Tag: winter

A new year, a new knee, a new wave of creative energy…

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and a good time to catch you up on the progress here in the studio…
It’s now been two months since my first knee replacement surgery and by all accounts things are moving along swimmingly. The first month was all about learning to walk again…

and the second month has been about taking a defibrilator to my mojo. Even though I was able to walk over to the studio by week three…the creative muses had decided to take a longer vacation and it was many more weeks before I had the energy to lift even the tiniest of brushes. But…thanks to my long suffering nurse and team of PT helpers… I’m back !

Before this saga began I had decided to get a painting started so that I would have all the setup work done and, post surgery, could just sit and paint. I had posted a facebook photo taken early one morning as I came to work in the studio…

and the muses must have been working on that website because the responses made it clear that I HAD to paint this. So with a few tweeks I  I painted right up until the day before surgery and had a pretty good start…

And after sitting patiently on the easel for weeks, it was more than ready for my impatient attentions. The first few days were short controlled bursts of playing with puddles of paint but finally the spark returned and I put the finishing touches on this work in the very last hours of 2012 and it felt great.

And day one of the new year found me in the studio beginning again to fill requests from galleries for new work. My goal is to sharpen the focus of who I am as an artist and to lay back and enjoy the gift of being able to do what I love right up until the fat lady sings…or at least until she has finished her mending.

May all of you find your sparkles alive and well in this new year.

 

The Season of Solstice

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Celebrating the season of long winter nights and welcomingly fragrant evergreens, a grateful return to my seat at the easel, the twinkling of colored lights, newsletters from loved ones, the trail of cookie crumbs from studio to cabin…and back, and the sparkle in the eyes of our sweet lapdog Finnegan who is thoroughly enjoying the frosty morning walks with her buddy.

Wishing you all manner of love and laughter and light…

Pat, Heather and Finn

Memorable…

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There was a surprising gift under the studio tree this week…

John Seed has included my painting, The Beginner…

in his Huffington Post Blog as one of the top 10 Mememorable Paintings of 2011 . The painting is currently on display in the Small Works Exhibition at Gallery 1261 in Denver, CO.

From the depths of my creative hibernation… I thank you John.

Here’s the extended snippet of the comments I sent to John with my thoughts about the work…

I’ve got this friend Ted who just turned 95 and lives on Martha’s Vineyard.
Ted was a high school art teacher and artist and has spent almost a whole century now inspiring and encouraging artists. I met Ted about 10 years ago and he has been “schooling me” ever since. (I’m working right now on a painting of him in an apple orchard which he posed for last fall.)
We talk often over the phone as he lives alone now but when we are on the Vineyard we spend a lot of time with Ted.
His house is chock-a-block full of antiques and stories to go with each one.
I noticed a tin can in his kitchen one day that had a bunch of those old pencils in it.
Wonderful chunky thick lead Dixon pencils that he used to introduce younger students to drawing.
I got up the nerve on our last visit to ask him if I could have one and he said, “Oh, those old things…here take the lot”.
When I got them home to the Pennsylvania studio and took a closer look I saw that they have the word “Beginners” embossed on them. And, since I’ve recently been hammering home the importance of a strong foundation in drawing skills to a couple of our grandsons who have brought their art questions to my studio… the idea of pencil as prop began to congeal.
The pile of rocks which are from the beach in Chilmark brought it full circle back to Ted and the tiny swiss army knife was one of the few items I brought home from Florida where I had to take my father off of life support earlier this year. That experience and it’s wake have been slowly filtering into my work in some quite unexpected ways. So, while I wasn’t aware of this until I just wrote this out for you, I guess it weaves a thread through three generations… with the iconic pencil as talisman.

Working on a theme…

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Last year I started a series of …well series paintings.

I wanted to work on themes and explore them across several different compositions. There were more ideas than I had time to create and I’ve learned that there is a time, and a season as it were, for each painting. So, as the crisp fall air brings the colors alive, I have been studying apples… anew.

