New Landscape

March Wind Across the Hills
2013
15x45
oil on canvas



This piece is about transition and movement.

The hills of Central Massachusetts in March are lit by the much stronger spring sunlight, animated by the still chilly and wild North wind, and colored by dry grasses, patches of lingering snow, and low areas of rich mud.
Green growth has not yet begun to push, but you know it is there, just below the surface.
In a few warm days the whole scene changes, like when The Wizard of Oz goes to color.

So, yes, it is a landscape, but really, it is a lifescape:  transition and movement.

The Journal Series Continues

You Gonna Tell Me
What Control Device I Must Develop To Be A Human?
2013
acrylic
36x36


I am still working away at this found journal series.

See the explanation back on Jan 17, 2013 if you don't know what I am referring to.

 I intersperse this work with oil painting and printmaking because it is so intense and emotionally draining.  Very rewarding, though.

2013
13x10
monotype with oil pastel
















I really enjoy this process of press-free printmaking.
As a matter of fact, I went out and picked up a jar of the oil-based ink in sepia, just like we used in class so I could do more on my own.

Mmm.... More Mixed Media

Sleep Cycle
2013
12x18
monotype with mixed media


This is a monotype print on paper that I later drew and painted into using acrylics, charcoal, pastel and conte crayon.
I love the layering of processes.

Ennui
2013
12x9
oil

GALA Spring Show, 2013

Golgotha
2012
36x36
oil















The GALA (Gardner Area League of Artists) show in Gardner is coming to a close in a couple hours.
There was a lot of great work this time around, and no blackout!

The judges were Karen Hass, curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Greg Heins, fine art photographer, and head of the photography studios at Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and C.M. Judge,

intermedia artist based in Fitchburg, MA.

I walked away with an embarrassment of ribbons, including best in show for this painting.

Invariably, people ask me why it is "up side down".  I always stumble with the answer.
It is just how the painting asked to be painted, which while true, sounds like mystical mumbo-jumbo.

Last night it came to me:  countless people have been crucified or otherwise tortured and put to  death over time, but regardless of our beliefs,  we have to admit that the crucifixion of Jesus turned the world up side down; changing forever the course of human history.

Pictures from the show will be forthcoming on the GALA website. and Facebook page.

Go See Art, Now!

Measurement of the Necessary
2013
40x30
acrylic


















I have been continuing my work with the discarded journal I found many years ago.
This page also contained a list that I loved:
paint
ladder
mIrror   
                                                 
To date I have completed eight paintings in this series.
My plan is to just keep going with it until I can't.
Could be a long trip!

Lots of art to see this weekend.  Central Massachusetts is hopping with Spring shows, despite the prediction of more snow tonight.

I have a figure drawing in Vision as Voice at the House of Art in Monson, MA.

And, for one weekend only, the Gardner Area League of Artists will have their spring show at the PACC in Gardner, MA.

Follow the links for all the details!

Brush Gallery Massachusetts Artists Biennial

Untitled
2013
18x12
mixed media on paper















This Saturday, March 16th, is the opening for Massachusetts Artists 2013 Biennial at the Brush Gallery in Lowell, MA.

All three of my submissions were accepted by juror Dina Deitsch, curator of contemporary art at DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.  She chose only 34 pieces from the nearly 200 submitted.

I am honored and excited!

As for the piece above:  hot off the presses!  Well, actually no presses involved, although there were some printmaking techniques used.

This came out of a terrific workshop I attended last weekend in Holyoke.  Taught by Dean Nimmer (of Art from Intuition fame), we explored monotype printmaking, printing over painted surfaces and drawing into prints.

I came away energized and with a mess of prints that I am looking forward to working with.

Beast of Burden

Burden
2013
24x18
charcoal















A few weeks ago I added a few new figure sketches to the slideshow that runs at the top right of this blog.

This is one I particularly like.
You can take it (or leave it) on a literal or symbolic level, as you wish.

