It is dark now. And it’s been a very long day of frustrating fits and starts. Much ado and almost nothing to show for it.
Last week I had a dream in which a painting began to take shape. A line of pumpkins supporting a pile of corn was the start . At first a shining ear with one glorious pat of butter atop was hovering over the pumpkins. Then the next day the title came into focus…The Philosopher Corn. I liked that but the original butter thing was too cute.
While sitting on the studio porch carving some spoons that afternoon I kept hearing a great swoosh in the trees just before seeing hundreds of migrating birds take flight. And I thought of a Raven…with an ear of corn in its beak… and that was my philosopher. Probably an echo of Jamie Wyeth’s sinful seagulls that I saw last week. But I liked the idea of the oily black feathers against the orange and green fall carpet.
I did a tiny sketch and gave Pat a shopping list. First off, the pumpkins. Well it turns out we are on the cusp of that season. Farmers said look back here on the weekend. And corn is at the other end of its season. Farmers said we probably won’t have any more by the weekend. And…we leave on Tuesday for a month on MV.
Soooo… I drove all over kingdom come and found Pumpkin Hill where I was no doubt the first customer … but I loaded four pumpkins into my wagon and called Pat. Got ’em, now can you go straight over to the orchard and grab all the corn that’s left.
That was two days ago.
Now here I sit tonight, waiting for my ipod gadgets to sync after hours of repairing loopy software, and decided it was time to set up the still life with the harvest. An hour later I am beaten.
Granted, I may be too tired to hear them…but the muses just ain’t helping out here.
This is absolutely hideous.
I hardly ever paint what is exactly in front of me in this kind of a still life…but really…my first little sketch had way more information than this heap.
And I have now ignored my partner and my puppy for most of the day… have two dozen perfectly good ears of corn going to waste…four decent pumpkins (pick of the crop) and a whopping headache in the balance.
Lesson learned…again…
these paintings have a mind of their own and when I try and force them into a tight little box in a crazy busy schedule… I just end up in tears.
I’m not letting go of the title, or the characters in play, but I am turning off this machine, going to shake myself together, find my dog, and head home to my loving partner for the night.
When we were on Martha’s Vineyard in July for the Granary Gallery show we took a day off to be filmed for a spot on Plum TV. Hannah Pillemer, the film maker, producer, editor and interviewer, along with David Rhoderick the intrepid cameraman, did a fine job of making us feel at ease…and our friend Barbara Gordon, aka Ansel Leibowitz, documented the interview for the studio blog.
Here are some photos from our morning in the spotlight, and a link to the video …
The cooler weather is perking up the not-so-little-anymore Finnegan…
At six months, her studio apprenticeship is focusing on getting the artiste to stick to a routine. Up at the crack of dawn, feed the pup, climb into the truck and head over to the park for a brisk half hour walk…then home to hose off …
Then it’s time to get to work…
Her new name this week is Runs With Brushes…
When I catch her and get this one back… I WILL get to work.
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.
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…
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…
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 !
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…
When I decided to give painting my full time attention I was well into my forties and had been a traditional chairmaker for ten years before that, in addition to a dozen different jobs and professions, so that when it came time to unveil the first batch of work at my show in 2001 I felt the need to help bring along my craft show patrons and friends, who never knew me as an artist…to go some way towards explaining the radical shift from woodworking tools, et al, to brushes and oil paints. So I wrote down some thoughts to go along with each painting and hung them off to the side.
There was some good response so that when, a month later, my work was accepted to show at the Granary Gallery I asked if they might also like the painter’s notes. Chris Morse, the gallery owner, said sure but he confessed to be not quite certain what to do with them so I assembled them into a folder which he put out for the viewers to look at casually should they be interested in more info.
I admit some naivite at the time and over the years these painter’s notes have been waved away by other gallery owners as not appropriate and on one occasion I was personally chastised by a critic for what he called the “conceit” of “writing poetry” to go along with my paintings.
Oh well…what helped me to get over that poke in the eye was the overwhelmingly positive response from the Granary’s patrons and staff and, for what it’s worth, I have continued to write.
After 9 years and over 200 paintings I have lightened them up some and see them more as journal entries that are there to add another layer to the work and the gallery keeps a notebook of the complete collection for those rainy day visitors to browse.
On my website you can navigate from the Portfolio page and browse through the paintings, sorted by year, open a thumbnail and scroll down to the logo on the bottom left (seen above) and click on the quill to open each paintings’ notes.
