Obsession

byLea Keohane, 2011. 8" x 8" pencil & watercolor on paper. All Rights Reserved

I've always wanted to participate in Illustration Fridays, but never got around to it. So this is my 1st. The topic this week was "obsession."

Besides the darkness that I see as inherent in the word obsession, I have been wanting to begin exploring some of my darker feelings in my work--at least privately, in my sketchbook--lately. Most of my work is quiet and introspective in a meditative way. It is meant to be thoughtful, uplifting. Looking for the beauty within myself so that I may finally see the beauty without. Hopefully inspiring others to do the same.

But this search for inner beauty would not be necessary if I had not spent so many years of my life suffering from a lack of self confidence, an inability to see my own worth. An acute pain that made me at many times wish I could simply vanish into the shadows so that no one could look at me.

I don't feel that way anymore. Not that I am magically some mountain of self-confidence, but I don't want to disappear. Most of the time I even feel pretty good about myself. I could write volumes on the journey that I've taken to get here, but that is for a later time. For now, "Obsession," a girl in the dark.

Solo show this Thursday!

I am so excited to announce my upcoming show at A MOOD CHANGE, this Thursday as part of the 1st Thursday Art Walk in NW Portland.

I have been drawing and painting my heart out to create this new series furthering my personal exploration of inner and outer beauty, growth, spirituality and feminine strength. This is my first serious use of mixed media in my work--I have combined elements of collage, drawing with various types of pencils, watercolor, acrylic paint, and a couple of other mediums--all done on wood reclaimed from sources from old cabinet doors to the Willamette River.

Starting at 6pm at 618 NW Flanders. See you there!

And when you're finished, head across the river to the Olympic Mills Building (107 SE Washington) for the opening of "Journey," the visual arts piece of the Siren Nation Fest, where you'll find two of my paintings alongside the works of 50 other Portland artists.

Annual Autumn Post

"Swing" 2008 by Lea Keohane. All Rights Reserved.

Every Fall I seem to find myself writing about my absolute love for this season. This year, however, I think this drawing says it all. Sold yesterday to a lovely friend, but I will certainly be offering prints in the near future. Enjoy!

Oh! Before I go, I must send you over to Indie Parade, where one of my little pendants is being featured today.

Letting Go

"Difficult Departure," by Lea Keohane, 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Sometimes letting go can be hard, especially when whatever it was that you once had was so good you thought it would last forever, you never even questioned the possibility of losing it. I usually do not plan my drawings before I sit down to do them, but this one was a little different. I was walking through the park, taking in the trees and whatever music was playing on my iPod at the time, trying to feel connected to the world, when this image came to me, or something like it. My original idea included both of the figures having wings, but I thought that had a different connotation than what I intended, so I dropped the wings and got on with the drawing. "Difficult Departure" is approximately 9.5" x 9", drawn with Pantone Tria markers and a Sharpie on paper.

Nostalgia

"Surely She's a Mermaid," 2008 by Lea Keohane. All Rights Reserved.

My little brother, Dylan (yes, named after Bob), is 30 years old. Ever since the clock turned on his February birthday, we two Aquarians have both been in our 30's and let me tell you, that is just weird to think about. As I write this, Dylan and his daughter, my niece, are on an airplane on their way to come for a week-long visit. It is making me a bit nostalgic this morning.

When we were kids, at almost exactly 2 years apart, we were really close. A lot of my childhood memories are at my dad's house, which is weird because we only spent every other weekend there. Like a lot of divorced families, though, one parent has to deal with the day to day discipline, errands, homework, chores while the other parent gets to try to make up for missing out on it all by having a mini-vacation with few rules every other weekend.

Every other weekend. We would eat at Wendy's, rent a ton of videos and video games, and spend the weekend at our dad's playing in between watching all of those videos. We would spend whole days in the 3-foot-tall above-ground swimming pool until our sides were cramped and Dylan's shoulders were covered in painful burns and water blisters, until I had a deep tan and my stepmom would call me her little island girl, until we decided to cover the yard with a plastic drop-cloth and call it a slip-and-slide (not quite the same, let me tell you).

