Escape artist | “Summer Waltz” by NG Swett | acrylic painting (& video)

“Summer Waltz” by NG Swett 2024 | 14x11” acrylic on canvas board

I herein reveal…

• what made me want to paint this scene

• what I was trying to express

• how I think it came out

• how I made the video (below)

• and more

Heat wave! It’s been so hot.

As much as one wants to go outside and enjoy the summer, IF it’s cooler inside, then one would like to stay inside.

By looking out the window at the beautiful summer day, one can feel FOMO — the fear of missing out. Summer is here, but it won’t be forever. Summer is the season to recreate, enjoy life, and take it easy. If not now, when??

What made me want to paint this scene

I spotted this lovely scene out the window and I thought I would set up my paints as if I were outside painting, only I would do it inside where it was cooler.

I saw a chance to play around with the indoor and outdoor scenes and have some fun with paints — and my smartphone!

The scene outside the window was so summery, breezy and lovely.

And the scene inside the window was also lovely. A bouquet of flowers that our daughter brought sat on the dining room table near the window. The striped curtains fall around the scene like theater curtains.

But there was also something not so lovely: the feeling of not really wanting to go out into the extreme summer heat, feeling a captive inside the house because of that. Of separation from nature. Of watching and waiting. The emptiness of the lounge chairs on the lawn and the chair at the table…

What I was trying to express

The process of painting the two scenes together in one painting — one a kind of outdoor plein air scene and another as a kind of indoor still life — showed me a few things:

• initially I felt fear and trepidation, which is visible in the video — doubt that I could make a good painting or a good video

• the sense of aliveness in the natural world I try to capture using a dabbed impressionist treatment

• gratitude and appreciation for a longtime home, a place near and dear to my heart and where my family lives, albeit a more staged and less changing indoor setting

• longing, yearning and meaning of empty chairs but also of possibilities

• challenged — demarking the window screen as the focal point, the exact place where indoor and outdoor meet; it picks up sunshine along its thin silvery grid lines

• defiance! The curtains lent themselves to a modernist, expressionist treatment — very satisfying! Like, I could make these curtains more exact or prettier, but I just did ‘em how I felt like doing them

• the lovely flowers, though challenging in their detail, came through best for me using some abstraction

How I think it came out

I mean, I like how the painting and the video came out. Works for me! I always think it’s a miracle when my painting ends up looking like anything at all, let alone forming a complete picture.

I really had fun with the digital and video tools, too.

Here is the video:

How I made the video

Here are some notes about how I made the video:

• I videotaped with my smartphone and a tripod

• I edited the video in Canva

• the waltz soundtracks are all from YouTube’s free audio library (for YouTube use only)

• the scenes of me inside the painting are done with the image of the painting overlaid with a video of me with the background removed

“More Babies!” — video with short rhyming poem, artwork

by New York poet NG Swett

Just a quick video post today, including a couple of extra pieces of material:

• notes about the substance of the poem

• when and how I wrote it

• creating and posting the video

The substance of the poem

The billionaires, plutocrats, oligarchs — some are calling for more babies.

Women should have more babies, some say. Women shouldn’t be able to end a pregnancy under any circumstances, some say. Life is too… precious!

Over a lifetime, families can easily shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars per person for taxes, health care, child care, education, shelter, food, transportation, weddings, and finally assisted living. The willingness to pay is only limited by our means. The value of a statistical life was estimated at $7.5 million in 2020 according to FEMA. Oh how the shareholders must drool at a number like that!

Other happy civilized countries don’t have things set up this way. Every heartstring we have is tapped for all it’s worth. Every fear stoked for our last dime.

There’s pushback on social media to this idea of women as livestock, especially among women. But the good news for the owner class is that they can mute ‘em with algorithms. (Studies show that social media is terrible for women’s mental health, especially secular liberals.)

Scientists proved that the human race is stripping the planet of resources, causing mass extinction, and polluting it to the brink of extinction. So do we really need more people? Or should we get our house in order first?

Writing the poem

So this all tickled my funny bone a little, so I jotted down this little rhyming poem, “More Babies!” just this week in a big black journal that I’ve been using lately for sketching and writing.

To illustrate the poem, I pulled up a painting I did some time ago of a made-up plutocrat, “One.” It’s from a series of a couple dozen mini acrylic paintings I made as art therapy to get me through writing and editing my first novel — a very, very challenging project! The paintings are all illustrations from scenes of the novel.

In the painting, One lounges god-like across a royal-looking chair in front of a glass window at night. You can see a bridge lit up behind him. The rug under his shiny black boots is a rough map of the Outer Lands Archipelago.

Making the videos

With the poem, the painting, and some branding basics for 4seasonshelf, I then made a short video in two formats, wide and vertical mobile. I added two audio tracks, one with the sound of a typewriter and another with the sound of an eerie lullaby…

I’m placing the wide format video here on 4seasonshelf.com first.

Then they will go on the billionaires’ platforms…