Mother 2 - A Life of Quiet Desperation

Mother 2
© Natalie Schorr 2023

I know this look. I have lived these moments of “quiet desperation,” home alone with two small children and no help or support in sight. I can connect with her plight.

The good news is that it wasn’t forever. I cherish the exhaustion of those days despite the long loneliness. I cherish the time I had with my children. And I cherish the time with them now that they are grown.

I didn’t really see that when I was in the midst of it, but it’s very apparent to me now.

I’m really really grateful.

Exquisite Corpse 4 - Her Novaturient Outlook

Exquisite Corpse 4 - Her Novaturient Outlook
© Natalie Schorr 2023

I took a hard look at the three previous Exquisite Corpse pieces, and realized they were all kind of dark, so I thought I’d do a piece that was a little brighter, which brings us to Exquisite Corpse 4.

I’ve been looking for beautiful words, adjectives really, to coincide with these pieces. Novaturient is such a word. Various sources cite it as meaning “desiring or seeking a powerful change in their life, behavior or a certain situation,” and “a compelling desire, a deep and energetic call to arms in the name of personal change.” It’s so obscure that even spell check has a hard time accepting it. Wonder what AI will think? Will we find it in a student’s essay sometime soon?

However, novaturient is the right word for this piece. Exquisite Corpse 4 - Her novaturient outlook extravagantly manifested the perfect day. Big pink wallpaper flowers, swans floating aimlessly on turquoise waters under delightfully pink skies. Clad only in a feather skirt and some bright, lime green floral shoes, she looks like she’s manifesting with every fiber of her being.

I really hope that works out for her.

Exquisite Corpse 3 - The Geometric Patterns

Exquisite Corpse 3 - The Geometric Patterns
© Natalie Schorr 2023

If you have spent more than 10 seconds looking through my work, you will probably have seen dots. Lots and lots of dots. Dots make me feel safe, and if I could explain that I would but I can’t. It’s a personal issue, maybe from a past life. So it made a lot of sense to me when Walter Tevis from The Queen’s Gambit says:

“It's an entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it; I can dominate it. And it's predictable. So, if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame.”

To be honest, this piece makes me uncomfortable. Yes, there are dominos with lots of dots, There’s a grid pattern with squares and dots. And the body is surrounded by dots, so I really ought to like it. But there’s just something about the butterfly wing ears and the cowrie shell mouth that weird me out and I don’t know why. Feels like it ought to have fangs.

I think there’s value to stepping out of your comfort zone a bit every so often, but people really seem to respond to this piece, so maybe I’m on to something. Or maybe I just need a good night’s sleep.

Exquisite Corpse 2 - The Seething Medusa

Exquisite Corpse 2 - The Seething Medusa
© Natalie Schorr 2023

I actually think this is a pretty amusing piece. What woman has not felt this way at some time in her life? Medusas are great images to work with, and who doesn’t love a head full of snakes.

I have it in mind to make some pieces to enter in this show, and they all need to be 12”x121”, so I trotted down to Jerry’s and bought some more cradled wood panels and got to work.

I thought I would break down the components of this piece. Down the left hand side is a very old vintage wallpaper in dark green with a pseudo-woven pattern. I can only imagine how dark a room would be covered in that.

The head is a linocut of Mona Lisa, which is also the basis of the head on Exquisite Corpse 1, and will likely be a recurring feature of this series. The snakes are also linocuts that were further embellished with colored pencil.

The sky on the right behind the city is actually the surface of Mars which I toned down quite a bit with marker and pen. It was from a book on, of all things, Mars.

The city was an art piece I found in a book about the Machine Age in America which has many cool pictures and photos.

The delightful cowboy boots are from a book on shoes. Don’t ask me which one, I have destroyed many shoe books in the past few years.

The torso is from a 1970s era Playboy. Playboys are cheap and easy to find and they have a ton of great pictures and mod typography from the time. Don’t look at them under black lights. though.

The eyes and mouth are from some fairly modern ad, and I kind of love the attitude they convey. This piece took a really long time to find and assemble all the parts, but I’m pleased with the result.

Exquisite Corpse 1 - The Numinous Twilight

Exquisite Corpse 1 - The Numinous Twilight
© Natalie Schorr 2023

I was reading recently about the surrealists because it was a little slow at work one day and I came across the game of Exquisite Corpse. It’s pretty simple, really. You take a piece of paper and fold it into thirds, then one person draws a head, folds it over so it’s obscured, and hands it off to the next person who does a body and then the next person who does legs and feet. Easy.

The second version uses parts of speech to do something similar: The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun.

I decided I would do some pieces along those same lines that would play on those ideas. Here’s my first try.

