3rd Session Rachel

2nd Session on Rachel

THIS is freedom!

Coming along nicely! 

Latest Collaborative Work

Check it out!

http://seashellfox.blogspot.com

Territory Influences

My landlord refused my offer to insulate the attic.  He said "it needs to breathe up there"....right......I've been forced to take some drastic measures and will be building a solar powered heater for the window.  My studio is starting to look more and more like the Territory.  Dreams of Paris and Hillary Clinton's pores muddle my thoughts.

Somerville 2011

Paris 2008

Rachel (3rd model in series)

It was a new experience painting Rachel.  There was a completely different vibe with her.  When I painted Ashley and Mickey I was making ridiculous faces, grunting and gasping with ecstasy, aggressively trying to penetrate the canvas with my brush, etc.  This is sort of my usual way of painting unless I am working on a slower, layered mixed media piece.  Rachel gave me a gentle, quiet feeling of peace and I painted her flesh softly.  I don't know what it is about the meditation aspect and allowing the models to speak for themselves but this series is becoming more and more interesting! 

December 13th

12.13.11

I see a boy on the train

From my childhood.

The commute becomes

Ghostly.

He’s too far to reach

But I wouldn’t anyway.

Though I’ve spoke his name

Countless times

I don’t know him.

Today is that date

Long thought about

And planned

Now emptied and plain.

No anxious scurry to the airport

No kisses goodbye.

Just an appointment

A computer

A commitment made

Countless times.

What if I reached out?

Could I utter the essence

Of lazy days in trees?

How could I express

That Christmas party

Where I chased him

And grabbing

His father scolded me?

Such shame I possess.

And imagine what he keeps...

The shy, quiet boy around the bend

With his interrogative mother

And cat-eyed sister

A mere dark, softened shadow

Of his father.

A deep well of grief

Lies behind his shiny, black pupils

Concealed by his cold, obedient

Statue of a face. 

Fearful of masks

A boy

Who now ought to be

A man

Trades one mould for the next

And in rapidly re-disguising

Acts as though

He is alive.

Speeding the shedding of skins

So he never once knows them

Nor does he know his loved ones

Nor do they know him.

A fierce man

Determined

Full of absolutes

Awaits his love with certainty.

But only at the final moment

Does he lift his head

Erect

Distracted and weighted

Bedridden

Doubting his regiments

Still too narrow to split

Then “pop” goes his hip.

Every injury is fleeting

If you will it to be. 

But it’s easy to stay a coward.

It’s natural

To preserve

What you think you need.

So, go. 

No one knows you. 

2nd Painting Finished

Although I prefer this blog to be largely visual, I'd just like to point out something important about my artistic process for those of you who might be interested.  

The Walden Pond sketches and photos that are a few posts back weren't so great.  However, the process of going there, meditating, observing, and creating was necessary to inspire many of the branches/forest in this painting.  If you have a good eye you will even be able to see something very specific that I stole from Walden as well as just the general impression of those woods (color, shape, mood, atmosphere, etc).  I did not go back and look at the sketches or photos to help me with this painting. The visions of my most recent experience at Walden simply made their way into this painting via my memory, some conscious and others not.  

Additionally,  I know all of the models from this series.  I have relationships with them outside of the art studio.  Some of them I know very, very well, some I have deep spiritual connections with and others more complex relationships with.  The fact that I have these varied relationships with the models has a profound affect on how they are expressed in the paintings.  

Each model is also lead through a guided meditation on their sacred space in Nature.  They choose their own pose through this guidance and without further suggestion from me.  

Rachel is next on Saturday.  So far all yogi(ni)s.  Stay tuned and check out the photos from the final painting I have done of Mickey.  

I think this is done....

Although I'm not too big on symbolism....I know that the model identifies his spirit animal to be the wolf...couldn't help myself

Better...

Second in Figure/Nature Series

Detail of the face

 mmmmmmmm love this stuff

Well, there are some nipple issues but so far so good!

It's Happening

The beginning of my new series....SO EXCITED.  Let's see how humans and nature reconcile with each other.

Finished Forest Narrative

This tells the story of my love life.  There is the right guy for me just on the other side of a tree. But I don't even see him...I am reaching for a little cat.  My blank expression is a mask.  

Walden Thanksgiving

Made my quarterly pilgrimage to Walden.  Paintings and Photos below:

Exhibits!

I have not been blogging!  :/

Me being a nerd at the BCEC opening

but look! I am showing at the BCEC and also at Thos. Moser for the Holiday show.

Check it out: http://katiebrockway.com/#2290547/News

For Molly (My Soul Mate)

11/4/11

Water and spit and piss

Pour down the blue well.

