Getting There

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:

A Nothing of a Post

Right Through There, 2009, Oil on Birch Panel, 12x16

Sorry, folks, this is a real nothing of a post today. This last week was almost a complete wash in my studio. Yesterday, our oldest son, Kurtis, moved into a residential home on the campus of his school and my studio time was interrupted almost every day by meetings, packing, shopping etc. And during the few chunks of time that I did have to work, I found that I was too distracted to do anything that looked even remotely worthwhile.

So I have about five underpaintings sitting here, waiting for their color and I will try again first thing Monday morning. I am posting a larger version of a 6x6 painting that I did a few weeks ago. While I do often paint the same barns and scenes many times, I usually take some time between each version. However this time I found myself working the same images simultaneously. Not sure if I will do that again, or maybe I will do it all the time; it seemingly made no difference in the outcome (other than that both pieces are pretty similar in color), both paintings are fine, the small one sold right away on my other blog (thanks Bridgette!)and this one was shipped to The Harrison Gallery> last week.

Ok, well, looks like I managed to eke out two paragraphs about nothing much today. Huh. How about that!

A Few of My Favorite Things

The ever so famous Anonymous left a comment on a recent post a few weeks ago. I started to write a response but naturally it got long and I decided I should just save it for a post. So this is the comment:

What is your favorite entity to paint - as in abstract, people, landscape, other - keep in mind that IDKS ;-)

Is painting (water color, acrylic) your favorite medium, or do you prefer, for example, charcoal drawing?

It seems relevant to talk about this a bit right now, since my work has been going through some pretty big shifts in the last year or so. I have had to really had to think about what to focus on and when, whereas previously I just allowed the art to just burst right out of me without too much thought and planning. I think that was a reaction to not having had the chance to paint for so long.

Anyhoo. Favorite subject matter. Back in college, and even before that, I liked painting a variety of things; still lifes and other objects, portraits, cityscapes. I think the subject matter that I logged the most hours on though, was the figure, both clothed and unclothed. I would say that the figure was my most favorite and least favorite.

Interestingly, the images that I NEVER worked on before 2003, was abstract or landscapes, and definitely no barns. I was a city girl through and through in college and ick! barns? No way!

But life happens, I moved away from the city, and I grew and changed as a person (I hope) and when we moved to the country I finally relaxed my ridiculous mindset and began painting landscapes AND barns. And while that work has thus far been my most successful work, and I feel at peace while creating it, I couldn't help but wonder if I would be able to get to those feelings with subject matter that I felt that I was better at. So a thousand landscapes later and circling burn out on them, I decided to try some new things, which were actually the old things mostly. Tried to do some still lifes, but found no real connection there, did a few cityscapes and although the results there were better, I just felt kinda bleh about them. Kept meaning to go back and do more but just didn't have the interest. All of this was just going around what is probably my favorite subject (to finally answer Anonymous's first question).

The figure.

And like in college, it has been something that I feel like I have to do, I love to do but it also just kills me, it's so hard. So still, it is my favorite, but kinda my least favorite too.

I am not sure where the abstracts fall. I am enjoying them, they are fun and challenging and I am learning to see things differently and I appreciate being able to do that. I don't see where they are headed, but I plan to keep going with them. And right now I think I envision them as the calm between the storms of painting figures and portraits.

Favorite medium? My favorite medium is oil, hands down, no question. It used to be acrylic until I tried oils in college and I have been in love with oils ever since. I despise watercolor, mostly because I am not good with it. Heh. For drawing, nothing beats a good graphite stick and eraser. And I love/hate charcoal. I love what I can do with it, but I hate the feel of charcoal in my hands, scratching on the paper which seriously gets my sensory issues going. And not in a good way either. I have dabbled in other mediums like pastel (sensory issues here again), collage, guoache, but none of them stuck. I am hoping to work with encaustics someday, but am holding off until I can really focus on them since I have a feeling that they will completely envelope me;)

So there you go. I would like to add that I have finally learned that nothing is written in stone anymore. Twenty years ago if someone had told me I would be making a living (sort of) by painting landscapes and barns, I would have smirked and referenced flying pigs. So I guess it is entirely possible that in twenty more years I could be painting the still life in watercolor with maybe a few pigs thrown in as well.

