Don’t know about where you are but here in central Pennsylvania the seasons have abruptly changed. Since we had no winter to speak of it is not a dramatic shift anywhere but in the closet where I’ve had to dig out t-shirts and shorts from under the fleece.
I’ve been remiss in blogging and will set about to fill you all in soon. The “Big Painting”, which I’ve taken to calling it, is still up on the easel. Been a full month and I am churning towards the finish line now. It’s definitely one that needs to be viewed by the public only upon completion. Looks pretty straggely at the moment. But all shall be revealed soon.
Meanwhile I’m sure those of you who are experiencing these warm sunny early spring days are, like me, tuning up the garden beds, planting those peas and spinach seeds, raking and pruning and … watching the daffodils stretch out of their winter’s nap.
My neighbor Sue has come to expect hammering and drilling around this time of year so as not to disappoint I am building some new raised beds and…a greenhouse. It’s all about recycling and son-in-law Pete has come to the rescue with an offer of windows, a glass panelled door and a sliding glass door which will be sweet and Jon and Zoe are headed this way in a couple weeks to lend a hand with the construction.
I’ve got the foundation set and the floor framing done…
It’s been so nice to spend time out in the fresh warm air doing good hard work. Makes it all the more rewarding when I head back inside the studio to my day job sitting in a chair and lifting tiny brushes.
Here’s to the return of the Pinkletinks and the hope that your daffodils are smiling at you…
As you may recall, when our log cabin was underwater in the flood last fall, my basement Chairmaking Workshop was decimated. Among the many attempts by friends during the rescue and cleanup operation was the valiant effort by our friend Susan to rinse and dry the few photographs that I had tacked to the rafters down there.
Oh, it hurts to look back on those days… anyway… today I am in the midst of clearing the office for tax prep and I ran across the tiny stack of the surviving photos. They tell a tale of very early days of my woodworking career and some of the fun that Peter Follansbee and I had and since most of you know me only as a painter I thought I’d share them as proof that once, in a time far far ago… I was a Chairmaker…
The beginnings at the Follansbee home on Pierce Rd.Follansbee and Myself along the banks of the Little Conewago Creek...which as you can see is still in it's banks.
And now here's his son Daniel hard at work in his Plymouth Plantation workshop.A chair for nephew NeillThis kid is now in college !Little Nephew Johnny who is now 16 and well over 6 feet tall.and...I think this is James, Stephanie's oldest son, Steph being my oldest friend from waaay back in high school...he's now at Brown ...that's my basement workshop in the background.
So there you have it. Now digitally documented for posperity.
When I decided to give painting my full time attention, circa 2000, one of the first things on my easel was this homage to that life of shavings, In the Chairmaker’s Wake…makes me want to sit on my shaving horse and think back on all the happy hours with the old drawknife…
A rare snowy day this winter and I find myself at sixes and sevens bumbling around the studio…eager to get the next painting up on the easel but there are gremlins about. I have a stable full of panels that are prepped but stand awaiting their final coat of gesso…the good stuff. This means that, once I decide what I’m going to paint and find the appropriate sized panel, put that gesso on and let it dry, then do the final smoothing wetsand… I have at least a day if all goes well before I can start the next painting.
Today, there was little cooperation from the muses. After telling myself not to try to do this without a drop cloth, I dumped a full quart of gesso on my favorite handmade rug…after I told myself to put on a smock…there went the shirt and pants…etc. Even when it did dry and I started the wetsand there were troubling areas that seemed to wipe completely down to the canvas so I had to re-apply and wait for that to dry and then sand again…twice !
So, while I practice patience and wait for that hopefully last coat to dry… it’s time to get back into the blog world. Last week my friend Peter Follansbee had an entry on his blog about the painting he is doing on his groovy new toolchest.
I noticed that he was using a mahl stick..
The simplest of painting tools it is basically a stick used to rest your hand on to steady it and the brush. It’s especially helpful for fine detail.
The one I’ve been using for decades I made from a twisty branch I brought back from Tucson. I sharpened the end, put a superball on it and wrapped that with a piece of soft leather. Wrapped this way the ball provides a soft pivot point that won’t marr the painted surface as you rest that end on the panel.
This one is about two feet long but has it’s limitations.
Then I watched a video that Bob Jackson has out now in anticipation of his newly published book,
Click on his painting above, The Feast, to view it’s creation. It’s a crazy slideshow look into his work process and along the way I saw him using his mahl stick. Couldn’t really tell because of the speed of the video but it looked to be somehow attached or anchored at the top of the panel or on his easel. This gave him a nice pivot point which seemed sturdier than my floating version.
