Paint

Tone from Trent Jaklitsch on Vimeo.

Music by Darkside, if you never got to see them live (Now it is too late) then you should look up their BoilerRoom set, or Pitchfork Festival. Does not come close to the real concert, but good enough.  This video really catches why I love paint, it is a series of wonderful mistakes and simply pushing around color.

Looks much like the opening I made for the watercolor painting lesson videos by Jody Bergsma, which you can check out here.

Painting with Moulding Mediums

Find the creation of this image here.

Okay, this image is very pixelated I know.  But that's okay, because this is just a draft.

I am guilty, of having not painted all year.  Instead I have filled it with work, travel, and play. However I recently received some private classes on acrylic mediums, and it has opened an entirely new realm of possibility.  If you are an artist and want to learn how to become skilled at materials, take private lessons.  If you want to be an artist who just acts like an artist, go to school.

I got my four year degree, and all I got out of it was a piece of paper and two years of never touching a sketch book or canvas.  Take one night of private lessons, and get a crazy urge to paint.  I know that in todays society it is almost mandatory to get a degree in order to be taken seriously.  Having a degree in art will qualify someone to get hired for a job that has nothing to do with art just because it looks better then the person without any secondary schooling.  It is a shame, but it is how 'Merica is modeled.  Whoever works the hardest gets the leg up, unless it's physical labor, then you just get treated like dirt.

Last year was all about painting.  This year was all about travel, work, and making movies.  Next year I think is going to look different all together.

Just after my last statement, I just realized something.  This drawing was my logo for my production business for film.  Yet now it's a painting.  A merger is beginning!

If you know me personally, you'll know not to take much of what I say seriously.

And Just a bit later...

Credit where credit's due.  Meet Honeydew.

IDEA Awards Submission

So for the last month I've been working like a mad woman on this piece.  It's three 36" by 36" canvases painted with acrylic.  I've never worked so big in such little time.  I had a dream early on about it, and I was specifically told not to over-work.  So it was an experiment with trying not to be perfect, being okay with it, and moving on.  I like how it turned out.  I'll get better pictures of it later to show the details, but the submission was due today and this is what I had!

This was the essay I wrote to accompany it.  Don't really know what anyone will think of it.  I had a lot more that I wanted to say, but it's probably for the best to keep it short.  Enjoy!

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“Nostagia” IDEA Awards competition
By Lily "Sky" Bergsma-Rockenbach

 According the Merriam-Webster dictionary, nostalgia is defined as an “excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.” What makes people different is our passionate yearning through memory and desire. This has always been one of our biggest obstacles, and the challenge of overcoming it can only be achieved through a state of peace and acceptance.

The painting “Nostalgia” is a triptych made up of 3 canvases, each measuring 36-by-36 inches, which together represent a romanticized landscape that melds geometry and geography. Each canvas is displayed spaced three inches apart in order to match the main element of the work: a 12 by 12 circular grid creating six-inch diameter circles in a four by four pattern behind a 270-degree view of Vancouver B.C.

"Nostalgia" was created specifically for the SAM unit at VGH and UBC Hospital Foundation. I have given much thought into the composition, colour, and philosophy behind the imagery.  Most importantly, I hope for my ideas to be inherent to the viewer so anyone could find themselves lost within the piece. Isolated geographical areas have been distorted to create a balanced composition that accentuates mountains, city, and sea while still representing a space that is recognizable. In order to capture the essence of what makes this city desirable I needed to seamlessly balance these three elements on a micro and macro level in which anyone could escape reality. Most ideas behind colour theory psychology are that it is a new-age approach to therapy, yet I find that it holds true on some level, and is always important when considering design. The undertone of this painting is turquoise, which is both calming (blue) and energizing (yellow) and promotes mental and emotional stability.

My own particular philosophy has penetrated the work through the use of geometry to create a romanticized symmetric structure. If I were to take ideas from the German philosopher Friedrich Schelling, geometry would be my way of uniting mind and matter by giving a way for our senses to perceive spirit through structure. Where there is no form there is only space, and through this is the key to nostalgia because it is the mind that fills the void with thought and from thought comes being. To be: to have a sentimental yearning for life and an absolute abandon until we reach peace and acceptance.