Montage

Figure study: Montage
2013
24x18
charcoal















The figure group I have been going to warms up with five minutes poses, which is kind of long for me, so I usually draw, wipe the page and draw as many times as I like until the time is up.

On this occasion, I left remnants of all of the quick sketches to make a layered drawing.

I suspect tomorrow will be a snowy day, so I don't think I will go.

The Classics

Penelope's Work
2013
30x22
mixed media on paper
















I can honestly say that Homer's Odyssey remains one of my favorite sagas.

Penelope is generally interpreted as a paragon of fidelity and domesticity, but I love her for her cunning  ability to protect herself, even as a person with few rights and little power.

As you may recall, she  buys some time by promising to choose one of the many unwelcome suitors who have descended upon her home to be her new husband as soon as she finishes weaving a shroud for her father-in -law.
Every day she works at her loom, and every night she secretly slips back and undoes her day's progress.

She does this for three years before they figure out what she has ben up to.

I find something powerful and poetic about that concept of weaving and unweaving the same thing for day after day to preserve yourself.

Napping
2013
oil on board

2013
30x22
charcoal and graphite
on rag paper



















Sometimes I just need to step away from the paint.

Sans Figure

In Your Absence
2013
10x13
oil with cold wax








There was a model seated here at one point.....

Paint Sketch

Semi-reclining Figure
2013
5x7
oil










This small sketch I did a couple weeks back using RF pigment sticks.
These are luscious pigments an a buttery oil stick form.
They can be tricky to work with, but are very exciting, just the same.

Navy Man
2012
14x11
mixed media



















Members Juried II  at Concord Art Association 

opens this Sunday, February 17th 2 p.m.-4 p.m. and runs through March 17, 2013.

Juried by Kathy Halamka and Natacha Sochat, formerly of NKG Gallery, this exhibit showcases works of photography, drawing, mixed media, crafts and graphics.

I have two mixed media pieces in this time around!

Figure Study in Oil

Seated Figure
2013
10x8
oil














Here's a quick little study from the figure group I have been going to.  I used R&F oil sticks which, particularly on such a small canvas forces you to generalize and work loosely.

You Have Nerves

You Have Nerves That End in Ideas
2013
36x48
acrylic

This is the latest in the Found Journal Series.  This has been a complex and totally gratifying project.

I am enjoying the acrylics more than I ever thought I would,

Farmland Vignettes
2012
14x11
oil on panel










This landscape was originally painted last spring on a trip to Maine.

This winter, I became disenchanted with it, and was going to sand it and paint over the whole thing, but then I hesitated.

There are a few passages I do enjoy, so I just painted out what didn't thrill me.

Not sure about the values, though.  I think maybe the "redacted" areas should be darker.

Furnished
2013
11x14
acrylic






This small painting is on a canvas panel that I coated with Golden Absorbent Ground which makes the paint respond a little more like paper.

Originally it was a figure study that I was not pleased with, but I was really enjoying the colors and their quiet, muted quality.

I built on the already abstract motif and blocked out the figure.

The resulting image suggests chairs, maybe tables.

Sometimes My Frame of Mind Isn't Framed
2013
40x30
acrylic




This is also from the "Found Journal Series"








This one has some subtle colors that don't come through so well in this picture.  I might try to photograph it again.

From the Found Journal

I Really Would Eat Poison with a Smile



2013
24x24
acrylic








This is another from the Found Journal Series, so please don't get worried about my emotional state!
You can read about it in the previous entry, if you missed it last week.

I am choosing the titles directly from the text.

Today I Am Almost Scared How Fine I Almost Feel
2013
30x40
acrylic

It is a spring evening in 1989 and I am walking down a street in Santa Monica, California.
Blowing down the same street are gobs of papers, partial notebooks, blue exam books, like the contents of a school knapsack emptied at the bus stop by the bully.

