Feeling Hope in the Darkness...A Painting Explained

I decided I needed to start writing about the deeper meaning behind my paintings and I'm going to start with today's painting "PoP".

I've been feeling such deep sadness about our world since visiting my mom last weekend in Calgary, Alberta and one of the ways I process feelings and get them out is by painting them.

Before beginning this painting all I could envision was darkness and spikes plus I wanted to tie it in with my recent Spirit Animal Series. So I started, as usual with a face and drew it with a bamboo sketch pen that creates a nice, scratchy line. (Oh ya, and by the way I'm also painting with my non-dominant hand). The darkness I felt inside got expressed in the dark, flowing paint outlining her body. Yet in this darkness is light and hope as expressed in the yellow rays extending out from her head. From there I tapped into her spirit animal which turned out to be a red and purple bird. But this bird wanted company. (And it's good feng shui ya know, if you have a painting in your home that depicts a couple...it creates good energy for couples), From there I could see a moon/circle in the sky but when I finished painting it I see that it wants to become a moon-flower so I add petals or rays extending out from it.

In the end, this painting expresses the dark AND the light which is appropriate for this time of year as we are entering the dark time of year (in the Northern Hemisphere) at Hallow's Eve or Samhain, also known as the Celtic New Year.

You can purchase PoP below!

Portfolio: Journey Into Intimacy

2011 Journey Into Intimacy

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2010 Journey Into Intimacy

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2009 Journey Into Intimacy

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Artist Statement

I am interested in exploring contradictions abstractly by juxtaposing opposites to express multiple truths. Each painting and print is an exploration of intimacy, vulnerability, raw emotion and healing in line with the Divine Feminine.

The watery, responsive nature and quick drying time of acrylics expresses fleeting moods and fiery passions in brilliant color that blends, bleeds, drips and flows onto smooth, gessoed silk and wood.

The paintings are just large enough to capture huge and overpowering emotions using unusual tools like garden rakes, house painting brushes or my body pressed into the surface.

Nothing is pre-planned or sketched. The process itself leads the way no matter how long it takes. Sometimes one stroke can take hours of looking.

I hope this series inspires the discovery of hidden beauty.

Kathy Crabbe

Resume Blog: art-in-progress

I come out of my hermit shell

Being interviewed by Karen, The Fog City Psychic on Blog Talk Radio was probably the high point of my week, or right up there with the Sag Full Moon/Eclipse meditation. We talked, we laughed and we were GREATLY inspired by the Sagittarian Full Moon Energy invigorating us all with passion, purpose, politics, and speaking up for our highest truth. Enjoy! (Click link above to listen)

Innocence Lost

100 Words 5/24

It is amazing how one stroke of a brush or line of charcoal can exhilarate. Without over-thinking I let the painting itself guide me into new territory, Aries rising leads the way, until something unique and intriguing is discovered.

Sometimes a little insanity is a good thing...that's what art has taught me.

Amorphous forms arise from the murky deep. Sea creatures feed.

Art making requires supreme faith in one's humanity, or what's the point in living? Working alone we face ourselves - can you handle it? What kind of world do you want to create given a choice?

5/25

My painting dreams ME into being almost as if I don't exist until I paint it so. Sometimes I'd like them to be more political, but often they just don't care...their roots grow deeper, their consciousness primeval...a reminder of hidden depths we've yet to plunder.

Innocence lost, a forgotten melody, a charm, a far off friend, a sorrow buried...these marks I make a reminder.

Paintings I love: the Post Impressionists, Expressionism, the Fauves: Matisse, Gaugin, Kirchner, Nolde, Munch, Der Blaue Reiter, early 20th century Paris, woodcuts - raw emotions.

Where to go next? One false move it's ruined.

5/26

"No" to painting today. It's so perfect and sunny but paint it is and so I sit and stare and wait and ponder and write and dream and worry and wait and hem and haw and fiddle and fuss until the birds and the breeze and me are in synch then I close my eyes, take off my glasses, put down this pen.

Can things be easy just for once? Like having someone else sell my work so I can paint and printmake and write and Circle. Does there have to be a hard part. Can't we all flow?

5/27

What's the good of expressing emotions? Well, for the "armoured amazon" (Schierse Leonard), let down by an emotion-less father figure it spells hope for mankind and I do mean the 'man' part.

The fire that burns within must be released or else one dies from the inside. Commercializing art-making brings no joy or hope or spark to me. Creating and releasing. The trick takes place in the next act: the selling and marketing of the work - not my job, but like breadcrumbs to the wolf, my paintings are being discovered by the trickster who resides in each of us.

EXTRA BIT: Perhaps by facing and owning this trickster, this huckster of dime store dreams, we can save what's left of our culture and ourselves. If dreams are paintings let mine save nothing, not souls, not dreams, not minds, no escape from ourselves. So what's left? What's the point? There is no point. We've only got our own life to make a difference. How will you make a difference? The point is to go beyond everything and into new territory and yes, I'm sure it's been explored before, but for me it's new - that's where the thrill lies. New for me, is having faith in my work in and of itself and for no other reason other than that it exists and its good and its speaks to me.

On the Art of Life and Vice Versa

Inspiration via Michael Kimmelman's book The Accidental Masterpiece On the Art of Life and Vice Versa~ Eva Hesse (sculptor) said:

All my stakes are in my work. I have given up in all else. Like my whole reality is there - I am all there." It was and she was. That was Hesse's declaration of ardor and commitment, for which she was willing to bet the house. Sol LeWitt had encouraged that attitude in one of the great freewheeling examples of an inspirational letter from one artist to another. "Learn to say 'Fuck You' to the world once in a while, " LeWitt told Hesse. "You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, rumbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose-sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding grinding grinding away at yourself, Stop it and just DO.