MARIAN DIOGUARDI - BOLD PAINTINGS FROM LIFE

When Art Finds a Home (or when a home finds art)

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:17:00 +0000

I don't know whether it happens to every artist, painter or maker but there are always certain works I become very attached to. I am often asked "How can you let someone buy that". And the answer isn't easy, it's complex especially with pivotal works that get me thinking in a new direction. But I'll try to give the simple answer, that answer is FAITH. I have to believe that I have within me the motivation, the passion and the ability to continue to create. That my creative drive does not end with an ultimate work. Each work contributes to the piece before and have faith that I will feel as passionately about the next painting as I did about the ones that were bought. And as another painter once said it so well 'an artist's favorite painting should be the NEXT one'.

So this month I say farewell to five of my favorite paintings as they find their appreciative home. May the passion I had in creating these works be passed on to the next.I am grateful for the opportunity to be tested yet again. Stay tuned.

An Honor

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:48:00 +0000

This week end, The School of the Museum of Fine Art informed me that my piece, A Little Pink,was bought by Dana Farber for their notable art collection. This collection includes the work of Warhol, Alex Katz, Lichenstien and Oldenburg. It's a great honor for me to be sharing the walls with these great Ameerican Artists.

But most of all I am honored by having my work in this special institution of hope. My dear friend, Alma was a patient at Dana Farber during the last two years of her battle with breast cancer. More often than not I would accompany her during these visits. When we were at Dana Farber together, the art on the walls gave us both relief from worry, treatment and the cancer situation. Alma loved art. Alma Kretchmer was also an early collector of my work. She had great faith in me and it's truly bitter sweet for me that she did not live to see my work on the Dana Farber walls. But I can't help but feel that maybe she IS seeing it and smiling. May Little Pink give everyone a little hope to get through their day at Dana Farber. Thank you all.

SoWa Winter Lights

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:06:00 +0000

The SoWa Artist Guild invites you to come and celebrate our art in a different light in conjunction with the SoWa - Thayer Street Winter Light Weekends. During the December 4th, SoWa First Friday evening from 7 to 8 PM, participating SoWa artists will convert our standard studio lighting into trans formative, imaginative and provocative studio lighting. We invite you to come and experience viewing art in a different light. It will change the way you see and think of art, if not for one hour but possibly forever. December 4th, 7-8 PM, 450 Harrison Ave, Boston, Ma.

There will also be a fund raising silent art auction in Studio 222 for the Rachel Molly Markoff Foundation supporting children's brain cancer research.Rachel loved art.

My studio, 233B, will also be open the first two weekends in December with extended hours;Friday nights, Saturday and Sunday afternoon hours, coinciding with the Thayer Street hours.Come by and take a second look at the painting you and your loved one fell in love with this year. Surprise someone with the gift of art for the holiday.Or don't remember what painting they loved best? Give a personalized gift certificate for one of my paintings or a commission. I will be leaving for the Alsace region in France on December 15th and my studio will be closed through December 23rd.

Above is my newest painting, They All finally Fell Down. This painting was glorious fun to paint as well as a challenge. A good painting always starts with a good drawing.Most artists will tell you that true ellipses are not easy to get looking right. Ellipses are not ovals; they are fore-shortened circles.The important difference to me is that an ellipse is an expression of three dimensional space while an oval is a two dimensional shape. I worked at he drawing from a close perspective and really wanted to get the feeling of the cup handle turning out into your space. The shapes and curves set up a rhythm to the composition and the colors fleshed out the light.It will be on view at First Friday.

Thanks to all for coming by the Brickbottom Open Studios. I had the most wonderful conversations with visitors., Sold some art but mostly enjoyed being a part of this creative community of artists.Fun was had by all.

Brickbottom Open Studios this Weekend

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:40:00 +0000

This weekend is the Brickbottom Open Studios. I am privileged to be an a Associate Member of the Brickbottom Artist Association and fortunate to be invited into studio C-214 to exhibit. I will be there with four other interesting and diversified artists.

