ART ON ANY GIVEN DAY

Art at the Attleboro Museum

2012-01-02T13:41:00.000-05:00

I find myself at odds sometimes with the desire to be and the desire to make. Rest has felt necessary and good over Christmas... but being part of an exhibition such as the one now showing at the Attleboro Museum feeds energy back into me, pulls me back up like a friend's hand and encourages me to go back into the studio, however little time I call my own. Curated by Clara Lieu, the Director of the Jewett Art Gallery at Wellesley College, the work below is some of the large, eclectic, and dynamic work at the museum now through February 2.

Winner of a Juror's Choice Award, Susan Denniston etchings open the show.

Susan Dennistan:

Walk to the left and you're busy searching the wide diversity of works including Janyce Conklin's assemblage, Sharon Fortier-O'Dea's acrylic on wood, and Beth Johnston's encaustic.

Janyce Conklin:

Sharon Fortier-O'Dea:

Beth Johnston:

There's a dynamic range of sculptural and low relief works included in the exhibition. Virginia Fitzgerald's mixed media piece has the physical presence to call to you. Her wedding dress is beautiful, rhythmical, and distressed, made of old newspapers which one might want to lean over to read, bits of other lives caught and held stationary here.

Virginia Fitzgerald:

Charles Guay's work is whimsical, happily engaging the viewer with his creature's friendly faces and small scale.

Charles Guay:

CJ Steven's glass bead image is engaging, along with the quiet beauty of Niva Shrestha's oil painting, and Mary C Taylor's acrylic and pigment transfer which won a Juror's Choice Award. These pieces are meant to be seen in person, particularly because of their delicate surfaces.

CJ Stevens:

Niva Shrestha:

Mary Taylor, winner of a Juror's Choice Award:

The work varies from representational to abstract, from traditional to non-traditional materials with the connecting guideline of all hung works measuring forty inches or less. Jean Sbarro's work is painterly, gentle and lit, in contrast to the vigorous drawing of Patricia Berube's drypoint which won a merit award, along with my own charcoal drawing, also winner of a merit award:

Jean Sbarro Jones:

Patricia Berube, winner of a merit award:

Patricia Schappler, winner of a merit award:

Emily Hammel's mixed media piece has the visceral power to gather one, while Jay Wu's Peony in oil and Felicia Touhey's mixed media quiets one, pulling the viewer back towards contemplation.

Emily Hammel:

Jay Wu:

Felicia Touhey:

From the exuberant joy of Barbara Lee Seligman's mixed media fabric piece,to
Jason Cronin's graphic piece, there's something visually enticing around every corner!

Do yourself some good, let a hand pull you up and out into this magical world and go look!
The happiest of New Years to all of you!

Christina Beecher, winner of Best Representational:

The Complexity of More

2011-11-20T21:49:00.000-05:00

The figure inspires. Large, small, simple or complex, it is our nature to look for meaning within the human form. We search a world which reflects opposition and peace, chaos and order, and perhaps we find windows for understanding life through visual means, poems that beg us to stay and uncover layers of thought.

Deborah Poynton, To Be Alone:

Clara Rojas, Untitled:

Come Hither:

Dorothy Lange, Migrant Mother:

Mike Mazur, Portrait From the Asylum:

Henry Moore, Family Group:

Kitaj:

Kathe Kollwitz, The People:

Line, shape, texture, form, space, color, time and motion work to merge ideas, to isolate and suggest, to emphasize and propel whether it is the harmony or disruption, the force or release, the blasphemy or prayer within us,… there seems to be a place and time to join and break in all aspects of our lives.

Lennart Andersen:

Vania Comoretti:

Anne Harris:

We make choices every day, choices that if you’re a maker of things, find their way into one’s work.

Langdon Quin, Solstice:

Lily Ma Che Vuoi
:

Swoon:

Antonio Lopez Garcia:

Caravaggio:

Wendy Artin:

It is with grace and faith that images manage to be made and perhaps with even more grace, that we take the leap and attempt to share some thought or intimacy or hope with a world which may or may not even notice.

Barry Fantoni:

More of Two in a Space

2011-10-11T19:11:00.001-04:00

Just a few more images of two in a space. There are many I'm not thinking of in the moment, but maybe some of these will get you thinking as they are diverse in surface, lighting, proximity, and total space.

George Tooker:

Richard Diebenkorn:

Elmer Bischoff:

Paul Cadmus:

John Biggers:

Charles White:

Grant Drumheller:

Suzanne Schireson:

Wayne Thiebaud:

and Alan Feltus:

Two In a Space

2011-10-07T17:57:00.004-04:00

When I think about the figure in art, I commonly turn towards the portrait with its ability to draw me in both visually and emotionally, Rembrandt's selves come to mind...

or Lucian Freud's works.

I have this little black book put out by Phaidon of five hundred self portraits ranging from Durer to Courbet, that I've shown students a million times, always entranced by the power of the human face.

...great images of the isolated or singular figure throughout time, but what about images of two figures? How does that change the dynamic of the picture plane, of the spaces between and around the figures physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually? How does narrative alter?

This summer and now into the fall, I'm beginning a small series of two figures in space:

They are bright initially... the girls are warm and lovely...but there's a current of joy, combined with unease, and this duality of strength and uncertainty is visually present in their gestures and gazes. I begin the drawings to learn more about them. Drawing uncovers and dissolves barriers.

David Hockney:

Otto Diz:

Egon Schiele:

Gentileschi:

Some pairings came to mind easily like the deeply engaged Kollwitz images of mothers with their children, bereft and charged with a physical awareness, a spatial magnitude, ... a weight so heavy as to drown the viewer in this pain.

I remember my mother always admiring Cassatt's pairings. I think I looked to them as well because they lent energy to both the figures' emotional lives and to the drawing's surface with its engaged marks, driven color, and presence. I could imagine myself as a mother in both Kollwitz's and Cassatt's worlds. Neither negated the other's reality.

Lautrec's chatty, alive couples on the other hand, are neither heavily emotionally weighed or parental in nature, but they still gather us into his intimate world...surfaces and spaces are genuine, and the invitation real.

The angst ridden Giacometti feels with a need. His tension is palpable within the surface texture and squeezed parameters, and those tensions enter the viewer as part of us, viewing his work:

while R.B. Kitaj's exhuberant, active surfaces and diagonal twists gives rise to personal voice:

clashing with Hopper's determination and stability, his cool refusals:

Paula Rego's loud, powerful, and physical narratives...

contrast to Cezanne's comfortably angular, conversational cardplayers,...the Van der Weyden, Degas, the wonderfully intimate Bishops, and detached Grant Wood...

Michelangelo carved the spiritual and emotional force of the Pieta into the building of Christ's small form. Held within Mary's engulfing triangularity, the spirit of the three in one is sheltered momentarily, saved within her geometry to be resurrected again.

Raphael Soyers' work is alert, snappy like a turtle but still generous:

All engage the viewer at meaningful levels. Other images were remembered over time, those to do with love, conflict, sexuality, and fear too,... theatrical and ambiguous narratives, tense and unresolved emotions, images of faith and humanity set in intimate and sometimes separated, distanced settings of two.

Alice Neel:

Sigmund Abeles:

Rodin:

Jerome Witkin's surfaces twist and bend, break and remold:

while Da Vinci's softly roll:

El Greco slashes:

while Cadmus's wrangly, driven marks and forceful diagonals push:

Steve Assael's proximity of figures to viewer, gathers:

and Gabriel Laderman's distorted, angular, fluorescent lit environments heave the sitters and viewers alike, attacking, threatening, shouting...and we listen, we feel this turmoil:

and finally to quiet... to the poetic surface of Antonio Lopez Garcia's family scene. Tension still exists in the sliding planes, but the decibal is lowered and breathing slows with it:

Philip Pearlstein's cold and dismal palette sets in like winter:

while Stanley Spencer's placement of these two figure's embarasses. There's a strange fascination with so much information and I need to look but want to protect or at least comfort, and can't manage either, as far away from these two as I can be in such close proximity...:

Jim Dine has a sense of mortality and humor:

Caravaggio's force is brilliant in the dark:

Goya's an amazing hammer:

La Tour's chisels:

Kiki Smith's perennial sense of sadness, is both visceral and internalized,:

while Lucian Freud's immense physical and evocative weight sits on the viewer:

The figure calls universally.

From the past to contemporary works and back again, our senses, intellect, emotions and psyche are moved, alerted, sunken and risen again.

The blatant, sensual, diving in of Rubens energies makes me know I'm breathing in the loudest but most wonderful way (ignore Eakins disdain of him, love them both!:

Eakins:

Elizabeth Peyton's vision is one of distanced dreariness, a submerged dullness, a muted emptiness that carries its own weight aside from the elegant lightness of mark:

Renoir:

Klimt:

Rubens:

Saville:

Two carries.

I recently worked on this double portrait of my husband and I.

Images move from whirling, decorated, flattened, sculptural, clear, diffused, careful, detailed, painterly, internal, external, intimate, cold, warm paintings and sculptures. They redefine what we think we know or see, to make us see with greater care...they make us look.

Beal:

Dali:

Eric Fischl:

Swoon:

Frida Kahlo:

These strange and wonderfully embedded images are fraught with figural complexity, dramatic and sometimes isolated space, with a powerful range of scale and light, and the psychological and emotional potential of two climbing under our skin.

Ron Mueck:

Gesture, Extended Seeing, Line, and Life

2011-09-18T12:40:00.003-04:00

Summer flies and with it, time. I leave it feeling as if I've lost something important. I circle my studio,... my home and family, wanting what is past, while simultaneously plunging on ahead.
Gestural work implies time lost, that tension of wanting what is leaving, savoring what can't be held, and loving the moment. It is a drawing filled with life, energy, need...the grabbing hold of something before it changes and saying, 'look here, now, this is significant, worthy of your attention!'
I can't say I've proceeded with any logical intent in the following, they are images that asked something of me and gave in return.

Rembrandt:

Rembrandt:

Rico Lebrun:

Peter Paul Rubens:

Kent Williams:

There's urgency present in the handling of marks, the speed of line, the delicacy of varied weights and values and above all, there's life...there's a meeting space between solid form and air. These works are intuitive, the communication visual and felt.

