Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Holding Tight and Letting Go

I'm home for just a few days before I head to Raleigh, North Carolina, Traverse City, Michigan and finally Portland, Maine. Regrouping, repacking and rethinking a few details in preparation for my upcoming workshops. Laundry is high on the agenda and so is catching up with friends, dancing and sitting in the sun when I can get it.

It's an opportunity to make some adjustments to what I've planned for my students. It's an opportunity to pause before I enter into an intensive stretch of teaching for about four weeks straight. Having had just a few days at home, I've needed to stay connected with what is ahead of me while relishing the delights of Portland and home. I've a need to go deeper into both spaces.

There is a connect here to painting as for me it's just these kinds of push and pulls that makes the act of painting fascinating and also makes a work of art great. The melding of nuance and aggressive strong strokes, woven together like a dance. Managing the contrasts.

Painting is also setting an intention and then putting the full force of your skills to bear on that intention and then completely letting go of that intention. Ha, ha!! My fellow artist and blogger Loriann Signori posted a quote by Wolf Kahn yesterday and I think it's on spot:

"Aiming is wrong. If you know ahead of time what you are doing it won't be good. You need to surprise yourself. "
He went on to share a story about a pitcher from the Astros baseball team who had bought a painting of his. "We got to talking and he had questions about my painting process. He said it was just like his process. He said that he trains, but can't plan his game ahead of time. He can't aim too much or the batter will know what he is going to do. He just has to have a general idea about where he wants the ball to go. Then he uses his full strength and lets go." 

"Of Pure Intent" Mixed media on canvas SOLD
Painting is letting go. If you plan it, then over-think it, it will be contrived. If you don't plan it at all and don't have a foundation it will be a mess!


Monday, May 21, 2012

B & B & B's

I'm teaching at a workshop facility in Buck's County, Pennsylvania. The workshop is on the grounds of a gorgous B&B called Stoneridge Farms. I have a lovely group and I think we had a terrific, choked full and satisfying first day. Tomorrow will be more of the same!

I had to share this photo with you. The proprietor took me to her garden yesterday as she was showing me around and revealed this nest of baby bunnies. So cute, and likely to make a vegetable garden a tricky proposition! Looks like about eight little bunnies!



Here are a few other pictures of the grounds.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Buck's County, Here I Come!

I'm traveling to Buck's County, PA tomorrow. It will entail a full and I mean FULL day of travel. I'll get there late at night, maybe even Sunday morning. But, I'm pretty sure it's gonna be well worth the trouble! I've been working off and on for the last couple weeks and organizing my gear for the workshop. Trying to keep it simple, still have a comprehensive workshop and just enough of the materials my students students and I need. Trying to keep to one checked bag, one carry-on and one personal item is challenging. For this trip, I'll be catching a train from the airport into Philly proper and then another out to Doylestown, PA, so I need to be able to manage my gear, knowing I'll be tired and it's heavy, despite my best efforts to downsize. I'll be taking my time and asking for help when and if I need it. Dollar bills in my pocket to tip the appropriate parties.

I carry on my pastels in a small Heilman box, my computer and ipad. I put paper, glassine and brushes in tubes. Roll cloths. Make sure paint, (watercolors), are double sealed in plastic. I also put a note in the check bag for the benefit of TSA, should they decide that paint is not o.k. in a bag. They could still decide to chuck the watercolor, but at least I try!




I have a brochure taped to the inside of the Heilman box, so if TSA wants to open it, I look like I'm a PRO!! I always politely ask if I can open it for them. Could be disaster if they do it! Usually, it's pretty smooth. I just plan on a little extra time, knowing that security can take some extra time with my pastels going through. Most airports know what they are. It just so happens that Portland is one of the most stringent from what I've experienced. Hey, wish me luck!!

Thursday, May 17, 2012

Sketchbook Confidential 2

Wow, I just received my complimentary copy of Sketchbook Confidential 2! It was complimentary because I'm in it! And wouldn't you know, another benefit of being a Baggetta; they organized the artists in the book alphabetically, so I'm at the front of the book. Page10-15! What's more, I see that I'm a "master" artist. It says so on the cover, so it must be true!


It's a wonderfully designed book with lot really juicy content, both visual and written. I'm enjoying reading what the other artists have to say about their sketchbook pages.

Here are a few of my sketchbook pages which were published in the book. I like that they left my fingerprints, the green tape and notes to myself. They left them raw. Pretty cool.





Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Why I Paint

I could have titled this post, "Why We Paint" and have tried to expound on the myriad of reasons artists are driven to the easel, but I try very hard to write this blog from my perspective and personal experience and not speak for other artists, not make my statements too broad or make gross generalizations. I also try to be authentic and yet come from a practical standpoint. I'm a practical women!

My pathway to becoming a painter was a very straightforward one; I drew and painted as child and was encouraged to do it. I went to art school and became an illustrator, then painter. I never learned to do anything else as well as I learned to draw and paint. It's a very good thing that it worked out for me! But, there is really nothing else I'd rather do than paint. You can only paint when you are fully in the moment. It's just not really possible to do it unless you have fully stopped doing or thinking about anything else. This is what I love most about it. It is as close to meditation as I can usually get. I can't think of anything else that gives me as much pleasure, satisfaction, or is as intellectually and physically stimulating.

I greedy about it too. I'm super protective of the time I carve out to paint and probably have aggravated more than a few friends as a result. Painting takes time and is done for the most part by oneself. Painting is an intimate interaction with your subject, the materials, your mind, body and spirit. It is a search to find 'it"and yet you don't know what "it" is. This part is endlessly fascinating to me. I try to do it as often as I possibly can. Painting is a dance. For me the dance is not a quiet one, but a frenetic and chaotic one. Not a waltz or anything resembling a slow dance.This doesn't make it less pleasurable, in fact, for me it makes it all the more satisfying when I've done something of merit. People have all different styles of dancing, as they do painting! Mine is just kind of crazy!

My studio in the midst of a little work!


I have to make art. I remember very clearly a neighbor once asking why I worked so hard. I didn't say it to him, but I remember thinking "because I have to". It's part obsession and part passion. I feel fortunate to have such passion and desire to pursue a path.

For me being a painter is also a conundrum, because I also have to paint to make a living. As I said, I don't really know how to do anything else! Selling makes me beholden to the marketplace and some would say makes me less an artist and more a producer of a product. This may be the case, but over the years I've chosen to make a living making art, wanting to spend as much of my life as possible, devoted to the activities of drawing and painting. I am constantly reconciling my desire to paint what and how I want, with what I think I can bring to my collectors. Fortunately for me, I'm very happy painting many subjects in a variety of approaches. It keeps it fresh and interesting to me.

Bottom line; I paint because, at the end of the day, it's my happy place....Through the chaos, the  sometimes manic urge to paint, the messy, dirty mix of materials and the mental fatigue that follows, there is nothing I'd rather do!

I love to share my work with my students, collectors and art enthusiasts.The next best thing to painting, is talking about it!

Pastel on Wallis board 9x12

Pastel on Wallis board 9x12






Monday, May 7, 2012

Book, Books, Books

When I was a little girl, books were a huge part of my life. They were honored and sought after in our household. We'd go to the library and check out a great pile of picture books, bringing home the stack to pour over them. Those books had weight and a particular smell. As we turned the sometimes dog-eared pages with our fingers, they had a special feel to them too. Some of the books were read once and returned straight away to the library, good to have experienced, but others...well, others were read over and over and over! We coveted them and did not want to return them to the library, so we hung on until the very last. Giggles, tears and delight; just some of the things that come to mind as we sat in the big brown chair in our jammies with a heavy picture book laid out over our laps.

What we're looking at right now!

As I grew older, I became an avid reader, gobbling up almost every genre I could get my hands on. Fortunately, my mother began working at our city library and helped nourish this hunger. Later she went back to school and became a librarian and a library administrator. Books and information were not only close at hand, but the lifeblood of our family. There were the Walter Farley and Dorthy Lyons horse stories, Roald Dahl, and then later, heavier stuff like Camus and Ayn Rand. Classics and sci-fi and mysteries; I loved it all. I loved holding a book in my hands and going to the library to pour through the stacks, knowing as evidenced by all the shelves, that there would always be more available to me.

The images in books steered me to a career in illustration. I always loved the pictures and aspired to be a children's book illustrator.  I met my first love at the library.  He worked with my mom as a clerk. I always got to see my mom there too and I got to feed my love of stories and images. It was a home away from home.

As my own children grew up, books took on another layer of meaning for me from a mothers perspective. My kids were a handful, but books in the evening were something they both appreciated and looked forward to. Books quieted and soothed them. We still remember many of the books word for word. A few were read every single night and have the worn pages and bindings to show how well loved they were.

