for all the Wolsey fans out there, and I have heard from a surprisingly many of you…
The Wolseys have become new parents…
I discovered this nest, which is in a bush just outside the kitchen window, when we were watching the tree cutters taking down another of the dying Pin Oaks. When all the noisy machinery quited down…the tiny chirps alerted me to the source. You can imagine my surprise when Herself, THE Cardinal Wolsey, flew out of the middle of the bush. You can see that the nest is well hidden. I wasn’t able to get a shot of the babies…yet.
Now, my theories of evolutional avian psychology are about to be tested…
Will the offspring of the ever tapping cardinal be taught that the woman behind the curtain, the one in the baseball hat, with the tiny paint brushes…is She Whose Cocentration Must Be Toyed With.
After the big summer shows I usually come home and crash…
for a week…
then get right back to the easel.
Well, this year I’m taking it slooooow.
We have been blessed with a new studio apprentice, Alex.
Here he is with his Dad, splitting away the mountain of wood that arose
after the two great, but sadly decaying, pin oaks came down last month.
Alex is one strong, enthusiastic, and smart worker, and he is making it possible for this old artist to cross off a long list of chores that have been put on hold…for a decade…while all focus has been on painting.
He has begun to learn the art of panel making and is teaching me a thing or two about snakes, and we’ve both enjoyed some spoon carving on the back porch after the mornings of hard work.
Pat and I feel like we have won the lottery as far as good neighbors go. Every which way we turn, we find kindness and generosity. Believe me it is appreciated.
And, after all that fun morning work…the garden beckons.
Those straw bales are producing, and though I have had an attack of storm trooper squash bugs, there has been progress…
We have returned safely to the studio, and the GG2015 show moves into the exhibition stage. Every two weeks, during the summer, a new show opens and the granary elves play musical paintings and shift the artwork to make way for the new works. I took some photos, after the crowds dispersed, so you can see what a masterful job the gallery staff does in hanging the show.
It has been a terrific start to the summer show season, with a satisfying double handful of red dots filling the walls. We return home to a triple digit heat wave and one very happy puppy to greet us. I had promised myself a week of uninterrupted gardening days, but with this weather I’ve turned up the A/C and brought out the quilting bag. The creative soul needs some rest but the hands…never.
Stay frosty out there and thank you all for your support.
Took me all day but here are three from the town of Edgar…
Lite Wash – 16 x 20
A view from choir loft in the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown.
On window washing day.
It’s been on the books, so to speak,
the sketchbooks that is,
for a few years.
Some are like that.
You sketch out a composition,
think it’s all set and it goes on the list
of paintings for a given year’s worth of shows.
Then time, or energy, or a divergent theme,
bump that idea down the ladder.
It happens that way.
Then something,
or someone,
comes along and there’s a spark.
So, I was sitting at the big table in the gallery
talking to Chris and Adam one day
and they mentioned something about the Old Whaling Church.
I said, you know, I had this idea for a painting…
but I’m not sure…
They both said, “we’d love to see that”. That was all I needed.
I have done a few from the outside and a couple from within,
but this painting allows for both perspectives,
and then some.
I had worked on it for several days before Herself actually took her first look.
She did what you probably did,
kinda tilted her head…then the other way…
then back. I waited. Then she got it.
“Oh, I remember that day. I was worried about your knees after we climbed up there.”
See, that’s what I’m talking about.
It takes a village.
The Yachtsman – 12 x 19
In all it’s newly shingled glory,
The Edgartown Yacht Club.
I love the simple E.Y.C. over the office door.
As someone who is not a member,
and has only appreciated the landmark
for it’s exterior,
I wanted to edit it down to the iconic elements.
New England cedar,
shiny copper weathervane,
flag snapping to attention,
masts at the ready,
the yachtsman scanning the horizon…
and the lantern softly glowing to guide his way home.
The Gutting – 24 x 36
Ah there’s always a dark side.
In The Yachtsman, you have a sunny, blue skied, fair weather kind of a day.
Here, the clouds thicken.
The air was heavy and it was deep into the beyond of the shoulder season,
Out in the gun metal grey waters of the harbor,
only the heartiest of working vessels were moored.
