One year ago my color palette shifted. It went from bright color to subdued blues, grays and pinks with contrasting black and white. This past fall I noticed a brighter blue was showing up, along with some pinks and yellows. One day a couple of weeks ago, guava pink and mango yellow appeared, and pacific blue became more prominent. In 2017, the intensity of the political climate, the natural disasters, the mass shootings - the whole shadow-side of the world slapping was me in the face every day. A subdued palette was calming to me. When I first started painting, I was going through a challenging spiritual awakening. Back then, the shadow-side of my inside world was slapping me in the face and my paintings were all black, white, gray and blue. One day I reached for the three primary colors, then I spent three years taking color as far as I was brave enough to take it. Last December the color just disappeared. Now, it's back. In fact, I go to sleep and wake up thinking about color lately. I'm just starting to know better who I am as an artist - the key phrase is "just starting". One thing I'm certain of is that I like color. I like figuring out how color works, how colors speak to each other and to the people who are looking at them. I'm starting to understand how color speaks in its own language, one that doesn't need imagery. This is why I am starting to explore painting non-representional abstracts to let the color tell the story. My word for 2018 might be COLOR. "Color is a power which directly influences the soul." - Wassily Kandinsky  Follow me on INSTAGRAM @ samyakyamauchi to see my colors.
samyakyamauchiart.com  "THE END OF THE WORLD" - 10 x 6 I painted this picture last Saturday. I didn't appreciate it until I asked "What's she looking at?" I realized she was seeing the end of the world. It got me thinking about how the world ends for people. Then, two days ago I found out about the horrible incident in Las Vegas. Today I went for a walk. The sun is shining, the trees are starting to show their fall colors and children are having gym class on the grass. I can't wrap my mind around Life. My mind is too small. The Cosmic Kiss 10-3-17
The world ended today. And yesterday. It ended the day before yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. It ended every day since it began. It ended with explosions and fires, hurricane winds and rising waters, with splitting earth and buildings crashing down. It ended with a horrific burst of gunfire and blood and screams of bewilderment and confusion. It ended with illness and tears and sometimes it ended with the peace in the silence after each very last breath. Once, it ended when the dream-spell broke open into jagged pieces that dissolved into the air. Then what had been seen became invisible, and what had been invisible was all that could be seen, and the end became the beginning again.  These are the sisters, Phoebe and Jo. They are seven and a half and ten years old, respectively. Jo's full name is Joan (after Joan of Arc) and Phoebe's name mean's "the shining one". I've set off with them on a late summer journey to have adventures in far off imagined worlds, where their sibling love and resiliency is demonstrated. In my own family of origin, I was the youngest of four children. My brothers were 7 and 15 years older than me and my sister was 13 years older than me. I always wanted a sister close to my age who would be my best friend and partner in playful adventures. Painting this little series is giving me the opportunity to have some sisterly fun doing what I enjoy the most. I've been working on 15 x 15 pieces for my own enjoyment, but as one of six PDX-CSA (Portland Supported Art) artists this season, I have proposed to make a series of smaller mixed media paintings depicting their adventures in images with text. The PDX-CSA works like a farm CSA - you purchase art by the deadline of Sept 17th and receive the completed art in early December. If you would like to be part of this journey with me, please see details about how the PDX-CSA works - check out www.pdx-csa.com/ I'm paired up with artist Maude May whose mixed media collages explore the theme of what makes a home, a home. If you purchase our pairing, you get a 10% discount. P.S. You can come meet me and the other PDX-CSA artist on Wednesday, September 6th from 6:00 - 8:00 at the "MEET THE ARTISTS " event being held at 1522 N. Humbolt St. 97217.
P.P.S. The top three paintings are now available through www.guardinogallery.com/Guardino Gallery in Portland. samyakyamauchiart.com Instagram@samyakyamauchi  Last winter, while in a contemplative state, I heard a quiet, small voice say to me, "Soft, like a kitten." As I thought about it more and more, I started thinking about how cats are so chill and at the same time so able to spring into action. I let the phrase sink deep into my being.
One night I shared this thought with my son who then told me that his partner's greatest wish was that she could be a cat. I decided then to make seventeen paintings of Girls Who Want To Be Cats, and the CatGirls were born! As I've painted them and written their stories, I've come to know the CatGirls as smart, ferocious, compassionate, and creative. They remind me of the strength and power of girls, the wisdom of animals and how "soft, like a kitten" is my true nature. My "CatGirls" will be showing until August 24 at SideStreet Gallery in Portland. I will have a book of them and their stories available in my studio during Portland Open Studios in October. Meow. samyakyamauchiart.com  Ha ha, it just struck me how this image reminds me of the Michelangelo painting "The Creation of Adam". It's a crop of one of the paintings I'm working on currently. I'm writing about it because a cool thing happened with it today.