Ya just never know.

Local Barn Update

Last August, I wrote about one of my favorite barns and how it was being taken down. In September, I wrote an update, showing the progress of the demolition.

I took some more pictures in October:



And now nothing much has happened to the structure for at least two months, which is understandable, given our winter weather so far. However, if they wait until spring, it may just come down by itself.

This is what it looked like today:


And here is a recent painting I did of the barn:
Before It Was Gone, 2008, Oil on Gessobord, 5x7
A before shot, of course. This is a very well documented barn!

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.

Coming Down

Morning Light on Red Barn, 2005, Oil on panel, 8x8

On Saturday, the kids and I were driving down the road to town and as we passed one of my favorite red barns, I noticed that there was some work going on. After a closer look it became obvious that the barn was carefully being taken down, probably so that the wood can be reclaimed. That part is good but I am devastated to lose another of our area's barns, one that I look at and enjoy every time that I go past it.

Of course I understand why barns come down, they become unstable, and can be VERY expensive to repair properly. Steel buildings can be built for a fraction of the cost and go up quickly and easily. Our beautiful 100 year old wood barn just sits, needing much work to make it useful again, but it will be quite some time before we can afford that. In the meantime we just hope the thing won't burn down or fall down. Anyway, this fellow did build a new barn, which is very nice even if it is lacking in character right now. I suppose it will have more as the years go by.

I have painted this barn quite a few times over the years and now it will be one of the first images I will do when (and if!) I ever get back to actually painting again. And I am going to photograph this barn as it is dismantled (maybe there is a project there?) then I will definitely take a few days to drive around central NY and take photos of more barns. I have wanted to do that for the last year or so but this event has really spurred me on to do it soon.




Route 26 Barn, 2004, Oil on panel, 6x6,

The Family Farm

Soft Sky Over Farm, 2008, Oil on Panel, 12x24

My mom's cousin Judy, who lives on the same farm in Ohio where my grandmother grew up, sent me a bunch of photographs of their beautiful barns. Since I have become intrigued lately with painting clusters of barns, I was immediately interested in using her photos as reference. Her photos were beautiful, great light, great composition, but it turns out that they were maybe too good. I found it to be very difficult to translate them, perhaps because they weren't my vision in the first place.

I had suspected this may be the case for quite awhile. Doug takes pictures and even they they are almost exactly the kind of landscape imagery (and sometimes he'll even take a shot of a barn that he thinks I might like) that I like to paint, I have not really felt interested in using his photos as reference. And I don't take great photos or anything, in fact the worse they are the better they are to work from. Guess the painting just works better when it's my view that I begin with. Thank goddess!:) It is all me after all.

But.

I really wanted to portray the family farm and because I like to think that I can transcend the reference if I have to, I decided to work from Judy's photos. The first few paintings I did crashed and burned, the third one was good and was included in a solo show, the next one was ok, and then the one pictured above worked out pretty well. It is my favorite so far. I struggled with the sky/treeline relationship, and after wiping off the paint a few times, I finally covered the whole area with green and then worked back into the sky with the blue. Normally I paint in sections but I liked changing it up and I am pleased with the soft and moody sky here.

I guess this painting represents quite a few lessons learned.

Odds and Ends

Well, we are entering the home stretch here. I have been working a lot of hours in my studio, since I found my groove with the figures. I have taken many work in progress photos and I want to talk about it all, but I think it may have to wait until I get home. There are many events in the coming week and between those and savoring my remaining carefree studio hours, I am not wanting to sit down and write it all up quite yet.

One thing I'd like to mention about the figurative work though is how much fun I have had taking pictures of many of my fellow residents for use as reference in future paintings. I felt really awkward about it at first but I asked Amanda (my studio neighbor) first and her pictures turned out great so I kept asking others to come to my studio so I could photograph them. Everyone has been really excited about it and in exchange I am offering them a small study of their image when I get to it. Um, which could be in years rather than weeks.

And I did do a rather kick ass barn in the last few days. I had brought a large panel along and after realizing that I wouldn't be using it for any of the figures, I decided to do a barn, based on a photo I took a few weeks ago up here. The snow scene turned into a nice summer setting and can I just say what a pleasure it was to work on a large panel without having to move everything around first? I need me a new studio at home.

