Sublime to Ridiculous: An Artist's Life

Good Luck Point

2009-02-18T07:20:00.000-08:00

I wish all exhibits were this easy to pull together. On Monday, Richard Rosenfeld came to the studio and we looked through the paintings that were available, and framed, and a half hour later there was a selection ready for the March show. The only thing left to do is deliver them to the gallery next weekend, then decide what to wear. That wouldn't be an issue except that the artist showing in the front half of the gallery is my husband's cousin, Chuck Olson. I remember from years ago how much effort he put into his ensemble for openings. I haven't seen Chuck in ages, and that may have been a phase he passed through, but maybe not.

The painting above is called "Good Luck Point". This spot is around the point from where I go in the summer on Barnegat Bay in New Jersey. When we started going there in the 1980's, there was a lot of this wide open marshland along the bay, but most of it has been developed, with lagoons cut into the marsh and clunky houses cheek by jowl. Too bad.

A Valentine

2009-02-08T17:08:00.000-08:00

After I delivered the new paintings to the Sherry French gallery, I thought I could take a breather. I'd just about finished the most recent portrait for the Lost Dreams project and I wouldn't have to bring anything up to New York until the end of March. But then I got a call from Richard Rosenfeld who had an unexpected opening in his schedule. Could I be ready for a show in March?Yipes. Richard is a wonderful guy and I haven't shown at the Rosenfeld Gallery for a few years so of course, I said yes. Then Sherry French asked for another painting for the February show. Suddenly I was frantic again. But I did this little painting in two days. I might have spent more time on it, added a bit more glazing, but it's perfect for a last minute gift and it was a lot of fun to do.

New York Blues

2009-01-30T08:22:00.001-08:00

I drove up to New York yesterday with my good friend and fellow artist Nancy Bea Miller to deliver new paintings to the Sherry French gallery. All the way up to New York we talked about the current economic situation, and the conversation continued with Sherry. It's not a great time for artists or their dealers either. The signs of economic disaster were also very evident when we drove uptown to see the Peter Poskas III show at Hirschl & Adler Gallery. Madison Avenue was eerily quiet on a sunny afternoon. A disconsolate looking sales girl stared out at the street from Dior. There were no groups of loud Russian tourists clutching shopping bags. There were lots of parking spaces on Madison Avenue. It was very strange.

The Poskas show was a real pleasure. The paintings were quite good, and it was enjoyable to see his take on places where Nancy Bea and I had also painted. One real stand out for me was the painting above, "Tomatoes and Olive Oil". Even digital reproduction seen on a good monitor doesn't do justice to the luminosity Poskas achieved in this painting. The slices of tomato shimmered in a warm saturated glow and the bread seemed lit from within and still warm from the oven. Really beautiful.

New Year, New Work

2009-01-26T13:35:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I posted. I get distracted, I guess. And the holidays, as enjoyable as they are, break up the work flow. I have to bring three new pieces up to the gallery on Thursday. Today I went in to the studio to varnish two of them and start framing. I had the unwelcome experience of looking at one of them and feeling I needed to repaint areas. Aaargh! So much for the varnishing. I reworked part of that painting and it will have to go up to New York "naked". I tend to paint in thin semi-transparent layers. This can give a very effective glow as the light travels through the paint layers and back to the viewer. The problem is that this technique doesn't look its best until that last completely transparent layer of varnish is added.

I am satisfied with this painting, "Japanese Iris", which is the result of a visit to a friend's country place last June. There was so much there to paint, but I found myself concentrating on the pond and these irises in full exuberant bloom. They called out to have a haiku written about them, or at least a memory painted.

A New Day

2008-11-07T08:40:00.000-08:00

The last eight years have been so dispiriting that it's almost unbelievable that we now have reason to hope. For far too long we've had an anti-intellectual, anti-science, narrow minded ideologue in the White House. I thought president-elect Obama's decision to not have fire works at Grant Park was a sensible and sensitive response to the grim economic times, but we can't help but be jubilantly optimistic.

