Tag: Musings

Knitting news…

Posted on by heather

Ahhhh voting day. They pulled a fast one on me this morning and moved the polls across the street. The only thing in the firehall was…fire trucks. And 8am in Strinestown is not exactly bustling with passersby to ask where the election day excitement was happening. I saw a sign at the entrance to the Brethren church parking lot and my blood pressure spiked. Getting my separation of church and state speech revved up I drove in only to find the tiny Strinestown Community Center bricked onto the back of the church hall. Still a little close for my comfort but I did my duty and was #84 in our community to vote. The day is young …your turn.Now to the real blog news…

Before I left for the show in July I stuck a post-it up on my computer with a list of things to “buy” after we came home, IF we had a good show. I had to wait until September to start crossing things off because I put them in order of need not want. But today I got word that one of those items…which was in both categories…has come on the market.

Beth Brown Reinsel’s new DVD Knitting Ganseys is now available !!!

And I just sat down last night to start a guage with the new yarn that I spun all summer…to make a gansey with !

If  you know of Beth already you were certainly in line clicking that buy button before me. If you haven’t run across her yet please at least give yourself the treat of checking out her website and blog. Beth is a knitter’s knitter. She pays the kind of attention to detail in her patterns that I do in my paintings. She makes the fine tuned techniques easy to understand and her joy of all things knitted is boundless and contagious.

Here’s a link to her website…sit down with a cup of tea and enjoy…

Gallery 1261 Show

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The Reality Boost Show is running now until the end of November in Denver. It’s exciting for me to be a part of this exhibit and to be showing among such stellar painters. The gallery website has a show preview … and some nifty little red dots !

Kudos and Congrats go out to one of those stellar artists…Bob Jackson, who has just had a painting purchased by the Brandywine River Museum for their collection. A well deserved honor.

And further congrats to artist friend Steve Mills who was also part of that Brandywine River Museum show, Reality Check (show continues until November 18th).  Steve’s paintings have received nods from many of the reviewers and his recent show at Gallery Henoch showcases some outstanding new work.

 

American Art Collector Magazine

Posted on by heather

…is featuring the 1261 Gallery Show which opens in Denver on October 15th. The magazine has a preview of some of the artwork which is on the newstands now and … Oils on Canvas made the cut…

It’s a late night in the studio…just me and the crickets.

A crazy busy autumn around here and I’ve noticed that there are many other familiar bloggers who have been absent from the cyberwaves lately. I suppose this is a sign that we are all busy and perhaps that is in response to some economic upturn. We can always hope.

For me… I just really don’t have much new to contribute…and I’m tired.

Later I guess.

Reality Boost …

Posted on by heather

I’m still reeling from a power packed weekend of art and artists and curators and interviews and new and old friends and a studio filled with all that and then some.

The Brandywine River Museum show was spectacular. The opening was mobbed but there were enough spaces in the crowd to get to meet all of my Realist heroes. The museum has put the paintings up on their website in an online catalogue version. It’s a nice way to have access to the images but I long for the old days when you could buy a nicely bound book to bring home and peruse at your leisure and revisit the images over the years.

With gracious appreciation to Bob Jackson, Pat and I were invited to join the artists and museum staff at a dinner following the reception and a luncheon the next day following a panel discussion. Both opportunities were pure gold and I will live on the fruits of those many conversations for months.

It was also a chance to meet many of the artists with whom I’ll be showing next month at the 1261 Gallery in Denver.

I’ve been painting round the clock to have some new works to show them and this morning the gallery director said yes to them all so …. off to the photographers and the framers went Pat today and I’ll be shipping them out early next week.

Here’s a preview of one of the paintings that will be in that show… Oils on Canvas

They too will have an online version of the show and I’ll post that link when it’s up.

The show is titled, Reality Boost and will be featured in the October issue of American Art Collector Magazine so check your bookstores or mailboxes for that…

and….

stay tuned for an artist’s profile on yours truly that will appear in the AAC Mag sometime in the near future… Contributing author, curator and all around man of the arts…John O’Hern… was in town for the Brandywine show and spent the rest of the weekend visiting here in the studio and interviewed me for his upcoming article. It was a once in a lifetime experience to share our space with him and the gift of so much of his time, depth of knowledge, and rapier like wit and charm.

John’s genius is well documented in the years of Re-presenting Realism series of shows which he curated while leading the Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, NY. But it is perhaps his current creative incarnation as a freelance curator, writer and consultant that may leave a more indelible mark on the artworld.

His most recent work was to collaborate with EVOKE Contemporary Gallery in Santa Fe and curate the show…Re-presenting the Nude. You can view their online catalogue version by clicking here. It’s a powerful collection of work and I’ve been spinning off of the catalogue to research artist after artist whose work he has now introduced me to.

Spinning is indeed the operative word for my head right now…

Add to all of the above a stellar week of sales at the Granary Gallery and we are holding on tight to this wave of positive energy flowing around us… it’s certainly nice to have good things to report on and we’re not taking one second of it for granted.

Now it’s back to the easel for me…  and you all get out and take a walk in this crisp clean air !

REALITY Check

Posted on by heather

After a stressful and busy month I am sooooo looking forward to this weekend. Some of my most favorite living artists are being featured in a show at the Brandywine River Museum which opens on friday night for members and saturday for the public.