Isabel Bishop:

Carracci:

Frank Auerbach:

Jacob Jordaens:

Degas:

Other images posted here hold the speed and longing of a gesture within a field of greater time. They search and re-search with the wonder of a child gazing into treasure and recognizing its worth. Moods are more complex, layered, intense. They move well beyond the time of a gesture but hold the life of that mark, connecting both parties, the viewer and the viewed within the boundaries of the work made, and across boundaries into themes and series that settle somewhere inside us. These images breathe.
Giacometti:

Kathe Kollwitz:

Jerome Witkin:

Paula Rego:

Edward Hopper:

Henry Moore:

Toulouse Lautrec:

Boccioni:

Will Kentridge:

Rubens:

Michelangelo:

Kollwitz:

Jenny Seville:

Paul Cadmus:

Lucian Freud:

If I were to take it a stretch further beyond the drawn line but including it in the abstracted and represented mark, painted and carved, etched, and sewn format, the pieces below would also fall somewhere between the gesture and extended gaze. Life sits here with its worries and fears, silliness and humor, anger and frustration, ...its sorrow and abiding faith in humanity calling out to you in the form of open narrative.

Jenny Seville:

Eva Hesse:

Magdalena Abakanowicz:

Balthus:

Antony Gormley:

Alice Neel:

Ann Gale:

Antonio Lopez Garcia:

Anselm Keifer:

Kitaj:

Beckmann:

Lucian Freud:

Kollwitz:

Ron Mueck:

Rubens:

Paula Rego:

Andrew Wyeth:

Kiki Smith:

Giotto:

Robert Bauer:

Jim Dine:

Picasso:

Rembrandt:

In my enthusiasm for this connection of us to each other through the visual, I'd keep going... but for the sake of your patience and to prevent me from creating an even longer run-on sentence, I'll wait. Check out the Cretara You tube link and keep looking! Another day then to wonder and join artists who have also slowed with hand and heart to wonder, and try, and see.

A Photographic Portrait of Cuba

2011-06-01T11:30:00.000-04:00

I had less than two hours to spend at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston this past Monday, and arrived to great lines having not taken into consideration that it was both a holiday and therefore, free entrance at the museum. My daughter and I had originally set out to see the Chihuly glass exhibition, but the crowds of people waiting were enormous enough to leave us wandering in a different direction, still a bit overwhelmed with the masses of people all trying to view the same works. Our bodies were pressed together in various rooms so my attention went more to the live figures than to the art, until we came to the Photographic Portrait of Cuba which presents Alex Webb's human portraits and Rebecca Norris Webb's animal portraits.

In this one room, we spent the bulk of our two hours, gathered into this other world.

The MFA's discussion of this couple's work relates that "they worked individually - Alex documenting the people he encountered on streets, in courtyards, and in cafes, and Rebecca recording the animals she discovered in personal and public menargeries. Woven together, the pitures form a poignant visual essay on the island's beauty and contradictions."

I am not one to spend much time in front of photographs, it is always the drawings, prints, and paintings, the sculptures and mixed media that call to me. It is a bias and I'm sure I overlook works as a result of my desire for surface, but walking into this space was a bit like falling into a dream. I felt these images, the heat, and the stillness, the noise and pressure, the absolute measuring of time and the movement within it. These images made me want to be there with the people and feel these textures, I wanted to speak their language and become part of their lives, even if only for a while.

I apologize for the quality of my jpegs of their far more beautiful works, but I wanted to share something of what I saw with you and send you the desire to see them in person. They are large and fill ones vision. They ask you to hear their specific sounds and dream those dreams. The color and shapes are saturated, alive, breathing things...

All the noise of the MFA and the people straining to see, faded. These images drew us us in to their world, to the beauty and hurt, the savage potential and gentle possibilities of the people and life here. If you see no other exhibitions this summer, try to see this. It has the lingering in memory of a long and loved novel.

'Eve' at Cambridge

2011-05-17T12:18:00.001-04:00

Last weekend I delivered 'Eve', to the University Place Gallery in Cambridge, as part of the CAA Northeast Prize Show. It is a mixed media drawing and cut paper piece that I posted the making of here in my blog, not long ago. My daugher Elli who sat for the piece (and moaned complaints a few dozen times throughout the process,) is ever so delighted to have her image hanging in the show and is convinced she brings me luck. I would agree that she and my other children are magical to work with, bringing with them the spirit, joy, and occassional crankiness that is by nature, a mirror of life.
Juried by Theodore Stebbins, Curator of American Art at Harvard University's Fogg Museum, it promises to be an intriguing mix of mediums and approaches. This exhibition of 111 pieces, was chosen from over 725 works.
The opening is this Friday, May 20th, from 5:30 - 7:30 at both the University Place Gallery at 124 Mt. Auburn St, and a block away at 25R Lowell St in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

More Pastels

2011-04-25T20:37:00.003-04:00

Jennifer Bartlett, Backdrop #4, 2005

This will be a brief post, mostly images. In general, I wanted to add to the collection of artists posted in the last blog, and increase awareness of the work that has been created with pastel. The diversity of thinking, applying, and composing, is wide and worth viewing over time. Some will be familiar and I would imagine, some, not so much. Either way, it's a happy occasion coming across old friends and meeting some new ones along the way.

October Amagansett, pastel.
Bartlett's lush surface and uninhibited color internalize the idea of garden.

Jim Dine's 'Red Scarf', created with charcoal and pastel, is persuasive, internal, and moody.
Heavier and even more compressed than Jenny Saville's oil pastel. Through both contour and color, Saville simultaneously thrusts the image forward in space while tilting powerfully backwards, compressing space while extending the air in which to breathe.

It is with true contrast that one approaches the lighthearted Gauguin image of the Breton Girls Dancing, or pauses to look at the Kahn's with their kinetic energy and joyous light.

Although I don't think of Milton Avery immediately in response to pastels, I was happily surprised by this gentle, little image.

On to the cling-clang and chatter of other favorites. Are you familiar with Yvonne Jacquette's city scenes?

or Larry River's self portraits?

How about Henry Moore's mother and child images, or William Glacken's city scene?

There is range in this pure material, the ability to speak through it. It is potentially deep or light, profoundly evocative, a sensitive tool for the artist, and seemingly magical in context.

Jim Dine, 'Tree' (Kimono)

Pastels

2011-04-03T13:52:00.068-04:00

I thought I'd open with an artist that was previously unknown to me until researching further.
Witkiewicz:

The energy and force of these pastels engage the viewer with drawing from the figure, offering a powerful point of view.

Pastels are made of powdered, color pigment bound with gum and molded to form a stick. They are used academically for beautifully realized, observed images such as this La Tour:

and given their ability for a soft, luminous appearance, pastels also provide for mysterious, mythological spaces such as the Redons posted here:

Colored chalks have been used since cave dwelling humans drew on walls,

but were established as a painting medium between the 16th and 18th centuries.

Chardin:

Because pastel sticks are formed with the minimum amount of binder, they are generally the most pure form of pigment applied to a surface. Artists may choose to run ventilation fans, wear protective masks or gloves, and all should avoid inhaling or ingesting materials.

Pastel allows for a rich range of works from the most subtle, delicate surfaces, such as:

Antonio Mancini:

and Ronai Rippl:

to full valued, sculpturally defined spaces such as those by Medveczky, Whistler, Sargent, Degas, and Witkin.
Medveczky:

Whistler:

Sargent:

Degas:

Jerome Witkin:

Pastel is also inherantly vibrant, and artists such as Soyer, Valadon, Rego, and Lautrec to name but a few, use the saturation of pastels to their advantage:
Soyer:

Valadon:

Rego:

Lautrec:

From Rosalba Carriera to Degas and Boccioni, to Cadmus and Jim Dine; pastels span centuries, artistic movements, and cultural diversity.
Carriera:

Degas:

Boccioni:

Cadmus:

Jim Dine:

They awaken the intellect to the psychology of the human condition,
R.B. Kitaj:

Jim Dine:

David Jandi:

and Paula Rego:

Witkiewicz:

Ilka Jedo:

Pastels as narratives, engage us socially and politically.
Picasso:

Boccioni:

Katherine Doyle:

Lincoln Perry:

Degas:

Like all forms of art, they engage our spirit and encourage a voice.
Chris Offili:

Cadmus:

providing mystery, potential worlds, myth, and symbolism.
Redon:

Moskowitz:

These diverse works created with pastel encouraged me to focus on a medium that is sometimes placed to the side or forgotten in relationship to drawing. Asking students to work with the medium encouraged me to revisit it as well. When I pick pastel up again, or revisit works by masters, it's simple to remember what is so lovely about this powdery, rich material, so very likeable. Pastel is similar to charcoal, familiar and forgiving, with a great range of value. It is powerful when pressed, quiet when held softly,...layerable, tender, raucous; it is a flexible, expressive material, and because it's held by the hand so directly, intimate and engaging at its most basic level.

From Boccioni to Barocci:

and Mancini to Cassatt,

it is delicious, sensual, mysterious, and alive.

Students sometimes ask how artists create such sculptural, defined spaces with bulky tools.
I think most everything I've ever accomplished has been through patience, thoughtfulness, or worded differently, acute tactile, visual awareness ...Through layering and allowing these materials to give, and knowing when enough has been said.

Kitaj:

Some artists use soft pastel pencils along with the bulkier sticks, some sand a corner down to control an edge, most work from the dark up to the light and from the harder to the softer..brands will tell you what they are and within them, experimenting will convince you further.
I generally begin with black chalk and work up towards color, but I've also worked with color on self toned paper or something like canson and moved both towards the dark and light in opposite directions from the mid-toned paper. The needs of the image dictate how you approach the surface. Content drives you to want particulars from the paper and the paper lets you know what it's willing to give.

Wayne Thiebaud:

Artists work on many supports from bristol board to sanded or textured, pastel papers, and from watercolor papers to gessoed surfaces. The same diversity applies to pastel choice. I work with nupastels beneath softer pastels including Sennelier, Unison, and Schminke, but if you visit catalogues on line, you will see a much larger selection, and by trying a few sticks from different brands you'll get a feeling for what fits your hand and aesthetic. This is a sampling of what's been done with pastels, but around every corner, you can be sure artists are pushing the limits further, mixing materials, re-casting the role of pastels in contemporary art as well as giving us a look in time.

Master Drawings of the Human Figure

2011-03-09T09:55:00.046-05:00

Drawing is intrinsic for those who want to see, as essential as breathing.
Van Gogh wrote, "In spite of everything I shall rise again:

I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing." and I suppose many of us that draw have felt the same bereavement for images that have lost their direction to end up piled with the 'almosts'. It is those drawings though that lead us back to more because we know we're closer to something which carries meaning. From Rembrandt's love of Saskia,

to his felt empathy and compassion, we look at his work and connect. Drawing does this magical human thing.

