do you actually read this...?

or are you just here for the pictures?

just wondering.

well, i tried running with the knee brace today...and it actually felt pretty good!
until i took it off. right now my left knee hurts like the dickens.

some bad pictures of some of my crappy stuff...





i have been having a terribly hard time with my painting of ashlee...that girl has most amazing skin...


it is also impossible to paint. i have been looking at Klimt, some Bouguereau and a lot of Waterhouse...they did amazing paintings of fair-skinned women, it is helping a bit...




very tired today. physically and mentally. this week was mid-terms...reminding me that i only have until the end of April to finish everything...the paper...my paintings...









i'm getting really tired of people talking big and not doing anything.

maybe it's just a reflection on myself...but i'm weary of it just the same.
Lord help me to let things go...


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so far so good

Here is my painting of Edan so far...keep in mind the color is, in reality, more intense, and the photo is a bit glared where i haven't yet added medium.
i'm very happy with it. lots more to do, though. but that's okay. last night he came into my studio wearing the same shirt, so i got to paint some of it from life...so exciting. someday i'll get to paint actual people from life and i will be so happy...! in about 45 minutes i'm heading up to the main campus to photograph my friend Ashlee for a possible painting and tomorrow i'm hoping to photograph Nick. and there are about 20 others i want to paint too, but we'll see. :P

it's warmer today, i can go outside without 3 layers and a scarf. there were little orange flowers on the hills on my way into Laguna this morning. i made an audible happy sound in my car, even though i was driving all alone.



tonight i get to draw a naked guy. whee!!



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the blessing and curse

"I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need or reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their validity, no matter what."

~Madeleine L'Engle
A Circle of Quiet


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"A double yoke"

I was up late last night in restlessness. This morning i woke up early instantly and could not get back to sleep no matter how long i laid in bed. Why couldn't i have done that the other 5 days i had to be up for school??

The air was cold. my jaw hurt. Before i even crawled from under the covers i was anxiety-ridden. Almost without thinking, i reached over to my bedside table and read this from Candles in the Dark by A. Carmichael and it pricked me. this could be written for me...but it could also be written by me, for so many i am praying for. you all know who you are.

"I am thinking so much of you. My prayer for you is that the peace of God may enter into your heart so that you will spread peace all round.
The only way I know that leads to this is the way of Matthew 11:29. Verse 28 has a word for you, too, but verse 29 is all for you. You have borne a yoke--sometimes a heavy yoke--but His yoke is easy and his burden is light, because we do not bear it alone. It is a double yoke. We are fellow-workers with Him in a new sense, when we give up making our own yoke and take His. It is a definite transaction between Him and our souls. "Take." He won't put it on us; He asks us to take. Then when we do, it is His yoke, not ours, thereafter."

Father it is so simple yet so impossible. You should force it on me...then i might get something done. ha ha...just kidding...

i'm in a starbucks in Orange and Allison Krauss just came on the speakers.

The rain has been amazing, the air is so cold, the sun is so clear, the light is so clean, the sky so deep and cloudy and blue...as i crested the hill to get coffee this morning my breath was taken away and i was almost too entranced to reach for my camera as i drove...


my week has been bittersweet... the rain and seeing awesome people was lovely. but i don't know what to do with my heart right now and i am cursing my inability to let the Lord take control of me and my desires. my insecurity has steered me this week...not my yoke with the Lord. and i am paying the price with headaches and little sleep...among other things.
yesterday i had a good long conversation with my friend Nick, and i was reminded of how faithful God is to let us know we are loved. i was also reminded of how much i'm going to miss LCAD when i graduate in May...but i can't think about that right now...!

oh i worry so much...about people i love, about my effect on people...about how i wish i could be stronger for people...and it's that worry that often causes me to pull myself away...because would almost rather never get close to them that to risk disappointing them...because i'm always afraid of disappointing people...because i'm always disappointing myself...

man, Satan's a jerk.

Yet despite all of this, The Lord has been faithful. He has pulled me out of so much, given me so much joy, pleasure and ability when i thought there was nothing left to strive for. One would think that would make me more able to trust him now, but no. because i'm a jerk, too.

so what of tonight...tomorrow...
2 Timothy 1:7 (NKJV) has hovered in front of my eyes for weeks now, when i remember it, and that's what i need to do.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

oh sigh

it is so beautiful outside. i think i'll draw today. clean my apartment. then this evening is the closing reception for an exhibit i'm in at school.
but first i'll finish my coffee and ask for God to bless you, because i love you.

you know who you are.


