Space and Light

Thirteen Moons

by Leslie Avon Miller

14 x 11.5 mixed media on paper

I want painting to be my flashlight.

~Squeak Carnwath

On my studio wall I have written the words space and light.

Space and light are my anchor, my rock, my beacon if I become lost.

Space is the breath of art.

~Frank Lloyd Wright

I like space in a painting, space to breathe, space to wander around, space to explore.

Space to be.

Space Abstracted


by Leslie Avon Miller


10x10, mixed media collage on paper

In my pictures there are tiny forms in vast empty space, empty horizons, empty plains, everything that is stripped away has always impressed me.

~Joan Miro

I like light in a painting. It adds to the feeling of spaciousness.

The reflections of the moon on one thousand rivers are from the same moon:

the mind must be full of light.

~Hung Tzu-ch’eng

Choreographer of Space
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by Leslie Avon Miller
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22x22, mixed media collage on paper

I have always been drawn to light over dark and dark over light, with each allowing some of the other to peek through.

There is a dance that happens when light and dark are mingling together. I like to watch that dance.

Be a full bucket, pulled up the dark way of the well,

then lifted out into the light.

~Rumi

I enjoy the hints of something from before, traces left which I can just see if I look closely that other marks were first, that there are layers and layers built one upon the other.

I like empty spaces that are no longer occupied,

although you can tell that people were there once.

~Dick Cole

Before Darkness
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by Leslie Avon Miller
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15x10.5 mixed media on paper

Intimacy is important to me in my work. I enjoy looking at the work from a distance, but then finding rewards for coming closer, to see and experience the little things that enrich the experience of viewing the surface.

When you look into the abyss,

the abyss also looks into you.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

Everything is a Self-portrait

Your handwriting. The way you walk. Which china pattern you choose.

It’s all giving you away. Everything you do shows your hand.

Everything is a self-portrait. Everything is a diary.

Chuck Palahniuk

As I worked in silence with shards and pieces of egg shell, gluing, painting and marking it occurred to me these were perfect self portraits – cracked open, glued together bits marked with illegible words and streaks, just like me.

Cracked. Glued back together, changed by experiences.

Marked by the interactions of life.

An act of naming should quite rightly enable me to call any-thing a self-portrait,

not only any drawing, 'portrait' or not,

but everything that happens to me, that I can affect, or that affects me.

Jacques Derrida

More and more I can embrace that I am growing increasingly mature,

marked by life experience,

releasing attempts for perfection and becoming

more gloriously human than ever before.

Deep breath.

When you start with a portrait and try to find pure form by abstracting

more and more, you must end up with an egg.

– Pablo Picasso

Everything is biographical, Lucian Freud says.

What we make, why it is made, how we draw a dog, who it is we are drawn to, why we cannot forget.

Everything is collage, even genetics.

There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly.

We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border we cross.

Michael Ondaatje

We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed,
bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees,
fears we have hidden in as if caves.

I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead.
I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature,
not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings.
We are communal histories, communal books.
We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.


Michael Ondaatje

It Takes A Long Time To Look

Prajna by Leslie Avon Miller

To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing.

One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.

~Oscar Wilde

Mary Nomecos

It takes a long time to look.

~Mary Nomecos

In this video Mary talks about her art, about play, and painting.
I loved the close up views of her work.
You will see fabulous brushstrokes and mark making, which I perceive as beauty.

She says that it takes a long time to look,
and looking is an important part of her art practice.

Perceptive observation is seeing with your brain,

feeling with your eyes,

interpreting with your heart.

~Robert Wade

Nota Bene by Mary Nomecos

Prajna is the Tibetan word for clear seeing,

the innate intelligence we all possess deep inside

that allows us to look at ourselves and others with humility

and compassion, but without judgments of good or bad

attached to those observations.

~Cynthia Grahm

Wide Open by Mary Nomecos

The most satisfying and most basic art experience is looking

– pure, unmediated observation and sensation.

