors, my creations, my joy, my excitement to be my superpowers. I want to feel a thump, thump, thump in my heart and have a wide smile spread over my face with every new thing I make. I will not suppress it. I will live in 4 year old joy!

Radiant Child © 2005 Karen O'Lone -Hahn

New thoughts as they trickle in...

Some belated New Years Resolutions....(It's still the New Year right ?)

#1 Done!

1. Buy fresh flowers twice a month

2. Burn more scented candles when I am home alone working

3. Eat dinner with fancy plates and candles with my hubby in the dining room for no special reason.

4. Eat dinner with fancy plates and candles by myself in the dining room for no special reason.

5. Clean out the jacuzzi and use it.

6. Burn more fires in the fireplace or pit.

That's it for now.. like I said, it's a trickle....

addendum: 7. Schedule one day a month on the calendar to  plan, dream, organize schedule and reflect on items pertaining to my art and life.

What are your plans or thought for making the New Year different or better ?