What Makes Me Paint Today

I find that observing rather than recording what I see works much better for me when I paint. What's on my daily observation list today? I get lost in the water in the shower, rain coming off the roof, puddling in the driveway, little gems on the spider web and the river a walk away, as it goes back and forth to the ocean. Here's some work that's come out of past observations. Some of this will be available as prints at my sale on July 20-21.

Studio Practice

Paul and I share a space in a factory mill in Fall River.
We are so lucky our floor mates are more family than friends.

For the last few months, my daily to-do list has been a little overwhelming, with the selling of the church and looking for a new place. During the week, when I'm Ms. Virgo Listmaker it all seems to work. The battle with anxiety, sadness and self doubt seems to hit me the hardest when I stop. And most particularly on Sundays, in my painting studio. I've been able for the most part to keep the place pretty sacred. I've promised to keep the space free of the computer, only make calls to and from the studio and checking emails (yes and occasionally Facebook) only on my lunch break. Stopping and emptying myself to paint today seemed especially challenging and it took me a few hours to figure out why. Art + Commerce. We're preparing for an art and antiques sale at the church the weekend of Feb 9-10, and I'm sorting through old drawings, paintings and lots of collectables, trying to put a value, a real price tag on it all. I've always said it's almost impossible to sell your art at the same time you're making it. Two totally different parts of your brain that seems to fight with each other. Recognizing it today made me fall in love with my studio, my process and work in a new way. A few postings back I wrote about the illustrator Tove Jansson and her wonderful children's books. This quote is such a good reminder for me to keep certain "creeps" out of my studio. -
"It's the right evening for a tune, Snufkin thought. A new tune, one part expectation, two parts sadness, and the rest, just the delight of walking alone and liking it. As he settles in to compose, he is disturbed by a small creature, a "creep", which rustles out of the undergrowth, declares its admiration for the famous Snufkin, asks him a lot of questions and demands attention and comfort. Meanwhile, the tune, which until then was forming itself out of the noises of the forest and brook and the slow revelations of the season, disappears. Snufkin has to wait for it to come back".
-exerpt from "The Spring Tune" part of the Moomin series
The photos are my early valentine to the place and tools I have a crush on. 

I've finally learned to love cleaning my brushes.
And I buy more expensive ones less often.

Sometimes the rags are just as beautiful as the paintings.

I work with natural light but a few paper lanterns make
the place cozy the last hour of the day in the winter.

A doctor friend gave me a pile of white surgical gowns
that make great painting smocks.
A little eccentric looking, but they cover everything nicely.

Oil bars, gigantic crayons, really.

Lots of enamelware and cigar boxes 

My favorite Swedish teacups my friend Pat gave me and a pic
of my pal Bruce, patron Saint of Art Elves.

I have also learned to embrace "setting the table for the muse"
Getting all those white empty surfaces
ready gives  me a little flip flop of excitement. 

My drug(s) of choice

Landscape No. 12

I'm not fond of apologies from bloggers concerning their lack of posts, but I will say I've had a few good excuses this fall for being quiet. Some travel, lots of design work, putting the house on the market, and looking for a new place with the purging and packing associated with a house sale, has left me little time for much else. But I would shrivel up and die if I didn't sit in front of color once a week. I've become a Sunday painter and have just finished 20 paintings to launch in the world. Thank you Charvin paints for providing me with my drug(s) of choice; Celadon Green Deep, Pouzzoles Red, Intense Lemon Yellow, Opaline Green, French Blue Violet, Julia Pink, Provence Blue, Light Linen, Deep Shell, and Diamond Orange. You make me so high it lasts half way through Tuesday. To see all the newbies you can hop over to my flickr page, here.

Landscape No. 16

Landscape No. 6

Landscape No. 14

Landscape No. 9

A GIFT

I spent a long day at the computer yesterday working on a casting project for a print photographer. I do real peeps casting occasionally and I love it but it's a lot of intense searching on Facebook, getting in touch with a lot of friends, (too briefly) and compiling everyone's schedule, height, sizes and addresses in a concise way. Admin overload. I was a tiny bit weepy because I missed my paintings so much and lots of family and friend stuff is making it look like painting is unlikely on Sunday. Then I got this gift. Sun was going down through the trees, shadows playing on my painting prints posted on the office wall, birds settling in, peepers coming out and Paul playing around on the flute. I watched this little dream play it's few minutes out, then shut off my computer and walked out the back door barefoot onto the lawn. Done for the day.

Fresh Landscapes

I've been working on some more abstract landscapes. These are still in progress, using oil bars and poppy seed oil paints. Big inspiration in the backyard from peonies, new baby RI red chicks and spring rain that turns everything bright and pink and acid green. Can you tell Helen Frankenthaler has been an inspiration lately?

Gaga over Sophie's Dada

Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1989-1943) was a swiss artist who bridged the Dada and Constructivist movements. An early socially-committed feminist, she taught weaving and textiles at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts, and expressed herself in painting, dance, tapestry, drawing, embroidery, furniture and interior design, photography, architecture, set design and puppet-making, all with equal intensity. To read more on this fabulous woman you can go here.

Helen Frankenthaler 1928-2011

Helen Frankenthaler, beauty, grace, courage, tenacity.

Hi again friend

O.K. It's been awhile. And I'm back. In the last month my show went up and came down,  Paul and I built a magical set and did a lovely video shoot in an antique barn, I finished the design for packaging and web for Mole Hollow Candles, the AS220 signage project is underway (Arley and I found some one to paint much of the design in gold leaf on storefronts!) and now I'm in the middle of a 64 page jewelry catalogue that I can't wait to show you. I'm not complaining just amazed that so many wonderful projects have made their way to and out my door in the last month. But I have missed you.

Here's a little amazement from Mary Oliver-

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

8.16.10 Poem for Monday

New landscape for show opening September 16 at Crowel's Fine Art
 A Lemon
-Pablo Neruda
Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

Poem for Monday

I live near a river, which reminds me every day needs to be like a river. What comes by for me, what I catch, what I remember to do is what I have for this minute. Today. And that's all I need to have, to do, to be. Because if I don't catch it, remember it, do it, it will come for me again. When the time is right. But Robert Bly says it so much better.

People Like Us

by Robert Bly

for James Wright

There are more like us. All over the world
There are confused people, who can't remember
The name of their dog when they wake up, and
     people
Who love God but can't remember where

He was when they went to sleep. It's
All right. The world cleanses itself this way.
A wrong number occurs to you in the middle
Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

To save the house. And the second-story man
Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,
And he's lonely , and they talk, and the thief
Goes back to college. Even in graduate school,

You can wander into the wrong classroom,
And hear great poems lovingly spoken
By the wrong professor. And you find your soul
And greatness has a defender, and even in death
  you're safe.

For more of my rivers you can go here.