Start your hygge?

 Autumn has hit hard here in New England.  It seems as if just the other day it was in the 70s and sunny with roses still blooming in the garden -- and then wham!  Cold, cold, cold.  2020 strikes again, I suppose.

So what to do to maintain a positive outlook?  To keep plugging along when almost everything in the news wears you down?  Well, I'm adopting -- or at least will try -- to take the Danish approach of "hygge"!  

Earlier this summer I stumbled on Helen Russell's wonderfully funny yet informative book.  It was truly fascinating how this little country has the highest rating for happiness, although Russell was quite frank about the "negative" aspects of living Danishly, as well. 

But I'm trying to embrace the idea of hygge -- to enjoy the simple, comforting aspects of winter.  And with the pandemic flipping into high gear once again, maybe this is the best approach for the coming months.  So, I'll be looking to cook more, read more, wrap myself in wooly socks and throws, whip out those knitting needles and crochet hooks to help sustain some type of positivity.  How about you?  Any plans for survival?  

In the meantime, I spent some hours sifting through artwork and such, posting to my Red Bubble store and thought I'd share some shots with you, several of which are colorful and summery in feel.  

Cape Cod Marshes (pastel on paper)

A throw pillow to break up the dreary winter months!

 

Melon Freefall (acrylic on paper)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A new journal for 2021?

Sail along the Coast (watercolor on paper)

Time to get a new apron?

 

Nothing like a bit of color and fun to lighten the mood, right?   As far as I'm concerned, anything to help get through the coming weeks and months.  So, stay warm and keep smiling (even if it is behind your mask).   I've always loved this quote.  It seems to capture that hygge attitude almost three hundred years earlier --

Barn's burnt down -- now I can see the moon.

               Mizuta Masahide, Samurai (1657 - 1723)

Is it truly Spring?

These are dismal times for so many of us around the world, and our hearts are aching for those who've lost their life and for their families and friends.  And yet Nature continues and evidence of spring abounds, even up here in New England despite a snowfall yesterday.  

Tulips #1 by me

Forced to stay home from work, I'm finding that so much of what I've pushed aside over the past years is now calling to me, tapping at my feeble, frenzied brain, reminding me that creativity and the need to express oneself never truly disappears.  It may fade into the background of our 21st century lives; it may be packed away at the back of a desk, waiting patiently for us to re-discover all over again.  

Tulip #2 by me

I'm going to take this enforced time to rediscover the joy of creating, even if it's something small and simple.  I've been culling through my photographs from the garden and feeling that a backyard garden can be a wondrous place.  I've been unwrapping paints and markers and pastels, lugging out canvases and sketchbooks, dusting off paint brushes and tossing out those that were welded together in neglect.  I just spent the last hour or so updating my blog (my art website was hacked last fall and I lost that, plus the email address attached to it!), posting a new banner that makes me smile.

Spring is a time for a new beginning.  It's as simple as that.  I hope you all stay safe and healthy in these coming weeks, months.  I intend to stop by your blogs -- if they're still alive! -- and revisit many of you.  And I hope I gain some new fellow bloggers, or Instagrammers, or FB friends. 

Spring Tulips 3 by me

Painting from Photos and Memory

"The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all. . . . I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it.

 Eugène Ionesco 

 

CT River, Late Autumn

Still working on the river and coastline oils -- at this time of year I'm depending upon the many photos I've taken over the years along the Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine coastlines; also depending upon my memories of driving the CT River for over 15 years. 

However, the more I work on these coastline / river paintings, I seem to be concentrating on the skies and the breaking light rather than the actual waters. So much does depend upon the light, though. A ho-hum gray day can become quite dramatic when the cloud cover breaks and a shaft of sunlight splits the skies. 

Departing Clouds

Or perhaps it's a battalion of clouds scudding across the horizon after a storm, giving an ominous look to everything.