The October before last  I spent a day with our friend Ted in the Tiasquam orchards in West Tisbury…

There are dozens of good painting ideas from that modeling session and I decided to elaborate on the “theme” of apple picking.  Though I started the series last year with some sketches …

and then this painting from my studio yard…

Like I said earlier… last year life took some wicked wild turns … but life ebbs and marches on…and I’m now reaching back and pulling on the thread that started the theme.

I don’t usually put photos of unvarnished paintings up on the web but the new iphone has a good enough camera to  give you a decent representation of what is fresh off the easel.

This painting was inspired by a quote from  NC Wyeth, “I have all this and more, yet how I would like to relax; to be content with a wheelbarrow, a rake, an apple basket, a pipe.” He wrote that in a letter dated September 19, 1910. A hundred years later and that sentiment still resonates.

And what to do with all those apples ?

Well that’s the next painting in the series… Skillet Apple Pie.

You won’t be able to get much out of this shot of the still life set up…because I decided to change it up a bit after moving to the easel…but here’s a peak into the early stages of the creative process…

I’ve gotten this far…

And yes, it’s all about the butter !

Stay tuned…

Blue skies…

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are now breaking out over the studio …

earlier it looked like this…

This is all good. Last Friday was in the 70’s and, even though we started the day with a hospital visit for an infusion of Reclast, we stopped on the way home for a picnic and a walk in the park with Finn and enjoyed most of the day just being out in the warm sun.

The rest of the weekend was no picnic. The occasionally reported flu-like reactions to that drug turned out to be more like the Dengue Flu. A short controlled burst of the pneumonia I was plagued with this time last year… and then some.

But, hopefully, short is the keyword in that last sentence because I am marginally better each day and back in the studio this morning. The pretty snowfall that we awoke to has helped to send me back into the much needed winter of creative hibernation and the continuing muscle fatigue and soreness is forcing me not to shovel this one out.

The days of laying in a sick bed were not completely wasted as I signed back up with Lynda.com to challenge my brain to learn something new in Photoshop. Long story short, last week I learned that I had fallen prey to purchasing a bogus Cs5 upgrade a few months ago. It had started to crash and burn which led me to realize that my computer which had been having it’s own problems was actually 5 years old now. Ancient in the graphics world. And, with the unexpected sale of a painting here in the studio, I decided to bite the techno bullet and upgrade both hardware and software at the same time.

As an artist who pays homage to detail, I have spent as much time sharpening my computer skills lately as I have my pencils. Both are tools and only as good as the craftsman who uses them so I study and practice and learn. The tutorials are terrific because I can work at my own pace and dip back in for refreshers as needed. I have already learned about fifty things that will make a huge difference in my “workflow” and am eager to try them out with the new machine.

It’s all about getting the composition up on the panel as efficiently and quickly as possible…then I can settle in and let the muses take over.

Now, it’s time to put this bump in the road behind me and get back my mojo…

carpe diem !

winter workshop relocation

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We have had one day in the last two weeks with temperatures above freezing and I was able to get out to the garage and finish wrapping the rest of the panels working late into the last of that afternoon sunshine.

But, along with the rest of the country, we have been shivering ever since. In this part of the state the meteorologists use Harrisburg International Airport as the official temp. gauge. This morning I happened to be at HIA and could verify that it was indeed 1 degree outside. And since the little dribbles of water that we had left running from both of log cabin faucets decided …..to….stop…….dripping……..yesterday…………morning……………I can attest to the fact that it is too cold for those panels to be out in the unheated garage.

So I have brought them all, all 20 of them, inside and up the steep and narrow stairs to the library loft.

