Score!

Well in between last week's exciting weather, family stuff and my own laziness and lethargy, I have managed to finally get some work done on those figurative underpaintings that I did forever ago.

At every stage of these paintings I have stressed and worried and procrastinated. Mostly because I was afraid of the challenge. Not only about making a bad painting I think (I do crappy paintings all the time!) but because I feel really attached to this project of interpreting the people in these old photos I have been collecting. I want to do those people justice, yet express myself as well. Not to mention dealing with all the technical issues of painting different imagery on different supports with a different palette (sort of, I admit to using a similar palette as I do with the landscapes). Anyway, kind of a tall order and I think it is understandable that I went a bit off the deep end during this process.

I struggled a bit with the first one (above) that I added color to. Mostly with the color of the background and the texture of it (it has kind of a wallpaper-y pattern in it, not visible until one is right up close to it), first it was a lighter green, then I darkened it (it doesn't look quite so dark in person) and while it looks better, I am still not so sure about it. I might go back into it. It is also a tighter image, mostly due to the underpainting that I cleaned up maybe more than I should have, which kind of bugs me now. But I learned a lot with this one and there are parts of it that I am very happy about; her face, the sweater and her odd pose (the photo gets partial credit for that), so it was an important piece to get through. Also the beauty of working on paper is that I can crop the image if I want. And I just might do that, I like this crop quite a bit:


Then yesterday, at the end of the afternoon, I just walked right up to the easel and knocked out this painting:

As I mentioned in a previous post, I loved the underpainting and felt pretty sure that I would ruin it with color. Then it sat for a long time in my studio while I convinced myself that I was definitively going to mess it up. However, I am actually thrilled with how it turned out (it was so hard to photograph-must I add that it looks WAY better in real life?) and it is just what I had hoped to do with this imagery. I was particularly worried about the polka dots on the dress, because I left it very loose in the underpainting, knowing that it would give me trouble at the color stage. And it did when I tried to make it a multi colored pattern. After I scrubbed that off though and made it a solid red dress, the energy of the pattern is still quite visible:

Through the whole thing, I had to remind myself not to overwork and to let the underpainting do most of the work and it helped too that I had to stop and go have dinner with the kids. Stopped me from my own obsessive compulsive behavior. Heh.

Here are a few more close ups:




So I am back to being pretty enthusiastic about starting some more of these and have been spending the day choosing photos to use as reference and preparing more paper. I will start a whole new batch of underpaintings tomorrow.

PS. No official titles on these two yet, but they are 22x30, in case you were wondering about scale.

Halloween Plus Snow

The Field Down the Road, 2008, Oil on Gessobord, 6x6

Our power came back on last night and we are very happily back at home, trying to catch up with things. I wasn't going to post today but well, here I am anyway.

I think that it is entirely possible that I brought on the snowstorm and the resulting power outages by painting a series of winter landscapes (see one above). I am very powerful you know, heh, and clearly I was tempting fate by painting pictures of the snow in October.

So tonight we will have the distinct pleasure of trick or treating in snow (even though it is 50 degrees today and sunny today it won't melt the foot of snow we got!). This year things are a bit different since our older kids are going off with friends and then on to sleepovers, while we hang out with our youngest daughter and her friends. And since she is diabetic now, guess what lucky couple will be on their own sugar high this evening?

Just exactly what both of us need. Heh.

Power to the People

When the power went out on Tuesday evening it was no surprise. Happens fairly often out here in the boonies, and not necessarily when there is bad weather either.

We stumbled around the pitch black house trying to find flashlights and candles, then eventually went to bed, pretty sure that the power would come back soon. It was charming and cozy and we didn't mind. But when I got up at 6am, it was looking pretty bad outside and I figured I better find out about if it would be a snow day. No power though, so I bundled up and went outside to sit in the car to listen to the radio (did I mention the phones were down too?) in the dark. Very surreal. School was cancelled so I went inside and went back to sleep for another hour.

We spent the day at home, eating the perishable food from the fridge before it, well, perished and I felt thankful that we had decided not to buy a quarter of an organic cow. I sat next to the fireplace and read a book for most of the day, which was nice.

However, all of the quaint charm of pioneer living began to wear us down by the end of the day (our water pump and furnace requires electrical power so few toilet flushes were in order, let alone showers, ewww) and Doug drove down the road to find a signal for his cell and make arrangements for a hotel room. He got a great deal at the local Howard Johnson's, which is pretty much empty this time of year so I went with the kids while Doug stayed at the house with our oldest son and the pets.

No one can tell us when our power will be back on, and thousands of homes are affected in the area. I dropped the kids off at school and a bunch of us moms commiserated in the parking lot and discussed where where to get the best hotel rates and how long it took us to cry "uncle" before fleeing our dark and cold homes. We lasted longer than many. I then secretly yearned a bit for a house in town.

Oh and did I mention that we will be shopping for a generator next week?

So this pioneer girl is going to take a break from blogging for a few days, but will be checking emails so sympathy will be much appreciated. heh.

Early Snow and the Old Studio/New Living Room

It looked like this out front this morning:


Not too bad and the kids went off to school. Halloween decorations clash a bit with the snow, but there you are.

By midday it looked more like this:

and then it got even worse. The kid's practices, football games and boy scout meetings were all canceled and everyone made their way home eventually.

Our internet was down most of the day, but just popped back in so my productive hours of painting are probably over now. Heh. And even though we had a few flickers, the power did stay on all day so that was good.

Anyway, in other super exciting news (I think I need to get a life:), our new rug finally arrived yesterday and now the old studio/new living room is pretty much finished. Still trying to scrounge up some art to put on the walls (I hate empty walls), but it is a very comfy room and I plan to take a day soon and just sit on my new couch and read. Well and probably nap too since I can't seem to read without falling asleep anymore. But I digress....

This is actually the second rug we bought for this room. The first one (you can see it here) was beautiful and I loved it. But it arrived before the furniture came, and then the deadline to return the rug passed too. So when the furniture did arrive, of course, it did not work well at all with the rug-the warm tans in the rug made the neutral sofa look slightly pink. Subtleties that could not be seen on the computer screen while ordering, alas, and the kind that drive me crazy. It was close though and I tried really hard to like the combination, but after a few days I knew that the mismatch was always going to be the first thing I would see in that room. I am obsessive like that. So I managed to get the return deadline waived, sent back the old rug and ordered a different rug, with fingers crossed. I had a good feeling about the new rug though, especially because it was cheaper than the first one. When I unrolled it yesterday, the room looked perfect, the choir sang and the whole world seems right again....