Bob Jackson has been working tirelessly to help pull the show and the artists to the forefront and the museum is hosting a panel discussion with the artists on saturday. His painting Target the Artist, 2009 Oil on Linen, seen below, is just one of his works that will be shown. The list of other artists is a who’s who of the top realists working today in this country. I encourage everyone to try and get to see the show and my congratulations go out to the museum and curator Audrey Lewis  for bringing these works together in such a fine venue.

Congrats Bob, we can’t wait to raise a toast to your success tomorrow night !

Having a heat wave ?

Posted on by heather

Take full advantage of nature’s drying oven and….make panels !

The studio yard doubles as workshop in order to get a jumpstart on a batch of smaller panels.   Day one – Dibond cut to size.    Day two –  Portrait grade cotton canvas wrapped and adhered with acrylic matte gel.    Day three (morning) – Call Pat on her way home from market and ask her to detour to pick up some Liquitex acrylic gesso… use plastic putty knife to paint backside of panels.    Day Three (afternoon) – use same putty knife to paint front side of panels.    Day Four (today) – second coat on front with Liquitex.

Let the sun do its thing today and they will be ready tomorrow for the first coat of ArtBoard Gesso. I’ve written about it before when first trying it out and after months of working with it…it’s become my gesso of choice. The beautiful chalky surface is easily and quickly worked into a smooth paste using a fine sanding sponge and a little bit of water. I can control the texture and even when it’s glassy smooth there is still plenty of tooth to hold the first coat of oils. It is pricey enough that it would be wasted on the primer coats, but well worth the expense for the finished product.

I’ve got two more shows this year and want to have new works in both so there is no down time in the studio for this artist.  I’ll be posting the expanded exhibition schedule soon…but in the meantime mark your calendar for these two dates…

1261 Gallery     Denver, CO.

Group Show     Opening October 15th

and

4 Women Paint   York, PA

Opening  November 13th, 14th

Artist Talks the following weekend.

Back to the easel for me… stay frosty out there !

Sad day in Menemsha

Posted on by heather

There was a major fire in the fishing village of Menemsha yesterday. The coast guard boathouse and several docks burned down to the waterline. It happened quickly and as of this morning there are no reports of major injuries. The other miracle of this story is that the wind was blowing out to sea. Within a few feet of the burning structure on the inland side are the historic fishing shacks that line the basin. They are bare wooden shacks, many of which are simply  standing wooden tinderboxes…and most of which are working boathouses for the few remaining commercial fishermen on the island. Had the wind turned, they all would have been gone and with them the history and charm of that tiny island village.

There are reports of bravery this morning of fisherman who towed flaming but untethered boats out of danger and away from the gas station on the other side of the harbor, and firefighters who managed to control and contain the blaze, and townspeople who set up watering and cooling stations and helped to clear the roads for emergency vehicles.

This is the Vineyard. They know how to take care of each other.

Shortly after the fire began there were reports filtering onto Facebook and via local TV stations. Pat got the news and came over to the studio to let me know. Earlier that  morning we had picked up the big paintings for this summer’s show from the photographer and I was in the process of framing this…

For most of the winter the shacks and boats and birds and scenery of Menemsha were my companions as I took care to faithfully render the rigging and shingles and horizon full of houses.

Like many generations of artists, I have been drawn to the historic charm and beauty of the fishing village. My own tastes tend to  run toward the somewhat grittier side of the working aspects of the place. The way the detritis of the commercial fishermen, their boats and gear and comings and goings, make for a constantly evolving composition. Lobster pots and long lines, bouys and traps, pulpits and netting all get tossed around by the wind, the tides and the human hands that haul them to bring in the catch of the day.

And if you hang around long enough, and show up when the tourists have left for the day…or the season… the light that is so strong and ever changing on that island will reveal hidden treasures of beauty. For the last couple years I have concentrated on trying to capture some of what I see there  and have used the challenge of the large canvas to find my way into the corners,  behind the boathouses, and between the shadows of Menemsha.

As I look back now, the focus has been pulling outward…

from the closeup of the swordfishing troller Strider’s Surrender…

to the larger view of the boats and shacks Out Back O’ The Galley…

and opening wide up to the basin as seen from the top of Crick Hill just after dawn on a late October morning…

And in all of those paintings the Coastguard Boathouse can be seen. At first just a hint of the end of the dock to the left of the Strider. Then a sliver of white with the famous red shingled roof at the end of the road to the left of the big shack Out back of the Galley.

And this year, sadly the final portrait… it is the first building to catch the full morning sun at the far right of the painting and, weighed down by the gaggle of seabirds, it serves as an anchor.

Sadly today there is a new horizon…

Props

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What does an artist do when a still life set up requires a subject that is…out of season ?

When the very name of the island that serves as the backdrop has the name Vineyard in it and… it is June ?

Well, she takes herself to the grocery store…or to her iphone.

Yep, who knew. Way back in April when this painting idea came to me  and I went to the new supermarket in search of props only to find that concord grapes are not among the items shipped in to our late winter township from some warmer climate on the other side of the globe. While wandering over to my favorite section…the cheese gazebo…I looked up and poof ! Concord grapes, complete with leaves ! Not exactly what I wanted but in a pinch… !

Now, in the middle of June, as I scramble to complete the paintings for the Granary Show, it is time to pull those photos from the camera roll on the trusty iphone and print them out as reference for the still life that sits before me.

You’ll have to wait a bit longer to see the finished result…but here’s a teaser…