JJ Worden

It's been a fucked up week.
I have no words.
I do have art.

Tom requested a clown. This is as close as I can get. WIP.

Another WIP that keeps changing. One of these days, I need to say, "Enough!" Today was not that day.


The Daily Painting in situ. There was paint throwing today. Cathartic Art Therapy.

One of my 2016 resolutions, more a goal I guess, was to "make art work for me".
Yah. I don't know what that means either.
It was of the "get more exposure, become a real artist and make some money" line of thinking.

Along with putting in my studio time, I've also been researching what exactly that entails. Most of it reminds me all too well of what I hated about being in the web design biz. And why Tom was in charge of peopling.

My eyes glaze over after reading #1 of 15 Reasons I Think You Should Blog or 20 Tips That'll Make Your Blog Work or 7 Steps to Launching Your Next Big Project. I've attempted to listen to Podcasts ... Artists Helping Artists, Magic Lessons, Savvy Painter, Gretchen Rubin anything. I even attended a "webinar" (oh! kill me NOW!) by the perky, punkgirl Kimra.

In every case, I get aggravated to the point that I frantically have to find and click STOP!!
How am I supposed to increase my exposure if I can't even stay on track long enough to find out how to increase my exposure?!? I'm down to the lowest of common denominators ... attempt to write here a few times a week, put out a semi-consistent newsletter and post to my FB page.

And with all the crazy breaking out every day, facebook has become a minefield of side-stepping Pro-Trump crap and Anti-Trump crap and global warming arguments and climate change arguments, nutrition arguments and simple living arguments. Lord love a duck, even cute puppies and kittens have gone over the top. (chihuahuas and muffins WTF?!?)

I can't take it.
Everything is making me angry.
I've officially become a curmudgeon.

I've thoroughly embraced "the many". Not that I didn't work on multiple pieces at once before. Because drying time. Hello? I am nothing if not an impatient artist! But I think my current roster of 'works in progress' goes well beyond 2 or 3 at a time!

Here then are the pieces I've been working on as I add to The Daily Painting ...well, each day! (and if you haven't checked it out recently. Go. Now!)

I started this during Grit and Grace and have been working on it since. Pretty sure the bald-headed dude is a spirit guide. As is the dog. Not sure what's up with the rooster/chicken mask. Trickster Guide, perhaps?


This one is on wood and you can see the transformation from the very gestural beginnings to its current Fox & Bird stage.




Here's another that continues to ebb and flow. A re-purposed canvas that I'd been experimenting on so it already had a ton of texture before I even started. As you can see from the larger image below, it's still very much in transition. Those are hunks of cardboard from The Daily Painting being attached at the top and bottom being held with clamps while the glue dries.

"Keep that dog running" pertains to Elizabeth Gilbert's assessment that creative energy, which is NOT benign, needs to be focused. In all ... for all... our best interests! Can I get a "hell yeah!"?



And finally, another wood substrate that I've just started. I'm working on the premise of  'paint-paper-paint-paper-scrape-repeat'. I painted the bare wood base with 'staining' colours. Most of Golden's fluids work but I'm particularly fond of the trilogy of Quin Gold/Quin Crimson/Pthalo Turquoise. Then a myriad of glued elements ...old envelopes and writing paper. A swath of gesso. Then scraped and sanded. Some more paint ...I love grabbing a mixture of paint from my palette with a credit card and dragging it along the surface. I don't pre-mix so depending on how I drag, the colour comes out in lines - some mixed, some adjacent. A new line each time. Love! It is now waiting for me to add another layer of paper. I'm hoping to keep this abstract but really who knows?!

I think I mentioned this somewhere in my Grit And Grace recaps, but I've been working on the same journal for well over 10 years. It's a standard hard cover sketch book and while ample, it isn't  THAT big. But I've had this idea in my head, that I can't start a new one until the old was complete.

Imagine my surprise that this isn't a universally held idea.

I have been liberated from my constrictive thinking. Yay!
I now have 4 or 5 journals going. And when one doesn't call to me, one of the others usually does.  Working simultaneously has not only freed me but also resulted in being far more productive ...actually DOING... rather than thinking about it. Go figure!

Here then are some recently worked on pages. They may or may not be finished.