The Barns in Portsmouth, RI, acrylic 14x18

We painted Plein Air at Judy Chaves' house yesterday in the late light.  We were waiting for the cows to come out, which they did, as we were packing up to go home & cook dinner :(   Apparently the cows (which are dairy cows, but I don't know that that matters) like the grass to nibble, but not these tuft-y weeds, so they grow, while the grass gets nibbled down.  Loved the light on the barn and out building.

Pembroke Arts Festival, August 1 and 2, 2008

Today I heard that I got 3 pieces into the Pembroke Arts Festival Juried Show.  I'm thrilled that "Atheena Ballerina" won an Honorable Mention Award!

Opening at the Ventress LIbrary 7/14

A young art lover....

Paula Villanova and Nina Villanova being so kind, after hanging the show, to come to the Opening, too....

Tim and I, trying to get a good photo of both of us...

Well, the 'Opening' finally happened.  Monday night, with a light turnout.  My family & friends were there, however, and I think the show looked good.  Here are a few photos.

New Stuff

A 'Toulouse Lautrec" inspired model...

A sunset on a "Hot Summer Night"...

And a Potato Field at "Wingover Farm" in Tiverton...

These paintings are what I've been doing on my 'week off' after my show got hung last week.  I swore I was going to give myself 2 weeks of 'no-painting', to lie fallow, so to speak, and rest from the (exciting) goings on of putting up a one-person show.  To repeat my Daily Blog - my show is at the Ventress Library, in Marshfield, MA through Mid August.  The show is sponsored by the North River Arts Association, and I am eternally grateful for this opportunity.  Photos from the Opening will be posted later this week.  The Opening is July 14, Monday, from 7 - 8:30.  No alcohol is served inside the Library, and there will be light refreshments inside.  But my car will be serving a Tailgate Party!  So to paraphrase Ernie Boc the car dealer ... "Come On Down!"

Off On Another Adventure

This week I visited Phyllis Adams in Truro at a wonderful 'cottage' just a few houses up from Edward Hopper's house on a huge bluff overlooking the Bay.

Here's a painting of the cottage we stayed at:

Denise Zompa and Trish Hurley were there for the whole week, too - so much fun! This was an amazing 60's 'cottage', a real party house with it's own place in the Art History of Cape Cod.  I think the room I had to myself could have slept 7, and all together I think the house could have comfortably fit 20 or so.  First night there a storm rolled over the bay (didn't touch us)  and we all painted it, here's mine:

and in the afternoon visited Provincetown, and gallery hopped, then painted at Days Cottages (see my Daily Blog for that painting).  This morning we had a terrific breakfast at the Wicked Oyster (see happy faces below), and I headed home, refreshed and renewed!

AWOL

OK, so I went to NYC last week, and while I didn't get to gallery hopping (do you really want to know the details of a day spent recovering a cell phone left in a cab?) I DID get to 'visit' the Statue of Liberty!  Back to painting now!

Portsmouth Art Guild Figure Show

I have been 'quiet' for a while, and want to explain.  Spring is the time when there are hosts of juried competitions, as well as some applications to juried art associations.  I've been really busy submitting, and have been dealing with, well, the agony of defeat. ;)  I know, everybody has their ups and downs, and truly, I'm one of those people who don't want to belong to any organization that would let me in!  More on that later.  

The Portsmouth Art Guild took two of my paintings, above, into their juried show.  One, you'll probably see on my Daily Painting Blog, the Skaters, the other is, well, different for me.  It came after a particularly stinging rejection of all my pieces into a show I really wanted to get into.  It's called "The Rejected Artist" and I took inspiration from Courbet (yes, Courbet the realist) and his "Desperate Man" painting.  I took my canvas and my acrylic palette into the bathroom and set up in front of the mirror, tried to strike a similar pose to 'Desperate Man', dried my tears (I'm an easy crier) and let it all hang out.  DAMN it!  I SHOULD have gotten in to that show!  GRRRR.....  I'll show them!  AUUGGGHHHH!!"  etc.  Oh, yeah, the next week I got rejected from an art association for membership, so I have plenty of 'models' for my crazy artist paintings.... but truly, you win some and you lose some.... can't let the losing be the emphasis of your life, right?