I've placed a handful of images here which have influenced and cultivated my aesthetics, connected with my sense of humanity, and encouraged hope in my own work.

For artists, drawing is thinking made visible. It is a direct line from heart and mind to hand.

Whether using pencil, pastel, chalk, ink, or mixed media, as thought evolves so does the image. It moves from the general towards the specific, searching for what is most intuitive and in that discovery, most profound. Like a heartbeat, these images hold life.
I remember seeing this Rubens before I knew that I would be an artist.

I was maybe fifteen, but I saw it in one of my mother's art books and instantly felt a part of that world. I understood it, in some sense I was it.

You feel art, you live it, and drawing, because it frequently comes in the form of simpler tools and means, connects as if the shoe lace has just been tied and one is now ready for a walk.
This image by Michelangelo was perhaps one of the calmer drawings I looked at and loved,

but there were many others like these that moved me profoundly.

That in effect, pointed back to me and let me understand myself more deeply.

From the simple,

to the complex,

drawings are personal, instinctive, sensual, and powerful. It's a bit like waking up after a bad cold and suddenly feeling better, more awake, more alive! Whether older masters or newer works.
From Schiele's work:

to Kollwitz:

Picasso's:

to Moore's:

whether I go back in time to Tintoretto or Mantegna:

or leap forwards to Giacometti and Frank Auerbach:

or even further to Mazur and Lopez Garcia:

or to Lucian Freud, you'll find a similar humanity, a willingness to search.

From the quiet beauty of Corinth's sleeping wife,

to Kollwitz's images of self:

and into the heart,

it comes back to us. Drawing is for us.

In This Garden

2011-02-16T19:27:00.023-05:00

This drawing began as a quiet desire to capture some of the gestures of my family, moments I would have let go of, if not visited in drawn form. What began as simple drawings of my girls and their friends, studies in pencil and quick snapshots before they noticed me, moved to something more that I couldn't define at the time of it's becoming. I wanted to remember the beauty of those moments, their arm gestures, the way they curled together...and so I set out to make a drawing of the sounds of their conversation and of their silence.

Perhaps it's because I have two children in college now that I feel imminent loss, even with two children at home for several more years. The noise is less, the house is quieter. Am I supposed to feel relieved? I do not. I have loved every moment of this loud, sometimes wild environment and in moments, feel that world altering too quickly, feel myself swallowing gulps of air as if I can't breathe. My sister and I have spoken about this grieving, it's an ache somewhere unknown, in the deeper crevices of one's heart I suppose. I only know that drawing helps, that it clarifies my life's experiences, uncovering the hidden. It exposes wounds and heals, sometimes within the same mark.

I have a way of working that's intuitive. I don't begin with an in depth plan, but rather with open sketches, a beginning idea, and a willingness to move things.

I begin with large scale paper dolls, partially because this makes sense with the scale I frequently work.

When I move them around, I find the visual weights,

the pull of gestures,

the rhythm of bodies, and somewhere in there, meaning.

I don't know exactly where the critical eye and hand meet, where the heart and mind connect, but I feel it.

Drawing finds and pulls you into the space of a world that co-exists inside you even when you're unaware it exists.

So as I drew my family and we each found our positions in space, the drawing suggested itself. I moved my paper dolls around and played with collaged moments until the figures and textures settled together into close proximity, a garden of wild noise and filled space, with the shapes letting me know where next to go, how dark to deepen, where to lighten and leave,

and through this physical act of observing and revisiting, the drawing has the power to lead me to some inexplicable peace. There's a place in this garden to feel loss and gain, ... sadness and joy, together.

Google Art Project

2011-02-04T13:09:00.005-05:00

http://www.googleartproject.com/

The link says it all for art lovers or the curious everywhere, go to it and have the time of your life! This project lets you into museums you may never have had access to, and celebrates the works up close. Navigate through rooms choosing which paintings to pause the longest over ... the visuals are terrific! Simply drag up or down to focus on the painting or move away from it, or click on the yellow icon to see singular images.
The list of accessible museums includes the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow; The Metropolitan Museum, Frick Collection, and MoMA in NYC; the National Gallery and Tate in London, Museum Kampa in Prague, and the Uffizi Gallery in Italy to name a few of the available sites. You may even create an artwork collection and go back to your favorites over and over again...this is better than any candy store you've ever been in, so visit it and have happy hours enjoying the world, the past, the present, and glorious art!

Sketchbook Painted Pages

2010-10-31T15:43:00.015-04:00

It's been a long time since I've been able to write (between family, teaching, and making.) I'm stretched ... but not apart, or at least that's what I tell myself as I'm driving one child to football, and another to crew, after a day of instructing (and with studio time around the corner if I can just manage it after dinner, after laundry, after pick-ups.)
There are highs and lows of trying to live life fully without bursting, of trying to balance motherhood with marriage, extended family with friends, and life at large with being an artist, without losing my particular vision and hopes for community. The short of the long, I missed being here, so I'm loading a few of my latest sketchbook images, some of my painted studies - although there are many graphite and pen images as well that need to be put in order.

When I have enough amassed, I'll sort them into a single sketchbook and mail it off to the Sketchbook Project 2011 where it'll be digitized and the original sent to reside in the Brooklyn Public Library, NY. This by the way, is an on-going project that anyone loving to sketch and share those images may join.

The idea of people walking into the library and being able to visit a large collection of sketchbooks from around the country and potentially from around the world, makes this planet seem easier... more lovely to navigate!

The Sketchbook Project offers themes to choose between. I've chosen "Girls and Boys" and have the vague idea that it will include all ages from infancy through the elderly.

For now, I'm simply catching images from my family and friends whenever they are willing to give me their time. Now, when I find myself so pulled in multiple directions, it is particularly purposeful and joyful to manage quick drawings and paintings in my sketchbook, time I might not put aside if not for the project.

It's an honor every time someone says 'yes', I'll sit with you for a while. Sometimes we end up laughing over the results, and I hear things like 'really? that's really how you saw me?' and we laugh more. Sometimes we sigh or smile, but always, it's time we've had together to really look and discover that we may have never had if not for the simplicity of a small book in hand and a bit of time.

Eve

2010-08-24T20:24:00.015-04:00

The start of this drawing was simple. I wanted someone to pose for me for a demonstration the second week of August at Sunapee, and I wanted to work from life. It was perhaps a leap of faith but Elli volunteered her time and I enthusiastically began to plan.

It was important to me to answer basic questions first,...how would she sit, what pose could she handle for hours with enough comfort, enough of herself maintained? Within that limitation, where would I (and you)be in relationship to her? Was there something in her gesture that meant something? So the two of us played for a bit, she would hop in and out of a green chair I set outside, trying to find something that was comfortable and I would nod 'yes' and 'no', and 'maybe' until we had both discovered something physically doable and visually and emotionally of interest.

More questions then, what materials and surface?
I like to use rag papers with a bit of tooth but not too much. This was BFK which is a beautiful printmaking paper that works well with many dry and mixed materials, allowing some flexibility with the surface, ie. it doesn't complain when you chew at it with your tools.

I knew I had some room, my sheet was 40+ inches (BFK comes in rolls as well as flat) and I could crop it, or keep a wide space available. I knew I wanted simple tools for a hot day...so graphite and erasers were the choices for me. I love both their range and simplicity, the silvery, crisp, soft, (and light or dark as well as anywhere in between,)of graphite. By nature, I am more additive than subtractive and as usual, I used the eraser more to give white line than to take away. Pencils are tremendously giving, they glide smoothly but can be jabbed and scraped along a surface, they are delicate, loud, and expressive all at once, having the advantage of being immediate and constantly, visibly, on the precipace of change. As I developed this drawing not just in the day at Sunapee but over the next week, I looked through layer after layer of marks and they accumulated to my experience of searching and being with someone over time. To me, this conversation between the intellect and the hand, the eyes and the heart, is exciting.

Elli is fifteen. Lovely, funny, and fickle. I wanted her close to you the way she was with me, almost as if we could touch. For by and large that is how I feel about the human figure, get me in there and you here, and let's share this moment and space.

Elli's framed as if she sits with all of us, as if she just squeezed her barely visible chair a bit closer. This is gesturally true to her spirit.

More questions though.
When I was drawing from her, there was grass behind where she sat and I wondered what I would do with it...it was a visual problem that I was willing to put aside while I had her sitting for me at Sunapee, but one I knew would need to be addressed.

Over the following days, I decided I would cut her from her space like a paper doll, something I do frequently, perhaps as a reminder of my own childhood, a connecting of generations as well as a problem solving technique. I remounted her on clean white - something I could look at and play with, but not glue down until I had a feeling for what the negative shapes would be.

Flipping it over allowed me to look at her as an original shape again, and I could place her within other shapes so the field of the paper would exist as one.

I thought in terms of her gesture, scale, and meaningfulness within the boundaries of the rectangle she sat within. Taking away the rectangle at least momentarily, allowed me to revisit the problems individually within the image and the process of building it. I think of 'growing' the drawing and the act of cutting and repositioning as ways of reaffirming the shapes edges.
In this process, I considered what would be behind her and why, tossing out ideas of flowers, grass, a shadow, an animal etc.. as all inconclusive and not helpful to the whole. I tried bright patterns but they drew too much attention, blues were heavier than I wanted, greys not enough of a contrast and in the end I wanted something to do with a garden to exist, as she equaled a garden in my mind, something growing and altering. Back to many greens.

If greens, what materials? I went to fabric stores, and craft stores, and hung out with colored pencils and more cut paper for the next few days, finally deciding paper made sense. It would connect with the image of her that I had already cut away.

Through trial and error, intuition and some singing in the mix (I admit it can get loud as well as very quiet in the studio), I pushed her just slightly off the center. I liked the strong horizontal and vertical patterns playing against the curves of her edge and the organic patterns of the paper's rhythms mimicking hers.

I love the clean edge of a newly cut form, and knew I would pick up on this within the ground by layering pieces of paper to form new edges.

So much of what we do as artists involves working inside the image, inside the pull of its innate gestures carried by the emotion of hand and eye connecting with form, and then stepping back and observing, thinking out loud, slowing down to see again.

Spray paint was too heavy and obliterated more than I wanted, colored pencil felt indelicate, so I returned to the beginning and used pencil again, applying patterns to the surface that may be added to or removed on any day. For me, they are changeable and fleeting much like my time spent with this girl.