See how easy I am? It only takes eight gallons of paint, brand spanking new furniture and two rugs to make me happy. Oh yeah and a new studio which made all of that possible. Ok, so maybe I am a bit high maintenance....

Sorry, I am Talking Politics Today (edited to add10/27/08**)

I have managed to get some work done in the studio over the last week, but in between that I have also become completely obsessed with the stories about Sarah Palin and her supposed faked pregnancy. A very juicy story and it would pretty incredible if any part of it turns out to be true. And I don't mean incredible in a good way either. Anyway, this blog has had much of my attention as the author seems pretty reasonable and brings up some good points.

It's not like I was going to vote for McCain/Palin though, as I am a proud liberal and registered democrat, but the lack of judgment by both of them, personally and politically, is breathtaking. I am in awe that either of them have gotten this far.

Perhaps it has to do with people like this:


I hope that Obama wins (although I still wish that Hillary was on the ticket) and I think he will, barring, you know, theft of the election by the republican party. However, I fear for him if he does win.

**It has come to my attention that someone who "used to like my art" visited the site I linked to above and left a troll-like comment. At the risk of giving this person too much attention, I would like to say publicly, first of all that I think that that is very rude behavior and second of all, that I am totally fine with someone changing their mind about liking my work just because I like to read what may be considered trash. I also enjoy reading through the National Enquirer on occasion too, just so you know. So if this is a problem for anyone, please feel free to go away. I am just a girl here, talking, making art, and expressing a few opinions here and there, and if that bothers anyone, I understand. But just go away then, there is no need to bug me or the people who do like to visit my blog, ok?

Art in the Family

Fall Away, 2008, Oil on Gessobord, 5x5

So with two parents who are artists* all of our children have varying degrees of and interest in art. Our oldest son, who is handicapped and is also adopted has seemingly picked it up by osmosis. Language isn't his strong suit and he never participates in any art projects at home. However he does wonderful things at school and we are always blown away by whatever drawing or painting or sculpture actually makes it home.

Our 13 year old son has probably been the most consistently interested in art and has been telling us that he wants to do to art college for years already. He loves pottery and I have a whole bookshelf full of clay bowls and sculptures to prove it. He has recently been really into throwing pots, however that's been on hold during football season. He doesn't draw too much anymore but once in awhile he does something wonderful, he did this sketch of Penny when he was about nine:

When he was younger, he went through reams of paper, writing and illustrating the adventures of his character FUNNY BUNNY in comic book form, based on a beanie baby that someone gave him once. You know, Funny Bunny Saves the Sun from Blowing Up, Funny Bunny vs. Godzilla, that sort of thing. He has also played around with computer animation and you can see a few of them here. (obviously he is not 21, shhh)

Our oldest daughter, who is now eleven, has not done much in the way of drawing or painting over the last few years, although she has been doing a lot beading and other craft projects-things she and all her friends enjoy. This year she began middle school and has simply fallen in love with art, thanks to the awesome art teacher at her school. She is so excited about everything she is doing in the class and has also joined the school art club (she also is in the drama club and plays clarinet and will be starting piano lessons soon). I bought her some pastels and she has been busy doing all kinds of drawings in her sketchbook and then last night she did this self-portrait in watercolor:

I may have to get some tips from her on the portraits I am working on.

Our youngest daughter, Ginger, LOVES painting and her artwork has graced a few of our holiday cards. She is incredibly enthusiastic about everything and I suspect that she might make a very good assemblage artist someday, based on the fact that she is a total pack rat and is always hot gluing stuff together. In the meantime, she is also involved in music, plays percussion in the fourth grade band, and does lovely, very elaborate drawing of animals and ladies with up-do hair styles.

Of course art projects have always been a big thing around our house, but the kid's interest in them comes and goes. We don't push it either way and just try to go with whatever they are into at the moment. We have a lot of art on our walls, which we enjoy but the kids don't seem to pay much attention to any of it. Maybe it is soaking into their sub-conscious though, I hope so. And my older daughter has been spending quite a bit of time lately looking through my art books.

I love though, that they all have a wide variety of interests, with art being just one of them, which is something I didn't really have when I was a kid. I was sort of pegged as an artist when I was young, which was fine, I knew that I wanted to be an artist when I was five, but when I made noise about doing other things, like writing or being a special needs teacher, I didn't get any encouragement. I grew up believing that I was good at only one thing, something that I have tried to change as an adult, by learning how to do other things (um except for math, which I suspect I will never figure out). So that is a lesson learned and while our life clearly revolves around art, we make sure to encourage and support our kid's other interests too.

However, I can't say that Doug and I won't be doing more than a few happy dances if anyone decides to attend art college.

*Doug has a BFA from Tyler in photography and sculpture. He is an artist at heart, and his interest in photography led to holography, a field in which he was very successful, both as a creator and and in the business side. But he will get back to his own art someday, I know.

More on Underpaintings

I did another underpainting on Friday (see close ups below). Even though I am excited about doing these I find myself procrastinating terribly when it comes time to actually sit down and get started. To the extent that I waste almost the entire day and then have to work quickly in the last part of the day before my mom thing starts up again. At first I wasn't sure why I kept doing this, I love doing the underpaintings no matter what the subject is and usually I love how they turn out. But doing them is intense and while it is exhilarating it also requires much energy and I am always drained after. It's all good of course, but I think the intensity of all that scares me a little.

Doug and I have spent a lot of time talking about leaving the underpaintings as is or pursuing the color. As I said before he thinks I should let them be, but I am feeling this intense need to apply color. I love doing the underpaintings more than anything, but I really need the challenge of painting in color too. Making the underpaintings would be fun, but too easy, I think, and while that is tempting I know that ultimately it wouldn't be very good for me or my work. So I am pressing on and will try to not mess these up.

Anyway, we did come to one conclusion. Hello! I can still do more underpaintings anytime, even of the same images, over and over if I want (I am the artist, I get to do what I want) in which case I would do some things differently. More darks, more lines, more randomness. So things are good, either way.

