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 : )

Thaw #2

18 x 24 oil on panel

Whites of melting snow give away to green grass. The top center is a focal point, a restful blue-gray sky. The painting is similar to my abstractions done in 1998 and exhibited at Villanova University. Light lines form a frame, an artificial spatial point that takes the painting into a metaphorical realm, a platonic conception of thawing winter. Matisse did it with chairs, for example. Rather than a rendering of a chair, his depictions are the idea of chairs, re situated in artificial, fantastical rooms partially observed, partially imagined. On a grimmer note, Andy Warhol's electric chairs' repetitiveness produced via silkscreen are also about the concept of an electric chair and all the ethical questions tied to it. Presenting any picture, photograph, painting, whatever, of an electric chair comes with the baggage of the moral debate over capital punishment. Art works this way, inevitably symbolic. Portraits can be seen as emblematic of the human condition despite the specificity of a particular person in time through the eyes of a particular artist, likewise for Christian art. Rodin and Camille Claudel's figurative sculptures are great examples. Airy and cold, Thaw #2 is my experience and concept of winter.

Gray Cloud, Afternoon

4" x 6" oil on panel

Like millions of others, I watched the Olympics. The human drama was there in time: life, death, hope, perseverance, defeat, triumph, achievement, the support of others. Empathetically, we watch with excitement and wonder. Olympic athletes take their sport to the level of art. In an interview with Evan Lysacek, American, the new gold medalist in figure skating, the host asked Dick Button (Olympic skating champion and TV skating analyst) if his performance achieved a balance between athleticism and artistry. Button confirmed it had and went on to tell that when Lysacek looks back on this time he will think not of the medal but know that he "skated well". Kaaren Anderson of the First Unitarian Church in Rochester, NY reflected on a similar theme after seeing an old gravestone inscribed with a person's name followed by, "She did a few things well." Initially it seemed insulting but after further consideration Anderson said that it was something to have the consistency and focus to do a few things well.

Like athleticism, painting requires dedication. Form in sports and art is very important for clarity. It displays control. That doesn't necessarily mean tight control but being able to execute form and still be fluid, fresh. Painting doesn't take place in linear time exactly and doesn't lend itself to time based media. It's quiet and still, although movement may be experienced in the expression, such as in brush stroke delivery. When teaching I have often compared the selection of a size and style of brush to choosing a golf club. Situations require different tools. Painting is intimate, one-on-one. Only blockbuster museum shows and the immersion of an image in culture, the Mona Lisa, for example, reach a kind of collective audience.

Scott Hamilton said to Lysacek that skating is about showing what you can do "with knives strapped to your feet." This is similar to a former professor telling the class that painting is amazing; we are pushing colored glue onto cloth with a stick with hairs on it.

It was disappointing that Lysacek's victory was challenged by Russia whose silver medalist, Evgeni Plushenko executed a quadruple jump and called the quad "the future of skating". Lysacek's performance was nearly perfect and the judges did not think that the ability to do a quad superseded other criteria. This situation made me think about the current state of painting. There are many artists and critics who dismiss the art form as passe because all two-dimensional pictorial rules have been broken. They say in the Internet Age, new media is where it's at. I disagree. Painting has been around since prehistoric times. Painters do not need to reinvent the wheel. Whether or not the future of skating lies in the quad, skating has its own inherent elements, its own language. You're not going to hit a ball skating; you're not going to use water in a warm state while skating; you're not going to walk on a tightrope while skating. Everything has limitations. Yet there is beauty that comes out of working within parameters. Skaters will always be compared to skaters of the past but also bring something of their own to the sport. Why does painting have to be blasted? Why do many look down their noses, dismissing it as conventional? It is ridiculous and frustrating.

Let's talk about the work. Gray Cloud and Afternoon are paintings that speak particularly in the singular. The gray cloud has a formidable presence like a character in a play. The viewer is asked to reflect on that presence which is mysterious and defies naming. Afternoon also has a singular cloud but it is set back, the trees assertive despite their scale. It's a view from my studio window of a bird sanctuary across the highway (I took out the highway). Small dots here and there are like touchstones.

