Muse Archives - Page 24 of 26

early morning mist

Posted on August 31, 2009 by heather • 2 Comments

It’s been stressful in the studio this week and I have been finding solace in my early morning walks with Finnegan.

It’s not safe to walk a pup on our street so I drive 10 minutes over to a local park and we walk for half an hour or so. The farms along the way are close to harvesting corn and sunflowers and the other morning, when we got a particularly early start…and just as we crested a small hill…the sun was a firey re/pink globe hovering over pockets of mist that hung in the valley of the fields below. I have driven that way every day since and the late August morning mist is there but not that spectacular sun.

Here’s a look at yesterday morning’s mist giving way to the sun…

I have a couple other paintings in the works which the Granary Gallery has requested but I am taking a small detour to work on the challenge of recording these peaceful early morning vistas while they are still fresh in my mind and before the snow flies.

As Polly would say…Shake yourself together ! and indeed I have.

Bon Appetite !

Posted on August 19, 2009 by heather • 1 Comment

Julia, my hero.

I floated out of the movie theater yesterday afternoon on a cloud of whipped to the peak of perfection egg whites…

Magnifique, Superb and Brilliant !!! I laughed and sobbed through the whole flick and the creme de la creme was the gaggle of three women sitting behind us whispering to each other in FRENCH !!!

Julia Child has been a hero of mine for almost my entire life. I watched along with the early PBS viewers as she brought us into her kitchen and taught us to cook and she was elevated to goddess status when I worked in Cambridge and would catch the occasional glimpse of her regal gait bobbing above the crowd on the cobblestone alleyways. My log cabin kitchen today is surrounded by homages to her genius… from the NY Times Magazine article that quotes her “last meal” suggestions…

my muse

to the windchime that has hung outside the door since her passing…

to the cupboards that have her famous quote painted on them to remind and inspire…

Ahhh Julia…

We took Lorrie’s advice and did eat before we sat down to watch…but on the way home we rewrote our shopping list and Herself made a special trip to town to fetch us the fixings for a feast…

A little bruschetta to honor the ripe tomatoes in our garden…

Then a lesson from the movie and an extra step to dry the scallops (not beef this time) to get a good sear…

And of course the money shot…the lobster scream !

And Voila ! we have Seared Scallops for Pat and Lobster Poached in BUTTER for moi…both over a bed of spinach wilted in garlic butter… ( did I mention butter ?)

Ahhhhhh… our tribute was complete with a dish of Haagen Daz velvety chocolate ice cream topped with fresh raspberries…

dessert

and we raised our glasses to Chere Julia, and to Julie whose blog was inspirational and gave Nora Ephron the medium to shine once again…to Meryll who simply was breathtaking…to life itself which we know to be the proper binge… and to love which after all else is at the very core of every meal… Salute !

Follansbee Folly

Posted on August 15, 2009 by heather • 2 Comments

A calm between the storm of fun as the Follansbees make their pilgrimage to Country Workshops where Peter will be giving a workshop in joinery and box making… it is our great fortune to live halfway between MA and NC and so we get to be the watering hole at both ends of their trek.

Rose and Daniel are blossoming into spectacular little humans and as much as I want to stop and document the magic… I would rather not have the camera stopping my eye…there’s simply too much going on to capture.

I did get a couple shots and in between finding long lost fairies amongst the zinnias they planted the last time they were here…and swimming all morning in the lake…and drawing pictures of Finn and alligators on the porch…and telling story after story…Papa and I brought out the spoons bags to compare and take notes and see what each other’s spoons look like now that we’ve been a’ carvin’ for almost thirty years. A fair pile of shavings gathered at the foot of our rockers and mingled with the sidewalk chalk and our conversation seemed to pick up right where we left it …with three year old stories woven through the thin bits…while Mama sat near by knitting and Pat smiled on.

Now this artist heads back to the easel and waits to catch them on the way back through in a few days… ahhhhh.

Granary Gallery Show

Posted on August 5, 2009 by heather • 2 Comments

Well it was a wild week up on the little island of Martha’s Vineyard… the show was a huge success, there were many new adventures, new vistas to investigate, a little bit of poison ivy, lots of early morning walks on the beach, many evenings of friendship and fine feasts, way too many kudos and not nearly enough sushi…and now that we’re home again I am rejuvinated by the enthusiastic response to the new paintings and ready to dig deeper and take the work to a whole new level.

Here is a gallery with some of the highlights of the trip…

check out our little apprentice as she visits the island for the first time…from the big boat to the bigger ocean she was a trooper… she left the last of her puppy teeth there and is now settling in to her cushy day job here in the studio…

another new adventure was being interviewed for Plum TV which has stations in lots of fancy vacation spots…they followed me around for a day with cameras and two delightful cinematographers…and our friend Barb followed them…very much looking the Annie Lebowitz part…

we had our usual techno breakdown on the night of the opening so there are only a couple photos… but I went in the next day and got some shots of the gallery to give you a feel for the place …just imagine a few hundred people milling about with mixed beverages and kind things to say and you’ve got the rest of the picture…

and then there are a few shots of good times with good friends and some views of the pond house where we whiled away the week that was… and of our visit with Ted to Menemsha and a stop over to Jane Slater’s, my teacup muse, and a chance for Ted and Herbert to catch up on some laughs…then, finally, a tight squeeze on the new ferry back over to America…

I’ll let you check this out while Finnegan and I get back to work…

be well, Heather

Sunshine at last

Posted on June 14, 2009 by heather • 1 Comment

When we walked out onto the creekside porch early this morning and saw our shadows … Finnegan and I knew it would be a good day. It has been so wet and steamy for so long and to see blue skies and walk in dry grass…the best.

