LIVING CREATIVELY
ARCHIVE
Remembering Summer
Way back in the spring I was furiously painting in order to have enough pieces for the summer group show. Then I was furiously framing
I was looking forward to a break. I had been at the easel from March to mid-July for what felt like every day towards the same end, to get the work done. Oh, and I also redesigned my website, completed a commission and nursed my painting arm shoulder injury.
But it was all worth it.
At the reception I met a lovely woman who had remembered one...
Center Court
I had planned to write this post yesterday and in so doing check a number of things off my to do list which had grown substantially while working on my latest painting. Instead, I spent nearly five hours watching two grown men bang a small neon yellow ball across a low net. I squirmed thinking about all the things I had hoped to accomplish but the longer it went on, the more invested I became. Almost five hours! I have no idea how they kept moving. Why didn’t their arms drag as the match wore on?...
Waterfall
I’ve sat next to all manner of waterfalls. The kind you unexpectedly come upon on a hike and need to figure out how to get over; the little creek cascades that trip pool to pool and disappear under deep forest growth; and the grander ones you seek out deliberately from maps, following signs through parking lots and down wooden walkways. Big or small they impart sensations of awesome power and hypnotic serenity. Even the behemoth Niagara Falls, with all its well-worn commercialism and history delivers.
Falling...
Kindred
Being thoroughly unproductive during the dark years of 2020 and 2021, it’s taken me a while to recover. I’ve tried to pick up the pace by painting some smaller pieces and increasing my studio time. This has paid off. As of the end of this month I’ve completed exactly as many paintings as I did all last year. I feel accomplished but at the same time I still feel like I’m playing catch up.
A few years ago I tried working on multiple pieces at the same time. They were all paintings of pink tulips...
The Red Sweater
The astute observer might notice that I like the color red. I’ve written about this in the past. But it wasn’t just the fabulous red sweater (although I do want one just like it) that drew me to this subject, nor the party dress, nor the crazy hairdo, it was the two-year-old imp who was rocking it all.
Sometimes a little one comes into our lives and lightens our days. This one certainly has, as have her two brothers.
Ask a group of people, young or old, “Who wants to do _____ ? and her hand...
The Birthday
This past winter a gallery director asked if I’d like to be part of a four-woman show this summer. My heart fluttered as “yes” flew through my lips. I’ve only had this opportunity a few times but never with the caliber of artists I’d join.
However, when he said I’d need oh, maybe 15 paintings of both florals and people, that elation gave way to panic. How in the world could I get this done in a few months? My inventory is not that big! So much to do and so little time. Turns out deadlines...
Big Mug Little Hands
Time is approaching fast when these guys will look askance at me plastering their faces on gallery walls so I must work fast. This one was uber-quick, only taking me but a few days to complete. Record time for me.
But time is flying by quickly. I swear that there are times that they seem to have grown inches in the span of a few days. Their faces are becoming chiseled into previews of their adult faces. So it was particularly delightful to work on this little face for a little while, to...
Fierce Beauty
Somehow my mother screwed up the forms needed for the dorm I was required to live in my freshman year in college. For that reason, mid-year, I first walked through the maws of that enormous university with not so much as a “good luck kid, here’s your library card” to help me navigate this new and oh so terrifying institution.
I didn’t eat for three days because how to get a meal card was even more opaque than how to get from class to class. I stumbled along as my stomach grumbled. My roommate...
Nasturtium Duet: Harmony
Deadlines are amazing motivators.
I’d started this painting when I thought I was going to be leaving for Australia the first week of February. It was just past the holiday crush and I figured I’d have plenty of time to wrap up the painting while I tried to get my head around what to pack for a “summer” vacation in the heart of our winter here in New England. But like many best laid plans, things got crazy when the trip was moved up two weeks which sent me scrambling.
Somehow, I got it all...
Red Moon
It’s a little before four in the morning and I’m awake. Not an entirely unusual situation. I’ve heard of late that insomnia is going around.
But perhaps all is not lost; one of the things that kept me from sleeping was the enticement of a lunar eclipse to come within the hour. I remember the first one I saw. I was a child living in the Los Angeles area and the storied Brentwood fires burned miles away. The cool moon burned angry, a deep red.
Reds. In retrospect the color has dogged my existence....