I like the way Canadian skater Patrick Chan does other things in addition to skating like tennis, pilates, yoga, golf, and weekly piano lessons - talk about living life to its fullest! It reminds me of advice for life a mentor recently gave me, "Be well, live full, paint well." It is not unlike Button's for Lysacek, memories of "skating well". What would you like to remember and be remembered for doing well?

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.

Ceramics Western NY Landscapes #13, 14, & 15

5" x 3"

3 1/2" x 4"

3" x 3 1/2"

ceramic reliefs

What would I do without NPR? A recent story about memory and time aired, enlightening me to the science behind the feeling of time speeding up as one gets older. My recent move, my son's transition to adolescence (evidenced by his wishing to say "crap" and "pissed off" as well as keeping me out of sight when the bus picks him up) and the appearance of new wrinkles make perfectly clear that time is marching on. We begin saying things we heard adults say when we were children such as "Where does the time go?" and "They grow up so fast." A friend from high school Facebooked that she knows she is old because she and her husband were falling asleep watching t.v. with their fifteen-year-old and her boyfriend. It was 8:00 p.m.

Back to NPR. The story is Why Does Time Fly as You Get Older by Robert Krulwich. Warren Meck, a psychology professor from Duke University, and a neuroscientist, David Eagleman, from Baylor College of Medicine provide the research. Essentially, when you are experiencing something new your brain takes in more details, more information. Repeat experiences don't do this and seem shorter. One might remember taking your new puppy on her first walk but a regular schedule walks in the same neighborhood with your grown dog may blend together. The flip side is that as one enters the "golden years" the moments become more precious and can again have the detail of youthful new experiences. The article has a great Simpsons clip called Homer Every Day which is so worth a look. [If you are trying to improve your memory (a decline starts at age thirty), one effective way is physical exercise.]

How does this relate to my work? The first two reliefs are continuations of work with side panels relating to the view from a kitchen window as well as the stage. The bottom piece is playful with its description of snow in the form of snowballs. I like their shiny quality that contributes to the sense of reflected light. The majority, if not all, of my ceramic landscapes are like memories. They aren't done from life but either from a specific place and environmental situation or from layered experiences (even Shrek says he is a complex individual, layered like an onion). I'm looking to do some paintings of the nearby bay from life as soon as it gets above forty-five degrees and isn't windy enough to blow my easel over - some new experiences to add to my layers.

Frost

6 1/2" x 7 1/2" watercolor

A fall frost is often accompanied by gardeners rushing around trying to protect their plants in various manners. Word spreads quickly, "There's going to be a frost tonight!" Some plants make it, some don't. It makes me think of The Resiliency Movement to which I just became aware through a fascinating WGBH program called This Emotional Life. Apparently most people are equipped with resiliency, which doesn't mean that one isn't shaken by difficult life events but that one is able to bounce back and be renewed. It is incredible to hear stories of people who rebuild their lives after natural disasters like Haiti and acts of war. President Obama in his first State of the Union address Wednesday night commented on the resiliency of Americans currently experiencing economic hardship.found an on-line course* about resiliency developed by Dr. Kristi Miller and Dorothy J. Landon .

"To further this understanding (or perhaps this confusion), Werner and Smith (1982) believe that resilience refers to a dynamic process residing in individuals as well as in the environment. From this perspective, resilience reflects human development as opposed to being a genetic trait that only a few "superkids" possess. In addition, Rutter (1984) states that "resilience cannot be seen as a fixed attribute of the individual…If circumstances change, resilience alters" (p. 57). Furthermore, Masten, Best, and Garmezy (1990) classify three types of resilience:

1. positive outcomes despite experiencing high-risk environments;
2. competent functioning in the face of acute or chronic major life stressors; and
3. recovery from a traumatic event."

We all run into major life stressors at some point in time, like plants. A list of stressors developed by psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe in order of severity can be found on Wikipedia. Interesting that divorce, ranked number two is ahead of imprisonment, number four.

Art is meditative to me, a stress release. Frost is stable in its circular points of focus yet retains a sense of movement, growth, and atmosphere, reminders that change is a natural process.

