Hello, AM by Teri Viereck

Hello, AM
I am responding to your welcome of photos and blogs:


I had a tooth removed and my gap smile looked like "trailer trash".  But  my son suggested  the word "bad ass"!    Then my daughter suggested "insouciant".  But now my favorite self-image word is "wacky".

Here is a an explanation of my aspiration to be kooky and weird.

My process of painting is for the purpose of discovering who I am. 

Stewart Cubley is coaching me; and when he saw this one:

he asked what was in the empty heart center,  i.e. what do I care about?

So I started putting something into the heart center,  I got carried away with the purple and diluting it with water around the edges, then of course more yellow, then some orange red so we have five big yellow daisies,  my favorite flower, my favorite color.   I love flowers and growing things, and being close to nature.  It's still wacky.  I embrace wackiness.

Here I started by just following form and color,  sometimes I see a lightbulb, sometimes a melon.  The little people are wacky, they are independent but at the same time related.   They are improvising with no ulterior motive.  It feels fun.  It is an image for the relationship in a group of people.  It''s like a Rorschach test, though I did not intend that.  What do you see?

Then while a young girl was playing with me yesterday I did this.  The posture of the woman is balanced, stable, limber, graceful, and serene.    The gesture of the man above her is sheltering, not threatening. He also is grounded..  I'll put in some horizontal line to express the ground.  His head should be larger.  Should I change it?  I drew the head of the man larger at first.

With great abundant wackiness,

Then a friend asked me "How do you decide what to paint?" 
Here is my answer:

how are you deciding

That is a very good question.

The blank, white page is a bit intimidating.

I begin with a choice of brush and color (my bottles of tempera are so inviting),

and make a blob or streak; and go from there without thinking about it, that's the hard part.

Stewart reminded me to distinguish between thinking and feeling.

When I think "wacky" it's a bit judgmental

When I feel "wacky"  it's fun.

 

deciding

It was a similar question when I studied with Eleni Levidi in Boulder,  and wondered how to "decide" how to move my body.   Feeling the texture of the carpet in her studio invited an exploratory movement which felt "authentic" and I laughed for hours.


Feel free to post this:


Teri Viereck
Fairbanks, Alaska