Swimming to Dutch Island

This gallery contains 6 photos.

Because of my Paint the Bay project, 21 Months-147 Miles-Painting the Bay, I have had the opportunity to dovetail two of my favorite pursuits into a single event, Think, Triathlon or the Nordic Biathlon. I decided to call it Swainting! Continue reading →

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The business of procrastination takes a lot of time!

Seriously, it can take me all day to avoid working on a painting that I find daunting.

Take my wave painting.
(this is the sketch)
About a year ago I thought….”Wow, it would be so cool to paint a 24 foot wave for my Narragansett Bay Show.” It seemed like a great idea for the “future me” to do.

Dryden Gallery’s Grand Gallery is a huge space, perfect for a huge piece. I’m an open water swimmer so I know waves (right?). “This is going to be easy!” I thought. “Paint the wave in fog, keep the palette very limited, it will just flow off my brush” I thought.

Flash forward to reality. Waves are not easy to paint, even foggy waves. They are deceptive little buggers full of varying angles and forms that flow into or against each other. There is reflected light and translucency within the form light. There are wind, wave and foam patterns all dancing a complex choreography. Add to that the size of my endeavor. What was I thinking? 24 feet is…. well… t w e n t y-f o u r feet!

The planning part of working large has been kind of fun. For instance, check out this behemoth brush I bought!

And these tremendous tubes!

Then, there is the surface…
I am opting for 5 separate aluminum panels to make the piece more transportable. Even so, they are too large and heavy for my easels, and my studio was not designed for producing 24-foot paintings. How and where will I support and prep these bad boys for painting? This seems to be where planning has turned into procrastination.

The future “me”, who I had imagined singing a happy sea shanty while a 24-foot wave flowed off her brush, has turned into a present day “me” who needs to take a nap.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

Celebration to Conservation

A painting of mine called “Perched” is currently showing at MEAM, the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona Spain. The show hosts winners of two international competitions for realistic fine art. I am thrilled to be included in a show representing contemporary realism at its best. Perched is a 36” x 48” oil painting of a pear, quite different from the many gouache and oil sketches I have been doing recently along the Rhode Island waterfront.

Artists may become known for a particular subject matter at which they are adept, or they may have a unique and exquisite approach to their medium. Once an artist has achieved a certain level of mastery, it makes a lot of sense to continuing doing what works so well. What interests me, however, is discovering what I can take from that past success and use in a new area.

At one time I was known as an animal portrait artist. I mostly painted dogs and had a business selling limited prints of my paintings through my company, Purebred Editions.
I received a number of national and international awards for the paintings and prints and at the time, to some, I was considered one of the top artists in the field. I could have kept painting dogs, but I didn’t.

Instead, I became interested in organic form and translucency. For years now, the pear in a produce wrapper has been my muse. Like my dog paintings, these are essentially portraits. I find the pears to be a lovely way to paint sensuality and explore light. Happily, I have enjoyed a positive response to these works, as the recent show in Barcelona attests.

This year however, Narragansett Bay is teaching me to be a landscape painter. It feels so freeing to simply paint what is there in front of me, designed by the sun, wind and water.

I love our bay, and I love exploring and discovering ways to share my experience of this RI treasure.

As wonderful as it is for me to show my work internationally, I feel it is just as important, perhaps more important, to have my paintings leverage some amount of appreciation and conservation for Narragansett Bay.

To reach that goal I hope to fill the Grand Gallery at Dryden Gallery in Providence with works that range from 4 inches long to 24 feet long. Part of the proceeds from sales will go to Save the Bay to help them continue the fantastic job they have been doing for decades.

Is your brain tricking you?

What we see and what we perceive are two different things.

According to Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist, our brains filter out everything unnecessary for our survival. The things we think we see are more like icons on your computer screen; representatives of things we have encoded in our brains. There is an interesting Ted Talk about this: Do we see reality as it is?

I have been aware of this phenomena to a certain extent for years. As someone who paints realistically, I know that once my brain has labeled what I see, I can no longer see it without bias. If I know a chair, which is in shadow, has four legs for support, I might paint what I know to be true and not what I am actually seeing, which is part of only three legs that reflect some of the light. There is the need to identify  individual objects with clear delineation of form, even  when they are grouped in such a way that in reality, you can not distinguish them from their surrounding. Equally true are issues around perspective. We just want to paint that desk as a rectangle even though to our eyes it’s a trapezoid.