Blossoming | September 14, 2022
This week I started a ceramics class, my first in 58 years, I think. We’d moved just a few years earlier to a new town that had a shiny new modern art museum. Our parents always nurtured our creativity so it stood to reason that they thought this would be good for me. It was great!
I wish I could remember the name of the instructor. He was a grizzly guy who was a found object sculptor of some repute in, at least, the local art world. He was indefatigable and never treated us urchins as anything...
Ten Years After
I have always loved birthdays. They are a reason to have a party, eat cake and be surrounded by your besties. What’s not to love? Which is why ten years ago I threw myself a big old birthday party. Lots of people, lots of food, lots of fun. Of course, presents didn’t loom as large at age 60 as age six, but that’s okay. Besides, the next day I found my favorite present on the back porch: a gathering up of maybe 30 little vases filled with all sorts of red flowers. That vision led to a ten-year exploration...
Plenty
For those of you who have been reading my recent thoughts here or on social media*, you might have seen that this painting has been slow in coming to fruition and/or was accomplished in fits and starts. Here’s the back story:
February was filled with family gathering and marking of milestones. Houseguests came and went. Big fun and exhausting. Also, I was preparing for March in which I was scheduled for total hip replacement surgery. So along with tacking down throw rugs and getting a stool...
Baby Steps
This drawing was started exactly a month ago. It was put on the back burner while I pursued a different project, getting myself a new hip. The hip is slowly healing – a miracle of modern medicine and Mother Nature that is humbling and awe inspiring.
Throughout I’ve been surrounded by my loving children, two of which flew many, many miles to help out their old mom in her time of need. Being the one who is more accustomed to being the driver, the wellness cheerleader, the ice pack getter,...
For Kyiv
Orange.
Yellow orange.
Lemon yellow.
Red orange.
Orange red.
Salmon.
Pink.
Burnt orange.
Light red.
Mauve.
Deep red.
Brick red.
Burnt sienna.
But mostly orange.
The word with no rhyme. Singular. Loved and reviled.
Fourteen years ago, orange banners waved day and night in the streets as common citizens rose to demand a voice in their government. Remarkably, they overthrew their autocratic governors and ushered in what they hoped would...
Summer In January
I’m turning 70 in a few weeks, something which my bones are all too pleased to remind me of on a regular basis. Knees, hips, hands, eyes, you name it, all chime in.
But unless I’m in motion – or looking at myself in the dreaded 10x magnified mirror that is now a necessity to avoid heading out of the house with some kind of horn growing out of my chin – I wouldn’t know that the ravages of time have hit this corpus. In my mind’s eye I am at once 16, 36 and 55, anything but standing on the verge...
The Humble Nasturtium
Last summer I once again planted nasturtiums willy-nilly throughout my garden. They went nuts.
Though slow to start and devilishly difficult to pick for floral arrangements they bring so much exuberance to wherever they flourish I find them irresistible. Trying to pick inevitably results in a few being crunched underfoot. They don’t seem to care, churning out more leaves and more flowers until frost brings them asunder.
Their improbably vibrant colors virtually screamed at me to pay...
A Green Leaf
Sometimes a painting isn’t about anything. Sometimes it’s just a painting of a leaf with raindrops on it. Little water droplets reflecting the world above, around and beneath it. A tiny dim sun dots each of them. A magnification of the leaf below. It makes one wonder, what’s inside?
I looked it up. In order for a raindrop to form high up in the atmosphere there must be a speck of dust around which the moist air can condense. And clinging to that dust can be all manner of things: bacteria, fungi,...
Yes, I Can Count
Way back in May (can it really be that long ago?) I posted a video announcing a new project that was supposed to spur me into an amazing flurry of painting production! The goal was to paint three paintings on the same theme simultaneously, taking advantage of a single palette. I was so optimistic! It's been four months and I've just finished the last one. Needless to say, not the outcome I’d hoped for.
I'll allow myself some grace. There were some fun diversions and one big home project...
Old Dog Old Tricks
This was an odd Olympic year. Truly. Olympics are always in even years, never odd. I know, recently everything in our lives has been odd so why not the Olympics? But it was different for other reasons. In a world of protest and divisiveness the IOC braced for the same on the playing fields. Instead we watched opponents lift each other up, as in physically, to walk arm in arm across the finish line. We agonized as one of our best chose to sit out the events she had dedicated her life to excelling...
