at the end of my Mendocino Artist in Residence – huge studio space!
Hi art friends.
This weekend over 100 artists exhibit in our lovely TriValley. 10-5:00, May 4-5, with a special sneak preview Friday night for 8 of the smaller private studios.
I’ll be showing at the Bothwell, Saturday and Sunday. Maybe I’ll see you there! I’m bringing out some abstract figuratives to show and offer for ridiculously low prices as well as quite a few of the layered ocean pours, including a few underwater pieces.
I am giving away this piece for the grand prize drawing for the third annual TriValley Artist Studio Tour.
I totally believe in Open Studios as a format for building an arts career and for helping supplement the income and following for artists in any career stage. Having a vibrant open studios to participate in is golden. It’s also good for the communities we live and make art in. I believe in it enough to donate a piece I love to entice at least some people to make the full tour.
Open Studios gave me wings early on in my career. I met so many people, made sales, and was buoyed by the interaction of the attendees so much I fell in love with the concept. I started ArtWalk Livermore in 2002 because our local Open Studios was cancelled, and I was crestfallen.
For artists, Open Studios work in many ways. Like I said, sales, of course. But sometimes when you are just painting, alone in your studio, there’s no interaction from others with your art. And artmaking starts a visual conversation, whether you intend that or not. And sometimes for various reasons a painting sits in a closet or in storage or on a wall where no one but you sees it. It’s silent.
There is something inherently gratifying about getting the chance for a number of people to engage with your work – especially when people really “get” it. It is a completion of that conversation you started, alone with yourself and your art tools. And people that really “get” your work tend to start following you – on Facebook or at other exhibitions, and in the next open studio. And eventually one piece might actually follow them home.
What Lynda Briggs said in her IG post a while back about how you will find your people and your people will find you at open studios rings true.
It’s also super amazingly good for the community. Not only can they discover the creativity going on in their neighborhoods, but by watching demos and new techniques they can be inspired to create themselves. Super good for young people, too – not only seeing a multitude of art and artmaking, but to realize that people out there actually do art after high school. Some professionally, some at their kitchen table. You don’t have to silence your art voice. And – people can be changed, when a work of art really hits their heart and their being. The effect is transformative. I’ve seen it and had it happen to me.
So all of that is to say, I’m donating because I think it’s important. I’m called Director of the event but honestly I’m only doing less than half of the copious amount of work this takes -and I’m doing that, too, because I think it’s important.
Nice, after the events of the last four years, to find importance and focus and meaning.
So that’s why. And by the way, first weekend in May! Gonna be a good one!
Surfacing 2.1 by Linda Ryan (C) 2019 all rights reserved
Surfacing 2.2 by Linda Ryan (C) 2019 all rights reserved
Lionhead Rock (Cove #1) by Linda Ryan (C) 2019 all rights reserved
Griphon Rock by Linda Ryan (C) 2019 all rights reserved
Play Misty 1 by Linda Ryan (C) 2019 all rights reserved
Play Misty 2 by Linda Ryan (C) 2019 all rights reserved
The Fog (Spivey Pt. 2)
Blake’s Gold (Spivey Pt. 1)
Above Works are from Surfacing, an Artist’s Journey
I’ve been working on this solo show for a long time, and am happy to say that it’s now hanging at the Gallery at Glendeven Inn & Lodge, Mendocino now through May 15, 2019.
Happy, and relieved. Creating a meaningful show that hangs together well is sort of like giving birth. Less painful, but anxiety-provoking. I was ready to be done with anxiousness. And then another atmospheric river hit the West Coast.
By the time we packed up for the trip, they were evacuating Guerneville and Monte Rio, beloved little towns on the Russian River, and strange weather was creating havoc all over Northern California. Crazy amounts of rain. Both Highways to the Coast off of northern 101 were closed due to flooding. I am told that this is not unusual for Highway 128 when the Navarro is full and the tide is high, but they were turning people away even at Highway 20, a more northerly route we rarely take but that has always been an alternate. One of my Mendocino friends said that the day we were traveling up, the winding road through Comptche that is always the back route for locals had been plagued with mudslides and trees falling from the sodden hills. She said, and I quote, “you’d be crazy to drive up here today”.
