Works by Tracy Helgeson

Harvest Festival Number Two

2011-09-27T06:07:00.002-04:00

I had planned to write this post yesterday, but I had to deliver some work for a show and plus it turned out that even though I thought I had recovered from the physical labor and the hours of chit chatting with tons of people, I wasn't really. I feel much more like myself today, so here we go!

Even though I know it's a bad idea to be finishing up paintings and packing and organizing for an event right up until the very last minute, sadly I still persist in doing it. More than anything I wanted to get enough sleep the night before, but I didn't get to bed until almost midnight on Friday night and then kept waking up because of the RAIN. Just what one wants to hear the night before participating in an outdoor art event. Anyway, I got up at 5am and we got the car loaded (well my son and husband did that part) and arrived in Sharon Springs at 7:30am. It was humid, wet and muddy from the rain, and was looking like it was going to rain any minute. Awesome.

But with crossed fingers, we set up my brand spanking new tent that had just arrived on Friday (I like living on the edge!). Last year I had borrowed one from my friend Karen, but this year SHE was also in the festival (we were hoping to be next to each other but alas we were separated) so I figured I better get my own tent. I didn't begin that process until the Tuesday before the show so it was a miracle that I managed to get a good tent, reasonably priced and delivered to my front door on Friday. All I can say is that I hate Walmart a little bit less now. heh.

Anyway. Set up went smoothly, my son Julien helped me again this year and in a lovely coincidence, I had brought one of the large sheep paintings and the couple in the booth next to me was selling big beautiful hanks on yarn spun from the wool of their own sheep. In fact, I bought some of their yarn at the festival last year. And on the other side of me was a woman selling hand knit hats and scarves, she and her husband were very nice and they also bought one of my little snow paintings. I always enjoy getting to know my neighbors at these things.

Saturday

Saturday passed in a pleasant blur. I sold 16 of the small format paintings which was really exciting and also totally beats last year's two day total of 14. And even though I consider myself to be a weird mix of somewhat antisocial and overly chatty, I thoroughly enjoyed talking with everyone who stopped by. There were so many interesting people! The weather held up, even though it was overcast most of the day, there was no rain and then the sun did peek out near the end of the day. I was quite glad when the day finally ended though so that I could stagger home and fall into bed at an embarrassingly early hour. My feet were killing me, turns out that muck boots don't really provide much support; my feet STILL hurt from wearing them all day Saturday.

Sunday

I finally got a decent night's sleep so Sunday started out in a much more relaxing manner. It was a beautiful, warm and sunny day. The first few hours were kind of quiet, then more and more people started coming through. However, I didn't make any sales until well into the afternoon and I admit to getting a bit of a complex about it. I contemplated changing my display around, and it even crossed my mind briefly that I should change careers. Ok, so maybe I was still a bit tired. Finally a few people came by and each bought a few pieces, then there were a couple more sales and my number for Sunday ended up being a very respectable 7. Doug and Ginger came later in the afternoon and I was able to go out and walk around the rest of the festival. I also visited the Mercantile and chatted with Brent for a few minutes.

There were probably twice as many vendors this year, and so the shopping was good! I am not sure how many visitors there were this time, but I think it must have been at least as many as last year, probably more. Also, the mood was somewhat different than last year as there weren't any TV cameras for me to avoid and no Rosie O"Donnell for me to chat with. There may have been some famous people there, but either they didn't stop by my booth or I didn't recognize them, which wouldn't be the first time. heh. Also, I loved the variety of people that attended, it made me feel like I was in a very comfy place between city and country, so many people there were visiting from other areas. The Beekman Boys have really put together a wonderful thing.

So today I am (almost) fully recovered and I have added all the remaining small format paintings onto my sales blog. Except for the sheep. Turns out the sheep were quite popular; I had six small ones and they all sold. But don't worry, I'm no dummy. I will DEFINITELY be painting more!

Sheep Study #339, 5"x3" Oil on Cradled panel

Harvest Festival Time

2011-09-23T09:46:00.003-04:00

Crazy busy here all week, preparing to deliver paintings on Monday for a local show of my portraits at the Cooperstown Art Association, and also getting ready for the Beekman Boys Harvest Festival in Sharon Springs. I did the Harvest Festival last year and while normally I don't do these sorts of events, I am happy to be involved with this one as it is a great way to support our local economy, farmers and craftspeople. Unfortunately I might have had temporary amnesia when I signed up again because I forgot how much work it is to do so many small paintings all at once, not to mention when that coincides with a another deadline, a husband on a week long business trip plus kids that have to be driven around and fed. I think I am doing better than last year though, in that this time I was actually finished with the painting part of the paintings two days before the event, rather than one day. heh.

I will be pleased if I get even half of what I have to do, done today. I still have to paint the edges on about 10 of the small paintings put hangers and labels on all 37 of them, edit all the jpegs of them, document everything, finish packing up and load the car tonight. I also have to finish the color at least on one and a half more portraits for the show at the CAA (will have to finish the edges, etc on those on Saturday and Sunday evening after a long day at the festival, blech). But MOST importantly, I have a very much needed hair appointment midday. I plan to avoid the cameras this weekend again, but just in case I better cover up the grey.....

Anyway, I better go, wish me luck and let's hope the rain that is in the forecast for this weekend, takes a sharp left and avoids Sharon Springs!

The One With Wolf Kahn

2011-09-17T21:20:00.004-04:00

So I thought I'd dust off this here old blog and tell any of my remaining readers about the exhibit with Wolf Kahn.

I know it's been ages since I wrote about this, so here is a quick description of the building and how the shows are usually organized within it:

"The Smithy is the oldest building in Cooperstown. It has three floors, each with varying kinds of gallery space. The first floor is at street level and is the original part of the building, it's very rustic; stone walls, forges, anvils, and tools remain from its original use as a blacksmith shop. The second floor is where the member group show is held each summer, in addition to a small room that features a solo show each month. I had a solo there in the summer of 2008. And the third floor is a large open space, which usually features one or two artists and often has a particular theme, often historical. This is the space I will be sharing with Nancy Samstein. The member group show and solo show by Michael Whaling will be on the second floor and Wolf Kahn will be showing on the first floor."

You can read my initial post about all this here.

I was a bit worried about showing in such close proximity to an artist who A. I admire, especially for his amazing longevity and productivity and B. my work has so often been compared to, mostly because of the whole brightly colored landscape barn thing, I think. I was worried about looking like a copy cat I guess;)

I decided to work around B. a little bit, by doing some new work which would include humans and farm animals, though not together, which would put me in an entirely different genre. heh. I was also reading the recent biography of Grant Wood at the time and decided it was time to put some figures and barns together and just so you know for sure, yes, I was COMPLETELY thinking about "American Gothic" when I did this painting:

Sunday, 2011, 60"x40" Oil on Panel

And since the one and only sheep painting I have ever done was the very first piece to sell in a show last spring, I decided to do some more sheep, and go larger too. So I did three that were meant to be together always:

Then I did a large red barn just for old time's sake.....

The rest of the paintings in the show were older paintings that I had on hand, ones that have not ~~sold~~ found their people yet. I spent quite a bit of time choosing pieces that worked together and that also looked right with the new paintings. Doug helped me a lot with this since I tend to want to include everything I have ever done and he tends towards sparse.

I had two walls of a HUGE room, the whole third floor actually. The light was a bit funky, there is an unfortunately placed stairway, and a lot of windows. Although I specifically requested the walls with the windows because I wanted to make groupings on the smaller wall sections.

So here are images of the exhibit. You can see a bit of Nancy's work in the last picture.

Now about Wolf Kahn. I learned a few days before the opening reception that he would not be able to attend. I was disappointed but I immediately understood that the bright side was that I wouldn't have to worry about prattling on and on in front of him or doing something dorky, like spray cracker crumbs on his shirt while prattling. Despite missing Doug, (he was out of town) I was very pleased that so many of my friends came to the opening and I had a lovely time chatting with everyone, not to mention getting my ego inflated a bit. The farm couple and the sheep received a LOT of positive feedback, yayy!!

However, the ego part didn't really last long enough for me to become unbearable. A few days later when Doug was back home, we went to take pictures of the exhibit and while we were doing that two guys were looking at the show. They were wandering around the room while we were taking pictures and finally stood in front of "Sunday." One of them said, and I quote: "the only thing that missing from this one is a pitchfork" Cue their hysterical laughter. Then he turned and they both spent about 5 minutes checking out every. single. detail. of the really "well built! nice color! sturdy! and it has a drawer!" table sitting near the stairwell.

Doug and I had a good laugh about it after they left and I am quite glad he got a few pictures of them which will serve as a reminder to me that not everyone loves my paintings. Sob.....

Anyway, Wolf Kahn's work was displayed on the first floor. Danielle (the Smithy's gallery director) was the curator and she did a wonderful job of that. The pieces were all pastels and were priced in the 3-5k range. I think Doug was tempted to buy one, but unfortunately those prices are not in any part whatsoever of our budget lately; our income is at the mercy of the current economy, alas. Maybe I should have suggested a trade? bwahahaahaaaaa!!!!!

So of course, it was wonderful to see his pastels in person, to see the marks, the colors, it all has a random and expressive quality yet the space and structure is so descriptive. Also these pastels were far more subdued that the pieces I have seen in the past, probably due to the changes in his eyesight (he has macular degeneration) and that accounted for just a little bit more of a difference in our work. Phew!

So all in all, this was a very exciting event to participate in, especially since it was actually IN our little town here. I am very grateful to Danielle for thinking about me when she got the yes from Wolf Kahn, and I am also extremely impressed that she was able to get that yes! Not sure yet if anything will come of this show for me, however I do have a pile of cards for the show with both our names on it which is pretty dang awesome and constitutes actual proof that I once had an exhibit with Wolf Kahn.....

Update With Pictures and LINKS!

2011-06-08T13:22:00.001-04:00

lccIZ56I/AAAAAAAAEnI/1tRp8mz5EUQ/s400/Garden6.6.11.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5615889168360662946" />And again, weeks have slipped by since I have posted here. Sigh. In my defense however, I have been pretty busy. Half my time has been spent in the garden and the other half has involved a lot of driving and watching girl's softball and soccer games.

The garden needed so much attention, I am truly ashamed of how poorly we kept it at the end of the season last fall. Um, actually I think we just sort of left everything out there, the watering can, the hoses, the dead plants in the beds, and fled the scene at first snowfall. I guess there was a good reason for all that but right now it seems like pure laziness. So I have decided to go all hardcore gardenchick and have been spending a lot of time in the garden in the last month, reorganizing it, weeding, mulching, planting and did I say weeding???? There are a lot of weeds out there. Anyway, I have been posting pictures in a photo album on FB which you can view, I have made it a public album. I am making a superhuman effort to keep up with things out there all summer instead of doing what I usually do which is bailing around July when it gets hot and too weedy. hehe, is weedy even a word?

Barn Study#325, 5"x7" Oil on Panel, 2011

And a few other brief updates. I have been working a little bit and very slowly. It feels like it took me forever to prep eight small format panels, paint, photograph and edit the images, and post them on my sales blog, but today they are finally all up. Although I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I messed up all the paypal buttons! Also, the winner of my last birthday giveaway, Denise Rose, chose one of the paintings (pictured above) from this group so I am shipping that out to her within a few days. I would have liked her to have her gift in a more timely manner, but I haven't done too many small panels yet this year for her to choose from......

I also recently painted five small bird paintings for a local show called 'Fins, Fur and Feathers.' I am sure there will be a lot of fun art in this show, but all I could think of doing was black bird paintings, and I mean that in a very literal sense, they are pretty much just black. I did some drawings (above) but I knew when I got to the paint, they were gonna be a really deep dark black (below). They were also incredibly difficult to photograph and so they must be seen in person. Totally worth a plane ticket to Albany, a car rental and a hotel in Cooperstown to come see them, right??? haha. Well, if you can't do that, you can see the crappy images here and if you don't already, go ahead and 'like' me while you are there.
Black Bird#4, 5"x7" Oil on Panel, 2011
I photographed them several times in all different situations and trust me, this was the best I got. I guess they are holding their secrets.

And one more link; I was having a twitter conversation (follow me@tracyhelgeson) with Robin Pedrero this morning even though I am fairly bad at keeping up with the threads there. Anyway, a friend of hers sent me a link to a map contest, which looks reallyreally cool, so I am passing it along. Looks like a good kid activity for the summer, and/or a fun detour for an artist. I love maps and even though I can't recall ever actually making one, I think I may try my hand at this one if I have time. Maybe a map of my garden since that is the only place I ever go anymore, heh.

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

2011-05-27T19:00:00.004-04:00

Last winter I noticed this on our property:

Then I got a pretty good shot of a beautiful Pileated Woodpecker who was getting busy with an ash tree in our front yard:

He made several holes in the center of the tree, and then a bunch more after I took this photo:

After he finished completely gutting the tree, I guess he moved along because we haven't seen (or heard) him again. Maybe he decided to check out a few trees in the hundreds of acres of wooded land just down the road. heh.

As visually captivating as these holes are, they have unfortunate consequences for us. We had a rocking thunderstorm last night and woke up to this:
(Penny is also surveying the damage.)

The center part of the tree that the woodpecker had been so diligently pecking at came down in the storm. Luckily it didn't hit the house, or the cars, or even the potted flowers I had set down along the sidewalk yesterday, so I am not complaining. We'll chop up the fallen branch and add it to our firewood pile; but between losing its main artery and the ash borer that is infecting trees in NY State, I suppose the rest of the tree will have to come down soon.

We try not to micromanage our surroundings too much up here (with the exception of the dang weeds in the vegetable garden) so even though I will miss this lovely tree that shades our yard and house, I might also enjoy having the extra sunshine for my flower garden at the front of the house. Until then though, we will have a rather goofy looking tree in the yard.

This Will Be Fine, Right?????

2011-05-09T13:46:00.008-04:00

White House, 10"x8" Oil on Panel, 2011

After frittering away quite a lot of days lately I am finally getting down to business but omg, why must I always procrastinate???? SO much work to do in the garden, which can't really be put off, and also I have a number of exhibits to prepare for in the coming months. Mostly a few group shows but they all involve me having to develop some new (for me) subject matter so some extra time and energy will be necessary.

However, one event that is coming up will need even more that that. One of the first places I showed my landscapes years ago was at a local nonprofit gallery, The Smithy-Pioneer Gallery. I have been included in their member group shows each summer (it's a seasonal gallery), have had a solo show and they can also take credit for getting my name listed in the Art in America's Annual Guide which I admit to being totally giddy about.

A few months ago, the new director contacted me and asked if I would like to be part of an exhibition called "Rural" that will be up during the month of August. I said yes, even though my exhibition schedule for 2011 was already getting a bit hectic and even though I usually try not to participate in anything bigger than a group show in August and September. I have learned from experience that it is really difficult to prepare for anything big while the kids are home during the summer, however, lately it is seeming like a bad idea to turn down any good opportunities. But I also paused when I heard who else would be exhibiting simultaneously.

But let me back up a bit first. The Smithy is the oldest building in Cooperstown. It has three floors, each with varying kinds of gallery space. The first floor is at street level and is the original part of the building, it's very rustic; stone walls, forges, anvils, and tools remain from its original use as a blacksmith shop. The second floor is where the member group show is held each summer, in addition to a small room that features a solo show each month. I had a solo there in the summer of 2008. And the third floor is a large open space, which usually features one or two artists and often has a particular theme, often historical. This is the space I will be sharing with Nancy Samstein. The member group show and solo show by Michael Whaling will be on the second floor and Wolf Kahn will be showing on the first floor.

Yes. You read that right.

THE Wolf Kahn. Monotypes, and maybe a few oil paintings. This is all exciting and everything but I must admit to being a bit intimidated as well. Over the years, people have often told me that my work reminds them of Wolf Kahn's and while flattering, I have never been quite comfortable with that, especially since I wasn't really aware of his work when I began my whole landscape/barn/color thing in 2003. (I wrote about that here and also wrote about meeting him" last year.) However, I feel now that even though our subject matter is still similar, the point of where my work has crisscrossed with his has passed. I was still concerned about being in such close proximity though and also about inundating viewers with barns and fields and tree lines, and I considered fast tracking a vegetable series I have going (more about that another time) so I could show those instead. But Doug assured me that my work has shifted away from his and it is true, I see that and I also hear FAR less feedback lately that includes his name in it;) So I am going to do some new work for this show, pursue the darker palette I have been using lately and also include more head on barn imagery like House, shown above, instead of the more angled views of structures I usually do. I think these are just a few of the shifts in my work that have distanced mine from his. Phew;)

So mostly I am pretty excited about this, but I still plan to stress a bit as well, which will ensure that things will be fine. Right?

PS. No word on whether Mr. Kahn will actually be at the opening reception. Please do NOT get me started on how much I will be stressing about that if he does attend. Heh.

PPS. I just realized that I really should have added here that I LOVE Wolf Kahn's work. It took awhile but I was finally able to see his oil paintings in person and they were simply stunning, so much better than any of the reproductions. I guess that is another reason why having my work in the vicinity of his is intimidating to me, I can't compete!!!!!

Different

2011-05-03T10:33:00.001-04:00

I have quite a bit of work that I should be doing, including several shows to prepare for, yet I am having quite a lot of trouble getting uninterrupted time in the studio. I blame the kids for this although it's possible that the magnetic pull from the computer screen has something to do with is as well. But mostly I blame the kids. Seriously. I can't believe I ever thought life was hectic when they were babies! Even though they are off to school during the day and supposedly that's my studio time, lately their needs are taking over that time as well, what with meetings, sewing things, dropping stuff off somewhere, laundry and picking stuff up all. the. time. It seems endless.

I used to be disciplined enough to just sit down and work in whatever time was available, but I have lost that. Partly because my studio is in the attic now, and not downstairs in the middle of everything like it used to be, which had its own problems. But mostly I think it's because my work and career have been in so much flux in the last few years. My excitement for working in the studio has changed; and it has taken me some time to see that it's not gone, it's just different. I have been letting that change throw me off but lately I am trying to work with it rather than trying to force myself to have the same intensity that I had years ago. Things are different now. I am different now. After many long discussions with Doug, I have come to see that despite all these changes in my work habits (which I have considered to be laziness and procrastination) my work has continued to grow and evolve. It's also more consistent; I make far, FAR less paintings for the sand down pile. So I need to accept these shifts and give myself permission to change without flipping out about it all the time. heh.

Anyway, it took me an embarrassingly long time to get around to starting this batch of small format paintings, but I finally managed it yesterday. The second I started moving the paint around I was in love with making art again so everything is right even if everything is different.

Stella is a Sicilian Buttercup

2011-04-19T11:33:00.003-04:00

It took me awhile to accept that what I was hearing from the oldster's chicken coop last winter was a rooster crowing. I was convinced that it was just the crowing from the hen house in the back of the house, bouncing off the hills that surround us. But finally I just couldn't ignore the distinctive sounds of a rooster's crow and the little chicken that suddenly looked like a beautiful rooster.

StuStella, mid crow:

And so turns out that Stella is actually Stu. And not only is he not a she, he is not a bantam either; he is a regular rooster, a Sicilian Buttercup rooster to be exact. Although, you shouldn't take my word for it, clearly I can't tell a boy from a girl, or a bantam from a standard, if slightly rare breed. Frankly, I could still be wrong since I simply looked at my chicken books and found a picture that looks like StuStella, which is what we call him. Well, mostly. I still think of him as Stella and sometimes call him Stella out loud just so I can keep doing the Marlon Brando thing. heh.

StuStella is a really nice rooster. Especially compared to the two nasty ones that rule the new flock with an iron claw and have worn off nearly all of the hen's feathers with their um, aggressive passion. Stustella is not quite as friendly with me as he was when she was a chick and eating out of my hand and perching on our hands and shoulders, but he is not at all mean or threatening to me or to his ladies. And he's got to be a bummed that he is in with the geriatric crowd (5 and 6 year old hens, yikes!). But he watches over them carefully when they are free ranging and is very gentle and brief when he occasionally gets some action. I get the feeling sometimes that the hens are just humoring him by letting him think he is in charge, because after all, they were quite independent for over a year after their last guy died and they did quite fine on their own.

Surrounded by his ladies::

So anyway, now we are a three rooster family which is at least one and maybe two too many. StuStella is staying though, one should never let a good guy go. Plus he is a good reminder to me that I don't know everything and that sometimes I don't know anything!

Hmmm, maybe StuStella should have his own facebook page and twitter account?????

Baby Jules!

2011-04-15T16:13:00.004-04:00

In the past few years I have told the stories here of the birth of each of my daughters (here and here), and since tomorrow is my son's birthday, I figured I better dust off my blogger password and post his story too before I get accused of favoritism. So kick back and get comfy; this is a long one.

Doug and I moved to Utah in late 1993 so that he could work full time with a company he had part ownership of. We rented a big rambling house that had a firepole (no really, it did) from the main floor to the basement. The house was kinda rundown but was in a great location, right in town yet totally secluded on a few acres between the Logan River and a canal. Kurtis (our nephew) was four and had just come to live with us. And after trying for a few years and thinking it wasn't going to happen, all of a sudden at the end of the summer of 1994, I was pregnant.

