In 2009, I heard about Matt Sesow, a D.C. artist who was described to me as “a modern-day Picasso.” I was skeptical (I tend to be skeptical about most things just-met dates tell me). But when I looked at Sesow’s website, I felt as though my fingers had just been stuck into an electric outlet: the paintings’ energy pulsated, jumped and vibrated. His colors burned.
Continue reading “Creativity Talks: The Art and Energy of Self-taught Painter, Matt Sesow”
Category: Creative expression
Keeping the Yarn Moving
Sometimes my daily life is doing, not writing about doing. This past month was pretty much doing: I’ve been knitting like a whirlwind. Socks for a friend; a hat for a COSTCO clerk who liked my hat so much that I had to make her one of her own; 4 tightly-knit birds nests for a North Carolina waterfowl rescue group who had put an SOS for them. Continue reading “Keeping the Yarn Moving”
Creativity Talks: Wild Bill’s Online Life
As you know, this blog focuses on creativity, on inspiration, the effects creativity has on a person, and on where creativity comes from. I want people to recognize their own creativity wherever it lies. I want them to hear their inner voice that says, “I want to make something.” I want everyone to allow themselves to tinker and create, to develop a creative identity. Like William Steagall, Jr. has done in video and in selfies, sometimes as Wild Bill, sometimes as himself. Continue reading “Creativity Talks: Wild Bill’s Online Life”
Creativity Talks: Vicki Teague-Cooper
I met Vicki Teague-Cooper in the 1980s, and bought one of her encaustic paintings while photographing her in her Santa Fe studio. She has been making and showing her art for about 35 years.
Primarily a painter, her work has included oil paintings, encaustic paintings, drawings, watercolors installation art, and monoprints. Continue reading “Creativity Talks: Vicki Teague-Cooper”
Thinking, But “Not Feeling It” at the Bill Traylor Show
Sometimes I’m grabbed by the heart when I look at art. In those times, I don’t look for “meaning” in the painting, I don’t do anything but feel: pleasure, love, excitement, sometimes a physicality that is like melting or merging with shapes or color or line. It’s like falling in love.
“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul,
and paints his own nature into his pictures.”
— Henry Ward Beecher
Continue reading “Thinking, But “Not Feeling It” at the Bill Traylor Show”
The Signature of My (Im)perfection
As the daughter of parents who went through the Great Depression of the 20th century, I grew up hearing–and believing–that “just because something broken is no reason to throw it away.”
Continue reading “The Signature of My (Im)perfection”
Creativity Talks: Pamela Viola
In January, I announced a new feature of my blog: Creativity Talks, short interviews with creative people about what drives them to create, how they work, what advice they might give us, and whatever else comes up…
Pamela Viola is a photographer and mixed media artist who lives in Old Town Alexandria, not far from me. I met her about 14 years ago, in creative writing classes at Duke University, in North Carolina. I recently reconnected with her.
Continue reading “Creativity Talks: Pamela Viola”
Wiped Out
Recently, I had to have my computer’s hard drive wiped clean in order to recover some 13,000+ mysteriously missing photographs.
The Apple Genius assured me that wiping out everything and “manually reloading everything” from a previous back-up was “no big deal.”
Continue reading “Wiped Out”
Putting It All Together
My sister was the one who started the idea in my head. “Have you ever heard about a ‘weather scarf’?” she asked. I hadn’t. She explained that she had heard that someone had knit a scarf with colors for daily temperatures and she thought I might want to do that now that climate change has brought my Northern Virginia hometown more wild swings in temperatures. Continue reading “Putting It All Together”
New Year, New Feature
2018 was, for me, a wasted year of missed opportunities and lost ideas. A time of hibernation and suspended animation. Besides the mid-term Blue Wave, there wasn’t much I was happy about. So I’m moving on. It’s a new year. A new focus for the blog. Continue reading “New Year, New Feature”