Well, we're not too far from Daylight Savings Time and Spring -- hooray!  After last week's blizzard, I have had enough of winter, although I admit that winter does afford one the time to work, paint, collage, quilt, knit inside.  Once spring arrives, the gardens will need tending, raking out, transplanting, etc.  And so the painting tends to take a back seat during those weeks.

But my plan is to get outside more and paint -- I re-joined the CT Plein Air Painters [I had let that lapse last year with the new job] and am hoping that will give me the incentive to get out there and paint from the real thing, not simply photos and memory.

Beach Cottages in Fog, the Cape

That's the plan -- but then the deck and the gardens tend to keep me close to home once the hard work has been done.  Ah, well --  I suppose I can always paint my garden!   Like Monet, I will sit amidst the roses and clematis with my battered straw sun hat and revel in the scents and colors of summer. 

Sounds like a plan to me . . . :-)

Finally!  Earlier today I picked up the oils and began working on a small 8x10 landscape -- it's been over 6 months since I've painted in oil; just too damn busy with the new job.  I know I keep harping on this, but I am amazed at how one's situation in life -- be it illness, or loss of job, or moving to a new place/home -- can disrupt the creative aspects of one's life.  If someone had told me this back in February, I would have laughed and exclaimed, "You're nuts!  Nothing can keep me from my art!"

Go ahead, Kelly, chew on your humble pie for a few minutes . . . duh.

So, in the return to what I love, I thought I would share a bit of how I work, how I approach my painting.  I apologize for the quality of the shots as I was using my phone.  But I think you'll get the gist of what I'm attempting to illustrate --

This is a photo of a nearby lake that I took about 5 years ago.  What struck me was the dark silouhettes against the late evening light and that strip of cattails moving out into the water.  When I developed the shot back home, I realized there was a strip of lavendar-shaded water against the warm peach, which only added to the beauty of the image.

This is the initial sketch -- I was working on an oil-primed linen canvas, 8x10, and the first stages of the sketch are done loosely with oils and turps, just attempting to get the main shapes set up. Looks quite cartoonish, doesn't it?

As I continued to work, I layered in more paint and color, using less and less turps. But now it was too pat, too formulaic. There was little or no subtlety, no nuance. I tend to like my landscapes a bit more impressionistic, less photographic in detail. So, what to do?

Well, I tend to work simply, with no special tools -- except my fingers and bits of paper towels. I smudged out most of the paint, scrubbing here and there, removing the distinctions between land and water, water and sky. I also find that when I do this, often some wonderful serendipitous color combinations occur, which I try to save but sometimes lose in the process.

Now, switching over to oil and Liquin, I begin adding back, sometimes using the sides of my brushes, sometimes a small palette knife, trying to maintain the impressions of light, of shadow, with little detail. The final touches are where the light falls, picking out bits here and there, sometimes scratching with the end of the brush.  Sorry about the bright spot in the middle -- phone flash.

There's still more work to do on this painting, but I find I must walk away at a point or I'll continue to hack at it and perhaps spoil the work. Better to leave it for another day, give it a chance to dry a bit [the Liquin will help that along more quickly].

This is a shot of my palette -- I tend to use cardboard as I like my oils a bit drier and "slabbier", not gooey and loose. The cardboard soaks up the excess oil, which you can see; also, as I prepare for painting, I will slip the palette into the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to "set up" the oil, making it even more dense.

Not too many tools, as you can see: a bit of turps in the glass, Liquin in the pewter cup, some brushes and palette knives and paper napkins or towels. That bit of glass is actually the top to a large candle -- I keep the lids once the candles are used up as they make excellent vessels for the turps.

Thank you for following me in this little "tutorial."   Hopefully, I keep at this and will continue to share some odd bits of how I approach painting.

"Instead of masterly, you want to be . . .

 clumsy or puzzled."
 
Helen Frankenthaler, American Painter

Variations on Landscape

Life is strange sometimes. One moment you're complaining that you are bored and need something more; the next moment your wish is granted and now it's too, too much. The new job is keeping me hopping and at night I'm too tired to even contemplate lifting a brush. Come the weekend there's too many chores to catch up on.