Despite a few moments of sheer panic, omg! a BABY is actually going to be coming OUT of my body!!!!! Doug and I were thrilled and early on decided to have a home birth. I did a ton of reading (books, no internet back then in the dark ages) based upon a few suggestions from some friends of ours who raved about how wonderful their home birth had been. I asked around and somehow came across the name of a midwife. We met with her and after asking her just a few of the questions on our list, Doug and I both knew we loved and trusted her completely.

However, most everyone we knew thought we were cuckoo. We fielded many calls from friends and family who were worried about me and questioning our sanity. My mom was so uncomfortable with the whole concept that she wouldn't even discuss the birth with me, which made me very sad. And when we chose not to have an ultrasound it got worse. However, Doug and I knew what kind of a birth we wanted and so we ignored all the drama. Through our midwife Chris and her assistant Alissa (who assisted in Sophie's birth too and is still a very dear friend), I had met many other couples who felt as we did, and so they became our support system.

So anyway, I had a great pregnancy, and I know it's not popular to say this but I loved every bit of it. I felt great, didn't care about the parts that weren't so great, didn't freak out about how much weight I gained for once in my life, and I felt so peaceful. I loved the feeling of a baby inside me even when he made me pee all the time and then gave me heartburn too. I didn't have any morning sickness although I did have a few seasick moments early on. I recall being in a hotel room during a car trip we were taking and watching the video for Sheryl Crowe's song, All I Wanna Do (the original version, before they cropped out the creepy guy watching her perform) and feeling like I was in a boat on the ocean, I am still reminded of that feeling whenever I hear that song!

My due date was 'around' April 1st but I wasn't paying much attention to the dates; I could tell we weren't even close. However, I think everyone we knew called us that day, hoping for an April Fool's baby. About a week later the Braxton Hicks started, they were pretty strong and usually lasted every evening for several hours. I was paying close attention to my instincts though, which initially were only off by two days, heh. On April 13th we called Chris. She stayed all evening while I had pretty serious contractions and even though I was still sure I was going to have the baby that night, she knew otherwise. And about an hour later everything stopped and everyone went home. Ack!

The next day I walked and cleaned all day, and the contractions started again that evening, but I didn't think it was going to happen that night so I did what I could to ignore them. The next day I walked around outside as much as I could again and when the contractions started that night I knew it was time. The first few hours were fine, we were all talking and laughing. Doug held my hand the whole time, but as I progressed I finally had to tell him to stop looking at me with the big puppy dog pity eyes; I was fine! That was the only thing that bugged me, well besides being left out of the conversation while I was having a contraction, by the time I was done they had moved on to another topic and I was perpetually behind.

I think I labored like this for about 6 hours, pretty tough but I was doing the Bradley Method, deep breathing and relaxing completely during each contraction so they were manageable, even if I couldn't chat during them;) Finally there was a change around 2 am, I could feel it. It was time to push and so that's what I did. It took me awhile to get the hang of it (if you don't already know, you don't wanna know now) and after an hour or so, there was no progression. Chris checked me again and told us that the top of the baby's head was not at the opening of my uterus. She said she had seen this before and that sometimes the uterus is tipped back so that even though the baby is in the right place, the opening of the uterus isn't and that it was like trying to put on a turtleneck, shoulders first. If I been in a hospital this would have probably turned into a c-section or at the very least a vacuum assisted birth, but Chris said to NOT push during the next few contractions and that the baby would then be moved to the opening of the uterus. At this point I was like, whatever, so I didn't push when my uterus wanted me to and I think I can safely say that this was the hardest thing that I have ever done in my whole entire life. Not physically, although there was that too, but there was something so emotionally visceral about the need to push and not doing it and I don't even think I can explain it better than that, it was just so intense.

After the longest forty-five minutes of my life, the baby got into position (it worked!) and after another half hour or so, there he was; all screaming and poopy (he had meconium on the way out) and red and wrinkled and with a little conehead from being in the birth canal for so long. Doug kept saying "it's a baby, it's a baby" like he had never seen a baby come out of me before, and we were both crying. It was the first best moment of my life. It took us awhile but finally we decided to see if it was a boy or girl since even though I had thought it was a boy, we didn't really know. Then we just laughed because we realized that we didn't care about that. It didn't matter, the baby was out!

We named him Julien for Doug's grandfather, Jules who was really Julius (we chickened out on both Julius and Jules) and spelled it with an 'e' instead of an 'a' because we knew we were going to call him Jules anyway, and somehow that made sense. It's possible that I might have still been in the haze of labor and love and a new baby, because a few days later I considered either going with Julius after all or at least spelling Julien with an 'a'. But we ended up leaving it and everyone always spells it with an 'a'. Sigh.

Julien was born near dawn on Easter Sunday (not a huge holiday for a non-practicing Jew and a near athiest but everyone around us thought it was special). As Chris, Alissa and Doug cleaned up around me (vinyl mattress covers are VERY handy for a home birth) the cameraman arrived. Yes, cameraman. I had agreed to participate in a short documentary that a friend of Alissa's was doing about the differences in how babies breastfeed after medicated vs. unmedicated births. In probably the only few un-self-conscious minutes of my life, someone that I did not know videotaped me while I was breastfeeding my first baby. Julien was actually sucking his fingers within 2 seconds of his birth, while still crying but after a bit he settled down and after I took his fingers out of his mouth he latched on like a pro. I have never seen this video and since I am back to being my usual self conscious self, I don't really want to.

So there you are, the story of Julien's birth. He will be sixteen tomorrow and I often feel like I might burst with pride and love for him. He is an artist, a musician, a writer, creative, sensitive, responsible, a wee bit moody, a bit shy, very thoughtful and handsome.

A few more thoughts:

Living near the water while pregnant was very interesting; The sound of the river was very relaxing during labor and especially during all those evenings of faux labor, but it also made me feel like I had to pee about a 100% more often than I already did.

I watched the entire OJ Simpson trial while pregnant and I think deep down, Julien must be an expert on that case.

During the labor, Doug complained that his arm really hurt from throwing a heavy rock into the river earlier that day while we were walking around. Everyone looked at him and he still says he could tell we were ALL thinking, shut up.

Chris showed us the placenta and how it was starting to break down, so Julien was obviously significantly overdue. We kept the placenta in the freezer for a few weeks or so, then planted in the flower garden which is supposed to be good luck.

Around 6am Kurtis came in. He had slept through the whole thing! His eyes were all big; he left right away and came back with a little stuffed animal and set it down next to Julien. That was the 2nd time I cried in a day.

Kurtis with Julien who is crying in the next photo that was taken;) And yes, Kurtis is wearing Power Ranger gloves and his Batman cape.

Julien's finger sucking at birth was a sign to come, he was a devoted thumb sucker until he went to kindergarten and got a bit of teasing. I felt a bit sad when he stopped.

I loved every single minute of our home birth even the crazy part when I couldn't push. It was wonderful to be surrounded by people who cared about me, who weren't on any kind of schedule and it was really nice to be in my own queen sized bed!!!!

I can't say enough about The Bradley Method which got me through 2 more wonderful but very different home births.

And even though I haven't seen them since we moved away 8 years ago, I still feel an incredible closeness to Chris, Alissa and Kezia who did the documentary and was with us during the whole fake out labor and then the real one too. Yay for Facebook!

Chris and Julien, April, 1995

More About the Photos

2011-01-27T10:09:00.006-05:00

Red Scarf Day, 2010, Oil on Panel, 18"x14"

Well, somehow January has almost completely flitted right by without me even once getting to my easel. I should be embarrassed to admit that, especially after I posted all my grand plans for the coming year, but somehow I'm not. I have a busy year coming up and I know that I will be completely swamped soon enough. Anyway, it's not like I have been doing nothing; I have been lining up a few new projects (will announce those as they become official), my girls have a crazy sports schedule and there has been a lot of driving and shoveling snow and attending basketball games. I have also taken some extra time each day to read more books, which I have really enjoyed.

I finally finished sorting the reference photos yesterday and that whole thing turned out to be SO overwhelming. First of all, I didn't realize just how many boxes of them I had collected, geez. I must have thousands of photographs! I should not be allowed to get obsessed with things. Heh, like THAT'S even possible. Secondly, sorting them turned out to affect me emotionally and I really could only work on them for brief periods before getting overwhelmed. I kept finding myself thinking about all these people and their lives, then moved on to think about how many stories and lives that there are in America and then in the whole world. Way overwhelming. Did I already say that?????

I also broke one of my rules of the 'People You Know' project. I had initially decided not to look for anybody whose pictures I found so that I could have to freedom to do whatever I wanted with the images. However, a few years ago I found a huge box of photos that traced the courtship, marriage and family life of one specific family. I have already used many of these photos for several of the portraits that I did last year in Vermont (see above) and as I began sorting I decided to keep the whole group of family pictures together. The photos are wonderful; they portray a classic 50's family filled with holidays, train sets, boys wearing cowboy hats, kids in the pool, in Boy Scouts, in the choir, the band and eventually posing with their prom dates and then graduating. As I looked through all of them I realized that I HAD to know what happened to the family, what they did, how the kids turned out, etc. I did some googling but the last name is rather common so didn't have much success with that. Finally though, I came across a Christmas letter written by the mother which gave me a few clues and I found the oldest son.

I debated for a few days about contacting him, because I knew doing so would change the whole direction of what I hoped to do with their photos, but finally I just couldn't stand it so I scanned one of the photos and sent 'D' an email. He responded rather quickly and we ended up talking on the phone. He was very nice, puzzled as to how I ended up with a big box of his family photos (I think that his mother had sent all these photos to her parents over the years and after they died, the box ended up in some sort of estate sale and then ended up for sale on ebay by an antiques dealer) and when it sounded like he didn't really have very many of his childhood photos, I ended up telling him that he really should have the photos, not me. I did ask him if I could scan some of them for use later on (he agreed to let me do that) and also described an idea I had about a project concerning his particular family images. D was actually very interested in that and after exchanging a few more emails, we decided to collaborate on the project over the coming year or so. He told me a little bit about his family members, just enough to keep me from completely busting open with curiosity and we decided that at some point in the spring we will get together in person so I can give him the box of photos and also to discuss the project further.

D should have the photos and I know that I did the right thing by offering to give them to him. And even though he is being VERY generous in allowing me to scan as many of them as I want, I still find myself feeling incredibly sad about not having the original photos. A combination of many reasons; how I like to have things, how I love to look through the actual photographs, feel the edges, the weight of the paper, the creases, read the notations on the back. It turns out that the tactile aspect of the photographs is a more important aspect of the "People You Know' project that I had originally thought.

So I was right about contact changing the direction of this series and while this is looking like it will be better and more fulfilling, I am not going to risk it again. I have two other family photo lots on hand, families that I am SO curious about but I am just going to put all that crazy-bursting-curiosity-energy into the paintings from now on.

Well, ok, I MIGHT do a little bit of googling but there will me NO actual contact!

Sorting It All Out

2011-01-11T14:11:00.003-05:00

I have been collecting old family photos (other family's photos, not mine) as reference material for the 'People You Know' project for several years and now have a crazyville, hoarder-like pile of them sitting here in my studio. At first I tried organizing them at least into piles of yes, no and maybe, but I didn't really keep up with that and so they eventually ended up all mixed together in several boxes. That disorganization was very overwhelming to me and was one of the reasons I kept putting off getting back to the project last fall. I knew before I could do anything I would have to sort and prioritize the images, which in turn helps me determine the direction to take with the series.

So after quite a bit of procrastination (who me???) I finally began sorting them out yesterday. For some dumb, overly optimistic reason, I had assumed it would only take an afternoon or so to go through 5 million photographs, but now I see that it will take much longer. It took me at least an hour to decide HOW to sort them. At first I thought there only needed to be three piles; yes, no and maybe. Then I thought I should try to keep them together by family (I often get boxes of photos from one family) but they have gotten too scattered for that. Finally I decided that I should make piles based on the subject matter; couples, men, women, children, landscape/buildings. I started with those categories and promptly realized that I would have to add many more; adults WITH children, two people, three people, big groups of people, prom dates, cars, animals/pets, interiors (amazing how many people take pictures of their living rooms!), gardens, Christmas trees, people on horses, the aftermath of big snowstorms, sunbathers on the beach, vacation photos, people eating dinner, weddings, school photos, class photos, and parades.

Then things really got confusing. There was a lot of overlap and I spent entirely too much time stressing about where to place the photo of the car stuck in the snow on the country road or the wedding reception dinner on the beach or the girl holding a cat in front of a Christmas tree.
When I began to seriously consider another pile called 'trifecta' I decided I better chill out and just do the best I could.

The thing is though, it helps me to have them in categories. I like to work in series and am looking at several series within a series here. And even though I am pretty sure that I won't be painting images of little babies or even children in general, they are too cute and I don't do cute even thought this baby is SERIOUSLY cute: I have also learned that I should never say never; I will be keeping every photo no matter how improbable it seems to me now that it will ever be a useful reference to me. Like this one for example: I can't see using it as reference but omg, what a great bad photo! I always laugh when I see that couple dancing and can totally imagine how they must have been moving around the dance floor at this rockin' party. This photo stays and I might even frame it......

Once I get all the photos categorized I will go through each group and pick out a few for the 'yes, I must paint this right now' pile. Foursome is definitely one of those: Foursome

And while sorting them, I have also been obsessing about how to store them. I am good at multi-tasking! The super organized part of me that has been able to fit ten tons of junk into one room wants to go out and buy about 25 nice perfect stackable plastic bins, one for each category. However, the more practical solution is to put them into large ziploc bags and keep them in a file cabinet drawer. Easier to look through them that way, I think, and less expensive even though I do love those bins. heh.

Planning for 2011

2011-01-06T16:27:00.002-05:00

Landscape Study #304, 6"x6", Oil on Cradled Panel, 2010

For some reason I have been assuming that I don't have much going on in the coming year, but after sitting down and looking at the events that I have lined up thus far, I actually think I will be fairly busy. Not as busy as I was a few years ago but I have decided to view this as a more streamlined schedule. hah.

Generally when I plan my studio schedule, I allow about 2 months of pretty solid painting time for a solo show, so I block in those times first. Then I look at any group shows that only need a few pieces and if I don't already have work on hand for those events, I set aside about 2-4 weeks to do that work. That is more than enough time to do two or three paintings, but in those situations I often do several extra paintings so that I have some choices for the show (I have learned not to put all my eggs in one basket) and also I prefer working on at least five paintings at once, I do much better that way rather than getting all obsessed with one painting which usually leads to overworking it. Then with the months where I don't have to be preparing for anything, I try to work on other things such as the People You Know portraits, or experimenting with other subject matter. I always hope to do more charcoal and/or pencil drawing during those times, but I haven't exactly met that particular goal, oops. Also in early fall I usually need to do a few new landscapes just to have on hand to trade out with the galleries' inventories before the holidays if necessary.

I used to write all this stuff down on a large calender on the wall, along with due dates, reception dates, etc. But either I have a better memory now or I have much less going on (ok, it's the latter) and I mostly just keep it all in my head and on the sidebar of my blog. Plus referring to my emails and/or gallery websites for specific dates works too. Super high tech, I am.

So anyway. Here is my plan for 2011:

January and part of February: People You Know portraits, and begin a new series involving vegetables (stay tuned for more info on THAT one).

Mid February through March: begin working on the paintings for my solo show at The Harrison Gallery in April, which will feature landscapes.

April: take off a week or so to have some sort of emotional breakdown after all the previous month's intense painting, start some new work to send to Chrysalis Gallery in Southampton, NY for their summer season.

May and June: back to the portraits and probably the vegetable series too. I also usually participate in a local group show around that time too so I will fit that in here too.

July: I have to paint six (or maybe eight) 36"x48" Black Paintings for a 3 person exhibit show in Texas. Also those paintings will have to be shipped there in a crate so I have to research and plan all that out by then too. Blech. I hate shipping, can someone invent teleporting already????.

July and August: I plan to participate in The Harvest Festival in Sharon Springs again in September, because it was great fun last year. So I will start doing many small format paintings for that (more is more, right?), plus even more of them for my sales blog for the holidays.

September, October, November: I MAY have a show in the fall and it MAY include the People You Know series although nothing has been officially confirmed yet. However, I am choosing to be optimistic that it will happen so am setting aside some time just in case. I already have plenty of portraits on hand for it, but just in case I need a few more paintings, I will have some of August and the rest of the fall to do a few things if I need to. I will also use this time to continue with the small format paintings for the sales blog.

December: Three options here kinda depending on what is going on in January. Sometimes I have a solo show in January at The Harrison Gallery, if that is the case I will need November and December to prepare for that. If I decide to go to the Vermont Studio Center in January (instead of February which I am leaning towards), I will need some time to prepare for that, and if neither of those happen in January I will take it easy in December and just enjoy the holidays. If I do one or both, I will just be squeezing the holidays in, heh.

Thankfully, I am not married to this plan, it is totally fluid; I can always add things in, and in fact I sure hope a few more exhibition type things will come up. In addition, there is a ton of other stuff to fit in, including things like planting the veggie garden in the spring, raising more meat chickens this summer, house stuff like repainting the cabinets in the laundry room, and a zillion kid things that mostly include me driving and watching their sporting events.

Oh, and yay, now I can refer to this blog post too when I need a reminder of what I should be working on, right????

Catch Up, or is it Ketchup?

2011-01-03T13:13:00.002-05:00

Landscape Study, #305, 6"x4", Oil on Panel, 2010

I ignored almost all things art in the last few weeks and it was lovely. It's not like I have been terribly busy in the studio this last year or anything, but the shifts in my business in the last few years have made me think (and stress) much more about where I am going with it all, which has really affected my mindset in the studio. Sometimes I find myself longing for the first few years when I started painting again after taking a decade off to raise babies; I just painted and painted trying desperately to catch up and while there was some thinking and plotting about the future, mostly I was just immersed in the process of painting again.

Things are different now, however. I have a teeny tiny toehold in the art world, including gallery representation, collectors and some very minimal attention, but now I want more and I have been feeling overwhelmed about how to advance. Especially since none of the things I did at first (like cold calling galleries) are working. Having different bodies of work now seems to confuse the matter, for me and for those who I contact.

So.

I came to no profound conclusions during the last few weeks while I was super busy cooking meals, baking cookies, cleaning the house, playing scrabble with the kids, reading, and obsessing about getting a complex jigsaw put together. Well, except that I realized that I really need to get back to immersion in the making art part, which is something that I had already suspected. I HAVE decided though, that I must have faith that if I do that again, the other parts will move forward and more exhibition opportunities will come my way. All along I have been sending out my info and applying for things, etc. and will continue to keep that up, but holy cow, I really gotta paint! It keeps me from getting overly crazy, heh.

This break has helped though, as did viewing a group of portraits by John Singer Sargent at The Fenimore Art Museum. A new art book of drawings by Willem deKooning (thanks Doug!) also inspires and so does laying out my studio schedule for the coming year. I am finally yearning to paint again.

Anyway, more about my schedule later, and all this immersion stuff will have to start tomorrow; my studio is a wreck and today is a 'ketchup' day........

And the Winner is........

2010-12-07T19:15:00.007-05:00

My son wrote down all 62 names (ten more than last year's giveaway!!) on a piece of paper, I cut them all out and here they are waiting for princess to sweep into the room and choose one;)

Ginger knows after a few years of all this contest stuff to look away while choosing the name. However she is looking FAR less perky than she dids last year. Maybe it was the 87 miles that she did at swim practice after school today.

But she gets to gets to read it first anyway.

Denise R.!! Yayy!!!!

Denise has been reading my inconsistent blog posts for about a year and a half and is a regular commenter. I see this is her second try for my birthday gift giveaway. So keep trying, folks!!!!!

Email me Denise, so that we can make arrangements and also I would love to post a link here if you have one.

And again, wow! Thanks so much for all the birthday wishes and incredibly kind comments. I admit to tearing up when I read through all of them and that usually only happens when the cute little Amish boy rings the bell near the end of Witness and all the neighbors come to help without fear for themselves. That gets me every time.......

Slight Delay

2010-12-07T13:03:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone! Just wanted to let all you lovely happy birthday wishers know that I will have to announce the winner of the drawing later on tonight. I forgot that my assistant/daughter has swim practice tonight and won't be home until 6pm at least and then she MUST have her dinner.....

We will do the drawing later and I will try to post the winner's name right away, although it might have to be tomorrow if there is too much teen and tween drama this evening. heh.

Pack Rats and My 3rd Annual Birthday Gift Giveaway

2010-12-06T09:44:00.005-05:00

My 2nd birthday, 1966.

Several years ago when my mom was moving she gave me some boxes of things she had saved from my childhood. This was the first hint to me that she was such a pack rat, which was confirmed after she died a few years ago; the crazy stuff she still had? Yikes! For some reason I had never noticed that she saved EVERY.SINGLE.THING.EVER. Maybe because we moved nearly every year while I was a child and somehow it didn't seem like we had very much. Anyway, in one of the boxes she gave me, I found the entire outfit (including the birthday cards that are on the table, but NOT the cake, thankfully!) that I am wearing in the above photographs. And by entire, I mean ENTIRE; the shirt, the jacket/sweater thingy, the skirt, a slip, underwear (I was potty trained already? wow!), those same socks, shoes and even the blue hair ribbon which was attached to the bobby pin which still held a few strands of my hair. Possibly slightly creepy, but mostly very sweet. My mom was an unwed mother in a time when society was very different and even though things changed and became more difficult as I got older, she was at her best as a mother while I was very young. She made most of my clothes (including the whole outfit I am wearing in these photos), she was very creative and despite having little to no money, few friends and family, she always managed to put together a good day for me. Although I think this was probably the birthday that was the most fully documented, heh.

