30 Day Art Challenge, Day 15 - Out of Time

 30 Day Art Challenge

1. Flight 
2. Dreams or Dreamscape 
3. Darkness 
4. Character 
5. Love 
6. Motherhood 
7. Nature 
8. Movement 
9. Astrology 
10. Harmony 
11. Technology 
12. Lightness 
13. Water 
14. Sweet 
15. Out of Time 
16. Reflections 
17. Purity 
18. Solitude 
19. Freedom 
20. Joy 
21. Mystery 
22. Childhood
23. Fantasy 
24. Companion 
25. Abstract 
26. Modern 
27. Wish 
28. Happiness 
29. Comfort 
30. Self 

Day 15 - Out of Time

I have to admit that I may have stretched a little on this one.

Since this challenge requires simplicity, some of my initial ideas were over the top complicated.  Victorian ladies posing for selfies, or a motorcyclist jousting.. people who had fallen out of time.  While this might be a fun idea to explore when I have more time to devote to a drawing, they wouldn't work for this.

Then I thought about time running out... literally being out of time.  Or being stuck outside of time while it moves around you. I started to imagine how it would be to see time running short, or to be displaced outside of the normal movement of things and having time move too fast or too slow.  Having time run backwards or stop completely.

And I started to go dark.

There is nothing wrong with darkness in art, in fact, some of my pieces (that no one will likely ever see) are full of darkness and madness and chaos.  When I feel bottomed out by life, I draw it out, or I know that it will overwhelm me.

This only works if I am already in a very dark place and I need to work my way out of it.  If I need to exorcise my demons before they posses me fully.  I have been wickedly depressed lately.  Not enough to need to see someone, but enough to know that purposefully taking myself someplace dark is not a good idea.  Art is supposed to be my therapy, and putting more darkness in seems counter intuitive.  And I did not want to push myself into a place I did not want to go.

So I cheated.

I decided to re-interpret today's challenge topic so that I could comfortably draw it.

Today, instead of out of time, I decided to go back in time. Back to the turn of the 20th century.  1900.  I went back to learn from a master - Edgar Degas.

I adore Degas. I always have. I love impressionist works, how they flow freely, the use and play of colors, not blended, not smooth, but broken.  Form without definite structure.  Flow and movement without being bogged down by the minutia of detail.  When I would visit the art museum or read books, I would get lost in the worlds of Renior or Monet, and especially Degas.

Dancers at the Barre, Oil Pastels on Paper with apologies to Edgar Degas

I learned to draw by seeing objects as shapes.  It took me a long time to be able to break away from doing everything realistic.  I had art teachers who loathed anything that showed any individualism, so for years my art was static, realistic, but flat.

When I started expressing myself, when I started to lean more toward my own aesthetic, I felt more at ease with what I drew.  I wasn't boxed into someone else's idea of what art should be.  I bent more toward surreal and impressionistic works.  I lived in abstract notions of shape and color.  And I felt more at home.

I imagine that this is how the impressionists must have felt.  They defied the conventions of art and explored color and light, movement and flow, shape and form.  They threw off the shackles of convention and painted what they felt.  They saw the world with poetic eyes and gave that gift to the world.

So today I pay homage to Edgar Degas and Dancers at the Barre.  The image is simple and beautiful.  It is full of color and light and movement.  It was drawn with oil pastels on textured pastel paper.  I used loose strokes of color to fill in the areas and layered.  In the spirit of the impressionist movement, nothing was blended. Color was added on top of color, layer by layer until I achieved the depth and richness of tone that I wanted.

I need to remember who I am sometimes.  I need to stay and remain true to my own vision of the world.  It is too easy for me to get derailed by someone else's expectations for me and for my art.  I was as content as I could be as I worked on this piece, curled up in my favorite chair.  And I love it, and I don't care if anyone else ever does.  It resonated with me on a deeply personal level.  And that, after all, is the point of art.  

I might have been happier in a different time, living in the moment, my paint brush in my hand.  Life is too complex.  We get too bogged down in the minutia of everyday. I would be happier if I could let go of the structure and form and just flow, colors to canvas, moment to moment, and step out of the rigidity of time.