Janet Strayer

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Wonder Series, Painting 4

Another red dot painting in the Wonder Series. And again, I had a great time painting it. This one enters more shadowy territory than some of the others. Still, our little explorer is intent on the excitement of the journey and has some startling companions in this garden of surprising shadows and vivid delights. Venture on!

Onward! by Janet Strayer

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Wonder Series, Painting 3

Girl and Cat by Janet Strayer

Like other paintings in this series, this one was part of lovely process. In the Girl and Cat, a restricted palette of iridescent paints was used to set off her more softly expressive face and blouse. The fixed iconic and decorative elements in this painting contrast nicely, I think, with the expressive moods conveyed by the girl's face and that of her companion cat. Some gently startling juxtapositions here, would you agree

Thursday, January 12, 2012

!Zing! and Sold Art in 2012

Here is one of the first paintings to sell in 2012. I'll include more in subsequent postings..I wish I knew how to make a large format visual gallery in this blog that keeps the paintings a decent size for viewing and that you could click through. Then, I'd show you several at once.

This painting is part of a magical series I will continue to pursue. Its theme riffs on my "Child Out of Time" collection, but is much more buoyant and (what can I say?) delightful. Paintings in this series, such as the one below. glimpse the magic of a timeless, boundless, extravagant, optimistically wishful childhood place where many things happen vividly, often linking the natural world of wonder with the child's vision.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Snorkeling Through the Winter Solstice

a moment on the Malecon (all photos JS)

December 21, 2011 found me in the open waters off Los Arcos near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. But don’t think I’m bragging about my good fortune; those waters were cocococoooold! And the tides were at their most extreme. Good for whale-watching, I’m told, as the humpbacks love these waters at this time of year. But not great for a scantily-clad snorkeller hoping to see pretty fish in the murky sea!

Despite this, I did see some startlingly bright blue and yellow angel fish, and other lovely iridescent varieties that seemed to give off light in an otherwise grey-brown bay that had me shivering with teeth-chattering through the snorkel mouthpiece. By the time the boat got to the second diving spot, I’d given up on snorkeling and wasn’t relinquishing the towel in which I was bundled. It’s hard to miss out on adventure, but it occurred to me that comfort wasn’t so bad, either.

Cathedral with its crowned cupula (all photos by JS)

This was part of my brief holiday in the sun, which fortunately returned the next day as a bright and warmly glowing disc. My plan, like many northerners, was to soak up as much of this southern sun as I could, using it as solar shield for my body during the bleak winter days back home.

Why we choose to spend the a chilly and cloud-covered winter solstice out on a boat and in the cold waters is a cosmic misunderstanding. Otherwise, it was a sun and fun holiday.

I like Mexico a lot, having traveled and worked in different areas there and feeling comfortable with the language, customs, and residents. And there is such imaginative artwork and crafts, much of it collected in tourist centres like Puerto Vallarta.

It’s always a treat to be introduced to the work of a Mexican artist I hadn’t known before: like a new fireworks display! Such a burst of inventiveness, decorative hi-jinks, creativity and sensual charm.

boy on a seahorse sculpture, emblem of Pto. Vallarta

one of my personal favorites

Puerto Vallarta is a festive town bordered by The Malecon, one of the most gorgeous boardwalks ever to grace the sea. Intriguingly inviting metal sculptures are on display, along with more ephemeral but impressive sand sculptures.

I snapped a shot here of an artist spraying one of the sand sculptures of a huge iguana. I asked if it was lacquer he used to keep the grains in place. "Nope, just water,' he replied.

It’s especially festive in Pto. Vallarta at this time of year, with nightly fireworks and free public performances at the town square or along the Malecon.

I was delightfully surprised one evening by a show of dancing horses. They were just wonderful in their rhythmically controlled tap dancing and swaying turns set to the music.

Another day there was a local band, complete with sousaphone, playing in the town zocalo,

So what if sleepy Vallarta has turned into a tourist town after its’ ‘discovery’ by movie moguls as a perfect setting for Liz and Burt and The Night of the Iguana? Both Mexicans and foreign visitors mingled and enjoyed all the many delights of this solstice (sans snorkeling).

