Still Life with Two Pears and Robin's Egg

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“Truth is the offspring of silence and meditation.”

Related to my postings on mindful studio practice, I often read renowned writer Maria Popova's work (my previous mentions here). Her article "Standing on the Shoulders of Solitude: Newton, the Plague, and How Quarantine Fomented the Greatest Leap in Science" explores James Gleick's Isaac Newton (2004). Here is an excerpt from her article:

"James Gleick writes of the young Newton’s plague-driven return home:

'He built bookshelves and made a small study for himself. He opened the nearly blank thousand-page commonplace book he had inherited from his stepfather and named it his Waste Book. He began filling it with reading notes. These mutated seamlessly into original research. He set himself problems; considered them obsessively; calculated answers, and asked new questions. He pushed past the frontier of knowledge (though he did not know this). The plague year was his transfiguration. Solitary and almost incommunicado, he became the world’s paramount mathematician.'" [Keep reading]

If you enjoy this painting, you may also like to see a bunch of my paintings of pears or robin's eggs.

In case you missed it:


Still Life with Hand-picked Apple, Bleu Cheese, and Silver Cup (Live Demo Painting)
6x8 inches, oil on linen on panel, 10 April 2020, larger than my typical auction paintings.
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P.S. Where ever you are right now, I wish you and your loved ones good health and peace of mind. There are many people in need and so many helpers right now -- I want to say thank you to all public health workers and medical professionals. So grateful for your sacrifices and commitment.

Watermelon (+ Mary Oliver on the central commitment of the creative life)

Related to my postings on mindful studio practice, I often read renowned writer Maria Popova's work (my previous mentions here). Her article "The Third Self: Mary Oliver on Time, Concentration, the Artist’s Task, and the Central Commitment of the Creative Life" explores Mary Oliver's Upstream: Selected Essays (2016) [the paperback version will be released on October 29, 2019 and I highly recommend it].

Here is an excerpt that resonated with me:

"It is a silver morning like any other. I am at my desk. Then the phone rings, or someone raps at the door. I am deep in the machinery of my wits. Reluctantly I rise, I answer the phone or I open the door. And the thought which I had in hand, or almost in hand, is gone. Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.

But just as often, if not more often, the interruption comes not from another but from the self itself, or some other self within the self, that whistles and pounds upon the door panels and tosses itself, splashing, into the pond of meditation. And what does it have to say? That you must phone the dentist, that you are out of mustard, that your uncle Stanley’s birthday is two weeks hence. You react, of course. Then you return to your work, only to find that the imps of idea have fled back into the mist." [Keep reading]

If you enjoy this painting, you may also like to see a bunch of my paintings of watermelon.

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Two Bosc Pears with Bird's Egg (+ Mozart's daily routine)

Two Bosc Pears with Bird's Egg
oil on linen on panel, 2019, 7"x6"
Buy It Now or Make Best Offer

This painting is available for a buy now/make offer price because it is larger than my typical auction paintings. ("Make Best Offer" is easy and lets you offer a price you're willing to pay to secure your purchase of this painting. I can then accept, reject, or counter your offer.) Framing is available upon request after auction closes.

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Related to my postings on mindful studio practice, I often read renowned writer Maria Popova's work (my previous mentions here).

Here's a bit from her piece on Mozart’s Daily Routine: 'How a day is composed in the hours between sleep o’clock and symphony o’clock.'

"'The patterns of our lives reveal us. Our habits measure us,' Mary Oliver wrote in contemplating how our routines give shape to our inner lives. This, perhaps, is why we’re so transfixed by the daily routines of great artists, writers, and scientists — a sort of magical thinking under the spell of which we come to believe that if we were to replicate the routines of geniuses, we would also replicate some dimension of their inner lives and, in turn, their outer greatness....