In conclusion, I have created this triptych, “Nostalgia,” for no other reason then for it to be placed in the SAM unit of the VGH and UBC Hospital foundation. My hopes is that this painting is of consideration. Every element of this work has been crafted for its intended audience and I would be honoured if I could, through my artwork, aid and add comfort to the healing process of those in need.

 Thank you.

Draft of Hyperbolic Space

Not a high resolution photo of not a complete painting.

The original title for this piece was "Does Not Exist," Which I think is still a very suiting title.  I just found out I first started this canvas in September 2011, you can see my first image in this link.

1)  Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid:

"A metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll".

By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, GEB expounds concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence. Through illustration and analysis, the book discusses how self-reference and formal rules allow systems to acquire meaning despite being made of "meaningless" elements. It also discusses what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of "meaning" itself.

This idea is represented throughout the work.  Fugue is a perpetual loop, a melodic harmony that can layer itself one over the other.  The image itself is full of mathematics and symmetry, where certain ratios and shapes are in perfect alignment with every other element in the work. 

2) Polyhydra or The Platonic Solids:  

Through history, polyhedra have been closely associated with the world of art. The peak of this relationship was certainly in the Renaissance. For some Renaissance artists, polyhedra simply provided challenging models to demonstrate their mastery of perspective.  For others, polyhedra were symbolic of deep religious or philosophical truths.  For example, Plato's association in the Timaeus between the Platonic solids and the elements of fire, earth, air, and water (and the universe) was of great import in the Renaissance.  This was tied to the mastery of geometry necessary for perspective, and suggested a mathematical foundation for rationalizing artistry and understanding sight, just as renaissance science explored mathematical and visual foundations for understanding the physical world, astronomy, and anatomy.  For other artists, polyhedra simply provide inspiration and a storehouse of forms with various symmetries from which to draw on.  This is especially so in twentieth century sculpture, free of the material and representational constraints of earlier conceptions of sculpture. 

I have hidden numerous Polyhydra within the work, including cubes, hexagons, and star tetrahedrons.

3) String Theory/ Einstein's Unified Field Theory
In my own words, all I want to say is that there are many different ideas out there.  With the current models for Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, there is no law that functions for one as it does the other.  Essentially these two very separate fields of study have no commonalities.  And we continue to follow the rules and laws we have set in place because 99% of the time it works.  Einstein was the one who came up with the philosophy that there exists something that unite these two fields of study.  String theory claims to have solved this age old problem, however there have been multiple "answers," just none accepted by the masses.

This work represents the miniscule- quantum mechanics through mathematics, and the infinitely  large- general relativity through space.  All these elements will mirror each other once you reach a certain degree, such as the harmonic scale starts over when you reach the next octave.

4) Ying Yang/The Torus
Most people have always known that the yinyang symbol stands for balance of opposites.  But around a year ago when I first saw this video and herd research on the Torus, I was a little blown away.  A deep obsession of mine has always been black holes.  The idea behind the Torus is that it moves inward and outward through its core into space and back again.  Perpetual loop (Theme of GEB at the top)  Some believe black holes to work this way, matter and particles being sucked in and spit out again.  At the center of every galaxy (including ours) exists a black hole, and currently we are being spit out.  




As you must have noticed at the exact center of this work is an yinyang symbol, which is also the eye of the gecko.

5)  Soundwaves, Frequencies, and Music
Light and sound exists as waves.  Each has a unique wavelength, or frequency.  Every element in the universe has a frequency.  Cymatics.  Just saying.
Our current harmonic scale was invented by Pythagoras.  One note is different from its parent by half of the string's length.  So by sectioning a piece of sting in half, and a half of a half, and a half of that half, and so on gives you the scale of A B C D E F G, then it repeats an octave.  Perpetual loop.

I have imbedded this as imagery within the sphere.  Along with one of M.C. Eshers's images called "Circle Limit."  How this was achieved:  Take 6 consecutive circles and have them intersect each other just past the larger circles edge.  Take circles that are half their diameter and then place down 12 circles, all intersecting at the larger circles intersection.  Repeat this effect and you will notice that from the absolute center of the main circle outward, all the other circles intersect along a line at a ratios of 2:1.  Our harmonic scale.  This also represent infinity, because if you follow this pattern you will never come to the edge of the main circle. Its in other word expanding at an exponential rate.

 Look up "Mathmagic Land" from 1976.  Once again references back to mathematics, music, and Lewis Carrol
I must be an egghead.

