Crossing Woods Creek
Leave a reply
Big Red Rock Eater
When I was a kid, we had a bookcase with lots of books. We had all of the Dr. Seuss books, as well as A Fish Out Of Water, Go Dog Go, and many more. One was a joke book. It had a riddle that asked
What’s big and red and eats rocks?
Answer:
A big, red, rock eater.
I’ve thought of that joke often throughout my life, and I recently did this small mixed media painting:
I didn’t mean to paint a big, red rock eater, but here it is. And then I realized that I have a character in The Adventures Of Flash Meridian which is a big red alien that likes to eat rocks.
I wonder if they are connected.
It was tall, like I said, and its skin was red. Magenta. It had a long, thin neck with a raised spiral encircling it several times from top to bottom.
Two appendages rose from its elongated cranium, looking like antennae or horns. Or pigtails.
That eye. It was so round. So white. So intense. It looked startled, of course. Was it unfriendly? Aggressive? Flash couldn’t be sure, so he remained still and reminded himself that this was a dream. Or was it? Now he couldn’t be sure.
It sniffed the air in Flash’s direction, and then, apparently satisfied with its investigation, turned back and resumed licking the rock face.
Flash walked closer and sat on a rock near the alien.
What are you doing?, he asked between the loud slurping sounds.
Have you tasted these rocks? They are delicious.
from The Adventures of Flash Meridian
Episode 99: Magenta
Bike ride
This series reminded me of a bike ride I took with my boys the other day. It was fun like the colors. I see the waterfront and an aerial view of lots downtown. I see a bike helmet and maybe even a bike. That’s my impression, anyway.
I love this time of year, even though it’s still chilly out a lot of the time. I know it’s getting warmer, and we have the whole season to look forward to!.
I don’t want to waste a day. I don’t want to waste a single minute.
My friend pointed out that these little abstracts come from my subconscious, and that’s why the images appear when I take time later to really look at them. I guess that’s what I’ve meant all the times I’ve said that these were created by my hand, but the pictures that surface are not contrived.
These mixed media paintings include acrylic and tempera paint, colored pencils, oil pastels, graphite, compressed charcoal, paint markers and anything else that’s been within my reach.
Subvert
I don’t collect or read comic books. I don’t watch anime or read manga. I’ve never been to ComiCon.
I write a science fiction story without being part of that culture. I’m sure there are expected formulas that I do not follow because I am unaware of them. I don’t know the rules.
I have a friend who is an avid reader of graphic novels, and he is a walking encyclopedia of superhero trivia. He has also written two books and publishes a web comic.
He described my story as a subversion of the genre. He was quick to point out that he saw this as a good thing.
With all of the books he has read, he said he has never read anything like mine before.
My story inspired him to start writing an episodic story himself, and his comic inspired me to start working on a comic of my own.
This is what art does. It inspires.
By creating and sharing, we can allow others to do the same.
It will never be the same. It might even be subversive.
Play
I often hear my friends say they can’t draw or paint. If you can hold a pencil or a paintbrush, you can apply pigment or relief to a surface.
Sometimes I do just that. I make marks. Then I make more marks. I apply paint, water, graphite and anything else I might have in my art box or within reach.
I just apply it. I don’t ask it to look like anything other than what it is. Sometimes the shape or line is in response to what is already there, sometimes not.
I just play.
With no expectation of it looking like a landscape or a portrait, there is no disappointment. No frustration, just play.
Afterwards, I look at it. I turn it this way and that, and quiet my mind long enough to begin to see what I’ve done.
I’m no longer playing. No longer manipulating the image.
The pictures begin to appear. Pictures I could not have contrived, and yet they flowed from my hand. Just like that.
If nothing else, I have enjoyed the act of creating. If nothing else, I am left with this token, this reminder of when I let myself play.
Flash Meridian book
I’m reworking the Flash Meridian book for its second printing. It will have a new cover, new episodes and color pictures.
Northern lights
I have some paintings down at Joy & Company, and I kind of feel like going down there and buying one. Part of me hopes they sell, but I’d be happy if they ended up coming back home, too.
I’ve seen a lot of videos online of people doing those acrylic pour paintings.
At first, I thought they were really beautiful. I loved the cells that formed. So I bought some flotrol, silicone, tongue depressors and plastic cups. Before I got around to trying it, I got sick of them.
The thing that bugs me the most is how everyone says “I’m really happy with how this turned out.” It really annoys me.
I guess they’re surprised when they like something they produced.
I like them the way I like glaze on a clay pot. You choose the color and let it act the way glaze acts.
I dislike them the way I dislike photographs of northern lights.
Years ago, I wrote about a woman who was hanging photos up the night I was taking my paintings down.
“Don’t you get tired of painting fish?” She asked.
Every one of her pictures was of northern lights.
Ideal self
Flash Meridian is my ideal self. He has unlimited resources. He is patient, inquisitive and content.
No matter what conflict he faces, I am able to keep him safe through a simple choice of words.
He doesn’t see me in my world the way I see him in his. He doesn’t know that I am giving him challenges and solutions. He thinks he is facing aliens, machines and boredom on his own.
He doesn’t understand that the universe he inhabits is all in my mind.
It makes me wonder whose mind I’m traveling through.
Ingeminate
I do not strive to be unique in my creative endeavors. I do tend to think outside of the box. I strive to be authentic. We’re all unique already. Even identical twins will experience the world differently from each other, and diverge as they live and grow.
I will have ideas that are different from yours. Different, but not foreign. I am another part of you. We are all related, no matter our skin color or our culture.
We are alike enough to understand, yet different enough to be interesting.
We look out onto the same planet, and we perceive it individually.
I gaze on the world through the filter of my experience, just as you see the same world through yours. One is not wrong because the other different.
Your creative voice may offer me a new perspective, and help me to understand something I hadn’t before.
The trick is in realizing that my way is not the only way. No matter how comfortable my way is to me, there are other viable, beautiful ways. You can teach me. No matter who you are, and I can offer you something in return.
Am I repeating myself? I’ve said things like this before. With different words. Words arranged differently, conveying the same message. Like sketches of the same subject, or roses, offering their familiar scent.
Noisy
I am hard of hearing. When I take my hearing aids out, I’m pretty much deaf.
For quite a while, my hearing aids haven’t been much of a help. A couple of days ago, I got beefed up speakers and tulip domes to use until my new molds are ready in a couple of weeks.
Those of you who hear probably have no idea what a boost in sound does to you.
I’ve become clumsy. I drop things. I become irritable. I try to get my kids to speak more quietly, when they have gotten used to speaking in a louder voice for me.
If that acoustic component weren’t enough, the domes themselves irritate my ear canals, and it will take a week or two for me to acclimate to them.
By the time they hopefully feel comfortable, I will transition to the molds, and start this process again.
My daughter was talking today about when I got my first hearing aids. I stared at the refrigerator and asked several times if it always made that noise. I thought there was something wrong with it.
The world is full of sounds that I had forgotten, and it can be overwhelming.
It’s such a relief to take them out.
I’m a Finlander. I don’t want to hear everything everyone says.
I have teenagers. They are noisy.
Maybe I should just take them out from time to time throughout the day. The devices and the teenagers.