Wow! Look at this lucky find!

I went out to Pinellas County yesterday to buy some of my favorite cover stock from my paper supplier. There is a frame shop down the street that I have been in before so I thought I'd just stop in to browse. I wasn't really looking for anything in particular, but they often have really nice open backed frames for a fraction of the cost of some other places, including online websites I buy from. The place is on Hercules Street in Clearwater, called. Vista Frame Galleries and this frame was just sitting there...hanging on the wall. It was a no-brainer to buy it, for a ridiculously low price, thanks to the owner, Peter, being so helpful and nice to me! I knew it would be a wowser (as my dear Mother used to say), and it certainly is!

Waiting For A Shell to Roll In

Waiting For A Shell To Roll In      9 x 12    watercolor on canvas

I really enjoyed working on this painting. You will be interested to learn it is on a watercolor canvas! Yes, it is a new product from Frederix and I bought it by mistake thinking it was the old stuff. In my Sampling the Media class I had two students who wanted to try watercolors so I thought we might experiment with these canvases. It was strange at first...kind of oily, but what I loved about it was that you could just wipe out sections that were not working and do them again. Not possible on paper! If you don't like the whole thing you can just rinse it off under the faucet and start over. In the end I sprayed it with fixative that the company recommended, and when tested it is waterproof...so I mounted in an open backed frame like an oil or acrylic painting. Very nice. I am sorry to say I don't know which ocean this is....probably the Gulf of Mexico but it could be the Atlantic at Misquamicut, but the color of the water and sky seem to imply tropical waves.

New Work

I have been busy...so busy I have not had time to photograph and upload new work to my blog and website! So here it is, finally. I will start with two new Genesis Paintings.

 Genesis: Cherries       Egg Tempera      8 x 6

 Genesis: Jalapeno Pepper     Egg Tempera    8 x 6

 Stargazers in a Blue Vase      Oil        24 x 18

Early on this painting had Miss Puss in it. She was peeking around the vase and was about to attack the flower on the table. I didn't realize it until much later that she looked very puny. I also had an emotional difficulty getting past the fact that these lilies are death to cats when they lick the pollen off their fur, and I found that out just after I brought them home, thanks to a friend I met in the supermarket. I locked them up in the bathroom so she wouldn't get to them, and used them in another painting. But this painting of these lilies with Miss Puss didn't look very healthy so I painted the cat out and I have a nice flower painting.

MISS PUSS AND THE FLOWER SERIES

Miss Puss and the Fallen Flower        Oil       20 x 20

Miss Puss and the Sunflowers       Oil       20 x 20

Miss Puss and the Roses         Oil            24 x 18

Miss Puss and the Gerbera Daisies     Oil     24 x 18 (Work in Progress)

I am also still working on Awe, which has come to a standstill for awhile. I am hoping for some more time this summer when I don't have as many classes and the snowbirds are home with their Windows 8 problems! I think it will be a productive summer, and I am looking forward to conducting two Monotype workshops this summer. I always look forward to doing some new monotypes and I also have a new digital editing workshop at Carrollwood Cultural Center so I am still busy but not quite as bad as it was this winter and spring!

"Awe" 3-23-13

Life revved up since the Holidays and I have neglected my painting in hopes that I would get caught up in other departments of my life. Nothing has been caught up, and my painting has patiently waited for me to come back since I last posted. I worked on it a few times, for short bursts, since the last photo, but for the past few days I have put in about 7 hours of work on it. You probably won't notice the changes in my small photo, but I am making corrections, adding another layer of paint and generally adding here and there to what is all ready there. I hope I have changed the perspective problem of the table flipping up...and I am trying to get the values of those white edges of the flowers right, so they don't assault your eyes. The violin had some drawing problems in it, and I am struggling to make it the right color while bringing it to your attention visually. It blends into the cloth and the table and background too much, but painting it a higher value makes it look sick.

Such are the problems of a fine artist at work. I hope to have more time in the near future, as I'm not going to be teaching as much this summer and will gain another day of freedom from the grind.

"Awe" 12-23-12

Today I worked mostly on the right side of the table.

I had a zany conversation last night, with my friend Kit, who was on the road to Vermont and I was in Zephyrhills, at home. She has been following my progress on this painting, and many times in the past she has been invaluable as a gentle critical eye for problems in my work. She tried to explain what she saw as a problem with the table, perhaps being flipped up, which is an error in foreshortening....a common problem with artists of all calibers. She couldn't really explain what she saw, and of course didn't have my blog in front of her, so the conversation went back and forth across about 1400 miles which was interrupted by several disconnects due to mountains being in the way, and distant cell phone towers. I could not figure out how to fix what she saw...everything checked out with the photograph, and my measurements were right on. How to deal with this....?

Fortunately, anticipating all sorts of problems with this painting, I made a large scale photograph of it, (using the real flowers) which I transferred to my canvas via an acetate overlay. I knew the cat might mess around with the drapery, and the big problem came when I had to dismantle the still life when tropical storm Debby threatened to flood my house. I got it back, more or less, but still it isn't quite the same with those plastic flowers and a messed up drapery! But I didn't move the table and I was fretting about that perspective. I have had moments when I thought that the table top was flipping up too. I think it was hard to see in my photograph, on this blog, what I had in mind for that area, as I had not worked there at all, and it was pretty foggy. In fact there was hardly any paint there at all, only my initial tonal scumble.