Big Bite
I’ve been wanting to embark on a big project for a while. I started one in early January which ended up being a huge fail. I found myself avoiding going into the studio it depressed me so much. I wondered if maybe I’d bitten off more than I could chew, that I’d lost my mojo, and started wondering if I should even be doing this art making thing at all. Wiling away my golden years reading books and watching 90-Day Fiancée seemed like a viable alternative.
After removing myself from the pity pot...
Ranunculus No. 3
While entering this, my most recent painting, in an exhibition I was asked what “inspired” the painting. For floral paintings like this one, it’s clearly nature. I’m in rapture with the way this tiny flower’s petals fold in upon themselves like an infinity mirror and how each petal seems to flaunt its own particular combination of colors. It’s both a challenge and a joy to try to preserve it on canvas.
Sometimes artists are asked about the meaning of their work. That’s harder. My paintings tend...
Parting Company
It is not long until Thanksgiving and conversation is swirling around about what to do about the holiday. To gather or not to gather, that’s the problem at hand. There’s a lot of hand-wringing going on in my little world as well. I was excited to be welcoming my now Australian-resident daughter home for her 40th birthday, this year falling on THE big day. She was bringing her partner along to give him the full frontal on American gluttony. So yes, that won’t happen and I will miss her so.
When...
Zhenya
Where the hell have I been? No, I haven’t succumbed to COVID-19, nor have I been abducted by aliens. Something scary did happen though, my computer died…or rather, was suddenly plunged into the death throes as evidenced by a flickering display and images that began to get darker and darker. Since I was almost finished with this painting I began working like a fiend, racing against time to get it done. Lucky for me, I just squeaked through before phantom shapes started to be superimposed on my flickering...
Adoration
News Flash: I’m in love. I’m in love with these children. They’ve been a central part of my life for just short of a month and I am sad that the painting is finished because I’ve loved seeing their faces, that chubby leg, the piercing gaze and the quite obvious fact that they have been smitten by the tiny new creature before them.
I remember so clearly the day I brought my first daughter home to meet her “big” brother, all of 18-months-old. He clamored up onto the sofa, tucked his little body...
Mirrors
A number of books on my shelves were from my mother who died many years ago. I pick them up now and then when I want to read something different, much different from our lives today. On the inside cover of the last two books I found “3/2003” written in my mother’s arthritic handwriting, two months before she died. Needless to say, I read them with changed eyes.
The last I read, Obscure Destinies, a collection of three Willa Cather stories, had an additional note, “A GOOD farm story.”
My mother...
My Constant Companion
I’ve been well positioned to weather the weirdness of this retreat into our homes these past few months. I, like many artists, thrive on solitude. I like nothing better than to dig into a project, be it in the studio or in the garage, uninterrupted for hours on end. I savor the freedom to watch what I like, eat what I want and do whatever I damn well please on any given day. Might be why I’ve stayed successfully divorced for thirty years now.
I sing good morning to myself and those ungrateful...
Surveillance
My covid-19 companions are a pair of cats. Brother and sister. In the past when I’ve had only one pet I always felt bad about them not having a playmate especially when I wasn’t around, so I got this pair.
Their foster mom told me they were highly bonded. Great! They’ll be happy together and I’ll have two furry friends to keep me company. Well, they’re furry and they certainly keep themselves company but in terms of being good company to me they, quite frankly, fall short.
They are excellent...
Gravitational Pulls
Tides ebb and flow as the moon orbits the earth. Earth maintains a healthy distance from the sun as the force of gravity tethers it to our all powerful source of light and life. And we too are drawn towards each other by our common humanity. Who can resist that pull less than children? Total strangers one minute, they become fast friends the next.
Ah, but in these days, during this pandemic, we must shut down that natural impulse to be close to one another. We must hide behind our windshields...
Those Trees
Sometimes when I stand at my window and look out at all the trees that surround me, I wish that there were fewer so I could better see the sky. I used to work in a rather nondescript office building who's single redeeming feature were the glorious sunsets we were treated to. They were so amazing that I was sorry to I miss them when the long days of summer took me home before it was dark. Yeah, they were that spectacular.
But recently I see things a bit differently.
I didn’t even think this...
Dream State
They say that these days we are all having particularly vivid and sometimes alarming dreams. I read an article about this in National Geographic and won’t begin to attempt to summarize except to say that it’s really a thing and some of it may have to do with lack of stimulation in our lives.