Not only music treats you, but there are also street performers and living statues to surprise you, like the angel photographed below. Put a coin on his plate, and he animates. Very ingenious propping, don't you agree?

And here's an lifesized Olé ornament that says Feliz Navidad, Mexican style:

lifesize bull head mounted on wall with garland of Christmas decorations

Enjoy your winter holidays, whatever and however you celebrate!

Rio Cuale entering Bandera Bay near the Malecon, Pto. Vallarta (JS Photo)

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The Feedback: What it Means for an Artist

It was a FABULOUS experience at this past weekend’s Eastside Culture Crawl. What a misnomer. It’s hardly a “crawl”. More like an explosion! So many energetic and diverse people interested in art attended. The buzz at my open studio was humming for three days.

It's very gratifying for artists to hear appreciative comments about and reactions to works they’ve created. How can one remain blasé when hearing (and overhearing) from strangers things like “it’s absolutely amazing”; “never seen anything like it”; “it’s so beautiful it makes me cry”, “gorgeous”. Of course, there are also the (happily, rare) comments like, "I wouldn't even put this in a garage sale."

For me, such feedback works as a validation, a reminder of how art really connects when it communicates. I work alone. My intention when painting, is to work on what and how I want to paint, regardless of how it will be received.. Afterward, it's thrilling to know a painting has hit the mark for someone viewing it. It's a great feeling to sell a painting. It's a very bad feeling to have one's art rejected for a show. You put yourself out there as an artist. You feel naked. BUT the challenge is always to pursue one's own vision. Be careful of minding too much about the seduction of positive or the hurt of negative comments. Accept criticism that is useful in your own terms.

Some of the visitors to this open show were painters, themselves. Their appreciation and comments (the ones they let me hear, anyway) were a tribute to their keenly interested eye and generous spirit. Their many technical questions were a pleasure to answer, knowing it fed our mutual curiosity about artistic process.

Many children came with their families, and I was delighted to see that a good number of them really looked for themselves. Some even led their parents over to works and pointed at things. I didn’t want to intrude on those sessions, but I wondered what they saw with their perceptively “uneducated” eyes. So, after talking with the parents a bit about a painting that interested them, I asked one 7-year-old girl what she liked, and she had no problem walking over to a very different painting and pointing to it. “So tell me about it; what is it that you like in this one?,” I asked. She couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me (an adult she didn't know), but whispered something in her mother’s ear. “She says ‘because it’s beautiful,'"reported her mom. What more could I ask!

I’m pleased, of course, that I sold a good number of works. But there’s more to it for me, and for most of us, at such events. Thank you for looking, for interacting with the art, for your many and diverse reactions and insights. Thank you for your keen interest and your appreciation

@ janetstrayer.com

Monday, October 31, 2011

My Magical Island: Saturna

I live on a magical island that’s only about 12 square miles (31 sq. km). in size and that sits quietly in the Salish (pronounced Say-lish) Sea. There are only about 300 other people living on this small island called Saturna.

on a bluff, looking out to sea, JS photos

sunset on Saturna, our place up above the sea

Mt. Baker in the US seen from Saturna Island Canada, JS photos

As if its location weren't special enough, Saturna has some exceptional petroglyphs as well, some on high and others only visible at low tides by climbing over and through slippery rocks and small caverns in the shoreline rocks.

Petroglypths on Saturna...these photos are older, now many are even more eroded..JS

My Magical Island.

Saturna seems a good place for wishing, the imagination having free reign without the impedances of city life. I wish Shakespeare, that word-magician could visit here. He'd swoon at the sounds and sights, and even the name of the place, he who so well knew the worth of names: love and rivalry in the sun-lit, star-crossed Verona of Romeo and Juliet; mystery and magic in Prospero's watery realm. But, then again, I doubt he was much of a traveller outside his own world-filled mind.

