Mood:  happy

Hopefully by now this blog site has worked out some of the bugs that were bothering me before.  My substitute blog site was elegant but I ran into worse bugs there than on this site. 

I need to blog.  It is something that releaves pressure in my head.

I've been spending many days applying for "A Room Of Her Own Freedom Gift award", which is a $50,000 writing grant taking place over two years.  If you win the award you are morally committed to a writing project, and I have offered to expand www.schizophreniaandart.com to include other artists and writers as well as finishing my book.  Can you imagine, a website where schizophrenics publish their creative writing like a literary magazine and display artwork like in a gallery?  I can do it only with the grant money, money nesessary to hire a web designer.

The AROHO foundation asks for answers to more than four essay questions and detailed financial information.  The essay questions had a limit of five pages and you know that I am using every single page available to me proving that I can write intelligently and extensively on every topic.  You have to prove that you aren't scared of a little work and that you can write prolifically.

Today I printed out the first two essay questions for my husband to read tonight when he gets home from work.  I'm excited because he will be my first audience.

The chances of me winning the award are very, very slim.  I looked at the profiles of the other winners and they all had more education than me and more experience having published their writing.  One was a writing teacher!  I feel like a cavewoman compared to the other women.  I practice my writing and that is my only education, me toughing it out with myself.  I don't have a graduate school professor giving me feedback on my writing, correcting the grammer and telling me what "works" and what doesn't "work".  The uncertainty over the quality of what I create is enormus.  Happily I've gotten several emails that bolster my spirit.  Here they are;

Hey, Karen, I found your site while doing a search on Schizophrenia and art.  I’m a nursing student and was curious about schizophrenic experiences and “source material” as you say.

I love your site and wanted to tell you that your prose is amazing.  You are a great writer.

I’ll share your site with the rest of the students in my class.

Take Care

Mike

Hello Karen,

My name is Evette. I am a student at Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania. I was given your website address by my professor because I am doing a paper on schizophrenia and art. My professor showed me some of the art work you have on the website and you amaze me. I started to read about your life and you are truely are an inspiration. I want to read the rest of your life story so I have submitted my email address for when your website is complete I can finish reading. I was wondering if I could interview you for my paper? Maybe by phone or in person? I would like to know more about your art work and about how you have changed your life to work for you, your mind and how you bring such life to your work not only in art form but in your writing as well. You have touched me in a way that I can not describe. I hope you consider the interview and I look forward to hear from you soon. Take care of yourself.

Sincerely,
Evette

Posted by dignifyme at 1:18 PM EST

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Mood:  spacey

I like using the color red for shadows in my painting.  It works especially well around green leaves.  I'm contemplating putting some writing on the painting that I'm working on right now.  It is a scene of the Annunciation from the Bible and God is saying to Mary "You WILL be holy."  It is pretty obvious from the pregnant woman's shock and uncomfortable posture that she didn't have much say in the matter.  It is rather horrible to muss up a perfectly good picture with words but I think in this case the choice was to put words around Mary's naked pregnant body or else shooting rays of light.  Stirickly speaking, shooting rays of light are rather visually boring.  In writting you get the loops and curls of my cursive hand writing, a little more horizontal as well as vertical strokes.

My goal is to finish the painting by next week.  I work on it every day.

Yesterday I hung my art show in the town's public library.  There were rules about how many works could be hung (8) and where they were to be displayed, but the woman in charge of the art show broke some of those rules in favor of flattering and highlighting my artwork.  Oh, there is a chance the show could run for an extra month as well, hope so.  Mistakenly I arrived with 14 works of art to be displayed.  Mike and I spent a hectic night putting together artwork and frames and wire hangers.  Although some of our effort was wasted, actually the 9 works that were finally hung in the library were just the best of the best, so it is a tight, impressive show.

I just re-wrote a press release for the town newspaper.  Hope they do an article on my show and lecture for publicity.  At any rate, there will be an item in the monthly calendar section of the newspaper.  Now the last thing to do for publicity is to tack the little posters I've made in area coffee shop's bullitain boards. 

I've got a tooth ache which means I need to see a dentist soon.

After I talked with my therapist we increased my Geodone to the maximum dose of 160mg and now I no longer feel suicidal any more.  I don't like myself very much, but I can live with myself.  Mike says I need more time taking care of my mental health then trying to paint and make us money.  I've been feeling very guilty lately that he makes all the money and I make hardly anything.  I'm inviting two gallery owners to my lecture. 

My therapist said that my laughter sounds different on Geodone.  Great.  My art has changed along with my laughter.  I didn't bother to ask her what is different. 