Geez. That was enough for me. I love Mendocino, but I must say I am not fond of these highways where the winding rarely ends, even in good weather. After almost 7 months of living there and coming back to Livermore at least once a month, I can drive them without whiteknuckling it all the way, but give me a threat of a tree landing on us with the Explorer loaded with 21 paintings representing over four years of dedicated experimentation, study and intense work and the personal safety of my partner and me and, well…
My partner, Duane, is so understanding and a great travel companion. The radio didn’t help, and neither did the Maps app on my iPhone. Weturned around and then turned back north first on the rain drenched Freeway 80 Berkeley and started to head home again after Santa Rosa. Then, I checked the weather again for the next day and it looked like it might really clear up – and he looked at me and said, hey, we are so close, let’s head up to Cloverdale and get a motel room and try again tomorrow.
We did, and the rain and even the fog suspended over 128 began to clear by 8:30 am the next morning. The drive was beautiful, as it always is – oak woodlands, lovely Anderson Valley, the ethereal redwoods, and finally the sea – but disconcerting, still. Small mudslides, too many to count. Lots of standing water, some flowing over the roads still, streams pushed to their limits, mostly small downed trees chainsawed in half and tossed to the side of the road (Nancy Puder, a good friend that has lived in the area since the 70’s, tells me that locals drive these roads with chainsaws in the back during periods of heavy rains).
Yes, we need the rain. Yes, I’m thankful this won’t be a drought year. It would be nice, though, if it would come down a bit more sporadically.
We got to lovely Glendeven early, in time to have coffee and biscotti in the Farmhouse and watch the sea rolling in to Van Damme Beach and the llamas kicking about and the chickens doing their chickeny things while gearing up to lay Glendeven’s free-range eggs. It was sunny and almost warm. When it was time to hang, Nancy Puder joined us and we put the show up in record time. Having capable Duane on my team is mandatory; having Nancy and her designer eye join in created one of those magical art hanging days where it all just seemed to work. Some people are just easy to hang with in more ways than one.
Oh yeah, about the show! Surfacing, An Artist’s Journey, explores the progression of the pour paintings up from underwater – the reef and coral pieces I painted previously – and exhibits the still-evolving coastal rock formations and the sea battering them which were my struggle and goal during my term as Artist in Residence 2017-18 at the Mendocino Art Center. There’s more to it than that; I’m working on a blog about how they evolved and what happened to me during that program (now that I finally understand it), but this is getting really long and I felt that the journey to actually just hang the show was part of gestating these works and the bringing them up for viewing was part of the journey’s story.
So. The coastal rocks are joined by several Underwater works in this exhibit. Standing in the middle of the gallery, it’s as if you feel the undulation of the movement of water, like you are in the Pacific but oddly not cold. Peaceful. At one with yourself and your evolutionary journey. Where you came from, where you are now, and where you are going become one.
That may be taking it too far. Sort of.
The paintings look great hung together. Yes, I said that. Those who know me personally know that while I’m not really a braggart (or at least I think I’m not, how does one know for sure?), I am far from humble – at least about painting. It’s a good show, if I do say so myself. Pour painting taken to a different level, all painted with a reverence for our ocean and copious amounts of that art explorer thing I think I might be addicted to that I find so fascinating with this medium.
Plus it’s just so cool to see them dry, go from milky to glasslike ahh-ness. I wish you could see that.
Or see the show. They are so much better in person.
This is a previous gallery showing. The gallery is open 9-12 and 3-7pm daily.
About Glendeven Inn & Lodge
This place is beyond charming, a serene getaway in an amazing setting. They earn the accolades they’ve gotten from so many magazines with attention to detail and caring for their guests, so much so that they have been expanding and purchasing neighboring property to make the experience available to even more.