Another Amazing Sunset, 11x14 oil

Here in my little piece of heaven, the sky is glorious almost every night.  Every day is different, and after a whole day of churning, heavy clouds the sunset arrived pure and cloudless.  At my side of the broken stone bridge (hence the 'Stonebridge Studio') a lone fisherman stood patiently waiting for a bluefish to grab his line.  Yellow, lavender, azure... ahhhh...  I tried to be loose, yet blocky, simplifying once again, to emphasize the purity of the design...

You know, I've been struggling with quite a few rejections in terms of my art this past month.  I have to say that initially I get miffed (OK, gut-wrenchingly so..) but now I think I'm just freer to try new things, and listen on the wind for my own voice, and maybe I'll get it right soon.  And there are just enough good things happening (like I got the piece called 'Everybody knows Everybody' below into the Cape Cod Art Association National Juried Show) to keep me going.  So I'll continue to prepare for my show in Marshfield (more on that later) at the end of June, and continue to try new ways of looking at color and design.  All in all I can not complain - life is good.

Dramatic Sky, Hingham Harbor, 12x12 Oil

So today looked like it might be a washout, but I was so very inspired by Rich Bowman's new work on his website, that I HAD to paint the dramatic skies today.  And since I had to drive up to Quincy to Tim's office anyway, I swung by Hingham because the Harbor is so pretty, and I thought the sky might be 'big' there.  And it was.  So I had to work quickly, but this is what I got in about 2 hours.  Tried doing mostly 2 directions (vert & horizontal) in my brushwork, and simplified, simplified, simplified....

Perfect Day..Sun, Sand & Sox on the Radio, 11x14 oil

I sketched this lounger last summer at the beach.  The game was on, his Dunkin Donuts iced coffee nearby... he got a little more sun than he probably should have.  I like the way everything was compartmentalized....

1st of the Irises, Acrylic, 16x20

Coffee in the garden led to a beautiful sight this morning - the first group of irises, bearded, I believe they are called, were all in bloom.  Before the sun even hit them I had my paints out, and Tim took this photo of me digging in to the painting  - don't you love the chain link fence?  It KIND of keeps the cats in (when we're there, anyway) and it gives us a sort of boundry because we are in a triangle of streets - all 3 side have people walking by, zooming by, and always interested in what we're doing in the yard!  

This painting was fast and loose, and I was channeling Ros Farbush.

Large Clamscape, 18x24 oil

Obsessive? Possibly. Dangerous?  Only if I forget the clams where I'm painting them and they die and start to smell... I didn't, though.  I'm loving the textures and surfaces, wet & dry on these babies.  Maybe I should have submitted clams and only clam paintings to the Art League of Rhode Island, who rejected my application for admission to their club today.   

Clam-o-licious, Oil, 22x28

At this size, maybe I've got clams 'out of my system' - ahem....  Seriously I did have such a blast painting these - I used, rose, sevres blue, indigo, cad yellow medium, cobalt, a hint of orange and alizarin - this is not your mothers' still life!

Everybody Knows Everybody, Oil, 20x24

This is a little beach community with those gorgeous summer homes with porches facing the ocean, and next week they'll all be moving in, cleaning up and 'Opening' the houses for the season.  I love the 'Hopper'-y feeling of this.

Tiverton Quohogger, 14x18 Oil

You know, I'm making up the size here.  I KNOW it's more than 12x16 but it COULD be 20x24 - it's at the studio, I'm home.  I painted this subject before, and think I did a better job this time...

Sun Hanging Low Over Dunes, 9x12 Acrylic

This is the new photo - a bit sharper.

