iPad Project 6-17-11

Green

9" x 12" oil on panel

Merry Christmas!

Hydrangea, Window

Check in daily to Art Weekly for an iPad Advent Calendar! Each post will feature one or more of my artworks done on the iPad using the apps Brushes, Sketchbook Pro, Inspire Pro, Art Studio, or Type Drawing.

Sunrise (Welcome to Rhode Island)

44" x 48" oil on canvas* PRIVATE COLLECTION

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.

Primary Window (Early Spring)

oil on panel

24" x 18"

I love Matisse's Window at Tangier painted in Morocco in 1912. It is the type of window that opens in, which becomes the side panel of the painting. The painting deals with this rectangle of pink, the pinks and oranges in the view to the red-orange vase with flowers on the sill, and the blues including the large rectangle at the top. Paint is dappled in areas to reflect light. The title is due to its primary color composition of blue, red, and yellow (three central bands). It's what your eye wants to see, after all.

Primary Window (Early Spring) is frontal. Whites and grays frame it from bright on the left to dark on the sill. The colors aren't very exaggerated; it is a day of bright blue sky, bleached grass uncovered from snow, and bare trees more pink than brown. Vertical ripples of the curtains bracket the woods, drawn like the colors shimmer. The lightness of the colors and the paint handling make it airy. Vital are the space between the trees, their rhythm, as does the way the treetops mingle with sky.

Landscape consists of objects: rocks, trees, whatever, the place in the space they inhabit, and that space, coexistence, interdependence. I like seeing the connection between these named things and their context (colors isolated and interacting is the same idea). It is difficult to see oneself that way, maybe impossible. We try to see ourselves, our connections to each other and the world through photographs, Facebook, Google Earth. I think they are all good tools for trying to grasp this thing that can't be held. Sticking one's hand in dirt is another way, a relief to feel something real. Reverend Scott Taylor of the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Rochester describes the mystery between people almost as a force, as God if you are a believer in God. He seems to stick more to just the idea of mystery and something that's there but you don't know what it is; he has a hand gesture to describe it. I think this mystery or energy between people is the same as what I see in the landscape. Lots of people "see it", feel it; I'm just trying to paint it. For that matter, lots of people have tried and continue to try to make art about it. It is what makes painting so difficult, almost daunting at times, but draws one back over and over to engage in the impossible obsession of trying to nail it. Plenty of painters wouldn't have this agenda and would say that they are just trying to make a good picture, Pop Artists, for example. Western Modern Art from the beginning of the twentieth century through today reflects the ideas of Western Society, including religion. Artists ranged in their beliefs from a singular, all-powerful Creator as defined by Christianity and Judaism, to Atheism and everything in between. Painting is a spiritual/religious practice for me. As an undergrad I read Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art which also delved into his ideas about color theory. I don't think there are many great books written since on the subject (let me know if you know of any!) because it is such an intangible area. I'll just keep making tangible things about the intangible and shut up like most painters do.

Yellow Walls, Landscape

24" x 36"

oil on panel

A concern of painters and a downfall of students is the problem of white. Too much white mixed in colors can bleach out a picture, leaving the appearance pasty. It is difficult to keep the tints (white added to a color) clear and purposeful, not faded and dull. White can bring light into a picture or it can drain it. I made plenty of pasty student paintings. Then students often overcompensate by making paintings almost completely out of bright colors. This painting problem is a part of Yellow Walls, Landscape. The bright yellow interior contrasts with the very pale outside which is bathed in a cool light. If I made the blue and green darker or more saturated the effect would be lost. I think I pulled it off. The left yellow rectangle is slightly darker and greener than the right, adding a hint of dimension.

I have a feeling that sometimes people see the wavy lines in my pictures as an ineptitude, evidence of not being able to draw a straight line. Over and over people say they disposes this ability as concrete evidence of their lack of creativity. Drawing straight is something that can be learned like good handwriting and is not a reflection of an artistic mind. For the record, if my line is wobbly it is intentional. It is because I deliberately want to convey something organic or flexible, in this case something of a curtain, or if it is window moulding then it is there as a transition from the crisp yellow to the natural outside.

Ruth Miller is a painter whose work shows an excellent color sensibility. Her work is sophisticated in its relationships of color and its role in composition. Images are sensitively created embedding time in the paint. She is represented by the Lohin Geduld Gallery in New York city.

Painting as practiced by Ms. Miller is described well by art critic Peter Schjeldahl in an April 6th interview in The New Yorker Out Loud. The focus of the talk was the emotional power of painting in relation to the exhibit Master Pieces of European Painting from the Norton Simon Museum at the Frick Collection in New York City. He spoke for all painting in saying, "Paint is made of the same stuff as we are". He explained the importance of seeing art in person because paintings are made of paint while reproductions are made of ink (I will assert pixels as well). In reproductions we just get the image, what we want to see/believe. Seeing the original poses a more challenging experience. He emphasized the term "hand-made" which is often downplayed in the current trend of appropriation. Schjeldahl gives Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbaran's Still Life with Lemons, Oranges, and a Rose, 1633, as an example.
The exhibition will be open until May 10th, 2009. Go, go, go!!!

Window (Late Fall)

oil on panel

24" x 18"


I recently commented on Vermeer's View of Delft. Another thing, among many, I like about his paintings are the way he treated windows and light. He painted many domestic interiors including solitary women. The window is secondary to the figure, but it is the source of the beautiful light that tenderly illuminates the woman. Unlike Renoir who portrays women as ornamental (basically the only thing I like of his are the peaches which are as boobilicious as his nudes but not offensive to the feminist), it seems that Vermeer respected women. It is the difference between the derogatory term "soccer mom" and mentioning Michelle Obama's name.

This issue concerns me as a mother who is very domestic, shuffling between the studio and kitchen. I love both and don't like my mother/wife role to be dismissed as lesser than my husband's as breadwinner. In this context my vocation as an artist sometimes is perceived as a hobby, especially if the conversation turns to sales and other marketplace-based evaluation. Luckily it doesn't seem to happen as often as it used. Enough venting, I'll leave the rest to Whitney Chadwick who addresses gender roles and societal views in her book, Women, Art, and Society. To be fair, I've heard a musician say that people equate his profession with unemployment and an actor in New York City with waiting tables.

On the male experience of the home and workplace, I found out about an early telecommuter before the "tele". 2009 is the bicentennial of the birthday of Charles Darwin. A recent BBC program, In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg, focused on Darwin's domesticity. He lived in the country with his wife and children in a home where he based his laboratory and garden used for his experiments. Apparently this quiet setting and family support fostered his studies.

Domesticity is the back story to Window (Late Fall), another view from my bathroom window. The landscape, this rectangle, glows. It is like stained glass when fully illuminated by the brightest day. The landscape is far, based on its scale, but then it overtakes you as it presses forward into your space before receding again. The landscape is burned into my retina, seen in quiet moments between the laundry.