Tag: realism

Open for the Season…

Posted on by heather

Well, it is now…but way back at the end of October, when I first started working on this painting, the Chilmark Store Porch was a ghost town.

So we have left the seaworthy sights and sounds of Menemsha and retraced our steps to Beetlebung Corner. But this time we are turning right. Slowly, slowly, just a few short feet more…and there it is. If you time it right, one of the 4-runners will be backing out just in time for you to pull in. But if you don’t, just wait a couple seconds more for the next satisfied customer will be exiting shortly.

Closed for the Season – 16″ x 19″

Closed for the Season

There is so much nostalgia weathered into the boards of this old porch.

Generations of up island travelers have stopped to set a spell in the heavy green rockers. Early on a summer morning the smell of roasting coffee mingles with the fresh ink on the Gazette.

The lazy mornings give way to the serious trekkers dipping in for their subs and refilling their water bottles.

Afternoons, the kids gather and scatter and gather again and if rain is in the offing it can be standing room only until the skies clear and the bikes can roll out again.

And then it’s time for pizza ! With Frank’s home grown veggies the pies are legendary.

Back before they decided that hydroperoxide and baking soda was the best remedy for skunk attacks I remember making it just in time to be the last customer to buy all the tomato juice cans on the shelf.

Oh, the gratitude, for the all the pleasures of an up island convenience store with friendly faces and wonderful short order cooks and a welcoming porch…full of rocking chairs.

Day Two…

Posted on by heather

Today we take a drive up island. Through the tree covered lanes of West Tisbury, out past the Allen sheep farm, around the bend and wave to Irene at the Chilmark library, through the stop sign at Beetlebung corner, left at the Menemsha Inn, slowly winding down the hill and right at Jane Slater’s Antiques shop, then through the curvy bit at the Bite, ok maybe we stop there and order some fried clams… then continue all the way out past Larsen’s Fish Market, and circle around until we find a parking spot, doesn’t matter where cause we are here.

While looking at this painting…if you turn left you would see the Texaco station and the Harbor Master’s shack…and if you turn right you will be headed out to sea. I know which way I would turn, how about you ?

Dreaming of the Fleet – 24″ x 32″

Dreaming of the Fleet

This was one of those iconic Menemsha moments. I had been sitting on the dock with my sketchbook and camera just watching the two or three fishermen who were lazily casting off of the pier. There were some very big and fancy boats in the harbor and the tired old Strider looked a bit sad to watch from her moorings as they passed on their way out to the big water.

A young boy joined the anglers and I noticed he was angling his own self for a seemingly coveted position at the very end of the dock. They all quietly checked out each other’s progress with eyes only for the twitch of a line. No one caught anything while I was there but the peaceful rhythm of the tossing of their lines was calming while I studied the scene.

Back home in my winter studio I zoomed in on one of the photographs and saw the Derby pins on the boy’s hat. So it had been serious business out there with more than a little bit of competition.

I decided to give him an edge and painted out the other wannabees so he had the dock and the waters all to himself.

And I decided to do the same for the old boats.

And, in spirit, I’m floating alongside the gull, and…In my wildest dreams…I’ve got a contender on the hook.

 

 

 

 

Ok Here We Go !

Posted on by heather

It’s time to launch the countdown to this year’s Granary Gallery Show !

15 days from now, on Sunday July 21st, we will be at the gallery for opening night. There’s a whole lot to do between now and then and, in these days of record heat, I’m going to start this ball rolling with a look back at a winter morning in the studio. I’ll be posting a-painting-a-day from now on so check back tomorrow for the next installment but for now I give you…

Morning Studio – 24″ x 30″

Morning Studio

This was a truly collaborative venture.
And heaven help us, it is a product of Social Media.
I’ve got this blog thing going and one or two people out there actually seem to read it. So, when I came over to the studio on a cold November morning with the barest hint of light in the early eastern sky I went inside and turned on the lights, took my pill, and walked out to join Finn for our daily trek around the lower forty.

As we turned the corner, by the hibernating lilacs, I was drawn to the warm rich color glowing from the kitchen windows. Outside, and all around us,  the ground, the sky, the air, was  steely blue grey. The rest of the neighborhood, the farm and the houses here and over there were dark and still save for that tiny light in our little corner and the bliss felt so good…I wanted to share.