Brickbottom visitors are some of the most art savvy visitors that I come across. I can tell that they are really looking at the art with interested and informed eyes. I have never failed to have interesting discussions about the elements of painting that are challenging and eye opening to what others see in my work. Of course, as a working artist, I want my work to be bought and enjoyed but there are many other reasons why I do Open Studios and those reasons are visitors. Every artist is different in what they want to get out of an Open Studio but please, as a visitor, come on by; say "Hi" and tell me what you think. I am there. I am as interested in you as you are in my art. This may be my favorite Open Studios to do because of the conversations that I have had there.

The hours are Saturday the 21st from noon to six and Sunday the same.http://brickbottomartists.com/open_studios_info

Come on by and see my new work, enjoy all the artists work (I do) and let's have a chat about art.

Frances N. Roddy Open Competition

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:33:00 +0000

Competitions are an artist's way of playing the lottery. It's our excitement, disappointment and it's always a thrill. I spent two months painting and finishing THE PAINTING that I wanted to submit to the Concord Art's Roddy Competition. Three weeks before the due date, I painted the sides on the painting. In order to finish the sides off quickly, I used an old Old Holland quick drying medium. To make a long agonizing wait for it to dry, short - it never dried. My best laid plans for a grand submission was aborted. So I took in one of my favorite and simplest paintings. I opted for directness in place of grand and my painting was chosen for the exhibit. Just goes to show you that you can NEVER tell what will happen.

This Asparagus painting was everything that I wanted this painting to be in order to do justice to these beautiful asparagus. Painted primarily with pallet knife, I worked quickly and intensely over three days, spraying the asparagus with water and keeping my studio cool to preserve the wonderful and subtle colors. When I took a step back on the fourth day, everything was just so. The muse had entered and I wondered who had painted the painting.

If you all can join us, the reception for the Frances N. Roddy Competition is Thursday the 12th from 6-8 PM at the Concord Art Association's newly renovated historic building in Concord.

PS- I ended up having to scape down the sides of my big painting and re paint them using Windsor Newton's Liquin, which predictably dried in two days. The irony of it all.

Fall's Final Farewell to Color

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:19:00 +0000

The Blue Berry Barrens

I thought it was finished;the fall colors brief and beautiful. I was wrong. Will Kirkpatrick and I hunted down the flaming wild blueberry barrens of Maine. One barren more beautiful than the other.

I have never been in Maine so late and I never experienced the turning of the blueberry barrens. It took my breath away and I decided this is what I was meant to paint. Not that my paintings will become standard by which blueberry barrens are judged but because I get to stand all day in late October and look at them. And the blue berries themselves are the real things I remember being given on my birthday in a bowl of cream from my Uncles' own hidden spot in Malden, MA.

My little paintings were started in the field and finished in the studio where memory makes them all the more real. I was finally happy painting the landscape.

Plien Air work

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:09:00 +0000

Longfellow's Wayside Inn

This was the scene of another plien air painting day with Will Kirkpatrick. Autumn is the time to paint outside(for me )..the green is fading, other colors are popping, the light is warmer and lower, the shadows are longer.It's all good.

I was especially lucky in that Will wanted to do a structure, the Wayside Inn and the Mill.I can't wait to do the Mill. I love solid objects in the landscape to counter the organic wildness of foliage. Though, I am feeling more confident about imposing a design on the foliage to get it under control. I drew and painted this from life, planning out the composition and painting in basic blocks of the major colors. I finished it up in my studio today. I invented the light ambiance and I finished the little details such as window panes, the flag, the fallen leaves. Shown above is the painting and all my painterly decision. The other is the photograph from which I took my details. Will and I expect to be showing our work out at the Wayside Inn this Saturday as invited artists from 10 to 2PM. We will be painting on site. Hope to see you!

Happy paintings

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:58:00 +0000

The painting above (Study in Simplicity-Redux -Revisited) is the last painting that I have finished. It is a reduction, a study of complicated perspective, lighting and color reflection. I believe that one has to master THE defining shape and colors before choices about the details are made. As I told my students, it's easy to paint an eyelash (one little line):it's difficult to paint an eye.

