Laurie Doctor 4/25/14 Laurie Doctor 4/25/14

I Am Different From You

This is the next essay in the series on Marie Howe's poem: Magdalene– The Seven Devils. Today we are going to explore how we fence ourselves off from others.

We set ourselves apart from others by saying, as Marie Howe states:

I am different from you: whatever happened to you could not happen to me, not like that.

Laurie Doctor 4/23/14 Laurie Doctor 4/23/14

Envy Disguised as Compassion

Now we come to the fourth devil in the exploration of obstacles to the creative pattern and Marie Howe's poem: Magdalene– The Seven Devils. It is: envy, disguised as compassion.

I have thought about this one a lot- it is the most difficult one for me to unwrap. I was struggling with how to approach it– so I put it down. It was a Saturday, and still dissatisfied with my attempts at writing about envy, I decided to take a break to run errands. I was listening to Moth Radio Hour on NPR in my car. They were featuring stories on coincidence– all kinds of wonderful stories from listeners.

Laurie Doctor 4/18/14 Laurie Doctor 4/18/14

One Devil at a Time

Marie Howe says:

The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the aphid, The aphid disgusted me.

We all have our aphids– the things that disgust us, that we refuse to consider. This is what aversion is: the impulse to turn away from something.

But how is this important to the creative pattern?

Laurie Doctor 4/16/14 Laurie Doctor 4/16/14

Fear: That I Might Make the Wrong Choice

Indecision is a kind of fear that can be paralyzing: Shall I do this or shall I do that? Fear is also a natural response to taking a risk- what have I gotten myself into now? (This is a recurring question for me!)

I was thinking just this when I was preparing for my exhibit, Another Night in the Ruins. After getting Galway Kinnell's permission to use his poem, I jumped in and invited sixteen poets and musicians to respond with a poem or music to one of my paintings. I had a vision of this culminating in a poetry reading and musical improvisation at the opening of the show at the gallery. What I hadn't taken into consideration was that although at this point the show was comfortably months in the future, I would need to have 16 paintings resolved enough to send digital images to these artists a couple months before the opening. Yikes! Did I make the wrong choice?

Laurie Doctor 4/11/14 Laurie Doctor 4/11/14

Casting Out Worry

I have been working on this lecture based on Marie Howe's poem,Magdalene– The Seven Devils. For now, I am taking one devil at a time, beginning with worry:

I ask myself, how much of my day has been captured by worry?

For example, when I was contemplating this poem as the subject for this lecture, I kept thinking about the last line:

Laurie Doctor 2/15/14 Laurie Doctor 2/15/14

Slide of class at La Romita School of Art, Italy

You can download a pdf with student examples of work and a registration form for the workshop at La Romita School of Art, Italy here: http://www.lauriedoctor.com/workshops/2014/catchingsong_final.pdf

http://www.lauriedoctor.com/workshops/2014/Registration_Form.pdf

Laurie Doctor 1/7/14 Laurie Doctor 1/7/14

Catching Song: Teaching in Italy this Summer

I was recently listening to an interview with the musician, Bobby McFerrin where he describes improvisation as movement, as catching song. What does it mean to catch a song? It implies that the song, our creation, is already here– and so part of our work as artists is to listen, to observe, and improvise from our experience. At La Romita, we will develop these skills through drawing, writing and watercolor techniques– and taking daily sketching trips into the small Umbrian hill towns. In the afternoons we return to La Romita for time in the workshop.

Laurie Doctor 9/30/13 Laurie Doctor 9/30/13

Notes on Another Night in the Ruins series

Making art is propelled by a kind of hunger. It is a walk toward the horizon– a horizon that everyone sees but no one can reach. There is an urgency to keep walking toward it, in spite of all the evidence of its intangibility. There is a paradox in aiming for something we cannot achieve– for example, I want to saturate my paintings with sound. I want to make paintings that have notes. I want a painting to be like a song you cannot quite remember, but when you hear it, feel like you have always known it.

Laurie Doctor 4/13/13 Laurie Doctor 4/13/13

On Painting

Painting is popular, and that puts it in danger of becoming trite. In contrast, I refer back to our oldest paintings-the ones in the Chauvet caves, and marvel at the unity and sparkle, the gestural integrity of the line, now, over 40,000 years later. No separation between spirit and animal, between writing and painting, or the artist and the shaman. The painting is the story. The cave painting shows the masculine function (whether we are male or female) of navigating the external world, of the hunt for what will give us sustenance. The feminine function is shown in the small sculptures of women found on the floor of the caves, holding the moon. The notches in the moon demonstrate an awareness of cyclical time. For how long has the moon been appearing, disappearing, and coming back again? In this day it is easy to have forgotten the sky, and the miracle that the moon mirrors the same cycle that is in our female body. And what about the stars- some shining down on us now in spite of the fact that they have died millions of years ago? This is a powerful image of the paradox of timelessness and brevity- reminding us that we are all made of the same (star)dust, and will return to it. Why do people go to see paintings?

Laurie Doctor 1/26/13 Laurie Doctor 1/26/13