Year: 2011

Paying it Forward

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One of the best parts of having a gallery represent an artist’s work is the unexpected connections that the paintings can make with people you have never met. The Granary Gallery  (scroll down to the bottom of this linked page to view a video of a summer art opening) on Martha’s Vineyard is in an old red barn in the center of the island and, with it’s unique low keyed old corner store gathering place kind of feel, it is a year round destination for everyone from tourists to school children. Whether you’re an art lover or just along for the ride there is something to catch just about everyone’s fancy.

Occasionally I’ll hear from someone who has made their way there and come across my work. I love hearing the stories and links to their common ground. One such connection was made a while back with a woman who was pondering what to do with her need to create and we corresponded about where she was on that journey…ready to take a big step.

She wrote a lovely follow-up note after reading last week’s blog and with her permission I want to share it with you…it’s always a boost to hear when an artist’s hard work pays off. I’m so proud of her…

From Tina Hickman…

Hi Heather – so happy to see you back online as I had been hoping all was well!  Not sure if you remember, but I’m the woman from NH who left you a note at the Granary, telling you how much my son and I enjoyed your work.  Since then I’ve been in touch a few times via email – telling you about my own journey; pursuing illustration for children’s books.  Early next month I’ll be recieving my certificate from RISD in Children’s Book Illustration (after a looong 3 years!), but I want to tell you THANK YOU. 

You had written a bit on month about Great Women Artists, what it takes to be a woman, and the challenges of focus, and time, and being selfish. To make a long story short, I took my small talents, and made a dedicated place for me to work (my studio instead of my dining room table), and among other small changes I became “selfish” with my time, taking my time and focusing, and felt good about it.  The results of these changes were my increased happiness and confidence in my work – but the results were also validated this weekend at the New England Regional Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Conference – were I took home 3rd place in the published division for my Book Cover Illustration for “Island od Blyue Dolphins”.  I am THRILLED  – and I owe you a huge thank you for helping me to see. 

Best of luck with all you do – always –
Tina

www.kjhickman.com

Spring Visitors

Posted on by heather

OK I’m back… if only for what was supposed to be a quick entry and has now taken me two hours just to sort through some photos for ya.

I have begun to get emails and inquiries from some of you who have been worried about my blog absence…along with some not so gentle nudges for updates and more photos…I am heartily sorry and phenomenally busy. More that the usual crazy around here but we are all well and, as you will see in the pics here…just plain plowing through the spring.

With a very few exceptions I have been painting non-stop getting ready for the big Granary show this summer and a June show at Gallery 1261 and a special exhibition in Santa Fe in July ! I promise to fill you in on all of those very soon.

But for now here are some highlights of our early spring weeks…

The Lake Placid Lackeys came for an extended visit that spanned the entire month of April and right on into May. Jon was working on a stunning stone project in lancaster and commuted from our place while Zoe and her mom Tonya hung out with Gran and Mima. When T went back home to her teaching gig Zoe took over grandma sitting and we worked in the garden and built a new arbor with raised beds for some more veggies and herbs and a grapevine. I gave Zoe her first woodworking lesson at the shaving horse. And she got her very first taste of Reeser’s ice cream !

On the back end of that trip we spent my favorite day of the year at the Sheep and Wool Festival. It was one of my all time highlights to introduced Zoe to this event and except for one very big and loud Baaaaaahhhh…she had a blast.

Now it is mid May and the northern visitors have left and all that rain, the wettest April on record, has indeed brought the most beautiful May flowers I can remember. The beach rose which I brought back as a tiny seedling from the island is in full bloom and her scent carries me back to the bluff every morning when I come over to the studio yard to begin the day.

A loving couple of bluebirds has taken up residence in the blue birdhouse in the studio garden and all day long they flit around perching on the tops of shovels and dogwood branches and they have christened the new arbor as their very own sky box for a view of our comings and goings.

Herself and Finnegan have developed a daily walking routine that is getting them both in fabulous shape and they are unchaining my ankles from the easel for a couple hours on the sunny days to let me work in the garden which is helping me to deal with pre-show stresses. Frames and professional photographs are starting to come in for the finished paintings and the studio is a beehive of activity. Look for previews here soon and details on all the upcoming shows.

