A Call For Collaboration

My mom and I (I'm guessing that many of these blog posts will start with those four words; My mom and I,) stumbled across a recent Call to Artists asking for collaborative efforts.  It sparked an idea.

We seek each others advice and critique each others work regularly.  There have been times it was all I could do to stop myself from taking my painting over and plopping it down on her easel and saying, "You make it sound easy enough, YOU DO IT!"  There have been other times I have had to resist the urge to take the brush out of my mom's hand, wipe it off, get the right color on it, and put the line where it belongs.  Of course, one simply can not do such things.
Or can one?

One obstacle I have battled seemingly forever, is a certain attachment to the idea of an outcome.  Lately I have been much more focused on the actual process of painting, and I have been enjoying it fantastically.  Control issues still lurk around every corner however, and I have to work to avoid making eye contact with them.  One little glance up and some rakish control issue will be offering me a swig from his flask and whispering emboldening flattery into my ear.
Ah, but what if I look Control square in the eye and kick that flask right out of his hand? What if I start a painting knowing that whatever I do might be undone, or redone, or turned upside down by someone else (namely my mother)?

So that was what we decided to do.  We'd each start a painting, paint until either we feel we reach a stopping point, or until the other feels an overwhelming urge to take the brush, and then we'd trade.  We'd paint, and then we'd trade again, back and forth, until we both feel the piece is finished. It's an exercise in letting go.  It's an exercise in co-operation.

To start, we each chose a photo of the other, we talked over a sort of style goal, if you can call it that; simple, colors and shapes, not portraits.  Then we started sketching.  Below are photos of just about where we left off before trading.

At last she has me...

...right where she has wanted me all along.

For as long as I can remember my mother, Sherry "Cas" Casper, has encouraged me to paint. I've always enjoyed artistic endeavors; drawing, pencil, ink, even using charcoal and pastels, and especially photography, but paint has consistently thrown me. Perhaps it is because I
was never able to not compare my work to my mother's, or maybe it was
because I was unable to force the paint to bend to my will.  But recently, somehow, something has shifted.

Recently, I have become an addict.  I can't get enough of painting.  Somewhere along the way, I stopped focusing on the outcome and started really enjoying the process.

My mother has always offered me an easel in her studio, but over the last six months or so, the easel has turned into an easel and a large table, a shelf for my canvases and a cupboard, some drawers, wall space, etc. My mother finally has me right where she has been wanting me all of these years, painting with her in her studio, or as my mom decreed it this Winter, OUR studio.