iPad Project 4-30-11

iPad Project 4-29-11

iPad Project 4-28-11

iPad Project 4-27-11

4-26-11 iPad Project

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4-24-11 iPad Project

From the Hydrangea

9" x 12", oil on panel

I took a break from the studio to go to the opening reception of "Scale: Experiencing Size, Surface, & Story" at the Attleboro Arts Museum in Massachusetts. The show features the work of three artists, Juan Jose Barboza-Gubo, Jodi Colella, and Richard Kattman.

From the museum's press release:

"Barboza-Gubo (painting and sculpture), Colella (mixed media sculpture) and Kattman (painting) deliver visual expressions that truly absorb the viewer thanks to either their strategically planned size, detailed texture, significant message – or all of the above.

“In some cases the highly appropriate grand scale of this artwork engulfs the viewer – yet, we also have the chance to rise above work that is extremely exaggerated – but doesn’t tower over gallery-goers,” comments Mim Brooks Fawcett, Executive Director of the Attleboro Arts Museum.” “Scale controls our relationship with these authentic expressions and we are compelled to explore,” she added.

Click here for the full article.

Barboza-Gubo's work struck me in a way that doesn't happen very often. His self-portraits with antlers remind me of Joseph Beuys' watercolors also because of the limited color and alchemical properties as the former's are done in blood, gouache, and graphite. In the show is an impressive carved wood sculpture with twisting forms like a Van Gogh cypress tree with a narrative. Large-scale paintings of Barboza-Gubo's are also on view, forms reminding me of the violent chaos of Gericault's Raft of the Medusa. Not in the show is his his Pieta Series 3 that blows me away. It has the mastery of Picasso's fragmented form and the layers of transparency and graphics combined with figuration as in Sigmar Polke. You can imagine that I'm jumping out of my skin even more to learn that he received his MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design (my alma mater) and is a faculty member there.

"Scale: Experiencing Size, Surface, & Story" runs April 15 – May 7, 2011

On the home front, this is what I'm doing:

This painting comes out of the work I'm doing of Hydrangeas including an oil paintings, watercolors, and oil pastels. My oil painting, Blue Hydrangea, is focused on capturing the globes of petals while this new painting allows the globes to diffuse into layered colored points that go back and forth in space. They may be seen as part of the plant or as their own system. Painted in April during a series of cloudy days, I kept the edges of the circles soft. They are thinly glazed in contrast to the heavier applications in other paintings. I think they have a wet, earthy feel to them, the modulated brown ground reflects light like the dark backgrounds in old master paintings. Someone seeing the original asked if I use stencils. They are all freehand. Too much unnatural uniformity makes them too mechanical looking. I also draw the dots when using the iPad and don't use any of the tools that make automatic dots. I think there is an emotional tenderness that comes through in the hand no matter how perfect or imperfect the circles appear to be. Perfection isn't my goal. I'm involved in each moment. A dot is a moment but not an instant. I can't paint them in quick dabs. It's like patiently trying to catch rain drop by drop but not wanting the drops to combine. Maybe it's more like catching snowflakes on a mitten in order to look at each one.

4-23-11 iPad Project

iPad Project 4-22-11

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iPad Project 4-19-11

iPad Project 4-18-11

4-17-11

Night

12" x 9"oil on panel 2010-2011

I wasn't fully satisfied with this painting, Yellow Sun that I did in early 2010:

So now it's Night. It was fine before but the sky seemed too thin and something was not quite there. I decided to dig back into it. I think it's a better painting but I can see the appeal of bright daylight on snow. In both, the yellow (sun or moon) is glowing, compelling. It's optimistic and its height reminds me of the lyric "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough" from Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by singer-songwriter Hugh Martin Jr.. He changed the lyric at the request of Frank Sinatra who wanted to include a happier version of the song on his album, A Jolly Christmas. It was originally "From now on we'll have to muddle through somehow".

Martin died in March at the age of 96. In response, Fresh Air re-released Terry Gross' interview with him from 2006. Remarkably, he reminded Gross of a previous interview from 1989 when she asked him to sing a few verses of one of his songs. He told her her kind words encouraged him to sing again in the years since. Kindness goes a long way. I'm wondering if positive affirmation can be squeezed into a painting, maybe into a yellow disc.

iPad Project 4-16-11

iPad Project 4-15-11

iPad Project 4-14-11

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iPad Project 4-10-11

My Hand and My Grandmother's Crocheting, photographs

Every once in a while I do a little photography. I intend to use these shots of my grandmother's crocheting in my iPad work, which I still am going to do, but they turned out to be photos on their own. I like the texture, light, pattern and the meaning of the handmade, connotations of warmth both personal and from the shawl. The sparkling threads of silver in the white yarn and the flowers remind me of snow and snowflakes. The top photo has my hand resting on the crocheting by my kitchen sink, light coming from the unseen window above. A hint of my grandmother's cranberry glass is in the upper left. Her name was Lillian Romano, which I add rather than letting her go unnamed as so many women who leave their crocheting behind do. I think I'm thinking of her because her birthday is April ninth. She took care of me until she died when I was six. I think those six years I spent largely in the kitchen with her made some kind of impact. I watched Days of our Lives and The Price is Right with her and she taught me to make meatballs, sometimes for Italian wedding soup. I love the sounds of cooking, water running, dishes, and people (dogs too!) in the kitchen. It's peaceful, home. The kitchen is supposed to not matter much anymore. It's a place women fought to get free from. It's a workplace where money doesn't get made. We are busy and so many families struggle to find time to eat together so it can be a place to walk through, grab something from. Still, it is where people gravitate towards at a party. I think it's where the heart is.

iPad Project 4-9-11

iPad Project 4-8-11

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iPad Project 4-2-11

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