We have no TV on Saturna and don't even think of it. Instead, we walk around, tend the land, do our work, and read. I think of Shakespeare visiting my magical island and being pleased at its comeliness, its seasonal shifts, its rocky shores and tidal pools, invitations to explore and to contemplate.

JS photo

This is a waterworld, and waterworldness is a quality the island and inhabitants sink deeper into each autumn as the summer falls into the sea. Mists rise to soften the abundance of ever-green trees, and the air is moist with scents of leaves and earth.

The heavy rains will come, and the ground will fill each footprint with a water rim, reminding us we live upon the sea. Like Prospero’s, ours is a house built close within the elements of wind, earth, and water. Human footprints here tend to leave only watery traces.

I will need to catch some new photos of this water-magic, but these are recent photos I took of some glorious non-raining Autumn days here, to give you a feel for the wonder of the season here.

I call this the glory tree when it bursts into full colour, JS

It's s autumn now, one of my favourite seasons. It's not as brilliant here as the season can be in the eastern part of this continent, given its abundance of deciduous trees and turning leaves. But here, in evergreen land, the contrast of the turning leaves amongst the backdrop of resonantly rich greens and browns is quite special. We've planted maples and oaks and other deciduous trees on our wild land to take full advantage of this contrast.

And here's our land in the early Spring, with fields of golden daffodils and a budding tree. We've planted thousands of these harbingers of sun over the years.

path to my studio in Springtime, JS

I have been back in Canada, on this West Coast edge of the sea, for more than three months now, and I feel the changes from the sun-drenched Italian countryside where we’d been living. So many different forms of beauty to appreciate.

Though we've stopped travelling, the mind still wanders like quicksilver, no time or space barriers. So that, here I am in the foggy mists of the Salish Sea and, in a second, I'm back thinking of Verona, our last stop in our Italian trip.

my studio this Autumn, JS

Perhaps when the rain becomes too dense here, I'll write a post recalling our good time in sunny Verona. I'll think back to sitting inside its ancient outdoor coliseum, watching a stunning performance of Verdi's Aida after an afternoon wandering around the props for this Egyptian-set opera sitting right on the streets of an already enchanting Italian location for star-crossed lovers! That's my kind of geo-mythical travelling!

Don't expect chronology to be too clock-bound here. It's more psychological. All things existing get called forth as needed. Quite Prospero-like, don't you think?

In the meantime, though, I'm quite content to be just where I am.

Today’s Thought

We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.
--Shakespeare, spoken by Prospero, The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

A related thought: Graham Swift’s book, Waterland, is a wonderfully literate and emotionally rich book. It’s set in the wetlands of England and relates shifting lives through time, replete with well-drawn characters in a compelling environmental history. Not to be confused with the completely different and forgettable Waterworld. Although Graham Swift won a Booker Prize for another of his books, this one remains my favourite.

Seasons of life. Not an original thought, but worth appreciating, nevertheless. Autumn, suggesting a more sober, less lush time than Spring, has its bursts of glory, too. And, how's this (see photos) for "lushness" amidst the ferns and mosses (instead of among the flowers):

Today's Art

As befits the sea life around the island, and the petroglyph shown above, today's item is a 3D mixed media work on a piece of wood cut in the shape of a salmon. I donated it for an art auction on the island to raise money for local events. Along with other artists' interpretations, it quickly sold. It was great fun to make with paint and colored glass beads.

mixed media 3D art by Janet Strayer

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Thoughts of Home

Lady in the Palazzo is a title of a book set in Umbria that I purposely did not finish when I lived there. Already knowing that I would miss our life in Umbria upon returning to Vancouver, I kept the unfinished book with me. I continue to read it now …. very slowly. I may write more about this fine gift of a book after my thoughts have settled.

Living in Umbria was as close to home as I ever feel, anywhere. That is, anywhere you don’t really have a childhood history or share a native language. Still, I felt at home there: like a place in my heart settling into what it recognizes as home.

Today’s Thought

…life is a crafted thing, not a willed one.

Marlena de Blasi, author of Lady in the Palazzo.