But it's been several weeks now, and I finally am feeling a bit more relaxed, able to focus on something other than work. In fact, it is an absolute necessity -- otherwise, one could go crazy.

Right now I'm sitting in my studio surrounded by chaos. Over the weeks I've dumped things here and there, stashed half-finished works on the floor or on the work table. I think I've even lost a batch of brushes as the turps dried up and now they're hard as bricks.

Nevertheless, some small quick works have been done in an attempt to keep my hand in, to keep the creative flow trickling along --

Breaking Light

acrylic, 12" x 12" panel

A view of the CT River in late winter -- a sense of a spring thaw perhaps, colors muted, early morning light breaking along the opposite shoreline

Farm Fields

acrylic on paper; 3.5" x 5.5"

Altogether different, a petite view of an autumn farm field, harrows of fresh-mown hay resting in the late afternoon sun --

Desert Moon

acrylic on 12" x 12" panel

the last landscape, dream-like, of a place not familiar to me in reality but perhaps internally;  a vast, open space, somewhere that I would like to be, cradled in a tapestried arroyo under moonlight?

Not sure.  Perhaps . . .

Whether working in a large, orderly studio or cramped in the front seat of a car, sketching on a scrap of paper -- that is the studio, that is the space, the moment in which one must do the thing itself despite setbacks, lack of time, lack of confidence. 

It just is . . .

The aim of art is to represent

not the outward appearance of things,

but their inward significance. 

Aristotle

Piecing One's Dreams

What sits on the margins, forgotten, shoved aside in search of something "better?"   In another effort to sift and sort, to organize my workspace, to dig and toss the detritus of years of making, one stumbles upon little projects, items that intrigued months, years ago . . . and then were shoved aside.  Perhaps not intentionally, but life has a way of shoving the small aside, including people.

These were little works,  bits of flotsam and jetsam, like puzzle pieces that I had pieced together for some reason, maybe for no other reason than that I love the idea of Italy, of traveling someday to Venice and Florence, to the Italian Lake District (remember that wonderful movie, A Month by the Lake, with Vanessa Redgrave?) or to the Italian Riviera (another great one, Enchanted April) --

So this was my way of bringing Italy closer to me, by finding an old 1920s Italian grammar book filled with lovely phrases, and making these small collages.  And then something else came along, and they were slipped into a drawer until the other day.

Funny, though.  Once again they brought a smile to my face, a fleeting glimpse of standing on a canal or on a seaside cliff, speaking Italian effortlessly with the locals, sipping golden wine alongside my husband who would be draped in a soft linen jacket and wearing a panama hat just like Edward Fox in A Month by the Lake  (don't tell him about that point, though) . . .

Well, all I can say is that at least now I have finally renewed my passport -- that's a step in the right direction, which I believe is due east and about 3,000 miles away.  Ah, some day . . .

Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty - 

this city, half fairy tale

Small Studies

Color Study I

(gouache and ink, 6"x6" on Magnani Acquerello paper)

Available as greeting card  -- Click here

Available as a matted print -- Click here

Color Study II

(gouache on Magnani Acquerello paper, 6"x6")

Available as a greeting card -- Click here
Available as a matted print -- Click here

Color Study III

(gouache on Magnani Acquerello paper, 6"x6")

Available as a greeting card -- Click here
Available as a matted print -- Click here

Threshold

(watercolor and gouache on 200 lbs. acrylic paper, 9"x12")

Available as a greeting card -- Click here

Available as a matted print -- Click here

working small, touching water to paper

colors creep seeking points to merge or not,

to blend or not.

scratch the surface,

stumble,

stay with the clumsy gesture

for it is true.

outside whiteness falls

into puddles of black ice,

the sound of winter

no sound . . .