And I just wanted to thank everyone who commented on my last post about dwindling sales. It is comforting to know that it isn't just me being affected and inspiring to hear how we are all trying to find ways to get by, whether it's by painting larger or smaller or selling in different venues, or using the downtime to develop new directions or to build up inventory.

Despite the difficulties now in selling art, I am still trying my best to not take a wrong turn here out of desperation and to (hopefully) keep my dignity. Well whatever dignity I still possess, of course. Heh. That's all relative, I suppose.


I am really proud of this polka dotted dress:

and it is a good example of how I would handle it if I weren't going to go back in with color. This area will be tough to handle and I have no idea how to do that right now. I know that to add color later, the underpainting should be more refined, but I just couldn't help myself here and I left it the way I liked it.

I am Choosing to Look at the Bright Side

Storm Clouds, 2008, Oil on Gessobord, 4x4

My sales have slowed down considerably since June when my NYC gallery closed. In fact, September was the worst month I have had since I began exhibiting in 2004, with only one small painting selling from a gallery. Since June, two more galleries that represent me have closed and sales of my work are way down at all of the others. As I have said before, I do not take this personally, I know it's the economy. I am not established enough for my work to be viewed as an investment, and my prices are too high to be considered an impulse purchase.

I have mixed feeling about all of this. I can't say that I don't miss selling my work, I love the feeling that people like a painting of mine well enough to pay money for it and then live with it in their home or office. I really love that and it is a big part of the satisfaction I get from painting; that other people like what I do. Maybe that is politically incorrect to say if one is an artist, but I don't care.

So now, though, paintings aren't selling and I have some options (luckily I do have options because while my income is useful, our family is not completely dependent on it, thankfully:), most of which are a lot of fun. So despite feelings of unease about my "career" and where it's headed, I am also very thankful to have this time to reassess things. I am trying to develop new work, taking a much needed break from painting landscapes (I was edging close to burn out on those after painting so many, so fast, for years), yet I am able to go back to painting on a small format just for fun, and with a new vision of painting landscapes, all of which is very exciting. Although I haven't yet, I can do other things that interest me and that have been on the back burner for so long, such as drawing, collage, and working with encaustics. I am also taking my time in considering which galleries to stalk pursue and am holding out for one or two that will advance my career, not simply move it sideways.

There are some drawbacks to this silver lining though, the main one being that I don't really have any deadlines. I don't handle self-imposed deadlines well, and without constraints, I have a tendency to flounder a bit, and I certainly have been doing that. But for now I am relatively disciplined and am managing to be fairly productive.

This is a worrisome time for all of us. I can easily get myself so freaked out about what may happen in the future that I become immobilized. However, I just try to do what I can today, and remind myself that things are ok today. And today I have things to do. There are always things to do, right?

PS. But don't think for a minute that we haven't hashed over a few alternative plans. After all, Doug's company does sell expensive and ultimately unnecessary items (fossils) and while they are still doing fine, there are no guarantees. We have had more than a few conversations about how we could farm our 22 acres full time, pay the mortgage and feed ourselves; all of which will certainly include less art making and way more shoveling shit. Heh.

I Can't Even Think of a Title for this Post.....

Triangle, 2008, oil on Gessobord, 5x7

Hmm, surprisingly, I have very little to talk about today, however I didn't want to go another day without posting so here I am anyway.

I have just been puttering around lately. I have gotten a bunch of paper gessoed, there is a new batch of small paintings in progress, I have shipped out some new work to one of my galleries and have attended many, many, soccer and football events. Ach.

We did have some visitors which is always super exciting out here in the sticks. Even the dogs get really excited about visitors. A friend of mine, Amanda, who I met at the Vermont Studio Center last winter, stopped by on Monday along with her boyfriend. They are checking out grad programs and stopped to see us on the way to Syracuse. So that event necessitated some house cleaning which was a good thing, and then it was great to see Amanda again and to chat with both of them for the afternoon.

I have also gotten back to the figures and portraits. I did this underpainting last Saturday:
The underpainting makes me happy, it was fun to do and I like how it turned out, however I am not so sure that I will not muck it up at the next stage. Guess I won't know until I jump in. Doug has suggested to me that maybe the underpaintings should just be the paintings (with some modifications), and I am taking that under consideration.

Some of you may have noticed the list of my followers up at the top of the sidebar. I was unaware of this feature until I noticed on my blogger dashboard that I had two followers. This little glimmer of attention encouraged me to show off that I actually had two people following me so I figured out how to add it to the sidebar and now there are a bunch more! Most of you I know, but now there are a few that I am not familiar with and I am looking forward to checking in on those blogs. Anyway, thanks for following me. Heh.

Well, maybe something exciting will happen here between today and tomorrow so that the next post might be a bit more interesting. I make no guarantees though.

Sellout

Dusky Field, 2008, Oil on Panel, 5x7

On Sunday I was very happy to see that there was a new post on SELLOUT. It had had a good run earlier this year then sadly went into remission. I left it on my bloglines (I am lazy) and so when a new post came up I saw it right away and I zipped right on over.

The posts have so far revolved around the current economy and how the credit issues are affecting artists and especially emerging artists. Hope you go check it out, there hasn't been too much discussion out there yet about this topic on the artblogs yet (at least not that I have come across).

Doug's Bee Drawing

In a recent post I wrote about painting our new living room and also posted a photo of a few things that we hung on the wall already. Steven LaRose was intrigued enough about one item (the other item was one of his paintings) to ask about it and even drew his own version of it.

So today I am putting up the original and will inflict its story upon you all as well. Heh. When Doug was about four, he got stung by a bee. His mom encouraged him to draw a picture of the offending bee and so this was what he came up with. The lines on the front legs (which I thought were BIG HUGE MULTIPLE stingers) are actually what he thought must be making the buzzing sound. And he did make the stinger pretty prominent, it's on the end of the tail and runs off the page it's so big.

I have always liked this drawing (such great line quality!) and a few years back I had it framed up. Since then, it has always been displayed somewhere in our home, mixed right in with our kid's art and the work by other artists that we have been collecting over the years.

