Happy Birthday Flowers from Christoph and Bouquet

24x18 oil on panel

12x12 oil on panel

I can't think about flowers in a vase without thinking about Manet's flowers which I mentioned after doing the Pink Roses series. The style of text with image is a little like Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe (translated, "This is not a pipe") 1926. The text in my painting provides a sense of narrative, my relationship to the flowers, and the title ties them to the person who gave them to me. My birthday is the day before Valentine's Day, so these were technically for both. He asked me if I prefer flowers or chocolate and I said flowers because I can paint them. I didn't want roses, the traditional red ones aren't the most interesting coloristically and I wanted a variety of colors as a change from pink roses. It was a stunning bunch, dauntingly magnificent. I'm a bit of a stinker because before he asked I bought a heart shaped box of chocolates for myself in case he didn't come through because I really like them and it's hard to find them after Valentines Day : )

The happy birthday painting doesn't have the dots I sometimes use but I really enjoyed painting each flower and its relationship to the others, which is similar. I went nuts with the dots in Bouquet but still retained the form of a couple. They are happy paintings. Janet Fish is a painter whose subject is still life. She often paints glass and reflections are a preoccupation. They are bright, clear, and skillful at description but I think they are more on the surface of visual perception while mine are more complexly emotional. Not in any way to detract from Fish, I like her work; we're just thinking about different things. On the other hand, we do have something in common aside from the subject matter here: color and light make us tick and we don't want you to miss it.

Thaw #2

18 x 24 oil on panel

Whites of melting snow give away to green grass. The top center is a focal point, a restful blue-gray sky. The painting is similar to my abstractions done in 1998 and exhibited at Villanova University. Light lines form a frame, an artificial spatial point that takes the painting into a metaphorical realm, a platonic conception of thawing winter. Matisse did it with chairs, for example. Rather than a rendering of a chair, his depictions are the idea of chairs, re situated in artificial, fantastical rooms partially observed, partially imagined. On a grimmer note, Andy Warhol's electric chairs' repetitiveness produced via silkscreen are also about the concept of an electric chair and all the ethical questions tied to it. Presenting any picture, photograph, painting, whatever, of an electric chair comes with the baggage of the moral debate over capital punishment. Art works this way, inevitably symbolic. Portraits can be seen as emblematic of the human condition despite the specificity of a particular person in time through the eyes of a particular artist, likewise for Christian art. Rodin and Camille Claudel's figurative sculptures are great examples. Airy and cold, Thaw #2 is my experience and concept of winter.

Gray Cloud, Afternoon

4" x 6" oil on panel

Like millions of others, I watched the Olympics. The human drama was there in time: life, death, hope, perseverance, defeat, triumph, achievement, the support of others. Empathetically, we watch with excitement and wonder. Olympic athletes take their sport to the level of art. In an interview with Evan Lysacek, American, the new gold medalist in figure skating, the host asked Dick Button (Olympic skating champion and TV skating analyst) if his performance achieved a balance between athleticism and artistry. Button confirmed it had and went on to tell that when Lysacek looks back on this time he will think not of the medal but know that he "skated well". Kaaren Anderson of the First Unitarian Church in Rochester, NY reflected on a similar theme after seeing an old gravestone inscribed with a person's name followed by, "She did a few things well." Initially it seemed insulting but after further consideration Anderson said that it was something to have the consistency and focus to do a few things well.

Like athleticism, painting requires dedication. Form in sports and art is very important for clarity. It displays control. That doesn't necessarily mean tight control but being able to execute form and still be fluid, fresh. Painting doesn't take place in linear time exactly and doesn't lend itself to time based media. It's quiet and still, although movement may be experienced in the expression, such as in brush stroke delivery. When teaching I have often compared the selection of a size and style of brush to choosing a golf club. Situations require different tools. Painting is intimate, one-on-one. Only blockbuster museum shows and the immersion of an image in culture, the Mona Lisa, for example, reach a kind of collective audience.

