Promise

Promise
Watercolor, 12 x 9", no mat
$125
to purchase this painting, email me

Welcome to the New Year! Isn't this an exciting day? I love the first of January. It's a blank page, a clean sheet, a new leaf and everything seems possible.

I hope that you all enjoyed lovely holidays and that you had lots of time to relax. I always think that I'll finish all of my year end tasks by December 31st but you'd think I'd had enough experience by this time to remind myself that most of the turn around tasks are not finished till some time in January (usually, the end of that month!)

I'm not one for new resolutions on the first of the year (I make them regularly) but I've been thinking of how easily we fall into habits. My art work is going through some sort of change and I find that I've become a slave to my own conventions. I keep wanting to repeat myself but something new is trying to emerge. So, after quite a bit of trying to work through the changes with an alarming amount of waste, I've decided to give myself a painting break. I am in the process of really cleaning up the studio and packing the paints and tools that I use every day away into the storage room. I'll follow by putting away my paintings so that I can't see them. Then I'll be working on some larger pieces in different mediums and maybe some smaller pieces too. After a few days without painting, I can feel the energy building up and am jonesing to sit down at my regularly proscribed time, set out my water, pick up the brush and go.

But I'm surrendering to this self imposed rest period from painting which just happens to coincide with a physical rest period due to an ankle injury from a bad fall before Christmas. It is almost impossible for me to just lay around with my leg elevated but, after more than a week with no indication of healing, I will have to attempt the impossible! (Not to worry, as I am a veteran of ankle injuries, I know the rules and regulations pretty well.)

All that is to say that, while I'll be posting here at least bi-weekly this month, I'm posting daily at my Studies and Sketches blog. So come visit there this month as I post a review of a sketch book with intermittent work from the past 2 1/2 years.

Visit Studies and Sketches and listen to some good music waiting at My Great Day.

The Home Place

The Home Place
Co. Donegal, Ireland
Watercolor on Lana hotpress, 7 x 10
Commission 2008

I came across the files of a commission I received earlier this year. The commission was a gift for a special birthday and, as I recently received a thank you note, I know these are now safe to post.



The Home Place study 4
Watercolor on Moleskine watercolor paper, 5 x 7
Commission 2008

This one of the five studies for the final piece went with the commission.

The study below, on Indian Village paper, I've kept for myself.




The Home Place
Watercolor on Indian Village paper, 5 x 7
NFS

The Gift

The Gift
Watercolor, 5 x 7", no mat
$75
to purchase this painting, email me

Merry Christmas!

The Order of the Golden Dawn

The Order of the Golden Dawn
Watercolor, 8 x 8"
$150
to purchase this painting, email me

What matter? Out of cavern comes a voice,
And all it knows is that one word "Rejoice!'

— 'The Gyres' William Butler Yeats

Happy Solstice!! The World is now officially a brighter place.


Read about Charlotte Salomon at My Great Day

Light in Hiding

Light in Hiding
Watercolor, 8 x 8"
$150
to purchase this painting, email me

I made this at the end of a long session overworking another painting — sort of a last gasp of intentional energy with the palette I'd been using. As I looked at this in a saturated state, I did not think it would work for a variety of reasons. But since drying completely, I've become fond of the sweet and goofy personality of that yellow, almost dead center, and have decided that this is really a cute painting. And timely. The sun is playing peek-a-boo, teasing before being born again. Here on the home front, I can't remember the last time I saw the sun, so I like the reassurance of this promise.

The title alludes to a Robert Motherwell painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, called Black in Hiding (1976). I happen to have a post card of that painting in my collection and the title has always stuck in my mind. I like Motherwell's titles a lot (and feel like I've written about this somewhere before).

Here's the initial color study for Light in Hiding (and the failed painting in-between).

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Read my two-part post on one of my favorite artists, Charlotte Salomon, at My Great Day.

Postscript: This evening, as I was walking into the studio, my eyes fell on The Cloud, a Prince Eugen painting I've had tacked to my bulletin board since I moved in. You can see it in my post on Nordic Landscape. What I didn't mention in my original post here is that Light in Hiding seemed familiar though I couldn't put my finger on why. Now I know why. If you look at The Cloud, you will, too.