The sun followed us over to the studio…

and now this can take a rest…

and there’s nothing like sunshine on whiskers…

But there’s no time to waste…the show approacheth and the Finnegan’s job is to get me back to work…

So here we go…a messy kitchen set-up…with supervisor on duty…

Apprentice gets to work…

Posted on June 8, 2009 by heather

We’re in full tilt show-prep mode here in the studio and our young apprentice has been keeping a tight schedule. I’m trying to make up for lost time and get a few more paintings finished and this next one has been rumbling around inside my head since it came to me in a dream last winter. The stars aligned and the rain went away and the model was free so Finnegan gathered the boots and teacups and headed out for the pool early this morning .

As prop assistant, she is in charge of making sure the set up is complete…

I have been using her pool lately for everything but swimming…besides the mosquito factory, it is now a staging pond for spoon blanks that I split a couple days ago and am carving up when there is an extra hour in the day… it’s all Follansbee’s fault… http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/ …but Finn’s job is to keep me focused and to make any adjustments needed in the setup… like pushing the model a little to the right…

It’s exhausting work, and she’s nudging me off of this machine so she can take an afternoon nap.

I’ve got the panel oiled out and the sketch done so it’s time to lay down some paint… catch ya latah.

The fence is finished and the roses are a-bloom.

Posted on June 1, 2009 by heather • 2 Comments

Ok so this blog is getting far and away from the art related content which is its focus… but I am trying to keep it real. If an artist is painting from her soul then she brings to the easel every part and corner and adventure of the surrounding world. If each sense is alive then they are constantly recording and… on a good day…remembering.

Painting from ones authentic self, nod to Joseph Campbell, is my goal. Woven through the early days of this year have been threads of death, dying, grief and mourning, anticipation, joyous birth, heart-pounding happiness, soul searching love and ab-stretching laughter. I’m expanding the dialogue here to share some of this life that is lived behind my easel. You will be the judge as to whether or not the common threads make their way into the paintings.

In that light, here are some photo updates and some things that fall into the category of … musings…

Finnegan's fence — Teaching her to spell her name

claiming clamshell — Just wait until we get to the beach !

Lots of lovely little girls.

Posted on May 27, 2009 by heather

There’s nothing brighter

than the smiles on a gaggle of little girls

gathered around a giggling puppy

with their grandmothers oogling

on a glorious spring day…

Flights of Angels

Posted on May 24, 2009 by heather

A sweet sadness is in the air this morning. After a long life of loving and laughing and raising a family of 10 magnificant children with passionate curiousity and free spirited thinking and a nature of true kindness…and after a very brief window of going… our dear friend Julie died last night.

Here is her shining face with Pat in the studio a while back. Pat was honored to help care for Julie in the last few weeks she had on the planet and to send her peacefully to her much looked forward to reward of once again seeing the love of her life…her husband Frank.

Right about now they are getting that red canoe off the top of the station wagon and over to the lake… and all I need to know of love…is the hint of Frank’s pipe trailing in their wake.

Dear Julie, may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest…

Painting Finished !!!… and Finnegan’s fence progresses

Posted on May 21, 2009 by heather • 1 Comment

’tis DONE !!! … though I’m going to have to wait for the photographer to do his magic in order to get a good reproduction, here is proof that the panel is off the easel and I am moving on…

The last few days involved cleaning up the detail on the remaining boats and making sure all the shadows were correct, then glazing in several more layers of water and reflections. Varnish will make a huge difference with a painting with this much contrast. The van dyke brown and olive green dark dry with a dull matte sheen and all subtleties within those dark areas are lost until the varnish pops them out. Imagine a beach rock which is transformed from a dull grey when first you pick it up on a hot and dry summer beach…and then comes alive with color as you let an ocean wave wash over it.

With that major project completed…and before I begin the whirlwind effort to paint the rest of the works for the July show…I treated myself to a rare morning of carving. In the midst of the pile of sticks, which Finnegan and I have been collecting each morning for her fence, I found a honeysuckle branch that decided it would rather be a walking stick. The wood is wonderful to work with. A slow growing hardwood that has a beautiful heartwood of purples and reds. Finn worked on removing the bark while I whittled away at the knot holes and we created a right fine pile of shavings…

It does my soul good to spend a morning listening to the birds, watching my sweet puppy play with her new bone, and working with wood.

We’re making good progress on the fence as well but were up too early to start hammering so here are some shots of yesterday’s work…we were running out of fallen branches so decided to get some fresh meat and trim out the honeysuckle and take down a couple saplings that were too close to the power lines.

After all that work…it was time for a break…

and then over to the fence to say hello to Jed and make sure Zola doesn’t miss her school bus !

Now… back to work !