Process and Pain

Will Kirkpatrick and I have a canopy tent which we paint under when painting in the rain or beating sun. This set up was on the Concord Art Association's temporary home at the Samuel Brooks House, Concord, Ma. looking over at the Noah Brooks Tavern and their field along with heritage breed cattle.

It rained all the day. The rain was heavy. The rain was light. The cattle came. The cattle went. Painting was a struggle that day. And just as we packed up..the light broke behind us and put the barn into late day light. That was the scene I wanted to paint. So the next day, in my studio, I painted in the light as I remembered it, using a quick digital image for reference (that does absolutely nothing for color.) Then the bull debate started. I painted in a brown bull. I didn't like it so I took it out. I was almost satisfied with it. However after "sleeping on it" bull or no bull, I woke up with the vision of a black and white bull. That's where it ended up. See for yourself. What do you think?

Painting in the great outdoors

Well,it must be getting on to summer because my buddy Will Kirkpatrick and I are out there painting. I have always been reluctant to paint outdoors. I consider myself a studio painter who likes to control the light. However I seem to have picked up a little more skill at observing the light out doors, holding it in my mind and getting it quickly onto the "canvas". This has given me more confidence and more enjoyment of the challenges painting out side.
Some things which have helped me painting out doors:working with a limited pallet of no more than eight colors (including white and excluding black)and painting quickly.Will and I work with very different palettes but we were amazed at how close our color mixing was to each other using entirely different set of pigments. I always have yellow ocher on my pallet and he doesn't go near the stuff.
I prefer to paint on a blue sky day but yesterday,I realized how easy it is to paint in the flat light of a grey day with just local color. So with the smell of chicken fertilizer in our noses and the threat of rain, this is what I got onto a canvas at Beale's Farm in Southborough.

Going Ons and Updates

It's time for a blog. I have just finished and hung up my work for Still Life-Not Dead Yet, a group show at Brickbottom Gallery.www.brickbottomartists.com It's an interesting show with diverse artists who continue to work in the still life tradition while making it contemporary to their life. The show is up through April 4th. Here are you can see three of my pieces. They are all fairly large. "La Dolce Vita" is 46" x 46". "Good to the Last Drop" is 46" X 46" and last but not least "Stacked and Ready" is 48" x 32".I love painting large with pallet knife. I don't just have an intellectual relationship with the painting, I have a physical relationship with it. I am only 5'1" so painting large just doesn't involve using my eye and my hands. Painting on a large scale involves, arms, legs , step ladders, squatting on the floor etc. There is a lot of investment in the time,the energy, and the commitment to doing a large piece but I find it exhilarating and challenging.

After a series of large paintings, I typically go back and paint small life size objects. That's where I am now. To my surprise, I find myself using brushes more than I have in the past with hese smaller paintings. It will be interesting to see whether I continue to reach for brushes as I return to large scale work.

The "Really Big News" is that I have taken additional studio space with my husband- photographer, at 450 Harrison St Boston in the SoWa art and gallery district.One reason is that I am really trying to set up time to work on encaustic pieces and I find it difficult to set it all up in my studio which needs to also accommodate my oil set up. Also I have not had much confidence that I can ventilate properly in my dungeon studio but I can in the new studios space. And it will help me to get out of my routine as an oil painter to pursue such a different medium. I should be working in the new studio space by the last week in March. 450 Harrison is also know for First Fridays nhttp://www.sowaartistsguild.com/.So come on by. You'll be the first to see my new oil works and hopefully my encaustic experiments.