So I snapped a pic with the phone and sent it to my blog readers and facebook friends so they too would have something warm and beautiful to greet them when they awoke. Some of them liked and some of them loved and most of them thought it was a painting and more than a couple of them said is should be a painting and I guess I agreed.

I started this the week before my knee replacement surgery. I was fearful and anxious, and needed a distraction, and I deliberately left it on the easel unfinished, thinking I would have an easier time of getting back into the swing of things if most of the compositional decisions hade been made, and what was left was the detail…the fun part.

It was a long hard two months until my creative energy returned enough to make my way back to the studio. And, when I finally was able to manage the short walk over from the log cabin and turned on that kitchen light,

I knew everything would be all right.  It’s all in the details.

 

 

 

Exciting news…

Posted on by heather

Bucket ListI’m thrilled to announce that my paintings will now be exhibited in the Sugarman Peterson Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico… Here’s a link to their website…Click Here

It is fitting therefore that, among the first group of paintings, they will be showing Bucket List. Thanks to gallery owners Michael and Christie Peterson I can now cross one more thing off of my….bucket list !

 

 

 

 

Mulberry

Posted on by heather • 1 Comment on Mulberry

We have a visitor in the studio yard…

mulberry

She was spotted in the hedges near the road last week. Poor little dear had hurt her front paw and was favoring it gingerly as she hopped to a safer nesting spot.
The boys down the lane saw her next, and then the n’er-do-wells next door to them. Then yesterday, after the ambulance drove down the lane and Pat went to find out what was going on…the rest of the neighborhood came out for a gossip and everyone was talking about the baby raccoon.

mulberry2

Finn got her first look late the other night when the flashlight beam caught them a foot apart .So I worried, because I do, and I called the game warden. He said, matter-a-factly, that it was the time for the babies to be kicked out of the nest and she probably wasn’t rabid since she didn’t try and attack me and that she would just find her way in the world.

Harsh natural truths.

Pat sees her every time she pulls in the drive now and I’ve noticed that every car, every one of the previously obnoxious daredevil speedsters who flew in and out of our lane with completely reckless abandon…well they are now all slowing down and looking for a glimpse of our baby.

mulberry3

When Pat looked it up last night, google told us that they eat berries. So that is probably why she is sticking close to the mulberry tree.

And that is why, after the traditional three day waiting period…during which any animal that crosses my path has the option to disappear…but if they choose to stay longer than three days…well I am obliged to name them. And woe be tied to anyone who messes with her now…because the muses have spoken…

and she shall be called…

Mulberry.

July 4th

Posted on by heather

It’s a steamy July afternoon and the weathermen say it’s the coolest day of the coming week. So I am particularly enjoying the air-conditioned studio and I plan to stay right here at this computer for the next few days getting all the behind-the-scenes work done in preparation for the big Granary Gallery Show.

Only a couple weeks away now and I am easing off of my manic pace which has been sustained, with the help of caffeine and Tylenol, for the past several months. Those 12 hour days at the easel were intense and I’m kinda floating around in a daze without that extreme focus.

The calendar says tomorrow is the 4th of July. 150 years ago, this very afternoon, in just the same kind of suffocating heat and humidity that blankets the valley today,  Gen. James Longstreet had ordered Gen. George Pickett to lead an assault on the Union soldiers holding their line on the hilltops of Gettysburg. The “high water mark of the confederacy”  would be reached by softening the line with heavy batteries of artillery and sending in Pickett’s men. They did reach the Union soldiers and a few Confederates broke through… but the line held… Pickett’s charge proved to be the final battle in the bloody three day slaughter, and it turned the tide of the war.

I’ve been listening to the local NPR radio channel as they have broadcast live from the battlefields each day for the past week. If you’ve never been to Gettysburg, history buff or just tourist, it can be a very moving place to visit. Today, as the culmination of several days of re-enactment, the participants, and visitors, are lining up on opposite sides of the battleground. Then, in a solemn procession, they are walking across the fields to meet at the line where the original soldiers stopped that assault and there are meant to come together and shake hands.

When the crowds clear out, and the weather cools down, and both my knees have been replaced, I’m going to throw the traveling easel and the paint box in the truck and take a road trip over there and see if I can capture some of the spirit of that hallowed ground.

Happy Independence Day to all.

Please be safe out there.

Threads

Simply the Best

Posted on by heather

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 !

mvmag

cs

 

The spaces in between…

Posted on by heather • 1 Comment on The spaces in between…

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

Severe Clear