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 …
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.
It’s not a very impressive storm…but given the lack of snow this year…which is my fault for buying a brand new snow blower two winters ago…it is notable.
If I could include an audio file it would be the sound of one long giant CRUNCH… there is a thick layer of solid ice on top of this snow and Gully and I sound like we’re inside the auditory canals of someone eating grape nuts…without milk.
So what’s the view outside of your studio windows ?????
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 ?
A cold sunny morning … and after a couple of dark and scary days it is most welcome.
Winter is rough on old dogs. But for Bernese Mt. Dogs, of any age… it is also heaven…IF… it snows. Which… it has not…here…so far.
Our stalwart guardian Gulliver has been struggling lately with her ageing mountain climbing legs refusing to cooperate. We have wall to wall non-slip carpets in both studio and cabin … which has been a boon for her ageing human charges as well. So, in anticipation of the ice storm predicted earlier this week, Gully and I took some extra laps around the yard to soak up the rays and limber the joints…and took one step too many and her front leg snapped. I can hardly bear to write that sentence…just breaks your heart to see a big dog come up lame…and this seemed to be a re-injuring of a fracture she received two years ago when negotiating another winter of ice storms.
With the lessons learned from that experience, and a ramp that Saren loaned us, we hunkered down for complete rest and managed to get through the next two days of ice and freezing rain and I found a harness on line, Web Master Harness , (which was originally designed for search and rescue dogs but is now being used for rehabilitation and assisting ailing pups)… and we watched and waited.
Gulliver’s job is to be my shadow, my guardian, my taskmaster, my muse. She keeps me focused, which is a huge job these days, and never lets me out of her sight. So it was hard for her to have to stay home when I walked over to the studio. OK, Harder for me.
Yesterday, when the new harness arrived she slipped into it with no hesitation, was patient while I fumbled to get the right fit, and has worn it proudly ever since. It is a wonder. Has lots of padding, a handle that allows me to lift her easily and without adding to her pain. And, with both back legs wobbly, and one front one clipped, I can take some of the strain off of the remaining solid peg. So with that little bit of extra help…she is back at her post behind my easel.
Gully will turn 10 in March. There have been lots of bumps along her road to strengthen her character and soften my rough edges. We may limp through the rest of her days but I’ll be right beside her holding on tight.