I can attest to being one of these people. The other morning I woke to learn that my subconscious had married my girlfriend off to Burt Reynolds despite her (and her boyfriend’s) dismay and the fact that...
On Being Resurrected
There came a day in my life that I had to make a serious life decision. It affected people I loved most dearly and I knew it would hurt them. It was at Easter services while I was in my pretty dress and a hat that my mother had worn on my head that I pondered my life choices.
Funny thing about the Easters of my childhood, we always wore white cotton gloves and we always wore hats. And most Easter mornings were spent franticly looking for a clean pair of gloves that matched and a hat that went...
Surface Tension
Bubbles are irresistible to almost any human being. Frankly, I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t get a little charge out of them. Charlotte is a serious aficionado. I have a whole bunch of photos of her blowing, or trying to blow bubbles so there’s a chance there might be a whole series of paintings along these lines.
Bubbles seem to be some kind of a miracle. They appear magically, bidden by the gentlest breath, float expertly on the slightest breeze and end by a teensy but rather alarming explosion...
Looking For Turtles
Over the past seven years I’ve dipped my toe in and out of portraiture. It’s a bit intimidating trying to make a likeness of someone but I think I’ve achieved that. So, to change things up I’ve decided to look at it from a different angle.
I have three highly individual grandchildren, as children are. They range from unabashed star of the show to reluctant model, with another in-between, both literally and figuratively. Stuffed animals, superheroes, sippy cups, stethoscopes, Legos, glitter glue,...
Motivation
As I wrote in my last post I am participating in a show at a local museum featuring modern interpretations of works in the museum’s permanent collection. The etching I selected is of a demure girl of her time by William Paxton titled Portuguese Girl. In response to the etching I decided to paint a demure woman, but of the modern ilk and a Boston Red Sox fan to boot!
People often ask me how long a painting takes. I try to give it a range. Someone once suggested I work in a public setting. Yikes!...
Character Development
When I first started painting in earnest, and by that, I mean spending a good chunk of my waking time in the pursuit of my craft, one of the concepts I found elusive was the idea of creating a “body of work.”
I wasn’t particularly interested in tying myself down to only painting one subject or to limit myself to only landscapes or unicorns or just one color. I embrace change in the rest of my life, so why not in the studio?
As it happens, I have naturally slipped into painting two main subjects,...
Morning Middle
On Day II of their parents’ mental health weekend we woke to a beautiful morning. The little one found her bubbles and wanted to blow some so I shepherded her outside, her brothers followed. Brother James picked up a bat and started hitting balls (at the house, got that fixed). William sat pensively, not quite awake yet.
He pulled himself into a compact form. I snapped his photo. The photo became a painting.
Being the youngest child myself, I cannot lay claim to first-hand knowledge of the...
Orange Zinnia Mania
It seems like I’ve been working on this painting forever! I fell in love with the concept then sort of fell out of love with the process. But as is true with all my past difficult painting births I’m happy with the result, and that it’s done!
What I wanted to try and capture was the juxtaposition of the sharply rendered object in the foreground while leaving the background, well, not so sharply rendered.
One of my most enduring traits is that I like things to be just so. I’m uncomfortable...
Accomplishment
[Note: The links in this blog post are expired.]
Its been a weird year in the studio. From March until early July I was working feverishly on a body of work for the 8 Visions Exhibition at the Attleboro Arts Museum (see the paintings I selected here). The weeds in the garden rose triumphantly as the floor under my easel darkened with bits or orange and red and black and green. I was putting in eight-hours plus at least six days a week. Hey, I thought I was retired! But the lure of putting on...
Solstice, Birthdays and Flowers
I don't think it's my imagination that spring has been memorably rainy this year. It is raining now as I type, a downpour actually. Since our summer is short here in New England the natives are restless for their time in the sun: beaches, cookouts, and general frolicking about. We yearn for it come January. March brings glimmers of hope. April routinely disappoints. But May and June are glorious. Just not this year.
As a result my garden is flourishing, though with an even ratio of weeds to...
Perfectly Imperfect
He wondered out loud, what is love now that we are in the last (two, dare I say three) decades of our lives? I said that I wasn’t sure, but what I did know was that it was different from the deep crushes of middle school and beyond that, the urgent, hormone-fueled passion of the reproductive years.
