LOU #10 (kite) 11 x 14 inches - oil on canvas

This is a new painting in my Lou Evans pseudonym series.  (You can bid on it here.)

It is actually my current favorite painting right now, partly because I think the colors are luscious, partly because I like the twirly motion, and partly because while the title is “kite”, it looks like a completely relaxed person flying around uncontrollably in in a warm little bed.

This is the feeling I have when I let go of a burden I’ve carried around for a long time – a sudden incomprehensible lightness.

A friend compared this to the way it feels when you train with ankle weights, and then take them off to run a race.

I think it is often harder for us to forgive ourselves than it is for others to forgive others.  We routinely require ourselves to do penance, carrying around burdens even after others would free us.  Sometimes that feels like an unhealthy pattern, but I think in reality it can be the strengthening part of a healing process.

In some ways I think I’ve done this in the studio.  I’ve painted my way through some serious trauma.  I reached harder and harder, dug deeper and deeper inside myself.  It led to good paintings, better than I knew I could do.  That was the point, to learn to do better, to control what I can.

Endless 48 x 60 Genie Maples (SOLD)

I am proud of these labor-intensive paintings.  They make me feel accomplished, and give me a kind of validation I needed.  They sell for much more than I could possibly afford to spend for a painting myself – necessary because I could paint relatively few of them.  But there may be another way.

I don’t know yet whether I will continue making that kind of paintings – maybe.  But even if I do, I don’t think I will struggle over the work in the same way I have for this last five years.  I’ve realized that the angst isn’t necessary.

It feels good to paint the new paintings I’m signing “Lou Evans”.  I am painting the way I used to when I first started down this road, but with a new grace and developed eloquence that I think only comes from having done very heavy lifting so it’s possible to feel really light, and really free.

The wonderful thing is that these paintings come so much easier, and cost me so much less in energy and struggle, I can experiment with offering them for much less, even testing out whether I can make selling at auction feasible again.  That was always my favorite way to sell – with buyers setting the price, with the possibility for anyone to have a chance to buy, whether they have tons of money to spend or not.

For now, the Lou Evans paintings are all small.  I am feeling an urge to experiment with some of these compositions in a large format, though.  All in good time.  Finally, there is no rush to carry everything at once.

One more time, here is the link to bid.

For some time now, I’ve had a scene from the movie The Mission running in the background of my mind.  This scene with Robert de Niro is incredibly powerful and has stayed with me for many years.  It seems to apply here to what this transition has felt like to me.  I found it on youtube, but embedding is disabled.  You can watch it here.  The scene has even more impact in context, and it’s a phenomenally moving film.

Lou Evans #1 (Hello Lou)

Lots of artists use pseudonyms.  Why?  To experiment, to be able to sell different kinds of work in different markets, to keep their main body of work looking coherent, because they are uncertain about some work, all kinds of reasons.

But of course, most artists keep it a secret – that’s the whole point, right?

Well, not always.  I’m not good at secrets.  I don’t like them and they don’t like me.  I avoid having to protect secrets because I think they are burdens.  They separate people.  They can sap energy and usually confuse things.  They make me feel uncertain and guilty.

Sometimes I have secrets, but I try not to.

Lou Evans #6 (Don't think about elephants.)

But we’re talking about business secrets, not family or friend secrets.  That’s different, right?

For me, not so much.  I sort of am my work.  I reach as deep inside myself as I can, and I put what I find on a piece of cloth.  Then I put my name on it and if you give me money, you can take it home and put it on your wall.

That’s one reason for me to sometimes use a pseudonym.  I can get very immersed in my work.  Sometimes I feel like I’m married to it, or that it is who I am.  That’s not really healthy, and I think that kind of very natural confusion is one of the things that can make some artists lost and crazy in the world outside our own psyches.  Yeah, that kind of crazy.

I’ve had a toe in that kind of crazy, and am not interested in getting deeper.  So I sometimes look for ways to remind myself that paintings aren’t me, they aren’t gods or golden idols, and they aren’t really all that important.

Lou Evans #4 (bull)

Something that IS important to me, going into this next year, is to find ways to remember that my work is what I do, not what I am. It’s my living, not my life.  So a pseudonym feels like a good idea for building a little healthy compartmentalization.

I’ve also gotten heavy and serious about my painting.  In some ways that’s good.  I push.  I use it to support my family.  I’ve grown tremendously over the last ten years and worked through lots of tough challenges.  My painting may be stronger because of the stretching and reaching, or who knows, maybe I’d have gotten here anyway if I hadn’t struggled.  But the pressure has been bad for my health and it’s time to catch my breath.  That means I need to spend some time in the coming year working on lighter, free-er work – work that is a surprise even to me.  I need to do some quicker, easier paintings.  I’ve gotten into the habit of picking a word to center my awareness around every year.  The one I chose for the coming year is “Ease.”

