Art and Painting by Cathy Hegman: July 2010

Monday, July 26, 2010

July 2010 Medusa complexities continues

Photo by Thomas Hegman

The days are hot and long in the Delta during the summer months and this one is no exception. The air is so thick with humidity it is hard to breathe and we have a tropical storm named Bonnie swirling in the Gulf, but luckily she is a lady and will not be much trouble other than the intrepid humidity and heat. Life in the studio marches on, every day the anticipation of fall hangs heavy. Fall is my favorite time of year and I endure the summer just to get to the clear crisp days of Autumn, the regent of carnivals, county fairs, and my favorite holidays. The river is still and almost motionless on the surface, probably trying to keep the heat at bay by not moving very much. The underworld of life aquatic is teeming as if there is no heat, but only the everyday life as usual for them. My son, Thomas Hegman (www.flickr.com/coolhand3011) was home one weekend and we took him on the river for a brief ride and he as always took some amazing shots(shown above). He somehow can take pictures of what I feel about a time and place and forever lock them onto photographic paper as a moment of treasured time to be shared. He is a window into our world with the ability to capture and hold it for a time.

Detail of Medusa Complexities:Seekers

Cathy Hegman

watercolor on paper

The parched rain deprived land was given a nice cool drink of liquidity last night. I stood for moments looking at my cat through the glass door, neither of us moved our gazes locked on in shock, it has been so long since we have seen rain neither I nor the cat could move. He finally got soaked and ran under the house to wait it out, I stood at the door for what seemed like an eternity silently praying a prayer of thanks. It was one of the moments that will most likely flash back in my last moments on earth , there was that much emotion radiating from our eyes to each other. The cat and I are connected on many levels, but today it was on a level of understanding the need for moisture and the wonder of nature. We are connected to animals in ways sometimes that seem eerily familiar.

Tidbit my 15 year old kitty cat

The studio is my refuge, I literally spend hours some days in there with no more sound than a brush grazing a canvas. I listen to music on some days but often I find the rooms in my head need the silence to seem alive. The thoughts that happen in that room are mine and mine alone until I carefully or frantically place them on the canvas. I have been in the oil painting mood lately but I thought I might just shake it up a bit and paint a watercolor. I have so enjoyed the time involved in oil painting and the waiting and thinking that truly predominates the use of that medium that I thought I would use the same process for a watercolor painting. In short I would not paint it in one day, I made myself go through stages and really stop and think about my next stage etc. I think this is good to slow the pace down and really relish the moments, in the end I feel I have truly given my all for the piece. The painting is one in the same series as the last post, the Medusa Complexities Series, and in this one I employed two figures with head coverings and you guessed it a cat.

The Medusa Complexities: Seekers
by
Cathy Hegman
watercolor on paper

Thank you for reading my blog and I hope that it helps you in your art journey and that you in turn will share your work with others.

Cathy Hegman
AWS,NWS,MSWS,MOWS,SAA,SW,ISAP
www.cathyhegman.com
www.youtube.com/hegman1

*All artwork and text included in this blog is copyright protected by Cathy Hegman and should not be reproduced in any form or fashion or used without the written permission of Cathy Hegman. All text and artwork included in this blog are solely the thoughts and original art of the artist, Cathy Hegman, unless otherwise noted, and are meant only to be guidelines and thoughts for others to read.my blog.
*All photography is copyright protected by Thomas Hegman and should not be reproduced in any form or fashion or used without the written permission of Thomas Hegman.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

August 2010.....Summer Sizzles Medusa Continues

In the studio I am continuing on the Medusa Complexity Series, I find each painting moves me to the next painting with an urgency that is captivating and fulfilling all at once. The Medusa for me is a powerful metaphor of life , as there are endless adjectives to describe her plight as well as life, both are beautiful, scary, frightening, interesting, captivating, cunning, wild, trapped, alone, threatened, threatening and the list goes on and on. I am captivated with the idea of shaded eyes, perhaps it is a way to remove some of the fear of a medusa, if you cannot see the eyes , then perhaps you will not be turned to stone. I am delving into the domain of head coverings and the fact that they much like Medusa's Snake encrusted hair, all simply shade the eyes. It is written that the eyes are the windows into the soul and perhaps this shading is hiding more than we know. Mystique is created somewhere in the darkness of the shaded portals of the soul. The darkness gives way to mysteries of both life and emotion when we cannot fathom the depths. I feel a strong involvement in this series that goes beyond the superficial surface of the paintings. I want to capture something that is intriguing and beguiling enough to appeal to many viewers on many levels, I want to make these paintings something that will be strangely familiar . This series will have some complete figures but mostly it is the face that I am focused on in this group. The face is more personal and intimate with the viewer in these paintings than in some of my previous paintings and this intimacy and mystery is exactly what I want to convey to the viewer. We can all relate to the figure in our own and very unique and personal ways, this enables the familiar, the odd head coverings and shaded eyes gives me the strange in this series.

Medusa Complexities : Fashionistas I, II, III
by Cathy Hegman
beeswax, oil, and damar resin on wood

I am working in many mediums in this series as an attempt to prove to myself that my subject can transcend the medium and find just as much meaning in wax as in watercolor. I am working in many sizes for the same reason. This series is teaching me about myself even more than ever, I am aware in my art of the need to put the meaning ahead of the methodology and technique. I am finding more and more now I am working seamlessly from one medium to another, while keeping my mind on the gist of the painting and not some technique or trick I might have learned along the way to produce a satisfactory painting result. I am foremost telling myself on a minute by minute basis that these are related by the soul and subject and not by the pigment and surface of each painting. This series has opened the doors of experimentation in my work and has made the transitions from one medium to the next much smoother in transition than in my previous series of paintings. I keep my mind totally open to new possibilities within the subject and its ability to conjure up related but new themes for each painting. I strongly advocate painting in a series as a good way to experiment with your mind and your mediums, and find more of yourself in your work. Art is part what you know but mostly what you feel and long for...

This series will be shown in November at an Exhibition at Jackson Street Gallery in Ridgeland, Mississippi.