Painting, Painting

Under the Sky, 2008, Oil on Gessobord, 5x7
Well, so far this vacation has passed in a somewhat boring haze of nothingness. The kids are watching just a bit too much tv, we are all staying up too late and sleeping too late in the morning and are wasting away much of the day as a result. I have been trying to get some painting done and I could, since no one is bugging me too much up here in my attic hideaway, however I have been caught in the web of my computer and so not much has been accomplished.

But today I turned on the lights at my easel, which nearly always gets me going. Then I set up my paints which is the real clincher! I have finished one of the the portraits that I started before all this holiday silliness began and I am planning to do another one after I post this.

So you'll forgive me if I go now. My paints are calling me, and I am anxious to put some color on my crabby old lady portrait. I will leave you with this link though, to a couple of self-described old ladies whose blog I came across during the recent election. I have been enjoying every word they write and I can only dream of being so blunt when I am their age. Warning: If you are a Sarah Palin fan or a George Bush fan, do not go there - you will become upset, I promise. If you are NOT a SP or GWB fan, go forth and enjoy!

A Quiet Day

Well, pretty quiet around here today. Ginger, who keeps us all either hopping or needing a nap (the above photo is what she looked like all day yesterday:)) is at a friend's house. The rest of us are at computers or reading or playing with our new toys.

Doug gave me a small book of figurative paintings by Egon Schiele and I have spent a lot of time going through it today. The book has many images that are not included in my other book of his work and many of them are very suggestive. Um, which I like. Not what I like to paint particularly, but I usually appreciate it in the work of others, nonetheless.

If I can manage to get myself up out of my chair (you can't believe how many cookies I ate yesterday and they are affecting my ability to to walk around without bumping into stuff today, heh) I hope to at least tidy up my studio after the whirlwind of gift wrapping swept through it in the last few days. Mentally at least, I am feeling like getting back to making some art and if I can get my body to cooperate it would be great to have a relatively clean studio. Maybe I'll turn up the volume on the stereo, that always helps me feel motivated.

Oh, and someone asked me awhile back about my underpainting process (sorry can't recall who right now, and I blame the cookies for that too). I came across this post written a few years ago (what? I have been writing this blog that long?) and thought it was a good and still relevant explanation of how I begin my paintings.

Christmas, Then and Now

Me, Christmas, 1978

When I was in 7th and 8th grade, I lived with my best friend, and her mom and step dad in a trailer park mobile home community (the best one in town-it had it's own pool! inground, no less!). Tammy and I had been friends since 5th grade and I had spent a lot of time at her house. When my home life got bad it was easier to stay at Tammy's and slowly it became a permanent situation, at least for a few years.

Tammy's mom, Ginny was a crabby, smart alecky woman with a heart of gold. She usually had Tammy and I figured out pretty well, when we were up to something. However, I don't think she ever did find out that the gum on the couch cushion we got in huge trouble for, wasn't really gum. We felt lucky though that that was all she thought it was, because actually the cushion had begun to burn while we were burning paper and candy wrappers and that kind of stuff (we were experimenting, did you know that plastic candy wrappers burn incredibly fast?) in a plastic ashtray that was sitting on the cushion (we were very smart too). We did manage to get the soot cleaned off the ceiling which may be why she never put the melted spot on the cushion and the loss of one of the ashtrays together.

Anyway.

By Christmas 1978, I felt like a part of the family. They were very generous with me, an interloper who had practically burned down their trailer the previous summer and by about a week before Christmas there were a lot of presents under the tree for both Tammy and I. Of course we were warned heartily to leave them alone and we did for awhile. At some point though, it all became too much for us and one evening when Tammy and I were home alone we very carefully opened all of our gifts. We didn't really unwrap them all the way, we just peeled the tape on one end, just enough so that we could see what was inside. This was still very dangerous though because Ginny had eyes like a hawk and would be able to see that the gifts had been tampered with from across the room. However, I was an expert at snooping (one of my lesser known talents) and making it look like I hadn't been there. After we jumped around, thrilled that we had gotten such great gifts, I very carefully taped all the packages back up. They looked perfect! We couldn't get them all back the way they had been stacked though and certainly she would notice that. I don't recall for sure but I imagine we concocted some sort of story probably involving Tammy's siamese cat, Cindy and how she had messed everything up while batting a cat toy around.

