Small works in a big way…

All hail the return of civilized weather. When that first waft of cool air hit my lungs I all but fell to weeping. The edges of my soul were beginning to get crispy and my eyes felt like thickly glazed donuts.

With the earlier sunsets and the thin carpet of leaves, the studio is poised for a hiatus. We are once again returning to Martha’s Vineyard for an autumn sabbatical and an opportunity to work among the gulls and the waves in person.

But I haven’t been idle in the last few weeks. My brushes have been flying in pursuit of some smaller panels but no less meaningful gestures. I will shortly be loading the car to bring up new works to fill spaces on the walls at the Granary Gallery…and will be sending a parcel of new paintings out to Denver, to Gallery 1261, for their upcoming small works show in November.

Meanwhile, I thought I’d give you dear readers a sneak peek. Here, for your perusal, are the latest musings from the studio… I hope you will enjoy them with a fresh mug of  cider…or warm cup of tea.

                             

Granary and Garden

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.

 

 

 

Group challenge

The  new exhibition getting ready to open at Gallery 1261 in Denver, CO.
This new painting, Master Violet Ray #11, has been shipped out west for the show…which opens June 29th.

In case you are not familiar with exactly what a Master Violet Ray is… you might enjoy reading the Painter’s Notes for this one. Click HERE for the link.

Memorable…

There was a surprising gift under the studio tree this week…

John Seed has included my painting, The Beginner…

in his Huffington Post Blog as one of the top 10 Mememorable Paintings of 2011 . The painting is currently on display in the Small Works Exhibition at Gallery 1261 in Denver, CO.

From the depths of my creative hibernation… I thank you John.

Here’s the extended snippet of the comments I sent to John with my thoughts about the work…

I’ve got this friend Ted who just turned 95 and lives on Martha’s Vineyard.
Ted was a high school art teacher and artist and has spent almost a whole century now inspiring and encouraging artists. I met Ted about 10 years ago and he has been “schooling me” ever since. (I’m working right now on a painting of him in an apple orchard which he posed for last fall.)
We talk often over the phone as he lives alone now but when we are on the Vineyard we spend a lot of time with Ted.
His house is chock-a-block full of antiques and stories to go with each one.
I noticed a tin can in his kitchen one day that had a bunch of those old pencils in it.
Wonderful chunky thick lead Dixon pencils that he used to introduce younger students to drawing.
I got up the nerve on our last visit to ask him if I could have one and he said, “Oh, those old things…here take the lot”.
When I got them home to the Pennsylvania studio and took a closer look I saw that they have the word “Beginners” embossed on them. And, since I’ve recently been hammering home the importance of a strong foundation in drawing skills to a couple of our grandsons who have brought their art questions to my studio… the idea of pencil as prop began to congeal.
The pile of rocks which are from the beach in Chilmark brought it full circle back to Ted and the tiny swiss army knife was one of the few items I brought home from Florida where I had to take my father off of life support earlier this year. That experience and it’s wake have been slowly filtering into my work in some quite unexpected ways. So, while I wasn’t aware of this until I just wrote this out for you, I guess it weaves a thread through three generations… with the iconic pencil as talisman.

Finding Abstraction

The Current show at Gallery 1261 features this little play on the theme… Finding Abstraction

The set up for this was crazy. I wanted to use a real Jackson Pollock painting as reference and found one in my old college Art History text book which I scanned and printed out so I could enlarge it and make it look like a postcard with torn edges. Then Pat found me an old paint can from the stash in the garage and after I rigged them up I taped a canvas to an old fedex box and started to drip.

I remembered the scene in the movie Pollock where Ed Harris takes house paint and starts to drip it on the floor. Turns out there is a learning curve which involves refining the dilution of the paint and the movement of the brushwork. More of a slow dripline than a splatter. I was aiming for verisimilitude but my need for immediate gratification left me impatient with the process. Yes, I could fake it… but I eventually found the right consistency and made up four jars of color and then I dribbled one layer at a time with the panel flat on the floor and walked away while it dried (that was the hard part). Since I was using oil paint instead of acrylic, it had to dry completely between colors or else I ended up with an oily blooming mess.

Then there was the fun of trying to get the magnifying glass to stay on that teacup.

I was just about finished with the painting when, sitting at my easel, I felt everything start to shake. When you work with a Bernese Mt. Dog at your feet this occasionally happens so I yelled at Finn to stop. It kept on shaking so I turned around and yelled at her again…but she was asleep. Then my phone beeped and I read the breaking news that there was an earthquake in DC. Yep, that felt about right.

I looked around the studio and a couple of the paintings were hanging off kilter but the only real damage was to this still life… the postcard had fallen off of the brush that I had rigged to hold it up (I did fake that nail and tile background).

So there’s the rest of the story as they say… stop by if you’re in Denver and check it out.

Fall Line Up

It’s time to move on to something artsy and not covered in mud…so I’d like to welcome you to the fall line up of shows which are going to be taking place in Denver, Co.

                      Gallery 1261     

October – Contemporary Realism

The Beginner     Oil on Panel          20 x 20

The Big Dipper             Oil on Panel       16 x 20

The Organist’s Daughter    Oil on Panel   24 x 36

November – Finding Abstraction 

                                              Brushwork    Oil on Panel     30 x 15

                                                Finding Abstraction      Oil on Panel    24 x 18

                                                                   Suspended   Oil on Panel    20 x 16

December – Small Works Show…..   stay tuned !

 

Sizzling Summer Shows

It’s about time we talk about some artwork around here…

There are three big summer shows opening in the next two months and here are some previews…

Gallery 1261 – Group Exhibition

Opens June 17th in Denver…click here to see the full lineup.

Pitted Against Time

12″ x 14″

EVOKE Gallery   – Santa Fe, NM  

 

   I’m very excited to have two pieces in their upcoming group show…

Decadence – curated by John O’Hern

 Show opens 1 July 5-7pmclick here for more information.

One Night Stand

36″ x 24″

AND….the biggest show of all….

GRANARY GALLERY  – Group show

Show opens Sunday 17 July and we will be there so stop on by and say hello…

I’ll be posting all the new work soon so stay tuned…but meanwhile here’s a sneak peek…

The Basket Weaver

12″ x 14″

 

New Gallery Representation

I don’t know where the art gallery business began using the term “stable”, as in “stable of artists”, to refer to the artists whom they choose to represent…but I was pleased to receive a phone call last night to welcome me out of this mid-winter cold and into the warmth of the stables of Gallery 1261 in Denver, CO.

I look forward to having this venue to expand our patron base and am honored to be in their fine company of artists such as, Scott Fraser, Daniel Sprick, Robert C. Jackson, Quang Ho, Kate Sammons, and Nancy Switzer just to name drop a few !

Now, as our first real nor’easter wails without… it’s back to the easel for me…

 

By Design…

A frosty december day here in Manchester. Spent the whole morning cleaning out the office and now we could hold a barn dance in here.

Gallery 1261 invited me to have some work in their upcoming Small Works Show. It opens on December 10th out in Denver with an opening reception from 5 – 7 pm.

Here’s a sneak peak at a new painting that will be headed out west for that show…

By Design

Oil on Panel     16″ x 12″

Another in the Teacup Series this little one is jam packed with props that I  have had stored in the Prop Room for years now. When I went up there to snoop around for some inspiration they, one by one, jumped into the old suitcase.

Oh those magical muses…