Many thanks to John O’Hern and the editors of the American Art Collector Magazine for showcasing the painting Temple of My Familiar in their latest issue. You can access the magazine on line if you are a subscriber or find it at most book stores to read the entire article. Above is a link to the AAC website and below is an excerpt from the article. The painting is on exhibition at the Granary Gallery on Martha’s Vineyard.
My niece Caroline is finishing up her Peace Corps Volunteer service in Lesotho working to help a woman run weaving cooperative build and sustain their business. She has asked me to spread the word about a special project which needs funds to train workers and grow the business. So I am sharing the information with my readers and fellow artisans here. You can help by donating or by spreading the word to others who might have an interest. The goal is to remember and honor those who have helped us by paying it forward and here’s an opportunity to do just that.
This is a link to a website with some photos of their weaving ,
http://picasaweb.google.com/Maserutapestries
and here is Caroline’s letter with an address for the org. which is collecting the money for this project,
Announcing our first annual spring sale in the Studio Gallery
All prints and original oil paintings will be 20 % off for the entire month of May !
You can visit virtually by clicking the link below…
OR…please feel free to stop by in person.
I’m breaking in my brand new apprentice and she’s eager to show visitors around the place…so come check out the artwork and meet little Finnegan…
Yours in lilacs…
Heather
29 march 09
It doesn’t get any better than this…
After weeks of lonely studio days and anxious worry about who we might find when at last we got a chance to choose our new pup… today the wait was over and every single one of my worries vanished in a heartbeat…when Belinda brought out two of the most beautiful Berners puppies I’ve ever seen.
They are from that litter of 14 puppies which were born February 17 and are now five weeks old. What I never expected was how hard it would be to choose if both of them were perfect…but this little girl was so much like Gully but with a reputation for confidence and being ornary and a strapper for her fair share of what her brand new life has to offer… we knew we had found Finn.
Now that our search has come to an end we have lots of work to do in the next three weeks before we bring her home. But, at least for tonight, Jon and Pat and I will settle in to a much happier sunday eve and I’ll settle for these photos to remind me what it was like to feel her sweet kisses…
She’s supposed to meet 100 new people in the first three months…so get ready for your studio visit !
24 march 09
Her smiling self…
Here’s to ya babe !
– H
21 February 09
Deep in the dregs of winter…
when one wants to shred the entire office on this, the third day of tax preparation…
And when the winter herb garden looks so dry and drab and grey…
A whole load of happiness came a callin’…
Make that a barrel full…
14 puppies arrived this week at our new breeder’s home…
Now I have grown superstitious in my old age… and hope with all my heart for the good health and heartiness of both mother and pups in such a large litter… and we don’t yet know if our new pup will be one among these…but we have put Gulliver in charge of finding just the right pup to take over her job…and it sure looks like she’s working overtime !
We’ll keep you posted !
Breaking through the rain clouds outside of the studio… and the walls of doom and gloom that seem to surround all of us these dreary mid-winter days… came a bright ray of sunshine for art lovers and patrons alike…
The Granary Gallery has represented my artwork for over 8 years and I’m pleased to be one of the cooperating artists for this unprecedented sale. As our friend Polly often said…” It’s a good fit ! ”
Heather
6 February 09
The mid-winter sunshine is melting away some of the sadness in the studio and work and life continues to push me forward.
We had a wonderfully healing visit from my pal Peter Follansbee this week on his way to and from giving a lecture at a furniture conference in Colonial Williamsburg. Many of you know that Peter is THE world renowned expert in 17thCentury Joinery and I got to tag along with him on tuesday as he went to the nearby Winterthur Museum to take a look at a painted wooden box made in 1698. It was a blast to be his lackey and get a rare behind- the -scenes look at the museum and meet their curator and top scientist. Peter has been hired by the MFA, Boston to reproduce the missing top half of a cabinet which is in their collection. The details to which his assembled team is investigating how the original might have been produced and decorated…and the microscopic analysis of the paint samples from the four existing examples of this furniture…are beyond amazing. If you’re at all interested in woodworking you will find his blog entries to be a remarkable wealth of information both historical and practical. www.pfollansbee.wordpress.com
This week also saw the launching of Laurie R. King’s Fifteen Weeks of Bees project. Regular readers of this blog will know that LRK is one of my favorite authors and that listening to her books in the studio has inspired many a painting. So, when she wrote to me a few months ago to invite me to participate in a fun project to help launch the newest installment in the Mary Russell Series…I couldn’t reply fast enough.
The idea is an old one … in the authors words…” Russellscape is an ‘endless landscape’ or myriorama—a series of panels with precisely the same colors at precisely the same places along their left and right edges. If all those edges match, then the individual panels, when laid side by side, form a continuous image…”
In this case she was looking for the illustrations to relate in some way to the MR series characters, story lines or geographic locations in the books. My first thought was of the painting that I had finished last year… The Beecharmer. The idea for which had blossomed many years ago while I was reading the very first book in the series, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. It took a few years of incubation and a larger studio to bring my composition to the panel … and it has taken the same number of years for LRK to return to the hive, so to speak, with her latest novel’s title…The Language of Bees which hits the bookstores on 22 May 09.
So, with a little bit of help from Photoshop… and a lot of artistic license and latitude… here is the image I came up with …
and here’s where you can see how they integrated it into the Russellscape… (Scroll down to the bottom of her home page to see the slide show ) http://www.laurierking.com/ .
It was a lot of fun and a huge honor for this humble artist to be included, so many thanks Laurie.
You too can participate as she is encouraging other artists to add their own panels… so follow the links on her site to find the details. There will be a contest coming up to pick the favorite panel…so get to the library and bone up on your Mary Russell stories and have fun. ” The Games A-foot !”
And, one last plug…the original painting, The Beecharmer can be seen here on my website…and is available now at the Granary Gallery .
And Now… I weave my way from Ye Olde Cabinet Shoppes of the 17th century … through the back alleys of 19th century London… across the moors and back across the pond…to the dune swept seascapes of Martha’s Vineyard…and straight onto a movie set ?
Next up on the easel… a painting commissioned for a movie currently wrapping up production by producer/director Tappan Heher … “Mistover”.
Much more to come on this exciting project soon… but, for now, the muses are calling.
Be well, HN
8 December 2008
Here are some brand new paintings that have been sent to the Granary Gallery up on Martha’s Vineyard.
19 November 2008
Brilliant light raking the hardwood trunks at sunrise this morning. A dusting of snow and the Bernese Mt. Dog is in heaven.
Slow, deliberate tiny strokes make for lots of fun but little noticeable progress…but here’s the pic from yesterday’s 7 hours of painting…
Lay some paint down one day, clean it up the next, move forward to add another feather. Got to build it up the way nature created it in the first place. It takes a whole lot of feathers to keep these big birds in the air.
Speaking of feathers and mother nature and such… today marks the 75th year in flight of my dear Aunt Lorrie !!! One of the strongest, sharpest and most courageous women we know. HB Lo, keep on soaring !
HN