Deeper into our lives we accumulate scars of disappointment and betrayal. These cast a shadow of suspect on others’ intentions and cultivate cynicism. Small accomplishments build strength and independence...
Kite Day
It had been a long hot day in July, though a perfect day to fly kites, which is what we'd done.
After a long drive, and a long search for a parking spot, and sunscreen in somebody's eyes, and experiencing a little of the kite enthusiasts' world, and many unsuccessful attempts to launch our own kite, and meeting a friendly little dog who seems to have changed our flying luck, and piling back into the car we landed at a clam shack in Warren, Rhode Island. Everyone was thirsty. And everyone had...
Glory
As I finished up this painting I was taken back to high school English (my tattered, 1,398 page textbook still takes up real estate on my bookshelf). Thinking about what I might want to express about this painting Wordsworth's poem came to mind; Intimations of Immortality, and the famous lines:
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will...
Aglow
I met Alicia online. As in an online dating app. But I wasn't looking for a girlfriend, I was checking out the competition.
After countless profiles of women my age in v-neck dresses looking lovingly toward the camera with alluring smiles and dreams of Mr. Right holding hands on the beach at sunset, I came upon her profile. I laughed out loud and had to tell her what a great writer she was and to wish her luck, so I did. That led to a meet up which turned into a friendship. Shortly thereafter...
Heading For The Barn
It was a dark and stormy night. Well, it was dark and it was raining.
We had been wine tasting down in the Willamette Valley on a cool autumn day, our teeth stained gray by the luscious pinot noir we'd tried. After a prudent break in the action, and a meal to fill our stomachs, we headed back north to Portland. I sat in the back seat.
The best place for me is always in the back given my penchant for dramatic air-driving to assist the actual driver from steering us into certain death. From...
Positively
She's a bit of an old soul in that body. I suspect she is reincarnated from someone who in some way was denied the life they wanted and has been born into this one determined to relish each and every moment...the good and the bad.
While visiting her the other day we sat on the floor of the sunroom, the rug strewn with crayons and markers; boxes and paper marked with abstract figures (her specialty) embellished with a constellation of stickers. She proudly showed me another of her masterpieces,...
Empty Nest
Whenever I see an abandoned birds nest I inevitably pick it up and find a place for it in my home. Some are fragile, loosely constructed with twigs and air. Others tightly woven from horsehair plucked from a nearby paddock. They connote to me hope and sadness...and utility.
So when a friend of mine approached me after having watched my foray into figurative work and asked if he might commission a painting I was pleased. But all the more so since the subject would be his daughter, who was just...
Tulip Field Fantasy
This is a sample blog post
Before all things went to hell in a hand basket there was this moment when I managed to get one of the boys to stand still long enough for a quick snapshot before he ran off with his brother to wreck destruction on a good number of tulips. I'm certain, given the number of children at the tulip picking field, the farmers factor this into their overhead but their mother wasn't too happy with their behavior. Being a grandmother I get to shine these kinds of things on...
The Joys of Grandparenthood
Being a parent is an awesome task. I remember days, and nights, that I thought it might just kill me. And others when I knew my children saved my life, and sanity.
Surviving my children's childhoods, teenage years, putting them through college and the mute witnessing of their coming into adulthood was both painful and a privilege. A privilege I wouldn't trade for all the riches in the world. We parents are masochists like that.
But the single best perk of having made it through thus far has...
All I Wanted
Looking back over the past few years worth of work it makes total sense why I was feeling a bit burned out. Flowers followed by fruit, followed by flowers, flowers and more flowers and then some fruit. I tend to be a creature of habit so I've learned to mix things up now and then...take a new way home, cook some fiddlehead ferns for dinner, move across the country. You know, easy stuff.
We were sitting in his living room enjoying a cocktail. The light was just right and he was framed by those...
What Linda Said
Linda said, "Well, it's either going to be really fabulous," she paused, "or really gross." She was talking about the trip to Costa Rica I would be chaperoning along with two science teachers, both men. I was told the school wanted a motherly influence to go along with them. What Linda and I were both a bit leery of was the fact that all of the students who had signed up turned out to be boys. High school boys.
It started rather inauspiciously when, on our way to our first destination our van...
Two-For
It's been a crazy month or so. Rushing around to get myself off for a much anticipated two-week plus vacation left me leaning on my son to pick up and deliver some artwork from and to exhibitions (thank you sweetie). Suffering from a terrible case of jet lag on the return trip I managed to drag myself to a reception at Hopkinton Center for the Arts' Arts in Bloom show, one of my favorites.