Visuals inspired by the olifactory

To follow on my last blog...that fresh air smell on sheets. I was inspired to compose a little painting I titled "Sweet Dreams". This painting is a pastiche of images and colors, real and imagined, from Burano-Venice. The juxtaposition of the shocking pink against green is true. The green in the painting has been changed to a green I love, rather than the "Kelly" green of the existing building in Burano. The window here is also borrowed from another building. Digital images are useful as references but a painting copy of digital image does not art make. There have been too many digital image paintings going around these days that leave me empty and that are not to my "taste". That says more about me than it does about the copies, some of which do show real patience and a type of virtuosity. But I ask myself "Is it not the artist's responsibility to bring something personal to the art beyond photo shop? "

On another subject, I am honored to be a juror for Project Laundry List's "Art on a Line Comptetion. "Project Laundry List is seeking submissions of all varieties of artwork to be judged from digital images for its Art On the Line competition. The year's competition celebrates Project Laundry List's mission of making air-drying laundry acceptable and desirable as a simple and effective way to save energy.To check out current entries, join us at Project Laundry List’s Art on the Line Flickr Group." http://www.laundrylist.org/index.php/art/66-artcontest
I showed you myr art, now show me yours!

That fresh smell of fresh air on sheets!

A quick kudos. When we were in the Catskills for Thanksgiving, my friend Edward stayed at the Catskill Motor Court. A simple but sparkling, friendly place with wonderful views. Anyway, Marie the proprietess hangs all the motel sheets out in the fresh air on a line to dry! It's beautiful. Imagine settling in for a good night's sleep on fresh air sheets. Wonderful! Project Laundry List would be so proud of her.
www.catskill-motorcourt.com

What could make me blog today instead of paint?

I have an interesting story to tell you all and that is why I am on my blog today. On the way home from Thanksgiving in the Catskills, we stopped for lunch, a visit with Duncan Miller the FRM and look see into the Berkshire Art Gallery, specializing in good painters to super good painters, mostly dead American painters, not on the list of "greats" as most people know the list. The art here are not as well known, mostly because of fate and circumstance, not because of lack of talent. www.berkshireartgallery.com (Someday, if we are lucky, when we are dead and gone our work will be in a gallery like this).

Anyway, while browsing, I saw an oil painting that reminded me of a watercolor I painted, in the sixth grade, of a clothesline strung from a brick house with a broken window, a bare tree in a yard behind double deckers and row houses;in short, typical East Boston. (My little water color went on to win a little school art prize somewhere.) Anyway, I went over to this oil painting because a) it was a laundry line, b) I liked the way in which the paint was handled and c) the composition was strong, not to mention a nice harmony of colors.
GUESS WHAT?
The title was Wash Day - East Boston done by Guido Rinaldo Borghi an Ashcan School / WPA / and animal painter. So, I bought it of course! I also saw, online, a painting Borghi did of the White Castle in Chinatown dated 1952 so he must have been around Boston a that time in a time when things didn't change much. East Boston looked much the same in the 40's 50's and 60's and 70's. Guido Borghi was born 1903 and died 1971. I attached the image for you viewing pleasure. I LOVE this painting.

Miscellaneous Musings

Hmm..I was hoping the lazy days of summer would start but so far I have been very very busy. Of course most of it is of my own making. For instance; I decided to do an encaustic portrait of a friend to submit to the Newton Art Association Library Show. I have always wanted to paint Miss X but I never really did get around to it. She will be leaving fr parts unknown soon so this is my last chance to paint her, really. However, I must be mad. A portrait is difficult as it is and to do one is encaustic seems nearly impossible. I may just throw the whole thing out when I am done. But I'll learn more from my big mistake than I will from my little successes.

Confucius supposedly said: "If the names are not correct, the judgments are not clear. If the judgments are not clear, the works are not accomplished." Now how does this apply to painting? Well, I think that in that eternal internal dialogue that I have with myself about a painting it is important to use the right words and names to describe what I am doing to myself. Perhaps if I can't find the words I won't be able to understand what I want to do.

And I would also like to post a commission piece which is completed. I titled it "The Storm Passed Over" It's 60 in X 46 in. I do like the physicality of painting large, I must say. I also like the intimacy of painting small. Hmmm. Maybe I'll do both!