Winter Landscapes #12 and #13

Winter Landscape #12, Stone Wall Upper & Lower, 12" x 9" oil on panel

Winter Landscape #13, Dusk, 9" x 12" oil on panel

The movie Julie and Julia is every struggling creative person's fantasy. A true story, writer, Julie Powell, is frustrated and bored in her day job is inspired by another artist, Julia Child.

["Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music." -Julia Child]

Combining her love of cooking and writing, she gives herself a monumental task with a deadline: to make every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook in 365 days, blogging about it on the way. It isn't easy, sometimes stressful, sometimes fun, but Julie succeeds in immersing herself in the process and gains literary attention (not to mention a major motion picture). I heard a writer on the radio tell about a strategy another writer recommended him: to write your life story in one hour a day at the same time for twelve days. Artists can find the structure and discipline such strategies can offer. Similar art school problems I heard from more than one teacher is to "make a hundred of them", "work on it for thirty-six hours", "draw the negative of it", or to paint on a deck of cards. The result would flush out problems in the work, probably resolve many, and provide focus. Painter On Kawara is known for his series of "date paintings" numbering over two thousand. Working in a series follows suit, like I am doing in my series of the seasons.

Winter Landscape #12, Stone Wall Upper and Lower, gets its title because my house has a beautiful stone wall around it. As a little girl, a thirty minute or so drive with my grandfather to visit my aunt in Ipswich, MA seemed like a long. Before the days of dsi's or even tapes of kids music, we had a lot of time on our hands. He came up with a game of counting all the stone walls and white fences we saw; simple, it delighted me. The center band of gray here has dots that don't really construct it but bubble up, pointing in perspective to the grass and sky above. The blue shadow has a different vanishing point off to the right. The painting is made of bands, the gray window edges, the upper left of which isn't fully covered with paint but dryly gone over allowing the white of the panel to show through and make light. The sky has blended bands of blue and of course there is the snow. It is called "Upper and Lower" because the wall is the middle line between the bottom and the top. The top could almost be spring and so in this way it is like an earlier painting of mine, Winter on the Left, Spring on the Right.

Winter Landscape #13, Dusk uses the white window edge to accentuate the blue of the snow, sky, and blue cast to the brown trees outside. It is quite stunning to look out and see that glow at the end of the day. I love to exclaim to my son, "Look, it's blue out!" trying to pass on that painter's knowledge that white isn't always white. Your assignment for the week, painter or not: look at the white walls of a room and see the color changes created by light. Notice warm vs. cool, bright vs. dark, blue/purple vs. yellow. If you get good you'll notice other colors, too. Take a break from texting and look : )