Tools of the Sandcastle Trade 11x14 Oil

This is the painting that I ruined my camera for!  Gale force winds and I needed to get 'lower' to paint and not have my easel fly away - lost my balance getting onto the sand and when I leaned over to right myself my camera dug into the soft beige sand.  Many trips to the wonderful folks at Mid State Camera (how long a drive can it be to get to 'mid state' in Rhode Island?) and I'm now 'sand free'.  I hope.   I liked the looseness and playfulness of this painting, and the Happy colors.  Reminded me of days at the beach with my kids.

Finished (and I mean it this time) Flower Stand

Beach Road Flower Stand, oil, 20x24

On the way to the town beach - on Neck Road - there's this flower stand in the Summer with a blue umbrella.  The person who arranges it really has a good eye for design, as well as a green thumb.  Just wanted to paint the vibrant grass and the shaded flowers with the blue umbrella.  Oh, the stone wall was fun, too, and sorry about the glare there.  This painting is done in Happy Colors, and almost looks like it was done in acrylic.  I believe I suffer from MSD (Multiple Style Disorder), an affliction of emerging ;) artists, when they roam from style to style - sometimes very realistic, sometimes impressionistic, sometimes contemporary...  Whatever the painting calls for, is what I say!

Thunderheads From the South, 20x24

I wanted to keep this loose, but was intrigued by the flat reflection of the curved shape in the water.  This was going to be submitted to the South Shore Art Center's juried show last week, but it's a Windsor Newton canvas, and it wouldn't fit into the standard frame.  This time, I was not AT the framers (where I could pay $25 extra for them to shave some of the inner frame off) so I tried to hammer it in to the frame.  Let me save you the $$ - that does not work.  I completely shattered a nice $60 frame.  Now I have no frame and had to put something else in to the show.  I'm hopeful, but not really - I get into this show about 1 in 4 times.  

Our Scraggly Tulip Garden, 12x12 Acrylic

When I went to Holland to paint, about one year ago, I bought what I thought would be enough bulbs to make a spectacular tulip garden - over 100 bulbs!  The pictures, and live samples were huge, hardy and vibrant.  Easy to grow!  Well, we planted them (and by this I mean Tim planted them where I wanted them) and look at the pathetic examples of tulipkind!  Tim's chalking it up to young bulbs, but I don't know.  We did everything we were supposed to do, and our tulips bought in the US are gorgeous - in other spots.  I didn't want to mix them because I'd forgotten what the Dutch ones were supposed to look like and didn't know if they'd look good together!  Also, they were scheduled to bloom consecutively - but they all bloomed at once.  And they were supposed to be different heights, but they are all pretty much the same!  Oh, well, they're still better than NO tulips! :)

Tug On The Sakonnet, 12x12 Oil

This is a larger piece I did from the little one done last Summer.  I like the looseness of the island in the background, as well and the more defined island in the foreground.  Believe it or not, there was little drawing on the tug, I was channelling Ken Auster in the finishing of this painting, taking his advice to "Reward people for looking at your painting".

Orphan's Day Out, 12x12 Oil

This one is a nostalgic image of my mother and her twin sister (Alternate name: Patsy and Mickey, but I wanted to save that for another painting I'm doing) on an outing.  They got some time away from the orphanage during the summer, and they both treasured that time.  I THINK I'm done with this.  As usual, the hardest part was my mother's face - which I had to make a random face.  I wonder if I'll ever actually be able to paint her.  She's been gone now 12 years.  Does it ever get easy?

Breakfast in Bed, oil 12x12

He's bringing her breakfast (or, since birds get up at the crack of dawn and this was about 10 a.m. it was probably lunch).  I have every hope that it's because she's getting heavy with eggs, not because she's sick.  The foreground is much more purple IRL.

Gild and Lilies, 24x24 acrylic

More flowers.  These gorgeous lilies were from Tim, the vase was a Christmas present from our daughter, Molly.  My favorite color, and glass to boot.  I made the window sash behind them gold, just because I felt it would give the painting a little pizzaz.