I love this little series of simple yet bold shapes that are painted to exploring how flatness can be used to construct the illusion of space. You can feel the curved inside of the cup and feel the hard flat surface on which it sits yet individually each part of the painting (the shape of the shadow, the ellipse, the crescent of the bowl) would just look like a geometric floating shape. This piece is being shown in my 450 Harrison Ave studio.

We had a fabulously attended First Friday open studios (every First Friday of the month 450 Harrison Ave Boston artists open their studios from 5-9 PM) last night.
The comment that viewers consistently use when they walk into the studio is how "happy" my paintings make them. My paintings are called "Happy Paintings" by many visitors. I embrace that label. I can't deny it. And you know, I am happy when I am painting and exploring the joyous colors and shapes of objects that I come across in life. To make a BOLD painting from a humble object, makes me happy. It's a job and a responsibility that I take seriously. Walk in beauty.

Shamefull Self-promotion -September

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:52:00 +0000

The painting here is part of a four painting suite I call Party Cup Suite.It's 6" X 8".

I now have a Boston, South End studio, that I share with my creative husband, JB. Studio 223B 450 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118. This artist building is at the heart of the Boston Art district in the South End.

When my work is not on gallery exhibit, it is hanging here. On the First Friday of every month, the artists in our building are open to public visits from 5- 9 PM. The commercial Galleries on the first floor often have very exciting openings on First Fridays It is a great scene to be seen at with art, fun, food, drink and who knows what. The dates for the rest of 2009 are September 4th, October 2nd,Nov 6th, Dec 4th. I plan on being there.

In addition, thru October, the Art district hosts a crafts market, farmers market and antique market EVERY Sunday from 11 AM to 4 PM. The South End is a great place to stroll and get great brunch. I plan on being in my studio on Sundays most of these Sundays. You can always e-mail me,md@mariandioguardi.com, to make sure that I'll be in. Other artists are opened and welcoming all visitors too. More fun.

Then,(Can you stand it?!) on September 19th and 20th the entire South End in opened for two days 11 AM- 6PM for the annual South End Open Studios.
This is an event that every art lover and art student looks forward to each year. I'll be there. Hope to see you.

What I did over my summer

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:48:00 +0000

Well, I don't write often so in case you haven't heard, I don't love doing landscapes because I just can't seem to bring an added value of what is already overwhelmingly beautiful in nature. Also, in the good old summer time, I am always fighting the greens. Green Green Green and not a color to drink up.

The image above is the inspiration. What started out as a cloudy day and cleared. Hence the painting looks sunny. I did and finished in my studio. which is so much more satisfying.

But my buddy Will gets me out there and I give it the old try. Well Will also turned me on to Stapleton Kearn's Blog. Now Stapletton is an opinionated mother but he knows how to paint up a good painting. I think he could do it with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back. He knows his stuff and he knows stuff. So I read this blog and things slowly sink in. Having been taught to paint through observation, I now find, has really held me back from enjoying the landscape. Why? because it's more fun to make things up and be inspired by what you see not a slave to it!You can design things, add color change color, change forms, eliminate, add. etc. The more deliberately you can make your decisions the better the painting will be.

Stapleton knows so much that your head could explode trying to remember it all.I ventured forward at Swan's Island Maine, staying with a few principles at a time which I could keep in my mind:
Design with a center of interest in mind.
Mass the dark areas
Break up straight lines.
Add reds to the greens and where ever you can mix them in. It really does help control the greens. I used Cadmium red deep.
And use blue but keep it under control. The less blue in a sky the better.
There are so many more helpful hints but I can only swallow a few at a time.

Process and Pain

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:08:00 +0000

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

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:44:00 +0000

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

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:39:00 +0000

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

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:05:00 +0000

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!

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:12:00 +0000

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?