So.

Time for my 3rd annual birthday gift giveaway. I am not as crabby as I have been in the past (and if you read that post, check out the link for the previous birthday post, still my fave) so this time I am including those of you who live in Canada. I am continuing to draw the line at shipping overseas (sorry) but if you have an address in North America that I can ship to, please wish me a happy birthday here in the comment section of the blog which will make me feel terribly popular and like I haven't lost most of my readers due to spotty postings. My super enthusiastic daughter, Ginger, has agreed to draw the name again and I'll announce the name tomorrow. My birthday gift is the choice of a painting from my sales blog and if there is not currently a painting that speaks to the winner, the choice can be made at a later date. I want the winner to get a painting that they reallyreallyreally want.

Y'all have until midnight tonight. GO!

Visit US on Black Friday

2010-11-24T17:31:00.003-05:00

Landscape Study #300, 5"x7", Oil on Cradled Panel, 2010

I am an equal opportunity shopper so I am not going to tell anyone here not to spend your money during this shopping season at a mall or at a big box store because sometimes ya just need a big bag of socks and there is nowhere else to find one, even though I am currently boycotting Target, hate Walmart and only go there if I am ABSOLUTELY desperate and there is not even a Kmart within an hour of here either.

Oops, I digress.

But I do hope that you will at least spread your money around and help support artists and craftspeople who pour their hearts into making things while often barely making a living wage at it. Electronics are nice, and I like a good new gizmo almost as much as the next person, but ultimately my most cherished gifts have been the crazy little ceramic pots/sculptures/collages/picture frames/other not quite identifiable objects that my kids have made for me, the earrings that a friend made for me, a necklace made by another friend. My husband has given me wonderful gifts over the years such as a beautiful woodcut by an artist friend of ours from Utah, a painting by an illustrator that I idolized when I was in college. Even though the computer Doug gave me one year was awesome! amazing! useful! and crashed within 2 years! I would ultimately prefer my art collection if I had to choose between the two.

So please visit my little gathering of artist friends at The Fine Art Department and also at the Small Art Showcase; between the two collections you are bound to find something beautiful and creative to give your loved ones, your friends, coworkers, and/or yourself!

I would also like to pass along more links to some other sites:

My old friend (and I mean that literally, we were co-barflies back in Philly in the late 80's, which now makes us old friends) Charlie has gained quite a following on Facebook and Twitter with his unique observations on life and has now put them on shirts, bags, etc at Shot of Wry.

I have never met Sarah in person, but she is a very good friend of Charlie and his wife Cecily who was also my co-barfly and best friend back in the 80's. One of Sarah's photographs hangs in my living room and I often spend some time with it, soaking in the sadness and beauty.

Lately I have been wearing more wood shavings from the hen house than jewelry and in fact I went so long without even putting on a pair of earrings that I had to recently "re pierce" the holes in my ears that I have had since I was thirteen, but that hasn't stopped me from drooling over quite a few items on this Etsy page. I may just have to forward this page to my husband so that he will be able to more easily do HIS holiday shopping this year, heh.

Two of my very good friends in real life make wonderful one of kind, "upcycled" jewelry and clothing, although lately I am seeing way more jewelry at Quirky Works than clothing. If you come to visit our town, you will see that EVERYONE is wearing their creations! Oh and you can like them on Facebook to receive updates.

Julie worked at the gallery in NYC that represented me for about a year and a half before they closed (STILL devastated about that, btw) however I was lucky enough to have made two lasting friendships (the other being the gallery owner) during that time and Julie might currently be my leading collector of small format paintings. Anyway, she has an Etsy page and makes the most wonderful cross stitched ornaments. Go see.....

And the other day I asked for links on my public facebook page and believe you me, there is a TON of shopping to do in the comments section of that post!

Ok, that should be enough to get you started. And please, PLEASE, if you make handmade arts/crafts and have a sales site or know someone who does, post the link in the comment section here. Now don't be shy about it, I WANT you to be able to show your work and now's the time to be ~~flaunting it~~ posting it......

So have a good turkey day in between all this shopping! I will be taking a vacation form my blog, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

I'll Miss You, Tom Butter;)

2010-11-16T10:39:00.003-05:00

Magenta Pool, 18"x18" Oil on Wood Panel, 2010

Sadly, I have finally decided that I just really can't go to the Vermont Studio Center this January. It truly pains me because one of the visiting artists that month is Tom Butter, who was also one of my teachers about 25 years ago at the Philadelphia College of Art. I was thrilled when I noticed that he was scheduled to be at VSC during January which is about the only month out of the whole year that I can actually get away from here to go there and was SO looking forward to seeing him and also getting his feedback on my work these days. He was one of my favorite teachers mostly because even though I was an interloper in the painting department (an illustrator crossing over) he took me seriously unlike some of the other painting instructors who shall remain nameless. Well, mostly because I can't recall their names anymore, but whatever. However, at least Tom and I can be Facebook friends, there is always Facebook, I guess.......

Anyway, besides Tom being there, I also wanted to go because I have some plans for some new work in mind and being at a residency is such a good place to focus on new ideas. Or get really confused about what to do. Either is fine; as both are valuable processes. I will just have to settle for trying to get started on those new things here at home and hopefully will have made some progress before January 2012 which is when I have rescheduled my residency.

So I will stay home and paint. I will also prove how grown up I have become by using my residency funds for upcoming expenses, including two crowns I need and that our dental insurance probably won't pay for, and also by staying home with the kids while Doug does some traveling for his business. Evidently. we aren't supposed to leave kids home alone even if two of them would really enjoy that, heh.

And the sliver of the bright side here (besides new crowns) is that it may be better for me to skip a year anyway. As much as I enjoy those residencies, they are also kind of intense, and so I think I should take a bit more time in between.

But still, bleh. I am kinda bummed out about this today......

Golden Oldies

2010-11-08T08:59:00.004-05:00

Pink Tree Up Front, 2007, Oil on Wood Panel, 16"x20"

I have spent the last few days sorting through my inventory and my studio is still a mess with bubble wrap strewn around and piles of oddball paintings everywhere. But it is a huge relief to have reorganized my inventory cabinet even if I did miss out on a beautiful weekend outside and all the raking and gardening too. Heh.

It took me several hours to go through all the paintings, recording them, rewrapping and reorganizing them so they would be all neat and orderly in the cabinet and I was heading towards a funk when I started to see just how much unsold work I have on hand. Yikes! It was only a few years ago almost everything I painted was selling and even though I have been painting far fewer landscapes in the last 2+ years, evidently I am still too prolific for the current economy.

But as each group of paintings were spread out on the table, I realized that I was looking at work that was so colorful and expressive and well, accomplished. So my potential funk turned into pride that I could have created such things and now I am now feeling even more determined to find their people.

I ended up adding almost 40 pieces to my 'Available Work' page on my website and alas, that does not include everything that I have on hand. It also does not include any of the 'People You Know' paintings, none of which have sold, but I have some different ideas in mind for that series. Anyway, I am not planning to sell this available work directly (the prices listed are gallery prices), mostly I think this page will be a good resource for the galleries that represent me.

However, this does bring me to a question for those of you who have gallery representation. What do YOU do with older work that hasn't sold? I am firm in not selling around my galleries (particularly at lower prices, which is a real no-no) but then I end up with so much work on hand. It would be very helpful for all of us, I think, to hear how others have handled this situation.

Tracyland is Back

2010-11-04T10:30:00.004-04:00

Landscape Study #281, 5"x3" Oil on Cradled Panel, 2010

And so all of a sudden I am feeling a renewed energy and enthusiasm about everything; painting, marketing my work, reading, knitting, cleaning the house and even weeding and clearing out the dumb stupid messy gardens for the winter (which I have been very UNinterested in, lately). This enthusiasm is also extending to wanting to be a better blogger. Still not sure that I have as much to say as I used to, but I am going to keep trying. Just don't expect too much depth here for awhile, k??

It's no secret here that I have been struggling a bit with various things in the last year or two; a normal part of growing up, I think. Heh. Some of that has had to do with the crappy economy and the closing of several galleries that had been representing my work. However, I am not entirely blaming the economy for the slow down in sales, which has been even worse for me during this last year, because I have also neglected opportunities to be getting my work out there too. And part of THAT has been due to my being somewhat burned out on painting landscapes (which is what sells) and pursuing other subject matter such as the 'People You Know' series (which DON'T sell) and well, just being in flux as far as which directions to take, in life as well as in painting.

However, reality has helped to shake me out of this flux. We need more income what with looming college tuition (x3), various camps and programs that Doug and I really feel that our kids need right now in order to balance out living in this very small and sheltered environment, not to mention just keeping up with the money pit (our house and the barn is becoming very needy too). Doug's company is doing ok, but since they sell stuff, it is also vulnerable to the whims of the economy. Mostly though, I seem to be the weak link around here lately. With some additional effort I can earn more as an artist than I can in either of the two available jobs that I am not even qualified for in our little town, so more painting and much more marketing it is!

I am currently in the process of sorting through all my available inventory and have begun posting those works on my website. I have made a proposal to a local company (which I will not talk about again in order to NOT jinx it). I have been compiling a list of galleries and museums to ~~stalk~~ pursue and am in the midst of putting together my info to send out to them. I have also made a rather reluctant decision to publicize my sales blog, just a little bit. In normal times I probably wouldn't do that because I have preferred keeping that low key so as not to interfere with my gallery work. However, the sales of the small format paintings have been paying the bills lately so for the time being, I am going to be a painting pusher. heh.

I am starting to feel the same excitement that I did seven years ago when I began painting again and was trying to get something going. I am thankful that have so much more experience (and collectors!) this time though and I hope that will help balance out the whole crappy economy thing, just a little bit at least. However, even though I have pursued some things recently that I have declined to do before, such as selling my work myself and having a booth at a local Harvest Festival, I am still being very careful about my decisions and am continuing to stay firm on my long range goals.

So that means no Tracyland reality art show, folks. Although, now that I think about it, that would be a good name for one. hmmmm........

Seeing Wolf Kahn

2010-10-12T16:27:00.002-04:00

Barn Study #246, 6"x6" Oil on Panel, 2010

Last Friday I was cruising around on the internet looking for galleries and museums that really need to be learning all about moi and my fab work soon. Heh. I was checking out The Brattleboro Museum's website and noticed that they were hosting a lecture by Wolf Kahn. Now, I have a long and checkered past with Mr. Kahn (I wrote about that here and here) and have always been interested in meeting him, even if I am not always very happy about my work being compared to his so often. Anyway, since the lecture was the next day and my schedule was relatively clear, I took that as a sign that I should go. No babysitters available so I decided to take my son, Julien, who is probably headed towards art school in a few years. An added plus about that was that he actually knows who Wolf Kahn is and what kind of work he does, so he was excited about going as well.

After deciding in advance about the VERY IMPORTANT issues (we settled on playing my iPod on the way there, and his on the way back) we had a nice drive to Vermont on a beautiful day. I had kind of hoped we could stay overnight cause Tracy's night vision isn't exactly stellar these days, but I had been unable to find anything before we left. Found out why when we got to Brattleboro; turns out that nearly everybody in New England was actually in Vermont for the weekend, looking at leaves and clogging the roads for me. So I mentally prepared myself for another three and a half hour drive back, bleh.

Despite being crowded, Brattleboro was great. We had a few hours to pass until the lecture, so we walked around and went into a few stores. There was an excellent record store where we bought a few gifts for Doug's birthday, including two Bob Dylan albums that we had never heard of and a Grateful Dead album where all the band members are dressed suspiciously like the Bee Gees on the cover.

We had an excellent dinner here and got to the lecture early enough to get front row seats. The lecture was held in a packed, small and dark theater but after an introduction by the Museum's director, Mr. Kahn got up and stood at the podium under a spotlight. The topic of the lecture was "Can Art be Taught" and right away he joked about how he had written a rather formal presentation and would now rather just tell a bunch of stories, which is exactly what he did starting with two of his teachers: Stuart Davis and Hans Hoffman, who had very different styles in the classroom. Stuart Davis talked mostly about jazz music and baseball, he had very little passion for teaching. Hans Hoffman spoke of a lot of things that no one understood and in fact he told his students that they wouldn't understand what he was even talking about for at least 5 years. He also had a tendency to draw into his student's drawings if he felt it needed correction and was even known to cut up the drawing if he felt it should have a different angle to it. He did ask before he went into a student's painting however, so that was good;)

Other highlights from the talk:

-He greatly dislikes the work of Jeff Koons and Gerhard Richter (I am repeating this only because this the talk was being videotaped and well, he did say this out loud in front of many people, so hardly a secret).

-This led to a discussion of the differences between artists and art students, that most are amateurs and others have a calling to make art, and how teachers are doing a disservice to them if they don't understand the differences in their students. He also thought though, that art is worth doing if it is something one enjoys and if one gets a little bit better each time, even if one is probably not going to a be really successful and famous artist. (phew!super glad to hear that!)

-He discussed his experiences as a teacher in the 60's and 70's and the various politics involved with that, then he went on to describe how in every class there were maybe 4 hotshots, 15 mediocrities and 10 who shouldn't be there at all. This didn't sound so harsh when he said it and anyway, based on my years in art college, I don't think it is entirely inaccurate. Guess which category that I think I belonged to?????

-He described the exercises that he had his workshop students do. I thought they all sounded interesting even though I would probably be a pretty crabby student and complain about starting off with making a gray scale. ha. However, he was redeemed in my opinion by using the term "shot their wad" while describing the next exercise. It was the perfect term. Really, it was.

And I was able to decipher a few more more advice related tidbits from my mostly illegibly scribbled notes:

-Don't let ideas enter your mind.

-He talked about how his macular degeneration has led him to be less fussy about the details and that he has to now pay more attention to the big picture.

-He joked that as his worked has changed due to his eyesight he has been getting much better reviews and wondered if he would have to be blind in order to be considered a genius!

-He said he knows his work is too nice and maybe even sweet, but that you have to work with the emotion that you have. He said his friend Joan Mitchell had a lot of anger and it really showed in her art and worked well for her.

Mr. Kahn was VERY funny, a very appealing mix of self-deprecating humor and self confidence too. While some of the things I have written here might sound a bit harsh in print, hearing him say them was quite different. His discussion of his teachers, of the art he dislikes, how crazy teens are; it was all delivered in a very endearing manner.

Anyway, he answered a few questions after the talk, then sat down at a table in the lobby and signed books etc, while I kicked myself for not bringing my own book of his to have him sign. I bought two show catalogs and he signed one for me and one for Julien. I was able to chat with him for a few minutes and naturally I made a few dumb jokes and only babbled a little, so that was good. Relatively speaking anyway. Heh. My son really enjoyed the lecture and I think he still planning to apply to Cooper Union after all that.

And except for the idiot who insisted on tailgating me while I was driving in the pitch dark, on a winding road with little to no shoulder, at 6o mph (slightly OVER the speed limit, I would like to point out) with his brights on, the drive home was rather uneventful, even if I do not understand what the heck so many drivers were doing driving around on the highways near Albany at midnight, but whatever. Leaning towards country bumpkin here, I guess.

Well, a country bumpkin who got to meet Wolf Kahn, ha!

PS. No image of Wolf Kahn's work because I don't know how to do a screen grab and no pictures of the event because neither one of us remembered to take any photographs. You'll just have to settle for one of MY barns, hehe.

Free Bird

2010-10-05T12:57:00.003-04:00

Black Underneath, 10"x8" Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

So I have done little to nothing in the last few weeks while "recovering" from preparing for two almost back to back events. I haven't really caught up on house and yard stuff, although I have done the basics. Mostly I have been working on my taxes, cleaning up my studio and packing and shipping out small paintings. Have had quite a good run on sales lately!

But I am trying reallyreally hard to NOT waste all this time, this time. I was incredibly unproductive during my last slow period between shows and I don't particularly like how I feel about myself when I allow that to happen. I just get so overwhelmed by how much I WANT to do, that I can't do anything. Dislike!

I literally do not have anything on my schedule until next April. As much as I think I would like to keep all this free time to do whatever I want, the reality is that I really need structure and deadlines in order to stay productive. Things do often just come up at the last minute, but it's crazy to be depending on that happening so what I need to do first is to send out my info, applying for competitions, etc.

And as far as actual painting goes, um cause that is what I do, right now I am leaning towards focusing on the 'People You Know' series again and trying to get them to work better in a smaller format, like 8"x10". But first I must actually get some more 8x10 panels....

Until I get those (must order them today), I think I will work on the squares that I have left over from this project that I began at the Vermont Studio Center last winter.

Starting on those tomorrow. Heh.

Taxes and Twittering, Twittering and Taxes

2010-10-04T09:39:00.003-04:00

Barn Study #244, 4"x6" Oil on Panel, 2010

So today I am (supposedly) going to finish up putting together all my deductions for 2009 so that I can send it all off to the accountant. Yes, Doug and I are somewhat lame in that we never get our taxes done in April, October is our April. In Doug's defense, his side of things is somewhat complicated and it is a real challenge to get it all together by April. I don't really have a defense for myself; there about 10 ways that I could do a better job of compiling my info throughout the year so that on January one, viola! It is all ready to go! However, I admit to being a complete and total procrastinator in general and particularly when it comes to anything tax related. We are doing pretty good this year however, our accountant will have 9 whole business days to put together our return which is about 6 more than we usually give him. heh.

And since taxes and all tax related talk is right up there with fingernails scratching a blackboard, I will end this very brief post with something silly and happy. Like twitter, what could be happier than twitter???? ha. Last night during some crazy tax induced haze, I opened a twitter account, which is pretty much how I ended up on Facebook too. I do not need any more reasons WHATSOEVER to be sitting on my behind in front of the computer but well, now I have one another one anyway. Still not entirely sure what I am doing there nor do I understand the etiquette yet (am I supposed to follow everyone who follows me? is it rude to block people/organizations who follow me and are clearly trying to get me to open bad bad links? and how the heck does this work with my blog and facebook pages? isn't everyone going to be super sick of me between all these things? I don't think I have enough interesting things to talk about!) but since I might possibly qualify as an attention ho, I may as well go with the flow so if you are also a twitterer maybe you'll see fit to follow me.

How is THAT for an invite????? hehe.

PS. The above painting is available, along with a bunch of other new ones, at my sales blog.

Stella!

2010-09-30T10:32:00.005-04:00

Usually when I get a batch of chicks from McMurray's they include a few extras (to cover for the possible deaths in transit I think) PLUS an exotic chick or two sometimes. When the box of zombie chicks arrived there was one that was not like the others in the box. It was a darker chick with stripes and I just assumed she was a layer or maybe a different meat breed. After a few weeks, she was still looking really small, however she looked healthy and she sure was active; she ran circles around those fat zombies. But they all got along so I kept the flock together and chose not to think about what I would do with the little one when the zombies went to ~~the slaughterhouse~~ heaven....

Some folks down the road have a bunch of chickens, including bantam chickens that skitter all over the place and after about 6 weeks I realized that she looked just like one of them. McMurray's added a bantam chicken to a flock of meaties!

And by the time I had to take the zombies in, I was more than a little ticked of about getting a bantam chick. Why couldn't they have just given me another meat chicken? What was I going to do with her???? I thought about taking her over to the neighbors to let her blend in with their flock of bantams but then Ginger named her Stella so that was it. We don't normally name our chickens as I have a hard enough time remembering HUMAN'S names, let alone 55 chicken names as well!

So once she got a name the other option was to put her in with one of the two flocks I have. Finally, I very reluctantly decided to put her in with the new layer flock. I put her in their coop one night and supposedly she was going to just mix right into the flock the next day. Um, but maybe not so well when one doesn't look like the others. I went out to the hen house the next morning and poor Stella was being chased constantly by at least twenty salivating hens and two roosters with a bad evil look in their eyes. I took her out right away and decided to try the much smaller flock of old hens and put her in with them that night. She immediately snuggled right in and then climbed onto the back of one of the hens, who looked a bit nervous but did not actually complain. Things were ok the next morning although she mostly stayed inside for the next week or so and the old ladies were not very generous with their scratch. She did go outside when it was time to free range though and came back in at night too. One night when she didn't go back in at dusk, we looked around for her and found her in the dog kennel where we had kept the zombie chickens. I felt a bit teary about that, she missed her zombies!

So it turns out that Stella is wonderful! Bantam chickens are very personable and friendly and she is no exception. She comes right up to me when I say her name, and she lets us hold her and carry her around. She is such a tiny little thing though and I worry about her free ranging but have just decided to let nature takes its course on that one. She was out of the hen house one morning when I went out there (we close the coop up at night and I guess she hadn't gone back in) and Doug and I joked about her being a tramp, but she survived a night out in the jungle that is upstate NY so she has our full admiration!