I start scooping them up.  I don't know, maybe I thought I was retrieving them for their owner, but there was no one, distraught, running after them.

As it turned out, they were fragments of someone's journal, bits and pieces of anguish spanning a decade.
I do not use the word anguish here lightly.
Contained, barely contained in the scrawl and rambles was a story of such darkness and repeated efforts to crawl out from under unbearable despair.

I do not know who the author is, but she seemed as thrown away and blown away as her papers, and so, I saved them.

Every so often I would pull them out, read some of them over, and then put them away again.  They were just so dark.

But I have kept them, nearly 25 years now, because I felt there had to be something I could do with them.
And I didn't want to give up on her.

I think I am now ready to give them new life.

This painting came out from a page she wrote in 1978.  An up day.

That is where the title comes from.

Seated Model
2013
acrylic on paper
13x10















Finally!  I am back to a regular figure practice.
I am in a 10-week uninstructed group at Emerson Umbrella in Concord, MA.
It feels really good to get back to this sort of thing.

This is from the first meeting, last week.

Winter Afternoon
2012
16x20
oil












Late in December a few of us got together and painted this homey scene of a young man reading.
I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy this sort of domestic scene, but I found that if you love the material of paint enough, the subject matter doesn't matter so much.
The result was more successful than I imagined it would be.

First Shows of 2013

Ann's Piano
2012
10x8
oil















Unrelated to this little painting, I have a few paintings in shows opening this week.

 Post Road Art Center in Marlborough this
Thursday, January 10, 2013 from 5:30-8 p.m.
2013 Figure and Portrait Show,  juried by Bob Collins
 I have two figure paintings there.

and on Sunday, January 13, 2013 from 2-4 p.m. at
Concord Art Association is
Members Juried I, Painting & Sculpture, juried by George Nick
I have a figure painting here, too.

 Click on the links for details or to see the shows on line (CAA posts images after the opening)

Silenced
2012
12x12
oil















I feel this one is complete, now.

Beach House
2012
14x11
oil with cold wax















Sometimes, many times, my painting process feels random, but truth is life and current events seep in and guide my blind hand.
Without knowing it, this painting turned out to be about the many homes lost along the East coast during hurricane Sandy and the countless storms that have swept away homes and lives along the fluid margins of our island home.

December
2012
5x7
oil










Yep.  Another wee one made from left over paint.
I like this so much I have started a larger piece roughly based on it.

I am partial to the month of December.  It contains the dichotomy of introverted reflection/darkness/dormancy and extroverted exuberance/lights/celebration.

Wishing everyone the peace and happiness both elements bring.

2012
5x7
oil











Just another little quickie with left over paint.
Sometimes I like these the best.

Sutured
2012
24x24
oil on canvas
















One of the things I love about the painting process, is how paintings reinvent themselves.
Just when I think I have a clue who they are and where they are going, they totally transform.
Often when I think a piece is done it turns out it was just resting.

As for this one, specifically, it came out of the painting posted on August 13, 2012.

It has surface details that show better when you click on the image.

Dilemma
2012
30x22
mixed media on paper

Are We There Yet?

2012

14x11

oil with cold wax

I could be wrong... I've been wrong before, but I think I'm done.

The biggest issue I have with this is scale.  I think if it were 60x48 rather than 14x11 it would be pretty exciting.

I know that not every painting is going to be top notch, but I always feel determined to move it to the best place I possibly can, and that is what this piece is about.

Last time you saw this was November 23rd , in case you want to compare.

Odysseus
2012
acrylic on paper with slag
22x15















Trying to make art that is personal, honest, yet able to reach others and communicate, on a nonverbal level, something about our existence is my own odyssey, so maybe this is a self portrait.

Freedom Trails Gallery

Opening this Thursday
in Amherst, MA
5-8 p.m.

Can you hear me, now?

Transmission
2012
diptych 22x30
acrylic, graphite, and slag on paper