News: Adios, Facebook!

Dear friends, fans, collectors and fellow artists…

c. Susan Sorrell Hill

In favor of spending a lot more quality time in the studio, I’ve decided to close down my Facebook page and several other Social Media sites at the end of this month. This WordPress blog will change a bit too—and for the better! You’ll see more posts about works-in-progress, and about the inspirations and musings behind the paintings. I’ll also be letting readers know when there’s new work for sale in the Etsy shop.

If you’d like to stay abreast of any of those happenings, I invite you to follow along via the RSS feed button (in the right sidebar) to receive blog post updates in your email box.

To all of you who have visited me here and on Facebook (and especially to my current blog and Facebook followers), I thank you for your many comments and generous encouragement over the last several years. I look forward to more years of making, sharing and talking about creativity and Life with you!

In the meantime, I’d like to put this little quote out there as food for thought, relative to Marketing and the Social Media frenzy:

If you sit in the Silence, wherever it is your own will come to you. Sit right down in the middle of the woods and let them beat a pathway to your door, for what God sees in secret is rewarded openly. The state of consciousness that you are is made manifest.             Joel S. Goldsmith

“Untitled”  from my unpublished children’s book, “The Emperor’s Pear Tree”   (watercolor, gouache, pen & ink)

News: new name for the Aunt Soup shop

Could it be turning 60, or maybe it’s Spring Fever…?

I’ve just re-christened my Aunt Soup Etsy shop–it will now be known as the Susan Sorrell Hill shop: same exquisite original watercolors and works on paper. All your bookmarks will still work. (There’s a link in the WordPress sidebar here.) Thanks for dropping by!

Illustration Friday: storm

c. Susan Sorrell Hill

The Illustration Friday word of the week is storm.

That tempest in the heart, that storm in the head…have you ever felt it? It’s an agony of indecision, a quandary of impossible choices: should I paint this way or that way, choose this one or that one, spend it here or there, move now or later, do this or that? It’s a pain that starts slow, like a migraine twinge, and builds to a frenzy. Any decision in question seems so very consequential, almost life-threatening.

These words look so calm, so benign here on my screen, like amusing ‘postcards from the edge.’ But the experience is a miserable one, and it always shakes my confidence to the core. It’s an experience that illustrates in living (black and blue?) color that expression, “Down here without a map.” Lost, lost, dreadfully lost. And time is going by! If you’ve been to this particular dreary destination yourself, you know what I’m talking about.

Fortunately, like any storm in Nature, this furious energy eventually reaches its apex and begins to dissipate. Like Dorothy and her tornado in The Wizard of Oz, I am deposited on solid ground once more. The still, small voice is again accessible, and a path, however faint, reappears before my weary feet. I have noticed that Surrender can look a lot like exhaustion.

Next time, I promise myself to remember sooner: Sometimes I just don’t know…can’t know in advance. Realizing that calms the storm.

Above: Storm   (watercolor, pen & ink, gouache, colored pencil)

Right: Of Two Minds   (watercolor, pen & ink)

c. Susan Sorrell Hill

Illustration Friday: wheel

c. Susan Sorrell Hill

The Illustration Friday word of the week is wheel.

Have I mentioned here that in my twenty- and thirty-somethings, I worked as a Graphic Artist? I designed logos, posters, beautiful wedding announcements and stationary with fancy, illustrated borders. I made art for greeting cards, cartoons, product labels, signs, T-shirts, and generally anything that had art and lettering on it. In those days, the work of fine artist, illustrator and commercial artist were all mushed together, and computers had not yet arrived to complicate the scene. Graphic Artists wore all the hats.

With the advent of the computer, a whole new set of skills was suddenly required, and finding myself unwilling to learn them, I traded my Graphic Artist hat for making “art for the wall.” I never (well, almost never) looked back.

I like being a painter (as opposed to a Commercial Artist): I am more temperamentally suited to Inner Direction than Art Direction, and I work more creatively at my own pace. But having discovered Arthur Rackham, Trina Schart Hyman and Lisbeth Zwerger in my graphic days, I also adore illustrated books. Alas, the world of publishing has changed just as dramatically with the advent of the computer and digitally rendered art. It is indeed a brave new world. I’m still trying to find a way into that world without sacrificing my own sense of what I should be creating, and without retiring my paints and papers. Perhaps I should be “beating my own drum” in this rather public blog, but the truth is, I don’t have a clue where my work fits these days…

This year will mark my sixtieth birthday, and I am noticing in more and more places the ancient message: Life is a circle, Life is a wheel which turns and returns. This is the philosophy, in fact a spiritual belief, that all things arise and pass away–and inevitably will return again. I am encouraged that what has been “out of fashion” will inevitably return as the highly-touted Vintage and Retro, that Made By Hand, Beauty, Meaning, and Figurative Realism will all make resounding comebacks, that although old people will pass away in their time, new babies will be born, that wars will begin and peace will be found once more…that night will come and that the sun will rise in the morning. I am encouraged to believe that Art made with an old-fashioned brush and paper will once again be highly valued and find a wider audience (even if it takes longer, costs more, and I don’t know how to scan it or tweak it in Photoshop). I’m waiting, somewhat impatiently I admit. In the meantime, I’m painting.