Even their website is fun to explore. They give each guest a packet of chickenfeed so that they can become acquainted with the hens that will lay their breakfast eggs! And, you can participate in llama feeding!!!
You won’t find much on the site about the gallery as they are starting a reboot of it, but they are part of the Mendocino Whale Festival – their weekend is March 8-10, and they’ve done a nice writeup of my exhibition here.
Studies and demo artworks are the steps we take along our journey.
Most artists I know try out new methods, new pigment combinations, new ways of doing things on less expensive supports. It’s just more freeing to play on something that costs a fraction of a “real” painting. It’s also really, really liberating to free yourself from the more serious aspects of art making and composition – you’ve built that into the experience by using something different than you use for professional works. You are playing and you know it through the whole experience. This what I do when I do studies.
It’s similar, but different, for paintings I do while demonstrating, either for a video (rarely) or in person at an open studio or during one of my classes. Any artist that demonstrates has got to know the tension of performing – and sometimes the exhilaration of nailing it, of doing a really cool flippin’ painting while under scrutiny, sometimes in only 15 minutes.
And sometimes these works take you somewhere you hadn’t expected and change the “real” work you do next. Art is like that. It’s one of the things I love about this profession. Art is a conversation, even if the conversation you are having is with yourself. It’s a journey, and sometimes without a destination in mind you can discover a new path.
Sometimes studies and demos should remain just a reminder of a personal exploration – something you thought was interesting and should be explored. Sometimes they aren’t to be shown to anyone other than the artist.
And sometimes, sometimes, once in a while, they inform the next works – but, do you keep them forever? When you are done looking and absorbing them, then what?
For me, I can’t sell them at a gallery. These aren’t my serious works, they aren’t on expensive panels, they are … play … and part of where I am going.
I guess I was lucky to have created a bunch that have given me what I needed and now their task is completed. I got an okay from my gallery to let them go at demo prices. I’m gonna do that, let the good ones out of the boxes they’ve been stored in, let them go play on someone else’s walls. Be free, as they helped me to be.
I woke up early again, but instead of rushing down to the studio to see how the paintings dried, I wrapped up in a shawl and sat on my landing to watch the sky lighten, my first coffee of the day warm in my hands.
I can hear crashing waves from the north Headlands and from the south, where the Bay meets Big River. There are songbirds greeting the morning, rumblings from the ravens, frog song to the south, and occasionally a seagull cries in the distance. There is an occasional car – it’s not quite tourist season, yet, so human noises are wonderfully quiet on weekday mornings.
Rather than try to explain it in words, I thought I’d just use this to answer some questions raised by potential attendees for the Pour Party Events and future classes – this is usually the size we use in Pour Parties or Basics Classes –
I’m writing this after just coming in from a tromp around the headlands as the sun went down, accompanied by a perfect blanket of fog and mist.
On clear days, there is a constant stream of sunset revelers past my studio doors, straight down Little Lake Street to the headlands. This is a great place to watch the show, with a clear view and a complement of waves thundering against the bluffs below your feet.
Did I say that it’s right down the street from my house? Yup.
I have come to prefer the misty, almost eerie sunsets, at least here at the bluffs. And it’s not just that there are less people about, although that’s part of it. It’s gentler, not blindingly bright, and full of surprise sunrays peeking through and about the clouds and washing them with swaths of color and metallic golds and coppers playing about the fog belt, the clouds…
As I write this, my nose and feet are just about thawed, and after I close this, I’m heading back downstairs to the studio to mix up pouring medium and this new palette of pigments I’ve been experimenting with. I’ve been mixing and pouring color swatches on mylar since I got back after the extended family holiday, trying for a more Mendocino Northern Pacific Ocean feel while still retaining a lot of the transparency that I love.
I think I’m close enough to just go try it out. 21sheets so far. 54 color combinations.
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