Unfinished Business

I have this painting that has been sitting around my house haunting me. I started it like two years ago and it just sits there and stares at me like an orphaned child. I have thought about throwing it away many times thinking that the moment for it has past and I should move on, but something always makes me keep it. So, I vow to myself that I will finish it within the week and I never do. Now I am showing it to the internet in an attempt to guilt myself into finishing it, because inevitably if someone sees it on one of my blogs they are going to wonder what it would look like finished. So here it is.

It came from a place in me that I had come to through the utter frusteration I was feeling about some of my other creative avenues. I really felt like my world was crashing down becuase certain things I was trying to accomplish just were not working. So I feel like I sort of have a vendetta against this painting. I have to win the war with it, as a symbol of staying the course to win the war with my other bigger projects.

My New Experiment! This One is Sort of My Baby Right Now!

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Everybody Now!!

So, I have this strange uncanny ability to strike up sing alongs in public places. Many times it happens out of me being completely impulsive and I don't realize what I have done until I am singing into my fork and dancing through an all night diner half way through "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and notice that a surpirsing amount of people are singing and cheering. One time in another incident of spontaneous fork singing, I was in a waffle house somewhere between shows on the East coast in december of 06, and I rocked that waffle house in Rockin Around The Christmas Tree and a group of really old ladies came up to me and gave me a 20 dollar bill and took a picture with me, which made me very uncomfortable. Especially because I felt like I had been possessed or something. Well, this sort of happened to me tonight. I was at Waffle House in the small town out of the 70s that I live in, having diet coke, because everything they have there is full of things I don't want to consume, and the restaurant was full of good'ol down home people (you know the type, plaid shirts, baseball caps, overalls, big 80s hair, and Tammy Faye makeup circa 1986). Well, one of these fine folks had decided to operate the juke box and after Shameless by Garth Brooks, and Crazy by Patsy Cline played, God Bless The U.S.A. came on. Upon hearing the first few notes of the intro I was stricken with a flood of thoughts and impulses. I thought, "Wow, these are just the kind of people that would just bust out into this song if given the right leadership." and before I could stop myself I was on my feet with my best gospel tone and low and behold as soon as a few moments of shock went by, the entire restaurant errupted into song. I tried to really play it up and I landed the soaring notes at the end perfectly and looked around the room. A few of the men had their hats off and some other people had stood. They were taking this so seriously, I really just meant it as a joke. Suddenly i felt heat in my face as I became aware of my manipulation of them and I sat back down and shrunk behind my menu. My friend and I had to stifle our laughter as several people approached our table and gave us random comments about being patriotic and singing in church or something. It was after all incredibly funny, but it was the type of funny that comes with a little bit of caustic irony and that is something that people around here don't even comprehend. Occurences like these set off a bomb in my brain, because I am a person that is constructed around a weird paradox. On one hand I am quiet and polite. To a lot of people I seem like a quiet wall flower content to blend into the background. Then out of nowhere I bust out with these vivid, charismatic actions that upon second glance were lurking just beneath the surface the whole time. This paradox is a drowning one, because I believe if I could access more of this vividness on purpose then, my art, my life's work would flow so much more and there would be so much more immediacy and honesty in my work. Well, I am sure all of this sounds crazy, but show me an artist who isn't crazy and I'll show you someone who isn't really an artist.

All Painted Up and Nowhere To Go!

Last time I posted some sketches of little monsters and I mentioned making a series of little paintings of them, well here are the first three of my series. The first one is 5 by 7 and is acrylic on canvas, the next two are 4 by 4 and are acrylic on wood. Thanks for looking!

A Peek Under The Cover......Of My Sketchbook

I have been working on several different projects. The first two sketches are for a series of paintings that I am working on to hopefully form a collection to be exhibited in a gallery show. The mermaid sketch is part of the long process of preliminary sketches for a huge painting called The Venus of Battleship Island. That painting is one of those things that you see in your head and you know your skill isn't there yet, but you want it to come out really bad, so you just have to hammer away at it, ya know? Hopefully by the end of the process I will have grown a lot as an artist.

The Starbucks Experiment

In my previous post I mentioned the idea of making a sculpture at starbucks using only the materials availbale for free in that environment. Well here is what I came up with. I chose to work only with nutritional pamphlets, and since they had and actually let me use it, I allowed it.


Once I was finished it kind of reminded my of some kind of palace or monument with a long gazing pool in front of it.

The people at the coffe shop slowly trickled over as each one of them gained the courage to confront me about what I was doing. You would think that this kind of action wouldn't really matter to people, but I live in a small place where people aren't exposed to sculpture at all let alone someone executing one in a public place. Some people were amazed that I would do such a thing while others were offended and though I was weird. (make sure to read the word weird with a thick southern accent.) The workers were used to me doing stuff like that so they just laughed and told me that I could only use some of the nutritional pamphlets. All in all it was a freeing experiment. I usually bust out with this type of behavior when I am feeling stifled by having to create art in the limited space at home.

Hi! I am Lynn and I am, well, up to no good!

Welcome to my blog! Be afraid, be very afraid, because this blog is being used as a tool for me to infect the world with my creativity and adventures. This is not a personal blog where I will be yammering on about my life for sentences on end. As much as the world loves to stare at train wrecks, I really wanted to create a space on the internet that put a face on me as an artist. So I will be sharing my work, my ideas about the human creative experience, and commentary on things going on in the world that effect me creatively. That being said, I have a wide variety of things that I believe to be a part of the creative experience. A piece of art can be a painting, a sculpture, a found object, a snapshot, a sketch on a napkin, a single written word, a collecion of words, or a carefully placed object. It could even be something non tangible like a moment between two people, a gesture, a glance, or a reaction. What I tend to gravitate towards in my own work is various creative experiments in order to acheive a variety of reactions from people. One of my favorite media to work with is the situation. I ask questions like "How would people respond to me making a sculpture in the middle of Starbucks using only the materials that can be found in the Starbucks?" or "What will the hostess of a restaurant say if I walk right up to her and announce that I am Gweneth Paltrow and I am on the list?" or even "How will that conservative religious family in the next booth react to me and my friends having a very loud conversation about robbing a liquor store?" (Obvioulsy no liqour stores were harmed in the making of that situation.) These scenarios are things that I have actually done! They make for awesome adventures, and sometimes if you are lucky they make a statement as well.
Sometimes you can create "sitaution art" just by doing something creative in public. For example my friend and I were painting in a coffee shop and a little girl walked in with her mother. She was riveted by our painting. She watched so intently
that we could tell that she wished she could paint too. So, we asked her mother if it was alright, pulled up a chair, and offered the little girl some watercolors. She painted a beautiful picture of a butterfly and a tree. The situation that was created encapsuled some rare grains of beauty and truth.
Of course I work in traditional media as well, I love to paint and draw, I like to make comics, and write short stories and all of that will be covered here. I am the kind of person that views every form of expression like different vehicles for the same art. Song Writing is just as much of a paint brush for me as a polyester fiber number 10 flat. So, if you have found your way here, thank you for looking when I pull a stunt, hearing it when I scream, and joining me when I laugh.