It’s not quite this white outside my studio window, but the valley is peaceful and the tracks are there, we just can’t see them right now.
New paintings are varnished and Herself delivered them to the amazing John Corcoran, he won’t mind me showing off his new website… click here . He will do his magic, as he does with every one of my paintings, and make a digital record before it heads back here for framing and then off to the designated gallery, or patron.
The early morning studio delivery wagon has just pulled out of the drive with the final tubes and boxes from our winter workshop.
The teakettle is rattling on its way to boil for the first thermos of darjeeling of the day.
A brand new panel is up on the easel, with sketch ready to transfer. Palette ready for some fresh new paints. Curtain pulled back and the view in the painting above is what I have beside me, and all I need is before me.
An email has just come in from Peggy, her thought for today for the artiste,
“Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view.” Paul Klee
It certainly feels like a holiday here, the spirits of solstice are sparkling and the view is open to change.
It’s a wonderfully dreary start to the day before Thanksgiving in central Pennsylvania, the perfect weather for painting.
We, like so many in this land, have a large plucked bird in the fridge and are planning to roast it with most of the trimmings and be thankful. And I am, for many things. But today, I thought I’d concentrated on…the birds.
Watching them, feeding them, learning about them, painting them, and most of all the delight of coming upon the treasured gift of their feathers.
The studio is full of them. Collected over the years, their beauty astounds. With my new bionic knees I am back out on the trails, and the muses are back as well…
After finding this beauty, I decided it was time to get serious about identification so I got this book…
Which I highly recommend. I’ve been pouring over it for days now. And the first one I spied was this one which recently made a supporting role appearance in this painting you might remember…
if you zoom in on the Jorgesen, that would be the clamp for you non-woodworkers, you will see the feather, which…every single one of the avian enthusiasts mis-identified. I have four of them which have been floating around here for years. But right there on page 91…
we see that it belonged to a Chukar !
Further research, at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, reveals that the Chukar is…
A native of southern Eurasia, the Chukar was introduced into the United States from Pakistan to be a game bird. It lives in arid, rocky terrain across the western United States and southern Canada.
And then it hit me…I already knew that. Insert fading memory comments here as you will, but it all came back to me. Years ago, I’ll say 4, I found one perched on my studio garage roof. As you can see, it is a stunner of a bird so it caught my attention, but it is also not a local gal. I also seem to remember that, when first I googled this creature, there was mention of raising these smallish sized birds to release for hunters to take down with big guns, ( picture me here shaking my head in dismay).
The memory of finding the feathers is lost but, when I decided to take the leap to add that little bit of whimsy to Peter’s painting, it was after all a painting of Peter, the birdman of Plymouth, I didn’t have to look far to find the perfect candidate as these four feathers have been tucked into a little blue teacup behind my easel for lo those, I’ll say four, years now.
Above that easel is this display of painting and sketch and original model…
And yes, the muses are right there over my shoulder of late…
Cardinal Wolsey. The ever present window slammer of a bird, is still with me. I now believe she is more than just a disturbed bird. Pat and Finn met a woman at the park last week who, after hearing the story of the intrepid one, immediately suggested that she was someone who I had known who had “passed on” and did I know anyone in the clergy. Well I sat back in my chair at that one. Seriously, my father, the Presbyterian minister, returned as the slammer ?
Possibly ?
I’m still pondering that one.
But this bird is definitely trying to tell me something. She now follows me from window to window and watches me all day long. Hurling Herself at the panes seems to diminish when I settle in at the easel. Then she just flies up and stares at me…the rubbernecker.
Well, ok, that part could be Ted. He is definitely nudging me to focus on painting…probably as I write this…which is taking time away from what I began this blog with…
that perfect painting day.
Well, the dreary rain has turned to our first snowfall of the season. The promise of a winter wonderland, a bird in the oven, one at the window, and two dozen at the feeders…that’s all I need of Thanksgiving.
And, this…to all my friends and patrons, whose support allows me to do the work that is so meaningful to my soul…
Working quite late in the studio tonight, but I’m at this computer rather than at the easel. There’s a lot of “business” stuff to this full time artist deal and it allows me to stretch some other creative muscles. Tonight, it’s writing.
No, not this blog, Painter’s Notes. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you will have found your way to this logo,
It appears at the bottom left of each of the large format image pages, which are found when you click on a thumbnail in the Portfolio section of my website. The logo takes you to the little journal writing that I do for each painting. Long story, written up somewhere in the archives here, but for now, let’s just say that once I got started…I wasn’t allowed to stop.
I am not a writer, and the “I have to do the Painter’s Notes” task does tend to be put off until it can wait no longer. Tonight is that night. At least for the five new paintings that are going out to Santa Fe. Well, they have already arrived, ahead of our flight next week out to the land of enchantment.
As I begin, it puts a smile on my face to see the images of The Bogcutter and The Smock side by side…
Our son Jon, and his daughter Zoe.
