Circle, Square, Rectangle

Past, Present, and Future

18" x 14" oil on panel

White, Gray, Blue

White, Gray, Blue, 9" x 12"

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.

Pink Hydrangea

24" x 24", oil on panel

I enjoy painting every dot. They are each a gift to someone else (the viewer) like sharing a piece of gum. I paint them for my own enjoyment, satisfaction, and centering first. They are reduced/concentrated elements of calm even when bouncy. They are complete in themselves, in their own location, suspended alone while part of a group like individuals in society.

Pink Hydrangea is a follow-up to Blue Hydrangea. Rather than a mandala type circular arrangement, it is a diffused square field. The globe form of the flowers is less accentuated in favor of the all over, hovering field. Quadrants advance and recede as do individual dots, activating the eye. Check out my Hydrangea oil pastels, too.

I'd like to draw your attention to the paintings and relief sculpture of Ian Tornay on view at the Bowery Gallery, New York City through March 26th. The press release for the show is as follows:

Ian Tornay paints lush, green landscapes in rural northeastern Pennsylvania and in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. In views of farms and rivers, Tornay paints with energetic brushwork that leads from foreground to sky in uninterrupted rhythms. He focuses our attention on the connections and fluid interplay of the elements: clouds, trees, fields and farm buildings.

For this show, his sixth at the Bowery Gallery, Tornay also presents a series of still lives. In these works, he contemplates the symbolism of each object and the different realms they belong to. Domestic objects, tools and pure geometric elements share the tabletop stage surrounded by dark, theatrical backgrounds. In these elemental compositions, he draws contrasts between permanence and decay, opacity and transparency, organic and man made objects.

Tornay also includes relief sculptures carved in wood. Each piece is carved from a single piece of wood that has been cut apart and rearranged. The jigsaw puzzle arrangements emphasize the connectedness of different objects with each other and with their tabletop environments.

Originally from New York, Ian Tornay lives in Philadelphia and teaches art and interior design at the Delaware College of Art and Design in Wilmington, DE. He was educated as an architect at the Cooper Union, NYC before receiving an MFA in painting from Queens College, NYC. His work has been reviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer and in The New Republic.

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am to 6 pm. Please contact the gallery for more information or tornayian@gmail.com

The River

9" x 12", oil on panel

Just in case you were missing the hard-core dots...

I like the different ways of looking at this - the sensation of falling, rising, a field (area), strata, aerial, the blue melding in with the green in planes. Concepts relating to possible readings include levels of social position and individuals within larger society, strata of meaning, and parallel layers of geological deposits. You can just take it and run with it.

I recently viewed an excellent interview with painter Philip Guston on YouTube made by the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. A statement he made regarding the generation of ideas as multiple pathways resonates with me not only in painting but especially with my current iPad Project:

"Nothing is ever solved in painting; it's a continuous chain that sometimes doesn't go in one line, goes in a serpentine line or in crooked paths, detours which have to be investigated. I felt like an explorer who almost got to the top of Mount Everest and somehow stopped just short and remembered and thought 'maybe I forgot some gear, forgot some equipment' but in going down to recover this equipment I took side paths that looked exciting, full of possibilities."

- Philip Guston

Here's to going off the path which is maybe the right path.

Looking Up

12" x 12" oil on panel

Oil paint! There's nothing like it. I couldn't have more pleasure eating an ice cream sundae. Amidst all the boxes from our January third move to Rhode Island I stole a small amount of time to break in my new studio. It is very modest, a third bedroom, compared to my former dream studio, but the press and flat files fit in the basement and we'll be setting up a small shed for the kiln.

Pressed for time, I made a picture as if I could only paint one dot and had to get everything I wanted to say into it, distilled like a haiku. The picture relates to other "minimalist" works I've done as well as a painting I did in 2005 called The Veil. The image came to me while watching Shaun the Sheep Off the Baa with my son. No kidding, the claymation cartoon by Aardman Animations. It is set on a farm so the setting is pastoral. There was a shot of Shaun looking up from a pit or something; I don't quite recall the scenario. My husband thought of artist Andy Goldsworthy (he makes art out of nature while in nature, stunning, check him out) when he saw it. Funny, I looked at the cover of my book of his work in passing as I unpacked it, finding it too large to fit on my bookshelf. It is perhaps an unconscious influence but there is definitely a relationship.

The view is from underground looking up at the sky. There's a little Alice in Wonderland to it, a surreal journey from one place to another that is unknown. It is definitely about my move. You can never quite know exactly what it will be like until you get there. The brown vortex suggests climbing through an earthy, murky tunnel with eyes set on getting out. The central focus is air, breathe-ability. My family has been looking forward to much shorter work hours for my husband, friends in the neighborhood for my son, and an art community for me. The goal is more breathe-ability and already we've experienced a significant difference. For the first time in our eighteen-year relationship my husband has been home for breakfast and dinner every day. My son has plans to see three friends outside of school this week, and I've had a close artist friend from college over and will be getting together with three others shortly.

Back to the painting, the lighter and warmer brown towards the cooler brown/black surrounding the center is a transitional space. It isn't static but propellant. It also isn't negative like solid, flat black but like fertile soil, implying growth through change. It isn't a smooth transition, however, and one could imagine it being a bit slippery, something one has to slug oneself through in order to make it, similar to climbing a rope but messier. The view is also telescopic, the blue circle like a planet, a new world for which there is little detail, little information except something placid, pleasant, promising. I think everyone needs to carve out a space in their days, their lives to have such a place.