6) Mandalas  

Sanskrit for ‘circle’ or ‘center’, mandalas have been used for thousands of years by indigenous elders and spiritual traditions, as a way of giving form to their prayers and weaving visions into the fabric of reality.  In nature, the ‘circle with a center pattern is the basic structure of all creation and is reflected everywhere we look. The center of a seed, a flower, a piece of fruit. The circling rings of stone dropped into water and the spiraling shape of a tiny seashell, up to the wide circular pattern of storms, celestial currents, the Sun, our solar system – and beyond! Every atom and every cell with its nucleus is a mandala.  In the Americas, Indians have long created medicine wheels and sand mandalas for healing and as a gateway to communion with the Divine.  In Tibet, mandalas have been used throughout the ages as an active form of meditation and integral part of spiritual practice. The creation of sand mandalas can take many hours or days to complete. When finished, monks gather in ceremony and they sweep their mandala away, emptying it into a nearby body of water as a blessing.  From Christian nuns to Aztec shaman, mandalas in various forms have been drawn, carved and created throughout the ages to infuse our visions with energy, to unify groups around an idea and to help ‘Dream Our World into Being’.  Pioneering psychiatrist Carl Jung used mandalas extensively in his own personal growth and as a way of communicating and understanding his clients’ subconscious.  He saw them as a “safe refuge of inner reconciliation and wholeness.” Today mandalas are even being used in European schools and hospitals as a way of calming, centering and enlivening patients and children.  Representing wholeness, mandalas can be seen as a model for the organizational structure of life itself, as a doorway into you are on the artistic path of life, you are surely in the right place to begin.

If you haven't noticed, the whole composition encompasses many elements of classical Tibetan mandalas.  The major one being the square, also known as "gateway of the universe."  The whole image works from the center point outward, and tries to express a form of enlightenment, a higher knowledge that can not be explained, but only experienced. 

7) Geckos 
  To read about the Gecko you can find more at this earlier post.

Dancing Techno Cats

Couldn't find this song on YouTube, so I uploaded it myself with on of my paintings.  The painting came from a photograph of me and my girlfriends dressed up as the Cheshire Cat for Halloween.  We all pitched in to help make the entire costume, including the helmets which were welded and had a special material stretched that allowed us to see out but no one to see in.  Spectacular really, one of my favorites yet.  Might I add, I love my girlfriends.

Photo Credit to Vasho Photography
SHAH Dj's, Vancouver's Drum'n'Bass crew.

Live Painting to Bass

Listen to this:  Ghostek- No Way Out

Place: Subduction, Seattle.

Goal:  Live painting.


This post is far after the event ever happened.  I was asked by a friend to do a collaboration on a painting.  I started it off before passing it to the next player.  This is the documentation of my time warp.  I cant say how long it took me, but I started before the party did.  When I turned around there was and entire warehouse filled with people below me.  Every time I've been back people call me "Artist Lady."

I found this sign sitting below one of my paintings late in the night, thank you to whoever that was :)

This is many hours into the night when my co-lab partner was ready to start working, so I passed it along and went to join the fun.

The next day we were continuing the party somewhere outdoors.  Never really painted, but instead joined the celebration.  Favorite part of the trip.  Making mud balls with an eight year old for hours by the river.

Gecko

Sun is finally shining in the north-west.  Days consist of working in the garden, painting on the weekends, and riding horses in the mountains any time in between.  My posts have been thinned in the last few months, mostly because I have been expelling my creative energy at work.  My life has been on an extraordinary high, and summer hasn't even arrived yet!

But as a personal creative project, I have been working on rejuvenating a painting I haven't touched in more then a year and a half.  It is a large piece, 4'x4'- and an oil painting none-the-less.  (Something I am completely unfamiliar with)  Most of the recent layers are more a matter of covering up what was there, and starting over.  Something which seems to go along perfectly with the concept, however unintentional it was.

When I started the piece, it was paying homage to a picture I drew when I was thirteen.  I didn't realize its full potential until last year when I started reading about physics, quantum mechanics, and general relativity.  Mixed all that in with my love of mathematics, and we have a concoction for something crazy.

Now, normally I don't like showing work that is unfinished, but sometimes it is fun to see the comparison.  Other then the shapes, I am nowhere near complete.  Think of this work as a "sketch."