So…I looked around the studio and found… The Niblick.
It’s an old wooden golf club that was used as a prop in the painting, Tea Time…
and now it is reincarnated as painting tool. It has just the right flexibility from the thin wooden shaft, and the iron head provides a nice weight, and the hook of the wedge is perfect for catching the top of the panel, or cross pieces on my easel. Because that edge is sharp and hard, I softened it by tying a piece of leather on and also wrapped the handle with a chamois for extra comfort there.
It’s just the thing for those tiniest details…
The painting I just finished yesterday was quite a bit larger than the one featured above and when the stick was hooked over the top of that panel it did not reach low enough for me to work on the bottom half of the painting. So… I dug around in the golf bag and came up with a 5 Iron. Not as asthetically pleasing with it’s metal shaft but the sturdiness of the metal seems to be needed for the extra length. I do have to close the curtains when the sun rakes in though…it shines off the silver and casts wierd light onto the panel surface.
Well the sunset came on quickly and the snow covered branches are blue against the darkening sky. I’m going to go see if that panel is dry enough to sand and then work on tuning up the sketch. Then it’s home to the fireside with Herself and Finn…and the snowy walk home will make it all the warmer.
Keeping up with the latest technological trends is definitly a balancing act but our behind the scenes tech wizard, Ross Ritchey, has finished his tweeking and handed over the newly polished website which, as you can see, now includes the HN Studio Blog.
For you, that means one less click. If you have any interest at all in following along with our conversations here, you can subscribe to this blog (look at the boxes on the right…all the way down the page…for the subscribe box) and you should receive an email whenever a new post arrives.
For me, it means that I can now use the WordPress interface to edit and manage my entire website. Who knew. Ross did and now the learning curve continues as I try and navigate the new powers at my fingertips.
Finding new and novel ways to reach out to patrons and friends and to expand the audience is integral to the creative process, and I do appreciate your feedback and checking in once in a while to see what’s fresh off the easel…it’s all part of the journey.
one solid month of painting…and painting…and painting,
I offer you…
well, I don’t have a title yet…but here is the final apple series painting…
( remember these are just iphone photos so we’ll all have to wait for it to be varnished and professionally shot…but you’ve been waiting much more patiently than I have…so….)
And here are a couple detail shots with the parts I’ve been hiding…
I usually reserve the treat of sushi for after I’ve sold a painting…but in this case Pat is willing to indulge me.
We are welcoming 2012 here in the studio by painting apples.
Yes I’m still….painting….apples !
Try as I might, this final work – the seminal, keystone, massively fundamental focus of the apple themed series – is just simply spanking my artistic self. And it’s all Chris’s fault. Back in 2010, when picking apples at the Tiasquin Orchard on the island of Martha’s Vineyard and visiting with it’s farmers, the Magnusens, my beloved gallery owner Mr. Morse had a vision. Wouldn’t it be sorta fun for someone to do a painting from the bottom of the hill looking up through the trees at a person picking apples ?
Simple idea, lovely idea…who better to do this painting than the woman whom Patricia Neal dubbed, “the artist who paints people without their heads “… Heather Neill.
OK she says and rounds up her favorite Vineyard model, Mr. Theodore Meinelt who happens to live just down the road from the orchard, and off we trot to pose among the heavily laden limbs. Now viewing this photo you will see one of the biggest challenges I faced in composition. These are ancient trees and, like so many of the island specimens which are battered by ocean storms, they are small. Wonderful for picking, and probably pruned to their diminutive height for just that reason…but when you put a human next to them he ends up looking like a giant.
One other challenge was that, good for Debbie tough for me…it was a bumper crop. Thousands and thousands of apples. I knew that in order to do this idea justice, again Mr. Morse must be thanked, it would need to be a panel large enough to let the viewer have the same panoramic feel that originally inspired my muse. And I knew that my ridiculously high standards would not let me take a pass on rendering every one of those apples (forgive me) right down to their core.
I debated, fussed, dripped with procrastinating angst…(Pat has been driven to longer and longer walks with Finn as each stressful day of whining passed) … and finally decided to use the 60″ panel thereby committing to what I knew would be weeks of work.
I started out taking daily shots of the progress with the idea of sharing the journey with you all. But I was so frustrated with the slow pace and the overwhelming amount of detail that I bagged on that early on. But now, as I am nearing the end…she says oh so hopefully… I have decided to show you the abbreviated “process” shots. I’ve been putting detail shots up on facebook as I complete small sections and now seem to have a small but dedicated group of followers with whom I have been teasingly withholding the ” big reveal” of seeing the whole finished work.