And last night we attended the Dutchland Roller Derby Bout with the debut roll of our first grandaughter Amanda…or as she’s know in the Rollerderby world…Seeds of Destruction ! (that’s her…the blur of a watermelon helmet with tiny pink shorts complete with sewn on watermelon seeds…of course ).  It was awesome and terrifying to watch her confident, atheletic and graceful body spin round and round that track. She jammed her way through that pack with style and grit and, though there just isn’t enough padding in the world for her grandmothers, it was amazing to watch her. (In the bench shot you can just catch a glimpse of the mascot…an Amish girl and her  black hatted little brother who ran around the ring with cowbells to rally the fans. It’s not your mother’s roller derby anymore.)

So our spring has been bookended with time spent with the oldest and the youngest grandchild…doesn’t get any better than that.

For now…here is the spring, so far, in pictures…

Fiddlehead Fever

Posted on by heather

It’s raining…and raining…and yes it’s April and supposed to do that so we can have those wonderful flowers in the studio garden in a couple weeks.

And yes it’s great painting weather.

Anh yes, Zoe is coming to visit today and we’ll have sweet baby toes to tickle soon…

But right about now… I’m craving a plate of Fiddlehead Ferns …

Birthday Blog

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I’ve been chained to the easel for long hours and late into the night and thought I’d take a break and write a quick blog to catch you all up.

The Granary Show is coming together. This year I have decided to focus on a few core themes and explore the subject matter across several paintings. A large central work accompanied by some other takes on the theme and then including smaller sketches to add some whimsy. The frustrating part is that I’m running out of time to meet the ambitious goals I set when I came up with this idea. Back when we were still enjoying turkey leftovers and looking forward to months of snowbound studio days.

Now… I haven’t been slacking off. Those winter months were productive but I had some commission work to do and an exciting Santa Fe show to paint for…stay tuned for that announcement… but here we are with easter bunnies and ham sandwiches and the clock is ticking.

 One of the “themes” I’m working with is … Laundry. Yes, that most humble, and dare I suggest…sensual, of the household chores. Back in the early days my friend Rex Wilder, the world famous poet, wrote a poem called The Folder. It echoed perfectly the act of love that goes into the folding of a lover’s freshly washed linens  and seemed to capture what I was trying to say in this painting of the same title (circa 2000)…

Pat is, as I write, up at the laundromat …lovingly washing and folding my clothes.

And I… am getting ready to play around with these three little panels…

It’s a PERFECT painting day…dark and stormy skies and rain puddles for Finn to play in while I set up a still life with tea towels and teacups and clothespins.

And at the end of this day…the promise of a sushi birthday dinner !

Life at 53 is a blast.

First day of Spring…

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It’s not all about painting this week…

The kitchen table has been piled high with vegetable catalogues and gardening bibles and seed packets and yesterday it was time to get some dirt on my hands. This year we’ve added two new raised beds. One for raspberries and the other for a cold frame greenhousey kind of thing under which I’ve started all the lovely salad greens and those devine french breakfast radishes.

Next project is to repair and secure the old Finnegan fence sections and then finish planting the peas…but mother nature is helping the muses out by dampening those plans with a forecasted week of rain.

Sooooo…it’s back to the easel for me. But at least I’ve got some dirt under my nails and those wonderful gardening endorphines keeping a smile in my heart.

Happy Spring !

This one’s for Follansbee…

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Pat just called and frantically yelled to get my camera and come outside…

Here’s who came to visit the studio this afternoon…

She , or he, sat perched in this hickory for enough time for me to circle around and get the sun in the right angle and then sat long enough for us to call Sue and Zola to look out their windows and then an electric truck drove by and that was time to bolt…

It wasn’t until it had taken off that we saw there were two of them flying around together. When I came inside to look at the photos the other one was there all along…

The whole neighborhood came out to see and it was a wonderful break from a long day of painting shingles…You can just make her out in the upper left corner…my easel window in at the bottom right corner…

Someone told us they are living in a nest down the lane…now that they know their way to the studio I’ll be sure to leave some goldfish out for a snack…

Chained to the easel…

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that’s where I’ve been for weeks now. It’s super crunch time as I see the deadline for the July show coming closer….and closer. Every waking minute needs to be spent with brush in hand in order to meet the ambitious goals I have for producing more and better work this year.

