maery lanahan ART + MUSIC

Northwest Folklife Festival

We’ll be playing at Northwest Folklife Festival for our debut performance as Elbows Touching!  We’re playing a 6 song half hour set with the first painting of the series on stage with us…showing the painting/playing the song “Giver of Life”.

NW Folklife (www.nwfolklife.org) at Seattle Center

Saturday, May 23rd 12:20-12:50 on the Vera Stage

Phinney Art Walk May 8th and 9th

I will be showing some of my abstracts at the Phinney Annual Art walk this year!

It’s Friday, May 8th  6:00-9:30 and Saturday May 9th noon-5pm.  Here’s the link to the event (http://www.greenwoodphinneyartwalk.com/)

My Paintings will be at Greenworks Realty (7406 Greenwood Ave./Seattle WA 98103 /206-283-8181)

I’m going to be debuting my first “song painting” from elbows touching.  It’s a painting that is also a song-they’re both called “Giver of Life”

As a little sneak preview, here are the lyrics to

“Giver of Life”

Your golden mouth
and jewel of a tongue
hidden flame
to burn out the night…
Ignite my core,
felt from the inside out.
Giver of life
Life giver

My rugged red hands
stretch around this world.
I loved the bustle.
I was in love with the hurt.
Only blood can suck the color
from the bruises.
Shifter of might
Might shifter

Your body breaks
at the hand of our doubt.
You are repaired
as time forgets the place.
Our heads can hold
only so many bits of earth.
Flitter of mind
Mind flitter

My sacred self
so secret and secure,
I was the cloud
that would hang behind the moon.
As my memory fades
it proves that I am passing.
Sliver of time
Time sliver

My flowering folds
blossom in the day
by the love
that runs this old place.
Firefly lights
string a bead on a strand.
River of Life
Life River

Phinney Ridge Art Walk this Friday April 10th 6-9

This Friday I’m going to show a few paintings at Greenworks Realty (7406 Greenwood Ave./Seattle WA 98103 /206-283-8181)

Friday, April 10 is a party - a 22 block long street party in Phinney Ridge and Greenwood. For three hours from 6 to 9 p.m., Greenwood Avenue North is being opened up from North 65th to North 87th Street.

new interview

I just did an interview with a guy in the Czech Republic about my music.

http://blog.sahajayogaradio.org/

The Ha!man show!!!!

The Ha!man is coming to my house for a house concert tomorrow night! (Tues 10/21)  It’s going to be so fun, I’m really excited. Cello makes me weak in the knees, and when I hear him play it, I’m just really in awe. He’s really mastered his instrument, dedicated his whole life to it. His passion is admirable. I can’t wait! I’ve got a heart shaped pound cake and rooibos tea to welcome him to Seattle.

(Email me if you want to come there are only a few spots left)

His site: www.hamanworld.com

OMBU Salon exhibit

I just got home from my art exhibit at OMBU Salon and Spa in Edmonds, WA. (550 Main St. #b-the paintings will be there for a few weeks)

I have 15 paintings hanging, all abstracts, about half from 2002 from my art show in Piqua, Ohio and the other half from after moving here to Seattle in 2005.  Looking at them and talking to everyone just made me reflect on how much of “me” I can see in each painting.  It is it’s own language….actually it’s very much like a secret language that I am only partially fluent in.  I used to not be able to paint anything without using ‘Cadmium Red Deep’.  You know the brightest brightest red… Every painting from that time had to have red, or it just didn’t feel like “me”.  Now I’m really magnetized to colors I once shunned…like lilac purple and turquise and bubble gum pink!!!  Ahh!   The early-mid 20’s rebel ‘me’ would not be caught dead using pink.  Now the 31 year old, post-moving-across-the country, post-2-kids-in-a-row ‘me’ is using a whole new set of colors.  It’s interesting and actually very revealing!

Overall I feel really glad to look at these 15 paintings that span so many years and see myself in different stages.

Everyone was so happy and positive about it tonight…so warm and friendly and genuinely interested.  That gives me a lot of momentum to want to share them.

elbows touching

“elbows touching”

“elbows touching” exists in theory right now.  It is a joint vision between me and my husband/drummer Brian Deweese.  We’ll make 6 songs and 6 paintings that go together…each telling the “story” from their own angle…  Brian is going to use ableton live and a live drum kit to do all the beats and sampling and I’ll sing and play melodies…however they come out.  My paintings will be large abstract oils that show the impression of the song visually.  This is what we’re working on….this is what keeps me up at night…  It’s a very exciting time where finally my two loves, (art and music) will exist together as one….

I’m not saying when it will be done, but this is the direction we are going in and this is what we’re now working on together…

art exhibit in Edmonds

In the evening when the kids are in bed and everything is settled, I’m finding myself drawn to my painting studio more than ever….I like the quiet, and I wouldn’t want to disturb it by singing out, so lately I’ve done a new series in touch with this childhood spirit of creation play…little colorful animal characters that keep the “whole family” company.  They live on the playroom walls.  They match the rows of toys.  It was a surprise really, but I’m so happy about it. 

I’ve also done some new abstracts… one of them is a portrait of my grandmother who passed away December 2007.  It’s called “Portrait of My Helen”. There is no picture of her face or anything predictable like that, it’s more like my color and form interpretation of her at that moment.  I painted it while I was grieving and it really helped me work through the sadness.  It’s fascinating how the act of painting is so threaded into me making sense of things.  Just like writing songs, but with a quiet brushstroke, not a blanket of popping sounds to arrange in the air.

I’ll be showing these new paintings on Thursday in Edmonds.  I’ll have 12 animal paintings and 14 abstracts. 
I’ll be the one milling around with her pinky up and a quirky smile on her face.

This is the info from the flyer:

Edmonds Art Walk in Edmonds, WA
This Thursday!!!!!!!!
September 18th, 5-8pm
maery lanahan- abstract and animal paintings
Stewart Family Chiropractic
547 Main St. Edmonds, WA 98020
paintings on display 9/18-10/8

my heart

When I was a little girl, we had a piano in the house.  Nobody really played it, I guess occasionally my dad would play chopsticks and then chuckle a little…but nobody really PLAYED IT played it.  I always tinked around with it… had a few months of lessons as a 10 year old.  I always wanted to play…

Through college I tried learning again and never really got anywhere with it.  I would seek out the empty stage grands play for hours when nobody was listening. Magical things happened during those times….but the whole reading music and really learning to play piano battled with me memorizing and playing by ear.

Last December we got a piano in the house and my life changed.  Now I’m writing songs on piano and transposing them to guitar and going back and forth.  So now my new songs live in two houses.

One house is my familiar guitar where I’ve spent years writing songs and feel comfortable playing, but have developed habits of rhythm and chord progressions.  The other house is my piano.  My mysterious and mystical piano. My heart.

I am convinced that I am a piano player who accidently learned guitar!  While I am still struggling to break free of the beginner and self-taught tendencies, I am totally in love with how it makes me feel, and by playing these new songs in both houses, it actually moves them more into my head. Sometimes I am writing them on no instrument at all, and that is totally liberating…..to hear the song completely at first in my head and then figure out how to birth it to this world…

I’ll record it and share it here when it is ready.

big love,
maëry

in hibernation

i haven’t played on familiar stages for a few years now. in 2005, my family and i moved from dayton, oh to seattle, wa. some new things are in the works…new stages, new songs.

big love,
maëry