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Current inspirations...

Chuck Close




Nicolai Fechin




C.S. Lewis



Last night's Sunset...











what's inspiring you?




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i think i'm willing to pay

David A. Glen is a man who desires what most see as the unattainable…that is…truth. He is the chief operations officer of an organization called PROGENY and a documentary photographer who has traveled all over the world. Recently he came to one of my classes at LCAD as a guest speaker. We were treated to a fascinating examination and discussion of the importance of truth and ethics in art, and why it is different for everyone…and why maybe it shouldn’t be different for everyone…after all, truth is truth, right?

Art documents the human condition. No one can deny that. Even art that seems to be meaningless and superficial still says something about the person who created it, that person being a human being, and thus exhibiting an expression of their humanity.
David made the point that most of the artists of the past were essentially documentarians recording our physical, emotional and spiritual history. I appreciated his drive to record not only fear, sadness, pain and suffering…but also joy, amusement and beauty. He shared that often the most difficult thing for him to do is to remain honest. His purpose is to witness and record history…to take pictures, not make them; and through it all to remain unbiased, casting aside all semantics and all ambiguity.

At one point Michael Moore was brought up. Concerning him, David said, to my amusement and relief: “Michael Moore is the most damaging thing that has ever happened to documentarians in the history of the art. Because he has an agenda. He is not interested in the truth.” This was something I had been thinking about as he spoke, and I could sense his bitterness towards the man who had stripped his life’s passion of so much credence and integrity. I feel the same way about what legalism and manmade religion has done to the beauty and light of Christianity.

Staying honest is an essential part of maintaining one’s humanity. David stressed that losing his humanity would be detrimental to his pictures, not to mention himself. He never wants to become numb to what is around him; great photographers, he said, are never desensitized. There is a large personal price to pay for allowing yourself to become so personally involved in the tragedy of people’s lives…but you have to care. If you lose that, the photos become mere sensationalism. Once you become calloused to tragedy or joy, once you lose your humanity, the work is no longer honest. It turns into superficial pandering, merely something terrible or strange or amazing that people scramble to see. And where is the truth in that?

Motives in any art are apparent in the final output. We were told that there is a fine line between expressing yourself and your beliefs…and distorting truth and reality. “Without truth you are nothing,” David said. The unvarnished truth is not meant to be comfortable. He expressed his opinion that true art can “get people back on track”…it is not “art for art’s sake”. I don’t know what every other person in the room thought of that, but I happen to agree with it. I also agree with what David said when he asked this question: “Is there such a thing as totally unbiased objectivity?” His answer was, of course, no. But that’s what it is to be human…each person different from another…no one creates or expresses themselves in exactly the same way. Whether or not your biases make it into the work, by grasping for the truth, you can be assured of the utmost purity in the outcome whether it be paintings of kittens or photographs of a cold-blooded massacre at a school.

As far as the ethical aspects were concerned, in this case, the issue was the question of right or wrong in the photography of dead and dying children. After seeing a slide show of the tragic, awful terrorism that took place in 2004 in a Russian elementary school we were asked, do pictures like this serve a purpose? Most of the class said yes…illumination, awareness, understanding. But the few opposing voices were just as strong, saying they were too disturbing, too gruesome, and that it was just plain insensitive to show them in a classroom.

I tend to side more with the former argument, that seeing things like this are indeed necessary, especially for Americans. I don’t want to be sheltered from this, to
Continue to believe that this fantasy world that I live in is what is normal. Some people, rather, most people wake up to see this kind of pain and heartbreak every day. My only connection to that is seeing footage like this…and I even have the freedom to choose whether or not I want to look at it! It is so far from what I consider reality…I am blessed beyond belief. And so very grateful.

~

Anyway, i found the class to be extremely fascinating...there is a link to the organization's website below.
What this has to do with my own aims and desires for what i hope to accomplish artistically is still vague to me...except that i am striving for truth...and how that is expressed in individual people (redundant?). Is that my goal in my love for portraiture...? Maybe not entirely...but i know it's part of it. The Lord will fill in the rest.

~

www.childrenunderfire.org



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The Life of Jim...and Why It's Okay He Longs for More Than He Has

It's been really windy today...and chilly. But so beautiful. Mom and Sarah and i went to visit grandpa in the hospital today, he fell again about a week ago and mildly fractured a part pf his spine, got himself a nasty gash in the back of his head, and now has pnemonia for the third time in the last 6 months. Wow! He's actually doing pretty well...just weak and grumpy. Which is nothing new. I held his hand and told him what teams were playing in the NFL game on TV (The Steelers and the Broncos), and we gave him cookies.