PS. The drawing was done on newsprint with some sort of cray-pas with water. It's held up pretty dang well considering it was done close to 50 years ago and makes me reconsider the stress and worry I go through when working on paper.....

Here Comes the Night

Crazy Fields, 2008, Oil on Gessobord, 6x6

In the old days (before kids/husband/any kind of responsibility whatsoever), I only felt comfortable working in my studio at night, after dark to be exact. When I had to, I could get some work done in the daytime classes but that was definitely under duress. I was a night owl through and through and loved the night. The quiet, the darkness, the solitude, the pool of light at my table, even my scratchy eyes from being awake forever. I loved all of it and always felt as if I did my best work at night.

After the kids though, the nights were not my own anymore. They belonged to crying babies, breastfeeding, changing diapers, a snoring husband and the desperate hope for at least a few hours of sleep. Studio time, day or night, was not an option then, at least not if I was going to raise my kids the way I wanted to so I put it all aside for many years.

When I began painting seriously again, everything was different. I still felt like a night owl, but wasn't anymore. I had started waking up by 6am each morning and all of my activity was during the day; getting the kids off to school, cleaning, cooking, after school kid stuff, etc. By evening it was all I could do to stay awake until 9pm, I think because I was really working against my natural inner clock that wanted to be up half the night and then sleep in a few hours or so in the mornings. But I also decided that if I was going to work, it would have to be while the kids were at school only and that when they were home I was all theirs. This has worked pretty well for the last five years and I have been incredibly productive, even (gasp) making pretty good art in the daylight!

Now though, things are gradually changing. I still get most of my work done during the day (um well, I would if I actually had any lately, but that's a whole different post, hehe) but ever since I have gotten my own studio, which is a bit separate and even has a door that closes, I have been spending a lot of evenings working under my comforting pool of light. Not so much actual painting, but other things, like preparing supports, doing sketches, organizing ideas, etc. and quite often on the weekends I HAVE done some painting well past sundown.

I am totally loving my own time in the studio late at night, still with my scratchy, tired eyes, and cloaked in darkness. I even have some patchouli incense which totally makes me think of college, but mostly helps to get rid of the musty attic/new construction smell. My iPod has made listening to music while painting much easier (no getting up to change the album) and every song I hear now is my favorite. I even love it when Doug comes up and we talk about art while I work. Maybe this is the grown up version of studio time at art school.

I sleep even less now than I used to and although I know I could actually fall asleep at any time, anywhere, each day, I don't. And when evening comes I get my second wind and enjoy my studio time all over again and I marvel each time about how cool it is to have my nights back.

PS. Well I should add that I do go to bed a bit earlier several nights per week now that the TV season has begun. Oops, so much for the love of art. Heh. Sometimes mindless wins out.

The Blues

I have had a few people ask me lately if I have put the figurative work on hold.

The answer is no but it has been a bit derailed by technical issues regarding the supports that I like to work on. As you may know, I love working on panels, specifically the birch panels lately. But they are expensive and even though a crappy painting can be sanded down and the panel can be reused, I prefer NOT to do that if at all possible. And certainly since I am heading off into a new direction here, the odds of dog crap paintings are pretty high. So I decided to use gessoed paper. I used cold press 150lb. watercolor paper at first, but after doing a few smaller paintings, I decided that the cold press surface was really distracting to me. So I ordered new paper, hot press, 300lb watercolor, and then also decided to work larger, so the prep for the large pieces of paper have been keeping me busy lately, along with the small landscape paintings that I have been working on at the same time, and then I had to paint some frames as well. Can I add here again how great it is to have a large flat table to work on? It is awesome to have so much room for these various projects.

Anyway, throughout all of these distractions I have been thinking about how to approach the portraits and the figures, so it's not like I am not not doing anything. It's just that there hasn't been much to show. Heh.

But yesterday I did manage to squeak out an underpainting (ironically it's on one of the first paper surfaces that distracted me so much, coulda been doing these all this time I guess) and at the risk of jinxing the whole dang project I am putting it up here. I am very happy with it but I also fully expect that I will completely wreck it at the next stage. I have been painting glazes over bright red/orange for so long that doing them over ultramarine will surely cause havoc with all my color sensibilities, not to mention possibly making my head explode too.

At least this jpeg will prove that things started out ok, though, right?

Odds and Ends

October Trees, 2008, Oil on Gessobord, 5x5

This is a good day for a few odds and ends. The painting above is from the batch of small paintings that I have been working on and I posted it because it is pretty much how it looked here yesterday. Bright blue sky, vividly colored trees and yellow fields. We tried to get some outside work done but it was actually rather chilly and I ended up inside mostly, cleaning and baking, neither of which I have done much of recently. But the grass got mowed, hopefully for the last time this year, the first batch (many more to come!) of fallen leaves got raked and put into the mulch bin and Doug finally brought down the pumpkins from our garden. This wasn't a very good pumpkin year around here, too much rain but oddly, ours did pretty well. I actually forgot about them-we planted them in the far back corner, then everything got really overgrown and I never even did go back there to check on them. Which is probably why they did so well, no one was messing with them. heh.

So they are out front now and I took a few gratuitous shots of Mr. Wilson perched on the big pumpkins.



And since Ginger is involved in everything, here she is too.



This image of Ginger reminds me of a photo that I recently came across. It's a (vintage) school picture of me in 1974 (when exactly did the 70's become vintage?), in fourth grade, same grade as Ginger is in this year. Slight resemblance, eh?



New studio news: Even I didn't think it was possible to fit one more thing into this room, but I managed it anyway. I decided not to hook up the baseboard heating this year (although I may regret that decision in January) and make do with a portable electric heater. I found a nifty one with enough btu's to heat the whole room AND it has a fake fire? What a find! I was a bit disappointed when it arrived however, as the fire is pretty realistic, well as far as fake fires go. I was hoping for a cheesier display maybe with a spinning paper log or a foil background but I'll have to just settle for improved technological illusions.


And this time of the year always reminds me of when Doug and I met in Philadelphia in 1988. This year marks 20 years for us which strangely seems like forever (almost half my life!) yet it has passed in the blink of an eye. Nothing special in the works to commemorate this anniversary, we are just trying to appreciate each day with each other and with our kids a little more than usual.