Still in something of a brain fog I arrived late only barely registering that my two entries hung near...
Everything's Relative
Here are the ten phases of painting, at least in my book:
Enthusiasm - Defined as the stage when I have selected an image and can just picture it in my head how it will turn out. I can't wait to start the new project and tend to dive in head first, almost before cleaning my last pallet.
Optimism - The drawings look good and I've got it transferred to the canvas and have blocked in the color. Everything is going swimmingly and I lose myself in the project.
Fear - Suddenly something looks...
Unsheltered
I must be no more than three in the portrait. I was exempt from posing, the artist having to work from a photograph to imagine my likeness...not to mention personality. As a result, I appear to be a docile creature, more like the doll I'm holding than the stick straight hair, skinned knee ruffian that I actually was. My sisters look more like themselves, at least to me...none of them ever really approved so I ended up with the painting after my eldest sister, its most recent custodian, died last...
Mocking
The fourth in my most recent series of tulip portraits is a departure from the up close and personal nature of its predecessors. It's both simpler and more complex.
I was drawn to the photo for the sinuous nature of the leaves and stem and to the strength of the blossom...so perfect, so proud. And I loved the messy cacophony of the shadows cast by the five-arm chandelier that lit the subject. The flower came together quickly, the shadows less so. As I wrestled with the layers of tint and shade...
Getting Brave
I don’t make New Year resolutions but I do try to set annual goals that sometimes take on an aspirational tone. This year’s theme leaned towards being brave and to be vulnerable. I certainly bit off a huge chunk to chew early on. You see, I took the plunge and mounted a solo exhibition.
Believe it or not I’m a quasi-government official, on a strictly volunteer basis…I’m an advocate for the arts here in my little town. I sit on a council whose charge is to distribute state money earmarked for...
I Do(odle) Now
I can’t really help it. I need to do something with my hands. So when I’m in a meeting or relaxing in front of the TV and there happens to be paper and a pen or pencil in the near vicinity I inevitably will start drawing. Nothing in particular, though I’m prone to suns and moons and lips.
This past December I decided to start putting this nervous habit to good use. Initially using just pencil, I started concocting crazy images filled with disparate patterns and aimed for nothing really, just...
Jan Theodora
My sister Jan died a little over a month ago.
She was, as all of us are, a complicated human being. In her obituary her son captured the best and the worst of her life when he wrote "Wonderfully eloquent in writing and conversation, Jan expressed herself beautifully and was known for her sharp wit and fabulous laugh. After a severe stroke tragically impaired her ability to communicate over her final 12 years, Jan’s physical limitations never diminished her fierce approach to life."
That brilliant...
Grace
As anyone who has seen my paintings or read this blog knows, it appears that I have something of an obsession with tulips. They are at once elegant, simple, playful, serious, honest and mysterious. Their colors are infinite and their curves both seductive and innocent.
Mirroring cultural biases I tend to select pristine subjects, their frills plump and brightly colored arches robust and compelling. This time I selected a slightly different subject.
There were age spots on this beauty. In...
A Tulip By Any Other Name
I've embarked on a journey. An experiment to see if I will ever tire of painting tulips, sort of. I just might because despite having spent now more than 30 hours facing this lady's backside I find that I'm at a loss as to what to name her. I really don't like the convention that some artists use of simply naming them nothing but I'm coming up empty. Help!
It all started innocently late spring of last year. My daughter-in-law and I took the grandkids to a tulip farm in Rhode Island. Our excitement...
You Can't Win Them All
Summer came in with a whimper -- cold, damp and generally uninspiring. I decided to spend time on an ambitious project, four paintings, each a quadrant of a whole. A tetraptych.
I suppose I believed that summer would continue as it started so I thought the whole thing would be done pretty quickly. The past three days have been in the 90s. Did I mention I don't have air conditioning? The paint was literally drying on the brush before I could get it to the canvas! I'll have to wait for cool weather...
Weiser, ID
My grandparents' home sits in state on Pioneer Road in Weiser, Idaho. Aptly named as my grandfather was a true western pioneer who arrived in this country at age 16 at the tail end of the Civil War and eventually became one of Weiser's founding fathers. He built that place for his bride and there they raised their seven daughters, five of whom survived childhood. My mother was the youngest.
