Exciting Days!

I am beyond excited because I just got to put up an art show at a bookstore in Old Roseville called Beatnik Books http://www.beatnikbookstore.com. I found the owner, Chelsea, on Craigslist and she is an amazing advocate for 'starving artists,' offering her wall space for the third Saturday art walk, hosting the party with live music, food and beverages. The ambiance in the store is just...warm. I LOVE what she has going on...and excellent supply of used books (priced really affordably), great lighting and colors, and as giants like Borders are leaving our community, it makes me happy to know that a shop like this is available to us. Chelsea is the heart of the bookstore and I'm delighted to have encountered her.

Getting ready for an art show is like getting ready to open your journal for lots of people to browse through. There's always the push during the couple weeks leading up to the show where you're wondering if you can put out one or two more pieces that would really put the show over the edge. Then there's the stress and worry about getting things in the right frames, mattes, etc. Art is expensive...that's one thing I would tell young students wanting to get into art. The supplies are spendy, plus it's usually an investment up front to get pieces made and ready to sell. In art school we had to load up on all the mediums: oils, pastels, acrylics, inks, brushes, canvases, etc. I have made a point of choosing to use materials that I come across in my day to day life. Almost any blank item that looks like it would hold up well under paints and inks becomes fair game. For example, when we had our house stucco done a few months ago, we got to see the sample colors on 12x12 inch pieces of stucco. I immediately thought, "I can use that," and I painted this here:



A lot of the work is keeping your hands moving at creating things. It's easy to get a little stale if you don't create for a few days, and there's nothing more frustrating than to have the artistic vision but to have your brain-to-hand relationship get clogged. I found that acrylics are easy to work and rework...plus, I don't have to wait too long to regroup and approach the canvas again. I can get pretty cranky if my artwork gets constipated, and there's nothing worse than when something starts well but doesn't end great. Sometimes that's just how it goes. It's like seeing a picture of yourself where you look fat and you just want to DESTROY it. Over the weekend I was going through my work and pulling out the ones I don't like and I put them in the trash. My husband asked if I knew I was leaving work in the trash and I wanted to retort with an "I can't STAND to look at that crap!! Why do they torment me with their ugliness?!" Missing the mark can be frustrating.

What is encouraging and inspiring, however, is when I feel like my art is connecting with people, inspiring people and making people think. My husband is my biggest champion, and I don't feel like it's because he has to be. Seeing him moved to tears when I painted him a self portrait and wove in lines from a Bukowski poem for Christmas a few years ago was a rich and powerful moment in our relationship.



He has been promoting my art show also, and when he sent an invite to one gal he works with, she replied with this:

"Wow…thanks for sharing this. This has not been the best day and wondering through Angie’s paintings has been a wonderful adventure - interesting, powerful and calming. I totally left my day behind and took a 10 minute vacation. I feel better right now than I have all day…"

I almost cried.

I heard a woman speaking at a prophetic arts conference I attended last year and she was talking about how a lady she knew who had been suffering from cancer and had a terminal diagnosis looked at a painting and suddenly she felt something change inside her. While she looked at the painting, the pressure in her head released and a fluid flowed out of her ear. She was healed. She knew she needed to get to her doctor, but the cancer had taken her hearing and given her migraines, and when the fluid flowed from her ear she could hear again and her head stopped aching.

I know that my work takes me into a different part of my brain and can completely transform how my day is going, how I feel about a situation, how I vent frustration and anger or express my love. There are times when I paint something before bed and first thing in the morning I pad along down the hallway in my bare feet to see what I painted the night before and if I still like it as much as I did with my sleepy eyes before bed. I feel connected with my Creator when I am creating. I feel like I'm 'the best me' when I paint about something I just learned or felt and I get it right. To have that validated is such an invigorating thing.

Other news...my husband and I came up with this...we're a little peeved at how things have been going here in the USA, so I worked up this illustration/design. Shirts available for sale! Hit it up on etsy: http://www.etsy.com/listing/79980733/uncle-sam-fcks-you-t-shirt

Summer Inspiration

Summer is usually a time when I drag a bit...I have a hard time working out when it's hot and I tend to prefer being poolside or napping during sticky afternoons when I'm not at work. This summer, however, has been thick with inspiration. Having my 15 month old toddling around keeps the energy higher in the house and he's always up to something. It's amazing to see bits of myself in him: he LOVES to draw with his markers and crayons and he LOVES animals. We had to peal him off of the goats and pigs at the petting zoo at the state fair last weekend.