Jon originally posed for this painting almost 5 years ago. Zoe is 4. She was just a twinkle in Papa’s eye when he hefted the bogcutter on his shoulders and let me sketch away. I’m so grateful now, for the reference photos I took way back then. Everybody changes over a five year time span, but I, unknowingly, caught him just before his life was to shift forever.
That painting sat on the back burner while I gathered up the courage to attempt an honest portrayal of someone I loved. Man it took guts, for me at least. The nudge of that AAC article was the extra shove I needed. That, and watching the passage of time move into warp speed.
The portrait of Zoe was a much more serendipitous affair. She simply wanted to paint next to her Mima. And when I got up to fetch her some clean water…it was all about the raking afternoon light. I wondered if a then 3 year old, would understand the concept of modeling. She loved trying out the new word and was so serious about her craft that the camera, clicking away behind her to capture the fleeting light in her hair, was no distraction. She was a natural at taking direction and held that dear little hand still so I could record the shadow on the dimple.
OK, now it’s later and I may not make it much longer tonight.
But, it’s a start. I’ll let you know when to click on that logo.
Looks like that Hubcap show, Second Time Around, at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley is a huge success. They have had well over 2400 people through just on the first weekend.
The Exhibit will be up through March 1, 2015 and it would be a beautiful day trip around this time of year. They have produced a new video which I found interesting so I’ve made a link here…Click for Video
Meanwhile, my days are filled with wrapping and shipping two groups of paintings headed out west. The Sugarman Peterson Gallery show opens in less than two weeks…oh my…and Gallery 1261 is having a new show which opens later in October, more on that soon.
Then, I have a large batch of panels in mid-prep in the garage workshop. The electricians have lit up the place, and it has been wonderful to throw the big carriage doors open to the beautiful fall weather, turn up the tunes, and work the day away.
So, though I will not be picking up the brushes for at least the next month, I will be working just as hard at the “behind the scenes” business of making art.
It was a stellar time on Martha’s Vineyard. A magnificent gallery opening with wall to wall kind and generous patrons of the arts, bookended by two amazing weeks on the wildly changed and stunningly brilliant Chilmark bluff.
I’ll have more to say about that and this, but for now, I have to kick the studio up into high gear to get ready for the next show…stay tuned.
Here are just a couple pics of the exhibition and smiling faces of dear ones who shared our island hearts…
4 Featured Artists, Wendy, Don, Heather and David, as we get ready to shake some hands.
Wendy, Herself and David making everyone feel welcome.Mr. Morse plying his trade.Ted, wouldn’t have missed it.Family traditions …The gallery’s next generation…The Follansbee Family full of fun.And a wonderful whirlwind reunion with Goddaughter Emily.
Notably missing are photos of the rest of the Granary Crew, Sheila, Adam, Sara, Nancy and Adam, the second, who were far too busy working hard to keep that place hopping. We are deeply grateful for everyone’s support up there…both humble and proud to be a part of their stable…as it were.
More to come as I sort through the ten thousand or more photos taken. The camera is still smokin’.
For now…I gotta go hit the brushes…
Be happy all.
Intermittent Reinforcement –
That would be akin to psychological torture and for an artist, in her studio, painting with tiny brushes, all day…
most, any … all distractions raise the blood pressure.
In the case of the smashing cardinal, radical measures had to be taken…
Earlier this spring, The Bird, started seeing her reflection in this window and set to hurling herself at it. Repeatedly. In five – ten minute intervals. Sun up. To sundown.
My easel is six feet to the left.Where, this spring, I was sitting…Sun up to Sundown and then some.
Years ago a naturalist friend explained the phenomenon to me and I have since forgotten all the lovely avian reasoning behind the need to defend…against oneself. And, though I have had oodles of time to ponder the psychological anomalies of seeing one’s own reflection as a threat…a constant threat…I long ago lost patience with the hurling distraction. Not to mention the self-mutilating brutality of what the poor misguided bird must be experiencing.
So, the sheet. Which neighborhood watch persons, Paul and Matt, saw on their daily bucolic commutes and wrote a scathing review of on social media. Insert smiley face emoticon.
This fix did work. It even survived for many weeks through storm and wind and hail. Last week, after I had left the easel behind for some quilting therapy, and needed more light, I took down the sheet.
Tap tap…smash. She was back.
Now, sitting directly in front of the action, I was able to see that, except for some drool and bother, there didn’t seem to be much in the way of residual bird parts left after the attacks. The beak alone was being used to make… her point. I had hoped that it was a nesting behavior and that all that mess would be over by now. But no. Or still. I’m not sure.
Either way, the sheet has gone back up. I have left the now dim corner of the quilting chair, and returned to the easel. And now, just for fun, I am privy to one or two tiny taps an hour. Seems that she is ever vigilant, but now only curious, and she flies up to the top of the sheet and perches and peers inside for a silent, blessedly silent, minute or two and then is off. You would have had a photo of this for confirmation, but she is camera shy.
I, of course, am curious my own self.
Trickster Goddess or Muse ?Painter or Seamstress.
Perhaps time will tell…
I know SHE won’t.