"[Mozart:] I am writing this at eleven at night, because I have no other leisure time. We cannot very well rise before eight o’clock, for in our rooms (on the ground-floor) it is not light till half-past eight. I then dress quickly; at ten o’clock I sit down to compose till twelve or half-past twelve, when I go to Wendling’s, where I generally write till half-past one; we then dine. At three o’clock I go to the Mainzer Hof (an hotel) to a Dutch officer, to give him lessons in galanterie playing and thorough bass, for which, if I mistake not, he gives me four ducats for twelve lessons. At four o’clock I go home to teach the daughter of the house. We never begin till half past four, as we wait for lights. At six o’clock I go to Cannabich’s to instruct Madlle. Rose. I stay to supper there, when we converse and sometimes play; I then invariably take a book out of my pocket and read…" [Keep reading]

If you enjoy this painting, you may also like to see a bunch of my paintings of birds' eggs.

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Still Life with Sugar Bowl and Peach with Leaf (+ Van Gogh on talking vs. doing)

Related to my postings on mindful studio practice, I often read renowned writer Maria Popova's work (my previous mentions here). As I spend studio time thinking about the relationship between ideals and practice, Popova's piece on "Van Gogh on Principles, Talking vs. Doing, and the Human Pursuit of Greatness" addresses this. She begins:

"Albert Camus memorably admonished that those who prefer their principles over their happiness remain unhappy, suggesting that such rigid personal dogmas at the expense of actionable happiness are a form of especially dehumanizing self-punishment. Nearly a century earlier, Vincent van Gogh (March 30, 1853–July 29, 1890) explored this disconnect with great wisdom in a letter to his brother Theo, found in the 800-page treasure trove Ever Yours: The Essential Letters."

Later in the article:

"[In a letter to his brother, Van Gogh] considers the relationship between abstract principles and concrete actions — the disconnect between the two often produces self-righteous hypocrites who, despite their holier-than-thou air, are no better than those Parisian artists:

'Don’t think that I look with contempt on people such as you describe because their life isn’t founded on serious and well-considered principles. My view on this is as follows: the result must be an action, not an abstract idea. I think principles are good and worth the effort only when they develop into deeds, and I think it’s good to reflect and to try to be conscientious, because that makes a person’s will to work more resolute and turns the various actions into a whole. I think that people such as you describe would get more steadiness if they went about what they do more rationally, but otherwise I much prefer them to people who make a great show of their principles without making the slightest effort to put them into practice or even giving that a thought. For the latter have no use for the finest of principles, and the former are precisely the people who, if they ever get round to living with willpower and reflection, will do something great. For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.'" Read more.

If you enjoy this painting, you may also like to see some of my other paintings of peaches.

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Thanks in advance,

Heirloom Tomato on Blue Block from Patmos, Greece (+ Wendell Berry on “Rugged Individualism”)

I've been away from posting auctions the last week because I've been focusing on painting larger more complex paintings. I will be ready to start posting some of those larger works in the next several days.

Related to my postings on mindful studio practice, I often read renowned writer Maria Popova's work (my previous mentions here). As I often spend my time closely observing the beautiful fruits of our planet, her piece on "Wendell Berry on the Grandeur of Small Places and the Perils of Our 'Rugged Individualism'" caught my eye. This is an excerpt towards the very end of the piece:

"Under the tyranny of 'rugged individualism,' this profound disconnect between our personal interests and our world’s wellbeing is a rift rooted in pitting the wilderness as an antagonist to human progress and seeing the welfare of the two as mutually exclusive — a pie fallacy which began at least as early as the Industrial Revolution and which Bertrand Russell bemoaned in his 1930 classic, observing that we’ve come to measure our progress by our 'separation from the life of Earth.'" Read more.

If you enjoy this painting, you may also like to see my other paintings of this blue block from Patmos, Greece.

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Best,

Chocolate Kiss, 2018

Related to my postings on mindful studio practice, I sometimes read renowned writer Maria Popova's work (my previous mentions here). In her piece about "Thoreau on the Hubris of Our Knowledge and the Transcendent Humility of Not-Knowing," she writes, "Thoreau’s chief concern is the hubris that knowledge breeds, to which conscious not-knowing offers a counterpoint of humility:

Thoreau: 'My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant.'" [Source]

If you're interested, you might enjoy seeing more of my chocolate kiss paintings or more articles I've posted about over the years.