Posted by dignifyme at 4:41 PM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 1 October 2006 5:33 PM EDT

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Mood:  not sure

There is a website called America Oh Yes that sells folk art on-line.  They buy collections, and I thought to maybe sell my entire collection of art I've made so far to them. 

 I don't think anyone on the America Oh Yes website is particularly better than me.  Only thing is that the people there all have their own style.  That is partly why the dealer is looking for a collection, it confirms that the artist is productive and mature.  People stumble along looking for their own vision but those with the strongest vision don't have to look far.  They are themselves right from the beginning.

I am looking hard for my own style.  Artistic "style" is just the end result of a unique process.  I am spending so much time in a process that I know in my heart isn't giving me an end product I am happy with.  My art is not yet free, like what I see with some other established folk artists whom I admire.  In my Risperdal Days when my life had a rhrythem to it, then, all my early work is clearly all of the same group and it all thrills me the same way.  Now I am here in Brattleboro to stay for a long time and I want to start having a new group of art.  I want to find a rhythem to life again.  Now it is going to be the Geodone Days.

For a while now I am going to stick to a 16" x 20" format of working in oil paint on canvas.  I know yesterday I said that I wanted to return to oil pastel drawing but I think that I have been spoiled by oil painting.  You don't put glass over an oil painting so the picture and colors are immediate and kind of reach out and grab the viewer.  I want to paint more than I want to draw because the final product of painting always makes me happier.  Except, that is, what I did in my Risperdal Days.

I spent the morning working on a plan for the painting I am going to start in my class tomorrow.  I did a lot of drawing.  It would be wonderful if I got a relationship going with America Oh Yes website and then whenever I finished a picture I could just send it off in the mail for them to sell it however they see fit.  I'm really scared though of contacting them.  I'm also really scared of sending away all my artwork, the whole load.  It would leave me with my hands empty, feeling that I had nothing to show for my talent.  Right now since everything is in storage all I have to do is look and immediately I see concrete evidence that yes indeed I am an artist.  It is like a pirate's hoard of treasure.  The pirate doesn't go buy a castle and horses and nice clothing with all his jewels, no, he buries the treasure chest.  Then the pirate sails about the world and thinks about his buried treasure.  The wealth gives him satisfaction in a strange way.  My artwork gives me satisfaction in the same strange way.

Selling my entire collection would help me to become more productive in the future because I wouldn't have past glories to rest upon.  I would have to produce constantly to prove my talent to myself.  But selling the entire collection would do something else.  I would be able to start having a reputation.  The work has to be out in the public eye for me to be noticed.  Dealers need to know about me and that all starts with one, the first dealer.  If I sold the entire collection I would be entering the real world where people communicate with each other, strangers move in and out of your life, and you are only as good as the last painting you made.

Posted by dignifyme at 1:36 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 21 September 2006 1:50 PM EDT

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Mood:  quizzical

Getting warmed up for my art class starting this Friday.  I've been painting in oil for over a year and this is a return to craypas drawing.  Don't really know where the Geodone is leading me.   Am I scared I'm going to start producing crap?  Yes.  I'm scared that I've lost a creative edge. 

I'm happy with the tree and the three creatures under it but the bicycling couple seems rather indistinct to me.  I don't know if that is o.k., or if everything in the picture needs to be sharply defined.  But I wanted the bicycling couple to look like they had a lot of light shining on them.  When the eye sees a lot of glare or reflection the sum total of the image is blurry and indistinct. 

"It Land" looks childish but a kid couldn't have drawn it.  They just do not have the ability to do something so dense.  Maybe one or two figures by themselves, but not the whole combined and a kid definately couldn't do the couple on the bicycle.  The couple is fantasy but it is an adult fantasy, not a child's.  Ultimately a child wants to make something "real".  Adults can look at what was done with entire childish seriousness and feel amused because all the child is only capable of is a version, or approximation, of what is real - but the child doesn't know that.  I guess this picture is dense too in terms of color changes and texture changes.  It started with a loose pencil sketch where I didn't commit myself to too much detail, hoping that once the craypas was in my hand the detail would come straight to the paper with the color.

If I saw this at a flea market I'd probably buy it for five dollars.  But it doesn't resemble any artwork that I'm currently aware of.  Maybe that is a bad thing.  Artists who draw like this get ignored.  Maybe someone who is locked up in a mental institution draws something like this in their art therapy class.  I can't shake the shameful feeling that my illness is somehow coming out on paper here. 

This piece took three days to make and shows the "direction" my art is going to go in the near future.  If I'm going to make more drawings like this one I'd better get my courage up today by looking at some outsider or primative artwork in books in my library.