Why 'Eve' then?
I think we come and go, and the narratives past down are added to and altered. Elli may be any fifteen year old girl/young woman at the very same moment she is a friend, a sibling, and a daughter, among other titles. She is presented as herself, but we are together in stories.

She might be Elli, or 'Mary', 'Alice', or in this imagining, with the garden behind her, 'Eve'.

Sunapee League of Craftsman Fair

2010-08-22T18:45:00.015-04:00

I was recently at the League of Craftsman Fair which lasts a week in Sunapee and houses among other things, blown glass, pottery, woodblock and etchings, hand knitted items of clothing, quilts, and wearable art of silver and gold.

As might be expected, I hung out in the New Hampshire Art Association tent and demonstrated on the first Saturday of the week with my daughter Elli, posing for what has been altered and changed over the past few weeks (look for those images in the next journal I post,) but meanwhile I also showed painted works from my garden.

There is undeniably something for most anyone, but the actual excitement of the fair comes from the energy of the artists,

their excitement in being around others who are invested in, or perhaps just curious about art,

and their willingness to share ideas, techniques, and approaches. There were wonderful people all pooled together, having a great time learning to see through someone else's eyes.

Seeing Double, Attleboro Museum

2010-08-12T19:16:00.061-04:00

Greta Young, Back to Back Darting
Joseph Farbrook, Urban Skin Stereopticon

Curious. My son looked through this stereopticon and was delighted to find the image shifting visually in front of him. His remark of 'That's so cool' kind of sums up the exhibition that recently came down.
The Museum's invitation aptly read, "The Attleboro Arts Museum presents a national juried exhibition that will prompt you to think twice..." Kristina Durocher, the Curator of Collections at the Fitchburg Art Museum acted as juror, and has engaged the viewer with a wealth of ideas.
The grouping was sensitively hung with each piece cooperating with the next, scale varied from five or six inches to 15 feet or more. There was wood, iron, steel, photography, charcoal, oil stick, fabric, wire, screen,oil paint, acrylic, powder, gouache, watercolor...the range was enormous, as was the variety of processes.

I was drawn to the tiny space of repeated figures in Yana Payusova's 'Leash' which presented an altered religious icon of sorts pervading the gold painted surface. One is met

by questions of who these women may be, what is their relationship, and if it's one woman, why does she catch herself, trap herself, overpower herself? We move from curiosity and voyeurism to empathy and participation with the story, as the artist allows multiple endings (or beginnings) depending on your point of view.
Walking further, Devan and I are met by an over sized pair of pears entitled, (happily, tippily) Yellow Tandem by Elissa Freud. I'm reminded of the sing song jingle, 'Weebles wobble but they don't fall down'. Scale is fantastic, and we are in these two form's playground.

Melissa Bland's delicate, Premonition, is a beautifully rendered, pairing of rabbits who are strangely people-like...contrasting and aggressive in a gesture that both comes together and defies the other. They mesmerize as opposites, the handling so quiet, with the energy just under the surface in paws that might just push off and bound away from each other.

Caged Birds by Emile Lemakis is a similarly shallow, flattened space, squeezing us by the pressure of the picture plane and our expectations of three dimensions. This patterned work is rich with gold to black contrast and small, irregular circles, hypnotically insistent.

The edges of the cages shift and sway, providing a movement that caged birds are not allowed. Bitter sweet then, to have such lovely forms, boxed. Is there a connection between how we as humans might choose (or not choose) to move through space?

Air moves between and around the uneven screen piece by Jodi Colella, Undercurrent. Grand in scale but frail with all these holes, it evokes mystery, a skin of sorts, porous and vulnerable.

Devan and I would have touched this cellular, amoeba-like form and walked through it if allowed, entering another world, either micro or macroscopic. The light changed throughout the day, altering its play of shadow and light, air and closure.

He meandered towards a sculpted form he immediately recognized as a whale tail, and I came to a piece that appeared visually straightforward and pleasing in its mechanical precision, except it was not precise, white laying unevenly on iron scales, the lightness, beauty, and purity of powder, replaced by the anxiety of knowing it's medicine, but what kind? The kind that heals or destroys? Balance is gone in 'Bipolar', by Claudia Flynn and we are placed in the precarious position of understanding what we think we see, may not be what exists. How do we compare beauty to despair, or the high to the low as these scales lost their balance...and is it necessary, or do we absorb both the balance and lack as one part of the whole?

The images in the exhibition spoke poetically of human needs, both physical and internal.

They stretched ideas of what it is to make a visual statement, and what it is to communicate.

The work was perplexing and inventive, thoughtful and encouraging.

Small and large, there was a feast of diptychs and doubles:

Troy West's Mother Father Grandmother, Grandfather,

Joanne Read Cotter's sensitive Dance of the Honeybee, with it's layered, transparencies of silk and wax,

and Sally Erwing's

'The Twin Within', close-spaced, nestled image which was both warm and strangely cold.

The theme of Seeing Double was open to interpretation, but it seems in viewing the exhibition, that many artists touched on what it is to be human (even if you're a rabbit, or a goat)and they accomplished this through ideas of nestling, overlapping, pushing at and shoving away, and even simpler, standing side by side.

Annmarie Collette, Mervin and King

Susan Denniston's After Twenty Seven Years Grey might sound somber, may even evoke 'somber' with its quiet range of browns and blues, but there was a humility to this work with the conviction of simple shapes, close proximity, and the slightly re-aligned forms of echoing figures. The couple turned away, private shapes that allowed for standing close and star gazing after all the years of good and perhaps bad, together. The psychological loneliness of the colors was transformed by the figures dignity.

My diptych, Adam and Eve, shifts in its spacing, with Eve sometimes on the right and sometimes on the left and sometimes alone. It isn't a political or biblical or even feminist story, although it might be all of these,... it is a questioning of placement, of materials, of stories untold or told from one or the other's viewpoint, so in the end, left open, a little wounded but bound, a partnering and a history taken and adjusted from other histories.

Open stories are where you, the viewer are in the moment of viewing, in the process of uncovering, and in how you interpret time and space in those moments of looking.

Are we seeing ourselves mirrored in others? Whose breath is on that glass, yours, or hers or ours? There's a self awareness, an uncovering, and an echo, leaving a question mark in the air. The woman in the image is young, sensual, leaning in. It feels private and we have been allowed to enter that private world.

External, cultural references live in this show, opening hallways to what if. Michelle Acuff's sculpted piece is touch and gentle simultaneously from the tactile smoothness of wood chanes to the heavy metal presence of iron, from the lighter to the darker, and from their isolation even while as piles, they remain close.

Beverly Rippel's image is lush, painterly, designed to both compel and repel, with internal shapes that become decorative like the iron wrought gate of your home, so then, what is home, what do we protect? Who do we challenge?

Jennifer Anderson allows us to visually look inside and around ourselves in this 'slice' of her portrait that never quite lets us inside for all the transparent potential, squeezed as it is between to planes of plexi.

How do we live together in space? Visually, how do we interpret and share ideas?What visual communication expands and what contracts?
Some of the images in 'Seeing Double' spoke directly to the idea of twin, an idea of belonging so much together as to be almost inseparable. My mother is a twin and has spoken of the lack of barrier between her sister and herself, of feeling the other's joy or pain as physically as if you were in fact, the same being. What is it like to feel so deeply, to become part of something else? Tempting.
Art asks you to feel with your senses and pull it inside yourself. It asks you to interpret and allow, and it asks you to look with care.

This work was visually and emotionally satisfying. Perhaps it's the discovery of unfolding patterns, pathways before unseen, the rising and falling of space and the coming together of the whole that makes looking so worth the time.
Seeing twice... is Nice!

Big Works

2010-06-08T20:15:00.019-04:00

Inside Newburyport Art Association
I recently exhibited paintings in Newburyport, MA, along with a dozen or so other artists.

Ed Touchette: Downtown

Large being comparable, the works were at least 36" x 48", mine were 40" x 50"
Patricia Schappler: Only, acrylic on canvas

and I would venture to say a small group were larger yet.

Caroline West: Under the Yoke, mixed media watercolor with gouache

The thing about large work, is that it is exactly that...viewed easily at a distance, tending toward larger strokes,

Cheryl Dyment: The River Takes Over

expressive,

Ed Touchette: Garden Work

sensual,

Michael Cunliffe Thompson: Moon Over Deer Island

and in this show, still human scale, still intimate.

Lully Schwartz: Avenue
I love large work on principal, not across the board, but in theory because it is big enough to absorb us as we view it,

Mike Dorsey: Plum Island Sky, oil on canvas

allowing it to wrap around our bodies, encompass us,

Patricia Schappler: Shelter, acrylic on canvas

and bring us unhesitantly into another space, including us in a particular vision.

The work here was both familiar and exciting, representational, and non-objective, dramatic, and quiet...a pleasing combination of ideas and thought processes that welcomed the viewer, encouraged thinking, and allowed enjoyment of surface and environment.

Faith

2010-05-16T14:38:00.033-04:00

My older son Luke, turned eighteen. He leaves me both joyous and bereft.
But I have kept a record of our lives together from the earliest moments and I find I can recover him on any given day, like a fresh breeze that enters to wish you well, only to depart.

He is the little boy in both the left and right panels, a blonde, serious, laughing angel of a child, curious and quiet. Not much changes, and everything must change.

Luke means light. He has been the child who offers humor and an easy smile, affectionate, warm,... the older son, one of two in the middle, and no matter what I say or do, uniquely his own spirit.

He journeys ahead, the 'David' of Goliath.

I know this through the years of drawing him, when his eyes have lifted easily to mine, and when they have looked away, whether theatrical or happy, or angrily in a mood.

I have found him around every corner.

This journey of motherhood is indissoluble, an indigenous part of me, and my drawings have become a transfusion over time.

It's just a bit of the journey, but you'll find him in every image posted here.

Portrait of Becky

2010-04-25T20:25:00.011-04:00

In Selected Essays and Articles: The Look of Things, (Harmondsworth and NY, Penguin, 1972, on p. 165, John Berger says, "A line, an area of tone, is not really important because it records what you've seen, but because of what it will lead you to see. Following up its logic in order to check its accuracy, you find confirmation or denial in the object itself, or in your memory of it. Each confirmation or denial brings you closer to the object, until finally you are, as it were, inside it, the contours of what you have drawn no longer marking the edge of what you have seen, but the edge of what you have become."

