Month: January 2016

  I have two shows–one starting in February and another in April. The theme of the April shows is pretty firmly set in my mind–fingerprints – looking at our marks – good or not on the world.

I’ve been pondering what I want to paint and draw for the February show when suddenly I’m hit with one of the great mysteries of life, and that it is, how the heck did the great masters managed to keep the cat hair out of their finished masterpieces?  can you do a bunch of paintings about cats  and their paw prints?  is that what Snoop is trying to tell me?

I’m beginning to thing the third time will be the charm, but the wheat is beginning to take shape.

In November, we went to an exhibit of Van Gogh’s work at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA.  For weeks I pored over the book I bought, mentally trying to translate his oils to watercolor. The thing that kept jumping out at me was not just the subject of wheat fields (yes, I have a problem – the intervention is scheduled for summer) but how different the wheat fields were.

Van Gogh’s wheat fields were masses of his familiar swirls, but the fingerprints on the landscape he painted were irregular, with uneven lines.  When I look at the fingerprints of humanity on our landscape, machines have carved the lines with a near-perfect geometry and on a scale I doubt he could have imagined.

It got me to really look at the landscape we call ‘nature’ and inspired the theme of an upcoming  show (Fingerprints) that will start in April at the Martha Canfield Library in Arlington, VT.

If you are lucky, there will be some people who enter your life–or whose life you enter–who have such a profound effect on you that just thinking of them can lift your heart, spur you to do the right thing, or just keep on going when you think you can’t.  You may not see them every day. You may not see them for years, but their very presence in the world is one more defiant beam of live in a world that can sometimes seem bleak.

When an artist or writer dies, their work keeps them alive.

When a truly loving person passes away, her love still shines through in everyone she touched.  I know it is possible for the world to be less good because someone like this is gone, but, for me, it will not be. It will not be because, like so many others who have passed through her life, I’m not going to let it go. I’m going to make it shine.

About the flower: Statice is for remembrance.

 

I was wandering through a department store a few days ago and noticed a display for swimwear.  In January. In upstate New York.  And I decided the stores ought to replace their speaker music with a laugh track.

  

 The trip to the Ace Hardware in Cambridge, NY should have been my first stop. I had been searching everywhere for the right hangers and grommets to do my gallery wall, and, like most people going into a hardware store with a Pinterest project in mind, had stumped most of the sales people with my request for parts that were not to be used for their intended purpose.

But the woman at Ace knew exactly what to do.

“Oh” she told me I had another artist in here just yesterday trying to do exactly what you’re doing. She asked me if I knew the painter–I hadn’t heard her name. I figured out pretty quickly, however, that the next time I need a conventional part for one of my unconventional projects, it’ll be worth my while to head straight to a hardware store that is used to slightly unconventional customers.

The rest of the project was easy. I should say that it was easy because I had a lot of help from the Big Guy. I had measured where my molding should go, but the Big Guy is a whiz and making things looking look professional. He got out the level and the stud finder, and let me sink the nails.  

 
I hung up an old photo of one of her now deceased roosters, “Chickie”, since all of my framed originals are hanging in one gallery or another. The Big Guy and I are now sitting on the couch in my studio, and I’m thinking how nice it was to get the job done fast and especially with pretty cool more than a little help from my Fam.

  
My Studio is in our unheated attic. when I want to work, I open the door from the kitchen and let the heat from the woodstove rise.

When I want to work, I open the door from the kitchen and let the heat from the woodstove rise.

My winter painting annex it is near window in the living room, but today I have a bunch of cartoons I want to do, so we started a fire and I opened the door.

I am also trying to get ready for open studio weekend in Memorial Day weekend, and today as we are warming up my space, Thing2  is helping me take the next step toward a workspace that can act as a gallery.  

Life is better with a helper.

  

I am a huge believer in the power of encouraging creative sparks. I know that it has changed the trajectory of my life in ways that not even a winning Powerball ticket could, and I believe meaningful encouragement, if it were shared with as many people as possible, could fundamentally change the world we live in. 

A few years ago I lucked into a writing class at Hubbard Hall, a community theater and art center in Cambridge NY.  Everyone in the group was nervous the first night — we had all seen workshops where competition squashed creativity.  In the end we came away from the class as a tight knit group of students that continues to encourage each other.  

For me, the workshop was a revival of a love affair with art.  Our teacher, author Jon Katz, refused to let us speak ill of our work. It made us all better artists and writers. My revival spawned new connections with other artists and the confidence to encourage others — even perfect strangers.

Today all that engagement that and encouragement culminated in an art field day.

 I kicked off the morning at the public library in Petersburgh, New York to hang my first solo art show and then wrapped up the afternoon at the member art show at the art museum in Manchester Vermont.  

Seeing your work in a juried show at a real live art museum is the thrill of a lifetime, but it was also a bit daunting.   I will admit to feeling like a very small fish in a gigantic pond dominated by very nice whales, but it was fun. It helped me set a new bar.

Nothing, however, can compare to the morning fun of going to the library hanging up the work, chatting with patrons as we hung paintings and went back to a delicious lunch made by the curator of the show. I spent the early afternoon talking with my new friend about art and life on what could’ve been an otherwise very dreary January day. I left her house feeling motivated and serene at the same time.

I won’t lie–we bought a couple of Powerball tickets, and if we won $900 million, you’ll hear me whooping it up across the Internet. But I don’t think even that princely sum could have bought a better day than the one I’ve just had.

I’ve been feeling off my game the last few months and, even though the worst of the illness is over, I’ve been waiting for the painting fever to return and finally decided to go back to where it started this summer – to black and white.  I also hoped drawing  the mountains with snow would help me really see them – and the snow – so I can conquer my fear, pack up my paints and go out into the cold to really see — and paint — winter.