PS. And now Doug and I always imitate Marlon Brando when we say her name, just so the kids will look at us as if we are deranged. Good times!

My Zombie Chicken Summer

2010-09-24T09:34:00.001-04:00

Note: If you are a vegetarian please be aware that I am going to talk about raising MEAT chickens here, so if that will bother you please skip reading this post. And if you feel the need to suggest a vegetarian diet to me, save your energy. I was a vegetarian for 7 years at one point and I am well aware of the environmental, health and humane issues concerning raising meat for human consumption. However our family has now settled on eating minimal amounts of animal protein, raised in a natural and humane manner as much as possible; this whole project is about having more control over that.

Almost five years ago I very impulsively decided that we should get layer chickens. Friends of ours had them, they seemed rather easy to raise, not too time consuming and the idea of having our own supply of fresh eggs was VERY appealing.

Within weeks of getting those first little chicks I was hooked and was plotting to get more; more chickens, more livestock for our empty farm, more everything. I got bit by the self-sustaining-and-cute-little-farm-animals bug. Pigs, sheep, goats, turkeys, ducks; almost every farm animal has been on my list at one time or another in the last several years.

Unfortunately I have been foiled at nearly every turn. Proper fencing and shelter is not in our budget, neither is fixing up our barn which needs a lot of work for it to be safe for animals (the lower level where the cows used to be is filled with falling down ceiling tiles, which are surely made of asbestos). We COULD possibly build some things ourselves, but both of us are already overbooked between work, Doug's business traveling schedule, the kid's activities and just regular stuff like cleaning the house. We (well Doug, mostly) have managed to put together a few things for the chickens but it always takes FOREVER to finish the project.

However, one thing that seemed remotely possible was raising meat chickens. Again, I have several friends who have raised some for their own families and I was encouraged by that. And even though I am not a vegetarian any longer, I have continued to be concerned about the quality of meat that comes from factory farm, not to mention all the genetically modified ingredients that seem to be in every.single.thing we eat now. We are certainly not perfect in avoiding all that 'cause it is damn hard, but I do what I can to buy most of our food from the local farmer's market and it feels good to support farmers who DO have good fencing and barns. However, I still have this self sufficient urge so I decided on raising meat chickens this summer.

So Doug became my reluctant builder again. He built a large wooden box with a screen on the bottom to house the chicks while they were small. He altered the outdoor dog kennel so that the chickens could outside as they got larger. All this while he had been plugging away at building a new coop and run for the 40 additional layers I also got earlier last summer.

But that is a story for another post.

After reading up on meat breeds I decided on Cornish Cross chickens. They are bred specifically to grow reallyreally fast, hatchery to table in 8 weeks; this is the breed most commonly raised in the chicken 'factories' and are pumped up with steroids, antibiotics and who knows what else. I decided mine would be all natural, no medications, and fed only organic feed. Even with a different diet, I knew their meat would be the most similar to the kind of chickens we are used to eating. Other meat breeds have a different flavor and chewier texture, especially if they free range and I didn't want to totally freak out the kids right away. Baby steps here.

43 chicks arrived in a box via the USPS at the end of June. Actually a mail carrier came to our house with them on a Sunday morning, gotta love small town post offices. They were cute chicks, everyone (well just my 11 year old daughter actually) squealed over them and she helped me settle them in.

In about a week they were quite a bit larger and nearly all of them had runny, disgusting smelly poop stuck all over their butts. Since a plugged up butt can kill a chick fast, I cleaned off ALL of their butts with a washcloth and warm water several times a day for almost 2 weeks. Finally that lovely condition passed just in time for me to see that they had outgrown the box already and needed to go outside into the dog kennel. They were about 3 weeks old here:
We had kind of a crazy set up outside for them, a HUGE tarp to cover the roof and to also pull down over the sides in case it was windy or chilly at night. We also partitioned off a section of the kennel each night so that they wouldn't be quite so vulnerable to critters. Each night I would go out, shoo them all in, pull down the tarp and weight it down with large stones. No light back there either and I got stuck having to do this more than a few times in the pitch black night. (NEVER a working flashlight around when ya need one) Then I had to put the tarp up each morning so they could go out into the sun and move around a bit.

Not that they really wanted to move; most of the chickens parked near or IN the food bins and just ate all the time. When they were around 2 weeks old I started taking their food away at night to slow down their growth (that is recommended). They were still under the lights at that point and would just eat all night if the food was there. Later on when they were in the kennel, I just covered the bins at night, they would not eat in the dark, unless of course they were still actually sitting in the bin: The amount of food they ate was stunning. When they were around 4 weeks they really ramped up and were eating a 50lb bag of grains every 3 days or so. All together they ate seven 50lb bags, plus two 50lb bags of crushed corn in 8 weeks. I had to go out 3x per day to refill all the bins and oy, the water! I carried so many buckets of water out there every day that I thought my arms were going to fall off! They probably drank 10 gallons of water each day.

As they approached 8 weeks, their feed consumption slowed down a bit. Between about 6 and 8 weeks I gave them mostly crushed corn to "finish" them, meaning they would gain some fat and add more flavor to their meat. By the last week or so, they were huge, they had big thick legs, and could only walk a few steps before sitting down. Some of the smaller ones ran around flapping their wings but then they would have to sit down to rest too. Their rapid growth is very stressful on their bodies and I had heard they might just drop dead, especially in the last week or so. I only had two deaths; one died within a few days of moving out in the kennel and one died at about 7 weeks. I just came in one morning and found her on the ground. naturally Doug was out of town that morning and I had to pick up the dead body, ewww.

The other very notable thing about these chickens was that they smelled worse than I ever thought possible. Their poop was all soft and mushy and everywhere! I tried to keep the bottom of their box clean and had to change the bedding almost every day. Still though, the chickens spent so much time sitting in their muck that they had bare spots on their bellies where they had contact. Yuck. When they were out in the kennel it was impossible to keep that cleaned up and the area area the water container was so disgusting and did I mention the smell?????

And after a month or so we began to call them Zombie Chickens. They had little to no distinctive personalities especially in comparison to my very personable layer hens. A few of the Zombie Chickens would sort of jump up at me when I fed them but otherwise they all seemed pretty interchangeable. That certainly helped when it came time to get them "processed". I can safely say that I was in no way upset to take them in to get them butchered. In fact I was pretty glad to be finished with the whole thing, as it was so much more work than I had expected. And did I mention how BAD they smelled????? Yikes.

The day we took them in to the local poultry processing plant was interesting. I had bought a bunch of big plastic bins to transport them. Doug and I rounded them up one at a time, real fun (!) and put each bin in the car. There were holes in the lids but it was a hot day, I was worried they would smother (um, on the way to be slaughtered), and they were all panting; I lifted the lids up a little but then they started jumping around and then I was worried about them getting loose in the car. So I just drove super fast, kept the windows open for some airflow and everyone was ok but I will need to get some proper cages for transporting them next time. And when I got to the processor plant they helped me transfer all of one, one at a time, into some poultry cages and most of the chickens flapped their wings when I picked them up, splattering the poo stuck on their feathers ALL over me. That was like the icing on the cake, heh. I was very proud though, when I went back to pick them up and the guys there said they were good looking chickens and a good weight, most of them were about 4-5lbs a few were even larger.

And the ultimate connoisseurs (my kids) gave our first zombie chicken dinner a thumbs up! We have had several discussions about how we were going to be raising chickens for us to eat, and while they don't really want to actually HELP much with the chickens and gardens, they do appreciate the importance of knowing where our food comes from.
So, I accomplished my goal. I raised enough chickens for our family to eat for the coming year. They were fed high quality local organic feed (they were offered greens, garden scraps etc but were NOT interested), plenty of clean water and they were raised in a very humane manner. I might even say they were pampered, I spent a lot of time making sure the temperature in their box was just right when they were chicks and I went out in the middle of the night more than a few times to pull down the tarp if it was rainy or too cold and windy. I also talked and sang to them whenever I went in to care for them although it is entirely possible that my singing could be considered inhumane treatment. Hehe.

Plans are being made to do this again next year, but with a few changes. We are going to make the dog kennel into a more permanent meat chicken raising structure so we can do away with the butt ugly tarps. I will probably raise some more Cornish Cross but will add some other meat breeds that will be free ranging in order to get away from the whole grain fed thing. I am also considering raising a few turkeys but will have to convince my husband to do some more building. Wonder if I can sneak in a few goats without him noticing??????

The One Where I Try To Avoid the TV Cameras

2010-09-20T18:37:00.006-04:00

Well, I had quite a weekend! The Harvest Festival was wonderful and VERY well attended. The Beekman Boys estimated that there were at least 5000 visitors to their little town in the last few days. I don't think they ALL came by my booth but I sure did have a lot of people stopping by.

So last week was totally crazy getting ready for the festival, but I managed to get almost everything finished. Julien (my son and assistant):
and I got up at the ungodly hour of 5am on a Saturday morning to get ready, finish loading up the car and get over to Sharon Springs by 7am. Set up actually went quite smoothly; he carried everything and I told him what to do. It was perfect. Heh.

I went with VERY simple for the booth. I had tried to figure out a way to build some sort of easel on the table so that I could hang all the small paintings on that, but it seemed too complicated and then time was running short so I put that idea aside. Anyway, I kept thinking that they always look so appealing in my flat file drawer:
so I thought that just laying all the paintings down flat on a table would be the best way to display them.
I had also planned to hang a few larger panels on the walls, but after we Julien put up the back wall, the organizers told us that no one was allowed to have walls up on their booths because they wanted the whole area to feel very open, which made perfect sense. So I just settled on putting one large painting on an easel at the front corner of the booth and a medium sized piece on a tabletop easel. I had an area where I put out a sign up sheet for my mailing list, a pile of postcards that I had printed up (image on one side, my contact and gallery representation info on the other) and my book that contains info about me such as my resume, statement, bio and a few articles that have been written about some of my shows.

Things were kind of quiet for the first few hours so we had time to settle in and go over writing up sales receipts and things like that. Soon though, things picked up and by early afternoon it was fairly hectic. It got even busier when The Beekman Boys (Josh and Brent) came through surrounded by cameras and a crowd of people who were watching the taping.

They stopped at several booths and talked to the vendors and while they were doing that I was totally panicking. Even though I certainly wanted my work to (possibly) be seen on their show, ultimately my natural self-conscious-ness won out and although I had spruced up my make up and hair just in case, I started to wish for them to NOT come to my booth. I even had an escape route all planned out! I was both relieved and disappointed (but mostly relieved) when they didn't come by my booth.....

But. At the end of the day, Julien and I had started to pack up the paintings (didn't want to leave them there overnight) and I looked up and there was Rosie O'Donnell standing in front of my table. I squeaked out her name in surprise, even though I had heard rumors that she was up for the event, I was still completely shocked to actually see her. And suddenly there was a camera on my face. Sigh. She and her girlfriend asked me about my process (they both paint and I could tell that based on their questions) and luckily I hadn't had enough time to get nervous so I managed to do ok, no stumbling over my words and I managed to stop myself from babbling. Unfortunately though, the camera eventually got me flustered and they left before I could remember to give them a card (I had given a card to every single other person who stopped by my booth). I had no idea how I did during the exchange, but Julien said I was fine and that as they walked away, Rosie said "they are beautiful". I didn't hear her say that because I was internally flipping out by that time!

Sunday was much quieter, it was overcast, but no rain at least. There were not as many visitors so I had more time to walk around and meet some of the other vendors. The people across from us were selling logs that grow mushrooms and I heard them explaining it so many times that I am now an expert at growing mushrooms too, heh. I learned more about growing garlic from my next door neighbors and I also discussed buying my next batch of meat chicks from them as well, as they have a small chicken hatchery. I met Austin who makes the absolute best chocolate that I have ever had in my entire life and I talked to him for quite awhile. I bought some beautiful yarn from a couple who raise sheep and I made some excellent trades with Suellen a glass artist

and a and Sierra, a fiber artist who makes boiled wool accessories like hats and purses.

And a few of my real life friends came by too so there was much chatting. It was also really nice to spent both days with my son, we had fun playing pool and some strange game involving archery on his iPod. And a big thank you to Karen who loaned me her tent, it was SO nice not to have to buy one.

Oh! I also met Doug and Garth, the owners of The American Hotel who were actually very happy to meet ME! They had 'won' one of my paintings in a fundraiser in Cooperstown about a year ago and someone had stopped by my booth on Saturday and told me that they were that couple, which I had not known. Doug and Garth logged a lot of time in front of the cameras on Saturday as they play a strong supporting role in the Beekman's tv show but I was happy to be able to chat with them while the cameras were NOT around and plus I can still recall our conversations quite clearly. Heh.

I sold eleven paintings in all (certain people bought THREE, thanks Brian!) and I am very pleased with that, it definitely covered my expenses. But more than that, it was a really fun and social weekend and I was able to be involved in an event that supports local farms and craftspeople and that also brought a lot of attention, enthusiasm and revenue to a charming upstate town. Josh and Brent have done a really wonderful thing for the area and I am very happy to have been a small part of it.

PS. I think I may have lost Rosie to the alpacas. It is tough to compete with alpacas who snuggle with each other, heh.

Plus.......

2010-09-13T10:05:00.002-04:00

Earlier this summer, I came across a NY Times article about The Fabulous Beekman Boys. Their story sounded familiar (city folks plunking down on a money pit/farm in upstate NY) and it turned out that they live in a nearby town, which practically makes them our next door neighbors in rural terms.

I checked out their website, bought Josh's books (funny and yet poignant, both of them) and then decided I needed their goat cheese. So one day Ginger and I drove up to their shop in Sharon Springs and Brent was behind the counter. While Ginger played out front with two of the most adorable baby goats ever, I hung around until a few of the customers left (ok, yes, stalker-ish behavior, I know it and I totally admit it!). Eventually, Brent and I started talking, comparing notes on farming, gardens, weeds, their TV show which was in the midst of airing on Planet Green at the time, friends in common; he knew a college friend of mine when he worked with Martha Stewart, and other local silliness.

At one point we were talking about the 2nd Annual Harvest Festival that he and Josh were organizing to bring attention to the food grown by local farmers, and Brent invited me to have a booth; most people sell their farm produce but several booths sell art and crafts sort of items. I told him that I don't do events like that but on the drive home, I started thinking, why not? I could do this event. I could show my small little landscape paintings, and help support something I strongly believe in as well. I have experience doing trade shows and so I am familiar enough with showing and selling my work to the public, even if I usually prefer not to do it. Plus, since I was in the midst of preparing for my solo show I really thought I needed MORE to do!

I worked on some new paintings at some point on July I think (not sure, this last summer is a bit of a blur to me now) and with those in addition to the ones I already had in my painting drawer (see above), I currently have 26 finished paintings. I have about 10 that are half finished and last week I was able to spend a few days to start even more new ones. So altogether I have 43 in progress, and my goal of to finish all those by Saturday, plus maybe a dozen more small Black Paintings. Ahem. Ok......

However, they ARE all very small (5x7 and smaller) so it is possible, I guess. But I will have to be really disciplined in order to finish them up, PLUS photograph and document all of them, PLUS prepare for the rest of the event, not to mention regular real life kid/pets/chicken related stuff that you know is going to interrupt me every other minute. Luckily though, a friend of mine loaned me a tent so I don't have to buy one, the cards are already at the printers, and besides painting, all I have left is to organize all the other stuff; bags, sales books, tools, maybe lighting, etc., so I think I will be able to get that part of it together in an afternoon or so. Heh.

Maybe I will post each day's tally of finished paintings here. Good excuse to be here every day, right????

And PS. The Beekman goat cheese AND the soap too, is AWESOME! I have gone back several times to buy more cheese, can't hardly live without it now!

PPS. The gallery reception on Saturday night was wonderful, more on that in another post, because now I must go paint!

Gallery Reception Tomorrow! Yikes! I Mean Yayy!

2010-09-10T10:55:00.002-04:00

Cotton Candy Updo, 16x12, Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

I am very busy today with work for an event coming up next weekend, more on that in another post, but I am also beginning to simultaneously stress out AND look forward to the opening reception for my show at The Main Street Gallery tomorrow. I like going to the openings, it's always nice to talk to real live people who are not delivering the mail or packages to our house. heh. And while it is always nice to discuss my work with interested folks, I do tend to stress about all that ahead of time: I have a whole slew of notes to self; to not babble on and on, spray spit while talking, wear comfortable and dressy but not TOO dressy shoes and clothes (black is always the best option there), take a few pictures of the exhibit and also keep an eye on Doug. Still not letting him off the hook for the excessive drinking he did at one of my openings about 4 years ago. He has a strict 2 drink limit for these sorts of events now, hehe.

Anyway, at the risk of inundating all of you who visit my Facebook pages and have surely seen ALL these links many times, I am going to put them up again here for those of you who do not do FB.

So the gallery link is above, and this morning I posted all the images that will be in the show on my public Facebook page. You can view them here and if you are on FB, go ahead and 'like' me if don't already; that is the page where all my art talk and exhibition updates are. There have already been a few newspaper mentions, one here and one here. The second one is a longer article written by a nice fellow who called me the other day. As is often the case when I get holed up here on the farm, I worried that I talked the poor guy's ear off, but he did a wonderful job of accurately conveying what I told him about my work, so I guess I wasn't too boring. He asked good questions too which is always nice.

So I am off to make underpaintings today, have a good weekend all, and if you are in the Ithaca/Syracuse area, it's a short drive to Groton which is right off 11. Just so you know......

Crazyville

2010-09-09T09:45:00.002-04:00

Wallet Size#2, 40"x30", Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

Well, it was crazy here last week. I was swamped trying to finish up all the work for my show at The Main Street Gallery. Actually I thought I had it under control; nearly all the work was finished and I just had one large painting to do and a smaller one to finish up and almost two weeks seemed like plenty of time. HA! Shows what I know!

The large painting was the third of a series within a series, and yes, I am beginning to find all these series to be confusing. Not sure how else to categorize them though and since I like to have categories, there will continue to be series until I can figure out something else, hehe.

So. A little background first. The 'People You Know' project is inspired by found family photos; photographs and other memorabilia that I come across on ebay, at yard sales, auctions and that sort of thing. Often in the photo lots, there are bunches of school photos and since I don't do portraits of kids, I have set them all aside. But for the last several months I have found myself looking through the school photo pile, feeling certain that there was a concept there and trying to figure out what it was. Eventually I realized that the appeal to me was the multiple images of the same person I was looking at. Doug and I had several discussions about that and he said he thought the interesting thing about a painting of multiples would be how each painting would be different, yet the same.

Still stressing about the validity and direction of this whole thing, I thought I should try painting a few and eventually picked out some pictures that I liked, kids at an awkward age and details like big collars, dorky glasses and dated hairstyles. I decided to do three panels and thought they might be a good addition to the show at The Main Street Gallery, which was already going to include the portraits that I painted last winter at the Vermont Studio Center.

These paintings required much more planning than I usually do, even for a portrait, which needs WAY more planning than a landscape. I realized that I would have to do the underpaintings in two parts, at least. I sectioned off the grids, taped the edges of the "active" portrait area and started there. At first I thought I would work on the portraits simultaneously; forming all of the images at the same time so that they would be the same. HAHAHA! Doing just two took longer than I expected, the paint began to set up just enough to be irritating and I also learned that I was possibly going to go crazy if I couldn't get each portrait to be EXACTLY THE SAME as the other one.

The first underpainting I did was this one:

And this is the finished painting:
Wallet Size#1, 24"x36", Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

Kinda creepy because it is only two up, it evokes all kinds of weird twin things. However, I do not view that as a negative.

The next one was a four up and this is where I really understood just how difficult it was going to be to paint the same image multiple times. While getting two to look the same was almost possible, more than two was reallyreally hard and also completely not possible. Even though the differences are the key here, every single fiber of my being wants each face to look exactly the same. I also decided to do each portrait one at a time rather than moving back and forth between two. I won't say which face was the first one, but in all the paintings, I thought the first one was the best one and I was so irritated when the others looked so different.

Even though I was mostly pleased with how the 4up underpainting turned out (I thought I could fix all the differences when I got to the color, haha!), it also got me really feeling the fear about the third one, which was going to be a six up. I dawdled and procrastinated about starting that one until the very last minute. Was I sensing that this one could send me over the bend???? I did two of the portraits, and started the third even though doing more than two in one session is very stressful (but I was feeling the looming deadline) which I could NOT do. It looked awful. I was frustrated, it was late at night, bugs were flying around under my easel lights and landing on me and in the paint and finally I did something that I NEVER do; I wiped off the third underpainting entirely and thought I would try again the next day. Then I want downstairs and had a complete breakdown in front of Doug, poor guy. After going through all my problems with this project, waaaaaaa, he finally said maybe I shouldn't pursue this project, that it was making me crazy. I accused him of practicing reverse psychology without a license and then went to sleep.

Sleep makes me feel optimistic and so I got back to it the next day, did two more of the portraits and did two more the next day. This painting holds the record by far for how long it took to do the underpainting-four days! SO unheard of for me.