Commuting Art

driving the commute, car hurtling past autumn woods . . .

a glimpse, a glimmer flickers on the windshield, on the inner eye . . .

then gone.

sitting in the office, the image remains a faint impression . . . light, textures, a sense of earth, of sky and water . . .

in the moments between budgets and meetings, how to capture, to evoke . . .

gather up a texture file, another, one more . . .

graft and meld, crop, enhance . . .

add the mark of scratchings, faded text, the hint of a compass as a talisman to find the way back . . .

all ephemeral, a chimera, a sweep, a smudge as the car hurtles past . . .

Liar, liar . . .

All right, I lied.  I said I was going to take a break for awhile, the impact of autumn, loss of light and more got to me.  I apologize! 

Last week was frantic, hectic with emotions running high here on the home front.  There was no peace to be had and the weekend was eaten up by running errands, food shopping, laundry, bills, what-have-you.

No art, no peace -- all was in abeyance.  By the time I got to work on Monday, I was exhausted.  Easier to be at work than at home sometimes (ha!).

But this weekend proved to be quieter.  I put all menial tasks aside yesterday and today.  My one "duty" will be to hand out candy to the little ones for Halloween tonight.

These paintings are the result of time to create, to experiment.  Listening to Mary Ann at Blue Sky Dreaming and to Eva Macie, I tried working with Yupo and acrylics, learning how this paper keeps the artist hopping!

Turmoil

As you can see, turmoil was on my mind, and I think this illustrates how I was feeling last week.  Incredible the number of textures you can capture so quickly on this paper!  I did several more and plan to use them in my collaging, although I have so much to learn with Yupo.

The Weight of Winter

"Weight of Winter" is acrylic on bristol vellum, using a brayer to capture texture, as well as a bamboo pen.  As November creeps over the threshold, I feel that the year is coming full circle, but that the weight of impending darkness threatens my inner balance.

However, as Emily Dickenson wrote: "Hope is the thing with feathers . . . " and "Summer River" brings out the deep warmth of a sunset on the Connecticut River, when colors deepen into that exquisite jewel-like quality.

Summer River

Well, the light is leaving shortly so I'm off for my walk before the trick-or-treaters start their nocturnal treks through the neighborhood.  Next weekend we turn the clocks back, so we gain an hour -- and that's good!

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words . . .

Emily Dickinson

Translations & Obliterations: New Work

Last weekend was a good weekend/holiday -- quiet with lots of time to paint and explore various ways to express thoughts and desires.  The weather was perfect -- sunny, warm with intermittent cool breezes.  One day it was watercolors and gouache, using papers that had been gessoed, painting watercolor/gouache on jajara paper (handmade in India).  I found it could really take a beating -- scrubbing, multiple layers of paints, etc.

But now this weekend was good in an all-together different way -- weather was chilly, clouds scudding through, sun in and out (mostly in).  So I worked inside trying out ideas on these 8" x 8" gallery canvases.  There are "unsuccessful" paintings underneath, so that the primed surface was very textured and rough.  Working with wax and oils, I scrubbed and rubbed, using fragments of other paintings and found translations from old Italian and French dictionaries published back in the 1920s --

Translation #1: I shall love

Translation #2: That I might love

While I let those dry, I moved over to the "paper" table and worked on more "Translations," using watercolor papers, fragments of old paintings and more dictionary terms. What great fun!  Time slid by unnoticed, music played and incense burned. No inner critics around, either . . . :-)

Translation #3: I would speak

I'll continue to work on this series of translations and see where it leads me -- another creative trail to follow.  There's something about these notions of ephemera that intrigue me -- flotsam and jetsam, bits and pieces of sentiments, thoughts, passing moments in time that drift into oblivion, obliterated from sight and mind . . .

Time flies on restless pinions - constant never.  

Friedrich Schiller

Battling the Inner Critic

I sit on the couch hunched over the coffee table.  It is a cool evening with a swift breeze from the north coming through the windows.   In front of me is my sketch pad, a pencil and a brand new box of crayons.  That's right, crayons.  I pick up the pad and begin to loosely sketch out some ideas that had been lurking amidst the little gray cells.

