An imaginative and beautifully designed magazine, Martha’s Vineyard Arts and Ideas, is the creative brainchild of Patrick Phillips. A few months ago we spoke about including my work as one of the featured artist profiles and it has been published in this month’s issue.
When I spoke to Patrick earlier this summer I was preparing to work on a painting which had the title, Aren’t we aging well…which I wrote about in the last blog entry.
The musings in MV Arts and Ideas, about “aging into creative maturity”, were in part a reflection on how I was going to interpret the title for this intimate portrait of myself and Pat…but were also part of a current dialogue that I have been having with the muses about how, even as a mid-career artist…read, she’s gone through enough sketchbooks and pencils to fill a spaceship…there are still daily moments of uncertainty as I sit in front of the easel.
I expect that most of you artists out there who are of a certain age are also still balancing the confidences of craft with the moments of dreadful doubt…especially since so much of what happens between the brush and the panel is a mystery. I’d love to hear how well all of you are “aging”.
We’ve been home for over a week now and the re-entry hubub has settled down and I am back at the easel in earnest. And back in the garden as well but not so earnestly as the summer heat wave continues. But this is all good because I am getting my garden fix early in the cooler morning hours and then the rest of the day spent at the air-conditioned studio easel feels like a spa.
Time then to post some photos from the Granary show. The opening was wonderful…a sea of art lovers with many new faces and lots of kind words of support. I took some photos after the crowds had cleared to show you blog readers the installation.
And not to be left out… a few snaps from this morning’s raid of one of the potato bags.
I’m in the mood for some vichysoisse and decided to dig around for some spuds. A task which I approach like an archeological expedition… gently brushing aside layers of dirt to reveal the brightly colored treasures. It’s just magical. Though I’m not too impressed with the yield so far. I welcome any advice from all my master gardener pals on how to improve next year’s crop.
In the coming weeks I’m going to look back and show a couple “paintings in progress” photos I took while working this spring. And I’ve got a slew of panels ready for a series of smaller paintings which will be headed out to Denver for the Gallery 1261 small works show in November/December.
Meanwhile I finished this piece the other day…(here’s an unvarnished studio shot)
It’s title is “Aren’t We Aging Well”…from the title of that wonderful Dar Williams song. I’ve carried just the title forward through several sketch books and when I decided on a visual interpretation it was originally supposed to be an anonymous couple, though always two women. But after Pat and I posed together in the studio yard…I used the remote shutter release on the camera to sneak some shots from behind the chairs…and I looked at the pictures, I realized that we were in no way anonymous. And then it became so deeply personal that I took it out of the Granary roster and put it aside to work on after the show.
I’m so glad now to have it finished …and have cleared some wall space in the studio to hang it after it dries, is varnished and photographed…just for us.
It has been years since I allowed myself to do a painting that wasn’t destined for a gallery or show. It’s good, as the song says, to “steal out with my paints and my brushes”…and paint as if nobody is watching.
But now…I’ve got to be getting on with the current still life. A few of the familiar props are making another appearance like the red stiletto, the silk camisole, and is that one of Polly’s cigarettes ? Really ?
Patience dear reader…all will be revealed…in good time.
This is sorta fun…writing a blog about the garden… IN the garden.
Last weeks steamy hot summer days drove me deep inside the air-conditioned studio and forced me to focus back on my day job. Which is a good thing because the Granary Gallery show deadline is looming large and there is much work to be done and time for one, maybe two, dare I hope for three more paintings to fly off the easel.
But yesterday was so beautifully cool and clear that I gave up most of it to the garden. This time of year I am doing a lot of selective viewing. Only half of the beds have been weeded and there are a few of the vegetable beds left to be planted. The Greenhouse is a-l-m-o-s-t finished, the shed has still not been organized, the piles on the porch have grown a bearded patina from the pollen purging of six different species of hardwoods and there are maple trees growing in the gutters.
But from the sky chair…all I can see are the roses, and the herb bed which is thriving. And I can smell the wonderful hay which Pat hauled from the neighboring farm which is now snuggly mulching the veggies.
And the birds…oh the birds. This chair swings at the low end of the yard and I’m far enough away from the feeders to not be a bother so it is a perfect place to watch. This morning they are anticipating the storms on the horizon and busy picking out the last of the Service Berries and the sunflower seeds I put out yesterday.
At the end of the perfect yesterday, and I mean the very end because we didn’t sit down to supper until almost 10pm AFTER we cleaned out those gutters, we had the once a year treat of grilled garlic scopes. With some clams and a beet salad thrown in it was a magnificent feast.
This morning it is cool and cloudy and time to put the cucumbers in their cage. Just one of the experiments in small bed growing that I’m trying this year.
The broccoli is coming along but as this is the first time I’ve grown in I’m not sure just when to harvest. Suggestions ?
The potato bags are finally beginning to flower.
And if these beauties are blooming…
then it must be June.
There’s no stopping this garden now…but the raindrops are threatening the well-being of the electronics…so I am headed inside to the easel…for now.
Yesterday was one of those days when absolutely NOTHING worked as planned. I had at least fifteen meltdowns and that was before noon. The stalled storm front which dumped steady rain for three days was causing my vertigo to flare up, and watching the creek steadily rising in the background was like having one of those CNN crawls constantly going across the screen inside my eyeballs screaming flood warning. But even with all this anxiety raging there was absolutely NOTHING going on that was worthy of the whining energy I was giving my angst. At the end of the day, with a glass of wine in hand sitting on the porch swing, Pat was able to talk me down off the ledge and that, and a good night’s sleep, has this day dawning a whole lot brighter.
With the countdown looming for the summer show at the Granary, I decided to have some fun painting smaller pieces inspired by my gardens. And this week it’s all about the roses.
Don’t look at the weeding in progress beyond the foreground…but this is the view from my easel window. I have Gulliver’s windchime hanging just over my shoulder so she can keep an eye on me and the first summer after she died this rose bush began to bloom. It now climbs up the chime’s support and reaches out of the dark corner into her light. I noticed this morning that another branch is peeking up over the window sill. Leave it to Gully to know how to cheer me up.
Yesterday I brought this beach rose in and played all day with a still life set up. (Responsible for about half of the meltdowns it was.) This morning that flower is flat out and the studio smells wonderful.
And here’s the first pass which was done last night. With roses behind me and roses before me I am ready to face whatever this day has to offer.
With the promise of a bit of Shiraz and Herself waiting for me at the other end…I can manage anything !
My favorite moment of the spring is when this rose bush first blooms. It was brought back to my studio oh so many years ago as a tiny off shoot from one of the grand dames of rugosas that bloom on the bluff in Chilmark. Now it is happily filling out the entrance way to the yard and this week it is full of welcoming wafting aromas that take me right back to the ocean.
As I am grinding away at the easel, burning the candle at both ends of the day to get the last paintings done for the Granary show in July, it is such a gift to see these roses and a much needed reminder that the treasures of that peaceful island are just there… on the edge of this spring breeze.
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…
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.