There was a great amount of artistic license in play in an effort to wrangle the tree and background, concept and balance, in the pursuit of the “essence” of the orchard. Here is one of the dozens of photos that I used as reference…the closest to the finished comp…
The initial sketch…
First pass… Some sky…
Needs to say more about the island… so how about a water view ?
Flash forward…weeks forward…to the first detail shots…
And now…I’m off to the easel to finish this baby. Have about two square feet of apples, leaves and branches to tighten up and one long branch to snap into shape. Might be two days of work since I have squandered this morning writing this entry…and allowing the tylenol to take effect…since the steady hours of resting my pinky on the panel to work the tiny brushes is taking a toll on my own limbs.
But I’ll get back to you just as soon as it’s done. I promise you will be able to hear the huge sigh of relief in the furthermost corners of your own apple orchards.
Our little studio workshop has been buzzing with print orders this week and Pat has been making daily runs to Fedex in the sleigh…
I’ve just updated the website but if you don’t see the painting that you want a print of…or if you have other questions about the ordering process…please don’t hesitate to contact us… hnartisan@comcast.net
Last year I started a series of …well series paintings.
I wanted to work on themes and explore them across several different compositions. There were more ideas than I had time to create and I’ve learned that there is a time, and a season as it were, for each painting. So, as the crisp fall air brings the colors alive, I have been studying apples… anew.
The October before last I spent a day with our friend Ted in the Tiasquam orchards in West Tisbury…
There are dozens of good painting ideas from that modeling session and I decided to elaborate on the “theme” of apple picking. Though I started the series last year with some sketches …
and then this painting from my studio yard…
Like I said earlier… last year life took some wicked wild turns … but life ebbs and marches on…and I’m now reaching back and pulling on the thread that started the theme.
I don’t usually put photos of unvarnished paintings up on the web but the new iphone has a good enough camera to give you a decent representation of what is fresh off the easel.
This painting was inspired by a quote from NC Wyeth, “I have all this and more, yet how I would like to relax; to be content with a wheelbarrow, a rake, an apple basket, a pipe.” He wrote that in a letter dated September 19, 1910. A hundred years later and that sentiment still resonates.
And what to do with all those apples ?
Well that’s the next painting in the series… Skillet Apple Pie.
You won’t be able to get much out of this shot of the still life set up…because I decided to change it up a bit after moving to the easel…but here’s a peak into the early stages of the creative process…
that’s what we’ve had for a whole week and it is healing the souls of flood weary citizens of the commonwealth.
So this morning I harnessed the power of those first rays as they blast through the foggy forest.
Yes, that’s a panel…a blank canvas as it were… which means that YES I am going to be painting again…any minute now. And yes, that’s an apple basket and a Stayman I think on the panel. Last night I took a previousely prepared panel and slathered on a final coat of the primo gesso ( Artboards Panel Gesso ) and this morning it was ready for the gentle wet-sanding which leaves that ultra smooth finish that I crave. You need to find a source of strong raking light to dance across the panel so the otherwise invisible imperfections can be spotted and sanded out. Today I let mother nature be the lightbulb as well as the drying source.
I have come to understand, though not always appreciate, that each painting has its own agenda, its own time to be rendered. I tried several times last fall, and then again in the spring, to work on the apple picking series which I had sketched out and planned to include in this year’s Granary show. But it wasn’t in the cards. Not its time… until now. It made me wait until the crisp autumn air sent me running for the first sweatshirt of the season…and the local orchard was announcing that it was time for pick-your-own…and the saigon cinnamon jar tumbled off the shelf and into my great grandmother’s dough bowl.
OK got it. I dug out the NC Wyeth quote which inspired the series when I read it in his letters last winter, ” I have all this and more, yet how I would like to relax; to be content with a wheelbarrow, a rake, an apple basket, a pipe.” And I sent Pat to her favorite farm stand to beg for a basket and Finnegan and I drove over to the orchard and picked a bushel of the finest looking apples…which, she reports, tasted pretty good too. Then we took a trip to Saren’s house to put the pieces of her old wooden wheelbarrow in the truck and bring it back to the studio for the setup.
With a bit of repair work it was strong enough to hold the apple basket and the rake and the pipe. So here’s a rare look at the first stage of the composition…
I say rare because, like any good magician, you risk letting down your audience if they see what goes on behind the curtain. I’m just so excited to be working at my day job again that I’m throwing open all the windows and doors.
Starting off the day with panel making at dawn… I can’t wait to see what other wonders await…