Also on Wednesday night, my jpegs were shown at the resident slide night. I was incredibly nervous about speaking about my work in front of so many people (standing in the back of the room, in the dark helped), but it actually went pretty well and many people commented on how much they liked my work AND how well I speak publicly (don't let that get around). It was just my usual gallery reception spiel, the one I am used to doing in front of only a few people at a time.

Anyway, I can feel that it is time to go home soon-I am having thoughts of what re-entry might be like and of getting back to my plain old life.

But for tonight there is still art. I am off to a presentation by Carole Robb, and then off to a party at one of the houses. It will be an early night though as I have my studio visit with Carole at 8:30am tomorrow morning. Those who knew me in my past, younger life would be shocked to hear about my non-partying reputation here. Heh. I am planning to be in bed by 11pm and even that may be too late.

More in a few days.

A Near Miss

Head on View, 2007, Oil on Panel, 8x10

I seldom get sick anymore. The last time I had a fever/flu (I don't do flu shots) was about 12 years ago and it's been almost three years since I have had a cold. So when I began to feel funny a few days ago I didn't pay any attention to it at all, just thinking I was tired. But Wednesday night I started having chills and sweats, coughing and had a low fever.

While trying to sleep that night, I worried about the timing of this. Months ago, I had made all of the travel arrangements for this weekend's trip to Pittsburgh for the solo show opening reception and the way I felt on Wednesday, I was pretty sure that I would not be able to go. The thought of getting on an airplane seemed downright painful.

BUT, on Thursday I didn't feel worse and in fact after taking it easy all day and loading up on tea and Vitamin C, I felt much better last night. So even though I don't feel 100% Doug and I are going to leave this afternoon after all.

When it was looking like I wouldn't be going, I felt really bad about the thought of missing it. I mean, if you're sick you are sick and standing around talking and shaking hands with people isn't a great idea, but I feel a lot of self induced pressure to be at the openings, especially the receptions for a solo show. I feel grateful to the galleries that are giving me these exhibition opportunities and the best way that I can support their efforts, besides supplying fab work, is to be at the openings.

This does raise an interesting issue though. How to handle last minute situations that arise right before an opening or event? When I started all of this I often had "anxiety" dreams, where I would dream that I simply forgot to go to the event. As if! Things do come up though and I guess I have been lucky so far that nothing in my personal life has interfered with the art stuff.

The painting I have posted today is one that will be on display in the show at Boxheart (the opening is this Saturday, November 17, 6-9pm, for those of you who may live in the area) and I wanted to mention that it's an unusual painting for me in the sense that it is a straightforward view of a barn. I have tried these sorts of views and compositions before but they have always failed miserably. They just look extremely flat and static, so I usually add a little tilt or change the angle slightly. For some reason, however, this one just worked, in fact it's one that just painted itself.

The One Where I See the Future

On my way back from Roxbury last Sunday, I drove past a number of barns and other structures that I have painted in the past. I always have my camera with me and whenever I go anywhere, I usually take at least a few pictures to use as future reference. This is a photograph of a building that I took last June.


A couple of weeks ago, I finally pulled it out and thought I'd have a go at it.

I liked the cupola and in the past have tried to include them in paintings with little success as I have a tendency to get too fussy with them. However, this time I thought I'd include it, but as an element that is no longer really there. So this is what I did:


Now for the eerie part. On Sunday when I passed the building I nearly drove off the road. No cupola!


The building is being gutted and possibly demolished, but on the very day I saw it, it looked a lot like my painting.

You can pretend that you hear the theme from The Twilight Zone now.

Imagine

Used to be Bigger, 2007, Oil on Panel, 18x24

I have been playing around with some alterations to the barn imagery. It began with an aerial photograph of our property that hangs in our kitchen and which I look at often, enjoying the history of our property.


It was taken in the fifties or so, back when this was a real working farm. The photo was given to us by Clyde, who grew up in this house and who now lives about a mile down the road. As you can see, the barns in the photo are pretty extensive, however now, only one piece of that whole structure is still standing. The other structures are long gone and a newer silo is now standing next to the remaining barn. But in the last few months I have become enamored with the "ghosts" of the barns in our community that I see everyday. I've gradually been looking through my barn reference photos with a new eye, imaging what may have once been there. And since I alter so much of the reference that I work from, it hasn't been a big stretch to also imagine what might have been surrounding the structures that I like to paint.