I can still remember the smell of hay drifting over the meadows behind the house and the slap of the wooden...
Little Faces
A while back my daughter-in-law gently asked me if I might donate a painting commission to my grandson's school's auction. Having been on her side of the philanthropy fence in a past lifetime I said "sure" and that was that.
A few months later I got the email. Suddenly I was filled with trepidation. Commissions are a mixed bag. It's flattering to be chosen. It's an honor to have someone have faith in your work. But it's also fraught with lots of uncertainties. What if the collector is hard to...
Hibernation
I do things a little differently. I hibernate come spring and emerge again in the fall. To my studio, that is. I suppose I just can't resist the urge to create on earth's canvas while the sun shines and the birds sing. It's about this time of the year that I succumb to a different itch, to dig into my boxes full of tubes of paint and rummage around a year's worth of stashed photos of warmer days seeking inspiration.
Motivated by guilt that I've long neglected this room, I rearrange the shelves...
Roots
Despite the snow falling outside on this blizzardy day, I'm thinking back to trips I took with my dad to the garden store; him passionate about plants and gardening, me loving sunshine, mud, worms and such. We would return home with flats of annuals and bags of cow manure and my dad would fill pots with petunias and geraniums. The station wagon would stink for days.
I remember my otherwise upright, Republican, pillar of the community father discovering creeping Charlie (aka glechoma hederacea)...
Iconography
In college I loved to decipher, or attempt to at least, the symbolism in the paintings we studied. The musical instrument, a cabbage, a recently extinguished candle, the little dog underfoot, a unicorn in the distance, a map of the world, all spoke volumes about the main characters and the drama unfolding in tableau.
We studied paintings depicting the Virgin Mary as the archangel Gabriel tells her of God's plans for her future. In most cases she takes the news pretty well.
In these paintings,...
Mistaken Identity
A good friend of mine, a former good friend of mine, someone who I once believed I loved, did something really stupid one day and ended up in federal prison. He told me he took the bribe but it only happened once. He was caught in a trap. His life was upended.
I stood by him. Helped him out. I was furious at his greed and humbled by the quick turn of fortune. I visited him during his incarceration.
The federal prison he was placed in is a minimum security facility out in the middle of nowhere....
Wide Open Spaces
I'm partial to skies. I like looking at them, photographing them, imagining them and painting them. So I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that they show up in my paintings.
I've just begun a series of skies. This is the first entry.
Tangerini's is a local CSA share farm. (For you city folks, CSA stands for "community supporting agriculture." You invest in the coming crop then share in the bounty, or lack thereof, as the season unfolds.)
Last summer I was there for the tomatoes at...
Reflections
I'd only been living here a short time. My neighbors had mentioned that the town's Community Day might be a fun outing for my grandson.
There were musicians, dancers, hot dogs, a bouncy house, 4-H animals, and a small-gauge train ride. But the best thing of all was seeing the stunned look in the eyes of my not quite two-year-old grandson as he gazed up at the massive trucks on display by the town's Department of Public Works. Did he want to get up into the cab? Oh yeah.
The carnival noise...
Unfinished Business
I’ve spent the better part of the past couple of weeks or so out in my garden. There were raised boxes to fill and flower beds to turn, and amend and turn again. I dug up turf, lovingly relocating clumps of it to bare spots and divots in my lawn. And since there were more bare spots than there were bits of sod, there was seed to sow.
I scratched at that soil and harvested a barrel’s worth of stones then laid little kernels of hope into slim rows. I stood in the breezy April chill as the spray...
A Different Kind of Portrait
Come December, despite the sensory overload of holiday lights, music, food and good will to all mankind, something like a lowly piece of fruit sitting alone on the table can reach deeply into one's psyche. The simplicity, the brilliance of a clementine reached mine.
It started innocently enough. I was hungry. I grabbed a piece of fruit, got halfway through peeling it when something distracted me. I came back to see this lovely thing begging to be acknowledged. Vulnerable, half exposed, cradled...
Madame
She was a particular kind of feline. Sometimes stately, befitting her name and sometimes ornery, well, just because she could. She was rather large, you see, statuesque. Not quite as big as her scale-bending sibling Otto but big enough to think twice about crossing her. She was definitely a force to be reckoned with.