Got me thinking of all this because I am sitting here in the air-conditioned studio escaping the 90 degree afternoon heat and writing up this year’s painter’s notes. Some ponderous reflection made me pull up the very first one I wrote back in the Spring of 2000. Here is a look …
Chilmark Morning
Spring 2000
A sacred place.
On a great measure of bluff overlooking Squibnocket Point
there is a century old chicken coop become camp cabin.
Outside, the seagulls rise on the warming October air and cry out over the persistent sound of the ocean swells. The rust and sienna and gold of the late season meadow is accented with tiny red specks of newly opened bittersweet. There are long shadows and down along the stone wall the deer have settled into their beds of bracken and cattails hidden behind the grapevines.
I have spent a hundred evenings on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.
Familiar with the darkening shapes of rabbits coming out to find their supper of greens, beacons from the West Chop light house signaling brighter on the horizon, the milky way preparing for
its spectacle, and the magic of sparks arcing into the night wind
as the logs are emptied from the too smoky fireplace.
Inside on this evening with lobster pots and wine glasses stacked in the porcelain kitchen sink, the dog walked one last time and the candles gently blown out, we retire to our cubby hole of a bed.
When the last light of the reading lamp goes out there is an indigo blackness, a ghostly breeze lifting the curtain from the sliding window, and a stillness broken only by the rhythm of the waves.
Camp Sunrise.
So named almost a century ago by Grandma Sophie for the spectacular sunrises which grace this edge of the planet. It is a humbling moment to stand on that bluff with the Atlantic ocean before you and all of the continent behind and watch the sun break over that horizon.
I confess to having witnessed more sunsets than sunrises
and covet the cool crisp sheets of the morning.
It was on such a morning that I awoke to a mysterious light.
The center of my waking world was awash in firelight.
The door alongside the bed was opened to the bathroom.
Herself had placed a small candle in the sink while I slept.
The interior of this cabin is painted white at the beginning of the season every other year or so. There have been great Nor’easters weathered there when I believed that it was only those thick
layers of paint which held the walls and roof together.
The orange light of this morning’s candle was alive and dancing across that whitened wood.
The brilliant blue square of the bathroom window had long been a subject in waiting and
I had done sketches and taken photographs for a decade in anticipation of capturing that scene.
But it wasn’t until that moment, when the echo of her spirit was reflected in the worn surfaces of the enamel and dawn, that I found the way in to the heart of this painting.
The advice to writers is to write of what you know.
I believe that is true for artists.
I paint of the Vineyard to testify and to claim and to hold tight to that sacred piece of the planet.
The accounting department gave us the go ahead to make an equipment upgrade and install a roof vent on the trailer. One of the trickiest, and most nerve wracking parts of my job is the safe transportation of finished artwork. We are responsible for getting a years’ worth of paintings up to Massachussetts, over the bridge and onto the cape, over the ocean and onto the island, and into the gallery parking lot….in the middle of summer.
I have learned the hard way that nothing, absolutely NOTHING, must touch the surface of a painting especially in transit. The slightest jarring can cause abrasions and the heat that builds up inside of a truck or the trailer can be wicked. Packing day is usually as close as we come to divorce around here but if we take it nice and slowly and mother nature cooperates we do find great humor in the efforts we go to to keep the paintings safe.
I found a solar powered roof vent which claims to be weatherproof and our super neighbor Sue saw me up on the ladder and came right over to help. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to let her lab pup Jed come over and finally meet Finnegan up close and personal. They have been fence buddies since Finn’s arrival but she needed to bulk up before playing with the big boys. They were terrific and are best buds now…
Then Zola came home from her fishing trip and the whole family got into the act …
As my Aunt Sallie says… “There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, that two women cannot do before noon ” !
Many thanks to my pit crew…
Two weeks from today we’ll be on our way to the opening !
It’s almost 4pm and I’m taking a break from the second go round of framing.
This is a profession I know well. I have been a picture framer off and on for thirty years and for most of that time I made a living doing it. Now it’s only once or twice a year that the studio is transformed into a frame shop. The workspace will never never be as small and confined as the closet in which we worked at the Harvard Coop but it is crowded this week in here and Finnegan and I are stumbling all over each other…
She has a very delicate way of maneuvering past tools and frames and original oil paintings and tiptoeing her way to find her favorite squeeky toy. She is quite the musician and I’m pretty sure she chooses among the three we have here according to their scales. We’re currently reviewing our Frank and Julie party mix and she is partial to the Frankie Capp Orchestra swing section. (You think I’m kidding …)
Meanwhile, here’s a look at the still life table cum framing table…
Is that art imitating life … or …me imitating art ?