Last night I got  the first coat of gesso on the back sides. This is more easily done with a wide putty knife…unless the plastic one you bought for this purpose was used as a chew toy by your apprentice…

Today I will turn these all over, give the canvas a light sanding to remove stray bits of dried gel medium (which is the adhesive I use to attach it to the Dibond) and then …using the new putty knife…will start the first of several coats of the acrylic gesso. I find that I can use the scraper up to about the third coat before the streaks it leaves are too prominent. I’m going for the smoothest, weave-free look possible.

The final coat will be with the Art Board Gesso and probably brushed on. But I’m eager to see if working up in the loft, with it’s great source of light, will make any difference to how well I can apply the final layer.

This all will have to wait just a bit longer however…since the phone reception is poor up there…and I am monitoring a delayed flight due to mechanical troubles…and the computer has now become command central until my traveler is wheels up…and safely back down.

Stay tuned.

too cold to prep…

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awoke to a snowy commute to the studio…

we have been off the snow storm track for the first part of this winter so all those marvelous nor’easters are blowing right by and leaving six or seven flakes on the ground just to tease…

today… an inch !

I’ve begun the serious work of narrowing down the best compositions for the winter’s hibernation. The list…the short list…is over 30 paintings. When I count out the weeks, the days, between now and the big summer show at the Granary Gallery… July 17th for those who might wish to know… the realist in me, no pun intended, might anticipate 12-15 solid pieces, one of which will be another very detailed 8 footer. So… the pressure is on !

With my supply of ready-to-go panels dwindling I can’t wait for the weather to warm up before putting some more in the pipeline. The newly roofed garage is cleared out enough to provide ample workspace and though it is not insulated or heated the space heater and afternoon sunshine warm it up enough to work. At least that was the case until this morning.

The snow means no sun and the temps are well below freezing. Even though I keep the adhesive next to an iron and use said iron to smooth and secure the canvas to the panels…and even though I have Finnegan laying at my feet and the Koln Concert vibes warming up the rest of the garage…it was too cold for this artiste. I got one more panel wrapped and fled to the warmer studio.

A couple weeks ago I finished a painting which featured this compost pile…and uncharacteristically I’ve gone back a couple times since to tweak the light and shadows…not quite satisfied that it was singing.

Yesterday morning…as Finnegan and I made our way to work through the back gate… I passed the compost pile…

 

and  just that little bit of snow, almost an inch ! ,  gave a place for the raking light to…well…rake. I’m going to go back one more time…with today’s snow falling outside and the fingers warming up…and see if the muses were right.

Stay tuned.


Welcoming the New Year…

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Zoe’s smiling face greeted me in the studio this last morning of 2010…

as my Aunt Lorrie said…it doesn’t get any better than that !  Right on Lo…we Grandmothers have it made….but they were only here for a brief visit and Finn is at a loss without her baby to take care of…

… to take her mind off of watching her sweet smiling pal being bundled up and tucked safely into the car and waving goodbye…Finn and I have begun to plan next year’s garden additions.

The seed catalogs have begun arriving and a mini-January thaw is promised for the weekend so we are going to build us a new bed and move the last of the dirt, which is threatening to become one with the driveway, into it and let it hang out with some compost for the rest of the winter and be ready to receive the salad green mixture of seeds in the early spring. I’m seriously eyeing one of those cold-frame covers in the gardeners catalog but the goal this year is to recycle the pile of construction materials from the old garage shed, and the other bits and pieces of clutter and debris that have taken up residence in our corner of the planet over the two decades we have been responsible for it’s care…and feed ourselves and a few neighbors along the way.

So…when Finnegan suggested using her old wading pools as planters…well we were off and running…

We’re thinking zukes and beans here…with some of those fabric potato pot planters as anchors…at least that’s what Finn is thinking.

We’ll head back out there after a morning session of painting…

and tonight, when we’ve put away the brushes and the tools and watched the last sunset of the year, and settled in with Herself by our fireside…we’ll pop a cork and raise a toast to all of you out there who make our lives so much richer for being at the other end of this blog.

Happy New Year !