I was painting on it as a demo for Portland Open Studios today. While I was painting, a little girl came up to talk to me. I found out that she was four years old (almost five!) and has some water colors, which was really just a ruse to talk about her Calico Critters and then she said, "There's hands in the painting." I told her I was thinking of painting over them, but what did she think about that? She said I should keep them, so I did. I showed her how I saw a hand on the left side of the painting too, and I traced around it. She said, "It could be like they are pulling on a rope." So I painted a pink line between them, but then I painted over it with blue and drew the zigzag line with the end of my paintbrush. "How did you draw with that?" she asked. I showed her how the end of the brush just scraped through the wet paint to leave the color underneath. I could see her mentally filing that idea away for the future. We talked about the structures on the bottom of the painting that you can't see in this cropped image. She said they looked like castles in water, and that castles have drawbridges, so I attached a drawbridge to it. We talked about her birthday, her favorite dress, and then she told me about her ugly paintings. She told me how she had painted her mom really little and herself really big, and how it was just VERY ugly. I told her, I paint ugly paintings too sometimes, and when I do, I paint over them and start again. At which point her Mom said, "Did you hear what Sam just said? So instead of tearing up your paper, you could just paint over it and start again." The point of all this is that inspiration comes when you least expect it, like when a four year old says something that makes me scratch a line in a painting and then the painting ends up reminding me of God and creation. Or a little bitty artist person hears that every big artist person makes ugly paintings sometimes too, and the ugly painting doesn't have to freak you out. Someday, after I have made this painting as good as I can get it to be, I'll put it in a show and dedicate it to this wonderful little girl, and every time I see it, I will remember what a cool little person she is and what she brought to my art on this day.  "THE WHITE MOTH" SAMYAK YAMAUCHI Reality: I think I slipped into a different world six weeks ago. It's a world of clarity and truth - a world of incredible beauty, and also a world of horror and heartbreak, and the most bizarro behaviors and beliefs. Maybe it's the same world, but I'm experiencing it differently than I did before.
Words: I'm having trouble sharing my art, writing about it and promoting it in this world because many of the words I hear and see are so empty. At the same time, some words are astoundingly deep and meaningful to me. Goals: It's weird because suddenly, I have no goals for myself as a painter, or for my paintings. And even stranger, I have no desire to have any goals. I'm just painting and trusting that there will be a reason and place for what I make. Trust: I wrote a newsletter. I'm writing this blog. I'm keeping my commitments to shows, galleries and other art-related work. I'm painting most days. Nothing has changed, but it feels like everything has changed. It was hard to write this blog, but here are some good words: "Transformation, heading for the light of something closer to the heart."  Two weeks ago I attended a five day "Enlightenment Intensive" at a beautiful Buddhist retreat center in Washington.
Did I get "enlightened"? If you mean, did I completely dissolve into nothingness? No, I did not. If you mean, "did I have a direct experience of the truth of who I am? Yes, I did. It was sweet and simple, and changed my life. It made me laugh out loud. The five day retreat was designed to be a complete immersion into contemplating the question, "Who am I?" - twenty-four hours a day. It was nine hours of intense dyad work, talking and listening openly and honestly with our partners at our deepest level. The rest of the hours were spent in "Noble Silence" with only the question. I ate with it, walked with it, worked, slept and dreamed with it. Now I am home and back in the studio. I'm bringing the contemplation into my studio with my paintings as my dyad partners. I've always worked with my paintings are partners and listened to what they want to be, so working with a more structured contemplative approach is going to be a subtle change. I'm really interested in seeing what happens. The painting above is the first to come out of this new practice. It's called, "After That, This". More to come, always. I've been doing yoga almost every day since the beginning of the year. I think being upside down in all those downward dogs is having a powerful effect on me, because I've been changing direction in many areas of my life. For example, for years I've been hosting creative/spiritual circles in my journey space, but I've recently realized I'm done with that. The energy I was directing outward in organizing and facilitating these circles is now moving into my paintings As a result, my goals as a painter and for my paintings are changing. I'm moving more inward, and intentionally slowing the painting process down. This painting that I'm working on right now is helping me do that. This is the 48 x 48 inch "Marriage Is an Experiment" painting I painted last year. It had evolved from a previous version, "The Seasons of A Marriage". Now it's not even a "marriage" painting anymore. It too is going in a different direction. If I keep a daily yoga practice for the rest of the year, I wonder what else will happen... Do you have a regular yoga practice? Has it changed your creative/artistic life? If so, I'd love to hear about it.  "MIGHT AS WELL DANCE", ACRYLIC AND PENCIL ON WOOD PANEL, 30 X 30, $1000 The seas are rising. The seer is blind. The earthquake comes in the dark of night. Let's hold hands and take a stance. Grandmother is coming - Might as well dance. For the past few months I've been occupying three states of mind.  "THE SUCK OF THE GAME", 24 X 19 ACRYLIC AND PENCIL ON PAPER 1. I feel overwhelmed, sad, and exhausted. Bleh. I see too much bad news, bad-intentioned people, and too many important issues that need attention.  "OFF TO KICK ASS", 24 X 19, ACRYLIC AND PENCIL ON PAPER 2. I feel like a warrior-goddess, ready to march into the unknown, kick some ass, and make a change in the world.  EVERYDAY ME, APPROX 202 X 20, ACRYLIC AND PENCIL ON PAPER 3. I feel capable, loving and creative. I know who I am, and what I have to do. I paint, read, write and do what needs to be done.
I am painting from each of these three spaces. The intensity of our times has led me to experiment with simplicity and constraint. My color palette is more subdued. My imagery is less refined and more gestural. There is one over-arching theme about relationships and taking care of one another. Because my shows for the year are all set up, I can concentrate on painting for them. I'm doing less in the studio and experiencing an expansion of freedom and possibility in my painting. samyakyamauchiart.com To see more of my new paintings you can follow my journey on Instagram@samyakyamauchi, or check out one of my shows this years. |
SamPainting in Portland, Oregon, and writing about it here... Archives
September 2019
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