This is my journal.. a private place, made public, for those interested in how a painting gets from HERE to THERE: scraps of paper torn from magazines, smeared with paint, notes for an essay, songs that are the soundtrack for the series, to do lists, the studio.... floor to ceiling with canvases, the lights rising up on the hills from the window, my view...and occasionally, a painting I am happy with.
30x 30 poppies 700
36 x 36 oil running horses 1200
below ballerina's secret 30x24 oil 09 sold
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| Evoking the mystery I believe that to make art with all the questions answered deprives the viewer of the joy of participating in the act of creation. I believe the self balances tenuously in the ambiguous, misunderstood spaces between people. Exploring the fragility of our connection to each other is the reason I make art. There are 4 comments for Evoking the mystery by Georgianne Fastaia |
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.Working notes: for those interested in how a painting gets from here to there. I created these paintings in the late summer of 2009 for the opening of Coda after putting my daughter to bed, between the hours of 8pm and4am. Alone in the drafty studio, I don 2 pairs of pants and extra socks and am most productive then, without interruption.Wayfaring Stranger as I could find, Jack White’s live version obsessively, Mad world, Lou Reed’s Perfect day and Jeffrey Luck Lucas.
The paintings are unified by color palette and emotional overtone-which is why the painting of three Monkeys looking expectantly upward is included among the other strangers, “going over Jordon, ... just going home.
late for the party 64x30 oil
artwork featured in ELLE DECOR july 2009 pg 71-75
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Paintings celebrating the Orishas Afro Carribean Mothers of Saint  
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Oxum the orisha of sweetwater 36 x 36 oil 09
. The girl with her toes painted yellow for Oxum, the little sun, and the word for power—axé—written on the wall Procreation, beauty, riches, love, and fertility. The mistress of jewels and fresh water. This is Oxum
photos from carival 2008 from the website of Gamo de Paz Candomble Master Drummer
faceprint of my colors
saw in thirds from magic tricks series
envelope 2009
palm reading
tea leaf reading
the real alice shaw
I was intrigued by the invitation,, "Alice Shaw has employed others, such as a handwriting analyst, an astral chart expert, a reader of tea leaves and a psychic, to tell her information about herself …then taken what she has learned from these sessions and made artwork in response.
The show was part documentation of this process—her original handwritten show proposal and the letter the handwriting analyst wrote in response, a palm readers scribbled notes upon her handprint, a teacup and the notes “ future health problems”, childlike watercolors and photos of the artist in various personas, interspersed with pairs of photographs and prints expressing dichotomies.
The first piece that caught my eye was face print of my colors, made by pressing paper onto her made up face….faint and wrinkled like a mounted skin, ghostly, yet still bearing the imprint of the artist.
in that sad fleeting visage; mystery.
On my second tour around the gallery I focused on the photographs; distilled, mature, enigmatic, coming finally to a watercolor series of illustrated magic tricks suggesting things are not always what they seem.
I returned to a framed envelope with a lipstick kiss on the back. Why I wondered, in a room full of artworks priced under $1000 was a lipstick kiss on the back on an envelope priced at $10,000? The difference in price was disjointing and made me consider the possibility that the price was an intentional artifice, a clue requiring that I pay attention.
The envelope, mounted in a simple black frame, incongruously almost, freezing in time, that particular kiss: until it became a symbol of a kiss which contained the promise of entering into another, and through them the hope of becoming complete; of understanding the unknowable you. Consider that most tricky of mirrors, love. The desire to be seen through the eyes of another, as much an illusion in the quest to know ourselves as a Russian woman reading your palm.
(Auto) biography uses our own fascination with ourselves to lure us in, as if through her exploration of identity we might be let in on the secret.
A friend commented that the work was hung too low, unevenly and looked unprofessional. My impression was that this was a deliberate choice serving to put the viewer at ease, by making the presentation more accessible, like a model with a chipped tooth. In their imperfection you recognize their humanity, as such I felt the way the show was curated beckoned the viewer to an intimate place, as if whispering, "You can be yourself here." We have our handwriting analyzed, see if we can predict the color of the next gumball out of the machine before we realize she’s winking back at us, as if saying; you don't really believe that stuff, do you?
|  | Oba/Obba Guardian of the hearth, first wife, of Changó, legitimate landlady of all cemeteries. Trained in the art of war, she used a machete as well as any male warrior, but was not physically attractive. According to Yoruba myth, jealous of his more beautiful wives, to guarantee Changó’s love for her and she cut off one of her ears and offered it to him in a stew. He fled their home in horror; she fled to the cemetery. She also records the life of each person in heav |
Oya
Ruler of winds and whirlwinds.
She rules over the dead and the gates of the cemeteries. She is a fierce warrior and was once the wife of Chango. She represents Our Lady of the Presentation of Our Lord and St. Theresa.
Her colors are maroon and white, and her number is 9
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| | Oya Changó’s favorite wife, she left his brother, the blacksmith Ogun, after he tried to force her to work in his forge, but not before stealing his tools (customarily seen as adornments for her crown). She fights next to Changó in war, and she guards the gates to the cemetery as well as to the marketplace; she is the hurricane that destroys in order to create. Her relationship to the ancestors is indexed by the use of rainbow colors in the clothing of her initiates and in altar displays. |
day 3 finished beavch painting 24 x 24 oil
erosion
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Wow! Great painting.