Monhegan in September

2008-10-17T09:28:00.000-07:00

The second annual Maine Landscape Guild trip to Monhegan took place during the first week of September this year. Six of us rented a house in the village, right on Fish Beach. In fact, the house is a converted fish house, and it's proximity to the water became all too evident on the second night when the remains of Hurricane Hannah roared through. We were fortunate the wind shifted when it did or we would have been IN the water, not just near it. Other than that dramatic night we had wonderful weather and we got a lot of painting done. This is a little (8 x 10 inches) painting of the tide coming in to the cove just north of the Kent House.

A Slow Summer

2008-08-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

It's been a slow and disjointed summer. This is the first year in about twenty years that I did not pack up and move to the shore for the whole summer. Unfortunately, that didn't mean I got to spend all of my time in the studio. I don't know where all of the time went. I did get some work done, however. This is a painting from a trip to Island Beach State Park. The morning fog was burning off and the path through the dunes was cool underfoot. There was a hint of September in the morning breeze.

Greg

2008-07-15T12:42:00.000-07:00

Here is my attempt to paint a portrait despite not being able to see the sitter's eyes. There were so many problems with the photographs that were available to work from. The biggest problem, of course, was that he was wearing sunglasses in the photo. Also, the hat in the picture was bizarrely distorted by the flash. I was reluctant to just "take off the hat" because I had so little to work with to get a likeness that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to see the true shape of his head. I brought a baseball hat into the studio and lit it appropriately so I would have something to work from. I had to reduce the size of his hand because the camera had distorted that as well. When I started working on his eyes, I found the I needed someone to use as a model. I could tell from one of the other photographs that I'd been given, that he had deep set blue eyes. I started looking around for someone I could use as an eye model. I first used the eyes of Heath Ledger because it was easy to find a lot of pictures of him on line. That made this boy look too old. I painted them out and tried again, this time using my older daughter as the model. My older daughter has brilliant green eyes, but she is the same age, and it was simple to adjust the eye color. These eyes look more "believable" but it can't possibly look very much like the boy. I feel so bad for his parents. I've worked for weeks on this and I'm going to have to call it quits. I will offer to paint the sunglasses on for them if they would prefer that.

Hubris

2008-07-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't disappeared. I haven't given up the blog. I simply went to the shore. I needed to take a break from the portrait I've been working on. What made me think I could pull this off? What kind of artistic hubris? How could I possibly get some kind of likeness without being able to see the boy's eyes? I will work on this some more, then call it complete, have it given to the parents with the promise that I will give them another, either with the sunglasses, or from another photograph. I have taken two things away from this struggle, however. First, I will spend some time contemplating the negative aspects of "pride", and I will take many more pictures of my kids.

A Challenge

2008-06-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

I started another posthumous portrait for the Lost Dreams project. The family provided photos to work from, but I'm at a standstill. One photo was what looked to be an 8th grade graduation picture, blurry, with a sun-in-the-eyes squint. Another is an odd angle, from below. In the last, the young man is wearing opaquely dark sunglasses and a baseball hat. I decided to use the third, because it was the closest thing to a traditional portrait pose, and the placement of the hand might give him a thoughtful look. But the sunglasses are proving to be a terrible problem. I've been trying for days to glean enough information from the three photos to give me a sense of what he looks like. I'm going to leave the hat on his head because I can't see what his head is really shaped like and that is so basic to getting a likeness. I can tell his eyes are deep set and a beautiful gray blue, but I'm having an awful time getting them to look like they're set in his head properly and that they're the same eyes in the picture taken from below. It got me thinking again about how much these portraits must mean to a family who may only have a couple of poor quality snapshots as mementos. I will keep working on this. If anyone has any ideas about how I could do this, please let me know.

A Beautiful Day

2008-06-22T18:52:00.000-07:00

Was it Toad or Ratty who said, "Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats." ? The only thing better is to spend the morning painting at a friend's farm, then taking a break to paddle about in a small boat. On Saturday, the art group I belong to got together to paint outside. The location was spectacular, and the company even better. Here are Alice Dustin and Renee Daily enjoying a Wind in the Willows moment.