For some of us, being at home may belong to a number of select places, not one. Places you choose or that choose you. Certainly, in my case, it’s not the place of my birth. Home for me is New York City, Vancouver, San Miguel de Allende, and now rural Umbria. Not home in the factual sense of houses or flats, but home as in feelings of abiding connection with something that lives in you even when you no longer live in it.

If home is where the heart is, perhaps then it is only the expansiveness and dedication of one's heart that defines home/s.

After my first journey (the first sea voyage to America), over which I had not the slightest control, I’ve come to relish intentional trips of discovery (and work) in foreign places: Cuba, Guatemala, Trinidad, Belize, Costa Rica, a year in South America, four months in Singapore and Malaysia, more time-limited visits to New Zealand, Bali, Burma, Israel, Greece, Crete, Turkey, Tunisia, Morrocco, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Poland, Romania, many visits to Mexico for months at a time, and several months at a time in France, Spain, and Italy. Never yet to China, Japan, Russia, India, central and south Africa. It’s a finite contest between the pull of places you’ve been versus the temptation of entirely new places.

Not surprisingly, so many of my paintings done this past year in Europe have themes of journey and travel in them.

Today’s Painting

Ariadne's Compass, painting by Janet Strayer

It’s not my intention to trot the globe with my footsteps, though I’m not averse to that either, if I can manage it. Perhaps I have an errant (but fortunate) gene that makes me wander, looking for home in all the right places, to alter a phrase. Perhaps it’s because I’m an immigrant, first as a toddler from Germany to the US; then as a young adult to Canada. Perhaps it’s because I am home, like a turtle carrying home with me, looking for interesting places to discover and put myself into as a new ingredient: the semi-permeable ‘self’ that happens when you allow yourself to be an interested stranger in interesting places.

The turtle remined me of a painting (below) that I made several years ago in Vancouver. I don’t really know what it “means” but I can make up a story, as can you. For me, it has something to do with a sea-surrounded muse, a remnant of land (a branch) drifting in the air beside her, an obdurate sea turtle at her service, a mischievously bemusing snake that cannot resist chattering to her from its home in a glass bottle, the inevitable winged creatures that find their way into many of my paintings, and an egg for the who-knows-what future.

Fathomless, patinting by Janet Strayer

I expect that one can travel great distances in an armchair as well as via an airplane. But there is, in the actual physical encounter with new geographies, people and animals, the distinctness one usually cannot just imagine, but needs also to remember. All those remarkable aromas, climates, vistas, foods, customs, faces, gestures: tangibles and intangibles that you sense and learn (frustration and discomfort sometimes being part of this). You may come to understand a little more, appreciate a little more. Imagination and memory build upon these experiences, but can’t alone create them.

Then, you miss them. So it is that travel begets travel.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Words: What’s the Opposite of Onomatopoeic?

I’ve always liked words. Nor long-windedness or fussy talking, mind you. But words, those little strutting bits of sound and meaning. Long ago, when I first started to read words without pictures linked to them, some of them used to fly off the page at me.

We had a big Funk and Wagnalls dictionary in the house. I even liked the sound of that, like the sound of “Walter Cronkite”. It was an oddly reassuring and reliable 2-volume set, with its serious, navy blue cover -- though Volume 2 always seemed a little scary. The dictionary was like a book of wizardry. It held a million A to Z keys to doors I couldn’t see beyond.

I’d pick a page at random and find a word I could read but didn’t know, then see if I could understand its definition. That often led to looking up other words. But I kept it to just one word at a time. After all, I liked doing lots of other things too. Like watching cartoons and westerns and playing potsy (you might call it hopscotch) on the sidewalk.

Words I didn’t know seemed especially magical: an entry into a special world that would become visible once defined, Words had different qualities. Some had gravitas, others took flight, others sounded sneering or funny. Sometimes, given its sound, a word’s meaning let it down.

When the definition didn’t fit the impression I had from how the word sounded to me, I thought the sense and meaning of the word had somehow gotten mixed up along the way. But more often than not, words somehow did fit their sound. Problem was, I often got the sounds wrong initally. Like thinking the US city of "Des Moines" was pronounced “Dezmoynes”.

