It is dark now, outside the studio windows.
Inside it is still early, by this artist’s clock,
but my eyes are weary and my head is thick with days of studying, sorting and pondering. After my two months of rehab hiatus I am back at my day job and it’s time to narrow down the candidates for the coming year’s worth of paintings.
I confess to feeling some pressure about this after raising the bar with last year’s Reclamation Series. Focusing on a theme which threaded throughout a larger body of work was both challenging and creatively stimulating…so I want to play on those swings again. But where to start ?
An interesting consequence of taking the rare “vacation” from our annual fall Vineyard excursion this year, is that I don’t have thousands of “new” photos and sketches from which to leap. Thus the last few days of reviewing the many years’ worth of archived images and ideas.
I have several compositions which have been patiently awaiting their turn at the easel and keep nudging at my elbow so they get first dibs. Some of those were roughly sketched out years ago and the artist who is looking at them anew today is seeing a radically different way to bring them to the canvas. This incubation period is something I have come to trust in completely so, now, it’s all about listening.
As of the end of this day, I have a stack of sketches. The next job is to make decisions about panel sizes. I’ve got about 25 in storage and 37 new ones in mid-production which gives me plenty of options. Then I can pick one or two which are the closest to being ready to paint and get myself in front of that easel. It seems to be best to let the editing of the big list happen in the background…to percolate while I concentrate on lifting the tiny brushes.
It’s a colorful day here in the studio and new work has been sent flying, like autumn leaves, to a gallery near you (That would be the Granary Gallery if you happen to be taking a walk on Martha’s Vineyard )… Here’s a sneak peak with Painter’s Notes to read so pull up a chair and a cup of tea…
The Reverie – 12 x 16
I have been sitting here in the studio office for over four hours now,
basically avoiding the task of writing Painter’s Notes.
Yes, I have been distracted by important things…
like the glorious clear November sky,
screaming its glaze of King’s Blue Deep,
overtop of which the tapestry of fall oaks and maples are positively on fire with peak season color.
Or the twenty minutes I just spent editing the photo I had to take of the praying mantis,
who I discovered sunning herself on the air-conditioning unit outside of my easel window,
when I walked over there to get a piece of gum.
And in between I have listened to two radio interviews by Krista Tippett,
whose conversations with modern day Clerics, Mystics and Buddhist monks
often stop me in my atheist tracks
and shine a light on my own particularly flawed humanity.
So, ok focus…and I am looking, once again, at this painting…and remembering.
It was a hot summer day and the bed of zinnias which I had planted for Pat was full of flowers.
It was late enough in the season for them to have to make way for the Black Eyed Susans,
and for the garden rake to be covered over with cornflowers.
I remember that I had noticed, the day before I started the painting, that the swallowtails were spending the early morning dancing in that bed, and that the first rays of light climbing over the hill made them seem like stained glass windows.
So I had taken some quick photos before I sat with the sketchbook.
As so often happens this was serendipitous because when I came over the next morning,
and sat waiting…and waiting…for the sun to replicate those shafts of cathedral light,
the one butterfly, which I had fancied and chosen as model, returned with a broken wing.
I didn’t see it until just now,
but the colors are the same, in the summer butterfly and the autumn leaves,
and both just as brilliantly alive
with the spirit…
procrastination or reverence ?
Her Smalls – 24 x 23
I believe the origin is British
but that doesn’t matter.
Smalls…it’s just a matter of undergarments.
And the dearness of intimacy.
And the gift of props.
Like the hat box which belonged to John’s grandmother.
The tiny gloves that I wore to the White House.
The delicates which used to live on the shelves in the Muddy Creek General Store.
The leather purse and traveling iron which used to live on the shelf in Jane’s shop.
The coin silver spoon that Ted gave.
The teacup that Sue had to remind me was from her grandmother.
And that whimsical handkerchief of Polly’s which I pulled from the drawer
because of it’s red stripe, and only discovered half way through setting up the still life,
that it’s little girl was, Herself, doing the ironing.