I have been working to discipline myself by nourishing my mind as an artist...it's such an input/output process. I have been hungry to see new art: the term "feast your eyes" comes to mind. I have been watching a lot of documentaries and interviews, doing a lot of reading and learning a lot about art history, and working hard at getting my art out there by responding to ads and entering shows. Watching videos of people like Pollock, Basquiat, Andy Goldsworthy, Alice Neel work is truly inspirational. I have taken a page from Jackson Pollock's drizzly style of painting lately and I love how you can really create texture when you layer things on super thick. My art professor's voice echoes in my head, "BE BOLD!"



It can be a little overwhelming to keep pushing when I am working full time and mommying the rest of the time. It often feels like I have to work at the Angie time in there also. Sometimes the prospect of plugging away at a job that I'm only partially passionate about can overwhelm me, so entertaining daydreams about showing work and getting to spend more time painting and in the studio (or even having a studio, for that matter) can really pick me up. I have to visualize that it's possible and I have to believe that I'm good enough and that I deserve to live my dreams.



I'm excited to say that I will be showing and selling my work at a coffee shop in Old Roseville beginning the third Saturday in August, which means that I will spend the next three weeks trying to get enough work together, fretting over frames, undulating through self doubt and anxiety about whether people will like my work, and finally...the show will be up and I'll be there to fidget and blush during the opening because that's what I do.


A peaceful, very feminine voice has surprised me a few times lately in my work. I admit that sometimes doing work that I know will be shown is like writing in a journal that I know people will open and read. I sometimes dislike how it feels to stand back from a piece and wonder whether people will engage with my work and whether it will be commercial enough. My momma once told me, "All you can do is your best," and I love that. I hope that at when I consider all the different hats I wear (mommy, wife, employee, friend, disciple, artist) I can stand back and say "I'm doing all right because I'm being true to myself." I think that spirit of self affirmation frees me to be really, really kind to myself, and I think that's the beginning of so many good things in life.

Changing Seasons

I feel like I'm going through the five stages of grief over my maternity leave ending. I've greeted my first son, a big-eyed, beautiful bobblehead and I'm smitten with everything he does. Teensy hiccups, long toes, fuzzy skin, a chin that quivers when he cries. Even while I was pregnant, though, I learned that every mother bears her baby into this world and then hears the inevitable tune of letting go. It's a new emotion, the love I feel for him. The intensity of the worry I can feel brings me to my knees, chest tight, or sends me to his room so I can place my palms on the edge of his crib and watch him dream. God has gently showed me that Liam is His baby, ultimately, and I'm the lucky girl who gets to love and protect him for now. It's like having the most gorgeous rose on my palm and every time I try to close my fingers around him I get a swift prick and a sweet, gentle voice reminds me Liam was never mine, he's the son of a king far better than me. Here's the first portrait I've done of Liam, probably the first of hundreds, God willing.



Also, back to the bride theme...I had these paintings on the ticker for a long time before I completed them. It takes a little more diligence as an artist when my attention is broken by baby meals and tummy time. I looked at wedding pictures of a couple of girlfriends and myself and really soaked in Revelation 21 when I painted this triptych. I'm sorry the images are a bit blurry...I wish I had a phattie scanner. The paintings are about the beautiful bride, ready and waiting for her groom.



The handwriting says:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

“I am making everything new! Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." "Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb." And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.

What if Obama IS the Antichrist?

Mull that one over.

For some reason the Dems tend to be called the Antichrist regularly. As evil as the Bushes (Bushs? Bush's?) seemed to me, I don't recall anyone ever calling them that. But I do recollect Bill Clinton being called that. And our current Commander in Chief also, of course.

I watched Inglorious Basterds last night. Not my fave...I actually thought it was pretty boring for a Tarantino film, but I saw the Hitler character and I turned and said to my husband, "I still can't believe that asshole pulled that off." Hitler, I mean. Think about what he did...he slowly, pragmatically pulled a whole military into a hatred so thick that his soldiers were all willing to kill, kill, kill anything he told them to kill. He pulled the wool over the eyes of civilians all over Europe. Poor Jews. But they weren't the only ones he killed. The homosexuals had a hard path under his rule also. A lot of folks did, I reckon.