Posted by dignifyme at 1:31 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 20 September 2006 1:32 PM EDT

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Mood:  happy

The title of this painting is "The Lady and Jumper".  The Lady is a mystical being who is responsible for fruitfulness and healing, (she has visited me several times in dreams) while the deer beast man is the representation of my beloved stuffed toy donkey, Jumper. The colors aren't quite right because I took the photograph while the artwork was hanging on the wall, drying.  Usually I use the natural light of outdoors.  Because I used indoor light there was some glare from my overhead work lights, despite the fact that I turned off the flash on my camera.  The last color to be applied was white, and it is one of the slowest colors to dry.  So it isn't safe to take the painting off the easel for a proper picture for about two weeks.  Also the picture is a little blurred, usually I use a tripod.  But you get the idea that I am working now more two dimentional and, perhaps, with more mystical subject matter.  This is the first painting that is pure Geodone influenced.

Posted by dignifyme at 3:00 PM EDT

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Mood:  crushed out

Just finished painting for today.  Already thinking about the next painting.  It's size, colors, and subject matter.  Tomorrow when I go to the museum for my volunteer job I'm bringing a sketch book.

Been working hard at painting.  Every day.  Last night I had a dream where I had an extra eye on top of my right eyelid.  It had no pupil but it was certainly a third eye on my face.  Mike said I ought to dream it again and move it to the proper place in the center of my forehead but I said, nah, it was where it was supposed to be. 

Last month I posted about a religious experience.  One thing that I didn't mention was that my spiritual friend told me that on Geodone I would be able to have better communication with the Other World.  I think that my dream of an eye over an eye has to do with my picture making ability or strength of imagination.

I'm going to making paintings that will make people want to possess them.  They will see it hanging in a gallery and think to themself "I want that in my home so that I can look at it every day.  I must have it, it must be mine."  I get that way about art in galleries, but, it is a rare painting that can do it.  In museums I used to play a game with myself.  I'd say to myself, "If I could take only one painting home with me, which painting would that be?"  Sometimes I'll be in an art gallery and I'll get really mad and frustrated because there isn't a picture in the place that I would want to take home.  I wonder if people have gone crazy, making boring trivial stuff, what is wrong with them?  I want to shake them and shout at them, "Put long hours and hard work into your art! Take risks!  Astonish me, make me envious!"

Oh, how I love to be beat.  I love to gaze upon strong, visionary talent.  I love to be outdone.

Posted by dignifyme at 8:53 PM EDT

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Mood:  spacey

Now I know how the museum survives.  The entire year's budget is supplied by a nuclear power plant!  Money, power, and charity are a very old triad.  Sometimes I've worried a little about the dangerous monster sitting on the side of the river five miles away.  Now my feelings are stirred.  I love the museum and have always wanted the best for it while I have always viewed the nuclear power plant as a blight upon the soil.  Now I understand that the existence of both are inter-related.

My three hours at the museum yesterday went very well.  A new retrospective exhibit by the artist Wolf Kahn opened and we are getting a sharp rise in attendence.  I'm excited because there is a lot I can learn from looking at this artist.  He will be speaking at the museum about his art on August 10th and I'm going to take a tranquilizer and go hear him talk.  The drug will be for mild anxiety.  From experience I've learned that people at these popular lectures get sandwiched in together uncomfortatbly close.  Too many human bodies makes me self conscious and my guts begin to rumble.

A good tactic for work days at the museum is to arrive having done little else in the morning.  It is a mistake to exhaust my reserves of energy before work.  Yesterday I wanted to paint really bad but instead I put a muzzle on Plum and brushed her.  A very basic, repetative activity requiring no sophistication of thought.

Wolf Kahn spends half his year living on a property in West Brattleboro.  He likes to paint his barn and other Vermont barns quite a bit.  I didn't know it but for the last 10 years every time I've visited my psychiatrist the enormus red barn art print she has framed opposite the therapy couch is a Wolf Kahn barn.  The original is in the show, and my, doesn't it look better than the print.

I've been thinking what to ask for Christmas - because confused parents sometimes are greatful for a little help.  I want big, fat art books with lots of pictures on artists who have now grabbed my attention.  They are artists who I want to steal technique from.  I need

El Grecco

Gaugain

Francis Bacon

I'm starting to think more than ever about color and how the paint lies on the canvass.  Clumps, dashes, raked bits or flat.  I need to look at original artwork by the masters and try to ask of it new questions.  Like, under the yellow, was there blue painted first and does it peek out from under the yellow? 

Posted by dignifyme at 7:36 AM EDT

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Mood:  a-ok

Yesterday I spent a good two hours at the library making copies of my drawing.  I was increasing the size.  Had to cut pieces, (add an arm, add a head, add the bottom of the feet) and then tape them together because the copy machine only has one size paper.  There was my naked man at 125%, 118%, 112% and 108%. 