As time goes by and we no longer open many of those books, we've passed on all but the most precious for other readers to enjoy. They don't all need to sit on our shelves for us to feel their impact. If they did, our house would be brimming with them anyway. Not good!

We still visit the library, although a lot less frequently and when we do, it's primarily for art books. We live close to a university library which is open to the public and they have an amazing art book collection! We always marvel at the books because most look as though no one has ever checked them out. The are brand new! Maybe no one does. Isn't that sad? Books still play such an important role in my life and I hope they stay around in their original form for a very long time. Not a week goes by without a big pile of art books landing somewhere in the house. There is just nothing more satisfying than hefting one of them onto your lap in the evening and pouring through the pages, getting inspired, awed and humbled by another artist. It's not the same on the internet, although a great place to see lots of stuff, it's just not the same.

So, as I prepared for an extended trip of teaching workshops, I loaded up my ipad with titles I hope to get to. I'm a little sad about it because I still haven't gotten used to reading from the ipad. I want that book in my hands to touch, to feel and to smell. I want to highlight sections and write notes in the margins. Maybe you can do that on the ipad?


Just a very few favorites. I'd love to hear what yours are!!

Art Books:
Creative Illustration by Andrew Loomis
How I Paint; Secrets of a Sunday Painter by Thomas Buechner
Wolf Kahn Pastels
John Singer Sargent by Ratcliff
The Art of Richard Diebenkorn by Livingston
Impressionist in Winter by Wilson

Fiction:
A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving
Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Non-Fiction:
A Day Book by Ann Truitt
Art and Fear by Orland and Bayles
Fearless Creating by Eric Maisel







Thursday, May 3, 2012

The Johnny Depp Factor

Anybody ever heard of him?? Well, he's done a few good things; Edward Scissors Hands, Chocolat. Don Juan DeMarco, Pirates of the Caribbean, Alice in Wonderland just to name a few of his credits.. For me what sets work apart is his choices of magical, quirky and enchanted films.

When I think of choosing what to paint, I think of seeing an ordinary day through extraordinary glasses. Seeing things in a heightened mode, through an innocent eye. It's those days when you walk outside and see the same green trees that you've seen a thousand times before, but something makes you notice them in a different way.  You feel as if you've never, ever seen anything so very green. And that day when the sky could not possibly ever have been quite so blue. Cultivating the idea of watching the world through enchanted eyes is not something that is very grown up nor always very acceptable in polite company. Maybe that's what being an eccentric artist is really all about? I don't know. But I do know, as I get older, the value of seeing the world through my own unique lens.

Cultivating enchantment and finding deeper mystery, beauty, meaning in each day, moment, breath. This is our job. No? So finding pathways to this stuff is part of it. Listening, watching and waiting for it. Lingering for that extra few moments in the parking lot of the grocery store when you feel the breeze pass by in just that particular way...Conjuring up a story from the shadows under a tree in your backyard. Letting yourself believe in fairy tales, if just for a few moments.

We have little magic and mystery in our daily lives, so we have to work on finding it, manufacturing it if you will. Sort of like going to the gym; our bodies need to move and we don't have to do it, so we need to manufacture activity for our bodies to stay fit. Likewise we have to cultivate enchantment to have our minds recognize it. Otherwise the pace of modern culture will whip past us and leave us drab and bored. We look to popular culture to entertain us, but really we could just look a little deeper and REALLY entertain ourselves. It's all there, we just have to remember to look!

My recipe for finding enchantment; be present, stay alert, watch and wait and then don't think too much, just feel it. When you've got those goose bumps, you know it's there...Now take that feeling, hold it and go paint. Hopefully, you have some stuff to paint or draw with. Maybe you've only got a napkin and a ball point pen! Everybody has their own recipe, just like a good soup, you have to have a good base then adjust the seasonings!

Most of the art that I really admire is of a simple scene or gesture or idea. Take Degas, capturing a glance a shadow, a breath. Most great painters captured reminders of our humanity or consciousness. Small things made large and usual things made unusual.  Artists like Dan McCaw, Wolf Kahn and Russell Chatam come to my mind. Even guys like Jeff Koons could fit here. Of course this dovetails into a greater discussion of what is art and what are our jobs as artists! So it goes!

Lastly, I'm starting a new blog that focuses on my figurative work and my collaboration process with my husband Mike. Should be an interesting and different kind of journey...More to come on that. I'll be continuing to post here of course!