Stream of Consciousness

And this is the stream of consciousness!

Little Pond of Dreams

This might be the pond where I threw my keys, from which I caught three fishes.

Pixel With Colors

Pixel swims into so many of my pictures.  Here he is all colored with crayon.  He usually lives and swims in this painting.  “Il faut refaire la meme chose, dix fois, cents fois ….” Degas said.  I took it very much to heart.  I’ve lost count how many times I’ve drawn Pixel.  (“You must redraw the same thing, ten times, a hundred times….”)

[Top of the post:  Pixel with Colors, by Aletha Kuschan, pencil and crayon]

This is not Alice

This is just an ordinary cat, attracted here perhaps because of all the fish.  The fish had better watch out!

[Top of the post:  Drawing of a Cat, by Aletha Kuschan, pencil]

Dream of Three Fish

I had a dream of three fish once.  I had driven a long way on the highway to a large building with a tall wall with no windows.  It was beside a pond.  And I got out of my car and unaccountably threw my keys into the pond!

Realizing I wouldn’t be able to drive my car further, I rushed to the water’s edge to fish out my keys.  I threw in a line and pulled out three bright fish that looked at me with their eyes.

[Top of the post: Drawing of Three Fish, by Aletha Kuschan, ballpoint pen]

Leaping Fish

This fish is all line and light, blue and white with a grid to keep him from leaping off the page and out of sight.  He looks at you.  The world is mostly water, you know.
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[Top of the post:  Pen drawing of a Fish, by Aletha Kuschan, ballpoint pen]

I am in full fish-mode

A very pencil-y fish here, where lines wiggle like waves of motion in the stream of ideas.  This one has lovely dots, too.  When my daughter was a baby and got her first lessons in art, they consisted of me dotting a paper over which she crawled, which I did while saying, “dot, dot, dot, dot” as I watched her laugh and squeal with delight.

[Top of the post:  Drawing of a Fish I named Pixel, by Aletha Kuschan, pencil]

Alice Drew a Maze

Alice the Cat drew a maze (on her favorite tool, the Magic Doodle), and it amazed everyone who looked at it. 

You start at the bottom right and finish at the upper left.  (I think you’re supposed to print it out and color it too — if you choose — if it pleases you — Alice would be pleased!)

How is it that when we are amazed we get momentarily lost?  But then we find what we were looking for too, after thoughts wandered.  It is magic!

[Top of the post:  Alice's Maze, by Alice the Cat, Magic Doodle]

Collage as “Environment” and Ideas

To make this photo, I took two collages and set them at 90 degree angles, one lying flat on the floor, the other propped on the wall, and I photographed them from the center.  The result is the dimensional blending of the two. 

The wonderful thing for artists living today is that modern technology offers up so many new avenues for getting ideas.  I take things like this and paint them.  I still pursue my thought in direct and traditional tools, but I use the new gadgets to produce ideas.

When I look at something like this, it’s like trying to enter a dream.  This is my way of looking for the doorway that opens onto thought.

[Top of the post:  Two collages photographed together, by Aletha Kuschan]

Collage of apples, close up

Here’s another shot of the “Heirloom Apples” collage, a detail of two apples first posted June 22.  This kind of collage is similar in character to what Henri Matisse made in the latter part of his career.  The paper is painted with tempera and then cut into shapes.  Streaks from the application of the paint show in the cuttings and become accidental elements of the work, giving it additional texture and interest.

This is like drawing with scissors.

[Top of the post:  Detail of a Study of Apples, by Aletha Kuschan, collage]