It got me thinking...what DOES it take to 'do a Hitler' on a nation?

It probably starts with control over the media. That happens all the time. Google's leaving China over this very issue. Those Bush people said we invaded Iraq partially because of this (don't get me started, don't even get me started). Heavens...it happens here in the United States. Remember how the H1N1 scare happened? It wasn't even real, it turns out. Sure it COULD have happened, but ultimately it was a sensationalized nothing and the media outlets scared the beJesus out of us. Many got the vaccines, but the drug companies couldn't even accommodate demand for the vaccines. They made an epic amount of loot. What if they were pretending there weren't enough vaccines to go around? I'm in marketing, I know what it does when you make a consumer think a product is scarce. They get into an I-gotta-have-it frenzy, worse than a school of Hammerheads around a bleeding surfer. Think about it...what if my beloved NPR has a price? What if...gulp...Google has a price? Can you imagine if our news outlets were submitting their scripts to Obama's administration and getting them approved before they aired the news? Creep-tastic to think about, huh?

It takes a good census to 'Hitler a country.' We all report who we are and what we are to the government. So far the Gestapo hasn't followed up since we submitted our census, so that's cool.

And it takes that sheer, raw evil that flows through Satan's veins to posses a man to do what Hitler did. In my opinion, at least. What else does it take? Post some comments, my people.

I like Obama, and I voted for him, but he sure did go caballero with how he pushed his health care reform through. That was weird, to me. I'm still deciding how I feel about him. It's early yet.

Anyway, next subject: my beautiful paintings. :) Some new ones for your viewing pleasure:

This one's of a catholic priest. I was trying to do a caricature of the current pope, but it didn't end up looking too much like him. I'm SO tired of how the Catholic church responds to their pedophilia. John Stewart said that Dominoes is more sorry about their crappy pizza sauce than the pope is about thousands of little boys being touched up. So you have the priest, and he 's got a little guy curled up on either side of him, with an angel kneeling over each. There's a verse in the Bible where Paul says, "Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." It should say, "than to burn with passion for little boys." I'm one of those people who thinks that the priests should choose whether or not they are celibate. If I were Catholic I wouldn't care about having a virgin priest, but you bet your bottom dollar that I would want a priest who I could trust to not touch my son if i left them alone together. These priests are lucky I'm not the mommy of one of the boys they molested, they would be seeing a mean side of this momma bear.

Next is one I painted for an art show I missed the deadline for. There's a gorgeous little park here in Carmichael called Effie Yeaw...they protect lions and tigers and bears there. Just joking, the animals they protect are turkeys and deer and these silly, fuzzy grey squirrels. The park is low on funds and they may have to close it, so a gallery in Sacramento is having an art show to benefit the park. I sat by the American River and painted this landscape, but the deadline for the show had already passed. Ultimately I gave it to my ma-in-law for Mother's Day.

The Haps

I've been painting a lot, and big. I had some crazy soul stirrin' this winter and lots of rainy afternoons to paint. One Sunday afternoon yielded my beautiful nymphs, a triptych in which I tried to capture three different, equally sacred aspects of being a woman: the valiant and daring, the introspective and pondering, and the broken and bowed down. The inky blottiness was an accidental ink well spill that turned out to be a happy mistake, and I love the electric, fluorescent skin color of all of the angels. They're very human but very divine. I've also gotten lots of comments about the voluptuous middle gal...ladies love a full figured model!









Another painting that I'm really excited about is this life-sized representation of the crucifix. I've been inspired to paint this since I went on my honeymoon and it took about eight months from inspiration to execution. I read a book called A Case for Christ, which is a pretty interesting argument for the gospels being accurate and historical. In that book I read a doctor's commentary on the crucifixion and what Jesus went through during his final moments and the words just came to life for me. I really felt like I understood what he endured. At the time I was reading it from the standpoint where I wasn't sure how to categorize Jesus..just a good guy who had a bad day in court and was sentenced to death? Divine? Supernatural? Emmanuel? I pondered these things but I finally wrapped my mind around what he endured from a human, physical standpoint when I was reading that day. We get the word "excruciating" from the ugly scenes of that day.

The other text I really digested was Isaiah 53:

1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.

8 By oppression [a] and judgment he was taken away.
And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was stricken. [b]

9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes [c] his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

11 After the suffering of his soul,
he will see the light of life [d] and be satisfied [e] ;
by his knowledge [f] my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.