Getting into the science and mathematics of this work is a long and strenuous conversation that I am going to avoid this late at night.  But what I was mostly interested in documenting is the fact that I am using such an apparent animal as the focus of this work.  It would indeed be the Gecko.  Normally I work with shapes over landscapes, so this has been really new.

I decided I should figure out what the Gecko stands for in mythologies about totem animals and spirits, this is what i came across:

Shows how to be out-going with tact and how to cope and overcome obstacles, he will show how to let go of old outdated perceptions to make room for the new. Gecko can teach how to maneuver in this transition phase of mental, spiritual and emotional death and rebirth. He will show how to emerge successfully in this spectacular change within your Self. When Gecko appears it is also a time to pay attention to dreams and visions for he will show how to shift and molt perspectives. Are you holding too tightly to current perceptions and ideas? Are you balancing your emotion and mind? Gecko can show how there is regeneration in life's endeavors by listening to this inner guidance so one can find balance in this transition time.   (Link)

Most of this information could not have been more relevant.  The majority of the ideas behind this work is all about opposites.  Dark and light, and in the most inner core of that idea is transition and balance.  Even more of a coincidence is that 2012 was all about transition for me, travelling the world for eight months (alone- except for 6 crazy weeks) will do that.  It was almost like I needed to do the journey before I would be mature enough to appreciate the idea.

That's it.  I know most of what I said is rambling nonsense- there are reasons people say not to drunken-Internet.  But this is something I wanted to remember.  That is what I get for having an online diary.

..And if you haven't herd this, you should.  I've listened to it more times then I'd like to admit!

Chap Chap, Cheerio!

Tomorrow I will be making a trade off for one of my favorite paintings.  $2400, which has become my first real sale to someone other then my parents.  Bon voyage old friend, I will miss you.

 

 

 

Colorado Aspens

4'x4' Acrylic on Canvas:

...Sometimes things leave a mark.

I probably could have found a better suited song, but during the trip that this was inspired from- this song became something that I played on repeat for quite some time.

I never saw myself as an emotional artist, but maybe emotion just comes with the territory of growing up. I'm finding it hard to talk about this piece because the backbone is 3 months of personal struggle. As the days grew darker, so did the picture. At one point I became to afraid to do anything else to the picture thinking I would ruin it if I did. Then something happened. I stopped worrying about it. I realized that life isn't so serious, and who cares if I mess it up? Its just a picture.

I've overcome many obstacles this last three months. And this picture is a reflection of all of it. I know some people may think "but its just a landscape?" That's the funny thing about art, it never is just that.

What I've learned is:

Realize there is no point

Laugh at your ego

Live in the moment

Love yourself and others

Do what makes you happy

Thank you again Wesley and Shana for this trip- I had a lot of fun in Aspen driving through the mountains. It left this imprinted in my head, and I was finally able to finish it the way I wanted!

Two-2-to-too-II.....

What can happen in two days. I forget how much progress you can make when you use a bigger brush. Along with having completed the tedious part of the painting, its been nice to get it a little messy. Sometimes I try to make things too perfect, and then I start obsessing. That is not healthy, or practical. Its a new technique for me to be this sloppy, but I'm learning to be okay with it.

P.S. I'm not finished, just am practicing the process of "documentation."

Ciliate

I've been staying up late, painting to Techno. What could be better? I started this image in the beginning of November. I've only now finished what I would consider the 'base-layer.' Its probably going to take me another 2 months to finish (at least), my deadline is March.

Normally I don't like to show my work before it is finished, but this time I'll make an exception. This Canvas is 4' x 4'. Its taking much longer then the last two pictures I did in their style, of course this is 4 times the size. But I'm starting to get more and more excited about it, so thats a good sign.

Honeycomb

I have always loved geometry. Then I learned what sacred geometry was, and became even more fascinated then before. Around the time I was finishing college I became obsessed with hexagons and triangles. And on a good day I could close my eyes and see shapes shifting outward from a center point. These moving images in my head became the inspiration for a lot of work around that time. However, to capture these complex and extremely intricate patterns I saw in my head were more difficult then I could have anticipated.

This Image is a tribute to a vision I had while sitting by the ocean at Mussel Beach on Vancouver Island. The only part I left out was the bright electric blue lines with white edges between all the shapes. It was done in oil, a medium I am still pretty uncomfortable with, but trying to learn nonetheless.