King of the Night

King of the Night (Darkness Rules)
Watercolor, 8 x 8"
$150
to purchase this painting, email me

The darkest hour is just before dawn. That's what they say and it's true. For me, at least, this is one of the most difficult moments of the year. What keeps me going when my mind gets a little too wild is that I know, on Sunday, the light begins to return to the world. I find that knowledge comforting.

This painting has been sitting on my easel for four or five days. I knew that I had to develop it but was terrified that I'd ruin the foundation with additional work. Mid-day today, I sat down and carefully worked it up to completion. People have commented on my bravery at various risks I've taken in my life — things I thought of as not well thought out or just plain stupid rather than brave. To me, it really takes a lot of courage to go back into a watercolor that's at an advanced stage and work to finish rather than ruin it. It's helpful to have the pressure of producing a blog post to make that work happen. Thanks to you all for your participation so that I keep this blog going.

It's late and I can't remember if there was something else I was going to write about this painting (probably) but I have to tell you that yesterday, late morning, while I was out here in the studio taking a yoga break, 25' away, my house was being burglarized.

I was as oblivious to the burglars and they were to me. Thank God. Fortunately, my neighbors across the street watched the entire episode unfold and, as my side window was broken and jimmied open, my neighbor arrived (with German Shepherd in tow) and announced, "The Police are on their way!" At which point, I saw two big men burst from the back side of my house and barrel past my studio across the lawn to the alley. It was really fantastic! I had no idea what was going on. I was really very, very fortunate. Within an hour, the police had come and gone, my neighbor's husband had replaced and fixed my window, and I was back at work. Sort of.

Now I'm checking the doors to make sure they're locked three or four times before walking away. The most noticeable effect is that I feel extremely confused. Not completely unusual but far more pronounced than I can remember.

This business brought another sort of darkness into my consciousness. But, being the silver lining kind of gal that I am, I appreciate the various positive results of the experience, not the least of which is... it's important to have good neighbors (and to be one, too)!

Leaves and Trees

Leaves and Trees
Watercolor, 8 x 8"
$195
to purchase this painting, email me

This is the finished painting that grew out of the color studies I posted about yesterday.

Read more about my Materials and Process (and process of other artists) at My Great Day.

Good news to share! I sold my painting — Virunga, Night Falls. Good news because I am sending the profits from this painting to Virunga National Park to benefit the rangers who, at great risk to themselves, protect this World Heritage Site forest and all her creatures, including the trees, the Mountain Gorillas and Rhinos.

Read more about Virunga at My Great Day and follow the rangers' adventures at their blog.

And Hey! Come celebrate Helen Frankenthaler's birthday at My Great Day!

Tree Glow

Tree Glow
Watercolor, 4 x 6"
$85
to purchase this painting, email me

Today's post is on the evolution of a color idea.

When I was actively writing and performing my songs, touring as a singer and guitarist, and regularly being interviewed by journalists and radio DJs, one of the inevitable questions was "Which comes first? The words or the music?" Unless you're a team with particular roles, like Rogers and Hart, there's no real set answer. Sometimes an overheard phrase suggests a lyric which suggests a musical idea. Or, after some noodling around on a guitar part, a lyric idea might arise. Or a story idea comes along suggesting some relevant lyrics, they're set to music and a song grows from there. Or a guitar instrumental suggests a character or a scene and a song grows from that. The mysterious beginnings of an idea are wholly dependent upon the work of development.

I write all this because my process with these landscape paintings is not so dissimilar. Do I start with an idea of form or color or place or weather or what? There's usually some notion that triggers the development of each new painting. Often, several ideas come together at the same time — difficult to tease apart.

Although I'll sometimes just plunge right in and see where the painting leads me — and that approach can produce some very exciting results — it's as much a crap shoot as anything. Regardless of how I start an actual painting, it's really critical that I have my colors together first.

So I like starting with a limited palette of 3 to 5 colors that I first test in little studies. These limited palettes are often suggested by something I see in nature and make note of during the course of a day, or some combined splash in a magazine or in an historic painting. When I'm stuck, I reach for my book of notes on color combos from previous paintings, or for my stack of pre-tested swatches that I've collected from scraps over the past couple of years.