Painting the Walls (with a lot of buts)

So my old studio/new living room, as we call it around here is finally cleaned out, painted and ready for furniture. It took forever to find a place for the junkiest junk that I had stashed in there and in fact, more than a few things still are piled on the dining room table.

Initially, I had planned to paint the upper walls the same color that I painted the side walls in my studio, a deep neutral color called Peppercorn. I was so sure that this was the right color I added two extra gallons of paint in the order at the paint store.

BUT.

Then I made the final decision on the color of the furniture, and then I found a beautiful rug and of course neither worked very well with the Peppercorn.

So I drove down to Sherwin Williams and picked out a deep brown, because now I was sure that I wanted the walls to be a dark chocolate brown. Normally I am great at picking out wall colors, when I painted the whole rest of the house, every color was right on. So I was pretty confident that the first brown I picked was the right brown.

BUT.

After I rolled it on the walls (twice, just to be sure), I noticed that it looked a bit purple at certain times of the day. I liked how dark it was but the purple/raisin/deep burgundy thing each afternoon really bugged me. So it was back to my collection of paint samples where I picked out a nice warm brown, a bit lighter than I had planned however there would be no mistaking it for burgundy or purple or anything like that.

BUT.

I was a bit concerned after I rolled it on and then even more so after it dried and it still looked disturbingly like the dog's diarrhea. At this point I had bought 6 gallons of paint and even the kids were starting to make fun of me. So I decided that a good option would be to mix the diarrhea and the deep purple color together. Doug scoffed at me, but I reminded him that I certainly know a bit about color for crying out loud! What does he think I do all day, anyway? So I mixed the two colors together until I got what I wanted. Painted the room yet again and it was so close that I even went around and even painted the edges.

BUT.

After a few days of trying to convince myself that it was right I gave it up. It was a good mix but just not quite right for the room or for the sofa, chair and rug that I ordered. Doug was out of town for a few days that week and I took that opportunity to very quietly slink back to the paint store and buy two more gallons of the darker shade of the diarrhea paint, the one we had once discussed but passed on because we thought it was too dark. I rolled paint on the walls of my old studio/new living room for the fifth time, not counting the two coats that I had done five years ago when we moved in. I did a second coat just to be sure (again) and finished up all the edges. Again. This time though:

PERFECT.

I love it. It is a beautiful warm, dark brown, somewhere between milk and dark chocolate and the rug goes perfectly with it. I have some worries about the furniture, as the fabric swatch and rug combo bothers me a bit, but there is no turning back on that one so for now I am just enjoying the wall color.

And I am also appreciating the fact that the walls in this room are only half walls because of the paneling and so one can roll all the walls in just over an hour. My wasted time seems pretty minimal when you look at it that way, don't you think? Coulda been way worse.


Oh and we had planned to replace the hollow core Home Depot style front door this fall, but that project is on hold and so I think that I will soon be painting that door to match the rest of the trim. The hunter green is just not working for me here. And by the way, anybody recognize the top painting in between the two doorways?

Forget the Economy, Go Shopping!

Curved Line, 2008, Oil on Panel, 6x12

Even though I have had an increase in hits lately (not sure why) today I am going to send you all away to go look at other artist's blogs, specifically ones who sell their work directly to their visitors. These are the blogs I regularly check in on and have even bought a few things here and there.

So here we go:

I have been watching Karin Jurik blog almost since I began mine. I love her work and am in awe of how she works. She has also very gracefully integrated selling her own work with selling her work through the galleries that exhibit her paintings.

I recently purchased one of Carol Marine's paintings. I like how Carol has such a distinctive style but still pushes herself to try different subject matter and compositions. And her palette floors me.

Robert Chunn does wonderful still lifes of some of my favorite objects, boxes and containers. I have tried to paint these sorts of things myself but couldn't get them to click the way Robert does. I love his use of color, it feels almost vintage 70's to me somehow.

I recently added M.Collier to my bloglines and I guess I should know whether M is a male or female but frankly I haven't gotten past admiring the work in order to do any detective work. Anyone know? Wait, don't tell me, maybe the mystery is good....

One of the few artists here that I have met in person is Neil Hollingsworth and as always his work is stellar. He also successfully shows in galleries and his smaller works do really well on ebay. I really need to get me one of Neil's paintings someday.

I found Randel Plowman a few months back and I admit to obsessively collecting his small collages. I think I have at least six of them, maybe more. I have lost count because they are still tucked away so that Doug doesn't know just how crazy I am. Heh. Anyway, Randel's prices are incredible but you have to be fast if you want to buy anything. Someone out there (besides me) is snapping up those bird collages.

Steven Goodman is a recent find and I am so happy to have one of his paintings of a barn. He was also very helpful to me concerning selling my small pieces and I greatly appreciate his help and encouragement with that. Check out his digital prints, they are awesome!

Last July, Melody and her family visited our home last summer and we had a wonderful, but too short evening. I was also lucky enough to see her work in person and I can assure everyone that it is amazing. The jpegs are fine, but they really miss the details and subtleties of how her embroidery harmonizes with the painting.

Diane Hoeptner is rather new to the blog scene, and the first thing I do when I visit her blog is smile. I love her paintings of toys, they have a wonderful personality about them and they all seem to be smiling too. I like her flowers too; they are very bold and colorful.

And if you'd like the opportunity to get a free piece of art, go visit Ellen Sereda. She has a good promo going on right now to introduce her new blog and etsy store. Ellen is wickedly funny and I think she and I have the same life; art, kids and never enough time.

Obviously there are at least a million more that I wish I could follow but there is only so much time in the day and I already spend too much of it in front of my computer screen. And I have surely left some of you guys out so sorry about that. Please leave a comment with your blog links and include etsy and ebay links too, 'k?

New Venture

Horizon Lines (Seventeen), 2008, Oil on Panel, 5x5

Last summer, I set up a blog to show work that was either in a show or in the inventory of the galleries that represent me, as well as to post a bunch of small pieces that were in a local gallery that doesn't keep up with a website. It was suggested to me more than a few times that I should sell the small pieces myself and while I didn't say I never would, I was too burned out at the time to decide how to go about it. But time passed, stuff happened, galleries closed, sales sputtered and I recently decided to go for it.