Ginny didn't suspect anything until Christmas morning when we were less than enthusiastic when we opened all of our gifts. The excitement had worn off and we just weren't that good at pretending. She wasn't exactly mad, but she sure didn't let us forget about it either!

Of course I immediately felt guilty, and soon, I realized how much fun and anticipation had been lost. And it was a few more years until I realized how disrespectful our sneakiness, had been towards Tammy's mom. She and her husband went to a lot of effort to buy us what we wanted, not to mention that they had to count every penny, and now that I am a parent, I understand how much of a let down it probably was for them to not be able to see how excited we really were about our gifts.

Because my favorite part is seeing how excited the kids are when they open a gift, I have avoided this particular situation with my own kids mostly by hiding everything until Christmas Eve, when I would spend almost all night wrapping them and putting them out just a few hours before they would wake up. They really haven't had the opportunity to sneak a look or slit open the ends of their gifts until this Christmas. We put out the gifts TWO days ago! I told this story (um, leaving out the part about burning stuff in an ashtray on the sofa) and explained that they weren't allowed to touch anything, that there was an "invisible fence" around the tree and that I would know if they breached it. Of course I wouldn't but like Ginny, I have made enough lucky guesses over the years that they do believe my story about the eyes in the back of my head. Well, my youngest daughter does anyway.

So this holiday was even more exciting than in the past even though we cut back drastically as far as gifts go. But that didn't matter, the kids were simply giddy with anticipation and spent much time excitedly guessing and discussing what their gifts were. We really threw a wrench in the works too, by not putting a name on the largest gift, Ginger pestered me relentlessly trying to get me to tell her whose it was OR what it was.

I imagine they will have to learn this lesson for themselves someday, but then again maybe they will just take my word for it and not do what I did.

Uh-huh. R-i-g-h-t-t. And I really do have eyes in the back of my head too.



Oh and this is the first year since moving into this house that we have had the tree in a decent spot, a living room! Since this living room was always my studio, we always stuck the tree in a corner of the very small tv room and one year it was in the dining room. It's like we have a real house now....

Go Vote!

Just a quickie here (heh) today. The above painting has been nominated (Tina Mammoser nominated me, thanks Tina!) for Best Portrait by a Female Artist in 2008 over at Making a Mark. Voting begins today, now and continues until December 30, and so if you have a few minutes maybe you can put in a good word for me. But if you see something you like better, go ahead and pass me over. I won't be offended at all, it's just an honor to be nominated. Really, I mean it. Anyway, I think I may be voting for the guy with the hair over mine. You'll see what I mean when you get there.

Hope you all have a nice day. I will be posting tomorrow too, probably with some sob story about Christmases past. In the meantime, I am off to bake about a gazillion sugar cookies.

Last Minute, As Always

Colorful Trees, 2008, Oil on Gessobord, 6x6

Posting is going to be a bit challenging for me in the next few days. And probably a bit challenging for you readers as well, particularly if you are waiting to hear some art talk. Not much going on in my studio, well except my beloved project table will be getting some use as we all take turns wrapping our gifts tomorrow.

I am clinging to the desperate hope that I will in fact break with a 15 year tradition and actually begin wrapping gifts BEFORE 11pm on Christmas Eve. I tried to get to it all day TODAY, a whole day and a half in advance which seems ridiculously early, I know. But I kept getting distracted by things like shoveling a path in three feet of snow in order to get water to the chickens (theirs freezes at night), making cookie dough, starting a really hard puzzle with my daughter (we got the edges put together, then managed to get exactly two more pieces in the whole rest of the day), doing a bit of last minute shopping in town, and then making homemade pizza for dinner.