In the case of today's study, I was cleaning out the supply room (a never-ending process), and found a scrap of newsprint I'd scribbled on with charcoal and pastel. Wow - interesting colors.... a lime green, deep violet and yellow orange. I wonder how they'd work in a painting....



So I selected these tubes: Daniel Smith Imperial Purple, Rose of Ultramarine, Green Gold, Serpentine, Goethite amd M. Graham Cadmium Yellow. Then, made a little swatch test with some of those:




Hmmm... looks like there's some red in there. As orderly as I try to be, in the throes of painting, sometimes I'll just need that one more color and forget to make a note of what it is. Looks like I did that here! And from this swatch, I next made the color study you see at the head of this post.

Anyway, I thought it might be fun to show this little evolution. Tomorrow or the next day, I'll post the finished painting that came out of these.

More!

Because of the first comments I've received and knowing that you all have not been following along since the beginning or understand the links between My Great Day blog and Landscape into Art, you might want to visit my postings on Materials and Process at My Great Day. In them, I talk more about my own process, let other artists I admire talk about their process, and show my materials and where I work.

Be sure to visit My Great Day where we're celebrating Helen Frankenthaler's birthday!

Attar of Rose

Attar of Rose
Watercolor, 8 x 8"
$195
to purchase this painting, email me

For these few weeks, I'm showing a bit of my process — where my color ideas come from and bits of what I make in preparation for a presentation painting. Attar of Rose was developed from the colors of the study I posted yesterday. It's also, obviously, a companion piece to Blue Skies.

Now, in response to my recent tagging, I am listing 7 painters I've discovered since blogging who's work I really like a lot. (There are others but I've mentioned them in previous tags and some of you, dear readers, are among them!) Because of this recent tagging, I forced myself to reach out, explore and mingle more than I've been doing of late and, as a result, discovered several of the blogs below. A good thing!

Go look at the work of these painters —

Randall David Tipton

Carol Feldman

Alessandro Andreuccetti

Steve Penberthy

Derek Jones

Not blogs, but still....

Stuart Shils

Lynn Boggess

That is the extent of meeting my tag obligations so here's a bonus. Go visit and read

Bruce Macevoy's writings on (mostly) historic watercolor artists

The Next Valley

The Next Valley
Watercolor, 4 x 6"
$85
to purchase this painting, email me

I am just back from my Christmas concert after a long but fun weekend of art showing and selling with a great group of artists. At some point on Friday, I had a relapse of my cold. Darn! Oh, well. 'Tis the season. Considering how knocked out I was with the cold, the house concert went very well and we all had a great time.

This color study is made with M. Graham Quinacridone Rose, Ultramarine Blue, Daniel Smith Goethite and Green Gold. 

Blue Skies

Blue Skies
Watercolor, 8 x 8"
$195
to purchase this painting, email me

This is where I really like to go and it took me several paintings to achieve. My motion was much less stiff and careful. I also switched out the Quinacridone Rust from the previous day's color set for the Daniel Smith Deep Scarlet which I'm very fond of.

At this point, I would like to acknowledge that Hillary Miller, Caren Goodrich and Dianne McNaughton all tagged me during the last month. Between illness and other distractions, I have not made use of these mentions. I'm really waiting to compose not 7 facts about myself (you can find out way more than you could ever possibly be interested in by following links through the sidebar to my main website and beyond) but 7 alternate things with links to 7 watercolor artists out in the blogosphere. You'll have to stay tuned for that but I didn't want to let any more time go by without nods to Hillary, Caren and Dianne.

A weekend-long holiday art show plus a Sunday night concert loom this weekend, so I'm off to prepare for those. Enjoy!

You can see this week's pencil drawing over at Studies and Sketches.

Cold Marsh Wind

Cold Marsh Wind
Watercolor, 8 x 8"
$150
to purchase this painting, email me

This is the first of two paintings I made directly from the same colors as the study in my last post. Although the sun is out, the cold is biting and harsh and you'd better be well wrapped up to enjoy this scene.