New Painting! "Fluid Dynamic II"

Here is the second of the ink and acrylic wet media paintings, finished, dried, and on the wall at the studio, enjoyed very positive feedback at First Friday, and one interested (as yet uncommited) art collector! I have heard that this painting resembles many things, and have begun to record the ideas I get from visitors to the studio. Here are some of my favorites so far:


1. A duck with a suction cup stuck to its beak
2. An aadvark
3. A fat cat with a very small head
4. Some kind of black bird
5. A butterfly
6. "It's like a dream that I don't remember, but I know I was there"

OK, I liked #6 the best.  It is interesting to me the way we all think differently.  I do not see these things in my work, ever.  I see lines, shapes, and colors.  Period.  My brain must work differently.  I'm interested in continuing to collect the things people see and sharing them.  Perhaps I will learn a little about how we see and how we make sense of the world.

Emmy the Doberador at the Studio!

Completed Ink Painting #1, ready to go, at McGuffey Art Center

Slept on it, and now this one is finally dry! Love that the texture of the cotton shows through in places, and having trouble decided to hang this piece vertically or horizontally. Moving time, water, tide, self. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't!

New Ink and Acrylic on Cotton, Waiting and waiting...

Happy day at McGuffey to find two large cradled boards to mount a new ink painting!  Hurray for the free corner!  Thanks to the universe and thanks to Helen Frankenthaler, from whom all blessings flow...get it?  Flow?!?!?? It's funny!  Really, it is! OK, that's a cheeeeesyyyyy joke, Frankenthaler forgive me.  She was the abstract expressionist who began pouring paint onto unprimed canvas on the floor, so that it stained the canvas, so that it flowed, like time, like a river.  Like the universe.  Hmmm...

So I started with these boards, stretched unprimed cotton over them, and underpainted a layer of creamy butter yellow and Japanese Sumi-e ink, then two pours, 36 hours apart, and still waiting for the second to dry.  But...epiphany!  Epiphany!  These are NOT just paintings I am making.  Not at all.  This is time, and this is magic and beautiful, in the flow of NOW, each instant of water and color and ink moving and becoming.  Each of these moments is part of the art of it, not just the completed painting that hangs on the wall, but the act of making, the act of observing this interaction of water and air and color and time.  I have not figured it all out, but I feeeeel it swirling around in my head.  Documenting the pours and the flow needs to be shared, an integral part of the work that will hang on the wall of some very very lucky art lover. 

Hmmm...

Oh, happy accident! To run out of black sumi-e ink one day and reach out for more color...waiting for days and days for the inks on vinyl to dry and at last, of course, they did. Very happy with these and hoping to come up with a good idea to frame them. The vinyl sheets are approximately 11x14. They are all for sale, and should be up for display at McGuffey in my studio by First Friday! If I keep this up, I may even have enough work for an actual show! Productive, productive! No social life and no sleep makes Nina's studio time pay off. Thank you, OCD.

Monoprints, japanese sumi-e and colored inks, acrylic on mulberry paper and vinyl

words are pictures, too, wittgenstein be damned...

elephant parable, tweet-size

this room in my heart is like this:  one day, after a long drive,

an elephant came to stay (a white one).  maybe a little cracked on the edges, clumsy handling.  needing a rest.  found soft spot, turned three times, lay down (pointing north);  slept. 

don’t mention it.

  

nina frances burke

Ink, Acrylic on Vinyl, Waiting for Evaporation and too much Radiohead

Ink and acrylic experiments continue...investigating various surfaces to find the one that allows the most movement with some element of control. The last photos with the yellow and turquoise colors are still (obviously) wet - been out of the studio for two days with a bad cold and I absolutely cant wait to get back and see how they're becoming! Its the most exciting work I've done so far. The vinyl sheets were a random "found" object from a friend, and I've been thrilled with the results so far. They do take some patience! I'm using so much water that it can take days and days to evaporate and leave the ink behind - and a great deal of "hurry up and wait". Hey, it only adds to the element of "practice" in a meditative, mindfulness, buddhist sense - that same idea I have of guiding the movement of the paint without controlling it...allowing the shapes and lines to be born into space (pictorial space, that is). That, and also I've been listening to too much Radiohead. Lots and lots of Radiohead.
All day, every day, its Radiohead. Its what my brain sounds like, on the inside. There's some sort of magic to it that "sync's" inside my head and makes everything move to the exact pattern of sound that they create. AAaacckkk! Starting to sound too weird even for me!