Some of my most favorite paintings come from a single word.
And the gathering round of favorite things.
And the gift of quiet leisure in which to cherish them both.
It’s looking a lot like this painting outside my studio this week. The skies have clouded up and the copper leaves are swirling into eddies along the edges of the lane. Glimpses of blaze orange peek from beneath neighborhood decorations and the wind is picking up.
Here’s a ghost story for you from the archives…stay frosty out there my goblins…
Ghost Stories
This just isn’t working. Thought it would be clever to write a Vineyard Ghost Story. Been writing and rewriting for days. A tale as told to me by Old Man Morse on Alley’s porch, late on a stormy autumn afternoon, about a seafaring captain who was never seen without a parrot on his shoulder. A story rich in long voyages on rough seas and the hint of warm trade winds and a couple of peg legged smarmy sailor types. And a dark secret. Turns out the captain couldn’t read. The bird who never left his shoulder and was often seen to whisper into his ear….was his enabler. They come one year to winter over on the island. Fierce and wicked weather freezes the harbors and the bird succumbs to the chill and passes on. The captain grieves the loss of his steadfast companion and literary interpreter. In the wake of his sadness, he decides one day to make his way along the snow covered roads to town. In West Tisbury he is welcomed by the lamps glowing on the library doorway. Short story shorter, the spinster librarian takes him under her wing, shameless pun, and teaches him to read for his very own self. How do I ever thank you, he says. Years ago I left my grandmother’s farm on the mainland to move here, she says, and I sure do miss her pumpkin pie. He vows to get her the gourd and when the spring comes and the harbors open he sails away returning months later with the promised orange globe. The captain walks all the way to her door only to find that the librarian had not survived a bout with the influenza. And to this day, there is one night each year, when a pumpkin mysteriously appears on the Library steps. Some even claim to have seen a ghostly reflection in the upper window on stormy nights in October.
But it turns out I am not a writer of stories. I am a realist. I paint what I have come to know. These notes are mostly journal entries and serve as benchmarks along the creative path. So I turn to a higher power.
One of my oldest and dearest friends Steph sent me a book at the beginning of the summer. When she was at the beginning of her chemo treatments. It is “Swimming at Suppertime by Carol Wasserman”. If you do not have this in your house right now you must go to the Bunch of Grapes and get it before dark. I have been portioning it out and yesterday read the chapter entitled Ghosts. Ms. Wasserman has found a most brilliantly simple elegant and graceful expression of the story of ghosts. I bow humbly to her artisanry and her spirit and lay the hallowed pumpkin at her feet. And I am grateful to my friend. Who is also a brilliant writer. Chronicling now her journey through a rough patch with her characteristic strength and humor reaching out to ease the fears of we who love her. And for those of you standing in the dark on this frosty late autumn evening waiting and watching at the end of the cobbled path, with scarves wrapped twice and steaming mugs of cocoa to warm your chilly hands … I offer these two lines from the end of C. W.’s story….. “Doesn’t love abide? Shouldn’t there be ghosts?” …… and maybe the odd pumpkin or two?
It’s been almost three weeks since I had my second knee replacement surgery and I’m feeling great… with short controlled bursts of terrific.
Light years ahead of where I was this time after the first go round, last November, my loyal nurse and trusty PT crew are keeping me hopping and, while the energy level has some catching up to do, the spirits are soaring right along with the beautiful September clouds passing over the studio yard.
For the first three or four weeks I have to share a bed with a CPM. For the uninitiated, this is a Continuous Passive Motion gizmo that you prop your leg on while the machine slowly moves the appendage from straight to bent. Depending on the degree of pain you are willing to inflict on your own self, this can be a gentle ride or a torture device but it does eventually lead to better motion and this, I am told, is the holy grail of ortho docs.
In order to accommodate this machine we had to flip flop the pillows so that, after 23 years of facing north to sleep, I must turn and face…well, I’m facing this…
Chilmark Morning, one of the very first oil paintings I ever did, circa 2000, and one which, though it has watched over our dreams ever since, I have come to overlook as one might a headboard.
You can imagine that the many hours spent resting and reclining over the last three weeks have afforded me, nay compelled me, to re-examine the work. The room itself, a view from the tiny bedroom in that magical Sunrise Camp on the bluff in Chilmark, is the geographical center of my soul. So many nights curled in those sheets drifting to sleep with the ocean waves, listening beyond the dark for the muses. It is especially poignant that circumstances forced me to turn around and see it again, now.
In a few short weeks that cabin will be no more. You have read here about what the corrosive storms have done to the bluff, and the plans are being finalized to relocate the three more stable buildings of the camp, but this old lady can not be saved. All of us who have been sheltered by her over the years will certainly keep the memories alive, until they too, like the sands, fade and blow further out to sea. And there is a solid and still growing body of work that visiting artists over the years have created to chronicle the stalwart presence of this shelter during her time on the edge of the planet.
Am I waxing a tad too nostalgic ? Perhaps but you can’t blame it on narcotics, I ditched those day one. More likely it is the forced hiatus, the medically imposed abrupt halting of the maniacal momentum that had become my life of late. The full stop, look and listen which I am respecting and honoring with no expectations…except that I will return to the second half of my life able to walk my dog again and hopefully keep showing up at the easel to record the next chapter for me…and for Camp Sunrise.
Before I head back for my afternoon nap, here’s a look at the original Painter’s Notes for Chilmark Morning…Now go out and take a walk in this sunshine for me…
Spring 2000
A sacred place. On a great measure of bluff overlooking Squibnocket Point there is a century old chicken coop become camp cabin. Outside, the seagulls rise on the warming October air and cry out over the persistent sound of the ocean swells. The rusts and siennas and golds of the late season meadow are accented with tiny red specks of newly opened bittersweet. There are long shadows and down along the stone wall the deer have settled into their beds of bracken and cattails hidden behind the grapevines. I have spent a hundred evenings on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Familiar with the darkening shapes of rabbits coming out to find their supper of greens, beacons from the West Chop light house signaling on the horizon, the milky way preparing for its spectacle, and the magic of sparks arcing into the night wind as the logs are emptied from the too smoky fireplace. Inside on this evening with lobster pots and wine glasses stacked in the porcelain kitchen sink, the dog walked one last time and the candles gently blown out, we retire to our cubby hole of a bed. When the last light of the reading lamp goes out there is an indigo blackness, a ghostly breeze lifting the curtain from the sliding window, and a stillness broken only by the rhythm of the waves.
Camp Sunrise. So named almost a century ago by Grandma Sophie for the spectacular sunrises which grace this edge of the planet. It is humbling to stand on that bluff, with the Atlantic ocean before you, and all of the continent behind and watch the sun break over the horizon. I confess to having witnessed more sunsets than sunrises and I covet the cool crisp sheets of the morning.
It was on one of those island mornings that I awoke in the tiny cabin bedroom to a mysterious light. The center of my waking world was awash in firelight. The door alongside the bed was opened to the bathroom. Herself had placed a small candle in the sink while I slept.
(Now, the interior of this cabin is painted white at the beginning of the season every other year or so. There have been great Nor’easters weathered there when, huddled under the thick wool blankets against the storm, I believed that those thick layers of paint were all that was holding the walls and roof together.)
The orange light of that morning’s candle was alive and dancing across that whitewashed wood. The brilliant blue square of the bathroom window had long been a subject in waiting and I had done sketches and taken photographs for a decade in anticipation of capturing that scene. But it wasn’t until that moment, when the echo of her spirit was reflected in the worn surfaces of the porcelain and wood, that I found the way in to the heart of this painting.
The advice to writers is to write of what you know. I believe that is true for artists. I paint the Vineyard to testify and to claim and to hold tight to that sacred piece of the planet. Because I have been there, and I know what it feels like to drown.
The weather is saying…autumn is here…get out your flannel shirts, brew a pot of organic coffee, take a mug and that little woven basket, and head out to the sky chair
for a morning of spoon carving !
Galleries are calling…wanting…NEEDING new work ! And I have spent the last month doing just that. New paintings will be arriving on the Vineyard, in Denver, and the one on it’s way to Santa Fe sold even before I put the frame on it !
So why, you might ask, is this artist sitting around sipping coffee with a knife in her hand instead of a brush ???
Well, I’m in the final countdown before I go in to the hospital on Monday to get me another of those bionic knees. The last hiatus of healing kept me out of the studio for a couple months and I’m aiming to beat that record. I have a renewed sense of purpose, and focus, and a pocket full of positive feedback and kind thoughts, that have filled my creative coffers to the brim and I’m eager to be on the other side of the hospital gown.
The order of the next few days is…. R-E-L-A-X…and the best way I know of to do that is to carve a spoon.
And in keeping with the theme of the week, Fixing Old Things, I picked out this old mess of a spoon to start with…
It must be twenty years old and I can see why I never finished it. Been hanging around in the spoon bag for so long it has a rich dark patina and is hard as…well a hardwood.
Here’s what difference a couple hours made…
It’s more difficult to measure what those hours did for my peace of mind, but my blood pressure cuff might tell the story.
So you all enjoy this fine weather, and the coming of the colors as the leaves and the air and the apples get good and crisp. I’ll let you know when I get back to the easel.
Meanwhile…grab someone you love and take a walk for me !
When I decided, back at the turn of the century, to try and realize my life’s goal of making painting my “fulltime job”, I thought it would be important to keep a record of the artwork. I kept track of my studio time and recorded the total hours I spent working on each painting.
Somewhere along the way I dropped the time records but I’ve kept up with the list. It is somewhat of a ritual to open the big book and note the completion of each painting, and it feels good to look back and see tangible signs of accomplishment.
I also have been keeping a running tally of the total number of paintings. I’ve been creeping up on a big milestone, #300, and the other day I went back to count and see which painting would receive that distinction…
It came as no surprise that the muses had led me to this…
The autobiographical sum of all of the 299 previous works, this painting shines a light on my soul and is a true milestone.
As I write this, Diana Nyad is 2 miles away from realizing HER life’s goal. I raise my brushes to her…and in the words of my other hero, Nemo…
just keep swimming…
just keep swimming.
The other day I was talking with my friend Katie and we got to comparing our gardens this year. She was excited to be growing purple beans but disappointed to discover that they turned green after being cooked….hmmmmm ?
At the time, my beans were just beginning to grow…
so I had to wait…and wait…
This week they are ready to pick !
And Zoe is here to help,
So we filled up the blue box,
with purple and green beans,
and threw them in the boiling water with the pasta…
(which I forgot to take a picture of …)
and YES, the purple ones DID turn green.
But not to worry, Zoe reports that they both taste the same and she should know because the entire box went into her belly.
It’s been wonderful to have an assistant in the garden and we have lots more to do before she leaves so I’ll sign off now…
Debbie reports that early Macintosh Apples are for sale today at the orchard…State Road, Martha’s Vineyard.
This is exciting news since last year there was almost no apple crop due to early spring weather. I sure wish we could stop over and pick a few, they’re some of the best flavors on the island. The orchard is just a stone’s throw down the lane from where the Obama family will be staying this week and they are due to arrive this afternoon. Might want to leave a basket by the road for the secret service Debbie !
I just got off the phone with Ted, who modeled for this series of paintings a few years back, and he reports that the Chilmark Road Race runners had perfect weather for the annual run up Middle Road. This month is the busiest on the island and, though I often wish we could be there to share in the fun…I’m quite happy to be home enjoying some “quiet” summertime days.
Here in the Pennsylvania studio I am catching up on chores and getting ready for another Follansbee drive by as he heads south to lead a workshop at Drew and Louise Langsner’s Country Workshops. You will know him by the spoon shavings that appear in his wake…and the ones that gather shortly thereafter under my sky chair.
Some new work is…in the works… and I’ll give you a sneak peak next time. Til then, take a big bite out of what’s left of the summer and say hi to the Magnuson’s for me if you stop by for some of their Macs !
I celebrated my 16th birthday on a plane bound for France. We were fortunate, as high school students in the mid-70’s, in Swarthmore, PA, to have a most amazing French teacher, Nancy Gabel. A force of nature and culture and aesthetics and art, she was, and still is, a profound mentor to generations…and she was my guiding light.
I think we spent a week or more touring Paris and the Chateaux in the Loire Valley and took one memorable visit to Versailles. I had a new Kodak along and have a vivid memory of walking through the palace and lingering in a hallway after the tour group ambled along, and peering through an open window into a sort of inner courtyard where the stuccoed walls had been worn away to expose some old wooden timber-framing and then snapping a picture of it. For some reason, those textures and history appealed to me more than the opulent outer shell and for years afterward I would return to that little photo often in later years as a highlight of the trip.
I even made a reference, to that scrap of my early artistic leaning, recently, when talking with our friend Dr. Doug about the museum series, Reclamation. Doug had come for a studio visit when I had first begun working up the early compositions of the rooms in that old Marine Hospital, and he had shown us some photos of his recent travels and we were marveling at his hidden talent as an art-photographer and how we each see beauty beyond the usual touristy facades. It was, in fact, our conversations that night and his enthusiasm for the new direction of the paintings that was the impetus I needed to dig deep into the project, and his continuing interest and support guided me right up until the opening of the show.
So, we fast forward to yesterday, where I sat at my studio kitchen table reading an article in American Arts Quarterly about Albrecht Durer. Always one of my favorites, I have dipped in and out of old copies of books which feature his etchings and drawings throughout my journey as an artist. At one point I danced one of his portraits of a pondering old man into a painting, Bookmark…
And, after reading about an exhibition celebrating the passage of 500 years since he was producing his art, I went to the bookshelves and took out the old books to study once again…
I know it will not come as a surprise to you…my loyal readers…my satellite muses…but it stopped my brushes and skipped my heart a beat to find…nestled in the pages of this well worn volume of his drawings…
that very photo, taken through a window in Versailles in 1974 and filed for safe keeping in a oft-visited corner of my brain.
If you had asked me to find that photo, and put the lives of my grandchildren in the balance, I am positive that I would not have been able to begin to know where to start looking for it… let along find it.
And, after living through the 40 years in between taking the photo and blogging about it here…I can honestly say that it makes my heart sing to hold that picture again, here in the studio I only dreamed about then, and to laugh along with the muses as they tease this happily aging artiste…who still likes to peek around corners, through old windows, to find the beauty in ancient palaces.
The studio garden is alive with color this week so I’ve been spending time outside each morning listening for the muses…
I had photographed this butterfly yesterday as she drank in the nectar from Pat’s Zinnia bed…and so today I brought out a teacup and set it on the split rail fence…and waited…and waited…for the sun to climb over the tree tops and reach that same raking angle.
Pat came out and found me sitting and staring at the fence and decided it would be a good time to pick some of her flowers…
Herself never looks lovelier than when she is holding a handful of her beloved Zinnias.
Just after she left the sun came through and I captured the shadows through the petals and the fleeting light. As I turned to leave, yesterday’s butterfly came back and danced across the tops of the remaining flowers. I was sad to see that a large chunk of her delicate wings had been broken off.
So my visit with her yesterday, in all her cathedral-winged glory, was arranged by the muses after all…and, like so many of these Garden Graces Series paintings, the emphasis is on…grace.