Ranunculus in a Mexican Vase, oil 12x16

This vase is so great.  Another Mexican souvenir (apparently I only managed to buy stuff for myself this time :0).  These cheerful orange, yellow & white ranunculus flowers are perfect colors for it.  Flowers are so hard.  I think you have to ignore what their shapes really are and just paint what they FEEL like.  Well, to me, today, this is what they felt like.

Crazy Harry, 6x12 oil

I did some sketching of my orange boy, Harry, the other day in the garden.  At the studio on Sunday, this showed up on a canvas - how'd that happen?  I like the playfulness of this, and it's definitely not 'serious', but I love the bull's-eye on Harry's side - it's really there!

Tiverton Getty, 14x18 acrylic

This started as a plein air piece from last Summer.  It's been kicking around, and I liked it and I didn't, you know?  So today when I got in from my outdoor session at Grinell's Beach I 'warmed up' inside by playing what I call 'Doll Hospital' - I grab a painting that just isn't 'right', and perform surgery on it - working the color, correcting the drawing - whatever it needs.  This one needed lighter lights and a kick in the color dept.  Now I like it.  Too bad the people who owned the gas station last summer are gone - these were their trucks in the painting!

For The Birds...

I've been sketching birds, from life and from photos (mine and 'found' photos).  I like to study them as they're sitting, eating or just hanging out.  It seems to me they have a very complicated system of communication.  I have great empathy for them, and contrary to many people, find them 'lucky' and 'good omens' rather than the reverse. 

The top image is from a sketch I call "Visiting Hours".  The pigeon on the right is injured in it's leg, and is unable to walk around and peck for food.  This was in San Miguel, and the children were relentless in making it fly instead of leaving it alone.  I had to leave myself, or get in an argument with the parents.  These other two pigeons stuck with this injured one, where ever it landed, and kept it company.  You can't tell me they don't understand what's going on.  

The bottom image is the one I dreamt about.  The Friday version I did at the studio was very stilted and the birds were all dead-on frontal.  The wings were very stiff.  In my sleep I painted them like this.  Thankfully Tim felt like walking the Bristol Bike Path today and we went over to my studio and I just dived in and re-worked it.  Maybe still not 'final' but definitely getting there.

Plein Air Falmouth, Marshfield and Norwell, MA

Yesterday (I have no idea why this is all underlines, and I can't undo it!) I was on Boston's South Shore for a 'blonde-ening' and I went early and painting this acrylic  painting of the marsh off rte 3A between Marshfield and Scituate.  Then after the hair appt I met up with my friend Nancy Colella and we painted the North River in Norwell, this time, I used oils.

Tuesday I went to the Veterans Cemetery in Bourne, MA and while I was there I stopped at Old Silver Beach in Falmouth.  It was unbelievable.  The water was aqua!  I don't like the composition, but you know what they say about a bad day of painting....

This Week's Figures, oil

I did go to a figure class this week - it's one of those drop-in... no instructors classes, and the model was good, so here's trying to keep the lessons at learned at Peggi Kroll Roberts workshop in mind...

Self Portraits

I'll give you a laugh today.  I've been doing self portraits for the past week - they're really difficult.  Honestly, I'm much better looking than this ;)

The last one is a work in progress, not done, but I thought I'd include it so you could see how I destroy these paintings slowly...

Featured Artist - Phyllis Adams (Block Dog Art)

Let's see how this photo looks, as I 'cut & pasted' it.  I'd like to introduce Phyllis Adams, a Tiverton artist and blogger, whose blog, Block Dog Art is a fun and adorable land of dogs of all kinds.  Phyllis is active as well on Etsy and Ebay, and to say she just started this a few months ago, has been very successful!  Check out her blog for some canine fun! 