So I have been occasionally adding scratched in barns or houses, clunky additions, and structural elements to some of my barn paintings, portraying what may have been, what is and what could be there as well. This is the first one I did and while not a barn, it was an encouraging start. I have been pleased with the continued results, and several of these pieces, including the one above, will be included in my upcoming show at Boxheart Gallery in Pittsburgh. The scratched in "ghost" elements are actually very subtle and the challenge is to get the painting and composition to work, whether one can see the additional elements or not. That takes a bit more planning than I am used to doing, but I am enjoying the challenge.

Barn Lady

A funny thing has been happening lately. I have been the recipient of many photos of barns. No less than three different people have recently sent me photographs of barns that they have taken. Surely everyone who knows me, or reads my blog must think of me when they see a barn now. Heh. Clearly I am now the Barn Lady.

Actually I love this. I have hundreds of pictures of barns that I have used for reference but even though I usually see at least one barn wherever I go and always get pictures, I can't be everywhere. And there are an incredible number of barns in communities throughout this country, not to mention the whole world. So I truly appreciate the thoughtfulness of those of you who have taken the time to send me photos. New reference is always good and when it comes through someone else's eye, it's even more fascinating to me.

And to the rest of you - bring it on! I would be very happy to see more barns (or multiple barns) and many of them will surely find their way into a painting. So go ahead and email me jpegs if you like.

The above barn is my great Aunt Minnie's barn in Ohio. Aunt Minnie (sister to my grandmother and to my Aunt Esther, mentioned here) was the best aunt ever, full of life and spirit and endlessly interested in everything that I did. Our yearly visits to her home were a bright highlight in my childhood and her confidence in my abilities was of such value to me. She died almost eight years ago at the age of 95 and I still think of her often. I am not sure if the barn and property is still in her family, but this will always be Aunt Minnie's barn and I am sure it has more than a few stories to tell.

Barn Talk

The Clearing, 2007, Oil on Panel, 24x24

Since my mother died last August, I have been lucky enough to get back in contact with several members of our extended family. We have all had some lovely communications about our family members and shared past and it has been very comforting to me. Turns out this blog has been a good way to connect and to stay connected.

One of my mom's cousins, often emails me to remark on something I have written here. Judy married my grandmother's brother's son, which makes us cousins twice removed with with some kind of lemon twist. Heh. My grandmother used to have a great understanding of the intricacies all of those relationships; to me we are all just cousins. Jim and Judy live on the same family farm in Ohio that my grandmother grew up on in the early 1900's, along with her three sisters and brother. When I was young, I loved to hear the stories of their childhood and their life on the farm (I should have paid more attention to the farm part!). Their lives were incredibly difficult on a daily basis but they all grew up to be very strong and educated adults and knowing that part of my family's history helped ground me when I pitied myself and my own disrupted childhood. My mother, sister and I traveled to Ohio quite often in the late seventies and visiting the farm was fascinating. I loved to imagine the events that my grandmother had described and to envision where they must have taken place in the house, barns and land. I was envious that I couldn't live in a place that I felt so connected to through my grandmother's stories. Perhaps that is why things feel right for me now, here on this farm.

But I digress. Judy recently sent me an email which was quite possibly the best compliment anyone, but especially her, could have given me. It read:

I enjoy your paintings, but being surrounded by old barns, I just marvel at your love of painting barns. I have been looking at my old dilapidated barns, trying to find what kind of inspiration you get in painting these barns.

Jim keeps fixing and slapping paint on these old barns every summer. I'm sure he probably has that same feeling about barns that you do, of course in a different way. You certainly paint beautiful pictures, and I must say, I look at barns a little differently. I even notice barns I never noticed in the neighborhood before.

To have any kind of influence whatsoever on how a person sees a barn, especially a person who has been around them nearly all her life, is just the most incredible feeling ever. Inspiring others is not what I have intended with my barns but is instead one of the loveliest and most meaningful surprises that I could have as a painter. Those surprises don't come everyday, but when they do, wow!