Ink and Ink

OK, it turns out I suck at blogging. I would like to get more on top of this process, but I'm finding that I keep putting it off and putting it off some more. Absolutely completely in love with ink. Ink uber alles! Wondering if there may be a 12 step program for ink. I discovered that PLEXIGLASS is a perfect surface for the water film dropping technique I'm exploring. The water suspends the ink at differing levels, and the plexi does not absorb it. Therefore, the water evaporates quickly and without the aid of a hair dryer (forget about actually drying hair with it!). I love the transparent quality of the plexi and am hoping to experiment with ways to display this work in a gallery space. The water carries the color through space and time; the ink flows like a river, some on the surface, some on the riverbed, but always it follows its own way. What a perfect combination of meditation practice and art practice. I can control the movement of the ink and the "weight" of the varying inks, but not with the level of gesture possible in brushwork. I've used ink on cradled boards and like that, too, but so far the plexi is my favorite. Think of the possibilities!

More Ink, Ink_Plexiglass

Getting ready for the jury process next month and working on an assemblage based on "Dias de los Muertos", Day of the Dead. On Nov. 1 and 2, families create "la ofrenda" (altar) to celebrate visitors from the other side. Altars include marigold flowers, fruit, mementos, and traditional foods for the dead to feast on. All just lovely, yes? Circle of life, death, and rebirth, a joyful celebration, an honoring of all life's rhythms. So I happen to stop in to the cemetery where my family members are interred in Portsmouth, Virginia, and I am struck dumb by the synthetic feel of this place and the enormous disparity in the traditions. Nearly every grave was decorated with gaudy plastic flowers. Certainly we are choosing these because they are "permanent", but that is not true at all. They are breaking down in the weather, blowing around the paths among the graves, carrying their toxic building blocks into the earth itself which contains echoes of bizarre burial practices...is this the ultimate walmartization of our culture, stripping all that is graceful from our heritage? But still, but still...the decaying fiberglass angels and ornaments hold me fascinated, as usual, spying on the intimate relationship we have with our dead. There are so many artistic and cultural connections in this that my head spins at the possibilities...check back for photos of my "la ofrenda" project as it develops.

Work in Progress!

Moving is such hard work! Every day I discover more and more stuff to wade through; mostly not the kind you put in boxes. Mostly the kind you put in your head. It's a mess in there sometimes, but its clearing out and becoming. It's work in progress! Here's what's happening in the studio at McGuffey Center these days... really good stuff. So happy in my studio there and soooo lucky that our rent is subsidized somewhat by the city (phew!).

I have carried the bird's nest around with me for years, sealed in two ziploc bags to kill whatever tiny creatures might live in it! A great friend of mine found it for me in Corolla Village (she's 8 and still remembers what is beautiful). This image is a detail shot from a larger collage made of two windows, each salvaged from a demolished farmhouse in Point Harbor, NC. The nest always makes me think of robin's eggs and my favorite blue, which I would use on everything I paint...including The Hymnal, with Glass, salvaged from a historic home in Wanchese, NC. Love the simple certainty of this piece. It does not ask too many questions. It would not get kicked out of Sunday school like its maker...hmmm.

With all my changes and growth experiences last year, I loved the "Do It" ad I found in a vintage women's magazine, exhorting us to use our summer "leisure time" wisely, prettying up our homes as a special treat for our hardworking husbands. NO JOKE. Since I've been redacting everything, deleting the extraneous elements (or the offensive ones), it immediately begged to be bathed in pink and reduced to those two words. Whatever you will, do it. Like the shoes said.

I make stuff. The dog eats it.

I make stuff. I call it art. Some people call it other things. All artists are perpetually broke. You freaks, by some art! Hello? Is anybody out there? Random: I listen to Radiohead too much to walk around like a normal person. I pretend like Ben & Jerry's does not exist in the building next door to my crappy part time job. I would like to eradicate the papyrus font from the face of the earth. Plastic ivy, too. Oh, and guess what? I am uninsured, of course. But sometimes I can become a river, or an osprey, or a drumbeat. I feel self indulgent and silly. A blog is a letter to myself, and infinitely better than shooting myself in the head, which is what will happen if I take one more web design class.

Learning in this breath and this one to be aware of the blooming pear trees and the drowsy bees and the red door to my studio. Dog is happy, nieces are happy too. How random? Should this be an exploration of the messy slog of weirdness floating on the oily surface of my mind? Well, today its a bit oily, but yesterday it was clear like tulum in 2002.

This image is called Happy Pills. I am a little obsessed with the Zoloft ads from a few years ago. First the saaaaddd pill is lamely limping around (you know when you feel the weight of sadness). But then, joyful day, the ssssaaaaddd pill gets a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and then magically transforms into a hhhaaapppyyy pill, forever and ever, bounding and bouncing through the screen with a big round smile. Having tried it myself, I feel justified in mocking the ad campaign that promises you and your kids that one day they can be happy pills too. One day the Zoloft people will probably sue me.

OK, that's me. I make stuff. The dog eats it. Alligator.