I've never been comfortable painting en plein aire, but I brought my new camera and had a great time taking photographs. I expect to get several paintings out of the day's pictures.

Completion

2008-06-19T16:28:00.000-07:00

I finished Darnell's portrait today. I decided to keep the background light because I liked the way the warm colors in his face glow in contrast to the lighter cooler background. I made a few drawing corrections which helped with the likeness as well as accentuating his youth.

2008-06-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

I used to work in pastels instead of oil paint. It was convenient when there were little kids around the house. I learned a lot about color using pastel. It's an addition and subtraction process, adding color, restating areas, layering cools on top of warms, finding the warm tones again. With pastel, you can't mix the perfect color. You have to make the colors you have work. Now, when I'm at the point in the painting process that I've reached with Darnell, I paint with oils the way I did with pastel. I'm adding thin veils of color, perhaps getting too warm, then cooling it down with a bit of titanium mixed with the color I'm using. If it gets chalky, I'll go back into it with a glaze of a transparent color. I'm adding and subtracting until I get as many of the subtle nuances of the skin color as I can.

Darnell Continued

2008-06-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

It's been a few days since I've been able to get in to the studio, so the under painting had dried nicely. The first thing I did was to tone the entire head, including the hair, with a thin layer of Rembrandt's Transparent Oxide Red mixed with Liquin. The under painting is still very clearly visible through this layer. This gives me a warm base color that I can blend other colors into. At this point in the painting I use mostly transparent colors, alizarin, raw umber, yellow ochre, vermilion, and cobalt blue. Gamblin makes a beautiful transparent orange that I used also. Keeping everything very soft, I start layering and blending colors in. It all starts to get rather dark so I start to work in a little naples yellow and a little titanium white, depending on whether I need a cool light or a warm light, to re-establish the lighter areas. I also mixed some cobalt blue with the transparent red oxide to deepen the darks in the hair, eyes, and eyebrows. At this point, I realized that the paint was setting up very quickly in the hot studio, so I quickly scrubbed on some cobalt blue mixed with raw umber to tone the shirt, and added some light tone to the background around the head.

A Chelsea Afternoon

2008-06-09T13:51:00.000-07:00

Saturday in New York. Ninety seven degrees farenheit. What a great day to be in Chelsea! My good friend Nancy Bea Miller celebrated the opening of her show, Still Moments, at the Sherry French Gallery with a reception at the gallery. The gallery is in a wonderful airy space overlooking the Hudson River. The view is so spectacular that every time I am there for an opening, there is a moment when the focus turns from the art on the wall to the panorama outside. Saturday's distraction was a fireboat in the river below, spraying its hoses in all directions. The crowd in the gallery was cheery and animated despite the heat, moving towards the window to see the fireboat, then back to the main part of the gallery to continue enjoying the paintings and the company. Many friends came up from Philadelphia for the event including Fred Danziger, Carla Tudor, Marianne Mitchell and Fay Stanford. Nancy Bea's paintings glowed against the wall in the subdued light of the gallery. Her still life paintings are known for their strong sense of stillness. The doughnuts looking like they've been caught in a bell jar, the sugar gleaming with a stickiness that can never be touched. Surprisingly, even her landscapes with figures, like "Berry Picking on Manana " above, have a feeling of time stopped forever at a particularly quiet moment.

Beginning Darnell

2008-06-05T12:38:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me that watching me develop a portrait could be like watching the proverbial paint dry, but if you're reading this, you are probably a painter, too, or a friend. In either case you're more likely to have the patience.

I start with the pictures provided by the family. In this case, I have a camera phone shot, and one with a very small print of Darnell's face. I decided to use the that second picture,and I enlarged the portion of the photo that I needed to do a head and shoulders portrait.