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:39:00 +0000

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

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:59:00 +0000

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!

Montserrat Encaustic Conference

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:27:00 +0000

I attended the Montserrat Encaustic Conference. The real meat of the program for me was the all day workshop which I took with Alexandre Masino. http://www.alexandremasino.com/. I admire his use of wax surfaces and textures in his beautiful landscapes and still lifes. He is a realist artist who works in encautic technique, using the medium's qualities very effectively. His paintings are not a forced preconceived vision in encaustic but rather he lets the encaustic do what it does best and that is to make a layered and textured surface. He has a very good sense of when to control the wax and when to let the control go.

For the most part, many encaustic realist painters don't seem, to me, to fully appreciate the medium. Many realistic artists hope that the encaustic medium helps their particular realism to be distinctive from oil or acrylic though to my eye they could very well be doing what they are doing in oil or acrylic. In fact, some realist artists try to get the encaustic to look like hyper realistic oils..something that oils is best suited to do. I see this as a technical goal not an artistic goal. Some encaustic realists use tape, stencils, and what ever works to re-create an effect close to a photo realism. Why?

I like to think of myself, firstly, as a painter. And as a painter, I see the paint quality and the image quality as equals in a painting. In other words: the painting ( quality and use of the paint) has to be as interesting to me as the image itself. That's the kind of painter I am. I like the quality of encaustic surface (textured, thickness, layered and luscious colors) but I will only use wax if it gives me something I can't get with oils .

Again, I am not interested in a narrative or recording image in my work but rather I find composition, light, color and surface to be where the excitement is whether it be in an abstract or a realistic painting. It's here where wax becomes "interesting"; encaustic a medium DOES have an advantage for me over other mediums. This I just now realized through this work shop. I can layer, texture and keep my colors pure and clean in an immediate way. If the results are not to my liking , it can be changed. But because the wax hardens on contact (more or less) the colors stay pure, like painting with a pallet knife. BUT then you can texture and layer immediately, not needing to wait, sometimes days and longer, as you must do in oils to say, scumble. Some oil painters do work up a layer of texture by a thick gesso or acrylic undercoat and then they use thin oils over texture but the texture of the under coat and the strokes with in the image are often a mis-match which, for me, corrupts the integrity of the painting. It's not me, I guess I am still a purist I guess wanting oil to be oil, acrylic to be acrylic and wax to be wax. This is certainly out of favor in the mix media world and classes me with dinosaurs.

The advantage that wax has over acrylics is that though the wax sets up, it can be activated and manipulated on demand through heat. This is unlike acrylics where once the acrylic paint sets up and dries (and it dries fast on pallet, brush and painting and you are always dealing with the water, extenders etc.). Acrylics is an awful medium for ME. I am a Leo, I feel much more comfortable using heat than water. Weird but true.

Now in encaustic realism, the resulting piece will only be as good as you are a painter. It still comes down to seeing and painting but now there is the whole wide world a texture. I intend to pursue it further. It's a risk because I have been somewhat competent and successful in oils. It's difficult to leave a safety zone but HEY! Nothing ventured nothing gained.

Anything else you want to know? It's an expensive medium but less time consuming if you know what you are after and don't stop to play too much.Oh yeah.. in the torch vs. heat gun..using both was the way for me to go. Each tool does something very different to the wax. And a thanks to Heather Hutchinson for giving me a little shove towards the torch.

Been a long time

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:58:00 +0000

Yes, I have been too busy to blog. I've been painting. I had the best winter painting sunny paintings of Venetian laundry lines, all winter long. I just sent off the works for my first solo show: Hanging Out in Venice at the Rose Gallery Fine Art, Hudson, NY. Everyone who reads this blog is invited to the opening reception on May 31st from 5-8. www.rosegalleryfineart.com

It's like sending 19 children into the world. Each one is my favorite for a different reason. They look different and they do different things. I tried to introduce a different element into each painting to keep them fresh and prevent them from being formulaic. It was fun. It was challenging. It was satisfying. This painting above is called A Tale of Two Families. It's whimsical and fun. I like this painting because I just stopped painting when it made me smile.