A second image of Becky in its first and second days of painting, with more figuring out to go through, reminds me again of Berger's quote as he continues to write, "Another way of putting it would be to say that each mark you make on the paper is a stepping stone from which you proceed to the next, until you have crossed your subject as though it were a river."

I think here's the magic. I could look at you today and see you one way, but tomorrow, I'd find another you...it's like rummaging through your favorite pictures and coming across the one where you say, "Wow, I wouldn't have known that was you!" and then you get to add that 'wow' into all the other expressions and visions you've accumulated over the years, and the more you build from that foundation, the more you feel like you're finally getting to something deeper and richer, but only over time, only over multiple searches, and only after the 'wows' of yesterday and today. Drawing and painting make you crawl through the everyday as if you're a newborn and you don't know much of anything...there's no quick answers, there's plenty of falling down and walking backwards, but at some point, you get a little sturdier and start to walk.

Nick, Ryan, and Anthony, Brothers and Sons

2010-04-23T18:40:00.011-04:00

I've been working on a series of three portraits for a friend that have just now come to a closure. I'll live with these guys for another week and make minor adjustments if I feel anything stepping out, but the overall image feels right. The multiple times I shifted their scale, gesture, and even the order of how they would line up) helped me get to know their faces more deeply...something that happens over time and across the changes that inevitably occur. A few of the beginnings headed to a dead end,

but each forward jump even if I had to backtrack, lead me to exactly where I needed to go. These are brothers. I wanted them to work individually on their own, holding their own space and identity, but I also wanted them to sit well together, to maintain an area of belonging. So here they are, one view of them, but one which feels alive.

Words and Beyond:The Book Re-Defined

2010-04-18T12:59:00.015-04:00

There are three artists currently exhibiting books of a different kind in Rivier's Art Gallery in Nashua, New Hampshire. The books are experimental, layered with unusual and frequently natural materials, graphically pleasing, and emotionally and spiritually satisfying.

These expanded books beg to be touched and explored. I held my hands behind my back to resist the urge to pick them up. Their tactility was powerful, dominating my sensory experience so much, particularly in the Spirit Books made by Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord, that I felt tempted, drawn in, and pushed back all at the same time.

There is a fantasy to these pieces which are made from many natural forms including seeds, branches, handmade papers, and shells. Things we may love to touch while walking the beach, only to forget them when back in our busy lives. Here though, one is invited to meditate and the things easily ignored before entering the gallery, are now highlighted and placed nest-like, and in some cases, altar-like, before us. This compels us towards a sense of hush, honoring what might be prayerful.

In looking around the gallery further, Sandra Bowden's work also explores the sacred in perhaps a more literary way. There is a meticulous, careful approach to her paced work. Gone is the nature filled, wilder spaces of the Spirit Books, here gold leaf, copper and other shiny, precious materials find a setting where the scrawling line of text contrasts with the geometric shapes of the total works, drawing us closer to examine the slanted human presence of this writing. It is the sacred meeting minds with the profane, a balanced tight rope of form and sensuosity. These moments of text are visually beautiful, emotionally alive, and remember texts from past sacred works as they move into present time.

The gallery is softly lit in the extremities with directed lights on the books, adding a quiet, otherworldliness to the already strange space. Leon Steinmetz's works add further to this delightful, if sometimes unsettling world. The frenzy of his energetic, black line begs for the eye to emotionally follow and connect with the stories he suggests. They are powerfully theatrical works that call to mind some of the great masters such as Daumier and Rembrandt. Here, quirky, shaking, twisting, alive drawings ask us to journey with them.

Perhaps then, this is what I come away with; the sense of what an intimate space encourages, that the book shape we grow up with continues throughout our lives to carry a sense of connection with other hands and minds, however built, opened or viewed, and that it is our unique ability to feel, sense, and interpret that in turn connects artist to viewer and in the larger sense, to life.

Recent Paintings From the Sky

2010-04-16T19:36:00.012-04:00

A few new small, square paintings from the skies over Mexico. We went on a family trip this past summer and I ended up with many odd, little sketches, a few of which lead to these three images. They play and hedge towards narrative amid their patterns and shapes.

Line in Relief, in Boundary, and in Marks Drawn at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts

2010-04-09T22:46:00.032-04:00

I spent the afternoon looking about two rooms at the MFA which included Chinese, Indian, and Iranian works. Visually, they beckon. I am bound by the beauty of line and edge seen in the low reliefs and cut surfaces, which I think could delight you as well. The beauty present in this Chinese limestone slab dating 550-77 A.D. is delicious, as is the image found below.

These scenes are filligree lace, hauntingly lovely. So this blog is not about what I know, but about what I feel...layers of line so close to the surface but not touching it, just behind that front plane, a whisper, a hushed sigh upon an earth gray. I could look at these patterned, swaying surfaces indefinitely. They are gracious, undemanding, patient, lyrical, and so sensitive to touch. I remain entranced and wish you the same happy moments.

Something of peace and generosity presides here and sustains the viewer in the simplest of ways, through cut stone and the light of day.

Seen to the right: Buddhist Shrine with Engraved Figures and Inscriptions, China, Tang Dynasty, dedicated May 10, 704

Hunting Scene, Iran, Safavid period, 2nd half of the 16th century, gold and opaque watercolor

This is far more beautiful in person but minimally, you get the sense of the narrative unfolding and the fine, almost dainty handling of the elements in this visual.

A detail of Young Bears in a Landscape, Iran, (too much light from a window across from this to catch the whole image...but it's charming enough to want to show you!)

Finally, I'll leave you with a couple of small, lusty works, a bit in contrast to the sacred beauty of some of the prior works. These two are ornate and more clearly voluptuous, ...but like the others pieces, offer a sense of completion. In that sense, these and the others, are all divine.

Lovers, Eastern India (Orissa)about 13th century, ivory

Erotic Scene (panel from a box, Southern India, about 17th C, ivory

I enjoy these selections as a visceral contrast of communication. From the quietest trickling, hair-like lines, to the heavily stated, pushed edges of twisting and undulating forms; each are aware of their boundaries and aware of breaking them. They reach across faith, culture, and time, to unite in life and death, love and loss, pain and glory. They are deeply spiritual and oh so physical, and at the end of the day, rise up gorgeous.

Portraits of Becky

2010-04-01T20:42:00.012-04:00

I was thinking today (partially because I was stuck on the computer the whole time) how lucky I am to be able to draw and paint from life, how completely satisfying, frustrating,engaging,energizing, and miraculous it is, and how I don't get to do it often enough, but by joy, have managed it some!

Anyway, I finished a small image of Becky this week that I loaded on facebook and then thought...well, why not here, why not a bunch of Becky's???

I like being with people, looking at people, trying to get closer to understanding who they are. I end up feeling closer to them, and in this case, the more I try to stay with Becky, be patient with the painted surface, with how she looks, how she tilts and bends and lifts, where the light falls on her face and the space around her, how she tires...how she changes on (any given day :D) I find it's all worth uncovering. This searching of surface and mark, of color and space, of gesture and face is why artists make art. Somewhere between the materials and choices, the thinking and doing, we find relationships and balance.

So... here's to the Becky's of this world that remind us of the simple things in life that are significant, making a mark, seeing with care, and sharing some time.

Brooklyn Water Artists Coalition

2010-03-12T20:09:00.043-05:00

In thinking about taking time to show work this year, I've sent jpegs to exhibitions a bit outside the usual hour to two hour driving range, with the longest drive to date, being Brooklyn. This image of the tree growing out from under the bridge enchanted me, making me remember my mom's library of books when I was a child, one of which included, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith. I actually went to Brooklyn College for my masters as well, so there's something perfectly lovely about returning with art here for the first time since those years of study. Add to it, the city is exciting and it doesn't matter that we had been driving for six hours, when you cross borders and boundaries of cities, you sit up and take note.

I love it all - the patterns and colors, the architectural mish-mash, the large, bold signs, the constant bump and brrr of the street against our tires...the mushing of car to car to bus to truck...it's all so incredibly alive!

The BWAC is a large warehouse, artist-run, gallery flanking the water.

It rises up bricked and quite beautiful with black wrought iron railings along the exterior, and exposed beams, hardwood floors, high ceilings,

and pristine, hung canvases to showcase the work.

There was much to see besides setting my piece down, so out of the van 'Embedded' came for the second time in the past month and a half (it travelled from the Connecticut Society of Portrait Artists to here) and what a journey! I feel like I've been on one all year without quite knowing where I'll end up but liking that my work has visited people in Chicago and Connecticut, and now New York. It makes the world seem smaller and more approachable if I can connect on this simple level of sharing time and space with others.

We took one more gander,

sighed that we needed to move on, and said our goodbye's.

The drive home had it's own beauty just waiting for a click from my camera to try and hold it a second longer!

Take time to visit this site: http://www.bwac.org/
The site exhibits a slide show of the entire show and I think you will find something to be interested in, so have at it and enjoy!

Connecticut Society of Portrait Artists at the University of Connecticut, Stamford, Connecticut

2010-03-07T12:32:00.029-05:00

Portrait of Wendell by Dean Fisher

One of the great things about entering an exhibition is the excitement of coming across work you are not familiar with. In this case, the Connecticut Society of Portrait Artists had not only some strong portraiture which was easy to fall in love with, but in particular, some terrific drawings. The image above is a graphite drawing, titled Artist and Daughter by Jimmie Arroyo and the one below here is titled Portrait of Gloria by Mal Luber.

Both drawings have a gorgeous range of pattern and pressure, the physical and connecting presence of facing us, and the joy of being life size.
In Father and Daughter, the lilting waves of the child's hair, repeat the movement of her father's veins along with the ripples of their clothing, much the way the image of Gloria finds a rhythm in the shape of her ruffled shirt. Her dark eyes, brows, hair and nails exist in strong contrast to the ethereal quality of her clothing. In both drawings, there's a giving back and forth between tool and surface, gesture and proximity, pattern and design that's so satisfying!

Then there's this quirky, charming image of Milton and Sophie by Joan Goodman, with its odd, doll-like vulnerability.

The drawing has a sense of past histories like an old, formal photograph, but also maintains a contemporary worry through the lift of the brows and the grasping of hands and clothing. As a viewer, I feel both protective and oddly distanced looking at these girls in their delicate, graphite world.

This drawing, Stymied by Arlene Lieberman is a clear, well felt, fleshy portrait, perhaps more internalized than the other images shown here, as he faces away from us in thought, seemingly unaware of his viewers.

