Tag: Contemporary Realism
The beginning of the theme…
Feathered Dreams –
Brrr…it was early in the winter of 2015.
A humongous box arrived at my studio door.
It held some things from my father’s house.
Way down at the bottom was a little zip lock bag.
Inside were six carved wooden figures.
Hmmm.
I’d never seen them before.
After my father’s death a few years ago, I uncovered many items and stories,
some of which were familiar history, and some of which were mysteries.
I found photos and writings about his grandparents
and knew that at least one of his grandfathers tinkered with wood.
So, I thought that maybe these were saved from his childhood.
Then the muses struck.
I called Pat, can you come over…now.
She threw on her coat and boots and slodged over to the studio from the log cabin.
I love writing log cabin.
Anyway, I bade her to lie down on the daybed…and take a nap.
I found the paper bag, filled with chicken feathers,
which Homer had collected for me last summer,
and I dumped them on her head.
Then I laboriously positioned the little chickens
and the little goose around her sleeping head.
Tucked in her red snuggy blanket,
Herself was content to model as long as I liked.
Until the feathers started…to tickle.
I managed to capture this image
just before…the sneeze.
When I was finished,
and the model was back in the log cabin,
and the feathers were corralled back into their paper nest,
I arranged the dear ones along the window sill next to my easel.
Finnegan came over to give me an eagle hug
and her tail swept the smallest bird onto the floor.
When I picked it up I noticed some writing on the underside…
Made in Indonesia.
With a sigh,
I put her back on a higher shelf…
and began to reinvent her past.
5am…enough light to see
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.
Last brush stroke…
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.
Got the squash and watermelon planted in a baseball diamond pattern. Scott’s fault, Go O’s.
The Raspberry bed has a new annex now and the greens are happy.
Other side of the baseball field…new blueberry bed, in the distance, is being harvested now.
This is the view out behind the sky chair, where the potatoes are thriving.
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…
Night night studio.
For all you Follansbee lovers…
and I know there are many.
Peter seen here, schooling the legendary Roy Underhill.
Peter has a spring cleaning sale going on where in he is divesting of some primo examples of his woodworking skills.
Here’s the link so you can browse, covet, support a master craftsman and maybe even collect…
Down to the wire…
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.
The Citadel – 60 x 30
Now back to the easel… and I mean it !!!
Stillness
Finding myself in need of some inner peace,
I turn to the simple grace of the placing of a clothespin…
Now here’s a mystery…
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”.
At least someone was…
My palette pal.
Anticipation…
Just that.
I’m waiting…or as Rex and Rocky Horror would say…SHIVERING…with anticipation.
This scraggly corner of the garden is supposed to be all abloom with beach roses…
That three week behind thing is messing with my head.
But Celeste appeared outside my easel window last night, right on cue, to cheer me up…
The dear one is taking on the mighty task of helping me to weed. Love that bunny.
OK…PAINT !!!
I love a craze…
This is Phyllis’s fault.
One photo shared on social media and now look…
And then there’s this…
And this…
Here’s the manual…
And the link to do your own research…click HERE.
This all seemed like a good idea in February. And Pat is now best buds with the farmer over the hill who has loaded up every one of the 40 plus bales we absolutely needed.I have had great fun experimenting with fertilizer and have replaced over 40 washers on the old rugged hose. And, despite our efforts, things are starting to grow…
Most of us on the east coast are experiencing the slow to warm up spring which has been a good thing for us old lady gardeners who have day jobs to which they should be attending. But I’ve already made use of the wisps of straw which collected in the back of the truck in two paintings…so…the bales are props !
There is new life in these old bones and the extra weeks of cooler weather has allowed this gardener to pace herself. I had time to add a new bed dedicated to blueberry bushes…
and build a better lid for the cold frame and an annex to the raspberry bed…
and …weed !
As of yesterday, all the bales are conditioned…read the book…and I’m ready to install the drip irrigation system. The back beds, with the strawberries, were started a month or more ago. There is good growth there and the row cover system allowed me to save the tenders from all three frosty nights.
We got a good rain last night, though it wasn’t enough to wash the poo off of the eagle cam…ugh. And Saturday is the SHEEP AND WOOL FESTIVAL …YEAH !!!!!!!!
So that means today I will have to knuckle down at the easel and limit my outdoor putterings. Seriously. I have a LOT of painting to do.
So, this is Phyllis Disher Fredericks fault !