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

SOLD

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.