Oil paintings by Abbey Ryan

Showing posts with label watermelon. Show all posts

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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End of Summer Watermelon, 2016

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Best,

Summer Watermelon from Maine (+ "a benevolent genie")

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If you're considering joining in my Innernet retreat, you might be interested in this article:

"Cell phones make us promises that are like gifts from a benevolent genie—that we will never have to be alone, that we will never be bored, that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be, and that we can multitask, which is perhaps the most seductive of all. That ability to put your attention wherever you want it to be has become the thing people want most in their social interactions—that feeling that you don’t have to commit yourself 100 percent and you can avoid the terror that there will be a moment in an interaction when you’ll be bored.

Actually allowing yourself a moment of boredom is crucial to human interaction and it’s crucial to your brain as well. When you’re bored, your brain isn’t bored at all—it’s replenishing itself, and it needs that down time.

We’re very susceptible to cell phones, and we even get a neurochemical high from the constant stimulation that our phones give us.

I’ve spent the last 20 years studying how compelling technology is, but you know what? We can still change. We can use our phones in ways that are better for our kids, our families, our work, and ourselves. It’s the wrong analogy to say we’re addicted to our technology." ~MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle, author of the book Reclaiming Conversation [Source]

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

Best,

Summer Watermelon (+ 1 spot left in Workshops)

There is just 1 spot remaining in each of my last two 2014 workshops:

My Nov. 8-9 Peto Museum workshop has 1 spot remaining. Register
My Sept. 13 Yardley, PA workshop has 1 spot remaining. Register
After that, my next workshop will be May 18-22, 2015 in Sedona (save the date)

Below is a message from a painter from my March 2013 Yardley, PA workshop:

If you cannot get away for a workshop, I offer online private instruction: Private Painting Mentoring. Also, you can read Testimonials from Private Painting Mentoring participants here.

Best,

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Summer Watermelon Slice on a Wood Block

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In case you missed it, my latest new poster/desktop wallpaper is free and available for download. I also included a bonus story to explain the significance of the quote on it. Click here to get it now. Hope you enjoy it!

Also, if you're new to my blog, all of my poster downloads are available:

I hope you enjoy using these as your screen background.

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Watermelon Slice on Marble (+ a TED Talk not to miss)

I recently watched an excellent TED talk by Oliver Uberti (a Senior Design Editor at National Geographic). Oliver talks about love and regaining a respect for the creative process. During the talk, he recounts a National Geographic project he worked on about Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Família in Barcelona. You have to watch him speak to get the full impact -- please do watch it as it's only 18 minutes -- but I found it moving when he discusses the remarkable drawings of Sagrada Família that his colleague Fernando Baptista created:

"Something magical happened here.... I believe that when Fernando was drawing this, perhaps unbeknownst to him, little bits of his soul came up through his body, passed through his archives of experience, down through his arm, activating muscle memory, through his fingers, onto his pencil and into the paper. And when YOU gazed upon this work, all that soul that he invested, leapt off the screen, entered through your eyes, all the little rods and cones, through your archives of experience, and came to rest inside your soul. This sharing of souls is the bond between a creator and the viewer."

I particularly love what he is saying because it takes the emphasis off the"subject" or thought or product, and instead emphasizes experience or "participatory knowledge." ("Participatory knowledge" refers to The Cloud of Unknowing and was coined by Laurence Freeman OSB in "A Theology of Experience” from Monastery Without Walls: The Spiritual Letters of John Main (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2006), p. 232-3.)

Towards the end, Oliver adds, "Art is not predictable. And the human spirit is not predictable," and then recommends that we "take the time to work with our hands. That's the heart of art. And that is the heart of innovation."

Anyway, I went back into my painting records, and apparently I paint watermelon fairly consistently about once every year -- no idea why. If you'd like, leave a comment or tweet about this painting.

Have a good week,

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