Confluence

Confluence 1 © Cherry Jeffs2013
Pencil on Paper 29.7 x 21cm

It seemed to have been written with me in mind.

This advice on 'Integrating your different threads' from Eric Maisel so exactly mirrors my current thinking about bringing the different strands of my artwork together.
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Maybe you make two sorts of art...It may pay you to...see if the two styles can be integrated into some third style that allows the best of both current styles to come together. Whatever you discover from that investigation—whether it’s to move forward in a new way or recommit to your current methods—you will have helped yourself better understand your artistic intentions.
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Eric Maisel

(I also explored this in an earlier post.)
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In case this wasn't sufficient encouragement, the heavens decide to give me another hint. During our summer escape, I found this piece in the collection of the Fundación de Rafael Alberti in El Puerto de Santa María, in the Spanish province of Cádiz.

Albertí (1902-1999) was a Spanish poet and artist and a member of the Generation of '27, and his fluid drawing style seems to hold in it the ease of the breezy winds of the port in which he was born.

Drawing by Rafael Albertí date and size unknown.
(Apologies for the light on my sneakily-taken photo.
Images of Alberti's work are terribly difficult to find on the internet.)

When I completed this book spread recently, I began to feel the pull to move away from regular, rectangular compositions towards organic flowing edges - as I did in these pieces from way back in 2006-7.

BAJO MIS PIES (Beneath my feet) © Cherry Jeffs 2006
Acrylic and collage on paper 37 x 48cm. Private Collection of S. Lord

Cause and Effect © Cherry Jeffs 2007
41.5 x 30cm Mixed-media on paper

Alberti's piece also served to reinforce this idea, with the result that I'm now working on a series that combines figure drawings with abstract mark-making, bounded within non-rectangular frames. 
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I am left feeling as if I'd had a pleasant visit from two favourite art mentors who whispered some sage advice in my ear and then went on their way.
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Have you had any timely encounters of the mentoring kind recently?

Do share in the comments.

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