And after I thanked Judy for such a compliment I did what any pragmatist would do, I told her that I would LOVE a few photographs of those barns to use as reference. I am always looking for good barn references.

Happy Birthday

So the last bit of super duper good news that I have to tell about the opening at Salt Meadow Gallery concerns yet another awesome sale.

During the opening I spent quite a bit of time talking with a really nice woman named Drew. She is the lucky gal who came in just as I put a mini quiche in my mouth and even laughed at my silly joke about it. She and her husband own one of my paintings, and I met them at the opening last year as well. Drew was very complimentary about the colors in the work in this show and seemed to especially like this piece:


I didn't think much more about it, because, well, that's what happens at openings, you get a lot of admiration and compliments. Visitors are usually drawn to a few pieces in particular. And then they leave without buying the piece they so admired. And I totally understand this by the way. I love to talk to artists about their work also and sometimes just viewing a piece can have a profound effect on me, but for whatever reason, I don't feel like I need to have the piece. Sometimes I do, not certainly not always.

Anyway, I digress. A bit later in the evening, Glenn was talking to my husband. They seemed a bit louder than usual and Doug kept looking at me and laughing. I thought maybe I had something showing or spinach in my teeth, but then he left the room without saying anything. Glenn motioned me over, pointed to the beautiful glass vase next to the above painting and asked if I thought it looked good there, or something along those lines. I looked and could see, behind the vase, the label for the painting with a big, juicy red dot on it! Holy cow!!

After I finished swooning, Glenn gave me the scoop. Drew's husband had decided to buy the painting for her birthday, which is this Friday. He knew she liked it and she didn't know he bought it for her. Her husband then joined us and we chatted about it for a bit. Drew, who had been waiting upstairs to leave, came down to fetch her husband and Glenn immediately did a little hop to his left to block her view of the big red dot on the label, while we all chatted a bit more. As we said our goodbyes, Drew's husband gave me the high sign not to say anything about the painting, which was really cute. They left without her suspecting a thing. (at least I hope she didn't)

Besides the fact that I am extremely happy to have sold this piece, my biggest yet (48x60!), this was such a sweet gesture from a husband to his wife and I am honored that my work just so happened to be the gift.

Off for the Weekend

Pink Barn in Back, 2007. Oil on Panel, 18x24

Doug and I are leaving tomorrow to spend a long weekend in the city. So today I am busy getting everything organized for the kids and the babysitter, grocery shopping, and finishing up a few paintings that I will be delivering to the gallery while we are there.

Today's image, shown above, is based on a house and a barn that we saw in New Hampshire last summer. I have painted it several times with quite different results. Below are two of them, painted last fall.

See you Monday!


Cast Shadow, 2006, Oil on Panel, 16x20

New Hampshire Barns, 2006, Oil on Panel, 12x16

Best Friends Forever

BFF, 2007, Oil on Panel, 24x24

I have been wanting to put purple and red together for quite some time. While I use each of those two colors often, I have rarely put them right next to each other. It can be a tricky combination as I have found. Many previous paintings have been scrubbed back down to the underpainting because I couldn't get the right red and the right purple AND get them to harmonize rather than clash or cancel each other out.

The underpainting that I posted yesterday was a good candidate as it only has two structures. Last week I found out how difficult it can be to coordinate three different colored structures so I wanted to stay away from that particular challenge this time. I started with the red on the back building and then added the purple on the front structure. After I added that, I decided that the Perylene Red wasn't right and I went back to my trusty Cadmium Red Deep. I still wasn't sure about the colors together but I decided to add the surrounding colors and then reassess. So once I added my worker bee colors, usually blues, yellows and greens, I thought the purple and red were fine. But the roof on the front building, which was initially dark purple, bothered me and so I partially wiped it off. Once I did that the light purple side of the building really popped and gave the piece a different look. Not better necessarily, just different. So the roof probably could have gone either way, dark or light but I decided that I liked how the light roof affected everything else and I am calling it finished.

And because I am pleased with the results I will probably beat this combination into the ground for months and months. Heh.

PS. You'll have to take my word for it that the colors are working together. It's kind of a dark day and it was tough to get a really accurate photograph. I'll try to get a better one later.