The wind was kicking up,
and we had just come from the Newes,
with bellies full of chowder and a pint or two of October ale,
and I thought I could hear a steady tapping…
just there coming around the corner behind us…
like the wooden peg of a leg,
tap tap tapping on the weathered cobbled stone.
I reached over, pulled up the collar of Herself’s Pea Coat ,
and snuggled closer for the warmth,
and we made our way down to the dockside.
‘Twas then I heard the screaming.
Ghastly wales, a staccato of screeching,
and a frenzy of feathers seemed to come at us from all directions.
The water churned and the sky was a roiling mass of gulls.
Through the miasma of wings I could see a figure.
A lone fisherman was tearing out the guts of his supper.
It seemed as if all of the island flock was massing, and thrashing,
to win the foul spoils of his long cold day at sea.
The gruesome sight was more than I could bear,
and my chowder began to repeat.
Just before I managed to steer us away,
in the midst of the carnage and chaos,
I caught a glimmer of light.
Perched on top of the blood red piling,
with a gaping maw of frothing yellow beak,
a white throated gull threw back her head
and just
shudderingly
and stunningly…
laughed.
The fisherman turned his head…
And I will swear that I saw…
a silvery, slithery, black eye patch.
That’s the note I found this morning, on the studio kitchen table, written on a scrap of cardboard, with a sharpie, found beneath the pile of framing tools, which were left untidied, after a long day of framing, and print making, and general mayhem making.
The Follansbee arrived just after I put out the lanterns last night, stopping for a pallet on the studio floor, as he made his way home from a week of teaching woody things down at Roy Underhill’s place in NC. So, the note was all we got to see of him this time, but we had a good visit on his way down south last weekend.
His hair is long enough now to tie in the back and a good bit whiter. But the sparkle is still there in those eyes. Gonna catch up with him and the family in the fall, so that’s ok then.
The day dawns, a little later for my own self than the master carver, and Herself has left to ship two new paintings out to the Sugarman Peterson Gallery. There is an opening for that show on July 3rd, in Santa Fe, so today you get the first peek at them…
All Her Eggs – 16 x 20
Scape – 12 x 13
From the sharply pointed pen of Mark Twain…
“Put all your eggs in one basket. And watch that basket.”
Eggs courtesy of Dru and Homer, who farm a CSA just over the hill. They are as delicious to eat as they are to paint. The eggs.
And just out that window and a little to the right is the little wren. Always.
When Zoe is here, she relies on the wren’s first trill of the morning to signal that it is ok to get her giggly self out of bed and start her day.
In the early summer she has a different job.
This summer she has built her nest in the birdhouse just above the garlic bed.
I wait with lusty anticipation all year for the garlic to send forth those gorgeously delectable curly scapes, and this season, her babies hatched on the very same day they appeared.
She spends her busy days now bouncing from Ted and Polly’s wind chime, to dancing from scape to scape.
So, there ya go. Ted is having a blast, directing the muses every which way I turn around here.
Look for these two garden graces to be winging their way out west this week. And if you are in Santa Fe, please stop by to visit Michael and Christie Sugarman and say hey for me.
Now it’s on to more framing…
stay frosty out there.
Finally !!!
It’s been a very long haul since I began painting for this summer’s season of shows. Way Way back…in November…the theme for this year’s work snuck up on me. I just looked back at a blog entry near the end of that month and it was full of feathers. And Wolsey. My pal, the ever tapping cardinal, who is out there now, right now, slamming into the big window over my shoulder.
No wonder my studio is now full of paintings of…birds. Many many birds. And feathers. And Eggs. I put the last brush stroke on the last of these paintings just an hour ago.
Thought I would jump right into framing because two of these have to make a very speedy path to Santa Fe, for the opening of a group show at Sugarman Peterson Gallery. But I’m too tired to do that tonight, and it feels good to sit in the comfy chair in the office, by the air conditioning vent.