There was a catalog to get to the printers, a flurry to ship a piece or two up to the Museum for their annual fundraiser, and, as I recall…a general air of that flurry, nay panic, about getting everything done in time to make our ferry reservations.
This year…I somehow went from being a month behind schedule in May…to being waaay ahead of that same schedule here in the month of June.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not in search of things to fill this time. There are small craft warning options, and bags of tools, and tempting books, in piles in every single room in both studio and log cabin. But for the first time in a decade I am, shall we say, relaxing into these early summer days.
Entire pots of coffee are slowly consumed in the morning sky chair. Weeds, which are historically allowed to cycle into full tilt trees, are being yanked in their youth. Many small, and a couple of large, projects have been crossed off the home improvement list. Parts of the studio can actually be called cleaned up. Ok small parts but hey.
And I have spent hours at a time, with tiny needle in hand, in a different corner of the studio, peacefully quilting.
My working theory is the brutal winter. It shifted something. Hard to the left. Can’t even write about it except to say that warm sun and blue skies are to be bathed in.
So, finding myself with this breath of extra time I am actually going back to the easel. The large panel, which was the last ptg finished for the Granary show, had to remain on the easel until it was time to varnish and then haul up to the photographers. We hooked up the trailer and I took it up to John Corcoran yesterday so it feels like a dance hall in here.
John recently confessed that he, like myself and so many other artists, is often anxious after a hiatus from the work. The ever present doubts that we’ve still “got it” sometimes make it hard to pick up a brush, or camera in his case, and crawl out on that creative limb again. The break which happens every year at this time, between pre and post MV show, always throws me that curve ball.
But today, in my newly granted, and oh so profoundly appreciated, stay of anxiety…I’ve got an idea for a teacup composition that has been teasing the muses and I’m going to squeeze out some fresh paint and open the windows and let the solstice inspired breezes play with the brushes.
Yes, I am painting.
Most of the hours of most of the days.
But the apprentice has lately been insisting on beauty breaks…
And, after the winter of discontent that we all shivered through, I am taking deep breaths of every single blooming flower in my garden..
My beloved Beach Rose and irises and even the daisy that always reminds me of J O’H
and, with a cart full of color, and a pair of sturdy gloves
I am taking full advantage of every single space between the brushes
to get outside and work in the dirt.
Herself chuckles and grins as she reminds me of the day,
sometime in mid-January,
when I hung my winter weary head
and swore I was not going to do ANY gardening this year.
Certainly no new plants, and definitely not the heavy lifting of the vegetable beds.
No, I was going to keep that head down low and focus focus focus on the paintings.
And right up until about March I was right on track with that dark pledge and doing fine.
Then some plague germs bullied their way into the studio and I spent the next few months crawling out of a very deep hole of un-health. (Spell check didn’t like that last hyphen and neither did I.) Which has thrown some curve balls of perspective at me.
BUT… the veil has lifted.
(Insert a choir of angels here please)
and all verdant bets are off…
Life is so damned short and…
you simply can’t keep a gardener’s soul from a wheelbarrow filled with marigolds…
And then there are those newly revised beds that I dreamed of through the wintery gauze of tissues…
and the annex to the asparagus bed that wants to try growing some beans this year…
Everywhere I look there are things growing…
And chairs that call to sit a spell…
or swing…
And so yes, I am painting, but I am also living large in the tiny corner of the planet that we are taming. And, when the brushes begin to whine, I settle back into my chair at the easel with a tiny token of the garden wonders to temp the muses…
May your paths be filled with clover
and strewn with beach rose petals…
now go out there and grab a trowel.
OK that’s a bit lofty (and probably influenced by the book I am listening to about the French resistance), but I have reached my limit…
My webmaster called it a “brute force attack”, something to do with blacklists and hackers, alls I know is that for the last year I have been flooded with bogus blog comments.
Seriously, daily dozens of ridiculously worded ersatz appreciations of everything from content to spelling of blog related matter in an effort to get me to “Approve” them and allow entry to the inner sanctum.
And today…
I have pulled the plug on those brutes.
If I unchecked the correct button, comments will no longer be allowed on my blog.
Not really a big deal except for the handful of loyal readers, you KNOW who you are, and the two or three others who occasionally wish to be heard on a given matter.
This shouldn’t affect any of you who look and lurk and generally like what you see here, and it won’t apply to all the facebook readers, but it hopefully will free up my emailbox for the countless other legitimate spam which tries to lodge there for my considered approval.
Meanwhile, life and creativity and many happy hours of painting continue on here in the studio. I’m working on a special commission which allows me to bring some blue skies and bright light into the last of these winter days. No sneak peaks since it is surprise !
But there is a whole lot of new work burgeoning on the spring horizon and the hint of an exciting new show to announce soon. Stay tuned and stay frosty out there…and…all you attackers…
keep your comments to yourself !
I feel better already.
Above painting, with flags at the ready, is Trinity and is currently waving it’s tri-colours over the hills of Santa Fe, at the Sugarman Peterson Gallery.
