AJAS Juried Art Show

Jurists and staff of the American Juried Art Salon congratulate you. Your art that has been accepted into our 2008 Spring/Summer national juried show is 'Mist in the Horizon'.

New work

Check out my new paintings

Mist in the Horizon www.peggyguichu.com/works/186905
Ladder www.peggyguichu.com/works/186902

Paintings sold

I'm happy to announce that I sold 6 oils last week. Red Mountain, Graffiti I & II, Living Earth, Catamaran and Heat. Thank you Gina, owner of Kay-Lochausen Fine Art Gallery in El Paso, TX.

What My Art Means To Me

Creating my paintings is like composing music. I start with a chorus of colors, a stroke of the brush, and let the images tune in as the composition begins. Always trying new color combinations, wanting more than I’m capable of producing visually. Chasing that color spectrum from another world or place I went to, but couldn’t bring back. I want to break the rules and prove I’m right. And when it gets really terrifying to go any further I stop. Now is the time to listen with my eyes. I start turning it from one side to the other. One of the angles will reveal itself. I know there’s a message in there somewhere. I just have to keep turning it, working it and eventually I’ll find it. And when I do find it I fall in love. The love makes me work even more delicately, more meticulously. I’m fearful that I’ll blemish it. When the last brush stroke has been played I will hang it in the most visible place in my house and let it sing to me. I know that selling my work is what I’m supposed to be working towards, but the emotion of letting it go is sometimes overwhelming. I still feel sad when I think of my ‘Egret’ I sold 15 years ago. I miss him. I just sold ‘Red Mountain’ and I seriously feel as if I’ve lost something so precious to me. I cried when I left my watercolors at Jezebel’s Gallery knowing that I would never see them again. Some tell me to just paint another one, but they don’t understand. I will never be able to recreate ‘Red Mountain’ or ‘Searching for the Source’. They hold my secrets and their colors resonate a feeling of love to me. It must have something to do with the exchange of energies. My wish is that those that buy my paintings will have the same connection as I do. See the magic, hear the symphony , allow the light to reveal the secrets of my soul.

Offering Encouragement

That is a very important point. The other point you brought to mind is to be sure that the advise you are giving is thoughtful. In other words, when a friend comes to you and asks, "Should I quit my day job and pursue my art career?" It would be very easy to say yes. It's likely that's the response your friend is looking for or why the question? So you say YES and he/she loses everything from the loss of income. Even a good friend may resent your advise. What I'm trying to say here is be careful with encouragement. We all know how hard it is to make it in the art world. By making it I mean making the rent each month on art sales. No one wants to discourage another artist, either. My husband reminds me constantly that most people don't and aren't prepare for truth. I still believe it is the best way to go. Tell the truth as you see it with your heart completely opened and your love large enough to lose for the risk of offering it.

Here are few words of wisdom from an old broad:

Judge no one
Listen to everyone at every opportunity you're given
Be authentic
Know that there is only love and fear in this world
Choose love

In response to Robert Genn's Reflexive Relaxology in The Painter's Key

One of my previous husbands was married previously to a lady obsessed by her father. She had been working on his portrait for over 10 years. That's a bit of mental disfunction if you ask me. I should have asked her prior to marrying her ex-husband. It could have been transference. Seriously, there's something almost sexual about listening to a southern man drawl his way through a story. I can surely pick out the art of a home born southerner by the languid brush strokes of their paintings. It's just luscious. On the other hand, I'm a fast paced Californian who is always asked to slow down so others can catch up. In the last month I completed 3 very large oils and I have 6 oils in different stages of completeness with 2 watercolors in the wings. My self analyses of that is that I'm going through a period of indecision. I think it's important to begin and complete a piece of work before you start on another. It feels like I've been interrupted before I finished my sentence. Perhaps this is a time of change or growth for me. I could just be stuck. Maybe too much going on in my personal life that distracts my attention. It could just be this time of year. I'm sure I need to slow down and breathe. Sit back and listen to my paintings. Light a candle and fantasize about laying out in a small canoe on a slow moving body of water with the sun seeping deep into my soul. That's where I'll discover my best work. That's where I can finish my sentence. There's a place for speed, but I find that in today's world we don't have to simulate it. Speed pushes us every single minute of every day to hurry up and finish whatever it is we are doing at the time. I crave the slow sensual drawl of a meticulous, thought provoked moment transferred onto canvas for all the world to enjoy. Here's looking at you kid.

In Response to Robert Genn's post on The Painter's Key

Didn't you find it fascinating and shocking how many thoughts ran through your mind at the moment that you realized your painting was stolen? The feeling of not understanding what you aren't seeing, the sadness, then anger and finally followed by the feeling of being violated were probably felt in less than 2 or 3 seconds. Several years ago, I had just moved into a cabin in the woods and had to leave quickly for an emergency surgery. While I was away the water pipes froze and broke completely flooding my garage. I didn't find out until I arrived home 2 weeks later. In the garage were boxes I hadn't moved inside yet filled with my watercolor paintings. All of them stained by the water. I wasn't supposed to do any lifting so a friend of mine came over and cleaned it all up for me. He said all the paintings had been destroyed and he had thrown them away. Several months later I visited him and there, tucked behind a piece of furniture in the corner of his living room was a pile of my paintings. When I asked what possessed him to take my paintings his response was that he didn't think I would care because they were damaged and if I ever became famous he would have something valuable. I took my damaged paintings back home, made a big bonfire fire behind my cabin and slowly burned them. Needless to say, the friendship didn't recover from the fire, either. If he had asked me, I would have given him the paintings, but he violated me in a very profound way.

Play the Game

In the 'Legend of Bagger Vance', Bagger says the game can't be won, the game is only to be played. Those words took me inside myself so deeply that everything stopped. What a concept. I'd never considered not working for the win. But if you take the win out of the game all that's left is the pure joy of playing. I'm a very competitive person so the concept is difficult for me, but I truly believe it's necessary in order to focus on the art and not the sale. I use that phrase as an affirmation to remind myself that I still have a game to play. A game that I can get better at and a game that never ends until I do. The other phrase that comes to mind in times of questioning is, "There is only love and fear." Like most I tend to notice and react to the fear more than I recognize the love, but I'm working on it. This is the year I have committed to moving forward in my art career. I understand now that I can't win the game, but I can give it everything I've got. Dealing with the only options that I have of love or fear breaks it down to a simplier, more compact playing field. It's just nice to know there are so many other deserving participants out there playing the game with me.