Now, eons later, it’s still one of my little pleasures to see the ‘word of the day’ from Wordsmith.org in my daily email. Taken out of context and put bluntly on a page of messages, the chosen word stands out as unusually significant, even if you know it. So, when I saw “refulgent” listed last week, I noticed that I had a negative reaction: the word sounded off, like food gone bad. But its meaning is quite the opposite: “brilliantly shining”.

So what are words called that sound opposite to their meaning; anonomatopeic? (I like my made-up word much better than heterological, which is the appropriate one.) There's a distinct Red Queen aspect to liking words, as Alice and Lewis Carroll well knew.

You may think that I must have too much time on my hands if I’m raising such issues. Quite wrong. I have a deadline tomorrow. But words keep spinning their spells. How else to explain the popularity of the Wordsmith.org enterprise? When I do have some time, I’d like to do a series of word-paintings. Rapp-imagery?

Today's Thought

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
Ernest Hemingway

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Why Read Blogs?

Even though I write this blog, I hardly ever read blogs on a regular basis. I started this blog on the suggestion of a friend while I lived in Europe. It was a way of keeping contact with my friends, who enjoyed looking in on how and what I was doing. I'm very pleased to have learned that what I post gives some pleasure and information even to some people I don't know.

Frankly, though, once I started, the process of blogging became functionally autonomous, even rather addictive. Even if no one is reading this, there's always the 'imaginary audience' to speak to. Writing it keeps me grounded and aware that much of my creative life (ideas, paintings) is solitary but still wants to connect.

Like many of you (and even more people who are not even reading this), I don't have much time or inclination to read blogs. There are sOOO many out there. I know I'm probably missing some really beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful, and eye-opening blogs.... but who has the time to to plod through all the stuff that keeps coming at us? The public news is bad enough to wade through, as is the terrible and misnamed 'reality show' trash that keeps getting thrown at us as "entertainment." Sometimes the information highway just seems like a huge and honking traffic jam.

But, now and again, there are little islands of sanity, solace, and beauty.

Let me recommend a blog that a Finnish-Canadian artist acquaintance of mine has written for a long time. It is a beautiful, thoughtful presentation of a life being lived fully. Marja-leena Rathje is an award-winning original printmaker with an eye for extraordinary design, and she writes so coherently too.

A very different blog is written by my free-lance journalist and writer friend, Ruth Ellen Gruber, who lives in Italy. Ruth is the one who instigated my own blog-writing ... if you ever feel like blaming someone for it. She has several blogs, as you can see if you type in her name at this blogspot location. But the one I want to recommend is eccentrically interesting, focusing on one of her main interests: country and bluegrass music in Eastern Europe. It's entitled Sauerkrautcowboys Sturm, Twang and the Imaginary Wild West in Europe.

Today's Thought

It's been my policy to view the Internet not as an 'information highway,' but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies.
Mike Royko, American Journalist (1932-1997)

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Art Lover

Another opening, another show! Was that Cole Porter? It took me a moment to think, “yes.” It’s from Kiss Me Kate, that wonderful musical spoof on Shakespeare’s even more wonderful The Taming of the Shrew.

But my main point in this communiqué is that another of my paintings has been selected by the Federation of Canadian Artists, this time for the Autumn Salon show at their Granville Island gallery in Vancouver. It's good that a different jury of curators are the judges for different shows. This offers flexibility and range.

I’m especially pleased that my painting, Art Lover has been chosen because it's one that took on a lot of significance for me as I worked on it.

The painting is both a conceptual work about art’s role in the world and a visual-aesthetic play on art as fantasy confronting art as realism confronting actual art sitting in the actual world. It’s about transformations of the natural world via art as well as the place of art in the world, no matter who the art lover happens to be.

Today's Painting

Art Lover, painting by Janet Strayer (Sold)

You may recognize the fanciful influence of an artful Klimpt tree painted in mural fashion on a wall that’s otherwise rather shabby: a painting in a painting. The wall itself bears witness to its transformation from mundane to inspired. The door that is slightly ajar to your right may be a portal to something real (a hospice, a shelter, a church?) and beyond. It's dark, and the eccentric bag lady prefers the street, especially this spot.