~Roy Thurston

Courage Kindled

On To New Ground

Sometimes my voice may be as a toddler, standing up, falling back on its behind, wobbly, but always pressing on, striving to walk and giggling with joy when it does.

My voice may become rebellious and say NO! Not that. Yes! This! My voice will never give up. It comes to me from the deep well, the river, the source. It is more powerful than I can imagine.

New Rhythm

Sometimes my voice is a tree, standing tall, firmly rooted, limbs reaching for the light. Assuredly "being" without question, knowing it is Tree.

Sometimes my voice may be as a venerable old one, richly lined and weathered, with a knowing wisdom to share. I sit at her feet and listen.

Gray Promises

Sometimes, more often than I would like, my voice may seem silent, as a bear in winter hibernation. I may cast about in the snow, looking and searching, but I only have to wait for the thaw which will come as surely as the spring.

Sometimes my voice will want to run for the joy of running and feeling alive. I run with it, and see where I go.

Courage Kindled

In week five of the Seeking Your Authentic Voice group and I am feeling my energy for creating expand and become more sure. A little braver...and I'm ready to gesso the large panels that wait in the studio. What an adventure it will be!

Continents Forming

These words came to me one early morning this past week. I honored the gift by writing them down, and now I am sharing them with you. After all if my voice gives me words, I need to accept the gift!

Each of these pieces is a small collage on paper, which have come together in the past couple of weeks. Several more are in the works. Fun.



How is your creating going?

Artful Conversations

Breeze At Dawn
Leslie Avon Miller

The artist fills space with an attitude. The attitude never comes from himself alone.
~William de Kooning

One of the things I enjoy about the blogging community is all the conversation that goes on in the comments sections. The topics of Authentic Voice and Language of Intuition have been especially interesting. Here is a sample of the conversation with examples of the artist's work.

Book of Reliquaries

Judy Wikenfeld

If I don't use my authentic voice then nothing happens, no art, no inspiration - blank canvas as it were. ~Judy

Strabo
Robert Kingston

I always noticed an awkward, clumsy mark or move that kept showing up in my work and I felt that if I could just get rid of that my work would be so much better. No matter what I tried though that clunky thing kept popping up again and again! It took me years until it finally dawned on me that that odd goofy thing was actually me! Everything else was just me putting on other people's clothes. Now I try to embrace who and what I am although Its still so easy to forget and to fall into emulating the flavor of the month. ~Robert

Bare Bones
Jo Reimer

One can riff off another's voice, sort of like jazz musicians do. ~Jo

I'll lean on you and you lean on me and we'll be okay.
~Dave Mathews Band

Ralph Bohnenkamp

I am always looking for the authentic voice. ~Ralph

When you do things from your soul,
you feel a river moving in you, a joy. ~Rumi

Beyond Form
Bridgette Guerzon Mills

I experienced that weeping for joy the last time I was in my studio and was working on the last painting I created for 2010. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, it is a spiritual moment, I think. It's such an amazing and uplifting feeling. I wish I could carry it with me all the time...well, I try. ~Bridgette

Inner City Found Object Assemblage
Don Pezzano

Without our true voice we are just bumping into things with a paintbrush in our hand. ~Don

Seedpod of the Leopard Tree
Sophie Munns

I will never cease to be amazed at how one can view the work of another and almost feel you want to be there doing that....and yet it can be a long way from what lives in oneself to do. I've found it quite mysterious at times to feel I'm drawn to a certain fields of work quite powerfully and consistently yet that is not what I'm about at the end of the day....I have to stay true to what issues forth from myself even if it doesn't always make sense!
Being authentic no matter what is the stronger pull. ~Sophie

Mansuetude

So often voices sound homogenized, and I can't tell who is speaking and from where--and then when you find authentic sound your heart hears it, knows it! ~Mansuetude

The landscape listens and we hear it call our own name.
~Emily Dickinson