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Best,

Self-portrait in a Blue Vase with Italian Plums, Peach, and Eucalyptus, 12x24"

Self-portrait in a Blue Vase with Italian Plums, Peach, and Eucalyptus
12x24 inches
Oil on linen on panel
Sold ($9,000)

Here's another Maria Popova article, "What Color Is The Wind?":

"'What is essential is invisible to the eye,' Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in The Little Prince. Those bereft of vision, therefore, need not be bereft of the essential — they discern it by means other than sight. The richness of that otherness is what Belgian artist and author Anne Herbauts came to see in a surprising and profound question from a blind child. During a bookmaking workshop she was leading, a little boy asked her whether she, as an artist, could tell him what color the wind was — a notion of the same trans-sensory, synesthetic quality as Helen Keller’s electrifying account of 'hearing' Beethoven..." [Keep reading]

Ending Soon
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Best,

Still Life with Figs and Drop Vase on Marble (+ the Cognitive Science of the Perfect Daily Routine)

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24 hour auction ends around 4pm, Friday 8/25/17

Related to my postings on mindful studio practice, I often read renowned writer Maria Popova's work (my previous mentions here). Her piece on the Cognitive Science of the Perfect Daily Routine is interesting. It's about writing, but has many connections to painting and any art form. In the article, Popova is sharing her thoughts on and excerpts from the 1994 volume The Psychology of Writing by cognitive psychologist Ronald T. Kellogg, which "explores how work schedules, behavioral rituals, and writing environments affect the amount of time invested in trying to write and the degree to which that time is spent in a state of boredom, anxiety, or creative flow."

Here are two excerpts that caught my eye:

"What matters, Kellogg points out, are each writer’s highly subjective requirements for preserving the state of flow: 'The lack of interruption in trains of thought may be the critical ingredient in an environment that enables creative flow. As long as a writer can tune out background noise, the decibel level per se may be unimportant. For some writers, the dripping of a faucet may be more disruptive than the bustle of a cafe in the heart of a city.'"

And this could be useful to many artists or writers who haven't yet created a dedicated space for creating their work:

It "isn’t so much superstitious ritualization — an effort to summon the muse through the elaborate juju of putting everything in its right place — as cognitive cueing. Kellogg considers the usefulness of a special space used solely for writing, which cultivates an 'environment that cues the desired behavior':

'This phenomenon can be reinterpreted in terms of the cognitive concept of encoding specificity. The abstract ideas, images, plans, tentative sentences, feelings, and other personal symbols that represent the knowledge needed to construct a text are associated with the place and time of the writing environment. These associations are strongest when the writer engages in few if any extraneous activities in the selected environment. Entering the environment serves as a retrieval cue for the relevant knowledge to enter the writer’s awareness. Once the writer’s attention turns to the ideas that pop into consciousness, the composing process flows again. Particular features of the environment may serve as specific prompts for retrieving, creating, and thinking.'" [Keep reading]

If you enjoy this painting, you may also like to see a bunch of my paintings of handmade pottery.

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To purchase my work, view my Current Auctions and All Available Paintings.

Best,

Lemon with Leaf (present moment) (+ "How to Love")

Lemon with Leaf (present moment), oil on linen on panel, 7 x 6 in.
Contact abbeyryan@gmail.com for purchase information

Today's painting is part of my "present moment" series. If you are interested, How to Love by Thich Nhat Hanh is worth reading. Maria Popova writes about it well; here is an excerpt:

"At the heart of Nhat Hanh's teachings is the idea that 'understanding is love's other name' — that to love another means to fully understand his or her suffering. ('Suffering' sounds rather dramatic, but in Buddhism it refers to any source of profound dissatisfaction — be it physical or psychoemotional or spiritual.) Understanding, after all, is what everybody needs — but even if we grasp this on a theoretical level, we habitually get too caught in the smallness of our fixations to be able to offer such expansive understanding. He illustrates this mismatch of scales with an apt metaphor:

'If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.' [Keep reading]

If you enjoy this painting, you may also like to see Lemon with Three Leaves (Separation of Powers) or a bunch of my paintings of lemons.