Is it better now, Kit?

"Awe" 12-21-12

Today I worked on the lower half of the painting, reconstructing the violin, flowers on the table, the drapery and the carvings of the table. Here is a detail photo of that effort.

"Awe" 12-20-12

Today I worked on that subtle transition between the yellow sunset and the blue-green of the sky. It needs more work, but that's for later. It was essential to reconstruct the whole painting, and since I was working more on the upper half of the painting, both yesterday and today, that's where I began. See the detail photo below to see what I mean by reconstruction. Some people call these "outlines" but it is much more than that...really it is a restatement of the solid forms in the painting, much like bones in a body. Without a skeleton we are pretty floppy, and so it is with paintings. Tomorrow I will begin on the lower half and reconstruct the drapery and the violin. As I go I redefine the shapes and add and improve on what I saw the first time around. I do this throughout the process of the painting, reconstructing whenever there is a trouble spot, or when I need to have a line to paint against. In the end, if the black lines are out of value I can minimize them, or paint them over, but for the most part they will disappear into the painting as I work back and forth between subject and background.

 

"Awe" 12-19-12

Fianlly, I am on "vacation" until January 2nd and this time has been labeled, painting time, by me! I was able to paint for 4 hours yesterday before the sun made me move my easel into the opposite corner of my studio. It is so low in the sky these days and comes in my west windows and throws light and shadows over my painting. I worked for a bit more in the opposite corner of the room satisfactorily until I actually felt tired.

I quit to spend some time doing a photo editing project and to decide if I really wanted to lower the tree line in the painting. I painted the change on a clear plastic overlay and after viewing the change and photographing both versions I decided it was better to keep the original. It actually didn't make that much difference and painting sky over that black tree line seemed counterproductive, so I decided to leave it as is, even if it cuts the canvas in a bad place. There actually is no better place and I tried to lower it and the only place turned out to be exactly at the halfway point....so I scrapped that idea.

Most of the work I did yesterday was on the upper half of the painting....the flowers and the sky. More shall be revealed!

"Awe" 11-11-12

Sunday...a painting day projected....finally at 3pm I get to my easel but the afternoon sun was blazing through the west windows of my studio and blinding me so by 4pm I had to quit. But I was able to knock down the white areas on the flowers which has been bothering me since August. I am so busy at work, and other stuff, and other paintings have intervened, and to tell the truth this painting is very overwhelming and I am procrastinating about getting busy on it again. My days are full to the brim with what my ex-husband called "peedle-weedle".

Upcoming New Year's resolution....fight "peedle-weedle"!

Sunflowers

Sunflowers         Oil on Canvas        18 x 24       $450

You can't see it in this photograph but this is a very rough weave canvas, like jute or burlap. I have had it for so long I don't know where I got it, or why. I unearthed it from the canvas pile when I last cleaned up my studio and decided it would be fun to try working on this kind of canvas again. So when I saw those sunflowers in Sam's Club one day, I bought them for this painting. When I brought them home I had them on my work table and Miss Puss had to investigate and she was so cute I did the photography that resulted in "Miss Puss and the Sunflowers" which is in a previous post. The Miss Puss and the Flowers series was kicked off and I'm now back on that track, having completed this single painting which I finished yesterday. It was different working on that heavy canvas, but it was not easy and the canvas was not very well made...cheap in fact, so there are ruffles in the corners which I tried unsuccessfully to remove with the wooden pegs. Because of that flaw I have lowered my price from what would be the usual $500 for a painting of this size and complexity. But that is a minor problem that I will continue to try to figure out in the coming days. For today I'm hunting for a suitable frame so I can put it in a show that is due tomorrow. I don't like to submit wet paintings to a show, but since I am the Art Curator I am taking on special privileges for myself and I hope it will be dry enough so it doesn't smell up the Gallery too much.

My Idyllic Week at Sanibel Island

 

My dear old friend Betsy, with whom I have been friends for 65 years, asked me to go with her to Key West. Hummm, I said "I think you won't like Key West". I know Betsy. Well, she said, suggest something else. So I said, "How about Sanibel Island?"

 

I spent every spring vacation at Sanibel Island from the time I was about 8 years old to my Junior year in College. It was a fantastic place, filled with wonderful things to do, as I was obsessed with shells even before my grandmother took me to this wondrous place. I have been back to the Island, several times since 1958, just to drive through and try out the "Ding" Darling wildlife refuge with my mother and husband but not to stay. This time I suggested that we try to stay at the Island Inn which was where my grandmother had us stay every year. Our original plan was to spend two nights there and go further south to the Everglades south of Naples for the rest of the week, but once there that plan was hastily scrapped in favor of our daily runs through the Ding Darling Refuge, and the lazy hours spent on the beach watching pelicans and terns dive bomb the water.

