The Granary doors are opening as I write this and the official opening reception is from 5-7pm tonight. Herself, Maggie and myself will be there in spirit and raising a toast to all the artists from our studio porch.
Our gratitude, however, knows no boundaries. There are many to thank for the honor and privilege of being represented at the Granary Gallery. Chris and Sheila Morse took a chance on this artiste 25 years ago, can it be ? The many adventures, challenges and staff friendships that followed have enriched our souls and the “family” we created along the way has gracefully shepherded us into our dotage.
Always, Always we are grateful for our many patrons and supporters. You make it literally possible to continue following my bliss and confirm for me that, the end is nothing…the road is all.
Thank you everyone.
This morning, of all mornings, the morning of THE SHOW when my website… crashed…and our amazing tech god Ross was immediately on the job, evidenced by you being able to read this blog, I want to send a special shout out to him and the company he has founded, Ross Ritchey, Assisted Innovations. Huge thanks Ross.
Right back at the easel for me. A blessing I never take for granted.
The space between this artist and her easel has been filled for these last many many many months with the voice of the great narrator, Patrick Tull, reading all 20+ volumes of Patrick O’Brian’s PRODIGIOUS series of novels featuring the swashbuckling seafaring adventures of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. Well over 200 hours of being immersed in that world and for me, it was the second time through. I have two hours to go. The last two chapters he wrote before his death. The last sentence of which was never complete.
As many before me, I was lead to the books by my love of the movie Master and Commander. Definitely falls under the category of IYKYK. The first time I heard the thrilling command of “BEAT TO QUARTERS !” I was hooked and it opened up endless chests of drawers, oak planked decks and scores of floating wooden barrels for my curiosity to play amongst.
The lubber’s holes of history, masted ships and sailing slang have come in handy for one of my other pursuits which is the editing of old ship’s logs. I am currently working my way through the American Naval Vessel USS Jamestown during her Civil War service from 1861-1865. The Old Weather Project is a citizen scientist venture to record and digitalize the handwritten log books. They started with Whaling Ships and once completed have moved on to US Navy, US Coastguard and British Naval vessels. I chose to start with a schooner of war only a half century distant from Captain Aubrey’s ship the Surprise.
It has been a thrilling adventure for me and a huge learning curve requiring an ever growing stack of reference books by my side ranging in subject from, “Seamanship in the Age of Sail” to “The Sailor’s Word Book”, to historical texts about the founding of the US Navy and Civil War. I have bored the socks off of any of the friends who dare to ask and have raised a glass of port with one or two of stalwart among them as we carried away long into the night with a shared love of all things maritime. And it rattles Herself out of her chair when I come home and tell her I got to transcribe…”Beat to Quarters” today.
We are currently moored in the harbor of Rio de Janeiro, (my ship and I) in December of the year 1862. Having spent over a year as part of the very young but rapidly growing US Navy, where she was stationed along the eastern coast as part of the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, charged with preventing Confederate ships from sailing and capturing ships, crew and cargo as spoils of war, we are now headed to do the same somewhere in the southern hemisphere…I don’t like to peak ahead.
While restocking in port, the men are busy at work painting and tarring the ship, taking on water and firewood, rounding up deserters (the temptations on land are hard for these sailors to resist so almost every day I have to write…”confined in double irons…so and so, and there are some frequent flyers on that list). And every so often, taken in shifts or “watches”, the men get a day off.
In the O’Brian books this is known as a “Make and Mend Day”. I just love that. Look for a painting with that title in the near future…simply for the love of the phrase.
When I look back at this painting and write these notes, I see The Little Lady taking her own make and mend day. Come to rest with her bloomers open to the fresh island breezes for a spell, she spends her day “down island” for a bit of shore leave. The comings and goings of the boatyards in Vineyard Haven do have a bit more bustling for her to watch. But her basin home tucked into the “up island” village of Menemsha must find a way to cope… until all her decks have been swabbed and her yards strung taught and she can sail away home… from the Dry Dock.
When I look back at the Painter’s Notes over the years it warms my soul to read how many of them mention Lynn Langmuir.
She is after all the first and only reason I ever set foot on Martha’s Vineyard.
From our early days as room mates in Somerville her prodigious generosity was surpassed by her kindness and then some more by her curiosity but the cherry on top was her laughter.
That full throated heart bursting joyous roar would shake the bluff and echo over the ocean waves.
Years ago and no, I don’t remember now how many, she brought me a treasure from a trip that she and Ellen had taken to Scotland.
A tiny tuft warmed by sunshine soft and white and smelling of stone walled pastures filled with sheep.
She had watched me learn to spin and packed the ever present bag of knitting alongside our spaghetti boxes into her VW for those early ferry rides. And with that memory in mind she knew the exact bestest gift for her artist friend.
That was behind the subject matter and of course the title here but you can’t touch the place deep inside where I can still hear her laugh.
“It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.” Leonardo DaVinci
Trustfall – The Series
It began with a fierce and mournful wailing in the heart. A visceral flailing of the soul. In the reaching out as sanity explodes the artist grabs instinctively for what is always within reach the sketchbook.
Thanksgiving Morning 5:45am – full dark
Waking to Trustfall
Eagle – fierce and powerful and the last true guardian… FURY.
Flag – Dramatically wrenched into fierce tension – tightened, knotted, twisted, threadbare – shredding – coming unwoven – just a few stars coming…UNSTITCHED. With eagle feather and red and white threads swirling all around. Then what IF anything is there to save it?