Unfortunately, using up four days really left me scrambling for time, and after a few days drying time and the first glaze, I had exactly one day to add the color to ALL the portraits. I prepared for that day like I was an athlete; a full night's sleep, a good breakfast, a quick walk in the morning to get my energy up. And then I just did it. ALL those faces in one day, plus the border.
Wallet Size#3, 40"x46", Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

Doug liked Wallet Size #3 the best of all three, the gallery liked the series and included them in the show, so I decided to like them too. I am fickle that way. And now that these are done, all is forgiven and I am thinking about which one to do next. Heh.

Total crazyville here, I tell you.

PS. And sorry, the jpegs suck, these are incredibly difficult to photograph and I just don't have a good set up for such large panels. Also Doug came up with the titles; Wallet Size and in a burst of amazing creativity (NOT) I numbered them, starting with um, #1. So sick of titles, I am.

Solo Show at The Main Street Gallery

2010-08-25T11:16:00.001-04:00

Night Falls, 6"x12", Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

Well, first I'd like to thank everyone for such kind words of encouragement concerning keeping this blog going. I really appreciate it and so yes, I will keep trying to find my way here, though I must warn you in advance, it may involve more chicken/vegetable garden/farm/bee posts. And whoever mentioned chocolate brownies is a genius, maybe I will include a few cooking posts too. Heh.

Which is probably ok, since many of you wanted to hear about this crazy farm life we have AND especially my meat chicken raising experience! I will write about that next time, I would do it today but I think it might be a rather long post with a lot of pictures and I have to start a rather complicated 40"x46" painting today. I really must get to work on that so that I can get to bed at a decent hour tonight. Seriously, it could take all day!

And the reason I must start the painting today is because it's for a solo show at The Main Street Gallery in Groton, NY, and all the work must be delivered by next Saturday. Even though I have two more large and pretty detailed paintings to finish, I feel like I am in pretty good shape here; all the other work is completed, all I have left is documenting it, and also painting the edges of the panels and putting on the hangers etc. A few days work, tops.

I am very excited about this show; The Main Street Gallery has been very kind to me over the years, they gave me my first solo show back in 2005 (which will always remind me of Hurricane Katrina, read about that here) and have also included me in several group shows. So when they invited me back to do another show, I said yes right away. And even better, they agreed to show the 'People You Know' pieces that I did in Vermont last winter, and I am adding four new portraits, PLUS a new series of small landscapes, including the one pictured above. I have taken a long enough break from paintings landscapes so that my return to them has actually been lovely and peaceful and I am quite happy about them.

So the opening reception for the show is on Saturday, September 11, 5-8pm and Doug and I will be there if anyone wants to come by and say hello. I will be posting many of the images here in the coming weeks and as soon as the show opens all the paintings can be viewed on the gallery's website.

Dipping my Toes in the Water

2010-08-23T11:31:00.000-04:00

Line of Trees, 6"x12", Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

So I guess I might be the stubborn sort. I want to keep this blog going even if I have been moving further and further away from it lately. Maybe it's all the fame and fortune it brings me that lures me back???? No, probably not that, hehe.

But there is something here, because every day for the last few months I kept thinking that I should write a new post even though I didn't really feel like it. Maybe I just needed a good long break to reassess. It has also occurred to me that maybe, and it's a real longshot, I have become totally sick of talking about myself all the time. Maybe I am preferring the short sound bite style mentions of myself and my activities that I post on Facebook. The ones that seem to fulfill the same need to express what I am doing, but take much less time and thought and get much more immediate feedback. Or maybe 4+ years for a blog is a really good run and I should close it up. Just a few of the many theories that I have been pondering in the last two months.

Well whatever the reason, here I am again and I will keep trying to find my balance in all this social media stuff until some sort of answer clunks me in the head.

Ok, so here is a brief update on life in Tracyland during the last few months:

-new hen house in the garage
-45 new egg layer chicks
-raised 40 meat chickens
-drove my kids everywhere everyday
-kids at summer camp and at Outward Bound at various times, but never at the same time
-husband out of town on our 17th wedding anniversary
-signed up to participate in a community yard sale day then bailed out because we were overwhelmed by all the sorting that had to be done
-read 'Open' by Andre Aggassi, my love
-mucho gardening but mucho problems with critters and weeds
-The Fabulous Beekman Boys
-me sending paintings to a new gallery for a try out
-me getting the paintings back after they received ZERO interest from customers
-one of my black paintings being accepted into a national juried show
-the start of a new series of portraits that I am SUPER excited about
-spending July and August preparing for a solo show in September
-a few shows added to my schedule for 2011
-and signing up to do several things I have avoided in the past which could be good but I am doing them mostly because the art business has been pretty slow again this year.

The list of things that I have NOT done this summer and should have, is much, MUCH longer.

So who wants to hear more about what? Speak up, otherwise the next post will be all about raising meat chickens. heh.

How I See Lady Agnew

2010-06-25T12:48:00.004-04:00

How I See Lady Agnew, 16x12, Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

Like many artists, I am often asked to donate paintings for various fundraisers. I don't mind doing this, although after the first auction I was in had no minimum bids set and my painting went to someone for ten bucks, I quickly became much more discerning about the events that I participated in. I have also narrowed it down to no more than 4 donations per year and those are mainly for local events at an arts organization and our school's annual fundraiser.

I also usually donate a painting to the annual auction and gala sponsored by NYSHA from which the proceeds benefit educational programs at The Fenimore Art Museum and The Farmer's Museum here in Cooperstown, two organizations that mean a lot to me. This year's big exhibition at the Fenimore is John Singer Sargent; Portraits in Praise of Women and I have always LOVED John Singer Sargent's work. So when I was asked to participate in the auction it occurred to me that maybe I should donate a portrait rather than the usual landscape.

Kinda risky decision though, because, well I want the piece to be sold (hopefully for more than ten bucks!) and I am mostly known for landscapes around here. But the portrait thing just kept nagging at me and finally I decided to do what I really wanted to do; paint my version of one of John Singer Sargent's paintings.

In college I had several assignments that included copying (mostly) old master's paintings, I did a Rembrandt (here is my copy of Rembrandt), a van Gogh, and several illustrators which I can't recall anymore. The goal then was to COPY the paintings, the composition, the brushstrokes, color, everything.

This time I wanted to reference the image but paint it in my style. I settled on Lady Agnew, mostly because I felt it had similarities to some of the portraits I have been doing lately; a seated woman, very straightforward pose, the colors and patterns. However, after I finished the underpainting I noticed that the body structure in mine was more compressed than in the original, which I have decided to attribute to using a different scaled panel (vertical instead of squarish) rather than my iffy observation and drawing skills. heh. And as I got into the painting of the details, I SO wanted to copy everything about the painting and I had to wipe out more than a few areas because they were looking more like a bad version of Sargent than the good version of me.

Anyway, overall I am very pleased with this painting and it was a fun and yet rather challenging diversion. I am also crossing my fingers that someone at the auction will bid on it.........

PS. I would like to add that really, there is no comparison between Sargent's painting and mine. His Lady Agnew totally rules in every single way possible!

Dragonfly and Bees

2010-06-08T12:56:00.001-04:00

Dragonflying, 6"x9", Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

Ok, well, things have been hectic here, but today I am finally getting these last two bug paintings photographed and formatted as jpegs.

I really have to get started on some new portraits for the show in September, however, I think I will be trying to do some more of these insects here and there. You know, for fun. It's a real challenge for me to do these on a small scale (mostly because of the underpainting part), but I will attempt to do a few to post on my sales blog.

Been busy as a bee out in the garden too, so pictures of all that next time!
Bees, Bees, Bees, 6"x9", Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

The Sky is the Limit!

2010-06-04T01:24:00.002-04:00

Flashy Little Bugger, 6"x9", Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

Each year our local arts org has an invitational small works show with a theme, this year it is "The Sky is the Limit". I have participated each time that I am invited because it's always a fun theme plus it's a great chance to stretch out and do something different.

At first I was thinking black paintings, with some random stars, lights, etc. but then one evening in the garden I was swatting bugs away and it occurred to me that I should use the bugs as subject matter. They qualified, what with all that flying in the sky and dive bombing me, hehe.
Flying In From New Guinea, 6"x9", Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

And actually, I have done some paintings of insects before. During the first year that I had started painting again, I was playing around with different imagery, having not conclusively decided to focus on landscapes. I did several bug paintings and one or two were kind of interesting but the rest were pretty dreary. I was still experimenting with the color of the underpaintings and how to get the glazes to work with the underpainting instead of against it. I also recall being unsure about how technically correct to get with the insects, I didn't want them to look like scientific illustrations yet I did feel that some accuracy was important. In general, I was still searching for the balance then, between accuracy and expression (actually that is an ongoing search) and insects were maybe not quite the place to explore that. In addition, my painting skills were just plain out rusty, so I gravitated back towards more simplistic subject matter in order to relearn my process and skills.
After looking through my jpegs, this seems to be the only bug painting that qualified for photography AND inclusion in the 2004 image folder. I believe it is painted on hardboard and is about 6 inches square. I guess the painting didn't qualify as one to keep either, because I can't find it anywhere!

Anyway, I am not so sure that all those issues are resolved concerning the bug paintings here although I think my painting skills have improved, and my color sense has certainly evolved too. But whatever! Mostly it was just a lot of FUN to paint these bugs! I would like to do more; for now though, they have been a lovely diversion for me before I settle down to prepare for an upcoming solo show.
I've Spotted You, 6"x9", Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

Anyway, after posting a few of these images on my Facebook page, I had a number of requests for more info, like prices and availability, so I am going to include all that here, even though I rarely post prices on this blog. I have six bug paintings (the firefly crashed and burned, unfortunately;)) and only four of them will be included in the show. I have not decided which ones yet, but if anyone is interested in ANY of the 6 paintings, I am going to support my local arts org here and they will be handling the sales for all of them.
Fluttering Moths, 6"x9", Oil on Birch Panel, 2010

So. Details.

Cooperstown Art Association
Exhibition Dates: June 11-July 9
Opening Reception: Friday, June 11 5-7pm
Each panel is 6"x9" and are priced at $225.
If you are interested in buying one please contact CAA AFTER Saturday, June 5th. I have to deliver them first!

And PS. I will post the last two here on Saturday, not quite finished with them, oops!

Gardening, and the Birds and the Bees

2010-05-17T10:19:00.008-04:00

Very busy last few days here and I don't think it will be letting up anytime soon.

I have been rather derelict in getting the garden cleared out for spring planting, although THAT would be easier if we did better at cleaning and prepping the planting beds in the fall. Sigh. One of these days, it will happen. Anyway, I have been trying to spend a few hours a day weeding and luckily everything but the dumb, stupid burdock has been easy to pull out. However, all of a sudden wild mustard plants have taken over the garden, which is irritating because that is the one weed we haven't had before and they are seriously invasive. They do have beautiful yellow flowers though and fields of them have inspired a whole series of paintings but I would like them to stay out of my vegetable garden, please.

Three beds back in the corner that still need weeding (they are done now):

This is where the tomatoes are going this year and I have handed the weeding duty over to Doug as I suspect some serious shoveling will be necessary (he is the shovel guy):

And proof that our weeds don't need much in the way of light, air or water. A tarp has been on this section for a few years now (clearing that spot is rather low on our list as it is in a shaded area) and every year the weeds under it raise it up off the ground about three feet:

But there are some bright spots. The garlic is looking good:

The raspberries look great this year (even if they are sending shoots off into the neighboring beds). And most of the beds are cleared now, ready for some mulch and then planting:

We are still a few weeks from planting for most things though, and I really should have gotten the peas and carrots in already, but I am planning to get them in this week. Oddly, my greens that I planted several weeks ago in the cold frame didn't come up, so I guess I messed up the system somehow. I am going to try planting greens again in the regular beds. Oh and the perimeter fence needs much attention. I am pretty sure that last year deer were just strolling in every night and eating everything from the top down. They LOVE peas and broccoli, just so you know.

Update on the birds and the bees:

Yes, my new chicks have arrived, just this morning in fact:

We are establishing a new coop for them as our old hen house is too small and plus it's really tough to integrate flocks. So Doug spent a few days putting up plywood on the interior of a small room in our crappy old garage. We wanted to build an entirely new building, but it wasn't in the budget and this was the next best, cheap idea. And actually it seems pretty luxurious to me, it has power and is very close to water (the garage is attached to the kitchen) so we can brood them in their coop. Doug still has to build the nests and an outdoor chicken run, but we have time for that.

It's been about four years since we got our first chicks and three years since we got the second batch and I have forgotten about the stress level with these little chickies. I have already spent so much time worrying and checking on them today and it's only been a few hours! One difference this time though is that there are 45 chicks, well actually 44 since one was trampled to death in the shipping box, and the little cannibals were already pecking it apart by the time I picked them up, and so I now get to worried about their pig pile tendencies too. Heh. But I am going to cross my fingers that they will be ok, and later on after I get some work done I will go and check all of them for pasty butt*, yay!

Doug was planning to get two more bee hives this spring but when he went to pick them up on Saturday, he was told the bees were gone. A part of the whole disappearing bee problem evidently. So Doug is calling around today, trying to find someone who has bees. Our existing hive is doing great, very busy and active bees already working on their honey, so we were really hoping to add to all that.

And besides our WORK work, there is a long list of things that have to be done around here; I was going to list them, but it makes me feel overwhelmed! I will post photos if as we make some progress. Right now I will just be happy if we can get some plants in the ground and keep my chicks alive until they are a bit more durable!

*Pasty Butt: Shipping can be hard on some chicks and a sign of that stress is that they get their butts pasted up with loose droppings. Keep a close eye on them for the first 5-6 days. If this happens, you must clean it up or they'll die. There are 2 methods: A -- you can softly moisten the plug with a warm moist cloth until you can pick it off, this being easier on the chick, or B -- you can simply pluck it off with the down it is stuck to. This is more painful to the chick, like having some hairs pulled, but has the advantage that without the down to stick to the problem will not repeat itself.

Painterchick/Chickenfarmer Girl

2010-05-11T07:52:00.005-04:00

South Side, 2010, Oil on Panel, 24"x18"

Good thing I have gotten some of my energy back, because there is a lot going on. Actually that probably is WHY I am getting it back, I HAVE to. Anyway, I am feeling enthusiastic again about working in the studio and just finished a really good group of paintings (see above). I am planning to focus on the 'People You Know' now, as I currently have plenty of landscapes in my inventory.

And life in general is particularly crazy right now. Both of my daughters have crazy busy sports schedules, one daughter is in softball with practice everyday and my youngest daughter is playing both softball AND soccer AND is also taking a Junior Lifeguarding class. And I am tired just writing this. Heh. Anyway, mostly this translates to A LOT of driving and scheduling and watching games for me. Plus we are getting into all the end of the year stuff; school concerts, dances, etc. Ok, nap time now......

Life on the farm is picking up too. The weather has been kind of wacky, and it has been really cold for the last several days which has been the perfect excuse to delay more work out in the vegetable garden. But there is MUCH to do out there and it is looming over us. I have been puttering around in the flower gardens but don't even ask me why there are a million dandelions IN the back flower garden. I need to get to that pretty soon. And this weekend we will be getting new 45 new chicks. I have decided to fully embrace being a painterchick/chickenfarmer girl and will be selling organic eggs, hopefully enough to at least pay for the organic feed. Our current flock of chickens are getting older and although they are still laying, they are slowing down so it's a good time to start a new flock. However, I am not exactly the culling chicken type, so we have decided to establish a second hen house. We have a 10x12 room in our garage that has its own door out to the yard and so Doug has been working on getting that room ready. It also has electricity which is VERY exciting, the other hen house is all pioneer with no power or water even remotely nearby. Chick pictures coming soon.

So I guess spring is a good time to get a girl out of a mild funk, eh?

Regional Shows and Often Procrastination is Good

2010-05-08T08:27:00.001-04:00

The Weight of Being, 2010, Oil on Panel, 20"x24"

So Chair Lady was accepted into the regional show at the Cooperstown Art Association and Doug and I went to the opening reception last night. We didn't stay too long because we had to get to our daughter's softball game but we had a nice time, talked to some friends and munched at the food table. Actually, I had exactly two things and they were both so spicy that I had a runny nose the rest of the evening. Awesome!

The work in the show was good but it became clear as we saw which artists won the prizes that I probably should have entered a landscape. Well, if I was intent on winning something. Heh. I do like to win, who doesn't? But I am still glad that I pushed the envelope a bit and entered something different. And a number of people mentioned that even though mine was a figurative painting, they still immediately recognized it as my work.

But the best part of yesterday (well besides watching my daughter play really well in her very first softball game!) was getting two large Black Paintings done. I spent most of Thursday SO not sure about what I was going to do with them, but finally that night I managed to eke out a few sketches of compositions that seemed like they might work. I still needed some time to settle in (procrastinate) on Friday morning but at about 1:30pm I stepped up to the easel and just whipped out the two paintings, it's like they just flowed right out of me. Love when that happens, that feeling is one of the things that makes being a painter chick so great.

Sure don't need a prize for that!

Winging it

2010-05-05T07:55:00.005-04:00

Black Painting#92, 2010, Oil on Panel, 9"x6"

Today I am prepping two 36 inch square panels. I have decided to enter two Black Paintings in the upcoming National Juried Show at the Cooperstown Arts Association, that I mentioned last time. I spent way too much time yesterday obsessing about the size, format and image but finally I decided to just go ahead and settle on the two 36 inch square panels that I already have on hand. I have a few other large panels, but only one of each size and well, I keep thinking that I should enter two that are the same. I need SOME order here! Especially since I have NO CLUE as to what I will be painting on these panels! I tried making some sketches yesterday which only proved to me that the large, looming barn like structures that I keep seeing in my mind, will not work very well in a square format.

However, I am recalling that when I worked on the Black Paintings series in Vermont, I was not sure what the image would be until my hands were in the paint and maybe even well after that. So I am going to wing it here on these pieces, fully aware that I may end up entering a landscape after all. I have to finish the painting part by this Friday, so I can get them photographed and meet the deadline which is next Saturday.

We'll just have to see how that pressure thing works for me this time.

Chair Lady

2010-05-03T00:02:00.001-04:00

Chair Lady, 2010, Oil on Panel, 40"x30"

Well, the people have spoken and so the Chair Lady has been entered into the juried show. Thanks so much to everyone who gave me their input, I really appreciate it. I was leaning towards entering the Chair Lady too but I became a bit mesmerized by all the color in the other painting once I tweaked it a little bit. I am a sucker for color, heh. Also I hadn't really planned to title it "Chair Lady" but it stuck after all that. Above is the final jpeg of the painting.

I should find out in a few days about whether I am in or not and either way I will attend the opening reception for the show this Friday. Always a good chance to chat with some friends and also to catch up with a few of the artists in in the area that I only see once in awhile.

And in case anyone is interested, this same organization also has a national juried show and the deadline is coming up on May 15. More info here if you are interested in participating. The Cooperstown Art Association is a GREAT local arts organization, very supportive of artists (they gave me a solo show when I was just starting out) and they do a number of community art events each year. And I can assure you that locals do not get special treatment here, I have been accepted only once out of about seven tries. I actually wasn't sure if I even should enter this year because one of the jurors is the owner of a gallery that represents me. However, I am going to anyway as I feel supporting the CAA (as well as all local arts organizations) is important and will just consider the 20 bucks as a donation. I will also enter different work than what I usually show with that gallery so that when I get turned down I can justify it by saying that it was because I hadn't entered my real work. ha

Juried Show Entry

2010-04-28T09:21:00.008-04:00

Not the best photos ever, but hopefully you can see past that and help me decide which painting to enter in a local regional show. I like (and dislike) both for different reasons. If I had more time this morning I'd add one of those little voting thingies but will just have to settle for votes in the comments. Thanks!

Chair Lady is 40"x30"

Five People is 24"x36"

PS. It is entirely possible that I may decide at the very last minute to enter a landscape or barn. Just so you know..........

What's Goin' On?

2010-04-27T09:41:00.002-04:00

House on Route 52, 2010, Oil on Panel, 18"x18"

OK, well, spring break is over (finally!) the kids are back in school and my days are my own again. And despite this last two week blip of constant interruptions here, I do feel like I am pretty much back on track. Doing a public to do list and charting my progress helped so I will be keeping that little trick in mind in case I go off the rails again. Um, train metaphors, anyone?????

Anyway, for awhile there it was feeling like I had NOTHING going on, which was kind of messing with my productivity. However, in the last few days I have been adding things up and it looks like things are picking up. Can't give a lot details yet on some things but this is what I have going on:

This week I am finishing up a portrait that I did about a year ago and never really resolved. I am planning to enter it in a regional competition at our local arts organization and the deadline is Saturday. Not really worried about NOT getting in, although it is certainly possible that I won't, but I just want to make sure and enter something since I missed the deadline for the last two years. I have decided to enter a portrait, a LARGE portrait (40x30) for purely egotistical reasons;in the past the paintings that I have entered have been small and rather quiet and this year I want a flashy entry for once. Heh.

Today I am packing up four paintings from the 'People You Know' series that I did in Vermont, and am shipping them off to one of my galleries. This gallery does very well with my landscapes and it will be interesting to see how these go over. They will be at The Harrison Gallery if anyone out there is in the area (Williamstown MA) and would like to see these paintings in person. Way better in real life if I do say so myself.....