You will have noticed that writing blog entries, which can sometimes take hours, have been shelved along with dinner invitations and all other social interactions, except for PT which is keeping my knees and back from seizing up all together.

I do monitor the incoming channels via email, internet and facebook so the outside world does get in… in short controlled bursts.

This morning one of those playful but interesting FB threads came through from a friend…World Book Day. Grab the book closet to you right now. Open to page 56, and choose the 5th sentence. Publish it as your status and write these rules as a comment. Don’t choose. PICK UP the CLOSET book.

I am a book lover so… I reached behind my easel chair and grabbed the closest book…it turned out to be Mechanical Drawing for High Schools by French and Svensen, used by students at the George Washington High School in Manhattan, N.Y.City between 1936-39…interestingly enough one of the students who signed it out in ’37 was George O’Neill…almost a relative ?

I use this book as a prop and it has appeared in several paintings…here’s one called Book Mark…

and a recent one, By Design…currently available at the Granary Gallery

So I opened to page 56…

and the 5th sentence reads…”When a pictorial sketch is dimensioned, the only additional consideration is to use care to see that all extension lines are either in or perpendicular to the plane on which the distance is being given.”

Which was a much needed reminder that the muses are here…just over my shoulder as it were…helping me struggle through the long hours of trying to get those extension lines just right…

Here is a shot of what I was painting when that facebook comment came through on the iphone beside me…complete with T-square in place to make sure those carefully considered doors are perpendicular !

So what book is beside YOU ?

Blue skies…

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are now breaking out over the studio …

earlier it looked like this…

This is all good. Last Friday was in the 70’s and, even though we started the day with a hospital visit for an infusion of Reclast, we stopped on the way home for a picnic and a walk in the park with Finn and enjoyed most of the day just being out in the warm sun.

The rest of the weekend was no picnic. The occasionally reported flu-like reactions to that drug turned out to be more like the Dengue Flu. A short controlled burst of the pneumonia I was plagued with this time last year… and then some.

But, hopefully, short is the keyword in that last sentence because I am marginally better each day and back in the studio this morning. The pretty snowfall that we awoke to has helped to send me back into the much needed winter of creative hibernation and the continuing muscle fatigue and soreness is forcing me not to shovel this one out.

The days of laying in a sick bed were not completely wasted as I signed back up with Lynda.com to challenge my brain to learn something new in Photoshop. Long story short, last week I learned that I had fallen prey to purchasing a bogus Cs5 upgrade a few months ago. It had started to crash and burn which led me to realize that my computer which had been having it’s own problems was actually 5 years old now. Ancient in the graphics world. And, with the unexpected sale of a painting here in the studio, I decided to bite the techno bullet and upgrade both hardware and software at the same time.

As an artist who pays homage to detail, I have spent as much time sharpening my computer skills lately as I have my pencils. Both are tools and only as good as the craftsman who uses them so I study and practice and learn. The tutorials are terrific because I can work at my own pace and dip back in for refreshers as needed. I have already learned about fifty things that will make a huge difference in my “workflow” and am eager to try them out with the new machine.

It’s all about getting the composition up on the panel as efficiently and quickly as possible…then I can settle in and let the muses take over.

Now, it’s time to put this bump in the road behind me and get back my mojo…

carpe diem !

Hinging…

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Getting lost in the details can sometimes mean losing the details themselves.

It can take hours and many layers of paint to make a convincing shingle, or door. Especially when the wood is painted white. Every angle and corner reflects the light differently. And you can’t just mix up a “blue” for the shadows because they rely on what’s under them as much as what the sun is doing for their color. And all those parameters can change in a heartbeat on what you thought was a stable sunny summer day when a cloud passes over.

So I’ve been paying close attention to those shadow passages for a few days as I built up the layers on this vineyard doorway…

And, as is my practice, I sat back at the end of the day to review the progress and make notes on things to address in the morning and something about this stage bothered me. So I got up and turned the lights off and heat down and came back once more before heading home…and it jumped out at me.  Did you catch it too ?

There was only one hinge on that door.

I was concentrating on the depth of that blue and missed the tiny little detail of hardware without which that door would fly away in a stiff ocean breeze.

I’ve got it on there now, along with the next couple layers of light and some the rest of the hardware and my walking stick.

Now if I only had time to fix the door to Pat’s office in the log cabin that has fallen completely off it’s hinges. Must be the theme of the week.