Now I am writing this post, and thinking that I COULD wrap all of the gifts tonight, if I stand up and start RIGHT NOW. On the other hand I am also noticing that my chair is pretty damn comfortable and it sure is nice to be sitting down.

Crap. I have a feeling that tomorrow night is gonna be a late one.

Still To Do

Restraint, 2008, Oil on Gessobord, 5x5

A bit of a hectic day here today and even though I am really trying to get some more small paintings done, and posted to my sales blog, I think the upcoming holidays are about to completely take over my studio time.

My husband is Jewish (he does Hanukkah with the kids) and I am not particularly religious, so our holiday is fairly simple, no visits by or to extended family (we don't have much extended family actually), just a lot of cocooning in our old farmhouse in the country. We play games, do a few jigsaw puzzles, we bake a lot of cookies and have at least one nice meal IN THE DINING ROOM and WITH A TABLECLOTH and using the CLOTH NAPKINS. That is a VERY EXCITING event! We probably give a few too many gifts to our kids, although we have been scaling back as they get older and also because are officially sick of injuring our feet by stepping on small toy parts on the floor. We usually give them art supplies and crafts kits (no beads anymore, there must be 5000 beads now caught in the cracks between our wood floor boards), books, music and maybe some electronics for good measure.

Even though we keep things simple, stuff happens and I get a little rushed anyway. At least most of the gift shopping is done now, but I still have to:

1. Decorate the tree. The girls will help but I need to put the lights on it first, which keeps getting bumped to "tomorrow" each day.

2. Put together some sort of holiday card. Last year I got to it so late that I just emailed a photo and Christmas letter to everyone, which was nice actually. So will do the same this year, but am not so sure it will go out BEFORE the 25th. So what else is new?

3. Totally bailed on putting up Christmas lights on our porch. Which is stupid because we had our porch rebuilt last year and lights would look awesome now on our perfect new structure, unlike how they used to illuminate every detail of the old sagging porch ceiling. Am going to try and put up a wreath though. I might be able to handle that although it seems a bit pointless at this late date. Maybe I can get one on sale.

4. I have to go do a big grocery shopping so that we can bake cookies. HA. Like we will get to baking cookies before the 24th.

5. And the rest of this week is littered with the all important hair appointment, other errands, another swim meet 80 miles away, a birthday party at the roller rink and who knows what else will crop up.

PS. Number 6 is to keep posting every day this month even though clearly I have little in the way of art to talk about. Will keep trying though, 'k?

The One Where I Keep Plugging Away

My Blue Barn, 2007, Oil on Panel, 9x9

Well, I think that posts may be a bit more infrequent here in the next few weeks. Everything is converging in the next week; the holidays, finishing up the work for January's show plus a myriad of other activities such as holiday chorus concerts and plays, mundane but necessary paperwork, and putting together the dang family holiday card! At this point I will just be happy if I can get the stupid things postmarked by the 24th. Of course, WE have received many holiday cards from people who are either super organized or who have nothing else to do in November but to mail out their cards. Heh. Anyway, I humbly bow down to all of those people.

However, this is the second year that I have had a solo show scheduled for January and while at first I wasn't too thrilled about the fact that I would have to work pretty hard well into December, there is also a silver lining to that. It has forced me (and our family) to simplify our holidays quite a bit. There is less time for shopping for things that the kids don't really need (or will even look at within a month), I have learned to hand over decorating the tree to the kids, who fully enjoy that process and although I like putting lights up on our porch, in the last two years I have found that Christmas still comes whether they are up or not.

The activities we have kept up with are the ones we all can pitch in and do; baking, making gifts, wrapping them, attending the concerts and other activities and cleaning the house. Well, maybe not that last one so much, but if there is ever a shot that I can get the kids to pick up their stuff without asking twice, it is now.

And while the ever increasing commercialism and consumerism makes me more uncomfortable each year, it has not escaped my attention that both Doug and I are totally contributing to it by creating things that are intended for sale. I am not sure I can ever fully reconcile those opposing beliefs, but I hope that by simplifying our lives we can somewhat offset what we do for a living.

It's the best I can do right now.