The focal figure is an iconic bag lady who is eating out of a can. In my story, she especially chose this spot, sitting beside this wonderful tree. I think she comes here often, sitting outside with all her worldly goods, enjoying her magnificent tree, claiming her share of sun. Or, like the mass of us who never notice, perhaps she lets it all go by. If art is in the eye of the beholder, what is it that we see? But no matter, even if she is engrossed in her can of food, the art still reaches out to envelop her.

The opulence of Klimpt’s fin-de-siecle Viennese style tree, the columned building perhaps recollecting better days, the solid presence of the bag-lady whom we (erroneously) might not expect to appreciate delicacies of taste ... these are some of the elements that combine in the narrative suggested by this painting.

Your story may be entirely different from mine. Usually, I’m reluctant to offer mine because any art lover always enters a painting and makes it his or her own, seeing and reacting to things that may be new to me... and better than what I offer.

That’s why any artwork that “works” really does live independently of the artist/s who made it. That’s why it continues to affect us outside of the particular or personal contexts in which it was created. There has to be something that reaches out, doesn’t there?

Well, I hope this painting reaches out to some of you.

I started this post out with some lyrics from another time, so I’ll end with others that are much more contemporary.

Today's Thought

Bag lady you gone hurt your back

Dragging all them bags like that
I guess nobody ever told you

All you must hold on to Is you, is you, is you

--Erykah Badu sings "Bag Lady"

Monday, August 29, 2011

Saturna Weekend

Last weekend I was sitting on the porch at Saturna, feet up, and reading one of the many old New Yorkers that had collected in the post office during all the months we’d been away. What bliss! (Hey, you can take the girl away from NY, but you can’t NY away from the girl!)

The sun was strong, and the breeze from the ocean was cool. The ocean itself was unruffled by the breeze, with only a large patterned swirl on its glossy surface showing any movement at all. Spots of darker color here and there where the clouds cast shadows.

Feeling good despite all the work to do here: the massively overgrown garden, the roses that had made it without me, grown taller and more spindly than they’d ever been, strangled by the high grasses and weeds. The kiwi branches reaching their amazingly long and curling tentacles onto anything for attachment, grasping indiscriminately at wooden gate and roses, not bothering to have any preference.

I’d decided to let the garden go this year. Too late and the weeds are too strong for me to pull. I’ll wait until the colder weather comes and the rains. The hardy flowers will all be gone, but many of the weeds will be too. Then I’ll do what I can to rid the garden of them. That’s my strategy. I feel like Napoleon planning his march on Moscow. I know it’ll get the better of me.

You should see my garden. Rather, you should have seen my garden before it went stark-raving-lunatic wild. I’d planted every bit of it,even laying by hand the little brick path that weaves through it. Not all at once, but each year bringing something new. And it became a work of art. Like Monet’s at Giverney, but of course not at all like Monet’s. Like a garden a city girl would grow who knew nothing about gardening until she planted this one right out of her head. It’s really a lovely place. Or it will be, again.

When I lifted my eyes from the New Yorker to look up, I was stunned. There on the top branches of a tree sat three bald-headed eagles, looking out to sea. I ran to get the binoculars to make sure. Yes, indeed, three of them, silent and still, the air charged around them.

I took these photos to show the views I saw without and with binoculars. Trouble is, because it’s not a video, you can’t see the eagles turning their heads, so you can’t see their white caps. The one at left is about to fly off the branch.

What a wonderful moment to be home again. What a magical place this is.

Today's Thought

It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.
-- Sitting Bull

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

--Winston Churchill

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Saturday, January 14, 2012

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

It was a FABULOUS experience at this past weekend’s Eastside Culture Crawl. What a misnomer. It’s hardly a “crawl”. More like an explosion! So many energetic and diverse people interested in art attended. The buzz at my open studio was humming for three days.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Friday, September 2, 2011

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Monday, August 29, 2011