I gave myself a few charcoal "landmarks" on the canvas, but then immediately started in developing a monochromatic underpainting. I use raw umber, titanium white, and turpenoid for this. I get the drawing problems worked out in this stage, as well as establishing my darks and lights. I can see that there are adjustments that I will make once I begin to layer on the color, but at this point, I have to allow the painting to dry for a couple of days.

Lost Dreams

2008-06-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of years I have been volunteering to paint portraits for the Lost Dreams Project. This project, administered through the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, has artists paint portraits of children who have lost their lives through violence, mostly gun violence. The originals are given to the grieving families and prints of those paintings are displayed at anti-violence events. I've done about eight so far, including this sweet little girl.

It's incomprehensible, really. How can we live in a place where children are being shot down in the street? While I was painting today, I was listening to the NPR coverage of the primary, and Barak Obama's triumph. I can only hope that we can change the culture in this country so that families don't have to lose their babies to gun violence.

I started working on another one today. The families often don't have great photographs for the artist to work from. I have photos of one 17 year who has sunglasses on in one, is sleeping in another, and the last is an eighth grade graduation picture where he's squinting into the sun. I haven't figured out yet how I'll do that portrait. But today I began a painting of Darnell. He was 15. He was walking home from a relative's house a little after midnight. He was found in a 20th Street intersection with a fatal chest wound.

In this case, I have a photo of Darnell taken with a cell phone, and another one in which Darnell's face is quite small. Over the next several posts I'll take you through the process of painting one of these posthumous portraits, beginning with how I use the photographs the family provides.

The Support of Women

2008-06-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

I have a real conflict coming up this saturday. My dear friend, Nancy Bea Miller , is showing at Sherry French Gallery this month. The opening reception is on Saturday. Here in Philadelphia, on the same afternoon, is a memorial at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for the wonderful artist and teacher, Edna Andrade, who died this past April. You can read more about Edna in the wonderful piece Ed Sozanski wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

I first met Edna Andrade when I was a student at what was then the Philadelphia College of Art. Although I never actually studied with her, and the "op art" painting she was doing at the time was not a direction I would be going, she was an inspiration. I was an unsophisticated kid from New Jersey. She was the first professional woman artist I'd met. Finally, I had a role model.

Several years after I left PCA, at a time in my life when I was struggling to make a living and feeling discouraged about my choice to live the artist life, I ran into Edna at an event. She remembered me, and was as she always was, kind, friendly and very supportive. I no longer remember exactly what it was she said to me, but I came away reassured and reinvigorated. I also came away from that determined to remember to be equally supportive to my fellow artists.

So on Saturday, while Edna is getting her well deserved send off at the Museum, I'll be in New York celebrating Nancy Bea Miller's accomplishment. But I will make sure to raise my glass of "gallery opening white wine" and make a toast in Edna's honor.

Note: The magnificent portrait of Edna Andrade, above, was painted by my good friend, Alexandra Tyng . I'm so glad Alex had the chance to complete this portrait. I'm sorry it's reproducing so small.

Welcome to My Studio

2008-06-02T19:07:00.000-07:00

There's a phenomenon familiar to most artists who exhibit their paintings. There's a mad intense push to complete the work, frame it, get it hung, celebrate at the opening - and then the crash. And that's where I am right now. My One person show at Sherry French Gallery just came down. It was a wonderful opportunity. It was exciting to start exhibiting in New York City and I was delighted to be written up in the Chelsea Clinton News by Joe Bendik. The painting above, "Path to the Beach" is one of the paintings included in the May show.

But now, here I am, laid low with a serious case of post show lethargy. It's time to try something new. Like this blog.

Let me introduce myself. I'm a realist painter. I paint landscapes. I have a studio in the Manyunk neighborhood of Philadelphia. I'm going to talk about my work and my life as an artist. I may show how I work through the process of doing a painting. I may talk about what I'm reading or what shows I'm seeing. Of course, I may veer into the personal or the political - but isn't that what all blogs do ?

And, welcome to my studio.