Aside from being a nice word, “Ease” is what I called my grandmother, whose given name was “Louise.”  I just found out two young adults I know got tattoos this year honoring their mother who passed away ten short years ago.  We find ways to honor people who helped form our lives.  I think I got most of my best parts from Ease.  I know I got my grit from her, and most other things in me that are strong.  I want to be stronger.  And I want find my own ways to remember to have ease in my life – that strength doesn’t mean struggle.

Lou Evans #7 (Fan Dance)

This way I get to try some little things I can’t do with my big signature work.  For one thing, I didn’t keep chronological records when I started.  I’ve sold somewhere between 1000 and 1500 paintings as Genie Maples – but as for Lou Evans, it’s all new for her.  I can number these paintings and keep a clear record of how the work develops. Learning more about that process so I can share it intrigues me.

If you hurry, you can have the very first numbered Lou Evans painting, probably for a song.  That chance won’t come again.

So, psst.  It’s an open secret.  Lou Evans is me.  That’s why her work looks familiar.  She paints with the kind of ease Genie Maples painted with before it all got so important.

I like both kinds of work.  Maybe you will too.  

The first work I made came at a point when had thrown up my hands completely because I knew I had no answers.

That made space for me to stop struggling long enough to sense a quiet, sudden impulse, “Why don’t I sit down and smear some of the kids’ yellow tempera paint around?” I think the nearly subconscious thought process was as simple as “Why not? It’s not like there’s anything I can do to fix things right now.”

Who knows how many times I have just swatted away such seemingly inconsequential impulses?  But this time, because I was crouching in a place of utter admitted helplessness, I didn’t swat it away.

When I am in that space of helplessness and nakedness, picking up a brush and keeping it moving is the least-cynical thing I can do.

I don’t always know what to do.  I don’t always even know what I believe in.

But what I believe most is that cynicism never solved a problem, and that moving away from it always helps.

I believe the deepest and most transcendent work comes from that place of admitted naked powerlessness, not with the idea of making something important, but with the idea of doing what I can.  At those moments picking up a brush is about choosing life or death. Sometimes it is as simple as I will move or I won’t, I will make a mark, or I won’t.  It’s as if the mark-making is an acknowledgement:  ”I am still here.”

The best advice that can be given to someone in despair is “make something,” and failing that, “move your body.” “Help someone” is good too, but can seems out of reach when we are empty.

If you are hurt or confused,  make something. Not because the thing you will make is important, but because you can.

“When we die, we will die with our arms unbound” ~The Decemberists

When people say they don’t understand the Occupy movement, I think they must not know the place I describe in this post.  But I think the people in the streets and in the tents do.

My guess is that the people at Occupy have been in this place, or can truly empathize with people who have:  ”I cannot fix this.  There are too many things wrong, and I am powerless in the face of it.”

We have lost all influence upon candidates and elected officials.  Civil liberties are undermined more every day. Average people have no means of redress for our grievances, no real representation in the halls of power, and we know that is getting worse, not better.  What passes for capitalism in this country smells more and more like fascism.

People have started responding this way:  ”There is nothing I can do, but I will not just lie down and be still in the face of all of that.  It is unthinkable.  If all I can do is stand in the street, then I will stand in the street.  Because I can.”

I respect that.

And surprisingly, people are finding, “I stand here too.” And it has become not “I am here,” but “We are here.” Which is something else altogether. The nonviolent but determined “we” is so threatening that militarized force is called out against people who are just standing or sitting or talking or drumming or marching or sleeping, simply because they are assembled together. The threat to the status quo is the specter of a nation that realizes it is NOT divided right down the middle and thus paralyzed.  We have common ground.  We can be a nation UNITED for the common good.  That is powerful, not because anyone individually set out to change the world or spur a revolution, but because it is the truth.  Maybe we really ARE one nation, indivisible, and maybe there IS such a thing as common good that can stand alongside individual striving, just as the founding fathers believed.  The threat is that more and more of us are realizing we really are all in this together.

How She Learns, When She Learns by Genie Maples ©2011

24 x 48 inches

oil on linen

Falling Deeper into a Wider Pool by Genie Maples ©2011

48 x 48 inches

oil on linen

The Opposite of Hollow - Genie Maples - oil on linen - 60 x 60 inches

November, Squared 48 x 48 oil on linen ©Genie Maples 2011

A little study in blue, with abstract expressionist tendencies

20 x 24 inches oil on canvas

and here is a close up detail from a large 60×60 inch major work in progress on linen.  All of these paintings are built with traditional slow-drying mediums, as I am now living with asthma clearly associated with the petrolatum based glazing medium I have used for a decade.

Change isn’t always welcome, but sometimes it is for the best.  Paintings will now take much longer to complete, but I can already see how much richer this work will be. This work approaches an entirely new level of maturity I don’t think I could have ever accomplished using Liquin.  So, thank you for the gift, asthma.  You can go now.

detail from a large work in progress

detail from a large work in progress by Genie Maples