Artists use tricks to see more accurately what is in front of them. We blur our vision to see the values better. We look at our paintings in a mirror or turn the canvas upside down to see it fresh and new.  But I have found that the best way to render something correctly is to have no idea what it is that you are painting!  Simply observe the color shapes and the changes in the edges and the values of those shapes. If you record that accurately,  voila! a perfect painting!, or at least a painting that mirrors what your eyes are seeing.

You can try this without painting. Look at something near you or look at the whole room. If you can, pretend you were just beamed here from another planet. You have never seen it before. You have no idea what it is. Look at the colors, the values, the edges and let what you see just be, without any explanation or identification.

Were you able to do this? Did you see something new or something that had been unnoticed before? I’d love to hear back from you!

Maybe not knowing can get us closer to the truth.

Gouache can be Gauche, but also Great!

Last year I taught myself how to use gouache, which is an opaque watercolor. Unlike regular watercolor,  gouache will wipe off the paper if you get it wet. That means once you put your mark down, it is fairly difficult to rework. Muddy, messy and miserable is the consequence of an indecisive  gouache painter. Colors  also have the nasty habit of changing as they dry and they dry in seconds. I find the whites dry darker and more blue. Since white is  ubiquitous in paintings, this change effects the whole piece. Meanwhile, the darks appear to dry lighter. Working with this fickle medium is kind of like dancing;  you need to anticipate your partners moves in order to stay on your feet.

I picked it up with the hope that gouache  would bring a new facet to my oil painting.  With oils, I tend to work slowly in layers, glazing color over color. Working “indirectly”  is a methodical approach and requires planning and forethought. Bold or spontaneous  mark making has not been my way.  With gouache, you simply cannot glaze or refine as you can with oil. It needs a dictator, not a diplomate.  Practicing with gouache, I hoped, would translate into more expressive oil paintings.

Despite the inconveniences that I mentioned earlier, there are some real benefits to using this medium.  If you are painting outside, the gear is light and easy to set up. The paintings are completed quicker and clean up is a breeze.  I also believe gouache is much less toxic.

 I painted in gouache last fall, but when the paint started freezing on the palette I switched back to oils. Now it’s warmed up and the painting above is my reintroduction to gouache.  I’m surprised how excited I am to be using it again. I actually like that little dance you do with the colors and the authoritarian way I’m forced to make marks. Hopefully you will see many more of these as the summer progresses.

I’m even thinking of offering a workshop for other artists who might like to try their hand with something new and difficult…(oops) I mean different.

 

The deep dark woods

 

The other day I was reading about how coyotes have been spotted all over my neighborhood. They are nomadic and travel in groups. Today’s coyotes are considerably bigger than the little 35 pound variety that lived here 20 years ago. These new coyotes are closer to 60 pounds. I never thought twice about a walk in the woods at dawn or dusk in the past, but after seeing a few of these big boys in recent years I have taken pause.  Hearing their frantic and fearsome howling prior to “the kill”, the screaming of the victim and finally the silence of the feast,  I have reconsidered my evening strolls. You see, I don’t run as fast as a deer and I’m smaller…. I know coyotes have not yet attacked people….but there could be a first and I would rather not be it.  I can see the headline now, ” Breaking News: World Famous Artist Eaten by Pack of Hungry Coyotes”   artists are known to have active imaginations….

But then, dusk is a lovely time to paint. The low warm light is just beautiful on the bay and surrounding areas.  So on the same day I heard news about coyotes in the area I went to a spot along the bay I have been wanting to paint…in the evening.  That area is only accessed by land though the woods, about a fifteen minute walk. About the same distance Little Red Ridding Hood had to travers to get to Grandma’s. I was late too. Trying to finish up some studio work before heading out. I know the area is popular with dog walkers, so I had expected more people to be around. Maybe they had read the same article I had.

As I sat on the beach painting , my mind kept wandering back to the woods; to the sun getting lower, to the lack of human company; to that headline.

At least I got a start on the painting, slapped down some base colors and shapes and started thinking about bribes to get my husband to come with me on another evening to finish it up. Then I packed up and beat feet back though the woods all the while looking for climbable trees. The only wildlife I spied on my trek out was this lovely lady who apparently has no worries about coyotes, or me for that matter.

Since I didn’t see a single coyote, let alone get attacked by a pack of them, I felt pretty silly about my concerns. Not silly enough to avoid sharing them with the world however.