Who knows, it took me about a year of working on it on-and-off to get to this stage. Maybe I'll go back into it when I feel like I know how to do what I want to do to it. For now I'll just hang it in my room.

One fish, two fish...

Red fish, blue fish. Or in my case, white fish, gold fish, the kind with round puffy cheeks.

In my dream I had been followed around by two goldfish, one was pure white, and one was gold, not to be confused with orange. that dream inspired me to create this Image. Although I did not create it this week, it captures the sense of what my weekly posts will represent. A mixture of drawing, photo, and digital manipulation.

So this is the first in the series, and hopefully the start to something fantastic!

Mandala Painting

Figure Paintings from 2009

For me, figure painting is WAY harder then figure drawing! My theory behind that is because you have the ability to close in an area before you start shading it in when working with pencil or charcoal. With Paint, You have all your different colors, and no idea where each of the area separates. Your filling space with a thick brush hoping you don't get paint where it shouldn't be.
These two separate paintings are from different classes I had at Emily Carr. The top one was when I was more ambitious with my color choices, the bottom was made when I was focusing on proper anatomy.

Thanksgiving 2006

During my first year at Collage I had left Vancouver to go to Bellingham and visit the family for Thanksgiving. In Canada and the U.S., this holiday lands in two different months. So when I left for the "American Thanksgiving" the plan was to come back to Canada by Sunday Night. Instead I became stuck in Bellingham until Tuesday because of a random snowstorm. On Saturday when My sister and I took off to hit up Mt. Baker and the Two feet of fresh powder that had just landed, we only made it until lunch before we received a call that our mom's house burned down. No one had been home, and our neighbors said our dogs were okay. The next question in our heads was "Do we finish our day at the Mountain, or should we go back to my sister's place?"

That night we were snowed in at my sister's, and the next day we met up with our mom who had just flown in from Cali. No one had been at the house sense the morning before. From that time until we arrived at the site, two feet of snow had covered the property. At our house we have no immediate neighbors, all our houses are tucked away in trees and cliffs. Our house was still standing, But we had no roof and everything on the inside had disappeared as a pile of ash and snow.

I was stranded in Bellingham for one more night, all transportation to Canada had been cancelled due to the storm. Nothing had really hit me until I made it to my apartment in Vancouver. Then it struck me, my childhood home was gone. To cope with it, I made two remembrance paintings. The first one was driven by the sorrow I felt. I had nothing but matte board to paint on, so I did.

I made this in one sitting, very late at night. Afterwards I felt much better, but it started me thinking about another painting that I had wanted to make for a long time (A year or so) but had never gotten' around to it. The image was a view from our living room, where my mom had a very large circular stain-glass hanging in our window of the Shri Yantra. It hung behind a multitude of jungle-like plants and ferns. So as my second mission, a began to paint my second picture.


I guess you could call this my moment of closure. Of course I still felt a like I had lost something I could not replace, but that would eventually dissipate along with all other objects you ever try holding onto. Yes... I miss my teddies from when I was a child, but you learn that life continues on in moments that continuously become memories. These two images are my best memories of this place.

Taking it a step further...

There are two types of figure drawing to me: Realistic, and exaggerated. I like both for different reasons. When I first started out, I would always try to make my drawings as realistic as possible, because I thought that was what made a 'Good' Figure Drawing. As time went by and I was exposed to more and more work I realized (what some people call) Naive Art can also be attractive to the human eye. Possibilities are endless in this world. In my whole career with Figure classes, I may have created several realistic looking figure paintings. The rest was eventually morphed from a feeling to an image. Ink painting is very difficult, and from them I had to reinvent a new technique for myself. (something other then realistic) The result being an abstracted figure made using both painted and drawn techniques.

Top Image : Acrylic on Paper
Second Image : India Ink using Calligraphy Brush and Bamboo Pen

Mt. Baker Tribute

This is one of the first Large Acrylic paintings I made while at Idyllwild Arts Academy. It is an Ode to Mt.Baker. As any 'Bellinghamer' would know, Baker is more of an obsession then anything else. So while living in California, the hole in my heart needed to be filled, and this is what I stuffed it with. Even though it may look dark and jagged, I feel such a calm peace within the landscape. I would say this is my dreamy memory and longing to return to the place I had called home for so long. I have this painting hanging in my apartment, and I will probably always keep it close by.