While we were there we visited a man that mom met in the emergency room last week when she took grandpa in. His name is Jim...and all his life he's battled a horrible disease that causes constrictions in one's intestines that must be surgically removed. He had his first surgery when he was 7 years old, and has had 7 more since then. He's 51 and has virtually no digestive system left. He weighed about 100 pounds when he dragged himself into the ER a week ago, dirty and unkempt, and today told us in a bright voice that he's gained 9 pounds since then. His hair is cut so bad it's almost comical; obviously someone's quick remedy to the bedraggled mess he was when he arrived. He's got 5 IV's running into his arm supplying him with fats, sugars, vitamins, etc. because he pretty much can't eat. Last time mom visited him, he asked her to bring him some "snacky foods" that would just go straight through him and he could enjoy...so we brought him chocolate chip cookies, too.

He showed us his scars from the surgeries, and showed us how his skin was regaining elasticity. He trembled as he spoke to us about his award-winning knife and gun collections, his friend the Elvis impersonater, and told us about his two children, both around my age. His daughter in in college in San Diego, and his son just turned 21. "Your daughters are so beautiful!" he told my mom. "I wish you could meet my kids, they're good looking kids. I'm so lucky." He told us about his comic book shop that he used to own. That his wife had yellow-green eyes. That his parents both died of cancer when they were in their early fifties. "That's so young!" He told us.

He invited us to come to the next show he will have his collections in when he "gets all better", and we happily told him we would love to go. He hugged us all so warmly as we left that i hardly noticed how thin he was. And as we walked down the hallway we talked among ourselves of how fascinating it is for someone who treasures life so much and has so much more he wants to do with it...can be so close to death. A week ago as he, my mom and my grandpa were in th ER they witnessed a group of young gang members being rushed past and around them...victims of multiple stab wounds. "They have no idea what they're throwing away...they're just throwing life away!" Jim said to my mom that night.

We know he's probably going to die soon. The doctors don't even know how he was still alive or how he could have taken care of himself. He's being released later this week, and will be admitted into a convalescent home as sort of a halfway house deal. But after that??? Lord, i don't know. He told us he was "going home"...but we don't even know if he has a home to go to.

hmmm. I'm not sure how to wrap this up. I've written four different paragraphs...trying to end this post for the last 15 minutes. I just want so much to be grateful. And i hope i can learn to value my own life as much as God does. That would be better than anything i could ever imagine.



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Ransom asked what she meant.

"What you have made me see," answered the Lady, "is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before, Yet it has happened every day. One goes forth into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one's mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before--that the very moment of the finding there is an the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for the moment, before you. And if you wished--if it were possible to wish--you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other."

~C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

The Simple Wisdom...

C.S. Lewis never ceases to inspire me. In the midst of desires to write a story, particularly one for children, i chanced to come upon some essays of his concerning, ironically, storytelling. In his writings on children's stories, i've been pleased to find the following instruction:

-"No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty-except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better to have not read at all...I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children's story which is only enjoyed by children is a bad children's story."

-"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are marks of childhood and adolescence...When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." (with a little "shout-out" to Paul there...)

Then, referring to the notion that people should only read age-appropriate books, there is written on of my favorite quotes form him: "No reader worth his salt trots along to a time-table."

Perhaps this means nothing to anyone else but me. But i couldn't pass up a chance that perhaps someone could share my inspiration. I'm finding a great deal of joy in reading these essays, as I find myself relating to so much of what Lewis says. This isn't a new occurrence, as i often find when reading him, i can apply myself and understand myself much more. It's really very liberating, and i'm particularly pleased to find such a sense of knowing him on a more personal level, and being able to relate to him as well in some other way than spiritually.

I love to write, and it's fun really, to explore Lewis' own ideas of something i'm particularly interested in. To read works of his that go beyond even his stories and spiritual exhortations, as much as i love them, is refreshing. Like reading Tolkien's letters, to see a greater glimpse of someone you admire and peek into their other passions, and read what they have to say about life and family and, in this case, theories on the actual act of reading and writing. They were both so young at heart, and yet so wise...it gives me hope that i don't always have to be grown-up, or even feel so, to make an impact in this world.



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