In the evening I put the different sized men on my board.  There is already a lady sketched in, so the men had to not only fit in the board but fit in the composition with another figure.  To my surprise, nothing pleased me.  I rooted around and found a copy of the man at the original 100%.  Today's task will be to redraw his head quite a bit smaller.  I had got all hot about the length of his legs and chest but now I realize that making a small head will promise me a large body - the body will be "enlarged" in the viewer's perception with a small head. 

While I was at the library I felt a little bit of quiet fear.  Just a nagging fear of the people around me that was easily overcome with common sense and control.  Such a haunting occured when I was on the weaker drug Risperdal about 7 years ago.  Fear is a big part of many people's schizophrenia and it is definately a symptom that I will have to live with.  I'm not naturally inclined to trust, every since I was a child the world has always been split in two, with numerous acquaintences and the few, hard won friends.

I'm sticking with the Geodone.  After this post I'm planning to go to the woods for a walk with my dog.  It is early in the morning and pleasantly cool.  The energy I feel within that makes the walk possible (a natural energy, the spring in the step of normal, drug free folk) is a result of the switch to Geodone.  My mind might be weaker, but given time my body will become strong again, - and more years added to my lifetime.  Obesity always results in an early death.  I need the energy of Geodone for my physical health.

Posted by dignifyme at 7:29 AM EDT

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Mood:  smelly

In my current painting "Cinderella" I put scarlet red and royal blue in the darkest dark places of shadow.

Before I went to sleep I felt like I would burst.  So much energy.  I was high off of being bold with color.  And my experiment worked.  It worked.  Mike said the picture is starting to look sharp and clear.  He doesn't know how this is happening in technical terms, just that it seems so.  Have to put the painting away to dry today, been looking at it too much.  Don't want to smudge or blend those brilliant shadow colors. 

The scary part is that I'm all alone with my art.  No teacher or mentor or professional to look to and share with.  It almsot feels maddening being so alone, so daring, and so touched to the very core of my being.  A strong statement to make, how putting dabs of paint on canvass can put me on my knees.  Silly artist.  Why so intense?

There was a story once told in my college religion class many many years ago.  If an ignorant peasant worships a stone as if it were a God, is this a religion of one?  With the potential to be as powerful as any other conventional religion?  For some reason I always imagine a Russian peasant down on his knees in the Siberian Stepp in front of a small stone in the dirt.  This stone, it is less than ten inches in diameter.  The peasant is focused and praying to his stone.  That is my picture of ridiculous.  All that will, belief and hope placed on something so small and ordinary.  How many stones do we pass every day that are less than ten inches wide?  Why did the peasant pick this one stone, and what good, what blessings, can the ordinary stone ever bring the peasant?

I was the Russian peasant yesterday with my red and blue strokes of paint. 

Posted by dignifyme at 9:46 AM EDT

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Mood:  crushed out

When I start a painting I start badly.  What saves the final work is rough draft after rough draft.

I wanted to do a picture of "The Lady" who I mentioned yesterday.  She is an African woman dressed in white.  Her dress is all lace and antiquated.  Her posture is stiff, her deminor is grave and elegant. 

Next, what was needed was a place to put the Lady in.  She needed a background and perhaps another figure in the painting.

Imagining a male nude is one thing, to draw it I always use a photographic reference.  I have a small art library at home.  Usually there is never a photograph of exactly what I want so I use multiple photographs and rather morph them together; an arm from here, a back from there, a foot from somewhere else.

This pose was proving particularly difficult.  So I asked Mike for help.  On his computer is an artificial picture maker called "Poser".  In Poser the human figure can be twisted and turned, mounted, muscles pumped up, pulled at with gravity, and the light source manipulated.  Using this sketch I asked Mike to make the same pose in Poser and print it out on a piece of paper. 

What I got was a great reference for correct proportion.  Poser is a library of human anatomy ratios.  While figures are turned in three dimentional space the perspective of the nude is continuously corrected. 

It is rather like playing with a doll in your computer.  Mike is particularly good at the program because it relies upon mathmatical instinct.  The method of using the program is not like a video game where, as you move a stick, so the figure rotates and moves.  There are a lot of numbers to be manipulated in the Poser program; and Mike is good at numbers.

Finally I was ready to put "The Lady" in an appropriate setting.  What is appropriate for someone from the spirit world?  This is what my imagination came up with.  Beauty and wisdom in a savage place.

Posted by dignifyme at 9:56 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 20 July 2006 6:42 AM EDT

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