Art By Tali Landsman

Yesterday was Australia Day. Skiers from the land of OZ skied with the Australian flag wrapped around their heads or necks like a cape. It was a fun skiing day in Vail. In the studio I am making great progress working with my black board paintings. Many times I have to lay the canvas on the floor in order to get a better ink flow. It has been a lot of fun to work in black and white for awhile. It gives my vision some rest from the bright colors I usually use in my art. Above are some of the paintings I have completed in the last few days. I bought some books about model ships and old automobiles that I started to use for my drawings and doodling .

You cannot call yourself a serious artist if you do not spend regular time in the studio! It is not your education, nor your success rate that makes you a serious artist. Not even the quality of your art /craft/ writing - those are arguably fabulous or mediocre, depending on who you ask. A woman I know, introduces herself as an artist, but the last time she painted was almost twenty years ago. My New Year resolution is to spend as much time in the studio as I can. Life has its rhythms and for everything there is a season. A time to accumulate experiences (for me it is through traveling) and a time to express them (in the form of art in the studio). Even though I always carry with me a small pocket size sketchbook, a charcoal pencil and a pencil sharpener, it is not the same as being in the studio and working with my medium. Today I spent the whole day in the studio and beside preparing and priming some canvases, I managed to finish another painting and to start a new one. I will post ...

Today I headed to the studio to paint. I tried to quiet the emotions that brings on discontent in me. Anything can trigger this discontent. Be it the political environment that seems to go in the wrong direction, or my own inner critic, at any event it is best to work through it and see what comes out in the form of art. I have finished the blackboard painting I was working on and primed two more canvases for my next paintings.

"Much of the beauty that arises in art, comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium" - Henri Matisse. Maybe this is why I lately feel such a sense of struggle in front of the canvas. I am definitely working with a limited medium. Nothing more than a black canvas, some chalk, white ink and white oil sticks. If much beauty will come out of it- I will be delighted.

I am adding two images of the blackboard painting that I have started last week. It is still in a very early stage and it will change many times before I will call it done but this is a first glimpse. Jules and I put ourselves on a "Buddhist Diet". In this discipline, we do not eat anything after lunch. We eat a breakfast and a lunch and sometimes a snack also, but nothing at all for dinner beside some herbal or green tea. It fits well with our belief that it is important to discipline the mind and body. Anyone that have tried to meditate knows that the mind seems to have a "monkey nature". It keeps on jumping from thought to thought. But it can be disciplined to be quiet with effort. So does the body. If we do not jump to satisfy the body's whims, we teach it to work with us instead of giving it permission to have a "life of its own". We are on day ten of this diet and it seems to be working very well for us.

I am packing art every day. My studio is filled with big boxes and it will be nice to have my space empty again after I have shipped all the paintings. It is actually quite a lot of work to be packing art every day, but I am almost done. Jules and I are in the midst of a discipline buddhist diet in which we do not eat dinner. We eat breakfast and lunch, but the last food we eat is at 3pm. We decided to do it for two weeks. At first we had some rough evenings, feeling sorry for ourselves and deprived. But now we hardly miss dinner and we are only on day seven.

I started a new painting in the past few days. I've applied a few layers of black gesso to the already triple primed canvas. Then I started drawing and doodling with white ink and chalk. To make the painting last longer, I experimented and found a permanent white marker that is creamy and is applied and looks just like chalk. It has the added benefit of being permanent, it does not smear or rub off. In fact it is very lasting, but it looks just like white chalk does on the canvas.

Just before the New Year weekend, I got a large delivery of cardboard boxes to pack and ship oil paintings of a commission work that I have completed this summer. They are finally dry and ready to make their way to their new home. I plan to spend the coming week preparing them to be hang, wrapping and packing them. I also framed, packed and shipped two paintings to another collector who loved them. He hang them on his office walls, photographed them and email me the image straight from his iPhone. I love seeing how my art looks on people's walls and homes. Meanwhile we are spending our time, or as much of it as we can skiing. It is so nice to be outdoors and active, surrounded by beautiful snowy mountains. The ski runs are wide and since it is early in the season, it is not yet packed with visitors. We were invited to a lovely New Year party and got to know more of our neighbors.