It was one of the top five best days of my life when I first walked into the Granary Gallery…and after 12 years of partnering in art… the depth of my gratitude for the fine work that the entire staff knows no equal.
Congrats to you Chris and Sheila on being chosen, once again, as the Best Gallery on Martha’s Vineyard…and beyond !
When I settle in to work on a big painting my focus narrows, the creative energy tightens, and all the weeks of slogging through pondering compositional elements and deciding what to keep in and what to leave out, of sketching and panel prepping, and of reworking those sketches and printing out piles of detail reference photos…it all reaches a crescendo and, like the stretching of a rubber band, it suddenly snaps ! …and the first brushes hit the canvas. So it was, all that creative momentum strung taut, when I began the large painting, Severe Clear, for this summer’s Granary Gallery show.
But now, some 300 easel hours later, I am looking back and see, on my camera’s photo stream, that there were some wonderful moments in the spaces between all those long days of lifting brushes. When I paid homage to my most favorite springtime rituals. When I literally stopped to smell the roses, and to enjoy the first of the fiddleheads, and the first grilled pizza of the season, the annual pilgrimage to the Sheep and Wool Festival, to sit of an afternoon in the studio garden with loving family, and to enjoy this wonderful life we have together.
I’ll be telling you about the rest of the project, of which this painting is a keystone work, in little bit, a series of paintings which feature a Marine Hospital on Martha’s Vineyard that is about to open a new chapter in its historic life, but in the meantime…here’s a sneak peak at the big one, Severe Clear, and some of the studio highlights experienced along the way…
And now, I give you… Severe Clear
What a nice surprise to sit down to lunch today and open the new issue of American Arts Quarterly to find my painting, The Mender, on page 53.
A thank you to Gallery 1261 for all their hard work and continuing support !
Ah the rights of Spring !
And the time honored traditions of the favorite meal of my “salad days” back in Watertown…Mussels and Fiddlehead Ferns…celebrated now in my dotage…
I’m still lifting a glass of the bottom shelf chardonnay in toast to the delicacy…
But nowadays I am using my organically home grown onions and garlic from the studio gardens…
Progress
I’m looking forward to watching this tonight.
The island fisherman have brought wounded vets to the MV Derby and it’s a good old American Throw Down. I’ve got my money on the Tomahawk piloted by my pal Buddy Vanderhoop…but the waters are deep out there.
Here’s a link to the trailer… Click Here
Happy Memorial Day to all !
I went searching on my website for the pic of this painting to use in today’s blog post and discovered that it had never been added to my portfolio. So I guess I was meant to read Peter’s Blog today, as I do most days actually. I need to be painting…NEED to be painting…but I wanted to quickly let you all know of a kickstarter campaign that he mentioned on his blog and it’s all about… Spoons !
Peter learned spooncarving from Wille, I learned spooncarving from Peter, and carving spoons is just about the most fun a person can have. So they want to make a movie about Wille, who is a national treasure in his home country of Sweden. And they need some money to do this and do this now as Wille is getting on in years. Basically you are pre-ordering the dvd and, as with all kickstarter campaigns, you don’t get charged unless they make their goal.
Here’s a pic for his AAC Feb 2011 magazine article which John O’Hern took of me carving a spoon on the studio porch…
And one of Peter a few years back carving a spoon on the log cabin porch…
So for all my woodworking pals out there…
Since it looks like Peter’s day is as chock full as mine I stole the following right off of his site rather than put it in my own words so you can read below…
and, even though I’m going to have to fight the overwhelming temptation to pick up a chunk of cherry and a knife… now I’ll get back to the easel.
From Peter…
There is now a kickstarter fundraising site set up to help get the film about Wille Sundqvist underway. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/761142325/the-spoon-the-bowl-and-the-knife-craftsman-wille-s?ref=recently_launched
I’m in a rush right now (clean up shavings in the kitchen from last night’s spoons, help get the kids off to school, me to work, etc) – so I will write at length about this later. But let’s get it together to raise this money pronto. Shouldn’t be hard. When you get to watch this video, you will be amazed. Here’s a snippet from the kickstarter blurb
“The biggest risk this project is that Wille Sundqvist is 87 years old. He is getting tired of age but still he is working with craft everyday. Last week when I talked to Wille he said he was in good shape and that he was eager to start with recording the film in June. He told me he is refusing all orders just to make bowls and spoons for the most generous donors. This tells us how he looks upon his own status. But of course everything can happen with a man at his age.”
If you are leery of using kickstarter, you can send a check to Drew Langsner.
Make it out to:
Country Workshops – Sundqvist video project
990 Black Pine Ridge Road
Marshall, NC 28753
It’s this kind of a morning here in the studio yard…although this is a painting of the bluff in Chilmark and those spider webs are over a decade old.
Our spider webs, here in the hollers of Strinestown, are brand new and based on the jungle of gossamer threads that I am pulling out of my face and hair…I have yet to learn this spring’s prime locations.
