Summer #3, Sky, Field, Trees & Summer #4, Blue Cloud

8" x 8"

oil on canvas

So far I am more a studio painter than a plein air painter. These paintings are done from memory. I look, look, look and then paint, paint, paint. I was amazed the first time I learned of how the painter William Bailey works. [He served as a guest critic in Tuscany when I studied there for a summer month after my junior year] His still life of simple vessels in monochromatic warm tones are done from the memory of these objects; they aren't directly in front of him as he paints. There is something Grecian about them, the Platonic ideal, perfection. Although executed in earth tones, I wouldn't call their modesty "down to earth".

I think my paintings are approachable. The Blue Cloud has subtle, dark dots in the trees. I like the feeling of heat in these paintings, summer warmth, and the active sky suggesting the day is moving on. We've hit fall now and I confess I am less than inspired to paint the foliage this time around. The leaves are uncharacteristically dull and muted in Rochester this year. I've only seen one lucky house to have a bright red tree glowing in their yard. I like browns but sigh.

Ceramics!

Hill, Dark Trees

Winter to Spring Window

Tilting Field

all approximately 5" x 7"

The kiln works!!!!!!  I got a used kiln and a dream come true in one.  I mainly want to make landscape reliefs. I don't know if I'll make vessels, maybe hand-built incorporating relief.  These can be hung on the wall by an indentation in the back.  I love that these landscapes are made from earth, clay.  The layers of the land, its undulations; the space between expanses of field, woods, hill, and sky are the subject.  Here in the country these areas, their textures, color and expanse fill my eyeballs.  We are fortunate to have the undeveloped lot across the street and we don't feel hemmed in.   I love moving the clay, forming vision into something I can handle, like building with hammers, nails, and wood.  In addition to form there is the stretching of the ground and the sky that is over and around.   Making this experience into a solid is challenging and fascinating.  

Greek bas reliefs are narratives telling history and myth pulled out of marble with the perfection of structure embodied in that culture's architecture.  I admire them greatly, but am not interested in pursuing their figuration and Platonic purity of the ideal.  My things are crude, reflective of the mud they are made from and the mud they represent.  Beautiful in the organic qualities like the range of compost to thriving plants.  They have the cultural context of a Bostonian relocating and embracing the middle of nowhere.  Local doesn't have to mean provincial.   I am just beginning.

The Neighbor's Shed

36" x 24"

oil on panel

Okay, you might notice this is a fall painting when we are in winter. I did an oil pastel of the view out one of my studio windows and this is a painting done from the drawing. I think the dots are kind of perky, not in a bubblegum snapping teenager way, but in a playful way. Rather than crunching leaves, one feels as if it is possible to bounce on the treetops like with moonboots. This playfulness is a quality that keeps the work, harkening back to Pointillism, from being dry and redundant. A fellow student in art school complained on our trips to the museum that it was "like going to a cemetery. It is full of dead art by dead artists." Perhaps some artists might agree, maybe those trying to find the cutting edge. For me the art is timeless while of its time, as full of life as Mozart is today.
The neighbors put up a new shed and it creeped into my work. The Post-Impressionists found Impressionism limiting because the short marks didn't lend themselves to clearly defining form. It was almost a focusing problem. Cezanne delineated form, but I think his bathers walked the line. I didn't want to make the thin trees out of dots and used line with dots weaving in and out of them. I see so many variations in the color of what I am looking at that I am not always content to make one or two stand for all, thus this pixelization. This painting makes me think of Pissarro, especially one at the Guggenheim, The Hermitage at Pontoise, where I studied how he handled paint. His work strikes me as quieter than a lot of the other Impressionists, a little less bang, but the paintings are very thoughtful, carefully and beautifully seen and made. If you check out this painting: Landscape at Chaponval, you can see what I admire about his treatment of houses in a landscape. I like the way they are nestled there, part of the patterning of the picture with the greenery coming in front of, behind, and through. Imagine what would have happened if he had heard rock 'n' roll?!