Spent the morning framing and packing up a new painting which will be headed up to the Granary Gallery as soon as Herself gets back from her yoga class. So before I head back to the easel here are a few pics of the first weeks’ work on the big panel….
A swath of sky, then in for some long distance work and detailing, then over to the shack full of shingles… I have become quite familiar with the weathered cedar shingle and learned that there are no short cuts. Wet-in-wet seems to work well for the first layers. Then I come back in and crisp up the edges and add texture. Then go back and glaze it all down as a summer rain storm might…and back over that to bounce in some highlights where the appropriate sunlight…or shadow…would glance off the surfaces.
So dark this morning…but the clouds are sprinkling the newly planted potatoes and all is right with the world….at least with the garden.
Yesterday I took a detour from the big painting and played outside. Following Richard’s directions we planted our potatoes under a bed of straw and leaves. Herself did all of the heavy lifting and we took our time…but it was wonderfully healing to be out working in the gardens again…and if the sunshine and spring rains don’t make these babies grow…the healthy dose of love and laughter we shared planting them certainly will !
After over a week of drawing, reworking and fine tuning the composition …I finally finished getting the sketch for this mammoth painting on the panel yesterday. Since this is a Vineyard scene, and since my studio is in the almost landlocked state of Pennsylvania, I am relying on a bank of photographs and sketches done on scene for reference. The first shots were taken back in 2004 and I have supplemented those with over a thousand more…chronicling a wide range of lighting, weather and seasonal elements in the intervening years.
Without revealing too much of the subject matter yet, I can say that the view of this part of the island can and does change hourly. A busy intersection of human, waterfowl and nautical activity, there is almost constant motion…so trying to capture that energy in a static and narrow two dimensions has been a challenge.
It was also interesting to see the changes in some of the “bones” of the scene over the 5 years or more of photos and drawings. Shingles damaged over harsh winters waited years to be repaired, and names painted on boats worn by salty seas were all the sudden bright again as I flipped from one year’s shots to the next.
I decided to let the verisimilitude go and concentrate on finding the essence of the place. The early composition has expanded from a relatively small panel to fill an almost 4 x 8 foot frame. The challenges of working on a painting that size are offset by the opportunity to portray the beauty in the simplest of details that would be lost in a smaller panel. And there are hundreds of them in this composition. So here we go.
Once again my nurse has insisted that I not lift this thing alone…so together we managed to move it from easel to kitchen table and back again. When I have the sketch completed I scan it into the computer and print it out sized for the panel. In this case it was such a huge file that I had to break it up into smaller sections. The printer spits it out in a tiled format so there’s lots of trimming and taping to get it back together. Then I line it up and trace it onto the panel using a graphite transfer paper.
This shot is towards the end and I’ve cut up some of the main sketch to be able to better see how the transfer lines are looking. Once in a while the graphite paper is of poor quality and I have been known to go on happily tracing lines for hours only to find they are not visible on the panel. Not fun.
I have very little patience for this part of my job…but somebody’s got to do it.
And now….with the panel back up on the easel and the counterbalancing adjusted…I can move it all by myself….
I’m not supposed to lift anything heavier than a can of soup for 6 weeks.
And my nurse is watching me like a hawk.
So I had to come up with a fool proof plan to get this next, huge, panel up on the easel. Too heavy for Pat to carry in from the garage by herself, we recruited the old wagon made out of parts from an old radio flyer and together we inched it through the gate and across the lawn and up onto the porch and slid it into the studio…then we locked and secured the easel carriage and one giant heave was all it took and presto…. she’s up and ready to go…
I put the deck of cards there so you could get some idea of size… the panel is roughly 4 x 8 feet…
It reminded me of a quote my dear old Aunt Sal sent which is taped to the studio refrigerator…
“There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING !, that two women cannot accomplish together before noon.”
We managed that AND moving a 50 lb bag of bird seed….well before 11:30 !
Now the hard part…to fidget with the composition and get the sketch up on the panel…day two of sketching and reworking…and counting…
Van dyke brown and ultra violet magenta, tipped with Old Holland yellow reddish extra …outlining the mid-winter hardwoods against a field of king’s blue deep sky with brilliant sunshine flooding the air outside of my studio this morning…and after a week long medical leave…I am overwhelmed by the sheer pleasures of returning to this space.
Here are just a few of the things I have missed…
The early morning sunrise shadows that greet me at the door…
The everpresent piles of books, art magazine, and vineyard gazette back issues that create a nest of inspirational reference materials for me to dip into on my mealtime breaks…
Watching to make sure Zola gets on the morning school bus in time…
And when she has a snow day and goes sledding with Jed…
The mid-morning tea time ritual of the Uncle Donald Memorial 40 dunks of the tea leaves…
The always inspiring view out of my studio window…
The mysteries that attend a blank panel…
And, as I look back from the studio full of sunshine and light… on the log cabin next door where in my dark healing chamber of recovery lies empty and in it’s cycle of refreshing…
the thing I missed most was hearing the click of the doorknob each time my babe comes in to check on me …
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 !
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 ! ”
So Light up your torches… put on your dancing shoes…
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.
In the wake of yesterday’s news of the death of Andrew Wyeth it has been somber in the studio. The view outside my window, of a weathered Pennsylvania stone barn and raw umber fields of stubbled winter cornshalks, echoes his own corner of farm land not far from here … and it settles my soul.
Many of you know our tradition of hanging wind chimes in the gardens in honor of loved ones who have died…and you won’t be surprised that this one will need to be special. I’ve decided to make it out of my old brushes.
In my studio, brushes live their lives in stages. I buy in bulk and on sale and only when I’m desparate and the new ones live in a state of reverence in the best of the old jars and mugs until I absolutely have to have that pristine spring and flow. The “working new” then get prime real estate on the table alongside my easel. Separated carefully from the grunts and wiped with the softest rags before being put up at night.
Try as I might, it doesn’t take long before they blend into the rest of the crew and their sabled edges begin to fray and the glossy sheen of their nickel plated ferrules no longer brags. I wean them out every other day or so …the hardest worn, stiffest bristled get tossed into an empty liquin box. When that is full, and the pile has spilled over onto the table, and Gully’s tail has knocked four or five of them on the floor and under the air purifier…then I gather them all up for a serious cleaning.
Last night I threw this bunch into a coffee can with about half an inch of Windsor Newton Brush Restorer in the bottom. I learned the hard way that this stuff will melt the finish off of the wood, seeing as it is paint !, so I try to make sure it stays only on the bristles. They hang about in that overnight and then I settle in for the tedious second stage which is to scrub them in the tub of Masters Brush Cleaner. Then the big rinse and they’re laid out to dry.
The best of that batch are returned to their staging areas …
and the stragglers who refused to come clean are relegated to the graveyard…a box under my workbench…
which, until today, had been the final resting place.
But now I’ve got a better use for them. I’ll let you know when I’ve got Andy’s windchime up.
In the meantime… I’m curious … where do your old brushes go ?
This coming Saturday, 13 September 2008, the Ft. Wayne Museum of Art will preview their Biennial Realism Show. I was honored to have two paintings chosen to be included, Where There’s Smoke, and Just A Spoon Full.
Below is the invitation and a link to their website. They will be publishing a catalogue of the show which is available there, as well as information on a Symposium: American Realism Explored, on Saturday October 11, 2008 at the museum.