Shown below are a few more of the many images in the show, some of my personal favorites, although there were many other powerful works to be viewed including Ralphie Life Sketch by Grace DeVito, a gorgeous portrait named Jacki by Oleg Radvan, Kate by Eric Uhrynowski, and My Dad by Paul Batch...other cool little images, that somehow in the photographing process, I missed taking digitals of!
Still shown below though is a graphically hot, sophisticated piece titled Image by Susan D'Amico

The craggly, old, head study titled The Actor by Leah Lopez

Check out these sculptures! They were an exciting addition to the 2D work and so physically alive in their range of material and physical presence!
Reflective Bobby by Alan Proctor

Fenix by Rosemary Gurpide

and Predicament by Damian Masanz

There were many lovely images, but in closing, I'll show two quite different portraits, the first one below is by Linda West, titled Florence. It is a complex, understated, and intimately small work that manages to bridge both traditional and modern portraiture.

And this last one, a gritty, curious, terrific painting, is titled Kiba, by Richard Prince, and had the power to entrance, invite, and shove away simultaneously. I loved its energy!

So, the exhibition was a quirky mix of the old and new, of the quickly seen and the forever changing, of 2D and 3D, of large and small, and above all, of the human presence in all ages, shapes, sizes, and intensities!

My cube Embedded is shown below among the other work. It now has a short lived home at the BWAC in Brooklyn, NY...another Blog, another night. Cheers to art!

Ekua Holmes, Paul Goodnight, Ed Johnetta Fowler-Miller

2010-02-17T20:34:00.020-05:00

Rivier College Gallery, a view into the smaller room off the main space.

Paul Goodnight, Angel On My Shoulder, graphite

When I first enter Rivier College's gallery in Nashua, New Hampshire, I'm met by Paul Goodnight's images, one in graphite and the other of the same title, in mixed media, although I'm showing you only the graphite.
Loving all things drawn, it is the one I look to first. Eerily, the other partner piece (not shown) is more worried, sharper, dominated by strong color and texture which may be building the image, or breaking it apart.
In contrast, Goodnight's graphite drawing is built from a range of delicate hatched and cross-hatched marks centrally defining the figure and then embraced by the more architectural, contoured lines of the surrounding leaves. These whisper along the edge of father and daughter, caressing the father's form much the way his hand holds onto his daughter's foot. The almost white backpack behind the child echoes the whiter silhouette of the leaves in the lower left and upper right quadrants of the work. There's a coffee colored smudge to the center left, a drop of blue in the upper left, a few erased but incised lines dragged across the upper mid to right side of the image, and a smaller almost duplicate miniature of the total in the lower right...echoes to be found in the lines of the trees and along the father's waist which tilt us slightly to the left and right, much as his body does. He's not quite solid on the ground, his perch potentially tipping and I suppose with him, the potential for his world to fall, and yet he holds steady. We believe he will support his daughter, she won't fall, the earth won't slip under him, those dreamy, silvery greys will continue. Perhaps this is the concern of the exhibitors; there may be calamity around the corner, in the past, or in the future, but the over riding feeling of the whole is one of peace, delight in the noise and the quiet of the living, and talk of place, home, and family.

Ed Johnetta Fowler-Miller, Ultimate Wild Woman, quilt

Ed Johnetta Fowler-Miller greets us as we rise up the steps with her quilt of Indian hand stenciled sari cloth and cotton from India, Africa, and Europe. I love that she so specifically lists where the fabrics come from, taking us around the world in these little notes. The edge of the quilt falls slightly irregular as it sways away from the wall, having the energy of a heartbeat expanding, the zig-zag of pattern and dancing figures, softened and slowed by the quieter salmons and blues. These surround the brighter, central of orange gold which in turn are calmed by the peacock like pattern along the boundary which reminds me of closed, lashed eyes. It is a dance of life, loud and exhuberant one moment and then hushed like a lullaby in the next.

Sr. Theresa Couture has organized the presentation of this exhibition with care. As I enter the space further, I come out of my focused looking for a moment to listen to the happy African inspired sounds of Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra with Yacubaddy and Odadaa playing jazz and blues. Drums and trombones, piano and bells are just a few of these joyous, dancing sounds that reach in and around the viewer as the search continues.

Above the guest book and smaller in scale, is a beautiful image titled American Songbook by Ekua Holmes, the third exhibiting artist. The silhouetted portrait (not shown here) faces left and reminds me of portraits from the early Renaissance while standing firmly in contemporary art and American history. It holds a love of texture, collage, written word, and the blessings and grievances of past and present. A signature of a parent is scrawled several times, perhaps the parent of the central figure who is now grown. Grades, math problems, abc's, class photos, and the American flag move around this woman. Thirteen stars remind us of the original states, and with it, the original quarrels and worries. The scene is set beneath a theatrical purple swag with white little cupids dangling above the bluebird and flowers which swish in contrast to the central figure's dignified, steady, black silhouette. Remanants of a story or nursery rhyme irregularly written swing underneath the swag on the right..."Then the Baby Elephant, I will, and he began and the Baby Elephant pulled and pulled...He pulled. The viewer feels the pull of all these elements in contrast to the central figure's steady, non-moving profile. Perhaps there is a connecting and recognition in the contrast of the family domesticity presented along with the uneasy correlations of maps and history.
The image is elegant, a contrast of noise and stillness, demanding, forgiving, and hopeful.

Entering the main gallery, I find a thoughtful arrangement of the three artists' works. Saturated color, energy, tactility, and the presentation of human figures don't compete for my attention so much as support each other. It's as if a group of friends have gathered for conversation with a bit of laughing and a bit of crying still present in the air.

The gallery has never seemed large to me, but presented and balanced with these works, it feels exactly the size it needs to be to support this conversation.

I sit on the centrally located bench in the gallery to enjoy the six Goodnight musicians from the NO Strings Attached Series, predominantly pastel. This is a collection of limbs slumping and bending over instruments, knees jutting out, and larger than life hands insisting on playing and then playing some more. Even when the figures relax or rub sore muscles, the ever large hands and feet anticipate the strumming and tapping to come. There's an energy in both the hanging of the group which bends and twists to aid each other and the strong color which flickers against the warm and cool greys of the paper surfaces much like a whistled note sung between the figures.
This is a small, engaging space with groupings of work well felt, so the mix of work doesn't feel jarring but welcoming, cool air over a sweating neck.

Ed Johnetta Fowler-Miller's quilted works provide surprise and play, I swear I can hear her chuckle as she titles this dominantly blue quilted image, "What Comes Out When You Have a Midnight Storm in Ghana." It is made of Nigerian blue cloth, and indigo cloth from India while encompassing an antique, beaded lizard with wonderful shells forming his spine and toes. There's a sense of the ocean and sky with this palette. The patterns wave, hieroglyphic like in their sense of story as the strong physical presence of the yellow and red-outlined creamy lizard, makes a dynamic diagonal through the center towards the upper right, scuttling across the horizontal bands of blue, happy to be out in the night!

If I glance further down the wall, there's an enigmatic work by Ekua Holmes, titled 'Golden.' It is deceptively simple with it's skipping girl and bright, inviting, colorbook colors. We feel the play, wanting to join in the jump-roping, letting our pig tails of younger years bounce with hers. The image invites community.
Suggested narratives occur throughout the exhibition and this is no exception.
We're offered one central triangular path with it's glorious yellow orange road, similar to the Oz's brick path and above it, another triangle of red and magenta from the child's jacket...but she faces away, oblivious to our journey and focused on her own. A Boston map is collaged within the piece, reminding us of place and perhaps, home. The child's right shoe is untied and she might yet trip while skipping, much as the collaged words hint at potential falls with the words 'suspect, suspended, claimed, and temper' half buried in the blues of sky. 'Hebrew, be a model, and activism' are among other words caught, as if a radio is playing in the back of our minds reminding us of past and present histories. The sky may be blue but it is flecked with clouds, has a storm come or passed? The word 'family' is collaged in the greens of the right side. Perhaps we are growing something good here, something hopeful.

There's plenty more to see in this exhibition,...it's a grouping which wakens the senses with quiet disturbances shuttered in and out of the work, while still encouraging the sun to shine, children to play, and adults the quiet dignity and raucous delight of work and play, all while the sax and the drums voice their beat.

Ekua Holmes, Remember Me - Easter Sunday, collage on board, 2009

Newest City Paintings

2010-02-14T17:38:00.008-05:00

Can you believe it...2 blogs in 1 night again!!!!
This is just a simple posting of work that I'm wrapping up for a local showing.

After the Rain is the first
and the larger of the two images which revolves around the occassional crazies that happen after a storm :)

The smaller image is a rambly, little thing from the same semi rainy, semi-sunny day where everything's a bit wobbly and about to change. It felt a little unexpected, as if 'what next?' should be posted on the signboards instead of street information.

Winter

2010-02-14T16:08:00.021-05:00

Name of a Tree by Catherine Anderson
Some days I am Ana's teacher, some days she is mine.
This morning, we look through her kitchen window,
the one she can't get clean, cobwebs massed
between sash and pane. The sky is blue-gold, almost
the color of home.
Ana, I say, each winter
I get more lonely. Both of us would like the sun
to linger as that round fruit in June, but Ana says
it's better to forget what you used to know...

To Winter by Claude McKay
Stay, season of calm love and soulful snows!
There is a subtle sweetness in the sun,
The ripples on the stream's breast gaily run,
The wind more boisterously by me blows,
And each succeeding day now longer grows.
The birds a gladder music have begun,
The squirrel, full of mischief and of fun,
From maples' topmost branch the brown twig throws.
I read these pregnant signs, know what they mean:
I know that thou art making ready to go.
Oh stay! I fled a land where fields are green
Always, and palms wave gently to and fro,
And winds are balmy, blue brooks ever sheen,
To ease my heart of its impassioned woe.

We Anonymous
You and I are cobalt cold today
cut across by shadowed lines
a scream of discontent on my lips.
Lift this powder away to find land once more
sienna earth and apple green
but I am struck sharply by winter's hand print
its cold arm flung across my face
Until you aid me
one hand drawn, to turn my face upward
blue sky, you chant, 1, 2, 3
I can feel the sun again
removing winter's lace.

It's Dark in Here by Shel Silverstein
I am writing these poems
From inside a lion,
And it's rather dark in here.
So please excuse the handwriting
Which may not be too clear.
But this afternoon by the lion's cage
I'm afraid I got too near.
And I'm writing these lines
From inside a lion,
And it's rather dark in here.

A Second Post In the Same Night, I'm on a Roll!