"Are those crayons?"

I ignore the question.  Obviously they are.  Anyone can see that.  I continue to sketch.

"What are you doing with crayons?  Have you reverted to your childhood or something?"  The voice grates, my teeth clench.

"I'm experimenting, looking for a easier way to sketch quickly."

"Hmmph!  One would think that you'd have grown up by now.  Look at all that equipment you have in the studio, even in your car. Crayons are for kids.  Didn't you eat some crayons once when you were a child?"

Probably.  Like many kids, I felt the urge to consume the colors, become one with the color, be the color.  Or, then again, maybe I was just hungry.  I remember they had no taste at all.  Very disappointing.  I think at some point I even tried doggie biscuits (hence, the great dental checkups).

Silence follows as I continue to ignore the last remark.  I look over the 64 colors ranged like soldiers in their  4 cardboard sections, a whiff of new wax tickles my nose.  I reach for . . .

"What do you hope to achieve with crayons anyway?  They're not "real" artist's tools.  Why not pastels or oil pastels?  Why not oil sticks?"

"Pastels leave dust everywhere," I reply.

"Oh, yes, I remember that time you wore white shorts. Ha!  Not very bright, I must say."

"Shut up."  I select one of my all-time favorite colors, periwinkle blue, the color of cornflowers, of summer mornings and warm breezes.

"Well, what about oil pastels?"

"They melt in the summer; freeze in the winter and snap."  A loud hoot fills the air.

"Yes, yes!  Remember that one, too -- melted oil pastels dripping all over your car, oozing onto the papers and your feet!"  A snort of laughter follows.

"Go away.  I'm busy here.  Besides, crayons are fun.  They're familiar, there's no preparation, they are easy to use and they blend so well.  That's all I'm looking for -- ease of use and a time-saver since I work full-time.  Now, go away." 

Another favorite, violet, comes out of the box.  A wide spray of violet covers part of the paper, mixing with the periwinkle -- yum!

"You have reverted.  You're acting like a kid again, not a true artist.  Well, if you continue to insist on this ludicrous behavior, I'll just have to leave you to your playtime."  The sound of stomping echoes through my mind.

Good.  My Inner Critic has finally left the building.

I think another pool of blue should go here.  And then maybe some light green over there.  Night rolls on . . .

* * *

The next morning I come downstairs, grab my first cup of coffee and sit on the couch, staring at the sketch pad I had left the night before, along with the pencil and crayons.  All happy little soldiers lined up . . . hey, wait a minute . . . something's wrong.

One of the crayons is missing,  Where's my periwinkle blue? 

Ummmm.  Could it be that maybe I've convinced my Inner Critic to put aside logic and have some fun? 

* * * * *

Have you tried something "silly" or just plain fun to break out of the doldrums or to find an easier way to do something?  Come and share!

The Price of Success . . .

Daybreak on the River:  SOLD!

Winding down for a few days away -- and not too soon, I may add.  As the old adage states:  be careful what you wish for.

Since June the Gallery has sold 7 of my paintings.  It took me 4 years to earn representation, with a growing sense of anxiety that these works I had labored over, thought and dreamt about would forever be stacked against the workroom wall.

And then a few are placed in a wonderful space and sell.  Oh joy, oh rapture!

Until you get the phone call, can you bring more?

They want more.  Quick, dash into the workroom and pull the next candidates, grab another one off the dining room wall.  Delivered.  Phew!  O.k., now I can go back to relaxing and enjoying the summer.

Another phone call -- more sold?  Bring more . . . ?   I glance around the walls of my house -- nothing.  Luckily, I have a few ready for varnishing . . . (oils take forever to dry in summer -- arghhh!).

Delivered.  Pour myself a glass (or two) of wine and put my feet up.  The phone rings -- don't answer that, I say to my husband.  He just laughs at me.