Later on the rainy Thanksgiving morning – with the library fire roaring and the tiny tree lit
Having watched as the dark sun rose and the cardinal slept late and the Jamestown sailed into heavy squalls with lightening during the midnight watch.
Found the eagle studio shots [from] 14 march 2011. Perfect for this painting. 32 x 48 panel ready to go. Ordered a “distressed” flag – which I will torture further in the pursuit of freedom.
3 April 2025
Panels up for oiling out. Re-energized. Resistance beginning to grow nationwide. Marches on the 5th. I’m ready to dig in and do this.
RISE UP
11 May 2025 – commences and between 4.00am and 5.00am
Panel up on the easel. Flag drying on clothesline. Fist ready to fight.
Artist’s Post Scriptum This is how it began. As it became clear that there was more to be said the resistance grew into a triptych. Two additional smaller works flanking the eagle. Taken together the creative response flows from the kernel of that fierce flailing soul grabbing for the powerful truths of beauty, decency and justice standing together with the voices of Resistance and holding on tight.
The second painting in the Trustfall Triptych. You can read the Painter’s Notes for Trustfall – Resistance for the backstory.
This began life as a smaller study last year when the idea of Trustfall was first percolating with the Muses.
The powerful emotions of trust and fear incongruently balanced with the lightness and whimsy of bubbles.
A dynamic that continues to challenge and somehow comfort.
The third painting in the Trustfall Triptych. You can read the Painter’s Notes for Trustfall – Resistance for the backstory.
The Muses don’t hold on to grudges and can’t abide living in hate they see beauty everywhere and insist on catching it like feathers riding on an ocean breeze they love to grab this old artists’ hands throw caution and brushes to the wind and dance.
AND…
Because I knew you would ask… a map rendered according to distant memory and assistance from my book of feathers so you can make sense out of these treasures.
“Bring tea for the Tillerman Steak for the sun Wine for the women who made the rain come Seagulls sing your hearts away ‘Cause while the sinners sin, the children play
Oh Lord how they play and play For that happy day, for that happy day” Cat Stevens (Yusif Islam)
The painting came through way before the title.
When months ago, as the sketchbook notes remember for me, I was reaching about in the studio for my touchstones, my eye settled across the room and over to the corner cupboard, home for many a maritime relic.
This wheel, this tiny helm, came to me by way of Jane Slater’s Menemsha shop many years back now. It would barely fit on a fish platter and it is deceptively heavy. The turned wooden handles earned their scars long before coming to rest in my studio. Rugged stalwart hardworking circles within circles.
I set it next to the easel and waited for the Muses to speak. But while they argued the tension itself was what I was listening to…
Tethering rope pulling hard to starboard onward onward ever onward.
Delicate teacup poised with the confident compassion of Slowdown, holdfast…we’ve got this.
But of course it isn’t about the wheel, or the teacup or the rope. It’s about where the boat takes us.
It’s not his fault really. He absolutely cringes at clowns and dolls.
But what do you expect the Muses to do when they open a box, hand delivered from gallery to studio, (thank you Wendy and John) penned atop with the bold and provocative signature… For Heather, love Chris.
It took a few months for this particular iteration of a composition to formulate, and for the moth infestation to be captured… and not released, before the Muses with a clever assist from Herself, who put the “devil” in the mix, were able to tie teacozy to eggshells which led to the ceramic eggplate from Ebay and then to the supporting cast of mustard and scorpion sauce both of which followed along like a gamboling spring lamb.
Once assembled it was the work of a moment to see that the books which I had randomly grabbed off of the topmost library shelf
were more than just another whim of the Muses… “The Way of All Flesh” indeed… and rather, paraphrasing as Emily Dickinson wrote, “All I need of hell”.
The crisping of early winter mornings forms wispy tendrils of delicate steam which float above the teacup sitting on a wooden box to the left of my reading chair in the snug of the studio library.
It is often a place and a time of year where and when I go a little deeper and darker under the sway of Under Milk Wood.
Last November while walking those Welsh worn cobblestones I had two companions.
On my shoulder to the left were the well thumbed pages of Dame Hillary Mantel’s Cromwell saga and leaning just there on the bones of the right Franny Moyles’ weighty tome of a biography of Hans Holbein, the younger… of course.
Magnificent chroniclers of juicy details all three authors taken as one provided a playground for this pondering artiste while the Muses plucked their gossiping lute strings stirred up lessons from the lives of the great poisoners and ground pestles of earthy cadmium fire and indigo mystery.
Over my leftmost shoulder just beyond the peat bog stained shelving its Trinity alphabet leafed in gold hiding a scintillating glint winking from atop the leaning pole of mace tucked there into the darkly columned corner…
just there gesturing away from all that history toward the promise of of a canvas garden coat draped over the rim of the sour cherry scarred bucket reflecting the raking of the earliest morning light then flinging us out and beyond to the white stone guards of the churning ocean horizon…
stood that stalwart maid of the chamber Her-story ivory aproned and bible black.
Sprinting like Jorge Mateo after a sac fly from Rutch, flying around third and losing my helmet on the way towards home base… I am chugging my way into the home stretch… and running out of time. So this year I will offer the New Painting “Rollout” into 4 groups of threes.
The first of these present three “studio” paintings. Qualified as thus because they capture, in still life, glimpses behind the scenes of the new, now very much a hard scrabble working, studio.
I’ll give them each a blog post all their own so you can absorb the Painter’s Notes, take a walk in the garden and brew a fresh cup of tea in between.
