Happy New Year! 2011

"Fan Dance" mixed media collage

"Elgee Stalks The Moo Shu" mixed media collage

Oliver Sacks wrote yesterday in the New York Times that one's New Year's resolutions (and here I ineptly paraphrase) should focus on the brain as much as the commonly made self promises to lose weight, eat healthily and work out on a regular basis.

I decided that some art and mind resolutions would be a great idea - after all, why not expand my 2011 goals so at this time next year, I can evaluate my compliance on a range of scales other than that nasty, inaccurate one in the bathroom? Intellectual, Philosophical, Artistic?

1. Since my last post was about my upcoming workshop in Tuscany, I'll start with a realistic goal of getting through all 12 of my Italian tapes before next September. Not that one really needs to speak Italian in Italy - getting completely lost in back alleys can lead to intriguing experiences there - but then, perhaps even greater opportunities exist for those more diligent students of Italian. I'm reminded of a recent trip when a car driven by an "only Italian" speaker left our lodgings, speeding towards Florence with my suitcase, which should have been heading with me to Piza.

2. It's been several years since I began my current series of collages. (Click here to see some examples.) More spontaneous and experiential than my paintings, and occasionally more narrative, I've been procrastinating about translating some of the collages into paint. This has been under the guise of telling myself that I've been reaching for a form these translations could take that would be as spontaneous a process as the one I use for the collages, rather than just using the images and blowing them up to canvas size.

Come on, Sandra, JUST DO IT.

3. We've just watched a film by Bruno Wollheim, "David Hockney, A Bigger Picture", in preparation for a class my husband and I will be teaching during February and March at the Art Students League of Denver titled "Art Goes To The Movies".

Hockney decided to return to England, and for the first time, to eliminate his photo references and paint "En Plein Air". Watching his experimentation with oils and freedom with color , I couldn't wait to get back into the studio. I'll wait until spring for my total "en plein air" experience, but the muddy locales of Yorkshire were less inspiration for me than watching the hand of the artist work.

Today, though at home, I dove into my paints.

4. One more. Being more disciplined with my time would certainly help me with # 1 thru #3. Although my best guess is that this resolution is unrealistic, given my bad record of adhering to a schedule.

I need at least one resolution likely to remain unfulfilled during the coming year. Then I'll have a good start on my resolutions for 2012.