I am just finishing up a bunch of paintings to send to Chrysalis Gallery in the Hamptons soon. The two that I sent last year have NOT sold but the owner said she is not giving up on me yet and will be giving me a good space on the wall this season for a whole grouping of paintings, which is really the best way to present my work. They seems to make more sense when seen in a grouping. She also prefers my more abstract color field type landscapes which are not really included in my current burn out on landscapes.

I have been invited to have a solo show at The Main Street Gallery in Groton, NY in September. This was the first gallery to give me a solo show back in 2005 just a few years after I had started painting again and it will great to be there again. I will be showing small scale landscapes in the back area and portraits in the main room, so YAYY! Pretty excited about that!

And I just heard yesterday that the proposal for an exhibition that an artist that I met at the Vermont Studio Center applied for has been accepted. I'll be learning more details in the next few days and will post about it soon. I will say however, that I am very, VERY excited about this because it involves me being able to show work from the Black Painting series that I worked on in Vermont.

Black painting #99, 2010, 9"x6" Oil on Panel
Sales have improved somewhat, two large paintings have sold in the last month or so; very happy they found their "people" and of course the surprise income is good too. This also makes me feel a bit more confident that not everything I paint will just be sitting around, gathering dust in my studio.

Also, I have a possible commission for a very large scale painting. Not confirmed yet, and I may be jinxing the whole thing by even mentioning it, but hey, I feel like living dangerously today, heh.

So there you go. Another step back to my previously busy self and it feels really good!

Low on Title Ideas Today (so that's the title)

2010-04-13T08:55:00.001-04:00

Messy studio

Well, all of a sudden it's almost two weeks since I have posted here. Sigh.

I haven't been super productive in the studio either. However, in general I have been pretty busy. Our washer broke down last week so Doug and I took the better part of a day to go shopping for a new one. We also took an afternoon to look at small barns since I am getting a new batch of baby chicks next month, plus we are also planning to get sheep or goats next spring. So trying to do a little long range planning for that. A day to take my daughter to the diabetes clinic in Syracuse. A couple of mornings in the garden, clearing out a few beds and planting greens. Mr. Wilson had to get his teeth cleaned and so a day of going back and forth to the vet. An afternoon for a hair appointment. Shopping for spring things with the girls. Doug was in the city last Friday and picked up a load of birch panels for me. Dumping them in my studio was the tipping point for clutter and so I need a day or so to clean and reorganize.

It's just been one thing after another and the rest of this week is looking crazy too.

I really have to finish up some paintings though as I have to send new work off to two galleries soon. Having a looming deadline always helps when my internal motivation is not quite up to par. So this morning I am trying yet again, to get back to work in the studio. I don't think I need a to do list to get going this time but I am not ruling one out either......

To Do List Update, Before I Bail!

2010-04-02T14:21:00.001-04:00

Study#213, 2010, Oil on Birch Panel, 5x7

I meant to post yesterday but a ghost somehow downloaded almost 200mgs from the internet on Thursday morning (I was the only person on the computer during that time and all I did was open Facebook and look at a few news articles, I swear!) putting us over the top of the dreaded Fair Access Policy. So little to no internet for 24 hours, which is always a blessing, even though we all grumble about it.

Anyway, here is the update for Wednesday and Thursday.

Wednesday:
Wrote a blog post on Wednesday and then spent some time answering emails, paying bills, etc.

Doug and I took a much needed walk around the country block on a very foggy and cool day. Took some pictures too in which I mostly look stupid but he looks good. Posting the most decent one of us together: (in real life, our heads are about the same size, just in case you were wondering)

In the studio I painted the edges on some small paintings, finishing them up so that I can put them in a drawer, hehe.

I finished up two more of the initial ten paintings on my to do list. I would have gotten more done except the first one that I did was VERY pesky and I had to to wipe the paint off and start over several times. Bleh. It ended up pretty good though.

And I worked on the curtain hems again while I was watching TV on Wednesday evening.

Thursday:

I did two more paintings which leaves me with just two more out of the ten. My lunch with a friend/social life item was replaced with taking our cat, Hermine and our poodle Mr. Wilson to the vet. I did speak to four people (which is four more than I talked to all week) while I was there so I think that qualifies as a social outing!

And in VERY exciting news, I finished the curtains Thursday night. Took me a bit longer than I expected once I got out the sewing machine that I haven't used in about 6 years. However, after pushing a bunch of buttons, I eventually figured out how to run it without even having to refer to the owner's manual. Luckily the bobbin had enough thread in it, otherwise I would still be trying to figure out how to load that up. After I got everything set up, it only took me a few minutes to do the actual sewing part. It ALMOST made me want to dig out the quilt that I started when my daughter was born in 1997......

So today, I had planned to work on the other studio stuff, the underpainting for a portrait, drawing and starting a few Black Paintings. But I gotta be honest here; it is a drop dead gorgeous and very warm day outside and so I think I am bailing on most of my to do list today. I do plan on getting out in the garden and planting a few seeds (maybe tomorrow) but mostly I am just going to putter around in the yard and maybe take a walk. My son has a friend over and so there will definitely be chocolate chip cookies to bake later, so before I get to that I am going outside!

I will get back to all this productiveness/motivation/to do list silliness next Monday. Have a good weekend, everyone!

Progress

2010-03-31T08:47:00.003-04:00

Frames#1005, 2010, Oil on Birch Panel, 16x20

I made moderate progress on Tuesday. Um, despite spending a little bit too much time on the computer. But it was less time than usual so I will look at the bright side on that.

It was a lovely, rainy day (I like rainy days) so it was easy to stay in my studio and work. I finished prepping all ten panels and after my little computer binge, I managed to finish up two of the ten paintings that were on my to do list. There are six left, and I think I can make some progress on several of them today.

Also, last night while I was watching American Idol (LOVE Crystal, Lee and that Casey is a real cutie pie), I started the whole curtain project and I think tonight (during Criminal Minds) I can get all of them prepared for the sewing part.

And bonus task yesterday was cleaning out the sink in the kid's bathroom. Normally, I would have one of the kids do it, but I use it during the day for cleaning my brushes, and it was starting to bug me so I just took a few minutes to do it.

Oh AND I wrote a BLOG POST!!!!!!!!!

Baby Steps

2010-03-30T09:52:00.000-04:00

Frames(Structure)#1002, 2010, Oil on Birch Panel, 20x16

Ok, it seems like the act of making the list and posting it on the internet has gotten me feeling a bit more energetic about things in general. I made some progress yesterday and also it was so awesome to get such encouragement about continuing the blog from my lovely readers. Thank you!

So this is what I did yesterday:

I made all my phone calls and I now have appointments to take two pets to the vet this Thursday, a meeting at the clinic in Syracuse concerning my daughter's insulin pump, and I also rescheduled my upcoming dentist appointment.

I finished the backs of the ten panels that I am prepping and this morning started the priming on the front and sides. The prep doesn't take so much time, it's mostly the drying, sanding and having to run downstairs to clean the brushes that can really drag things out here......

I had some emails to attend to yesterday, in addition to a good chunk of online time (oops) so I got started painting a bit later than I should have. But it ended up ok, I managed to get two smaller pieces done and will get back to the easel as soon as I am done with this post.

And bonus! After dinner, instead of glancing at the disgusting, dusty, greasy range hood, sighing and then ignoring it yet again, I decided to just take a few minutes and clean the dumb thing. This might have been the most encouraging thing I did all day; I have been ignoring stuff like that for weeks.

Will be back tomorrow!

Spectacularly Unproductive

2010-03-29T10:43:00.001-04:00

Frames #1001, 2010, Oil on Birch Panel, 12x16

Well. Ahem. Yes, it has been three weeks since I last posted. Every single day, I thought about posting, but didn't. Couldn't? Not sure which anymore. I can't say I have been too busy either, as I have been spectacularly unproductive lately. And while I don't want to end this blog, it does periodically occur to me that maybe I will.

But today is Monday, a good day to turn over a new leaf and I am going to try again and get my mojo back. For the blog, for my work, for my life in general. Sounds dramatic, eh??? Well, like I said; spectacularly unproductive lately. Not only am I not working in the studio enough, I am not even doing the projects around the house that I usually complain about not having enough time for, even though I have had all the time in the world lately.

So I have decided to start with to-do lists. Public to-do lists. I don't normally keep a formal to do list, but well, desperate times here. I do NOT like being spectacularly unproductive. The plan is to post a to-do list for each week, on Mondays and update my progress each day. I am hoping that this will get me posting here again and also help me get some stuff done.

Well, here we go. My list of things to-do this week (in addition to regular stuff like driving kids, making dinner, scooping cat litter and feeding chickens and um, keeping up with Facebook):

Studio

Finish the 10 paintings that are in progress, starting with the six that have been sitting here, halfway finished for at least three weeks.......

Finish prepping panels.

Do some drawing for at least a half day.

Start at least one new 'People You Know' painting.

Do seven more Black Paintings on the 6x9 inch panels that have been sitting here for a whole MONTH.

Load new paintings on to my sales blog, and do some other things, like ordering supplies, etc.

House

CLEAN the house.

Hem the new curtains for my daughter's room, the curtains that are still sitting in the shopping bag on the dining room table, exactly where I set them down when I got home from buying them 3 WEEKS AGO.

Make a few appointments that I have been lazy about making. Dentist, vet, etc.

Have lunch with a friend. I have been spectacularly antisocial lately as well.

Get out in the garden and plant spinach and lettuce seeds in the cold frame.

This seems like a lot to me, especially since I am pretty much starting at zero. Heh. But it's nowhere close to what I used to accomplish in a week and it is stuff that I really do need to get done, so this is my list and I am sticking to it.

PS. I do realize that I would be spectacularly productive if I had anything whatsoever on the exhibition schedule for the upcoming year, but that is a post for another day;)

Vermont Friends

2010-03-08T08:42:00.018-05:00

Last night together in Vermont: Jon, Rob and J.T.

Even though I spent way more time working than socializing while I was at the residency in January I did manage to meet at least a few people. I tried to keep most of my chit chatting to mealtimes, although there were some memorable conversations in my studio, or at one of the two parties I attended. Heh.

It was very exciting to see what other artists were working on in their studios and I really enjoyed 'Slide Night', the weekly event when the visual artists gave a short presentation of their work. Most of the artists I got to know have websites (seems more common than when I was there two years ago) so I am going to share them here with you.

I knew J.T. through our blogs before January, but he was also pretty much the first resident that I met; I walked in to the opening night reception and there he was. We got along well, we had most of our meals at the same table and also visited each others studios. The other resident that I 'knew' before we got there was Rob Williams. He found me after doing a google search about VSC and we hit it off right away, both via the internet and in person. He knows a few of my deep dark secrets too, lucky guy.
Rob and Jang Soon

I also really enjoyed the time I spent with Lauren, Marcie, Michelle, Aschley, Lindsay and Giordanne. I believe that technically I am old enough to be a mother to most of these lovely and talented women (in one 'ouch' moment I learned that Michelle's mother is younger than I am), but they did not in any way hold that against me! I am also very happy to have acquired several new pieces of art from this group of friends.
J.T. and Aschely

It's bad luck to discuss the details but I will say that I might have a potential project with JoAnna Johnson and Kristie Eden O'Donnell. JoAnna's dress project awes me and Kristie's work is very bold and strong with just a bit of vulnerability, just like her. Crossing my fingers about our project.
JoAnna's dresses, hanging in her studio.

Matthew McConville had a studio down the hall from me and he had some really helpful observations about my work, and I really appreciated those. His work is beautiful AND funny, which is the perfect combination if you ask me. Nicole McCormick Santiago also gave me some really good feedback about my work (she didn't need any on hers; it is ALREADY PERFECT!) and we had some good talks concerning painting process and the art biz too. I think Steven Pearson worked harder and longer in his studio than anyone. It was my own personal goal to work later than him in just once in the month we were there, but I failed; he was always in his studio whenever I dragged my zombie self home, no matter the time. He had a project that had to be finished while he was at the residency and it was pretty exciting when he did just that.
Steve, in front of his finished painting.

I had a lot of nice conversations with painter Jon Eckel. Jon lives in the Philadelphia area so we had that in common even if he was just 5 when I moved there, hehe. I was impressed with his motivation too; Jon was spending THREE months in Vermont to find new direction in his work and I will be very interested in seeing what happens with that.
Jon

I also enjoyed talking to Kim Manfredi, and reallyreally liked what she was working on and admired her process which was pretty involved. I am also still bummed out that I didn't get to see what she did in the last week or so, she packed up her work before the final Open Studio. Anthony Hawley came in for the second two weeks of the session and I like him right away, he was very nice to talk to. He also has an interesting project going on right now and I am pleased to now have two of his small paintings.
Anthony

I loved my housemates, Nancy Williams was only there for two weeks, but we had much in common and I enjoyed her reading (she is a writer). Kimberly Dark came in at the middle of the session and her performances were incredible, very funny and thought provoking, and she is just an all around wonderful and kind person. Tonya Gregg was very sweet to me one evening after I had had a frustrating day and I also was very taken with her work. She showed some images of previous work that I still think about, very strong, colorful and bold work.

So those were the people that I got to know best. I wish I had been able to spend more time with other residents as well, but I really wanted to work so unfortunately my social time was limited. However, many of those residents are my Facebook friends now and so I may get another chance. A few of these folks don't have websites (as far as I know) but I am listing them anyway: Marin Abell, JC Jogerst, Nicholas Naughton, Lia Powers, Carrie Elizabeth Cook, Ariana Franco, Jang Soon, Matthew Clark, Eric Markowsky, Christian Benefiel, Ariel Churnin, Kate McGraw, Mary Lamboley, Tatiana Berg, Jeremy Lundquist, Kit Burke-Smith, Liliya Zalevskaya, Sanghee Park, Seungae Bang. Also, Jeanne Marie Wasilik was in the studio right next door to me (which was the studio I had last time), and we had many nice chats.
Ariana Franco at the last Open Studio night.

Marin Abell's project.

Oh and it was wonderful to see David Grozinsky again. He works there and remembered me! Yay!

So anyway. I am sure I am forgetting someone and I apologize in advance. And if I am missing anyone's website or link please let me know and I will add it. Love sharing up links!

New Website

2010-03-04T11:20:00.004-05:00

Black Painting#98, 2010, Oil on Panel, 9"x6"

More than a few mealtime conversations at the Vermont Studio Center revolved around our websites. J.T. was real keen on Other People's Pixels and he encouraged, and then helped a few of the other residents set up their sites at OPP (the next post will include links to those sites as well as to blogs etc of some of the other residents that I got to know).

At first I wasn't really interested in changing my website. A friend of mine had designed mine several years ago and even though it could use some updating I still really liked the basic design. So I mentally filed all this new info, which is not easy to do these days, I am perilously close to total overload!

After I got home and sorted through and photographed all the work that I did in Vermont, I was really excited to get my website updated and maybe give it a little face lift too. Unfortunately, my friend's company was swamped with work and it wasn't looking like anything was going to get updated for awhile. I was feeling a bit pressured to start sending my info out (this coming year is looking very quiet right now) right away, so I checked out OPP again. I signed up for the trial membership and within a day or so I got a good part of the site set up which really won me over. Gotta love anything that is easy enough for ME to set up! By the time I got everything loaded I was ready to sign up for a year of hosting ($160) and that is just what I did.

So go check out my new website. I like it a lot; it looks pretty snappy and I really like the simple layout and easy navigation. It doesn't have some of the wonderful little details that my old design had (love ya, Niklas:)) but I have finally gotten over losing those. Best of all I can load and unload new images and make other changes as easily as if I were on Blogger or Facebook. Not saying I am an expert, or am even fast at any of that, but eventually I can figure things out. Well, usually. Heh.

And if you happen to decide to sign up at Other People's Pixels, link to it from my site so I can get a free month. I bet J.T. has a free year by now!

Vermont Light

2010-03-02T08:32:00.003-05:00

I wrote a post while I was in Vermont mentioning the light in my studio there and even though it was a little bit pesky if I was trying to actually paint, it was a comforting element in my space. My windows faced east, and slightly south, so when the sun was out (which was not too often actually, it was a pretty gray month) the light moved from one side of the studio to the other between about 10am and 1pm. And just by chance it often illuminated my work that was hanging on the walls and I was always trying to quickly find my camera to get a good shot.

Sometimes it seemed as if the light was communicating with me, telling me to do another painting:

Showing me the drama in the Black Paintings:

Highlighting a favorite:

And gently saying goodbye as I was taking my work down at the end of my time there......

And PS: JT was visiting my studio on a sunny morning and here is his hand:

Vermont, Plan D

2010-02-26T16:18:00.006-05:00

Plan D was actually the first project I had planned for my time at Vermont Studio Center. I have wanted to sit down and focus on my mark making for a long time so I merged that with an old concept that I had briefly worked on a few years ago involving small squares of colors. I lost interest in that as it didn't really do what I had imagined it would, but I kept thinking how I wanted to put tiles together. So when the scratching became a stronger element in my work, I combined the two ideas and saved it for Vermont.

Over the past year, I have had all kinds of plans about how to set up the project but eventually I simplified it as much as possible and decided to refocus on the mark making aspect. And because I wanted it to be all about process, meaning I wanted to expand my mark making skills without feeling compelled to refer to those marks in future work, I decided to make it a give away at the final open studio at VSC. In keeping with that I also decided not to document the pieces, and only took a few general photographs of the project as it progressed. I wanted this to be all about my internal process.

So, process. I stocked up on about a million 4 inch squares. Well actually only 120 but it seemed like more. Heh. I also had some larger squares which only made it to the underpainting stage. I had planned to have them all gessoed before I left for Vermont but things got crazy busy before I left and so I ended up having to do all the prep after I got there. Then it took me several chunks of time over a few days to do the underpaintings and I admit to being mighty sick of the whole thing by the time I finished all of those! I didn't have a specific plan about the composition on these and I did do a few that would end up being one color as in my original idea. But I then decided to incorporate some of the more abstract elements that I was also doing in the border paintings; small sections of color at the edges, borders, contrasting squares in the centers, etc. I did at least a dozen of each composition, knowing that color would differentiate them later. By the night of the first open studio, I had all the underpaintings finished along with the first layer of glaze. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of that but this one has a bunch of the underpaintings in progress as well as a few that already have color:

Things in general after that got pretty hectic, I had all the other work going on plus there were artist talks, readings, etc so unfortunately I put off doing the color and scratching on these for just a bit too long. I ended up doing far fewer of the squares than I had planned and on one memorable night I seriously considering bailing on the whole thing entirely. But the next morning life seemed was all bright and shiny again and I decided I could do it after all. (Note to self: Never make any decisions after 1am;) I counted out how many I needed to have finished so that all the residents and staff could each take one and just focused on doing those. I ended up finishing seventy-two of the 4"x4" squares.

It was really a challenge to feel like I was varying the colors as well as the marks in each one. Um, especially after about #43. I settled on making very small shifts in color and by the end, both the marks and the color got pretty minimalist. There are a few squares floating around out there that only have one scratch running right down the center. Heh. I also learned that the most successful marks tended to be the random ones, marks that were not very representational, and that really carried over to the marks I made on the other paintings as well as what I have been doing since I have been home. I tried using some different tools to make the marks, but for various reasons I ended up preferring the little rubbery pointed tool that I was using in the first place.

My self imposed rules for Plan D were:

1. All the give away pieces would be on 4 inch square panels.

2. Because the project was to be all about process I would be giving away all the panels, without documenting them.

3. I also decided that I would stick with the initial colors that I chose for the glazes, no wiping off the paint to change the color and no working back into the painting later. Whatever I put down first, I had to make work. This was somewhat of a time saving rule;))

However, it turns out that the whole thing ended up being so much more than my process and it had such wonderful and unexpected results. In some ways, I think Plan D was really the most valuable project for me in Vermont and gave me some really good things to move forward with.

The unexpected things that happened here were:

1. They looked AWESOME all grouped together! I had always pictured this project as being only squares of solid color so I was very surprised to see how the small patterns on each square formed so many larger patterns. It was also interesting that the panels even worked together at all, considering they were all painted with no thought about how they would fit together later.

2. More than anything I wished I had been able to observe and possibly document the other residents as they were choosing and deciding on which one to take (I wanted to see the other resident's studios so I couldn't be in my studio the whole time). I was able to be there for awhile though and it was really interesting to watch a few people making their choices. Some people would pick out one, then change their mind a few more times before deciding on one, others connected with one particular piece right away. SO much more to do with this aspect of the project!
Matt Clark, Kimberly Dark and Kate McGraw making their choices.

Marcie Kaufman showing me her choice.

3. As I was walking through the other studios, other residents were so excited to show me which square they selected and it was fascinating to find out why they picked a particular painting. I think this was the best part; immediately seeing hearing why and how a fellow artist chose something I had made. Sometimes I feel a bit removed from that aspect of my work; why someone finds a certain piece appealing.

4. I was secretly glad that the all black piece ended up as one of about 10 leftovers. It was my favorite and is now part of MY collection!

So Plan D gave me so much more than I had imagined it would. Now that I am home and eying the balance of the half finished 4 inch panels, I am working on some ways to incorporate these other elements into this fourth new direction that I have going.

Very exciting!