A Cottage Called Al-Fred, 9x12 oil

This little gem of a cottage is on Cape Cod, and my friends and I paint there a couple of times a year with my dear friend Joan Brancale, who is a fabulous painter.  (She's been featured in magazines, and her art has been advertised in American Art Collector).  This painting started out as a plein air painting, and I worked on it in the studio to fine tune it a little bit.  I love the feeling of crispness of the air, when I look at it I can smell the salt water off to the left.  I wanted to sit on those red adirondak chairs and watch the water!  

Oh, and we were so curious as to the whole 'Al-Fred' sign - turns out that the couple is something like Aline and Fred, hence Al-Fred, :)

A Wild One

For me, this is a HUGE oil painting.  It's something like 30x36.  I painted it one morning on the road to the old studio, when I was passing a field just as the sun was about to rise over the trees at the back of this yellow field of grass.  Everything was on fire, and as soon as I got to the studio I set to work.  It's not quite finished, but I thought you'd like to see something a little different for me.

Glow At The Quarry, 20x24 Oil

This is finally finished.  It went through many phases, but it was done from a plein air sketch that I did just before sunset one night last summer.  It is a good thing for me to see often, because it reminds me of how blessed I am in this life.  I was painting at this spot where there are always people fishing (for food, not for relaxation).  There was this large Cambodian family there, and upon seeing me set up my paints, the grown up urged the many children to go watch the artist (and get out of their hair for a while).  Why does everyone do this?  I was a little annoyed, because many times I've had to babysit kids and I really didn't have much time to paint before the sunset.  Anyway the kids stayed for a while and asked a million questions which I tried to answer patiently.  They straggled off, all except one girl, 12 years old, who watched with such intensity, I thought, maybe she'd like to be an artist someday.  So I stopped and talked to her about her future.  Which turned out to be bleak.  In two years, at age 14, her parents were sending her to care for her aging grandparents and living in Cambodia.  When they pass away she has other older relatives that she's got to care for before she can come back.  She accepted it with aplomb, but refused to let herself hope for a wonderful future for herself.  Wow.  No more belly-aching from me.  I don't want to hear 'poor me' from any of my own children, either!

Cloud Dance, 20x24 Oil

Well, OK, this may look bizarre, but occasionally the little tufts of clouds seem to 'dance' down the river.  Here, one night at sunset, they caught the rosy colors cast into the sky, making them look like little flames.  No apologies.  If you can't believe it, you are welcome to visit my corner of the world and see it for yourself sometime. :)

Another Sakonnet Sunset, 14x18 oil

I'm now finished with #2 in my Sakonnet Sunset series.  The colors are SO not true, but the painting's at the (old) studio, where I worked on it today instead of packing.  I do this every time I'm moving.  I plan, then fiddle faddle around when I'm supposed to be packing, so I end up doing it all in a rush.  Anyway, till I can get the right lighting, here's the gist of it.  

My Sorolla 'Forgery', oil, 22x28

February is the month for the "Fakes & Forgeries" show at Spring Bull Gallery on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, RI.  This year I chose one of my favorite paintings by Joachin Sorolla, titled "Mother".  It not only depicts such a tender moment with a brand new baby, it's a study in subtlety.  I knew it would be difficult, but I didn't anticipate just HOW difficult.  I wish I'd had another week with the painting.  Anyway, it got a great spot hanging front and center at the show, I was very pleased.

I wish I'd been able to see the two images close together like this while I was painting it, oh, well....  It certainly is a learning experience when you copy from a master.  It is, however, still just copying, and when you paint alla prima you have to make each decision for yourself.. is it cooler or warmer, darker or lighter, is the drawing right?  Measure, measure, measure, and through all this, you learn.  

Sakonnet Sunset, oil, 22x28

This painting is hot off the easel.  I decided that since I am entranced at dawn and sunset by the light hitting the clouds, giving the skies glowing colors, I would paint a bunch of skies from my own view.  Here's #1.  I'll be putting it in the Members' Show at the North River Art Association, Marshfield, MA, which I have belonged to for a very long time.  It's a great group and they have a number of venues to display your work.  Anyway, hope you like it.