Some of the bird paintings will make there way out to Santa Fe, and my garden has been wanting equal time. There is a nice little feature in American Art Collector Magazine this month about the SPG show, and they included my thoughts on the muses this year…
” Where the focus drifts, the muses follow, and they are encouraging me to dig around in the dirt and out in the greenhouse and among the weeds to find inspiration for painting ideas. So, I will be adding to my series Garden Graces and building on the figurative work that has been whispering over my shoulder…just as soon as I plant the tomatoes.”
I got them in… last week. But, as the new little “look how healthy you are…not” app reveals, the arc of my “steps taken each day” has flatlined for the last three weeks. No wonder, since it is exactly 50 steps from cabin to studio. Double that and then spend 12 -14 hours at the easel and you have…100 steps. I’ll make up for it now though. My garden beckons and I can hear the weeds singing my name.
Here’s a few pics of my straw bale gardening experiment.
And the way back bales, two similar beds of bales are two the right with strawberries in them and this one has a steady crop of chard and beets which I use daily now.
So…there’s that.
Then…inside the studio…the shift is on. Frames and paintings are now stacked in every room and the Corcoran shuffle keeps Pat jumping as she delivers and picks up paintings from John at his photography studio. My job. Frame ’em up. Then write painters notes and pack everything up for our trip to Martha’s Vineyard for the biggest show of the year at the Granary Gallery.
That’s right…I know your calendars are marked… July 12th is the opening. Incredibly only three weeks from tomorrow. Geez…
So, I’m not sure if the whole reveal thing will happen with the new works this year but I will unveil them as the files come in and you will get the sneak peeks that my readers have come to expect.
First up…way up… is
Updraft – 12 x 16
Yep, that’s really how close the house is to the edge now…or at least “was” back when we stayed there last July. And just over those rocks is a 30 foot drop to the beach.
Ahhhh…the bluff.
On this, the 40th anniversary of JAWS…I think I’ll keep my toes out of the water and flying in the sky chair which is where I’m headed right now. This will be my view, for tonight at least…
I am not looking at the calendar.But, un-like the light bulb in the refrigerator which may or may not be on when the door is closed…I know that the days are definitely still being crossed off…and the march towards the summer shows has become a sprint.
As mentioned in an earlier blog, when the snow was still falling, the Granary Gallery show is two weeks earlier this year, JULY 12th. Seemed like a doable time frame back in December but whoa Nellie here we are and it’s almost J-J-J-J-June. And, just to keep the old heart ticking…the Sugarman Peterson Gallery has added a special group show for the first week in July out in that art mecca of Santa Fe. Nellie needs another gear !
You will be getting the details on those venues, as well as a block buster of a show at Gallery 1261 coming this fall, but in the meantime…I’ve got to double down on the brushwork.
The 20 or so finished pieces are now working their way through the production pipeline. Fully dried, they now can be varnished, then Herself hauls them up to John to photograph, then I order frames and the folks at Artworks join them up, then we haul them back here to the studio and I turn me on some Suede tunes and pop them into frames and wrap for transport to MV or SF and beyond.
Just to let you know that I have actually been pushing some paint around for the last few months, I’ll give you a sneak peak at one of the new works.
Last night I started a painting.
And I replaced my crusty old palette box with a brand new one.
It is just a plastic box to hold the tablet of disposable paper palettes…and this new one comes with a lid… I misplaced the lid from the old one centuries ago.
But, in spite of my excitement over the prospect of being able to cover the paints every night, thereby keeping down the dust…and this week the pollen…which is coating EVERYTHING….
Well, it seems I forgot to cover it…and this is what I found this morning…
If you look really closely, you will see tiny tiny tracks.
It would appear, she writes putting her pipe down next to her deerstalker hat, that some creature crash landed into the raw umber which always anchors that upper left corner, and then walked, or dragged, her fee,t or perhaps wing tips, over to the translucent yellow brown, then ambled down to inspect the greys. The ivory black seems to have held no interest and the path doubles back on itself then forks over to make a straight line review of the warms, ending in a flurry in the bottom right corner as she built up the strength to climb up and over the side, leaving tiny amber tracks on just a few of the brushes before disappearing into the studio night.
I am filing this under the category, “At work in the studio”.