A big part of this decision was made because I realized that I still love to do the small format paintings. I began painting again by working small (less pressure) five years ago and I guess that it is still in me. It's also a great non-pressured way to keep painting during this slow stretch that I have going. Um, so I don't go cuckoo again. heh. They aren't usually the pieces that gallery want to exhibit, too small, too low of a profit margin, whatever, yet I think some of them are my most successful paintings even if (or maybe because?) they are so small.

And I won't lie, a bit of income would come in handy right now to at least cover my supplies. Not my main motive here, but there you go. It is an element.

So I revamped the other blog and I have posted the pieces that I did a few months ago, which did not sell at the show. I have many more new ones on hand that I will start putting up each day or so after they are finished and photographed. I am also continuing with the Horizon Lines series and #Seventeen is shown above, which has been posted and is available.

The blog is now called "Tracy Helgeson" which is extremely witty, I know. The link will be on the sidebar of this blog, which gets a pretty good amount of traffic and I am just going to start with that for now. I may send out an email with the link, but I am not a pushy salesgirl and that will probably be about it for marketing. Oh, and I might casually suggest at some point in the next few months that these small pieces make really good gifts, but that's it, I promise....

Life in a Small Town

You know you live in a small town when the lady in the ball gown and tiara who is scraping out the monster pumpkin in order to race it in the regatta, is also your next door neighbor, AND was your son's seventh grade math teacher.

PS.Good regatta picture here. I couldn't get a good shot yesterday, it was too crowded!

Ginger, at the pumpkin weigh-in on Saturday.

Ch-ch-changes

My head is spinning a bit today, as there is so much going on in my world, as well as the big one, outside my doors. I won't pretend to understand the implications of the bailout that the government has proposed, but I will say that unless there is an independent, bipartisan committee (preferably NOT politicians) overseeing the bailout money, I would be completely against it. Not that my opinion matters of course (although I have made my opinions known to our senator and congressmen), because if anyone at all had paid any attention whatsoever to what I think, we would have a different president, we would certainly not be at war, all of our most needy and vulnerable citizens would get assistance and respect and that everyone would have the right to marry whomever they'd like. The health care system would be more efficient and would cover alternative health care as well and don't get me started about how ticked off I am about government mismanagement of our tax money.

So anyway. I like what Michelle has to say on this subject and will send you over there and leave it at that, before I really freak out.

And on a not unrelated topic, there have been more changes this week in my little world of business. I have been considering leaving two of my galleries for awhile now, as neither of them have been selling my work for quite some time. I do not blame them at all, in fact both of them have been with me nearly from the start, have been extremely supportive of my work and wonderful to work with in every way. But the prices on my work have risen over the last few years and I guess the last hike really put a wrench in the works. I knew that raising my prices would probably cause me to be priced out of certain markets and that is exactly what happened. Even though I feel badly about leaving (I tend to feel guilty about things that I probably shouldn't feel badly about, one of my cute little quirks) I know it's the right thing to do. They should be utilizing their space for work that does sell in their market and I need to streamline my efforts a bit.

So yesterday, a few days after my communications with those galleries, I received a letter from another gallery, informing me that because of issues regarding their space (losing their lease) they would be closing as of November 1. They were great to work with too (I have been so blessed to work with so many good people), and even wanted my prices to be higher, but the sales never really materialized there for me. I had considered leaving them too, but decided against it because I thought they might have been receptive to my figurative work. Um, provided I get it going of course.

I am now down to two galleries (from nine at one point) plus one local gallery that is only open in the summer. Even though this worries me a bit, I have decided to sit tight for now, keep working and just see what happens. Maybe I'll send out the occasional info packet, as I do have a list of galleries that I'd like to approach, but for now I just want to think about things and digest what has happened to me in the last five years regarding this business. I have learned a lot and want to make sure that I stay on the course that is right for me and my work.

In the meantime, though, I do have a little project going and I will describe that next week. Oh and I'll be watching the news and the debate, even if it does all leave me with rather hopeless feelings about what the future may bring. Ack!

And in keeping with today's title, I thought I'd put up a painting that I did in 2000, back when we lived in Utah and I could only paint during Ginger's nap time (maybe), or when the girl down the street would come to play with the girls. I'd say my work has gone through a few changes since then, eh?

I'm Trying!

Tree on Yellow, 2008, oil on Panel, 6x6

Well, I am trying to get some painting done, but now that I am all into it, things keep coming up to keep me out of the studio!

Today I had to drive to Saratoga Springs to retrieve my work from Gallery 100. They have been fabulous to work with over the last several years and I will miss Deb (the owner) and Nancy (the director). Even though I am sad that the commercial gallery space is closing, I am happy that Deb (the owner) is so enthusiastic about her new direction. And I am sure we will continue our association. You can read more about all of this here.

And this afternoon I must take my daughter to soccer practice, then make dinner, then more work on the taxes. So no time for painting today.

I might be able to work tomorrow, after I pay the household bills in the morning, but then will miss a good part of the day on Friday because of the all important six week hair appointment.

The weekend is totally booked with all kinds of family activities, including our local Pumpkinfest which I wrote about last year and since it's pretty much the same each year, I'll just link to last year's post. Maybe I'll get some time in next week. Although I imagine something else might come up to keep me from the studio on Monday....

However, something good, like winning the lottery would be acceptable. heh.

Still Breathing

Middle of Fall, 2007, Oil on Panel, 12x16

Well, turns out that my exhibiting career does still seem to have some life. The Harrison Gallery has scheduled a solo show for me in June 2009. This will be my third solo show there and also marks an upgrade to a slot in their busy season, summer. The first two had each been in January and both were good, the one in 2008 was nearly a sold out show (and is what paid for my new studio). I would also like to mention that this gallery routinely shows work that sells for $10,000+ and while I am sure not in that range, it is an honor to brush shoulders with those who are. Heh.

Also, Carrie from Carrie Haddad Gallery has given me another show (fourth in five years) next August, also a good time in Hudson, which has a lot of summer and part time residents who come up from the city. She also suggested my work for a Hudson Valley arts publication and it looks like the above piece (which is owned by one of my blog readers) will be on the cover.