2010-02-02T21:34:00.008-05:00

Only because I was a bit of a slug moving into the new year with no new posts until tonight and having been reminded of my slugdom status, I've set out to prove otherwise. Here are a few relatively quick head studies, 2 in oil pastel and the other, the first stage acrylic block-in of a friend and model.

I have indeed been working.

Road Trip to Stamford Connecticut

2010-02-02T20:03:00.018-05:00

Road Trip with this piece in tow.

I don't know what possessed me to enter a show in Stamford Connecticut, a whopping 3 hours and 52 minutes away according to 'Lucy' our GPS, and potentially a 5 hour drive depending on the way traffic flowed, but there you have it! I stuck my nose out, brandished my jpegs, sailed them away, managed to be accepted, corralled my supportive husband into driving, packed all the right munchies and music, and we hit the road with the idea that 'Yes', in fact, my work belonged in the exhibition, "Faces of Winter 2010" and we were going to road trip the piece all the way down almost to NYC.

I felt happy, husband to my left, the sun warming us to my right, the painting safely tucked behind us, occasionally bumping the big white pedestal it sits behind to remind us of its presence, and the Taj crooning away while we did our darndest to join in.

So there we are, trucking along with the dancing, swaying trucks, when all the brake lights go on and we wince a bit at the thought of extra time in the van, but no worries because Jimmy Buffet's singing, "It's a jungle out there and I don't care"...and later, "Some pea brain people think my songs are obscene and nasty...but it's just a love song from a SLIGHTLY different point of view..." The harmonica's good and we're still singing away, so 10 minutes added on doesn't seem to matter. Before you know it, we're moving again, cruise control at 67 and if we're not always on key, we're still having a great time!

37 degrees down here in Connecticut, eating clementines, m&m's, and the peanut butter cookies Devy made for us, not a care in the world, driving along the Scenic Roads of the Merritt Parkway.

We're ignoring Lucy as we drive a different way and she needs to 're-calculate', laughing while we search for more license plates...Georgia, Massachusetts, Florida, New York, Connecticut, and New Hampshire all represented thus far, making the world seem smaller and more manageable, more human, and this place is a mix of simply pretty along the parkway, with what eventually is the loud, busy joy of city as we close in on Stamford. Life is good.

So we arrived in Stamford around 4:00 in the afternoon and it was a quick unloading, bringing it down the halls toward the gallery

and setting it up while also trying to take peeks around the space...a terrific portrait of a blue-haired girl with earrings in her nose, ears, brows, tutu spread out and crazy flowers in the ground, loved it! There were also some terrific sculpted heads, a couple of gentle, small scaled head studies, many larger works, more traditional, highly skilled but not as exciting works... and overall, a strong exhibition that I'm happy to be a part of! You might check out the link below later in the week to see if CSOPA has uploaded any of the images to their site.
http://csopa.homestead.com/FacesofWinter2010.html

The only down side as we were leaving was that there was also a policeman who was leaving after placing a parking violation ticket on our windshield...oops! Didn't see the meter. Onward! Nothing can drag us down, we've driven almost four hours, four more to go. We've successfully delivered my piece, joked with a few artists dropping their work off, placed my piece in the center of the gallery under the firm hands of the director and with the much appreciated muscles of others to help, and are now heading home. We'll be humming to Ingrid Michaelson's 'Be OK' and lazily, headily, singing to Buddy Guy's "Feeling Sexy" feeling that smoky, loungy, lovely feeling, feet on the dash, content.

The Boston Museum of Art

2009-12-30T19:08:00.038-05:00

The Museum is festive in the winter with its red bows and green wreaths hung.
White lights and a long invitation of steps, rise to the front entrance which encloses more art in flat and sculptural forms than anyone can take in on a single visit...but the heaven of trying awaits.
I managed this piece of heaven with my daughter who stands beside the vase found in Sargent's painting of 'The Daughters of Edward Darley Boi', an image I visit for its lush, painterly handling, and dark, sculptural space.

Stop and enjoy the thick, buttery surface of Sargent's 'Artist in the Studio' at the same time.

But I get ahead of myself in the excitement of trying to explain the pleasure of visiting this museum and it's wide range of available art to view.
When we first walked in the side entrance, while still in line for tickets, we were able to catch a peripheral view of the contemporary work by Scott Prior,

Fairfield Porter,

and Alice Neel, a psychological and figurative treat.

The inside space has moments of pure happiness where the architecture is clean, but the variety of art works is sassy and eclectic. Sculpted children float above you,

a painting by the artist Anthony Green presents a self portrait of a distorted man in a fishbowl, green-gardened world begging you to his Oz Land, close to a quiet, poetic Alex Katz image of branches,... soft, inviting, rainy day branches, all out of focus while the man in his green world is all edges and crisply defined oddity.

If you're willing to walk around the hall, past the Hockney, past the psychedelic black and white stripes of the hall by the bookstore, you'll find a mesmerizing glass sculpture by McElheny, seemingly endless reflections that are beautiful and mysterious, a curiously philosophical image worth viewing.

There's an inviting, curvy Botero with her hand on hip,

and a hall brimming with French posters, including brilliant lithographs by Toulouse-Lautrec.

These are funny, sardonic, and intelligently designed pieces.
In the same hall, you may find a colorful, rhythmical print by Edouard Vuillard called 'The Pastry Shop'

and a couple of lithos by Theophile Alexandre-Steinlen called 'In the Street' and 'the Black Cat', which are likeable with their force of energy and bold shapes.

There's also the Modern European room with paintings by Beckmann,

a glorious sculpture of 'the Lovers' by Kollwitz,

a sculpture by Giacometti,

and his wonderful painting 'Head of Diego'...which is penetrating, psychologically astute, and both simple and really complex. I love these images!

There's also a gentle Morandi with quiet, encouraging neutrals,

a Gauguin that I've visited since childhood for its rich color and intriguing narrative,

a small Moore sculpture,

and the list goes on.

I have my favorites as I bet anyone reading this does, including the print and drawing areas (don't forget to visit the Durer's), the Egyptian wing with its glorious figures, some of the Asian tapestry, and the incredibly beautiful relief work in the Chinese wing,...all the lightly etched drawings on those pensive, shaded walls that if I was allowed to touch, I surely would! There's so much temptation here!

As it turns out, I enjoy some of Jim Dine's work, particularly his self portraits, the images of his wife, and in this museum, his tool series. This last series mentioned hangs in the member's area...terrific etchings and drypoints with hairy marks that manage to be both delicately sensual and powerful in the same stroke,...rich, black, velvety marks that invite the viewer to hang out and enjoy these forms.

So...love the Matisse,

and the carved Bellano,

adore the Donatello,

be drawn to the intensity of the Tchelitchew,

the Kara Walker wall,

and the sheer, visual beauty of Khan's digital C type print...

it's all to be mixed up and shuffled around in this great melting pot called the
Museum of Fine Arts!

Painting From Life

2009-12-15T19:25:00.057-05:00

It's easy to forget how essentially beautiful life is, until reminded by looking, finding, and trying to see it.

The model provides surprise from the first question of where to be in relationship to this person, to the very last question of, 'Is this complete? Does it feel right? Does it say enough?'

I photographed my 30 x 42 inch painting at the end of each 2 1/2 hour session, so there are many changes not visible in each digital as strokes were changed and surfaces replaced, but the marks remain as part of the painting's history.

Day 1: Initially, I blocked in the larger forms, covering the whole ground and spending a few hours re-positioning where I felt she was in the space of the room and on my canvas. I mostly attempted to make some prior misunderstood passage, clearer and to define the contrasts between values, temperature, and weight distribution.

Given so much information, what was crucial to me? I searched to understand where there was light and air and where there was flesh and solidity, and because this was such a tactile experience, I wanted the sense of soft and hard visually present. The most minute terrain was becoming of interest over those sessions.

Day 2: Time isn't enough. I could've spent weeks more trying to understand, but as it was, we had committed to five classes of hands on time. Throw in another few hours as I continued working on the space behind and around her when she wasn't present. Not ideal, but practical, given the time constraints.

Through this experience, the model made us aware that the most minor shift in her body position or any change in weather pattern moved things. We had to question what angle her arm was bent, how shadows were falling, where and at what intersection her hand touched her leg, and what it all meant. Those tiny shifts were exciting, because they happened in the moment. They unintentionally encouraged us to think.

Days 3 & 4: I wasn't teaching this class, simply joining in, but as an instructor I frequently suggest looking to the large forms first, ...forget the details, see the form's mass and positioning...no lashes, no freckles, no decorations.
Here I was trying to understand her like everyone else, and finding as I went on, that I saw more intently, and that more was eventually important, down to the mole on her sternum. It isn't that detail in and of itself, is significant, but that the things she wore and the way she wore them, including her body gesture, carried a truth and physicality about her particular spirit, and energy that I responded to.

There's a slowing down and speeding up of time simultaneously that occurs when working from life, an urgency to do and then in counterpoint, the desire to savor, clarify, and reveal.

We forgot ourselves as we painted from her, left everything behind to understand this person through the simple action of applying material, sometimes thin, delicate washes, sometimes thicker, larger strokes, not always agreeable, sometimes too hesitant, too nervous,...but sometimes clear and in their way, magical.

Days 5 & 6: Seeing is not so simple. You have to change with the light and with the model's gesture, you have to let go of the end to find the beginning, you have to be available, curious, responsive, and willing to fail.
Time with the model is time attended to, alert, and in the end, cared for.

Me Today

2009-12-03T20:56:00.001-05:00

Daily Painting

2009-12-03T18:57:00.035-05:00

I generally spend weeks, sometimes months completing a painting, but these works on paper were all completed quickly, some in an hour, all in less than five,...and all centered on maintaining a fresh vision, mixing directly on the paper, and finding large patterns and shapes with speed.

I use acrylic paint.
On a difficult day, they can appear unwieldy, stiff, and uncompromising; traits I'm not interested in. Because they dry fast, blending isn't acrylics' most natural trait, needing be coaxed. Yet these paints have excellent collaging properties, and transport easily. They are also generous, fast drying, clean, and saturated.

I wanted to accentuate acrylic properties I both admire and find disadvantageous, simultaneously. This meant working more rapidly so the paint would hold some sense of butteriness before its speed of drying could overtake and prohibit all blending.

I like modeling space and blending is part of that, but over blending is a killer to both surface and space, so my mantra for these hours was: work fast, choose with care, apply with greater confidence, find the essential contrast, and keep the stroke visible to the extent space allows.