*quoted with permission

Sunrise January 2010

In between unpacking boxes and scheduling utilities I managed to make these two. The sketch I did at 6:45 a.m. looking out the kitchen window. Beyond those trees is the bay. the colors changed in seconds and fifteen minutes later it all turned blue. I want to hold onto the color. The trees have payne's gray, black, and blue mixed in. It was tricky to capture the volume of the clouds overhead when the dots want to flatten space, accentuating the picture plane. The two pictures are very different. The sketch is airy and energetic while the painting is staid and iconic, almost classical. Dictionary.com defines "staid" as "fixed, settled, or permanent". The drawing is more spontaneous, a reflection of how it was made. There is movement in the painting and the entire concept of a sunrise is temporal. The painting has that in addition to a feeling of being grounded, the dots are like map pinpoints, helping me to orient myself. So far so good.

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.

Western NY Landscape Ceramic Relief #10, #11, #12

Western NY Landscape 10 Ceramic Relief 3 1/2x4 1/2_2009

Western NY Landscape 11 Ceramic Relief 3x5_2009

Western NY Landscape 12 Ceramic Relief 3 1/2x7_2009

Here's a little summer for you in January. Our move from the Rochester area to Rhode Island had eventful weather. We hit white out blizzard conditions and needed to sleep just off the road from three to six a.m. Our new town had an uncharacteristic six inches of snow, while back in Rochester a friend reported snow up to mid-thigh. While I like the snow, dangerous driving conditions and salt and dirt tracked through my new house by five movers makes me less than appreciative at the current moment.

The bottom two reliefs remind me a bit of the landscape paintings of the 18th century Rococo artist, Jean-Honore Fragonard. Landscape with Three Washerwomen has the pastel coloring that makes me consider the comparison. His work is exuberant which I think is another quality these reliefs share. I see my reliefs as not only objects but as images. Despite their solidity and material resistant to deterioration, they carry a fleeting moment, and particular weather conditions. Not made to look fully illusionistic, "real", they are somehow hyper-real. I used to hate Fragonard and Rococo art for its frivolity, regarding it as "foo foo". It seems that some points in history disdain others but appreciation comes around eventually. I never heard anyone in art school going around saying how much they were influenced by Rococo art, in keeping with the style's initial dismissal by art critics as "frivolity". These are as close to it as I get and I admit some discomfort at getting so close, but I now see subtlety, light, space, and passion in this time period and would like to claim those qualities for myself.

Pink Roses from Amy

Pink Roses From Amy #1, 8 1/2"x6" watercolor 2010

Pink Roses From Amy#2, watercolor 9" x 6 1/2" 2010

I just arrived at my new house in Rhode Island. I am leaving the countryside of Western New York as my son wants a more walkable neighborhood and friends on his street rather than our somewhat isolated country road. We will also be closer to friends and family and fellow artists for me. We are leaving behind good friends, however, whom I wish could come with us. Last year my friend, Carin, who gave me the first bouquet of pink roses (they inspired the series of oil paintings) is one of them. My friend, Amy, is another. Amy brought be a dozen pink roses at our coffee "goodbye", knowing how much I liked the first roses. You know, being given a dozen roses by a friend rather than a boyfriend is different. If they had been red roses, given the cultural significance, it would have been a little strange. These flowers were both complete surprises and conveyed the warmth of the friendships. I am very fortunate to have such friends and I think the spirit of the paintings reflect this. The oil paintings as well as these watercolors are celebratory and intensely alive. I think we feel more alive when someone steps out of their box to express their love. I'm not an overly sentimental person but occasionally I'll get a bit teary when witnessing such moments in others. It is funny but when I heard of the passing of health care vote through the Senate I had such a feeling. It was particular to the way Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, a Democrat who typically wouldn't have voted for the bill, said "This is for my friend, Ted Kennedy --Aye!" It is an amazing thing when relationships can be so strong and close to one's heart.

I hope you have a Happy New Year filled with such warmth. Back to the boxes...

White Window

8" x 9"

watercolor

regarding art:

"...transmission of one soul's innermost essence to another. Art is meant to be an unconstrained expression of the inexpressible. It's our way of telling each other things we feel but are unable to put into words. It is ultimately the only real way of sharing who we really are with the rest of the world."