Who knew that painting required such intrepid fortitude?

Look for the next installment of Adventures from the Imagination of a Bay Painter coming soon!

 

Fifty Days of Grey

When I began this Paint the Bay Project five months ago I looked forward to the variety  of moods and lighting I would encounter.

I went out this morning.

It was grey.

Yesterday morning, grey.

Last week, grey.

Tomorrow morning I am going out again.

 

Painting Narragansett Bay, drop by drop

Did you know that Narragansett Bay encompasses 147 square miles? I just learned that myself. I started painting scenes along the bay last January and plan to continue painting it’s estuaries, coves and vistas a few days a week until November of 2018. How much of that 147 miles do you think I will capture? I am going to find out and I hope you will join me on this adventure by following along on my blog posts. Feel free to leave comments at the bottom. I would love to learn of special places along the bay you would like me to paint and when I post a painting, you can offer a guess as to where it is.

“Twenty One Months and One Hundred Forty Seven Miles – Painting the Bay” is a project that grew from discussions with Save the Bay and Dryden Gallery. Over the next year and a half you may find me somewhere along a beach, in a kayak or even in a little pop-up tent during a snowstorm, painting away.

All these paintings will eventually become a show at Dryden Gallery. Proceeds from the sale of these paintings will benefit 3 important entities:  Save the Bay, Dryden Gallery and thankfully, Me! So mark your calendar for October 2018!! (I will have to get back to you on the exact date!) 

Self Portraits

Every man’s work…is always a portrait of himself. (Samuel Butler)

Same goes for women. (LP) 

I have come to believe that an artist can’t accurately see their own work within the time frame they are doing it. The work can be exactly what they had intended (tho this is very rare!) and they can make fantastic improvements as they move though the process of the piece, but I wonder, can the artist see the intrinsic gist or essence of the work during the time it is produced?

I suppose I can only speak for myself personally on this. I look back at work I did when I was in my early twenties and I see that I was sad. It’s as clear as if it was written across the canvas. I didn’t know then that I was sad, nor did my work speak to me that way, at that time. It’s just in looking back years later that it becomes clear. Maybe because I am fairly content these days I can see the discontent from years ago.

Similarly, during the time I painted my animal poster series, I did not see the paintings as I do now. I was focused on details and accuracy and didn’t realize how strong the colors and simplicity were. Only years later did that become clear to me.

Knowing this, I wonder what my work is saying beyond my conscious awareness.

This piece above is, as Samuel Butler asserts, a self portrait, though it is not a painting of me.  Like so many others, I love the ocean. I don’t really know why. I love swimming in it, looking at it, painting it. It is part of me somehow. The idea of this painting has been brewing for a few years and happily for me, my child Anna posed for the piece.  The painting means something to me, though I’m not sure exactly what.

Art schools, critics, patrons and grant bestowers need to hear that you do know exactly what your art means. An artist is often required to articulate in words so others can derive meaning from it in a way that makes them comfortable. The work is derived in the heart, goes to the brain for an explanation in order for another to process a watered down and inevitably altered idea of the piece with their brain. Maybe it allows them to then see the piece better. Maybe not.

A friend once said that an artist analyzing their own work is like a bird discussing ornithology. I love that comparison.

Hopefully this mirroring of self in art is somehow of use to others, weather it is explained in words or not. I suppose that is why we do art, to communicate what we think and feel and see on a level that taps into a bit of the unknown or unspoken.

Enter, Rejoice and Come In

It’s that time of year again!

It will soon be the eighth year I have swept the dirt under the rug, hung the paintings and opened the door.

My open studio is next weekend. Oct 25th and 26th from 11:00 to 5:00.

There will be food!…and art!

Come sign the book

And learn about my art class.

for adults..

My tradition during these open studios is to offer drastically reduced prices on paintings that are not slated for a gallery.

That could be the small landscapes I have done over the past year

or older paintings that are not headed to a gallery.

Thanks to my iPad and paypal I take credit cards.

So I hope you can come see what I’m working on, visit a while and if you are in the market to buy a gift or something special for the wall, I hope I have just what you are looking for! If not there are 19 other artist’s showing this weekend as part of the West Bay Open Studios and I can show you what they do and give you a map to get there.

I’m the red dot in the middle nearest the water. # 10 on the signs you will see on the road.

Not number 20, that’s someone else….also worth seeing.

You will find my studio at 323 Harrison St. North Kingstown RI

See you soon I hope!