And on a side note, I have been asked to have a show in early spring at a gallery in Troy, NY. I agreed to do it, however they have not followed up so I am not really counting on that one happening. It's ok, stuff like that happens every once in awhile, I have learned to never count on anything until there is written confirmation and signed papers and often not even then. Sometimes a lack of follow up is a sign to me that it's maybe not the right thing for me to be involved in.

Even if things are slow right now, I still have to pay attention to the signs and take heed.

Just Like Old Times

Horizon Lines (Ten), 2008, Oil on Panel, 4x6

Well, the last few days have been much more like old times. I now have 21 very small underpaintings on deck, waiting to be painted. I am in the process of gessoing paper, as well as another batch of small birch panels. I also spent yesterday morning painting the edges of the walls in the new living room/old studio. Plus I have had to attend a few school meetings and the elementary school open house, not to mention all the usual driving around-picking kids up from their various after school sports. Good times.

I have also spent much LESS time at the computer which feels really good. And I am cautiously excited about getting back to work and about whatever direction that may take.

So have a good weekend, all. I have to go to a football game game and two soccer games on Saturday, finish painting the living room and also finish cleaning out all my old studio crap, go to the local cider mill apple harvest with the kids, work in the vegetable gardens and stack two cords of wood in the garage (the boys will do most of that).

Oh yeah and finish up my tax info for 2007! Yes, we are expert procrastinators around here....

When You're Right, You're Right

Horizon Lines (Seven), 2008, Oil on Panel, 4x4

Doug has told me more than a few times in the last few months that maybe the reason I have been feeling "off" lately is because I derive a good part of my daily energy from painting (I have done very little painting since early July). I scoffed at this observation at first, thinking that a. he was nuts and b. surely I should be able to function properly and with enthusiasm, WITHOUT painting all the time. After all, I did that for years while I was having babies.

Finally, yesterday, after he made his point yet again, I decided to prove him wrong. I scrounged up a bunch of small panels for a project that I am thinking about (more on that later) and spent the afternoon doing underpaintings. Mostly landscapes, along with a few barns, and in a bit of a looser style than I usually begin with. It was blissful getting my hands in the paint again and losing myself in the process. I can't believe I almost forgot about all that.

Today, I woke up feeling really enthused about everything, working in my studio as well as finishing up some of the other things I have going on such as painting the new living room/old studio (more on that later too). I am looking forward to doing some more underpaintings this afternoon and have decided to get back to my previous painting schedule, even if I don't have events coming up. I need to get back to it and end this strange limbo I have been in. Even if I did enjoy it at first, somewhere along the line it took a turn and I lost the enjoyment of a more relaxed schedule.

So it turns out that my husband knows me pretty well after 20 years and I will be thanking him tonight for his astute observation;).

Randomness

Magenta Smudge, 2008, Oil on Panel, 6x6

I have just been floating along lately, doing a little of this and a little of that. Kind of chipping away at the projects I have going but not really making significant headway with any of them.

The portraits: I have decided to not continue with the rest of the group that I began on the gessoed paper, mostly for technical reasons. The drawings were too light and then when I did the orange and red washes, I could barely see the drawing underneath, making the painting part pretty difficult. The two that I did and posted were ok, because when I did the washes on them, I did some modeling, meaning I pulled out some lights with a cloth, leaving the shadows. That gave me enough to work with when I got to the color. I haven't the faintest idea as to why I didn't do that same thing with all of the drawings.

Anyway, I am waiting for the heavier sheets of paper to arrive and will start again, having learned a thing or two the first time around. Supposedly.

In the meantime, I am doing some small figures on the birch panels, 9x9 squares for now. I am beginning with a pencil drawing, based on snapshots that I have been collecting from estate sales. They are not far enough along to post images of yet, but I will when I make some headway. Even though I am totally enjoying the drawing part, I should have more done by now. But I don't because frankly I am having trouble resisting the lure of my computer lately. Yesterday I spent hours reading up on important topics such as recaps for Swingtown and the new Beverly Hills 90120. You can not believe how fascinating the message boards for those shows are! Why I spent hours reading through them....

I have also become more involved with Facebook, although I still can't bring myself to describe what I am doing every minute of the day. Everyone else seems so funny and witty while mine would certainly be an embarrassment. "Tracy is checking out viewers comments about whether Tom and Trina should give up their swinging lifestyle and have a baby" or "Tracy just went downstairs to let the dog out and is now back at the computer" "Tracy can't believe that Shannen Dougherty is actually back on 90120" Are these lame or witty? Also, whenever I get new friends I spend way too much time stalking them going through their pages, plus I just figured out that a real time sucker is chatting online. On Saturday night I was up until 1:30am chatting! Well past where I turn into a pumpkin with no ability to function properly the next day.

Maybe I should try a bit harder to get a new gallery, or at least a show. Heh. I need something.

PS. The bad news of today-bankruptcies, buy outs, and Hurricane Ike did not escape my notice. It's just that I felt the need to cut into those extremely sad and depressing stories with fluff. Sorry.

Piece By Piece

Thought I'd put up an update on the neighboring barn that is being taken down. I spoke with the owner a few weeks ago and he said he had an agreement with a friend of a friend (that's how it's done up here:) to take down the barn and in exchange he could keep the materials. Pretty good trade if you ask me-the owner is getting a building taken away for free and the guy doing all the work is getting some materials that he can make some money on.

And since just one guy, with help from a friend or two, is taking it down in his spare time, the whole process is going very slowly, which is good for me as I have been able to photograph it at almost every stage. The most recent photo (on the bottom) was taken the day before yesterday.

Gessoing Paper

Turner, pencil drawing on gessoed paper

Katherine asked about the gessoed paper in a recent comment. I would love to offer a great description or demonstration about gessoing paper but to be honest this is the first time I have gessoed paper to use for oil painting. In college I did a lot of experimenting with various materials and supports, but by my last year I had settled on gessoed illustration board, which I really liked and which has held up perfectly after 20+ years by the way.

Anyway, this time around I did some google searches, read through my art materials books and talked to other artists who work on paper. After my head spun around counter clockwise 35 times due to the conflicting information and overwhelming amount of process involved, I decided to keep it simple. I just wanted to do some studies on paper, a surface that would be similar to the prepped panels I normally work on, easy to store, and relatively inexpensive.