Now you know why I'm going away for a few days -- I'm hiding from the price of success.  But then again, I shouldn't jinx myself -- pride cometh before a fall, doesn't it  . . . ? 

Damn, you just can't win.  It must be that old catholic school training . . . guilt at success is like going straight to heaven, skipping over purgatory and dancing on the head of the devil.  Dangerous stuff, that.

Maybe I'll get used to this.  Maybe not.  Next time I wish upon a star, I will think carefully and refer to a lawyer regarding the proper phrasing. 

Care to share you stories of success, ambivalence and the accompanying guilt of not being thankful enough?  I'd be happy to post them --   :-)  

Summer Thoughts to Share . . .

Heat, ma'am! it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it

but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.

~Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir

Footpath to the Sea

oil on canvas

11 x 14

These past few weeks have been fairly brutal in the heat and humidity.  It saps one's strength, one's resolve to do anything constructive other than lay around in a droopy mood.  On the drive to work in the early morning I find myself drifting mentally into some kind of haze, steering the car as if on automatic pilot.  The only summer blossoms one sees along the highway are the intrepid cornflowers and queen anne's lace; all else has shriveled up like dried cornstalks.

Shady Lane

oil on canvas

5 x 7

I finished working on these two oils recently; they seem to evoke the sense of deep summer, of how we almost instinctively seek out shade and cool shadowy spaces to escape the heat.  My two most favorite times of the day are my first cup of coffee on the deck, sitting on the top step in the shade cast by the beach roses and hydrangeas, watching the birds at the feeder.  It's cool and one can think clearly before the day begins.

The other time of day is in the evening when once again the shadows grow and stretch across the lawns.  I sit in one of the adirondack chairs with a glass of chilled chardonnay and watch as the birds and rabbits frolic about in the shadows.  I look up and watch the clouds, thin rivers of lace overhead -- or perhaps huge Wagnerian divas roiling across the skies presaging an incoming storm.  

Tempestuous
digitally enhanced photograph

by the artist

It's odd how we complain about the snow and the cold; we complain about the heat and the humidity.  I'm beginning to think that there is about a two-week window in the spring and in the autumn when we are content!  Well, I hope everyone is enjoying at least some parts of this summer -- 

In summer, the song sings itself.

~William Carlos Williams

New Exhibit & Partnership

My new home

Selected art by moi

another view of LBG

more works by moi

love those wood floors and tin ceiling!

As artists we all dream about it, work for it, angst over it -- and then it finally arrives:  representation.  I'm still pinching myself!

The Left Bank Gallery of Essex, CT is a wonderful light-filled space, situated in a beautiful village on the Connecticut River where working shipyards, boutiques and restaurants, cafes and bookshops line the narrow streets and tiny byways of this typical New England historic town, complete with a green and an old-fashioned bandstand.  Each month, the Gallery hosts a reception to highlight a particular artist, complete with music, good food and libations.  Summer is a busy time for Essex with the shipyards, yacht clubs and harbor as it is on the route of the Intercoastal Waterway that goes from Florida up to Maine and the Canadian coastal areas.

Well, I'm keeping fingers and toes crossed that some of these paintings will find good homes, either on dry land or afloat!

pondering gesture . . .

Wing Sight

aqua media on vellum bristol paper

9 x 12

gestural marks . . . scratches, sweeps of paint, staccato dashes, stabs or swirls . . .

what is my mark?  what is yours?  are we aware of making them?  should we be aware?

do they change with mood or with the material used?  can i be identified by my mark?  do i want to be . . . ?

questions, questions that lately plague -- the more i know, the less i am certain.

the more i paint, the less i feel confident about --  maybe that's a good thing

drop the confidence and feel the work in wrist and arm, in elbow and shoulder

to let fly with color, to find sight when blinded by ego

make one mark, make a thousand

listen to the brush, to the empty space that calls

taste the light

a leap of faith, a dance through minefields . . .


Recommended Readings:
The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration 
Meeting the Madwoman: Empowering the Feminine Spirit