 

So much...dolphins, pelicans, herons, an aligator, a racoon, tangled mangrove trees with their eery roots, Queenie's Ice Cream, The Shell Museum, beautiful skies and gorgeous sunsets. It was hypnotic sitting on our balcony watching the palm fronds waving in the breeze. Nothing much more to do than that...that was enough.



 

 

Because of Sanibel's unique position in the Gulf of Mexico, and the currents and prevailing winds shells get stirred up from the deep ocean and flung up on the beaches in huge piles, sometimes. Shelling on Sanibel is a hobby for some, an obsession for others, and a casual pastime for most visitors. The photo above is so typical of the high tide line with the daily spewing forth from the ocean depths. Very, very lucky people can find the rarities, a Junonia, or perfect Scotch Bonnet or Murex with all her spines intact.

 

For awhile during the day it looked like we might have clear atmosphere to see the "green flash" but as the sun went down clouds appeared and prevented us from seeing that rare occurrence, which I have seen several times. It was not to be this time either, but the sunsets were amazing.

 

 

Looking East

 

Looking West

 



I was slowly being restored to some kind of sanity by watching all this hypnotic activity...sandpipers running frantically along the edge of the surf, never to be knocked down, and the surf sounds, making me feel drugged with relaxation.

 

On the north side of Sanibel there is a totally different habitat than the southern beach side. Most of it is mangrove swamp and it is here that many people have made efforts to conserve these wild lands. Sanibel has seen progress, no doubt about that, from the late 1940s when I first arrived there to find only one small paved road, and a ferry to get there. Now there is a bridge and shops and food places and shell shops and T-Shirt places, but it is tackful and no building can be higher than 3 stories, so you have modest development along the beaches and no development for most of the Island's interior and mangrove edges. It is amazing, and wonderful, not pretentious like some places, and there is obviously money there, lots of it, but they do things like require you to be off the beaches after 9:00pm and you are not allowed to have even a flash light on the beach at night because it will disorient the sea turtles who nest there. No wild beach parties here!

 

This is what a mangrove swamp forest looks like. If I was a critter this would be a place I'd choose to live!

 The mangrove trees put tangled roots down into the water.

On the bay side is the entrance to The J.R. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge. We bought a pass that allowed us lifetime access to all the Federal protected lands. This is bird watching at its easiest....from the front seat of your car! You drive about 4 miles through this swamp, scanning right and left to see whatever is out feeding, preening, or roosting. It is a mecca for photographers, and birders, and especially birders who, like me, are not hikers! We made daily runs through the sanctuary in the early morning and again in the late afternoon. The photo above is of a flock of Roseate Spoonbills. In my early days of Sanibel, spoonbills were so rare a sighting of one of them would bring applause in the dining room of Island Inn at dinner, as well as finding a Junonia or catching a rare fish. It was that kind of place!

 

"Ding" Darling was a political cartoonist and he was syndicated all over the nation's newspapers, having a huge following and his ability to visually poke at the politicians and get things done in Washington was legendary. He was a friend to both Roosevelt presidents, and was for a time involved in setting up federal programs for conservation. He love to come to Sanibel and after his death this sanctuary was set up to honor him.

 

 

 

We could not have asked for better accommodations. We had a continental breakfast at the Inn, and we had a kitchen with refrigerator, stove, and microwave in our rooms. It was quite nice to shop in the two Island supermarkets for our lunches and dinners, and we discovered the locally made Queenie's Ice Cream which was so addictive we had to have a pint each night.

 

I'm slowly trying to get back into my regular life, which is very difficult to do! It has been so long since I spent 5 days doing nothing I can not remember when it was. Vacations should always be this way!

 

 

 

 

 



Miss Puss and the Sunflowers      Oil        20 x 20

 

This is the second painting of Miss Puss and the Flowers. The first painting is here.

This is also another series with different size paintings. The next two paintings will be on 18 x 24 canvases. My cat is so much fun and she seems to be a willing model.

"Awe" 8-14-12

I worked on Awe all afternoon and feel as if I didn't get much work done at all! The flower on the table and parts of the scrollwork of the table were areas I painted, and I did a little blending of the sky where the blue goes into the yellow, just to get that harsh line out. The whole sky will be painted again, several times, probably, but for now I'm leaving it alone while I go after the flowers.

"Awe" 8-10-12

I have worked on this painting for about 12 hours since my last post. It does seem like an overwhelming amount of work, and I'm projecting ending the painting around Thanksgiving! Maybe. I was at my easel for 8 hours today, and things are becoming clearer. I felt as if I was "fighting white" for quite awhile with so much of the painting with a light scrub in and so much of it out of value. Now I have a good base on which to lay the paint and the layer work begins soon. I will be painting the entire sky background again, and hopefully resolving that "stripe" of yellow that doesn't meld into the blue above it too well....that will be a real trick to get that right. I will need to mix my colors carefully and work wet into wet as I go, so that work will be done on a day with nothing scheduled!

"Awe" 7-26-12

Gone are the window edges, the bar that went across the painting in the dead middle, and the pink billowy curtains. None of that added a thing to the painting and it looked strained and confined, not to mention cut off at the sides and in the center of the painting. Moon and stars are moved over but they may be moved again tomorrow. It works better now. At least that's my take on this one!