SCRIBBLING NONE

( old collage from my book - Summer 2006)

I've been doodling with paint since grade school. It started out as a mandatory thing that I loathed my instructor for making me paint something I really did'nt like. The stuff I painted was truly Horrible. Emotional and totally strange, but I did it - and realized I loved it.The more I painted , the better I got (I think) so I enjoyed it even more. Over time, it became a stress reliever (aside from retail therapy). When things were pretty down in the dumps, I write. It's not hard for me. It doesn't take much time at all. I'm not a big De Quiros thinker-type, I just write what comes spewing out my enlarged head.

( Screenshot of my flickr page above, see Sketch below. Call me crazy but reading Daphne’s comment 3 years ago still makes me smile.)

I'm in a drought now. I have had them before - when things are just beyond terribly unpleasant and the " I do not feel like doing anything" kind of phase. Or, when things are just so great and I'm here, lazy, and totally don't feel compelled to write. Thankfully, right now I'm stuck in the latter stage and haven't written anything like who knows when because I'm too dimly content to work.

I tried to work on something fun last week, just to force myself into it, but it went something like this:blank canvas - totally blank.

I mean, the thoughts were there, but I couldn't get them to form anything interesting or creative. Instead, I just forced myself up and tossed my sketchbook back on my bedside table. I've never believed in forcing yourself to write or paint. Creative outlets and some good combustion, and when I just "write to write" it comes out like uhh, and then I feel bad and think I have no talent. What good is that?

IMELDA PROJECT

I love creating and hate the EMPTY FEELING WHEN IT IS DONE.

Happily, my New Diversion has begun! And, can I just affirm that there is seldom such a rush as getting myself a new pad of acid free art paper - big repositories just waiting to fill up. I thought the doodling all my stuff would be mostly la la work, but it has been something very different – something I really am enjoying so far.As I create Imelda, it really takes me back months, or years, to when I actually created an ugly Imelda, and some of the material feels really raw all over again. As I'm re creating them, I've been re-viewing things and if I think of something now that is so much more effective than when I originally created it. I know some artist think that kind of do-over is scandalous, as though the first draft is the purest form of artistic expression, but I've always thought that was crap. The emotion is purest in the first draft, but sometimes the emotion damages my ability to express it. So, I think there's a lot to be said for reflection some time later, and a willingne ss to fine-tune creation that may have suffered in the first go-round. Since I'mdoing this sort of re-creating, the process is taking longer than it would if I were simply churning them through my word processor. But, I think that's okay, since the end results are so much improved.

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Artwork above by me

colored pencil on acid free paper

stuff you do when you're bored. Me, Meldie and my 10 year old Prismas

PLAY SPECTRUM ( April 26 – May 31, 2008)

Fesca na aplaya

Oil on Canvass
by: Raul Ramon Lopez-Vito Bucoy II
I’ll spread out all my treasures, of fabric, cutouts, magazines, old books and photographs and see what pops out. Things call to be together and a story begin to emerge. As an artist, I combine the objects to suggest a storyline, make an outline but it is the viewer who makes the process complete. You come to the piece and complete the story, flesh out the meaning. There is a part of the collective unconscious at play here that makes these pieces sing. They are more than beautiful works of art. They are a secret whispered, a snippet of song long forgotten, an old joke that still makes you laugh, a line from a poem deeply loved.

Meaningful personal changes are often unrecognized in the moment in which they occur and aren’t recognized as such until much later. The image began as a collage from my sketches and photographs made for my own personal satisfaction and were done over a considerable time span. It is only by looking back at them recently that the change moments (transformational) became recognizable to me. What I see now is that my moleskine sketches and doodles are markers of change moments spiritual in nature.

Some of the images are given what is for me a new meaning by the way my sketches, photographs and collages are interpreted. What I saw in the camera’s viewfinder felt right intuitively. That was reason enough for me to make the photograph. Traditional, straight forward art don’t convey the sense of their meaning. The images have been reinterpreted to better represent what I feel happened in those moments.

There will be a few more paintings from this series coming in the next couple of months.
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It took me a month to work on this painting my friend Rafa commisioned me to do. Thanks!