 

Herb Shop logo, circa 1982      (pen & ink and Press-Type)      Remember those rub-on sheets? For a stroll back through memory lane, or an “Oh my God, I can’t believe people actually used that stuff” experience, visit this excellent post by Steven Heller.

Illustration Friday: wings

c. Susan Sorrell Hill

The Illustration Friday word of the week is wings.

You may have noticed that wings show up in a lot of my paintings: on birds, on angels and on creatures transforming. It’s true, I have a thing about them: their beauty, delicacy and complexity, their mysterious capacity for flight so foreign to my earth-bound existence.

But really (and it took me a while to realize this) I use wings to represent that Something which I hope is watching out for each of us somewhere, somehow behind the scenes…something larger that guides, cares and has a Plan. I suppose painting wings is my little way of casting a positive vote in answer to that far-reaching and ancient question which Einstein was referring to when he wrote,

“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”

What’s your belief, deep down…?

More wings: website and Etsy shop.

 

“First Flight”   (watercolor, pen & ink)   **See it in my Etsy shop here.

Illustration Friday: ocean

c. Susan Sorrell Hill

The Illustration Friday word of the week is ocean.

Twelve years ago, I took a long break from making literal, well-planned images and experimented with abstract painting. I fully indulged my love of color, layering and texture, and put aside for a while the need to make something identifiable. To say that it was freeing would be putting it mildly, but it was nerve-wracking as well. It was surprisingly uncomfortable to answer the usual conversational question, “What do you paint…?” I had not realized until then how important it was to me to know what I was painting and where I fit as an artist.

I thought about my discomfort, but continued to paint abstracts. I realized that I had grown tired of making ‘serious’ and meaningful art that could be explained and talked about at length, and that I did not enjoy having to ‘usher people into the experience,’ as one of my gallery-owner friends likes to put it. I was now looking for a way to make imagery that people would respond to on a visceral level, images that would inspire a viewer to make up her own story.

After a few years, imagery crept back in. (This painting is one of those.) I discovered that I still enjoyed making recognizable images, but was now also searching for a way to leave the Mystery in a representational painting…and a way to still leave lots of room for a viewer to respond in her own way.

This deep, mysterious ocean of Creativity…I suspect it will be a life-long journey of discovering how to let that move through my pencil and brush, unfettered by mental idea of how it should look. “Getting out of the way” is how it feels. Perhaps it is the right balance of “surrender and grabbing hold” as Matthew Wood  (Seven Herbs: Plants As Teachers) puts it. I’m reaching for an even deeper way to start with an idea or story, but allow the imagery to come to life in its own way…an intuitive approach to creating. But it’s also my way of combining art and spirituality, exploring the mystery of everything that is, in fact, spirit and matter.

I’ve found some very helpful books that talk about this delicate, passionate process of dancing with creativity, as well as what gets in the way of that. Maybe you’ll find some inspiration and food for contemplation here too…

Life, Paint and Passion: Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneous Expression by Michele Cassou and Stewart Cubley, Trust the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go by Shaun McNiff,  Fearless Creating: A Step-By-Step Guide to Starting and Completing Your Work of Art by Eric Maisel, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg (written for writers, but every bit as applicable to creativity in other mediums), Break Writer’s Block Now! (also very helpful to artists) by Richard Munster, Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland, The War of Art: Break Through the Block and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron and Point Zero: Creativity Without Limits by Michele Cassou

“Ocean”   (oil on canvas)

Aunt Soup’s new About Page in the Etsy shop

I work mostly from imagination, but sometimes a bit of reference helps a lot!
Shown here: the initial drawing on tracing paper for the watercolor painting, “The Girl With Silver Hands” c. Susan Sorrell Hill

Have you visited my Etsy shop, Aunt Soup, lately, and found the new About page? If not, you’re in for a treat! There you’ll find a mini-feature of the inspirations and studio practices that go into my work, along with some photos and tasty tidbits about what makes this particular artist tell stories with pencil, paintbrush and paper…

Thanks so much for stopping by!