- Dilbert

created by Scott Adams

Western NY Landscape #7, #8, #9 Ceramic Relief

3 1/2" x 5"

4 1/2" x 4 1/2"

3 1/2" x 4"

ceramic relief

I'm very happy with the painterly quality in the ceramics I've been doing. I use a combination of glazes and these underglaze chalk crayons/pastels. There is my secret. Not everyone is willing to share recipes. I heard of a couple getting divorced and fighting over the exclusive right to a special glaze recipe. I don't feel like the medium here is a special trick, though. I have my own sensibility, vision, and way of handling the material.

The top piece is very physical and seems like a setting for a fairy tale. Dusk is the time of day, late fall or late winter/early spring the season.

The central piece is spacious. A big sky with lots of transitions and a raised, dark green hill with a contrasting edge. I like the organic tilt of the all-over form.

The third piece has an array of greens; it has been tricky to get the right brighter ones. The trees have layered, interwoven color that I see in foliage. A bit of the feeling of a sky arching overhead is created by a curve.

The uniqueness of handmade things makes for memorable gifts and I found a great site to list some of my older work and for holiday shopping. Etsy is an enormous site where one can by directly from artists and craftspeople. Everything on it has to be handmade or vintage. You can find art, clothes, jewelry, household items, and many other things. It is nice to buy from an individual rather than a chain as well as things made in the U.S.A. I found half of my gifts there this year including cool etched monogrammed scotch glasses for my father-in-law and custom t-shirts.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Blue House

8" x 9"

watercolor

I am always taken by this cornfield and house when I go by it; it's down the street from me. I like the contrast of the texture, repetition, and color of the corn field, corn long harvested, with the blue triangle coming out of it. Both agriculture and architecture come from the human imagination, creativity born of necessity. Evidence of creativity in human history can be seen by the recent discovery of a Pre-historic bird-bone flute in Germany dating from 35,000 B.C., making it the oldest musical instrument ever found.

It seems that more students are faced with majoring in something "practical" due to the economy. It isn't an unreasonable and is most often a necessary consideration. It is difficult to ascertain if the value of art or artistic practice is now by the wayside. The internet, YouTube, and ITunes bring many artists, mainly musicians, to the forefront of our culture. Painting is more iffy, I think. This quote by John Adams condensed on a poster at Massachusetts College of Art when I was a student is relevant today:

"The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other

sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation

ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts.

I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study

mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and

philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture,

navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children

a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary,

tapestry and porcelain."

Adams basically says that once "practical" subjects are studied by our forefathers society will be stabilized enough for their descendants to be able to study art. War for the United States sometimes seems endless, and it is a sad state of affairs that this patriot's dreams for the country are out of reach for so many. America is trying to protect freedom for ourselves and others; that is the intent which may not necessarily work out in the doing. Freedom and financial security are necessary for a people's well-being, but contrary to this we can also find many examples of art made during difficult economic and political times.

I, for one, continue to partake in the luxury of art-making. It is not just a luxury, however, but imperative to the meaning in life. The bird-flute maker took time away from hunting and berry collecting to focus on carving an instrument that is art and makes art. It could not have been easy to live in his/her time. We should aspire to emulate what this evolved human valued in the face of survival.

Self-Portrait With Camera #2 & #4

digital photographs

The lower self-portrait, #4, seems a little sci-fi with the metallic eye. It is representative of the artist's vision, a special lens through which to see the world. The flash of light is like the bright idea light bulb. Hands have figured prominently in past paintings and I like the way my hand holds the camera at the top; it seems more pressed to the foreground, the hand that is the physical maker, laborer, tool for the eye. The limited palette works well, turquoise background playing off the shiny camera.

The top one, #2, is direct. Intense. Looking straight at the viewer I am confident with my identity as artist; my sense of self deepened with age. I like the light most of all and didn't want to let it go by without snagging it. The magenta and turquoise reflections float on the surface like paint, pieces of colored light. They help define the composition along with the hand, round circle of the camera lens, and the angles of the neck. I'm not quite sure where the photographs are going and if the landscape ones I take as notations for paintings are art. I enjoy making them and that is usually a good sign. It's all about searching, anyway.

Painting Trivia!

Painted by Matthias Grunewald between 1512 and 1516. It is his greatest and largest work and is on display at the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar, Alsace, France.

Check back soon for the answer under "comments".