12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, [g]
and he will divide the spoils with the strong, [h]
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

What I love about this passage is that it was written about 700 years before Jesus was ever born. There were hundreds of prophesies he fulfilled. It was like the whole story came together into one unified, resounding expression of God's love...woven throughout time, and it culminated and made sense to me the day this painting fell onto my heart. It's hard to get a picture of, it because it's so ginormous, but here is the painting I call "Isaiah 53."



Finally, this one goes with the last painting I posted about the bride of Christ. It's another study about the many different faces and aspects of the bride of Christ. It's like a waiting place, it's where we all are. I added a bunch of different verses about God's bride, "I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, it was a glorious sight beautiful as a bride on her wedding."

"Come with me and I will show you the bride, the Lamb's wife."

"Bring together everyone - the elders, the children, and even the babies. Call the bridegroom from his quarters and the bride from her privacy."

And so on. This is called "Go and Find my Beautiful Bride."

Mo' Artwork

A couple weekends ago I got to participate in a community art event hosted by ZAP Creative Group...they work with the Children's Hospital Miracle Network and a bunch of artists get together and create artwork about a Children's Hospital patient and there's a big auction at the end to raise money. You can go to http://www.paintingformiracles.com/ if you want to learn more or participate next year.

Anyway, my gal's name is Ariana and she's half kid half amazing:

Eleven-year-old Ariana of Laramie, Wyo., has always been a precocious child with a dynamic personality. A stranger once commented, “It’s hard to imagine she won’t be a movie star.” Not that the glamour of Hollywood would fit the personality of a girl who loves karate, barrel racing and archery, and who regards solving math problems as a special treat.

On New Year’s Day, the limitless possibilities Ariana and her family hoped for unexpectedly came into question. Complaining of lower back pain, Ariana went to The Children’s Hospital for x-rays. They revealed a small amount of hardened tissue, which they hoped was just a minor injury. But the pain soon became excruciating.

After an MRI doctors discovered that the tissue was not an injury but a tumor called Ewing’s Sarcoma, an extremely rare and aggressive form of childhood cancer. Ariana quickly went into surgery, but due to the location of the tumor the only further option was chemotherapy.

Arianna is not a quitter. She pushed through a year of treatment, determined to beat cancer and anything that came with it. And she did. By the time school began in 2007 Ariana’s cancer was a thing of the past.

Here's what I painted for Ariana!



Also...heavier on the heart this week...I've been pondering eternity a lot, getting into the Bible a lot. I've been working on getting in touch with the ancient God Moses and Isaiah knew, the God Jesus was performing his miracle on behalf of. I've been sampling a bunch of different churches and I seem to keep rambling and wandering through, really dissatisfied with our standard, accepted protocol for reaching out to this dynamic, incredible God (i.e. modern religion). Anyway, Jesus described himself as the groom, and promised that someday he'll return for his bride and the two will be one unified body again; we'll all sit at the table and have a rockin' good time at the wedding reception. I started stressing about what kind of shape Jesus' bride is in, and worrying that he might just decide she's not really work coming back for. I painted what she looks like (ass on backwards, morbidly obese, lulled to sleep by the evil spirits of complacency whispering he-hasn't-come-back-maybe-he-never-will. This is what I came up with for a portrait of this bride, I call her The American Church:

Paintings by Angie Golaski

Honestly, I don't sit down to paint to make something that's pretty, I'm bored with that, and I can't. So, I let my soul purge itself on the canvas and I grapple with all the questions and concepts I have in my head with that space. I like to try to say something with what I put down on paper. I'm also a woman of faith, and it's always my hope that I can somehow mirror my creator's greatness with what I create. My aim is always to stay out of the way when I'm making art and I aim to be a vessel that the art can through. I don't want to contrive it too hard and often I'm a little bit surprised at what comes out after an hour of painting. At the end of the day I'm very true to my artistic self, and I can't really be apologetic for that.

ALL of my art is for sale if you're interested, and I'm also available if you would like to commission a piece (or ten). If you are interested in contacting me, please shoot me an email at angie.golaski@gmail.com. Thanks for stopping by!


Self Portrait


Take and Eat


Blue Bird


Valentine's Day


Picasso-esque


Father Time


Lucy


G-Dub


Sexual Harassment


Body Image


Chicken


America


Exchanged


Native Woman