Then my dad and stepmom (now ex-step) bought a house in Colorado's foothills, and while the schedule stayed the same, our stomping ground grew. We would ride our bikes around long curvy roads to the store to buy candy, play with the goats and feed the chickens, run around on the giant hill that was nested up against the back of my dad's property. On that hill was a cave that we would dare each other to walk through. At the other end of the cave was an opening through which we could see the 2-lane-highway far below.

These are some of the best memories that I have of my childhood. There were times when I was in high school and was much moodier, that I didn't want him around as as much, and as we became adults and life got in the way we often didn't stay in very close touch. But we have always been close. I can't wait to spend this week with my brother.

Her Spirit Lifts

"Her Spirit Lifts," 2008. All Rights Reserved.

You never know when something will happen, when your life, your perspective will change suddenly. Something that forces you to step back and re-assess what you have, what your goals are, what will make you happy. How to really achieve whatever it is that you want in life. Something that will make you break apart your preconceptions, set aside your baggage, and try to start anew.

This is just one of those weeks.

Freedom

Close-up, "Realization," 2008 Acrylic on masonite by Lea Keohane. All Rights Reserved.

I am sure at some point in your life you have experienced a problem that you can't seem to solve. Whatever it is, it feels complicated, confusing, and the harder you try to find the answer, the more it evades you. Then you set it aside, get distracted, let it float around in the back of your life. Time passes. Suddenly the answer hits you. Maybe you feel a bit silly because it is so obvious. Nonetheless you are extremely thankful, your problem is solved and your life opens up a little bit because of it.

Over the past months, as I've talked about before, I have developed an early morning habit of sketching for an hour or so before everyone else wakes up. For the first few weeks, I cherished this time. It was my own time, my energy was spent entirely on myself, and it felt GOOD.

In addition, I have one day a week set aside specifically for painting, and so I would choose one of the drawings from my sketchbook, re-draw it on a canvas, and paint. Sounds great right? Wrong. The paintings felt contrived, awkward. They lacked the life and the energy that I love so much about the original drawings. So I thought, 'maybe the drawings are the real art,' and I set the paintings aside. But I have a number of reasons for not wanting to deal with works on paper, and one of them is that I want to PAINT. I love the feeling of my brush moving across my painting surface, controlling the brush strokes to look one way or the other, thinking about how the strokes will look later when they are dry and the light hits them just so. I love the way I can quickly cover a large area in paint, turning it from dull into a brilliant color that I am in love with...

And so, with this unhappy feeling, and the business of preparing for several shows and a visit from my mom, my morning ritual waned for a week or two, and my painting stopped entirely during this time. I was busy, stressed, and distracted to say the least, wondering what the hell I am doing with my life as well (a bout of worry that I go through in cycles).

During this time, though (it was only a couple of weeks, but it feels so much longer!), I tried to keep myself open to any answers. I am a strong believer that answers can come from anywhere, the most unexpected places, or in this case from expected ones. I met with different people, talked to strangers at my shows, listened. And I kept hearing, "prioritize, simplify." Finally my friend Anna hit it home when we went out to coffee. She looked at some lists of projects I was working on and made me rate from 1-10 how much I wanted to do each of them and what my reasons were for doing them. Aha! I was doing too many distract-a-projects with the thought of making money, and losing focus on my real goals. Plus I was wasting a lot of energy with all of my list-writing (and re-writing, and piling and saving of lists...yikes).

I sat with those thoughts for a few days, then one night I fell asleep early, I was recovering from a cold. Suddenly, at 4 am, I woke up. Wide awake. It was hot, I was uncomfortable, anxious about the shows I'm doing this summer, and I could not go back to sleep after 45 minutes of trying. So I got up. I made coffee, and started to go to my morning ritual of drawing in my sketchbook, when the answer came to me, loud, clear, and wise, "Draw directly on the canvas."