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Best,

Romeo Y Julieta Cigar (+ Anne Truitt on the Difference Between Doing Art and Being an Artist)

A book worth reading is Anne Truitt's Daybook: The Journal of an Artist, and Maria Popova gives a good taste of it here:

"At the age of fifty-three, the influential artist Anne Truitt (March 16, 1921–December 23, 2004) confronted the existential discomfort any creative person feels in facing a major retrospective of his or her work — the Corcoran Gallery of Art had just staged one of Truitt’s. A retrospective, she felt, forces upon the artist a finite definition — this is what your work is, this who you are. It attempts to make visible and static those invisible, ever-fluid forces that compel an artist to make art.

To tease out her unease, Truitt set out to explore the dimensions of her personality and her creative impulse in a diary, in which she wrote diligently for a period of seven years. It was eventually published as Daybook: The Journal of an Artist — an extraordinary, soul-stretching collection of meditations on the trials, triumphs, and self-transcendence of the creative life...." [Keep reading]

Auction ending at 12:15 PM EST Wed., July 20th:
Still Life with Four Cherries on Marble

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Happy Monday,

Pear and bird's egg (present moment) (+ "life’s ebb and flow")

I wanted to share a beautifully illustrated children's book with you. Maria Popova writes: "I have shared a good portion of my life with a dog afflicted by what animal behaviorists call 'storm anxiety' — a phobia of thunder so acute that it renders him a terrified, trembling ghost of himself, heartbreaking to witness and nearly impossible to comfort. This despairing helplessness to help led to the purchase of the gimmicky-sounding but surprisingly effective ThunderShirt — a contraption that achieves, cognitively speaking, the opposite of what a canine raincoat does and calms the shaking pup down by simulating the sensation of being tightly held.

One of the lovelinesses of dogs is that they have a great deal in common with children — a vast capacity for playfulness and a largehearted, jubilant curiosity about the world, but also some intense, primal fears of phenomena like storms and the dark. And one of the lovelinesses of children is that they remind us of the most elemental parts of ourselves — parts that only get covered up by our grownup masks and coping strategies, but never quite leave us. That classic childhood fear of the dark, for instance, becomes the less obvious but equally paralyzing adult fear of the unexplainable.

In The Storm, Japanese children’s book author and artist Akiko Miyakoshi presents a subtle and sensitive fable of fear, the frustration of uncontrollable events, and the redemptive power of surrendering to the ebb and flow of life. The story unfolds from the point of view of an androgynous child who has been anticipating a trip to the beach, but learns that a formidable storm is on the way...." [Source]

To purchase my work, view my Current Auctions and All Available Paintings.

Best,

Wabi Sabi Korean Bowl (+ "On the Soul-Sustaining Necessity of Resisting Self-Comparison")

I brought this amazing and unique wabi sabi handmade bowl back with me from South Korea in 2013. Wabi sabi is not easily described in words, but when I teach my workshops and private painting mentoring online, I often share my thoughts on handmade objects, and the spirit and gesture embedded in them. If you're interested, Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren is the seminal 1994 classic volume on the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. This painting is part of my Paintings of Handmade Pottery work, here's another wabi sabi bowl of mine from Patagonia, Arizona, and here's a 2013 post of mine about wabi sabi.

Renowned writer Maria Popova recently delivered the commencement address to the 2016 graduating class at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, her alma mater. I wanted to share an excerpt with you:

"Whatever your specific vocation, your role as a creator of culture will be to help people discern what matters in the world and why by steering them away from the meaningless and toward the meaningful. E.B. White said that the role of the writer is to lift people up, not to lower them down, and I believe that’s the role of every journalist and artist and creator of culture. 

Strive to be uncynical, to be a hope-giving force, to be a steward of substance. Choose to lift people up, not to lower them down — because it is a choice, always, and because in doing so you lift yourself up. 

Develop an inner barometer for your own value. Resist pageviews and likes and retweets and all those silly-sounding quantification metrics that will be obsolete within the decade. Don’t hang the stability of your soul on them. They can’t tell you how much your work counts for and to whom. They can’t tell you who you are and what you’re worth. They are that demoralizing electric bike that makes you feel if only you could pedal faster — if only you could get more pageviews and likes and retweets — you’d be worthier of your own life." [Source]

To purchase my work, view my Current Auctions and All Available Paintings.

Best,