In the bleak early winter – apologies to Christina Rossetti – my November studio has become more than chilly. At some moments, it’s downright bleak. I’m taken back to January art school days in Maine where we worked on our projects in an unheated building, thanks to a power failure. Classes were not cancelled. The show went on, but the faculty took pity and brought … Continue reading To See with the Human Heart
My painting studio and my writing room are not the same. I paint in the small shed/studio set off to the side of the house behind the carport and the large workshop. I’ve been putting this new place together since December, including new lights, and the numbers above are the specifications for the overhead lights. Painting is not just about paint. I write at my … Continue reading 5000K, 85-100 CRI
Choices have been made and the event has been announced. I’m down to the last minute tasks for the show that goes up on Wednesday. Twenty paintings are now ready to grace the walls of the lovely gallery space in our City Hall. How they’ll be received is yet to be seen, and it’s not up to me. I’m doing the finishing touches on paintings … Continue reading The Paintings Are Ready and So Am I
“Art, after all, rarely emerges from committees.” This bit of wisdom comes from the opening paragraph of the section, “Fears About Others” in Bayles & Orland’s always spot-on book for artists, Art & Fear. In a discussion about artists and “others” who include the critics, the public, family, friends, teachers, the lady down the street, and too often ourselves, Bayles & Orland go on to … Continue reading Art and Risk – the Dynamic Duo
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” – Robert Burns, “To a Mouse” If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. Corollary: If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then. – Murphy’s Law “The violets in … Continue reading A Change in the Weather
“Summer was past and the day was past.Sombre clouds in the west were massed.” Robert Frost’s poignant poem, “Bereft” includes these lines, and they came to mind today, although in this case: “Winter was past and the cold was past. Fluffy clouds in the west were massed.” Spring has come, and with it the flowers of the season, the budding branches, the greening grass, the … Continue reading A Wild and Precious Life
“…And when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and when the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.” –Rabindranath Tagore As we continue to creep out of the pandemic during which so many old tracks were lost, I continue to hear from other artist friends and writers about their slow recovery from what’s … Continue reading Searching for Constants and New Tracks in our Artist Lives
This painting was done three years go and is one of the unplanned paintings that come out of nowhere but speak to me in loud voices. I remember the day I painted this one – or at least the day I finished it. It was not a day with war raging anyplace around me, nor was it raging in my head, although there’s almost always … Continue reading Show, Don’t Tell
Despite some discussions about the similarities between art and science, it’s good to be clear: they both matter, but they are not the same. David Bayles and Ted Orland make this abundantly clear in their Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking. From Bayles and Orland:“It is an article of faith, among artists and scientists alike, that at some deep level … Continue reading Art and Science: Together and Apart
I’m ready to get back to work. I’ve been experimenting with my old collage materials on the small pieces of illustration board and trying some new tricks. But combining large areas of paint with the collage materials is a whole new adventure for me and results have been mixed. No, wrong. They’ve been bad. That’s why we experiment. Smaller works are not what I generally paint, so … Continue reading Floating on the Tide
Art and Tulips 