What ever happened to my encaustic painting plan? Well I have been thinking about it all winter, in between painting laundry lines. On June 6 th I will go to the England Wax Symposium at Montserrat College of Art for two days of lectures and workshops. I have some ideas and I'm sure I'll come back with more. The weather is warm enough now that I can start setting my encaustics up outside, necessitated by the lack of ventilation in my dungeon studio.

Last weekend I participated in Newton Open Studios. I was pretty pleased by the response of visitors, the purchases they made and the interesting opportunities that presented themselves. However, there has been something on my mind since last year ; that is the painters in Newton who shadow me and my work. I guess that I just want to say that creating art is about originating, not about imitating. When I took lessons from my teacher, Ed Stitt, I didn't want to paint like him. I wanted to learn how to paint. So all you students out there, don't honor you teachers by trying to paint like them. Take what they teach you and paint like yourself. Be an originator (like my guy Mike Finnegan www.finneganart.com) not an imitator.

In closing I want to say a "thank you" to Claudia. She came by at open studios . She was a wonderful visitor who told me that she enjoyed reading my blog. Well, she inspired me to get up and writing again. I didn't think ANYONE read my blog.

Time

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:17:00 +0000

I can't believe it's been ten days since I last posted and ten days since I last got to work in encaustic. Since then - good news and bad news.

Where to start? The bad news - no new encaustic work. My new hot air gun arrived BUT I realized that Hylla Evans was absolutely correct; I needed a variable fan as to not blow the the melting wax away or around more than I want. So I packed up the gun and I am waiting for the newer and better hot air gun. Do you care? Probably not but anyway...The encaustic workshop which I signed up for through the Copley Society is only in two weeks. I am really looking forward to it. Really

Hey, there is a segue into some good news: I have been invited to submit an full application to the Copley Society. I passed the first hurdle by submitting a screened application. But this is the amazing part,: I have to wait a year to submit my full long application with an original painting. Yikes! Yes, I have started to get it all together. You'd be surprised how fast a year can go by. No kidding.

Painting! Remember this blog was suppose to be about painting? I am painting. I am nearly done with the large stack. It will be finished this week. I am nearly done with the single large cup for my client who wasn't able to accommodate "A Change in Circumstance" in her home. You can see the painting of it in this blog. It's nearly done. And one more "nearly done" the Green Clothesline. I did glaze the green, toning it down to a little more of an earthy green. Fine tuning a painting is a good thing for me when external forces require me to push a painting further, I learn.

Other good news. I sold two of my favorite paintings of mine. Tipping Point and Cup in Waiting. Thank you and Enjoy, Betsy!I would have been willing to keep these paintings hanging in my own home but sometimes they get away. I also have a commission for another stack and there is talk about two clotheslines commissions in the air. All is good. I get to keep painting. That's what it is all about.

Encaustic painting and that's not all

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:54:00 +0000

Last Weekend we were back in Maine, Sedgwick to be exact. It's on the mainland right before Little Deer Island. Beautiful weather, wonderful company , great food and I did terrible painting. My heart wasn't in it. I had work at home I wanted to do: tone down the Green Clothesline (don't ask but it's all good), paint the big cup that I love which is on my easel and get back to my encaustic studies.

However, when I got back home, the fall plants that I ordered were waiting for me. So this week I was "farmer Marian". With all that I still managed to get to the art store and lo and behold there were encaustic tools. Could I resist? NO! When I got home did I do my studio work? NO! I went downstairs just to try a few things and ended up doing two landscape studies and I re- worked the apple (looks like the apple on the left now) for better or worse or the same but different.

My friend Maria asked me if the "love affair" with encasutic painting is still going strong. The answer to that is "The honeymoon is over but I am still in love. But now I see how much work I have ahead of me." Isn't it always that way.

I will be showing at the Brickbottom Open Studios this November 17 th and 18 th. I hope to show the encaustic work to see what people's reactions are. They don't know my other work so they will see it fresh with out prejudice.