The act of washing away and cleaning

Is sinful and profane.

Shameful.

My human hand runs

A bar of lavender mint

Long down my caving chest’s descent.

And your story rises with the steam,

Condenses on my brow

And sings to me.

You wrote him

But kept Love for yourself.

Some say the lonely lover

Calling out patiently,

But waiting, restlessly

Breaking and expanding,

Scattering and sparkling

Is the purest.

But we’ve been told:

This is not a poem.

This is a war.

A game!

Your soft wanting eyes

Are too great to hide.

Lead him around a circle

But you must never look behind.

Sight is your enemy

Armed with truths and lies.

You wrote him

And wept for his knees

Broken like wings

Shattered by their knocking

Weak from never kneeling.

Isn’t it always pure to love

Such a lively corpse

Always intricate and spinning

Then quiet after the gushing floods

Leave your dammed up throat

Flushing out feathers

From your caged nest?

Does it matter just when he will drift past you?

No, knowing
would not slow his skin from turning grey.

Below, the city looks timid.

The rivers seem grand

The highways thin like ribbon.

For a moment the world is still

And misty blue, preserved

As we dreamed it to be.

The farm fields form neat patterns

Like a museum diorama.

It is so quiet and perfect.

But no one is there.  

Neutral Milk Hotel

Album Cover, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

So, this blog is supposed to be about my art but I want to talk about someone else's art and explain how it is connected to my own.

I saw Jeff Magnum this weekend play at Town Hall in NYC.  It was amazing.  If you have never locked yourself in your room and listened to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea through and though, do it.  The album is largely inspired by The Diary of Anne Frank.  It is so beautiful, nostalgic, poetic, emotive and just intimately human.  He opened abruptly with Two Headed Boy Pt. 2 and I couldn't help but tear up during the last few lines when he sings:

"Two headed boy, she is all you could need.  
She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires.  
And retire to sheets safe and clean.  
But don't hate her when she gets up to leave."

So basically, during the next three weeks I am going to be listening to this on repeat which means my art will be affected by these songs.  And it's not the first time.  Not only is Naomi featured on my "artsy fartsy" mix, but I've been listening to this band since I was 15 and that year, when I was a sophomore in high school, I had an art class assignment.  The assignment was to pick lyrics/poetry and incorporate them with a painting/drawing.  I picked the final lyrics from "Holland, 1945":

"And here's where your mother sleeps
And here is the room where your brothers were born
Indentions in the sheets
Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore
And it's so sad to see the world agree
That they'd rather see their faces fill with flies
All when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes"


Jeff Magnum writes some really beautiful lyrics that similarly to Gainsbourg or Dylan could be, and is by many, considered to be great poetry.  I know that artists such as Magnum and Joanna Newsom have not only influenced my paintings but have also influenced the poetry that I write.  


All art is inspired by other people's artwork in someway.  I love this chain of passing down visions, ideas, words, sentiments, impressions.  Somewhere in my paintings a trace of Anne Frank will settle down and stay.  

Reflection

Ah, okay, strangely enough this picture has answered many questions for me about my creative path!  When making my website I debated a lot about whether or not to have two sections: people and landscapes.  Because they are sort of different bodies of work but then I have several people/landscapes combined images.  I have been cautiously playing with the idea of figure+landscape over the past year and a half yet simultaneously continuing to create these separate bodies of work.  This has made it difficult for me to write an artist statement.  There is a clear consistency and mission behind my work but the choice in two different subject matters seemed vague and indifferent.  

Okay, so yea, I am a person and people are beautiful/important to me and clearly so is nature.  People and nature are obviously connected but how am I connecting them?  Seeing this image made me realize how much my figures and landscapes belong together!  I now know that I need to embrace their union and go full force with a new series completely joining the two.

SO happy I feel like this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2_2Z2u74Tk

Jack-o-lanterns....gone wrong?

 ummmmmmmmmmm.........

 A true pumpkin artist at work!

WOW

Armenian Princess

I've been hoarding this for a year.  

She's coming over.  

It's time to frame this for the model who deserves it!

New Website!

Just got signed up with Cargo Collective!  I am very excited to launch a new website....I am so ashamed of my current one. YESSSSSSSS

Okay so a work in progress but still very exciting:

http://katiebrockway.com/

Romantic Red

Selfish in the Attic

May be on to something.....

Cork

After 3 years of collecting, it's time to do something with these......

Stay tuned!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_Oak

Dead cork fiend:

Rain Forest Killer?

Quarter Rounds MADE IN CHILE???? 

Are my stretcher bars from the rain forest??!!!???

Damn you, Home Depot!

 In progress detail highlighting some raw pigment!