Plus.......

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!

Regional Shows and Often Procrastination is Good

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

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.

What's Goin' On?

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!

Vermont Residency Plan B

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

The Importance of Being Earnest

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;)

Halfway

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).

Pictures, Finally

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!