So this is what I did: I had a pad of 140lb cold press watercolor paper on hand, so I cut each piece in half and taped them down to my work table. I applied three coats of gesso (it dries very quickly), then pulled off the tape and applied three coats to the other side. The paper was still wrinkled (I will use 300lb paper next time) and so I put a piece of release paper on the surface and ironed both sides. This worked pretty well to flatten the paper and so I taped each piece down to a scrap piece of hardboard so that I could work on a firm surface as well as easily move them from my easel to the drying shelf etc.

I have since found some more recommendations concerning paper. I have a few pieces of this on order and will try it next.

Also, when I was in Vermont, one of the other residents introduced me to the wonders of (Gamblin) PVA Size. She said that could be used to size regular drawing paper, which could then be painted on, even with oil. She used it for her studies often. I tried it while I was there and at first the paper wrinkled like crazy. But the next day it was perfectly flat and so I used it for one of the figures that I did there. I have been meaning to use the sizing again, and now that I have said this maybe I will feel motivated to pull out the bottle and try it again. Not sure how archival working like this is, but really these are just studies and experiments so I am not going to think about the next 400 years for now.

Well, I can't imagine that I have been very helpful here at all! Plenty of you must know much more about gessoing paper than I do so feel free to leave a comment and offer all of us a few more tips. Google searches are good too; "gessoing paper" yielded the most info for me.

Oh and by the way, I use Utrecht brand, acrylic Gesso. Probably not the best gesso ever, in fact it's not even authentic gesso, nor is it oil based which many think should be used when painting with oils (again, my head is spinning), but I like its surface and Utrecht has been my first choice ever since college.

Next!

Becky, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 7x10

Usual busy weekend. Doug and the boys finally got the garage cleaned out (I have been pestering him about doing it for months, actually since last spring which is when it really should have been done) so that we will have a place to store three cords of wood for the winter. I spent a lot of time delivering children here and there, and it was also the first weekend of soccer. I managed to finish up cleaning and organizing the house and also spent quite a bit of time in my studio prepping panels. I am totally loving my big flat table surface. I can prep at least twice the number of panels than I could on the old table I used previously, PLUS there is room for a pile of junk or two as well. Pure luxury!

And shown above is the second portrait that I have been working on. I will probably work on it just a bit more today, and the photograph of it is a bit funky but you get the idea. I am not quite sure about it yet, but I definitely don't hate it either.

A Conventional Clip

Busy day here, but I couldn't resist passing on this link to the best clip ever.

PS. I would post the clip here but have no idea whatsoever as to how to do that and my usual technical guy is probably traveling through Iowa right now.

Studies

Victoria, Oil on Gessoed Paper, 7x10

Close-up

Well, I had a bit of a wrench in my plans to get right to work this morning. Last month I had a falling out with my my mother's husband and while no more contact with him is a good thing for me, the whole thing was nasty (well, HE was nasty) and I really needed to go over the whole thing with Doug, who always helps me put things in perspective.

So I got up to the studio late, around 11am, answered a few emails and well, I admit to surfing around a bit, procrastinating.

Finally I got the paint out at noon and worked until about 4pm until it was time to get dinner started.

The good news is that I worked on one of the portraits I had started over a month ago and I am quite happy with what I did today. I was not sure how I would be handling the painting aspect of these (doing the drawings was great fun!) and frankly I was a bit afraid at first but I just dove in and am feeling pretty peachy about it right now.

Might change my mind tomorrow though, or I might like it and leave it the way it is and just move on to the next study. I am a bit disappointed that I didn't really capture the likeness of Victoria, who was a fellow resident at the Vermont Studio Center with me last winter. But in general, that isn't my goal with doing portraits so I decided not to stress about it. The only reason I did stress about it all was because my agreement with all of the residents who posed for photos for me was that I would give them one of the studies or small pieces that I would do and I can't help myself from feeling that the study at least should look like them a little bit.

And I did learn today that I should make the next batch of drawings darker. I put down two glazes over the drawing and after those it was really difficult to see the drawing underneath, so I practically had to start the drawing all over again, which probably accounts for my having trouble getting the likeness as well. On the other hand it may have been a plus to not have the drawing visible, maybe I would have felt too compelled to stick to it too much. I want these portraits to not be perfect, to not be a traditional style portrait and to be a bit rough around the edges. There are a lot of lines scratched into the paint and I hope to also move these into a bit more abstraction eventually, but despite that I do feel it necessary to begin with an accurately drawn image. Anyway, I began painting another study today (I have six drawings ready to be painted) and will try to finish it tomorrow.

It was beyond wonderful to be painting again too, by the way.

Baby Steps

Horizon Lines (Four), 2008, Oil on Panel, 4x4

By sheer force of will, I managed to get myself going again and get back to doing some creative and productive things this weekend. It wasn't easy and I am still not my usual self, but I am getting there.

I guess this sounds as if I were sick or had some horrible event however, that is not the case. I seem to be the kind of person who truly gets more done when I am overwhelmed with things that MUST be done. Show deadlines help me organize everything else and since I haven't had any of those I have been aimless. And it's not like I haven't had things to do. I have been so busy painting in the last few years that I let some things slide, like cleaning closets, drawers, the garage, the basement. Not to mention that I have done a terrible job keeping up with paperwork and record keeping, and even correspondence. In August I was given the gift of time to do these things and I just couldn't accept that gift.

But I have decided to try and give myself a break. I have had an incredible year, filled with so much activity and a few events that I will need time to adjust to. I had a great show at the beginning of the year, while on the verge of burnout, I went to a month long residency which I loved but also rocked me a bit. I moved my entire studio into the attic (not to mention that I first painted the walls during 90 degree early summer days) and even though I have prepared for one small show in it, the new studio hasn't really been tested yet and a breaking in period is probably still necessary. We did major physical work in the vegetable garden. My daughter became ill. Sales have slowed down and I am really feeling the urge to take my work in new directions which is somewhat frightening even if it is a good time to do so. So many things converging at once, but having nothing that HAD to be done was such a relief, I suppose.

Mostly importantly though, I haven't painted for well over a month, closer to two actually, and Doug thinks THAT is what is making me feel all crazy about all of this. He might be right.

So tomorrow, my goal is to be painting within a half hour of when my kids get on their bus. I do really need to get back to it.

Wish me luck.