Scott Hamilton said to Lysacek that skating is about showing what you can do "with knives strapped to your feet." This is similar to a former professor telling the class that painting is amazing; we are pushing colored glue onto cloth with a stick with hairs on it.

It was disappointing that Lysacek's victory was challenged by Russia whose silver medalist, Evgeni Plushenko executed a quadruple jump and called the quad "the future of skating". Lysacek's performance was nearly perfect and the judges did not think that the ability to do a quad superseded other criteria. This situation made me think about the current state of painting. There are many artists and critics who dismiss the art form as passe because all two-dimensional pictorial rules have been broken. They say in the Internet Age, new media is where it's at. I disagree. Painting has been around since prehistoric times. Painters do not need to reinvent the wheel. Whether or not the future of skating lies in the quad, skating has its own inherent elements, its own language. You're not going to hit a ball skating; you're not going to use water in a warm state while skating; you're not going to walk on a tightrope while skating. Everything has limitations. Yet there is beauty that comes out of working within parameters. Skaters will always be compared to skaters of the past but also bring something of their own to the sport. Why does painting have to be blasted? Why do many look down their noses, dismissing it as conventional? It is ridiculous and frustrating.

Let's talk about the work. Gray Cloud and Afternoon are paintings that speak particularly in the singular. The gray cloud has a formidable presence like a character in a play. The viewer is asked to reflect on that presence which is mysterious and defies naming. Afternoon also has a singular cloud but it is set back, the trees assertive despite their scale. It's a view from my studio window of a bird sanctuary across the highway (I took out the highway). Small dots here and there are like touchstones.

I like the way Canadian skater Patrick Chan does other things in addition to skating like tennis, pilates, yoga, golf, and weekly piano lessons - talk about living life to its fullest! It reminds me of advice for life a mentor recently gave me, "Be well, live full, paint well." It is not unlike Button's for Lysacek, memories of "skating well". What would you like to remember and be remembered for doing well?

Sunrise (Welcome to Rhode Island)

44" x 48" oil on canvas*

A sunrise means a new day, new beginnings, something hopeful. We might know the outline of our day ahead: responsibilities, schedules, challenges that make going back to bed appealing or happy prospects that make us jump into our clothes and out the door. Most of the day is unknown: how things will happen, conversations, details about place, the way time feels.This painting comes from the sunrise seen through my kitchen window as does Sunrise January 2010. My sunrise is about the unknown that is about to unfold, the beginning of the play, and the belief that the play is worth seeing, the day is worth living. It is about possibilities, opportunities in which to act, Carpe Diem, an expression conveying the urgency that life is short. Sunrises are exuberant celebrations of the start of the day, fireworks in the morning rather than the dark. Would you believe I feel this way even though I gave up caffeinated coffee?! The title of my solo show at the Bowery Gallery in NYC in 2008 was Images of Optimism; the theme is consistent in this work, its snappy dots each like notes in a composition, all necessary, none extra. They are insistent. The raw canvas, prepared with PVA, helps convey the transparency of the curtains, simultaneously forming the wall behind their white material and the air outside. These side areas define area of the central dots. The gray trees below don't upstage them and add to the depth, a vanishing point located about two-thirds down on the right.

Lastly, the painting is playful. I'll leave you with an image of one of my favorite toys when I was a kid:

*The white in the bottom corners doesn't have that blueish tint but reflected the light so that I am having trouble getting the digital photo to cooperate.

Ceramics Western NY Landscapes #13, 14, & 15

5" x 3"

3 1/2" x 4"

3" x 3 1/2"

ceramic reliefs

What would I do without NPR? A recent story about memory and time aired, enlightening me to the science behind the feeling of time speeding up as one gets older. My recent move, my son's transition to adolescence (evidenced by his wishing to say "crap" and "pissed off" as well as keeping me out of sight when the bus picks him up) and the appearance of new wrinkles make perfectly clear that time is marching on. We begin saying things we heard adults say when we were children such as "Where does the time go?" and "They grow up so fast." A friend from high school Facebooked that she knows she is old because she and her husband were falling asleep watching t.v. with their fifteen-year-old and her boyfriend. It was 8:00 p.m.