Vermont Plan C

2010-02-15T16:38:00.004-05:00

I began the 'People You Know' series during my first residency in Vermont and so it seemed natural to use this residency to continue developing them. I have learned in the last two years that this series is tough and so that is one reason I decided to take a few other projects to work on this time. Most of the other painting that I do, even if it is new to me, usually just flows out of me. The portraits involve much angst and wrestling, and well, they just hurt me sometimes. It is difficult for me to get started on one, even if I have an image I am excited about. Once I get past that part, things get somewhat better although still (unlike the landscapes), I can only do one or maybe two at a time.

In addition I have struggled with the validity of the whole project and the fact that I use found photographs as a basis for the portraits. But finally, I have realized that much of the process in this series involves my choices in imagery. Just as I find scenes in the landscape that I like, I am finding images (in the form of found photographs) of people that appeal to me for some reason and that I feel compelled to express. The paintings in this series are about the photograph first and the actual person second.

And so after many discussions with Doug about this, and then also in talking to the visiting artists at VSC, I am embracing this aspect rather than feeling so unsure and even somewhat guilty about 'copying a photograph'. One of the visiting artists (Jill Moser) suggested that I consider trying to capture the specific qualities of the photos that I choose, such as an object in the background, the faded colors of the print, the patterns in the clothing and other details that make each photo so unique and yet so universal at the same time. I don't think that I will go all out with that because I still want to express myself in this work by making certain changes. But it sounded like a very intriguing direction and so I will be thinking about all that in the next group of portraits.

However, I was pretty far along with this group of paintings when I finally got these fab realizations so the rest of this post will discuss how I handled these particular paintings during the residency. Everyone likes to hear about process, right???

The first few days I was busy with the larger works on paper and I also spent my evenings sorting through the two big boxes of photos that I had brought along. When the works on paper got to the point of needing time to dry, I turned to the portraits and did these two:
I worked on other things while those dried for a few days, then finally gathered myself together and did the color on Deanne, the girl on the right. J.T. came by my studio after I did the first swipe at the color and he gave me some feedback, suggesting I focus on a few details like highlights on the glasses, the earrings, etc. At first I wasn't sure I wanted to do that as I felt that they might begin to look TOO traditional. However, I decided to forget about that and just focus on what was best for this painting and bringing out those details was it.

So this is the finished painting:Deanne Likes Pink, 2010, Oil on Birch Panel, 18x14
And a close up:

I did a few more underpaintings next then got to work on the color on the other lady. This one gave me some trouble. In a way, I was trying to figure out why I was even painting it; this woman is very pretty and is posed in a very traditional way, quite unlike most of the women I am usually drawn to. But there was something about the nostalgic late fifties quality of the color in the photo, the red scarf and also her perky breast. Heh. Then THAT particular feature had to go when I got to the color stage, white shirt with perky breast just did not work in color and so the coat ended up covering it. I am continually reminded that giving up my favorite parts often benefit the whole and this is a good example of that. At least I still had the red scarf! Red Scarf Day, 2010, Oil on Birch Panel, 18x14

The next painting is of Deanne again and I have painted her so many times now that I am thinking that she qualifies for her very own post. Coming soon, k? Anyway, I liked this very straightforward image of her in a mucky colored lazy boy and so it was next. When I got to the color, I was really wishing I had not kept the background dark in the underpainting as I can't really make it light with color without losing the translucency of my glazes. I think it's OK dark but it might have been better with a lighter area. However, I still think this painting is a worthy addition to my collection of 'Deanne' portraits:Deanne in the Easy Chair, 2010, Oil on Birch Panel, 14x18

And the next image seems to be Deanne's mother. She is sitting in the same chair and I have a number of photos of those two in the same rooms. This photo was actually pretty blah but I kept coming back to it and decided that I was really intrigued by the red line going up the center of her clothing and also by her breasts falling down to her sides. This piece is quite different than the others in that it the person isn't really posing and is actually kind of depressing, I believe Doug used the terms 'disturbing' and 'depressing'. I like that! Days of Our Lives, 2010, Oil on Birch Panel, 18x14

Now at this point in the residency, I realized that if I was going to be able to get all these portraits finished before the end of my time there, I would have to get all the underpaintings done PDQ. I spent a bunch of late nights in my studio and managed to get five more finished. I would have liked to have done more but really the most I could do in a day was two underpaintings and some days even that felt like I was really risking my sanity.

So after I had all the underpaintings done and while they were drying, I worked like crazy to finish up all the other work I was doing so I could get it all up on the walls and out of the way. For the last week and a half or so I focused on finishing the portraits and my other project, Plan D (more about that in my next post).

Eventually I got back to the color on the portraits and the next few passed in kind of an overtired, sand in my eyes haze, so I am not entirely sure of the order. I loved the dark blue dress on this big strong smiling lady, as well as the lower viewpoint. I simplified the background and one visitor to my studio said that image seemed like a memory or an image from a dream: Midnight Blue, 2010, Oil on Birch Panel, 18x14

And a close up:

And this piece was actually based on a photo of a seated older couple but I decided that I only wanted to paint the woman. Something about her arms and that insanely large corsage. I totally simplified the background and am pleased with the graphic quality of this image. A nice reminder of the year in college that I was a graphic design major.Wallflowers, 2010, Oil on Birch Panel, 18x14

The next two were painted on the last possible day that I could paint in Vermont so that the panels could be dry enough to pack up. Last week here at home, I finished them up. I learned a valuable lesson on the single woman; do NOT keep such strong shadows in the face at the underpainting stage. It is tempting to leave the shadows in because they look SO good at that point, but they are VERY difficult to handle at the color stage. I have enough trouble with flesh colors let alone doing such shadows too, yikes. But ones of the things that I liked about the photo (besides that most awesome poodle hairstyle) was the strong light. I must have painted the color on that face a hundred times before I finally got really ticked off and just slobbed on one color over the whole thing. That actually ended up working out ok, but I'd like to do better next time. Note to self: resist the allure of the underpainting.Peter Pan Collar Lady, 2010, Oil on Birch Panel, 18x14

This image is actually cropped quite a bit, the photos shows both full figures and it is so funny, the two of them standing there holding flowers. But unfortunately I didn't have a large enough panel with me to do the whole thing, so I decided to crop. This painting has much more detail than the others (the flowers) and is a nice contrast when grouped with the other paintings. In looking at the painting now, I think that I need to work back into the areas where their hands are, it looks like there should be more of an indication of a vase there. On the other hand, I think that the man's left ear is probably the best ear that I have ever painted! We Got Flowers Today, 2010, Oil on Birch Panel, 14x18

A few more things about Plan C:

I also did one more underpainting (of my apparent muse, Deanne)which I could just not do before it was time to leave Vermont. It really bugged me that I just couldn't do it, even though I recognize how crazy it was to feel that way given how much work I did actually complete. But I am over it now and plan to finish it up this week.

I feel like the actual style of painting in this group is a bit more refined than in the previous portraits I have done. I have mixed feelings about that as I really feel that there about a zillion other artists who can paint portraits better than I can. I don't really feel that I am a traditional sort of portrait painter either and I am worried that I may be headed that way. However, I also think that these are a pretty successful group of portraits and so I will try to stop worrying about this aspect. Well, for now, anyway.

All of these are on 14x18 birch panels. I brought panels because I felt this series was further along than the other work I was planning to do there (which is why I did nearly all of that on prepared paper). Also, I received a lot of positive encouragement on these and Brenda Garand, one of the visiting artists reallyreally encouraged me to pursue showing them. So I am planning on doing just that. I may have to start with applying for exhibitions at nonprofits again, just as I did with the landscapes.

And I always seem to put off painting these portraits until I believe that I have enough time to really focus on them. but since they are intense I can only do one or two at a time. I need to stop pushing them to the back of the queue and simply start fitting them in around other work.

There. I have stated goals out loud and in public so I have to pursue them, right???

Vermont Residency Plan B

2010-02-10T09:45:00.002-05:00

The Black Paintings ended up being Plan B (I don't consider this list to be in order of importance). I had done a bunch of black abstract paintings during 2009 (you can see a few of them here) and felt they were going in an interesting direction so had initially planned on making a ton of smaller sized black paintings at the residency.

BUT.

When I got everything set up in my studio, and really looked at the space again; the big white, beautiful walls and high ceilings, I knew I would have to work bigger there. I wanted to take advantage of the vertical walls, the ability to see all my work grouped together while hanging on the wall and I also didn't want to fool around with cutting up my paper, and having to make a hundred decisions about size, scale, edges, etc. So I decided to readjust my plan, and do the black paintings on the 22x30 sheets of gessoed paper that I had brought and to accept the limitation of working in a vertical format (it could have been horizontal, but I preferred the vertical for some odd reason;)) rather than square.

The first batch of underpaintings that I did were to be color paintings and I had already decided that they would include landscape elements. So it seemed natural somehow to focus on barn like structures, in the Black Paintings. I had done this small painting:last summer which was a bit of a departure from the abstracts, but I kept thinking about it. And at the last minute, I wrapped it up and took it with me to Vermont, so I could have it to refer to.

As with the color paintings I spent a few hours making sketches before diving into the black paint. Again, doing the sketches helped; I felt the images needed just a bit of planning, not a lot but I wanted something to refer to.

This was how the first group of Black Paintings looked:
After looking at them for a few days while waiting for the paint to dry (the black paint takes forever to dry even though I mixed in some Liquin, which at least helped to make the paint easier to move around) I decided that I did not like the sections of white, which is actually not white paint but rather a lack of black paint. I felt it was too harsh and so when the initial layer of paint dried I went back into them and softened the lighter sections. I was pleased with the results of that and when I did the next batch I was prepared to keep the images darker.

The scratches and marks into the paint have much more significance in the Black Paintings and it was a constant struggle to make them subdued yet still important and visible. Finally I settled on making more marks than I might have wanted, and then would either darken them or paint over some of them after the initial layer of paint was dry. Most of the marks evoke windows, doors, roads, telephone poles, etc., rather than the more random marks that I tend to make on the color paintings. The marks will evolve as I keep going with these.

The Black Paintings were tough but exciting too. Even though I had sketches to refer to, I still couldn't really see what or where I should go next with them. I knew I wanted to push the abstract qualities as much as possible, but just couldn't see how to do it until my hands were actually in the paint. Also with these, I couldn't really see where to go next (other than changing scale), whereas with most of my other work I have some sort of idea about where things are headed. It is good to have a different method, I know, and this was good challenge for me, even if it was a bit stressful.

The visiting artists were very enthusiastic about this series, one used the term powerful, which made my ego inflate slightly, heh. And again, as with the color landscape/border paintings, I think scale is important with these, but I am planning to do some smaller ones in the next few weeks to find out. I actually feel optimistic that the deepness of the black will allow them to be strong in a smaller format.

So these are the finished paintings, pretty much in the order I painted them. I photographed each group after I finished so can't be sure of the exact order. They are all 28x20, on gessoed paper and like the other paintings on paper, they are tucked into a drawer until I decide about doing something with them.

Black Painting#1, 20x28, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 2010

Black Painting#2, 20x28, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 2010

Black Painting#3, 20x28, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 2010

Black Painting#4, 20x28, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 2010

Black Painting#5, 20x28, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 2010
Black Painting#6, 20x28, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 2010

Black Painting#7, 20x28, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 2010

Black Painting#8, 20x28, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 2010

Black Painting#9, 20x28, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 2010

Black Painting#10, 20x28, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 2010

Vermont Residency: Plan A

2010-02-08T19:53:00.002-05:00

When I decided that I would be going to Vermont Studio Center again this year (I was supposed to go in 2009, but delayed it a year for financial reasons) I realized that I ought to have a better plan in place concerning the work I wanted to do during my month there. Last time my big plan consisted of 'doing some portraits'. I had no back up plan in case I began to flounder with the portraits and since that is exactly what happened (I floundered!), I had to scramble to find some other things to do while I tried to figure out which direction to take with the portraits. I don't want to say that my time at VSC was wasted last time, because by the end of the session I had found an interesting path to the work that eventually became the 'People You Know' series. However, I certainly would have liked to have been more productive during that month.

So, keeping that in mind, I put together a few plans; A, B,C,D, and even an E just in case. My slacker days needed to be over and I wanted to really kick some painting butt while I had the chance! At first I considered the People You Know series to be Plan A, the plan I wanted to focus on. But when I got there I started to work on these abstracted paintings right away, they were bubbling right at the surface for me; images I had been thinking about for awhile, a step back into landscape elements, yet also looking ahead to the more abstract images that I am interested in as well.

I took a few small paintings along with me that I did several months earlier and thought were a good starting point:

but despite having those to refer to, I panicked slightly on the first morning in my studio. After seeing things in my head for so long, I wasn't sure I could translate them into something outside my mind. So I spent that morning doing some sketches just to block out some shapes and edges. I do not normally sketch before I begin a painting as I tend to lose my enthusiasm and spontaneity when I get to the actual paintings, however it was the opposite this time. I did a few sketches and immediately got to work on the first four underpaintings:

I was pretty excited about them, but of course my crazy process makes me have to wait for the next step, so while the paint dried on those for the next few days I began work on Plan B (more on Plan B in the next post) and then started three more underpaintings:

While THOSE were drying I went back to the first ones and added the color glazes. The first two were similar (to me anyway) to the paintings I had brought from home which I used as a touchstone throughout my time working on these. So the first two:

seemed just a few steps away from my Horizon Line series, although later on I would learn that others saw them as very abstract and one of the visiting artists said that she didn't even view them as landscapes at all until I mentioned the influence.

Anyway, the next few had borders:

which as I mentioned in a previous post, seemed window-like to me, I was thinking of the views OUT of the barns I paint, or out of my home and studio windows. Dark inside, looking out to the bright day. But as I did the last one in that group:

I used a lighter color in the border and then I thought of the landscape as an image on a wall, or in a frame. So I tried to push that theme in the last group that I did:

One visitor mentioned that the space seemed to either recede or come forward depending on the color of the borders but then was flattened because of the surface marks when viewed at a closer range. I am not sure if that was meant as a compliment but I chose to take it as one. Heh. And I have decided now that I really, really like that element.

The other border pieces seem to fall somewhere in between indoor and outdoor and I think they became more about color:

And with a few others, I decided to toy with placing the landscapes in the border and indicating the interior as a window referring back to the dark windows of my barns:

Not quite sure that I like these as much but it was interesting to try them and I think there is something there to pursue at some point.

And one last landscape:

Well, at least it looks like a landscape to me, heh.

I did these all on gessoed paper and after masking off a one inch border, the actual paintings are 28x22. I viewed these as fairly experimental so that is why I did them on paper and is also why they are now all tucked away in one of my flat file drawers. It also accounts for my amazing lack of creativity in naming them, untitled with numbers were all I could come up with here! But after I finished these pieces in Vermont, I felt pretty excited about the direction as a whole and so I decided to do a few on some smaller sized panels that I had also brought "just in case". Painting on panel always feels better to me than on paper, and working on a smaller scale was an interesting challenge with these as well. So these are 12x6 and 10x8:

and while they have less 'presence' than the large ones, they have a more intimate feeling, not unlike what happens in my landscape/barn paintings when I change the scale.

I am pretty excited to continue on with this series and am planning to do some more, on panel and in some more mid range sizes although Doug says they should just be big! I think he may be right......

Oh and PS. I did a LOT of scratching in the surface of these paintings too. Just so you know;)

The Importance of Being Earnest

2010-02-05T10:37:00.001-05:00

Well, I am finally making some progress with the jpegs of the work I did while in Vermont. The 'Black Paintings' and the 'People You Know' jpegs are finished and I am still working on the large abstracted landscapes. All of the work I did there is proving to be VERY challenging to photograph and I have had to try a few different, and increasingly more complicated set ups in order to get good enough images to format. Bleh, just the kind of crap I hate doing and need an assistant for. heh. Also, I normally document the batches of work as I finish, usually about 5 to 7 paintings at a time and it turns out that doing 37 all at once is very confusing! Deciding how to title them is maybe the worst part of it and frankly I am taking the easy way out on some them. Numbers, baby!

Anyway, I have 14 more to do (see above, while on display in my studio at VSC), so it will be a few more days. I could post about the other projects, but the first paintings I did at the residency were the abstracted landscapes and everything else kind of flowed from those so it seems like I should go in order.

In the meantime, I will blather on about what a great experience doing this residency was. As regular readers here may know, my work has been in flux for the last year or so; I have been trying to avoid totally burning out on the landscapes and barns which account for most of my sales and exhibition opportunities, yet all that has slowed down too, due to the economy. Having extra time to work on other directions has been good and I have tried to take advantage of that but personal issues and my lack of focus and energy have hindered my ability to make much progress. So I have not been pursuing exhibition opportunities because I haven't felt like I really have a strong enough new body of work yet, and I haven't wanted to get new representation based on the landscapes/barns because I don't want to do as many as I have done in the past. So I have been a bit stuck, shall we say.....

However, going to Vermont definitely unstuck me. Having hours and hours and days and weeks of uninterrupted studio time really helped me regain my focus and also my studio work habits. No Facebook (well ok, just a little, but it was very limited), no having to run out and pick up one or more kids, no cooking, shopping, chores, no dogs to let out, no chickens to feed, losing all those distractions for a month was what I really needed. Not that I hate doing those things, in fact I love ALL the aspects of my busy life, but I really needed this time away to focus on developing new work. And I was SO proud that I was able to do that. Sometimes having NO limitations can lead me to flounder, but I had my list of projects that I wanted to pursue and I did it. I worked in my studio every single day that I was there. I was so intent on accomplishing everything I set out to do that I spent one of the last few days seriously annoyed with myself for not getting the last painting finished. Yes, crazy, I know.

It was wonderful to be immersed in art as well. There were so many activities planned for us, such as visiting writer and artist talks, resident slide/jpeg night, resident writer readings, open studio nights. All of these events were optional but I attended everything since those are the sorts of things that are really lacking in my real life. So it all just fed into my studio work even if it took time away from it too.

And having feedback from others was also extremely valuable. The visiting artists were very encouraging and constructive and I also received good feedback and observations from other residents, especially JT Kirkland, Nicole McCormick Santiago and Matthew McConville. I had planned to be more social in Vermont (chatty girl that I am) but after a few days I realized that I wanted to be in a serious work mode and pretty much decided to keep my social life limited to mealtimes. Ok, some of those meals may have turned out to be two hours long but whatever. Living and working closely with so many other people can be pretty intense and I did go out a few times, but mostly ended up keeping to myself in the evenings, catching up on my emails and Facebook and working on sketches. It was a good balance, I think, because I still managed to make some very good friends. I will talk more about my lovely new painter and writer friends in a future post.

So now I need to keep the momentum going and I actually have much to do in the coming weeks, all as a result of this one month residency. I have paintings to finish, a website to update, people and galleries to contact, and best of all? New work to continue to develop and explore AND the energy and interest to do so!

Oh and I am totally applying for another residency in Vermont too. Next deadline is February 15th;)

Close Ups

2010-02-02T05:15:00.000-05:00

Well, it looks as if I posted here a few times during the first two weeks in Vermont which is a couple more posts than I specifically recall writing. Something about the water there made me even more forgetful than usual. Heh. And after the two week mark, I went into overdrive in the studio so totally bailed on writing here, although I did continue to update daily on Facebook. So if you keep up on my FB public page you might remember that I totally kicked butt throughout the whole month and did a LOT of painting! It was exhilarating and exhausting and wonderful and I am still trying to gather myself up from all of it.

I am planning to write several posts about my time in Vermont over the next week or so and will certainly include more photos. I am also in the process of photographing the work that I did there, which is proving to be very difficult, mostly because I used a lot of darker colors and they sure pick up a glare, no matter what I do. So it will be at least a few days before I am ready to post the final images of the paintings I did there.

But I have managed to get a few close ups ready and so I am posting them today. And you'll just have to stay tuned to see the full paintings of these lovely ladies........

Halfway

2010-01-18T12:02:00.000-05:00

Ok, here we go. The first body of work I began when I arrived here in Vermont two weeks ago has been really exciting to me. I decided to step back from full on abstraction and I have been making these paintings that have very definite landscape elements, mostly the horizon line and in color choices. I have been playing with a border, which at first felt like a window to me, but it also has a very frame like quality as well. I like the ambiguity of that. I am also doing a lot of scratching into the top surface of the paint, which is barely visible until one is quite close to the piece. The marks are somewhat random, although many of them evoke things like roads, houses, windows and power lines. As of today, I have 10 finished paintings, they are all on 22x30 gessoed paper and I think most of them are pretty successful. Two or three of them are a bit iffy, however if one of the visiting artists were to come in and rave about any of them, I could change my mind. Heh. Me fickle. I only have five more pieces of paper left and plan to do three more of the landscapes and two more Black Paintings. Here are some images of the color landscapes (hmmm, need a name for that series too, I guess). I apologize for the rather bad photos, I haven't yet set these up to take better images and anyway, I didn't bring my good camera, so the 'official' photos may have to wait until I get home. Anyway, here are some images of these paintings, along with a few close up shots:

The landscapes have flowed out of me and so far I usually have a good idea of what and where to go with the next few pieces as I am finishing up the current group (I have been working with these mostly in groups of four). Making those paintings has been a peaceful process; with enough new elements to be challenging yet they are still relaxing to me. Not so with the other things I am working on which all seem to be trying to kill me, or at least maim me. The Black Paintings are in the latter group. Again, I backed up from full abstraction and decided to include barn like shapes in these. I am very happy with what I have done so far, but I have no clue as to what I will do in the next one. I keep hoping that I will wake up in the morning, knowing what I should do but that hasn't happened yet. So I start each one blind, and the images forms while my hands are actually in the paint. I know this is good but it is also a bit unsettling to me. It's not like I am rigid about planning out what is next, but I do like to have some sort of plan that I can either follow or veer away from. However, overall, I think these are successful and I have gotten quite a lot of positive feedback AND one of the visiting artists called them 'powerful'. I have five finished Black Paintings, and three more that need just a bit more work. Those three are nearly entirely black or they have very little contrast, and I am also focusing on scratching into the black, which is a much stronger element in these paintings than in the others. And here are a few images which are are even worse than the others. Pretty much just black!