It was kind of fun to put together random parts and textures, and the square format was also challenging, but it did render some cool textural moments.

The piece is much smaller than my regular pieces, which are mostly 18”x24”, while this is only 12”x12”. I decided on the size based on a prompt for a show I want to enter which requires all the art to be 12x12. It’s a different way of thinking which s always good.

Exquisite Corpse 1 - The numinous twilight gently revealed the tragedies of yesterday. The piece has linocut, printed ephemera from books and magazines, vintage wallpapers, colored pencil. paint pens, and acrylic paints.

I think I’ll do another.

Mixed Breed 6 - Moving in a New Direction

I feel like it’s time to push this series a little further beyond just racial and gender identities, which is where we get Mixed Breed 6 with its wet dog head.

That’s one of the valuable things - for me at least - about working through a series. It allows me to start with an idea and push it to see where it will go.

The figure is less human in this one, and the accompanying animal form is partially made from a marshmallow Peep chick. This piece also features several linocut prints like the previous mixed breed.

Let’s break down the parts. The head started with a linocut of Frida Kahlo’s head, over which I put a photo of a wet dog’s head from a book that is all photos of wet dogs. I can’t quite imagine pitching that to a publisher, but OK.

The sunglasses came from a hip hop magazine, and the slacks along with the eye and mouth of the pet are from an early 1970s Playboy. The only time I’ve ever used a Xerox in a collage is here with the marshmallow Peep. There is typography from many sources along with colored pencil and acrylic dots.

And yellow. A challenging color bridge between the scary reds and the calming greens. Go figure.

The Necessity of Dreams

The Necessity of Dreams
© Natalie Schorr 2023

I happen to love my dreamtime. Not just the nighttime ones, but the ones during the day when I let my thoughts wander.

Making art for me is very much a dreamtime. Not much is planned, so stuff just sort of happens. It might begin with a trip to a used book store, as they are often the source of both inspiration and working materials. Or it might be that I have a vague notion of something that I’d like to look at, and then one thing leads to another.

This piece started with stuff that was hanging around the studio. I connected pinks and blues and browns, patterns and textures without a real plan or even an idea of a title. Tried some different elements, and am pretty pleased with the results.

Mixed Breed 5 - Collage in Black and White

Mixed Breed 5
© Natalie Schorr 2023

Following the discomfort of my previous Mixed Breed piece, I decided to step back a bit and work in some very minimal colors.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. It just sort of happened that way but I decided not to add anything bright.

I used to draw 12 hours a day, 6 days a week when I was working in motion pictures and television. Granted, it was drafting, but that’s back when we still did everything with pencils on paper. A very different time. But I still connect on an emotional level with the feeling of black and white with the occasional coffee ring. This piece evokes that time for me.

Also, this piece uses a lot of linocut elements, much more than I have used in a single piece for awhile. There’s a level of comfort in that, too.

Mixed Breed 4 - Uncomfortable Colors

For whatever reason, this piece is out of my comfort zone. I love the circles and dots, but all the bright colors kind of make me uneasy.

Mixed Breed 4
© Natalie Schorr 2023

I am interested in why I create pieces that I am ultimately uneasy with. Is it that the piece didn’t turn out as planned? That can’t be it since I’m not much of a planner. I have a vague idea where I’m going, but not exactly a plan and I more often than not I end up somewhere else in the process.

Since I love circles and dots, it would seem like I’d love this one, but no. I think it has to do with the colors.

I freely admit to being drawn to blues and greens; that’s my comfort zone. Reds and oranges are OK in small amounts, but I have trouble being in a red room for very long as it makes me really uneasy.

This piece has lots of reds and oranges, so much so that I ended up toning down the aura with a variety of purples, which made me feel somewhat less uncomfortable. I think it’s good to venture out from my comfort zone and explore, as it allows me to grow in certain ways. I’ll try not to run back to the safety of blues and greens too quickly.

Mixed Breed 3 - Multiple Identities

Mixed Breed 3
© Natalie Schorr 2023

I’m kind of fond of this piece, maybe because it feels like all the different identities come together in a really cohesive way even as the body seems to be a tumbling cascade of blocks and flowers.

The head, blocks, flowers, and one of the hands is from a library of linocuts I have made over the years that I use again and again. It makes the pieces feel related even though each part is an individual print and inherently unique.

Sort of like all of us.

Her aura is blue. I don’t consciously see auras, but I do use them in a great deal of my work so the possibility exists that I’m aware of them on an unconscious level. They seem to be expanding in my recent work, whereas they were very slight and color shifting in my earlier pieces, so maybe there’s something there.

Or not. Hard to say.

In any case, she seems confident and at peace with her many identities, as we all should be.