Back to NPR. The story is Why Does Time Fly as You Get Older by Robert Krulwich. Warren Meck, a psychology professor from Duke University, and a neuroscientist, David Eagleman, from Baylor College of Medicine provide the research. Essentially, when you are experiencing something new your brain takes in more details, more information. Repeat experiences don't do this and seem shorter. One might remember taking your new puppy on her first walk but a regular schedule walks in the same neighborhood with your grown dog may blend together. The flip side is that as one enters the "golden years" the moments become more precious and can again have the detail of youthful new experiences. The article has a great Simpsons clip called Homer Every Day which is so worth a look. [If you are trying to improve your memory (a decline starts at age thirty), one effective way is physical exercise.]

How does this relate to my work? The first two reliefs are continuations of work with side panels relating to the view from a kitchen window as well as the stage. The bottom piece is playful with its description of snow in the form of snowballs. I like their shiny quality that contributes to the sense of reflected light. The majority, if not all, of my ceramic landscapes are like memories. They aren't done from life but either from a specific place and environmental situation or from layered experiences (even Shrek says he is a complex individual, layered like an onion). I'm looking to do some paintings of the nearby bay from life as soon as it gets above forty-five degrees and isn't windy enough to blow my easel over - some new experiences to add to my layers.

Frost

6 1/2" x 7 1/2" watercolor

A fall frost is often accompanied by gardeners rushing around trying to protect their plants in various manners. Word spreads quickly, "There's going to be a frost tonight!" Some plants make it, some don't. It makes me think of The Resiliency Movement to which I just became aware through a fascinating WGBH program called This Emotional Life. Apparently most people are equipped with resiliency, which doesn't mean that one isn't shaken by difficult life events but that one is able to bounce back and be renewed. It is incredible to hear stories of people who rebuild their lives after natural disasters like Haiti and acts of war. President Obama in his first State of the Union address Wednesday night commented on the resiliency of Americans currently experiencing economic hardship.found an on-line course* about resiliency developed by Dr. Kristi Miller and Dorothy J. Landon .

"To further this understanding (or perhaps this confusion), Werner and Smith (1982) believe that resilience refers to a dynamic process residing in individuals as well as in the environment. From this perspective, resilience reflects human development as opposed to being a genetic trait that only a few "superkids" possess. In addition, Rutter (1984) states that "resilience cannot be seen as a fixed attribute of the individual…If circumstances change, resilience alters" (p. 57). Furthermore, Masten, Best, and Garmezy (1990) classify three types of resilience:

1. positive outcomes despite experiencing high-risk environments;
2. competent functioning in the face of acute or chronic major life stressors; and
3. recovery from a traumatic event."

We all run into major life stressors at some point in time, like plants. A list of stressors developed by psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe in order of severity can be found on Wikipedia. Interesting that divorce, ranked number two is ahead of imprisonment, number four.

Art is meditative to me, a stress release. Frost is stable in its circular points of focus yet retains a sense of movement, growth, and atmosphere, reminders that change is a natural process.

*quoted with permission

Sunrise January 2010

In between unpacking boxes and scheduling utilities I managed to make these two. The sketch I did at 6:45 a.m. looking out the kitchen window. Beyond those trees is the bay. the colors changed in seconds and fifteen minutes later it all turned blue. I want to hold onto the color. The trees have payne's gray, black, and blue mixed in. It was tricky to capture the volume of the clouds overhead when the dots want to flatten space, accentuating the picture plane. The two pictures are very different. The sketch is airy and energetic while the painting is staid and iconic, almost classical. Dictionary.com defines "staid" as "fixed, settled, or permanent". The drawing is more spontaneous, a reflection of how it was made. There is movement in the painting and the entire concept of a sunrise is temporal. The painting has that in addition to a feeling of being grounded, the dots are like map pinpoints, helping me to orient myself. So far so good.