contemporary collage paintings
the process
Leslie Avon Miller

My life flows when I'm in my art.


Jean De Muzio

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Out with Lanterns

Lanterns, collage on paper 6x6 , Leslie Avon Miller

Perhaps being lost, one should get loster.
~Saul Bellow



Loster in the studio; that’s where I am. And it’s no so bad. I have no idea what I am doing and I don’t know where I am going. I only know I am continuing in a state of curiosity. I try many things and make decisions about what to keep and what to discard. 

I create papers with color and textures which will later be turned into some shapes for collage. I make marks and I follow new pathways.

I have been through most the drawers and other places I have stored papers, collage, and paintings on paper looking at my own artistic history. I am grateful that I have kept some of my earlier works. It seems to me that the ones I have kept are sensitive and perhaps not so easily understood. But to me, they have a beautiful mystery, a certain aesthetic. And I find there is a thread from them to what I am doing now. 



                               
          And I am out with lanterns, looking for myself. 
                                                      ~Emily Dickinson
 
 
My sensibility shows up like my fairy godmother even if I am unaware. Examples can be found by following the link to my tumblr blog in the side bar.

Some fellow named Sir Herbert Reed said that art is pattern informed by sensibility.

As I commence this next phase of my life, likely the final third, I have decided to do so with increased awareness and gratitude in general and with specific appreciation for my own sense of discernment. I feel a tenderness. I am opening. I am opening and turning towards the light. 






Late Ripeness



Not soon, as late as the approach
 of my ninetieth year,
 I felt a door opening in me
 and I entered
 the clarity of early morning.





One after another my former
 lives were departing,
 like ships, together with
 their sorrow.





And the countries, cities, gardens,
 the bays of seas
 assigned to my brush came closer,
 ready now to be described better
 than they were before.



~ Czeslaw Milosz,