The experts keep saying our flora are three or more weeks behind this growing season but that is based on the last few years of climate change which has now become the new norm. These long weeks of cool days and cool nights are what I remember as being the springtime of my youth. Slowly warming temperatures and gentle rains gave the gardeners time to ease into the toolshed and let the winter weak muscles wake up gradually.
We did have an early zap of three or four days of 90 degree days and my thriving spinach began to bolt…but almost a month later in which temps stayed 20-30 degrees cooler…it has settled back down and I have been able to test several spinach artichoke dip recipes.
Neighbor Sue and I have noted that this is the craziest grass growing season ever. She can’t keep up with it and she is one who lives to mow.
The peas, radishes, beets and carrots I planted back on St. Patrick’s day are sooooooooo slow to climb up outta the dirt. But the lilacs…oh the lilacs…they are loving this weather and, when I leave the studio late in the evening, their fragrance fills the valley and soothes my tired soul.
So, while the world outside might be three weeks behind and dragging its arboreal heels…inside the studio this artist is racing the clock and hopping.
The countdown is on for the Granary Gallery show this summer…July 21 is the opening date…and I’ve taken on a major challenge which I’ll be telling you about soon. For now I can tell you that the brushes, mostly the tiny ones, are flying from early morning until late and later… and later… each night.
There’s a very large panel on the easel right now and and it makes a hilarious contrast to the tiny brushes that I am using. The detail is electric and the concentration required keeps me so focused that only the thing which has been able to break it is the nuclear bolt of lightening that lifted me off the chair last night.
So…here’s to a real old fashioned spring…
and a face full of spider webs…
and a rich green carpet of grass…
and a studio full of flying brushes.
Enjoy !
An arc
Something thrown out into the world
Where it spins and bounces off of life
Then comes sailing back to where its journey began
In this case, two people
brought together by chance…by hazard
then launched into the world
to follow separate paths
in search of creative truths
and now reunited and returning …
Rex Wilder and I started our fling in the late 70’s when we met as students of life attending Connecticut College. He, with ambitions to be a poet. Me, the fledgling artist. On the road to masterpieces, we both carried around sketchbooks and filled them with earnest, if early, scribbles and thoughts. We scoured the streets of New London in search of authentic souls to gleen for signs of intelligent life in the universe. I, the Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote. And many a windmill did we tilt.
Then our trajectories divert and almost 40 years of pursuing our separate arts flies by…Rex becomes that poet and achieves fame and book royalties…I become that artist and get to paint every day.
And now the story comes sailing back to home and we, the seasoned artistes, have collided in one act of creation…
This, his second published collection of poems, is poised to be launched on its own journey…and humbly holding all those precious treasures in place…if you’ll forgive me…Suspended.
On so many levels this is magical. For us both, the circles within circles are joyous and stunning to celebrate and sitting back in my easel chair and pondering how far we’ve both traveled and being reminded of the youthful ambitious dreams that we shared finds me smiling alot these days.
I’m sure there will be much ado surrounding the official book release and I will keep you all posted about that. For now, you can access more information and even pre-order the book on Amazon via this link…click here.
And the original oil painting is currently on display at Gallery 1261 in Denver and you can visit it via this link…click here.
I’m waiting until I have book in hand to read all the poems but I have peeked at a few and they are delightful divertissements… I think you will enjoy.
Now, back to the brushes.
In the spring,
at the end of the day,
you should smell like dirt.
Margaret Atwood
Print available for sale in my Etsy Shop…click here to browse.
7th Inning Stretch
from the Painter’s Notes…
I love listening to baseball games on the radio
and when I lived in Watertown Square, back in the 80’s,
I would sit on my fire escape overlooking the 7-eleven and the front steps of the catholic church beyond and tune in the Sox and work on the weekly crossword puzzle,
while watching the woman’s softball league practice in the park across the street.
When I was a much younger girl I played baseball with my friends. My brother Rob was a first class pitcher but he threw the ball way too hard for me. So I moved on down the line of brothers to Scott.
The two of us would play catch in the street out front of our home in Swarthmore for hours after school. I was learning Russian at the time and with each toss I would teach him a new word.
I still have my mitt, and the last time his son Neill visited the studio we got it out, and the old baseball which bears the signatures of friends along the way, and played catch in the yard.
My arm ached for days but the smile lingered in my heart for weeks.
That’s my old bat and glove in the painting. You can just make out the peace sign I taped onto it.
It was the 70’s after all.
But what is missing from the final composition is Gully whose nose was in my lap each time I ran from the camera to the chair to outrun the self-timer. Boy was she pining for those cracker jacks. I almost painted her in…but … the closest she’s ever come to a baseball was chewing off its cover…
or to ironing for that matter….
when, as a puppy, she would curl up in the wicker basket and wait for…
the 7th inning stretch.