Plain, simple, obvious. I draw with a black sharpie most of the time anyway, there's no reason why I couldn't draw every day right on to my painting surface (usually masonite, not actually canvas). So now I'm back, I feel like my work has made a little leap ahead, and I feel really free. Not to mention in the need of LOTS of new surfaces to paint on! :)

Planet Earth Sketches

Indigo and I recently finished watching the BBC series, "Planet Earth" on DVD. A truly stunning series, with footage that beats the pants off of any nature special you have ever seen before. It was aired on the Discovery Channel, but if you have not seen it already I would highly recommend picking it up. I would also recommend the original BBC version narrated by David Attenborough as the American version has Sigourney Weaver narrating, and while I love her acting, her voice is not nearly as interesting to listen to as Attenborough's.

While I was watching, I couldn't help but pick up my sketchbook and start drawing, especially during some of the episodes I had already seen. Most of my work is figurative, and while I have a lot of experience drawing people, I have much less drawing animals. It was fun to catch some of their movements on paper, and I came up with some really fun sketches, like the baby elephant pictured above.

Coming this week!

The past few weeks, I have been hard at work. Art work, that is. I am drawing every day, painting at least one whole day every week, and whatever else I can squeeze in to my schedule.
Which means I have several new pieces--at least 10 ACEO's, 4 new paintings, and possibly more to add to my etsy shop this week!

I will begin listing them around 10 am (Pacific Time) on Wednesday morning. I hope to see you then!

Depth of Change

I don't know if it's the depth of change brought on by the art business class that I am taking, or the fact that I am not 100% sure of where my income is coming from right now, or the exhaustion I am experiencing from sleeping on a broken bed and dreaming about killing zombies (seriously), or the intense email that I just got from my dad, but I AM DRAINED.

For the past week and a half I am supposed to be working on de-cluttering my space, and organizing my time and money. But I feel like for every step I take I add three more steps to the list. I guess that is just what deep cleaning does, but today I am frustrated.

On a more positive note, I have been waking up every single morning, brewing a cup of coffee, choosing a song on my iPod that affects me strongly, and playing that song over several times while I draw in my sketchbook. This morning my drawing went quickly, so I also made a little ACEO, pictured above, entitled, "Squid Love #1."

Yay! Front Page!

Thanks to my friend Danielle, I just found out I was on the front page last night! Doesn't my paper look pretty?

Well, it's check-in time again! I did blog 3 times (more I think!), but didn't finish a painting. The coming weeks are going to be big for me, though. I just finished a very intense, emotionally draining & powerful weekend, which was the kickoff for a 12 week artist's business class. I have learned a lot about myself and my art already, and a lot of things are already coming into focus for me. I have been taking my art in the wrong direction, not painting nearly as much as I've wanted, and completely avoided doing the types of shows I need and want to be doing.

So, there is much to be done, starting with my home, my money, and my time. It is about clearing things up so that I can be a more productive artist. This week is a clean up my home and my finances week, take care of some things I have been avoiding and make my apartment more liveable. I will take some photos along the way and post them here!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

In celebrations of this lovely holiday, I am offering all of the pendants in my shop at 50% off! Stop by the sale section of my shop and check it out!

What next?

I guess by now if you've been reading the past couple of weeks, you will have noticed all of the changes and updates I've been making to my shops, and do my life. I am terrified, honestly. I am terrified of being solely responsible for my whole income (and exited at the prospect), and even more terrified that I will fail and be forced to go get a "real" job. I can't handle that last idea.

So now I am selling some fantastic things as SupplyRiot, and I am completely revising my LeaKarts shop. I am taking the pendants out completely. I like them, and they were a fun project at the time, but not what I want to invest my energy in. In fact, I will be selling them at a huge discount at Crafty Wonderland this weekend!

I have been pulling my sketchbook out regularly, and painting again, and regaining my focus. I have a distinctive style and a particular talent that I need to be putting to work. I will update here in my blog in the coming weeks as I make changes to my shop, re-create my website, and have lots of new paintings & services to offer!