And the 'People You Know' series is definitely trying to kill me. I haven't done any for about six months and am finding it difficult to just dive back into them. I brought the last few that I did so that I could refer to them, but so far the pieces I have done here are too low key somehow. I can only do one or two underpaintings at most in a day, they are much more intense and I am just wiped out afterward. The color is a bit less energy sucking, but is also the point where everything can go horribly wrong so that stage of the painting is also a minefield for me to navigate. Currently I have five underpaintings, one is finished, one has color on it but is pretty blah. The drawing in the underpainting was lacking and since that really drives the painting, it can be hard to recover....

BUT. The last visiting artist was veryveryveryveryvery encouraging about the 'People You Know' series and told me that I should definitely be showing them. So even though they suck the life blood out of me, I am feeling a renewed energy about them and I plan to focus on them for the next two weeks.

And my last little project here, which is a good one to work on while other things are drying, is all about process. I brought like a million 4x4 inch gessobord squares, well ok, actually a hundred and twenty, but whatever. It felt like there were a million when I did the underpaintings on them! I am feeling like I need to work on my scratching technique since it is becoming a much more integral part of my paintings, so the plan is to make a variety of these small surfaces and do a lot of experimenting with scratching and drawing on them. I will be working on them in between the portraits over the next few weeks.

Even though I was pretty close to burned out on everything when I arrived here (December was SO hectic!) I have managed to get back my painting mojo and have been in the studio every single day. I am really feeling re-energized about my work and where it is headed which is really nice after being in flux for the last year or so. And now the real crush is on, I realized last night that I must do all the underpaintings by Wednesday so that I will have enough time to get paintings finished by the time I have to start packing up (sob).

Sunny Delight

2010-01-09T21:05:00.000-05:00

Today was the first sunny day here in Vermont since I arrived last Sunday. Of course it was about 7 degrees, but whatever. There was bright shiny sunshine!!!!

And as an added bonus, the late morning sun does some very interesting things in my studio.....

Color, Finally!

2010-01-08T23:40:00.000-05:00

Another look at all the black paintings I did the other day:

After looking at them today, I think I will go back into a few of them and reduce the contrast a bit. I think these should be softer, with more greys instead of whites. Still struggling with what the next step should be. I can't seem to sketch or even really picture what I have in my mind. Maybe I will wake up knowing what to do tomorrow morning.

Toady was a really good day in the studio. Still working on prepping paper and just start gessoing some 4 inch square panels for another project that I will discuss once I get it going. But mostly I worked on the first four landscape/abstract paintings that I did on Monday. I added the color and am quite pleased with the results:

And here are some individual shots:

I apologize for the photo quality. There are fluorescent lights in the studio which does very bad things to my color and also I did not bring my really good camera. I should be able to take the tape off on Sunday or Monday and will hopefully be able to get some better shots during the day.

The other underpaintings I did are almost ready for color too and so this weekend will be very colorful in my studio, I think. Might help to balance out all the white going on outside: I do believe it has snowed every single day since I got here on Sunday......

Pictures, Finally

2010-01-07T23:20:00.001-05:00

I am in a different house this time and I like my room much better, even if it is a bit Caribbean-meets-70's-style-princess-bed:

This is the view from my window (there has been a bit of snow here):

I liked my studio in the Wolf Kahn building, so I requested to be in the same building again and I am in the studio right next door to where I was last time. And this is how it looked on Monday as I was getting settled in:

The bridge is being rebuilt so it's a bit of a mess out there right now, but this is the view from my studio windows:

And I also have a good view of the Red Mill which is where the gallery, resident's lounge and dining hall is:

So on Monday I did these four underpaintings:

All are on 22x30 watercolor paper that has been gessoed and taped onto a board. They are part of the abstract series, but I have backed up a bit and am keeping a few landscape elements, most notably the horizon line. Don't ask me why I am going back a bit, I have no good reason other than I just feel like I should. I am also adding a border to some of them which is an indication of a window, of looking outside. I am quite excited about this direction! And tomorrow I will be doing the color on them.

Yesterday I did the underpaintings for two portraits for the 'People You Know' series. I am hoping to do at least ten more while I am here, but they are pretty intense and I can only do a few of the underpaintings at a time.

These are 14x18 and are on birch panel.

Today I did five black paintings and again (also on the gessoed paper), backed up a little bit and decided to include the barn like structures. I intended for them to be more abstract than they turned out to be, but luckily I have a lot of paper and can try again. I actually like these though and think they are a good starting point to somehow express the images that I have in my head.

This is my drawing table, which unlike the one I have at home, I am actually using. I have been making sketches of the images of what I would like to paint, which is also not something that I normally do. Not sure if making sketches is affecting the paintings here one way or the other, but I certainly am enjoying the process of making the sketches. I do not draw with a pencil near enough anymore.

And this is my studio tonight:

I am quite settled in and am heartily wishing for vertical walls to miraculously be in installed in my attic studio while I am gone. Heh.

More soon!

Off I Go!

2010-01-02T09:45:00.000-05:00

Well, I do believe the phrase 'insanely busy' could apply to my life for the last few weeks. Not sure what I was thinking when I scheduled a month's residency AND a solo show for the same month, not to mention the one right after the holidays.

But it's all done now, the show at The Harrison Gallery is up, the opening is tonight and I am all packed and ready to go to Vermont. The holidays were great, I managed to get all the important stuff done (baking cookies!) and the kids had fun. I even spent all of Christmas Day reading and sleeping on the sofa! VERY decadent.....

I did slack off on a bunch of things that I meant to do, like cleaning my desk, catching up on the laundry and paying attention to my poor neglected blog here. I had a bunch of posts that I had planned to write but never got to them. I also had planned to gesso all the paper and small panels (for a little project I have planned) that I am going to work on in Vermont, but time ran out and so I will be prepping everything there. A few other things have fallen off my list too and unfortunately Doug has had to do everything in the last week, not fair at all as he will really be doing EVERYTHING for the next month. But he is being a good sport about it and I am lucky that he is completely supportive of my work. I will have to make things up to him when I get back February. Heh.

And right now my plan is to write here every few days or so about my activities at the Vermont Studio Center. I wrote quite a bit about things there when I did the last residency so will try not to duplicate myself too much. Maybe more pictures this time; I will have a laptop that works and it will be much easier to load photos. I am sure I will also be updating my Facebook public page too.

I make no promises though! I might just fall off the internet entirely for a month while I hunker down and paintpaintpaint. Well, probably not but whatever. Sounded good, right?

And PS. For some reason blogger will not load a photo for me today, it won't even give me the loading page. You'll just have to make do with looking at my show preview (link above).

Utterly? Really, I wrote UTTERLY????

2009-12-27T20:49:00.002-05:00

Ups and Downs, 2009, Oil on Birch Panel, 8x10

Well, in order to tell this story properly, I must also admit to having signed up to receive google alerts whenever my name shows up anywhere on the internet. Actually this is just for professional reasons. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being self absorbed and wanting to find out who says what about me. Heh.

Mostly though, I get alerts about basketball players (some kid named Travis Helgeson is a mighty fine player) in the midwest, teachers who speak up at their school district's board meetings and then finally the occasional update of a blog who has my link on their sidebar. When it gets close to a show that I am in, I tend to get more alerts; the gallery's press release in newspapers, 'what to do this weekend' bulletins boards and maybe an article about my show. And then every so often I get an alert when another blogger mentions me, which is of course, always fun and flattering.

But recently I got an alert that made me turn about 50 shades of red. Some of you may recall my blathering on and on about Joe Fig's excellent book, Inside the Painter's Studio a few months ago. Which, by the way, I still love and am still rereading sections of it every so often. I wrote this very gushy, oops, I mean enthusiastic post which turned up on the book's publishers website as a review!!!! Good grief! I would have written something much less foolish and embarrassing had I known that anyone out there would be paying attention. And while I do stand by everything I said about the book, I might have gone a tad bit overboard when I titled the post "I Am Utterly In Love". Sigh.

However, I must say in all seriousness, that I am quite happy to have been included in this group of fine reviews. Princeton Publishing has put together a wide variety of reviews including those who can write about art and art books with depth and understanding. Including, hello! Artnews!

Um and then there is me.....

I think I should be putting together a writing resume now. Bwahahahaha!!!!!!

PS. And I am very happy that Joe's book is doing well, it just went into a second printing. Awesome!

A Few More Additions

2009-12-23T12:50:00.004-05:00

Barn Near Patterson Road Road, 2009, Oil on Cradled Panel, 4x6

Well, today I got nine unsold, small format paintings back from a local gig, so I just added them to my sales blog. Last ones!

The half off sale was more successful that I ever imagined, in fact I was pretty much totally ill prepared for it! First I messed up the paypal code on all the entries, then I didn't add the inventory section on all of the posts so that some of the paintings sold twice before I caught it. I would like to thank those (and you know who you are) who graciously agreed to buy a different painting than the one they initially chose. But once I got that all straightened out, I think I managed to get the shipments out pretty quickly and safely and hopefully to the right buyer. Heh. Still have a few more in the pipeline and plan to get those out next week. Anyway, thanks so much to all of my lovely readers/buyers/friends, I really appreciate that so many of you want to live with my little paintings.

So it turns out that I also greatly miscalculated just how busy I would be at Christmas, while also finishing up work for a solo show (to be delivered on December 29) AND preparing for the month long residency in Vermont (leaving January 3). Good grief, someone remind me of all this next time I overbook my life, k? I might finish the last of the paintings for the show this weekend, and today Doug is in the city picking up an order of panels for me, which will all need to be prepped before I leave for Vermont. I am also planning to do some work on paper, so I need to gesso those as well. But I am trying my best to at least take a two days off from the studio; tomorrow and Friday (well, unless none of the kids want me around then I might sneak upstairs and apply a coat of gesso or two). Tomorrow is cookie day, we are going bake a zillion cookies and even if it kills me, I am going to sit on the sofa in our living all day on Friday, reading and relaxing!

And I actually do plan on posting again soon (well probably) as I have a bunch of links I want to share. In the meantime though, I hope you all have a great holiday!!!

It's a Big Sale!

2009-12-16T22:20:00.000-05:00

Ok, here's the thing. I don't have much storage. We live in an old house with NO CLOSETS and my studio is in the attic which has knee wall storage, suitable for packing materials, mouse poop and bins of my kid's artwork, yarn, and photographs. I have one flat file drawer, maybe two tops, to keep the small paintings in that are on my sales blog. Both drawers are now full, and I would really like to clear them out so that I have somewhere to keep the new small format paintings I plan to paint as soon as I get back from my artist's residency in Vermont.

So it's a good time to move these little ones along. And to smooth the way, I have decided to offer all the paintings on the sales blog at half price until January 1. A big discount, it's true, but I really want them to find good homes and I also really want to paint more, so it's a win-win for me.

And if you hurry and buy something, there is a very good chance you will have it before the holidays. Everything is just sitting here, all ready to pack up and ship out. The mouse poop costs extra though. Heh.

The Winner!!!

2009-12-07T20:44:00.001-05:00

Ok, so last year Ginger got to choose the winner of the birthday contest and this year I gave the other kids a chance to take a turn. No one was interested, I don't think my little contest here is cool enough for them. Heh.

So the ever enthusiastic Ginger was more than happy to do it again. Clearly she has been working on her presentation skills and here she is posing with the bowl of names:
I am thinking she could be a star! Or at least get a job on a game show!

Anyway, here she is mixing up the names:

No coaching by me, folks, Ginger intuitively knew to look away while picking out a slip of paper:

And here is the winner:

Jamieson5!!!!!!!!!

I am very excited that Shari won, she had her students do a project based on my work awhile back and well, clearly she has awesome taste in art, hehe. The kids did some cool work which you can see here. So I think it is fitting that she is going to be able to receive a birthday gift from me. Email me, Shari!

I would like to thank EVERYONE who left a comment and birthday wishes, especially Gary. By mentioning that I am still "quite a FOX", Gary qualified for TWENTY entries in the drawing, but alas he struck out anyway, hehe.

Also, I would like to reiterate that I am truly not upset or even mildly freaked out about being another year older; it is simply a bit surreal to be this age on the outside (which, except for my hair color, is ALL natural, baby!) when on the inside I feel about 20, at most. My life gets better each year, and I have been incredibly productive for the last 15 years, what with birthing babies and painting and all, so I have nothing to complain about. Just a little tongue-in-cheek joking about the march of time around here, that's all.

I promise.

2nd Annual Happy Birthday to Me Contest

2009-12-05T23:18:00.000-05:00

Layer Cake, 2009, Oil on Panel, 6x4

So I decided to have a birthday gift contest again this year and when I went to get the link to last year's post I reread it and well, it was an excellent post and I am not sure I can top it this year. Heh.

There are a few differences this year however; I am turning 45 (bleh) and my crabbiness is not because of that (well, not ONLY because of that) but because I have been so busy the last few days and am now pretty much totally freaking out about how little time I have left to finish work for my upcoming show, there are a zillion events written on the calendar for the coming weeks so I am going to have many interruptions to my studio time. Arghhh!! Plus I had to do a lot of driving today in our first real snow this year, without any warm up for it, like flurries or even sleet; just a full out snow with slippery roads and everything.

But anyway.

This year has been a bit tumultuous but things are really good now despite looming deadlines, and I am pretty sure that I will be having a very nice birthday on Sunday. The snow makes it seem as if we live in a winter wonderland, I am pretty sure I will be getting some cool gifts from the kids and even though I have to work for a few hours tomorrow, I actually consider that a gift as well.

So same terms apply as last year: leave me a message between now and midnight tomorrow (December 6th is the magic day:)) and say Happy Birthday to me. We'll put all the names in a hat or whatever, and announce the winner on Monday. The lucky duck may choose a painting, any painting, from my sales blog and I will ship it right away. Um, in the US only, sorry (still crabby).

Oh and to all my lovely Facebook friends: ya gotta leave your comment here, not on my FB page. I made that rule up just now!

Pet Picture Day

2009-12-04T18:16:00.000-05:00

I was thinking I really should make an effort to post again this week, and since every day is pretty much the same lately; computer, painting, laundry, cooking, driving to town and back again x2 or even 3, I decided that a pet update is always a good diversion from mind numbing sameness. Heh.

So a few months ago, I noticed that our little pumpkin was getting chewed up, and assumed it was some sort of critter that was getting at it at night. Then one day I noticed the chickens were crowded around it and well, duh! They had been pecking at it and we all had a good laugh about it after we realized that carving pumpkins would not be necessary this year:

They didn't bother with the big pumpkin until they had decimated the small one. Now I wish I had charted their progress on it, it has been pretty interesting to see how much pecking they can do in a day.

I am liking these big gaping holes that they have fashioned in our home grown pumpkin:

Nice form, don't you think?

The flock seems to be doing pretty well since our rooster died, and it seems that this scrawny old hen is the replacement 'rooster':
I see her rounding everyone up, clucking behind the stragglers and she is the last one to go into the coop every night. She is always very talkative with me and comes rushing up to me everytime I come outside. No attacking, just chit chat. Still miss the rooster's crow each morning though........

The weather here has been so mild that the dogs are still spending a lot of time outside each day and I got this shot of the dogs just as the sun was hitting the porch the afternoon:

Mr. Wilson is about 2 1/2 now, but it seems like he will forever be a puppy. Even though he only weighs about 4lbs, he is brave enough to pick a fight with any or all of the cats, who each weigh about 15lbs. Mr. Wilson pesters them, they smack him, he whimpers, then starts it all over again. Silly pup.

The cats are just cats. Fat, sleepy, hissy with each other and did I say lazy? I can't get them to do anything around here (although they are good at keeping track of all my shipping supplies):

They do like to find all the sunny spots:
warm places (this chair is next to the fireplace):
and guess who is coming to dinner?

So there you go, folks. Pet update, another post in the can, oh and a gratuitous image of a painting that I just finished for the upcoming show in Williamstown.
Turning At The Edge, 2009, Oil on Birch Panel, 18x24

And PS. Keep an eye out for my Happy Birthday To Me post this Sunday, k?

Crazy December

2009-12-02T10:24:00.002-05:00

Good Bones, 2009, Oil on Birch Panel, 16x16

Crazy, wacky, insanely busy week (and month) here. I am really feeling the show deadline looming and am freaking out about whether I will have enough work ready. Three weeks seems like a long time but we all know how fast that is going to spin by.

I am also thinking a lot about my upcoming residency at the Vermont Studio Center in January. The show opens on Saturday, January 2 and then I will be driving to Vermont the next day. Some very precise military-style logistical planning may be necessary for that weekend........

Like the last time I went (almost two years ago) I am planning to work on painting things that are NOT landscapes! I want to focus on the 'People You Know' series, the abstracts, and will maybe make some collages while the paint is drying.

Unlike last time, I have few concerns about sharing a bathroom, meeting people, making friends or finding someone to sit with at dinner. Turns out I am still quite sociable in the right environment and certainly being around other real live artists will help facilitate my chattiness! I still have occasional contact with a few people who work there and I also look forward to meeting fellow artist/blogger J.T. Kirkland, who will be doing a residency as well.

So currently the plan for the rest of December is to have a birthday, paintpaintpaint, have Christmas, deliver paintings for the show, prep all the panels I need for the residency, pack up a month's worth of art supplies and clothing, have a kiss or two with Doug on New Year's Eve, and attend the show's opening reception before leaving for a month.

And that list does not make me feel tired at all. Heh.

The Fine Art Department

2009-11-23T09:56:00.002-05:00

White Barns, 2009, Oil on Cradled Panel, 6"x6"

In the spirit of the holiday shopping season (which I hate more and more the older I get and yes I totally get the irony of that; Doug and I both make things that we ultimately want people to buy, bleh!) I am going to post links this week to fellow artists, starting with a few of my projects. Much better than shopping at Walmart, dontchya think????

So last year around this same time, I got a few artist friends together, chose a few others from a surprisingly high number of submissions and put set up The Fine Art Department (you can read my long drawn out out story about how that came about here, hehe).

We got some good attention, a bit of press and pretty good traffic and sales all things considered (remember, stupid economy). Things quieted down after the holidays though and the site sat rather quietly throughout the year, getting only a few hits here and there.

This season everyone is still into the project however, and so we decided to update and make another push. Most of The Fine Art Department artists are on Facebook now and so we also have a FB page this year too. That in particular has been a lot fun; over 700 hundred fans have joined since we published the site on Thursday night! True teamwork, baby! We sent out invites to our own FB friends and I have to admit to being really excited about so much activity there. Um, and very obsessive, I probably refreshed our page 47,000 times this weekend, watching the numbers go up!.

Anyway, FB attention aside, and I know I am totally preaching to the choir here, but I greatly encourage you all to consider purchasing a piece of art as a gift for a friend, a family member or oneself (my favorite thing to do;)). Most artists struggle even when the economy is good. And of course the stupid economy still pretty much sucks so every little bit helps us to continue to make our art, buy supplies, support our families etc.

The Fine Art Department is also working along with The Small Art Showcase (a few of our artists overlap) and Whimsical Paintings, so go on and visit them as well. There is some wonderful art to see and to buy. Have fun!

PS. The Fine Art Department is not currently accepting submissions.

Getting There

2009-11-19T08:15:00.004-05:00

So I am plugging away in the studio, trying to get some paintings done for the show in January. My goal was to have all the landscapes and barns finished by the end of November so that I could spend the month of December focusing on the six portraits that will also be included in the show.

This plan is working out ok, although I do wish I were a bit farther along with the landscapes. But I have had a ton of distractions and interruptions, so all things considered, I am actually doing ok.

I am feeling a bit strapped for subject matter though, I haven't had the chance to get out to do some driving and take some new reference photos. The other day I went through the box of photos (yes, photos that were on FILM and then DEVELOPED! It's like they are antiques now!) that contained images that I took during the first year or so that we lived here. I found some images that I can use, but what really struck me is that it seemed obvious that I had never seen a tree or a field before we moved here. Heh. It seems that I took hundreds of pictures of fields with trees in the back......

I am also a bit strapped for barns as well, but that is easily handled. I haven't painted our barn for awhile and Mother Nature was kind enough to give me a very atmospheric morning in which to get some good reference photos.

Gotta love her!

The other side of the barn: