I just read a wonderful article by Lindsey Lee, oral history curator on Martha’s Vineyard, who, along with the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, is putting together a show based on Ted and Polly Meinelt and their annual Christmas displays.
Readers here will know how deeply Ted and Polly touched our lives, and we got to see a few of their holiday trimmings in person over the years. This article brings to life their unique creativity and cherished love of art and people and the Vineyard.
Clicking on the picture below, one of Ted’s famous holiday cards, will take you to the article on MVTimes web page.
A great big thank you to Lindsey for her dedication to telling Islander stories,
and for putting a smile back in my heart on this, as Ted would call it…
in the studio that is. After a loooong hiatus wherein parties were engaged, film crews aimed cameras, god moose daughters were wed, fancy party shoes were danced off, the flu gripped, horses flew, stone walls were studied, the stars came alive, the sun rises blazed, the chowder ran through our veins and the seals laughed at we who stared out to sea while knitting.
Home now to the tapestry of autumn colors that are bringing me to my bionic knees.
It is Scare Crow season my friends,
There is much to do before I officially pull up the drawbridge and settle in for a long season of painting. I got the garlic planted yesterday, but all those straw bales need to be put to bed. The panel making process got interrupted so there is a garage full of unfinished rectangles out there to gesso. Well over ten thousand reference photos, from our Vineyard weeks, are awaiting review, and oh how good it is to be home.
I have a couple dozen blog posts in the wings to catch you up on, but first some rest and re-entry and unpacking of the craziness of the last few months.
Here’s hoping that you can find a heaping pile of leaves to jump in…
for all the Wolsey fans out there, and I have heard from a surprisingly many of you…
The Wolseys have become new parents…
I discovered this nest, which is in a bush just outside the kitchen window, when we were watching the tree cutters taking down another of the dying Pin Oaks. When all the noisy machinery quited down…the tiny chirps alerted me to the source. You can imagine my surprise when Herself, THE Cardinal Wolsey, flew out of the middle of the bush. You can see that the nest is well hidden. I wasn’t able to get a shot of the babies…yet.
Now, my theories of evolutional avian psychology are about to be tested…
Will the offspring of the ever tapping cardinal be taught that the woman behind the curtain, the one in the baseball hat, with the tiny paint brushes…is She Whose Cocentration Must Be Toyed With.
After the big summer shows I usually come home and crash…
for a week…
then get right back to the easel.
Well, this year I’m taking it slooooow.
We have been blessed with a new studio apprentice, Alex.
Here he is with his Dad, splitting away the mountain of wood that arose
after the two great, but sadly decaying, pin oaks came down last month.
Alex is one strong, enthusiastic, and smart worker, and he is making it possible for this old artist to cross off a long list of chores that have been put on hold…for a decade…while all focus has been on painting.
He has begun to learn the art of panel making and is teaching me a thing or two about snakes, and we’ve both enjoyed some spoon carving on the back porch after the mornings of hard work.
Pat and I feel like we have won the lottery as far as good neighbors go. Every which way we turn, we find kindness and generosity. Believe me it is appreciated.
And, after all that fun morning work…the garden beckons.
Those straw bales are producing, and though I have had an attack of storm trooper squash bugs, there has been progress…
Wolsey…
this is one hysterical muse.
I had a momentary respite, from her staccato background tapping. You’ll read below, that as the last Painter’s Notes were written, the studio fell silent. I took it as a sign. After years of Wolsey’s bombarding, every window through which I can be seen, and both wing mirrors on the truck, I thought maybe she/Ted/my father/whomsoever is driving that bird’s bus…was finally satisfied that I had received whatever message she was laying down.
Yesterday was a major clean up and trailer repair, so I was outside most of the day, but when I was inside…quiet.
Today was a marathon of making the garden secure for the gardener to be away for a while. And now, I’m cooling down and crossing off the last things on the list. The second I sat here at the computer to log in the last of the new paintings…tap. TAP TAP TAP.
She’s back. Ya know, I was sort of afraid that the wandering cat, or a predator bird might have eaten her. So, I have to confess, after all this time and in spite of all the myriad levels of annoyance…I guess I sorta missed her.
Well, we are at the end now. These last three paintings complete the 2015 Granary Gallery Show. I hope to see some of you at the opening this coming Sunday, and, for those of you who won’t be able to make it, I thank you for all your support and kind words of appreciation.
And now…
I give you…Cardinal Wolsey…
Wolsey – 10 x 12
The following is an excerpt from November 2014. The bird had been pecking, steadily, at that point, for over a year. It is now June…2015…and if I could figure out how to put an audio recording on this site…you could hear her now.
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. The hurling Herself at the panes behavior 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…
Thank you.
Post Script – June 2015
After painting those eyebrows…I do believe it is Ted. He would wear the cappa magna with panache.
The Cardinal – 10 x 12
If you read the other notes on this little gal
you understand the determination behind this gaze
the relentless dementia of the tapping behavior
the persistence of the muse
but you know what ?
ever since I finished these bird series paintings
as I have been sitting here in the office
for almost a week
working on the computer to get these files up on the website
and composing painters notes
it’s been….quiet.
Not a single tap.
The only other time that happened
was when Zoe was here in the studio
painting along side of me.
Now what do you make of that ?
Himself – 14 x 12
This is Ted’s teacup.
(Thank you Terry)
And an old coin silver spoon
with which Ted gifted to us a long time ago.
But that bird…
she’s all mine.
Cardinal Wolsey.
Each time I painted her,
I fell deeper into those eyes.
There’s a thing about birds.
You can never get close enough
in person
to really look into their eyes.
I have dozens of good photos now of Wolsey,
but there are hundreds of blurry rejects
that were snapped just before
and just after she smashed into the window.
The split second of the camera lens
has given me a gift.
For all her racket,
and by that I mean
demented
torturous
unrelenting
eternal-faucet-dripping
madness of the tapping…
I love it when people say, ya know what you outta paint ?
So, David says, ya know,
I just stopped over at Mermaid Farm,
and I think it would be great
to paint that pedestrians and bicyclists
quote thingy that they have, written in magic marker over the vegetables.
We have stopped there of course.
It’s a gem on middle road.
I often wish I knew the farmers,
because they have a really groovy thing going on there.
So I gathered reference shots, and sketches,
from several different times of the day, and year
and, when I was sorting through them, I saw
the chickens.
Bam, I’m in.
Bird series here we come.
But I had an editorial decision to make.
Half of the detail shots were from July
and half from October.
The light was different in both but I can handle that.
It was the produce.
Dahlia’s catching the warm afternoon light,
a bag of papery dry onions,
and an autumn tapestry of leaves,
or…
those luscious purple onions,
bunches of thick leaved dinosaur kale,
potatoes and beans, and summer hot green leaves.
And someone WILL notice if I mixed them together.
You can see I went with summer,
but I figured I could pick and choose
among the two versions of tables and tin cans,
rows of seed packets inside the shack,boxes and buckets,
and the fifty different positions in which I caught light cascading on the scale.
But among all those changing details,
one thing stayed the same…
the red bicycle pump.
Did you find it yet ?
And that little lizardy thing…missed that one didn’t ya.
After our pal Ted died, my friend Katie and I decided to honor his being in our lives, with a road trip.
Ted used to grab his stick, and match a stylish hat to his shoes, and lift the plastic handicapped parking sign from the kitchen hook and into the truck we would climb to wander the island in search of painting ideas.
Ted knew everyone and every corner on Martha’s Vineyard. Even after he lost most of his sight, and all of his hearing, and none of his wits, he could still navigate us to the most god forsaken dirt road dead ends, and take three steps further, and be standing before beauty.
Gay Head lilies, at the end of a meadow, that we reached by marching straight through a woman’s yard to see.
Should we knock first Ted ? No, she won’t mind. Turns out she didn’t.
The towering brickyard chimney, at the bottom of the steepest rockiest dirt road the truck had ever seen, which all but bounced his own self into the heath. PG was in the front seat, and Ted was folded like a Gumby in the tiny back jumper.
Climbing to the top of Crick Hill, all the while swinging his cane dangerously close to my head,
to illustrate his historical narration.
Posing, unknowingly, at the top of the beach steps alongside
Pete in those weathered moccasins.
Like that.
And so, so much more.
So, anyway, Katie misses him too, so we are now doing Ted Trips.
On this one we did most of our looking from the car, because my new knee was still pretty new, but we did manage to climb around Cedar Tree Neck long enough to get the tick that gave me Lyme Disease, and we did some knitting parked at the beach in Menemsha eating our snack, and Katie wanted to take me to see the new library,
where she spends some quality time with friends and literature.
But it was closed.
We walked around the building, getting a glimpse here and there of the shiny new interior, but coming back up the hill to the car it was the big old grey mailbox that caught my eye.I had told her of my rambling idea of painting “Up Island Openings”, gates and windows and granite pillars and such. Not a theme yet, just a whisper of a concept really.
She thought the mailbox would fit right in, actually I think she was humoring me and inwardly suspected that the cheese was sliding off the sandwich. But she’s a gem and a kind soul…
and after some consideration her razor sharp brain came up with Portals.
Yep, that’s much better than openings.
This is the first in that whispered at series…
notice how I got it to fit into the more concretely thought out “Bird Series” ?
The Supreme Court of the United States made big news yesterday, and it is fitting to unveil this painting today.
The Massachusetts Drawing Act of 1870 – 24×24
Last week a thirteen year old art student, who is also studying music, wrote to ask for some advice on how to make a career out of art. She had seen my work at the Granary Gallery and Adam and David P. Wallis, two of my Gallaristas, encouraged her to share her thoughts. I got a bit long winded, but here is a portion of my response…
I do have some advice, actually.
Draw
Draw
Draw.
You are beginning to learn how to express yourself, your thoughts, your feelings and the world as you have come to know it, in many different creative ways. Just like you are finding with musical instruments, there are skills that you need to learn in order to play the notes and make the music you want.
Same is true in art.
There are basic skills that you need to learn.
Tools and techniques that you will need to master in order to use them to make your art.
And just as in music, while you are learning how to play those instruments, your musical tools, you probably are also being taught to listen. Listening to the music but also to yourself. Where does it come from in you, and what is it you want to say with the music you make.
Same with art.
So you practice. Any good teacher will be able to show you how to use pencils and brushes and paints, even digitally. As you get more serious, there is plenty of color theory and art history out there that will fill out your understanding of how to do the craft behind your work and how others before you have chosen to express their practiced talents.
I believe the foundation for all of that is drawing. You need to train you hands to see what your eyes are seeing.
I’ll tell you a story about one of my grandsons, Ben.
Ben came to visit when he was about 15. He had an art project to do for school so I cleared a corner of the studio and he worked along side my easel. His homework was to take a photograph, which his teacher had given him, and make a drawing of it.
I wasn’t exactly thrilled with that concept, and I’ll explain that a bit later.
So, Ben worked for a while and seemed to be struggling, and asked me to look at it.
In the art world this is called a critique. But you probably already know that.
I could see right away what his problem was. It was a photograph of a leaf. Not a leaf.
I made him put down his pencil and put on his coat and walk outside with me.
It was autumn, we have lots of big trees, the ground was covered with…you guessed it… leaves.
I told him to get out the rake and make a pile of them and then pick out half a dozen.
Then I had him really study each one and pick the one which felt the most beautiful to him.
We brought it inside and I asked him what made him choose that one.
OK, now Ben, describe the qualities which made it beautiful.
Then we talked about all the curves and lines and textures in that leaf.
You know how they curl in on themselves as they dry and fall off the branches.
We talked about those curls as gestures. What other forms in nature echo those same gestures.
The challenge was to get Ben to “see” that leaf with all his senses.
To make a personal connection between himself and the beauty he initially saw in it.
To get deep down inside of the living thing which that leaf had been, what it spent it’s life doing and why. You get the idea…become one with the leaf.
Then, after teaching his eye to see, I gave him back his pencil.
It was time to teach his hands to replicate what he now saw, much more deeply, with his eyes.
Here’s where I explain my concerns about the photograph.
Don’t get me wrong, I use photographs all the time as references. When there are things I paint which can’t be right in front of me, say the ocean…because I live in Pennsylvania, a landlocked state…or…birds, which is my theme for this year’s show. They tend not to stand still.
Well, then, I rely heavily on photos I have taken. Hundreds of them sometimes.
I call my camera my backup hard drive. It is both a memory tool and a detail tool.
You might have seen that I like detail. My camera allows me to collect all the information I need to get up close and personal with the scenes and objects I want to paint and to bring them back, via the photos, to the studio to study in depth and then to render.
But…and here’s the important bit…
the camera is only a tool, and the photograph only a reference.
Most of the actual work of painting is about all the years of hard studying and practice I have put in to learn how to use the tools.
The first tool to master is the pencil. Go ahead and play with paints and brushes and computers. Explore and get your hands and clothes covered in color and clay and whatever else interests you.
But don’t let go of that pencil until it does exactly what you want it to do.
Take your sketchbook everywhere. (I even took a fun detour for a while and taught myself bookbinding so I could make my own sketchbooks. As my friend Ted, the art teacher on the Vineyard, used to say…that was sorta fun.)
Draw, Draw, Draw.
Ask other people, teachers, friends, to critique your drawings.
Ask them to be honest but nice.
Listen to what they say and how they respond and see if it matches what you were trying to tell your hands to do.
And, at this beginning stage, draw from life. What was frustrating Ben about his leaf was having to look at a flat, one dimensional image of a leaf. He didn’t even take the photo. So he never even held the leaf. He couldn’t follow the curve on one edge to see where and how it ended up on the back side. He was being asked to draw a form without enough information to really understand that form.
So yes, I use photographs. But, I only use ones which I have taken. To take a photo means I have to be standing in the presence of the subject. When I am in front of that object I am using all my senses to learn about it. I rely heavily on my sketchbook. I take lots of notes and do sketches on scene which also helps me back in the studio.
After many years of practicing, I have a good understanding of how to use my tools, the nature of my subjects, what to leave out and what to leave in…my art teacher, Jim Gainor, used to say, ‘’”Paint the air and not the chair”…and I work really hard.
My partner Pat likes to remind me, “what you focus on expands”.
I have been focusing on art all my life.
I study feathers to better understand birds. I stare at the ocean to learn how the light changes on the water. I read about weather to help explain the clouds…you get the idea. A curious person will be learning new things every single day.
I’m always studying and trying out new techniques. Your new pal David P and I were just sharing some technical ideas a couple weeks ago. I learn tons from listening to other artists talk about their process.
My pencil sees pretty well now, but I still draw. When I want to really understand an object, I draw it.
Wow, I just read back what I’ve written. Geez that was long winded. That’s what is called, “warming to ones theme”. I should have warned you at the beginning to at least grab a snack to get you through. But, if you are reading these words, then you made it to the end.
Almost.
I hope that someday years from now,
on a day when you are working hard in your studio,
you get a note from a thirteen year old just like the one you wrote to me.
Then you will know how good it makes me feel that you took the time to write,
to express an interest in my work, to share some of your dreams for the future,
and to ask for some advice.
The work of a painter is mostly done alone, by yourself at the easel. It is meaningful but often very hard work. It’s really nice to hear from someone, out there in the big world, who reaches into the studio to tell you they “get” it.
Thank you for that.
I’m attaching a sneak peek at one of the new paintings which will be headed up to the Vineyard next week for my Granary show. It’s title is, The Massachusetts Drawing Act of 1870. Your assignment is to go look that up. I’ll give you a clue, it was the first time that art classes were legislated to be taught in schools.
In it you will see a feather, a quill, which is what was used to hold ink and, like a pen, to draw or write…way back in the day. See how I made this fit the bird theme ?
Alongside, on the desk, is also a pencil.
That particular one was a gift from Ted.
Remember Ted…kinda sorta.
Look closely.
See what is written on the pen…Beginners.
There’s your foundation…
now grab your sketchbook and a pencil
and get to work.
Draw me a leaf.