Otto seems to be overlording from the settee in this painting but don't be fooled, it was Madame who ruled the roost, except when she was being freaked out by ceiling fans that...
Winter's Warmth
Among tattered sticky notes, phone extensions listings, memos, meeting dates and emergency procedures, round little faces of friends, family and colleagues' babies and grand babies colored the bulletin board beside my desk. I didn't put all I received up there, just the ones that made me happy.
This one was a keeper. I've always loved Violet's expression, adoration and mischievousness rolled into one. And Richard, blissfully unaware of what might be forming in Violet's mitten, the big brother...
What Value Art?
What is the value of an artist's work? Probably the hardest thing they do is try to put a price on a piece of art. After all, it's not a widget. It springs to our soul from our eyes and through our hands to become something unique.
Today, while I worked on the initial layers of my most recent painting, Dennis, my handyman and all around go-to guy these days was painting the two walls in the hall my 5'2" body couldn't quite reach. He put in 6 hours and I paid him $360 for his time.
The paintings...
From My Soul, From My Hands, and From My Heart
Who is one's own worst critic? I own up to often being my own. When I find myself looking at old photos of myself I acutely recall how much I didn't like that shot at the time, but years later find I didn't look all that bad after all (old perms notwithstanding).
"Hey, I was pretty cute", my much older self says through her wrinkles.
And when I look through old projects, I find drawings and paintings that, at the time, I thought were sub-par only to rediscover to be really quite decent after...
Feminine Wiles
Last Thanksgiving I had the unique privelidge to sleep a night or two in a young ladies' bedroom. She was spending the night at her mother's house so I took up residence among objects most likely not long for her life. Dolls, stickers, posters, scraps of paper. Treasures all.
I wanted to read for a bit before going to sleep but the overhead light was a bit too bright. I turned Cinderella Barbie on. Surprisingly bright light, I thought, as I snapped this shot. Barbie illuminating the darkness.
As...
Loosening Up
I'm at a bit of loose ends.
Started one project in oil but it needs to dry before I can move forward. Waiting for a call back from the collector to start working on a commission. Can you hear my fingers thrumming on the desk?
Not wanting to get into anything too ambitious I decided to aim to complete one canvas in one day. This is counter to my instincts. One day requires spontaneity. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I'm a ducks in a row kinda person. There is a list somewhere in every...
Reality Check
We sat knee to knee in the living room checkered by Christmas presents and plastic bags full of wrappings when she coyly announced that he was taking her to a romantic inn in Maine for New Years. I wondered if she'd come back with a bit of gold wrapped around her left ring finger. Indeed she did.
A few weeks later my son asked if I'd be able to sit for the boys come August. The wedding to be in Jamaica, not child friendly. Confident that with an expert helper by my side I'd survive, I said yes.
Fast...
Melancholy
It sometimes happens that happy things are also sad things. That the innocence of children belies what the future holds for them. And life lives itself out in the way it always does, with gratitude jumbled up with loss for things once had. Pretty much sums up my feelings about this painting.
The boy grew more distant from us, veiled by the mysteries of the human brain. The beautiful boy. Sweet Max. His grandparents generously commissioned the painting for Max's mother, yet unaware of the life...
Happy
It goes without saying that people and relationships are the most important things in our human existence. Without them we are but stick figures, dimensionless, solitary. Like you, my family and friends are precious. And maybe like you, I also derive tremendous satisfaction from being out in nature, and particularly in my fledgeling garden.
My garden (though it struggles against the elements, deer, slugs and powdery mildew) brings me a great deal of happiness. There's something about getting...
Chocolate and Ginger Ale
I've just finished a project, a commission, that's taken me longer than I'd expected and has turned out better than I could have imagined. I'd love to post an image of it here but won't be able to do so until it's delivered, which will be a while. For now I'll just need to be content to celebrate with a few pieces of dark chocolate and ginger ale since it's a little too early for a glass of wine!
Working on commission is a different bird from working on my own. The times I've been so honored...
Thoughts on Painting
...OR THE LACK THEREOF.
Since this little tack I've taken in my life has been largely motivated by a desire to follow my bliss and paint, it seemed logical to me to also turn this blog around into something that focused more about my work. It's morphed before and it can again.
Problem is, I'm not terribly adept at talking about my work. I'm great at talking about paintings, just not mine so much. So I'll just rip off the bandaid and tell the tale of my most recent work, Panhandle TX. Maybe...