Admittedly, that means some of these little works are more satisfying than others, some are simply exercises in making myself stop when I could have easily kept going, correcting, altering spaces, and re-visiting.

On another day I will want to modify, to stretch, to participate for longer.
I will want subtlety and longevity, and to be blissfully patient, thoughtful, internal...
But for today, there is satisfaction in choosing to be bold if only for an hour.
The goal was met. State things economically and with the immediacy of a first, excited 'hey look at that, I'd like to see that in paint...now'

Reasons to Love Boston

2009-11-27T20:00:00.032-05:00

November 27, 2009

It's November and the gardens in front of people's homes are still green, the roses are blooming and the sparrows are chattering, people are out walking and conversing, and life is loud.
Boston is friendly and full of things to see. My daughter and I walked to SOWA from Mass. Ave. on Wednesday and there was something of visual interest every step we took.

No matter that it was a misty, grey day; the architecture, the people, the railings and gardens, the art, and curiosity...it was all terrific! From the bright colored doorways, to the fresh fruit stacked in trucks, to the stone work on Holy Cross Cathedral, and the mom walking her child home from school, there's a rhythm to Boston that is purposeful and unexpected.

There are strange happenings afoot...take the light post that was warmed by a knitted sock with woodland creatures on it...it makes you want to see more.

So we meandered.

Stopped into an open studio where artist Tasha Cough, was nice enough to put her computer down, welcome us into her space, and allow us to photograph it...turns out she's showing an image at the NHIA Biennial which coincidentally, I am too...she also showed us a picture from the opening of 'some guy' as she said, 'looking at the wall which included her work',... more fun yet, that man was my husband!
Small world and that's my point...that's Boston for you!

We caught a few more open studios in SOWA, one of which had a hanging image that reminded me a bit of Eva Hesse's works, airy and tactile. Popped into Chase Gallery right down the road before heading back, and were pleased to see rich, layered, iconic images.

Boston is so likeable with its size and energy...not so large you can't walk around, not so small you don't have places to go.
It's a playful, hard working, serious, goofy, strange, normal place to hang out in.

I'm glad we did!

Pages From My Sketchbook

2009-11-23T15:19:00.009-05:00

Drawing is the beginning of my image making process. I have a few sketchbooks of different sizes that are for graphite, markers and pens, and a larger book for collaging and more complex spaces.

These drawings have faults, there's generally no erasing or altering yet for that same reason, they contain some of the more likeable moments in my work - they record unfiltered passages of time and mood in an immediate and sometimes pressing manner that feels genuine to observation.

So here are a few little studies, some are from family and friends, I'm always drawing my children, and some are after favorite artists like Beckmann and Rembrandt...I'm sure Giacometti, Lucian Freud, Kollwitz and Moore have all journeyed their way into my pages.

Recent Scapes

2009-11-22T21:38:00.008-05:00

These images are relatively quick, modified alla primas, made on 18in. x 18in. stretched canvases and painted with acrylic paint. They come from a series of photographs and sketches I've taken and worked on site, which I then transfer to painting surfaces in my studio. I block them in as large shapes of light and dark, focusing on warm and cool rhythms, patterns, and overall energies.

A few of my favorite things on these particular days...
Wild skies
Lit, striped roads
Blinking lights
Vanity plates (I keep a journal of them)
EZ Pass greening us through, and...
The bearded, goateed man on his motorcycle with another bearded, goateed guy in his side car (terrific!)

Black and White Drawings

2009-11-15T21:05:00.016-05:00

November 15, 2009

Drawing is instinct and observation partnered with touch. This grouping was created with charcoal, graphite, pen, and a hint of pastel. Keeping the materials simple allows me to focus on the subject at hand in a more direct and immediate way.

The drawing of the gentleman with the hat is not from life, but is an ancestor of someone I was commissioned by, so it carries the history of looking back in time without quite knowing what I was searching for... faded photos from over a hundred years ago, the kindness of an unknown soldier's eyes, the interest of someone now trying to see into their family's past, and the desire to convey this visually, culminated into this small graphite and pastel image.

The pencil drawing of the woman, on the other hand, is from life as are the other images. I was interested in the strangeness of looking at her seemingly upside down, the immediacy of the limited time available with her, and the challenging need to observe space with care.

The third image maintains the model's core physical and emotional energy. The bulk of the image is complete, so with a few additional marks, more from memory than observation, I've stopped drawing on it and called it complete.

The last image is of my child. He was a bit unwilling to pose for any length as my husband drove us to Manhattan this weekend, but I was able to make this quicker study of him. I used a pen that was partially dried out, so it left these curious match-like marks from the point to end of each stroke. Every tool implies something different, and in this case, the slight resistance of the marker met my son's slight hesitancy in an unexpected aligning of mood.

Sketchbook pages 6:06:00 PM by Patricia

1 – 1 of 1

Sigmund Abeles

2009-11-15T18:39:00.016-05:00

My family and I began the morning early, driving four and a half hours through the remaining rain of Hurricane Ida to arrive at the Culture Center in Manhattan. Sigmund Abeles art work is here, the last day of the seven days total that it has hung in this space.

Sigmund’s a master printmaker, draftsman, painter, and sculptor with a humanist viewpoint. Our time today amounts to four hours of visiting and seeing...added to the whirlwind four and a half hours to get back.

The rain softens enough later on our drive for us to find CA, PA, and NC, among other states visible on the license plates, people all driving in the same direction. It creates a sense of connectedness, and this in summary, seems to be the gist of Sigmund’s work.

The Culture Center is lovely, with bricked walls, high ceilings, and old wood floors,…it’s a place that houses art with ease, and perhaps the empathetic, figurative work of Sigmund’s, more easily. On either side of the stairwell are prints by Sigmund, including two self portraits to the right. They’re intense, searching images, with a rich value and mark making range that makes me want to remain with them, as do his other lithographs and even more so, his intaglio and drypoint works. The stairwell is lined with elegant pastels, oils, prints, and drawings, and although the main room is small, work rises above and below eye vision to acknowledge the fun of crouching down and straining up as many of his figures do within their fields. His titles suggest loose narratives, the gestures of his models inviting further story telling, but it’s his particular vision and handling that draws the viewer in, with its curious, physical, demanding, compassionate, and sensual attention. His talk, like his work, is complex, engaging, time oriented, and personal.

I did not have the chance to look at every image equally, but loved the human touch felt in his line, the solidity of his figures, the beautiful, deep color of his pastels and the overall years of living and experience felt in his work. There is genuine warmth to his gaze as you feel it rest on the same forms he’s loved and worked from for years: family members, models, and the animals throughout his life.

‘Tyrone with Drawing of Renee', 'Black Man, Knee Bent’, and ‘Carol In Beret With Hand Against Face’, are a few among the many powerful works visible in this exhibition, and seeing both him and his work has been a privilege.

Processing

2009-11-12T21:33:00.004-05:00

Facing three works, I find my eyes resting mostly with the painting of my daughter and two of her friends. The smaller cityscapes that I’m also currently working on, balance the larger work, allowing me the time and energy to step away and assess what’s necessary for each of these canvases. I’ll return to the larger piece when I know more about it.
Meanwhile, the cityscapes require urgency, as the remaining light threatens to leave. I look at these same streets most nights until they are partially committed to memory. Cars squeeze and compact, creating a palpable energy of people trying to get home. The honking, gestures and sirens are not always pleasant, but it’s real, and it’s alive!

Painting on multiple works helps me linger in a way I might not without this process. I can step away from one work, see another one with fresh eyes, and return again to the first with clearer understanding. This slower road to completing paintings is important. I begin spontaneously, but later, slow down and wait. It’s similar to listening for a sound before you can quite make out what it is…a living, breathing thing, unpredictable, layered…complex…it’s the potential, something mysterious, something not quite nameable that’s held in expression and is worth the waiting.

I keep looking at the large figurative work. The colors are enticing, deep and rich, with a feeling of intimacy and gangly grace. There are drawing issues to attend to, the surface needs to grow, the balance is not quite there, but there is something to think about, there is a beginning.

November Exhibition Announcements: If you are in the Portsmouth area, I’m showing a couple of drawings at the Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery on State Street, and have a painting in Manchester at the NHIA Biennial, along with a couple of drawings at Art 3’s “Treasures” show. Drop me a line anytime at forarts_schappler@comcast.net.

It's a Question of Balance.

2009-11-12T15:14:00.003-05:00

I’m not sure this will ever be a logical BLOG, as I’m not chronological by nature, and am frequently inside out, …but, being human…I’m counting on others feeling similarly laundered. Besides, a little soap never hurt anyone.

It’s a Question of Balance.

I make drawings most days, work on paintings some, love and agree and disagree with family and friends, make meals, plan trips…trips to the market, to the park, to the dance center, to the library, to the art stores and galleries, all in search of something. I’m always on the move, but where to?

As artists, I think we try to get closer to the spirit of who we are, where we’re headed... Why care? I don’t know about anyone else, but I want to attempt to understand life, it seems so BIG, and significant!

Drawing and painting help me understand.
Something about processing (through making,) helps to clarify ideas, feelings…life! So, I draw and I paint and I process, the way I breathe or love.

In picking up a pencil and looking to this person in front of me, or this space or land, I stop all the running around. I put my head back on, and connect to the living in some fundamental, necessary way.

There is no equivalent.

The scratching of the pencil against paper, the energy of its pulse, my arm tingling as it erases and re-draws, the forgetting of self as one steps back and forth to search, the sense of total participation and emersion…this is magic. In the way you believe in something more magical than yourself, something more wondrous.

I believe in lists, perhaps because my mother always made them and in turn, taught me to have faith in them, words, almost like a prayer.
Lists are Good. I always forget to look at them, but they live anyway, somewhere in memory and in wanting.

I will:
Love
Join
Laugh
Listen
Expand
Approach
Erase
Merge
Question
Try
Voice
Believe

On occasions when I feel made of mud, heavy, unfiltered, weighed…I work to clean myself up, pretend for the day, let go. Drawing allows me to let go, to see, to clarify, to love more intensely, and to let go. It is a place for non-filtering, no editing, charged thought and work.
I’ve listened to the kids laughing deeply, silly and in each others faces, belly laughs that make up for all other moods, heard the steady rhythm of my husband’s hammering as he works to build us a porch…I’ve let go of worry over this or that and can feel the mood of contentment settle in as I know I’ll be bringing this to the studio tomorrow, this sense of quiet and well being that will be shaken on another day, but is clear and present in this moment, today.