That is worth the price of admission. So it goes. Stay tuned.

Dreaming

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:06:00 +0000

As you can see here, I have made some strong progress on my current stacked painting. It's all oil and in various stages of dryness. "So what" you say? Well, what that means to you, looking at it, is that the dark colors appear less saturated and dark because they are nearly dry. It's like a beach pebble that you pick up when wet: it's vibrant and beautiful and all the subtleties of color show. But when you get it home, it's all sort of flat and you wonder why you ever picked it up in the first place. Well.... oil without a medium is like that: when it's dries it flattens out and you can loose the true beauty of what I was seeing when I put down the wet paint. And ..that's why I varnish my paintings. It's not about "protecting them , it's about bringing back the vibrancy I put into them. So you have to imagine this with darker shadows. Still needing to be done: the yellow bowl and the rims at the bottom and the sides of the cradle panel.

So yes, I have been having fun doing this. I believe I have a client for it who already offered to pay me sight unseen. As flattering as that is, I want to make sure that she really does want it before I handle her money. When and if she loves it ; it will be hers.

I do dream in color and this week I dreamt of encaustic painting. I dreamt of a cup painting in peach, yellow and a neutralized deep rose color. I will have to paint it, I know that. I also spent the week collecting more equipment for the encaustic techniques. I have an iron, a temperature control griddle, brushes, sculpting tools and I broke down and ordered some encaustic paints. As soon as they get here..I'm gone. I'll be painting encaustic outside every day that I can . My oil artists friends are not very supportive about my new found enthusiasm for wax. I'd love to say that "they just don't understand" (because they don't) but that is too dismissive. So I am working from the assumption that they are correct: I can't do better work in encaustic than I do in oil and that I am just wasting my time. So it's up to me now to prove them all wrong.

PS.

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:34:00 +0000

Ah yes, the lovely green clothesline painting which I have enjoyed doing so much is now completed, with roof line and all.

Encaustic-a new frontier

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 23:43:00 +0000

Something Sweet-an apple still life study in encaustic and oil pigments

This week the encaustic medium which I ordered from Evans Encaustic arrived. It was beautiful and blank..like a beautiful blank canvas waiting to be painted on. This medium cried out to be used, now. So on a sunny perfect day, I set up outside, a hot plate medium, oils , pallet knives and read Joanne Mattera's book "the Art of Encaustic Painting". At first I told myself that I would just prepare panel substrates with linen and wax or linen and PVA but the pull of the paint was too much and I didn't stop there. I played "hookie" from my current body of work and prepared myself to make a mess and fail and have fun all the while.

Encaustic painting is not easy. I do not have the perfect appliances to keep the wax medium at a constant temperature. I did not perfect fusing. I melted wax and blew it all around. I spilled wax. I did make a mess and I did have fun. But more importantly I realized I would be able to do it and get better at it. I think once you know your equipment , melting, mixing and fusing becomes second nature.

Now , why bother with all this when I can just paint? I like the feeling of constructing, building almost sculpting. It's physical and visceral. I can't really explain it ; there is something that just grabs me about the contrasts and the contradictory nature of the wax. To keep control one must have an easy touch. Like life situations, things which are fluid suddenly stop, harden and become immovable and then, just as quickly, they can become fluid and flow right out of your control and be gone. then there is the end result, the effect of encaustic paint which is both ethereal and solid at the same time. And when it's done it's done, no drying, no varnishing. It is what it is.

Just a thought for today

md@mariandioguardi.com (mariandioguardi.com) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 20:09:00 +0000

When I am not painting and doing the things that one needs to do in order to paint, I walk and think.

And today , I was thinking of friends and family I have lost and my own oblivion to come (hopefully in the far far future) and I thought: for me it's not the death and dying. It's knowing that life will go on without me and I'll miss it all.

Then I went downstairs to the dungeon and painted the next value on the green clothesline roofline. And it was good.