10 small paintings 9.14.15 (The "Weird" Ones)

These are the paintings I mentioned in a Facebook post as being "weird". I realize now they probably aren't any more "weird" than many of my other paintings. 

The response on Facebook to the concept of weirdness, at least in the context of creativity, was overwhelming. People like weirdness. It's a good thing. I love my friend Sherrye's comment that "we all know that weird is just another way to go home".

I looked up the definition of "weird", it having been brought to my attention by another friend as a word that she didn't particularly like.

Weird is a complex idea, and old. It has to do with fate and destiny and is of, or related to, witchcraft and the supernatural. 

The "Weird Sisters" is another name for the Fates.

Weird is magical, of strange and extraordinary character, fantastic.

It is unnatural, preternatural, eerie, unearthly, *uncanny. 

*Uncanny - as in, "mysterious because of its apparent defiance of the laws established by experience". I think that is how I was using the word 'weird', not "suggestive of the fateful intervention of supernatural influences in human affairs" or "by suggesting the ghostly, makes one's flesh creep" or "belonging to another world"... although, that's not too far off.

So, these sweet little (5" X 7") weird paintings, which do not abide to the laws established by experience, were all done by first smearing colors onto paper with a scraper, then finding things in the smears to enhance. 

They were done with acrylic, charcoal, oil pastel and they were hard. I don't know why, but they were giving me a lot of trouble coming into being. Tom Waits talks about his songs as each having a personality that presents itself individually for him to decipher just how they want to be, essentially, born into the world. I tried that approach with these, and like I said, they were not easy births. 

It's interesting to me how much there seems to be a nautical/water theme that comes up in my imagery. Not sure why that is so. I was born under the sign of Aquarius. Maybe that's it.