Indian Summer

Indian Summer
12 x 16
Please contact me if interested in this piece

We have had some incredibly beautiful fall days over the last week or so. Yesterday it was almost 80 degrees, which made me start thinking about the term "indian summer". It turns out to be a uniquely American term, in use for over 200 years, although this phenomena is recognized and called by other names in Europe and other parts of the world. Of course, it refers to a warm period of weather, occurring during a time of the year (fall) when cooler weather prevails. I prefer a less meteorological definition - a metaphor for something that happens at an unexpected time like a late bloom or flowering- something perhaps brief, but cherished for its untimely appearance.

Imagination & Execution

This past week I reread the book Art & Fear. I was first introduced to this wise little tome over ten years ago. Its one of those books that you can reread again and again, finding new and deeper insights each time. This time was no exception. The passages that seemed particularly apt had to do with what the authors call the "correspondence between imagination and execution"- that is, the place where your work actually gets made. The idea is that at the beginning the work can be whatever you can imagine but as it progresses- as you actually begin to make it- the possibilities narrow with each successive brushstroke, until at the end only a very narrow range of choices remain to complete the work. It is then its own thing, separate and apart from the world and what inspired it. In other words, as Annie Dillard (paraphrasing Paul Klee) wrote:

The painter...does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.
I have read those words a dozen times over many years and have only just begun to understand what they mean. I had this ridiculous notion that I was in control!

This past week I've been working on the large painting-the underpainting is posted here. This first image is one glaze over the foreground and trees and the sky laid in with opaque paint.

Once the sky was laid in, I began to adjust the values and color temperature. It gets tricky here because you have to remember that each successive glaze will darken that portion of the panting. In this next image, I've put several more glaze layers on the foreground and the distant trees, repainted a portion of the sky, and adjusted the distant tree shapes and color harmony throughout.


So far, I've done very little to the large trees in the foreground and nothing to the small piece of water in the very front. And the sky will need repainting again. There are zillions of little adjustments to edges and shapes and color needed everywhere now-each needing to be fitted to what came before-to the paint.

Walking the Country

We live about 4 miles outside a small town (pop. 3800 on an optimistic day) in North Texas. Founded in 1833, back in the day, it was a prosperous town with numerous cotton gins and four drugstores and a movie theater on the town square. Now, not so much. Our road and the adjacent land in our area has had its own identity as a distinct community for many years also. Its called Mabry. My husband hates that- he thinks it sounds like "Mayberry". I say, so what? Mabry is, of course, a family name of the people who settled here and several of their descendants are our neighbors. When you turn on to our road, an old, white church and a graveyard mark the entrance to Mabry. The school house for the community (two rooms) originally stood on our property. A small piece of the foundation and a leaning flag pole (which we still use) are all that is left today.

Over the last 16 months I have painted mostly what I can see from our property, on our road or the drive into town. I cannot say, as Constable did, that these are "my places" given our short residency here, but nevertheless, they do feel like they are mine-at least aesthetically. Over these months, we have met our neighbors and most already knew I was an artist (that's the way it is in small towns). Many have graciously consented to let me roam their woods, pastures and fields in search of inspiration. I never have to go far. That little wooden ladder leaning against the fence behind my studio seems a perfect symbol of my place here- and I am content with that.

Finishing the Start

Evening 48 x 60-under painting

Its amazing the amount of things you can get done while you are trying to avoid tackling a big canvas-things like laundry, cleaning up the garage and even your taxes (yes, we procrastinate around here). But eventually you have to face the music, or in this case- the linen. The one thing I have learned is that no matter what I intend the work to be, no matter how many studies I do, the canvas will, at some point very early on, become its own very different thing. When I painted in a more direct manner I would sometimes try to force it back into its cage, so to speak. But now, I cannot so easily cover my tracks. The under painting tells all and whatever happens by the time I have finished the start will be part of the finished work.

October Afternoon

October Afternoon
7 1/2 x 12 oil
Please contact me if interested in this piece

This past weekend I drove to New Mexico for the opening of the Albuquerque Museum Miniatures & More show. It was a quick trip- 24 hours of driving squeezed into about a 54 hour trip. But, I'm glad I went. I saw many friends at the show and I always enjoy the drive, especially at this time of year. I was more than a bit worried about how the show would go, given the recent economic news. I haven't heard whether overall things were slower, but Summer Moon sold, for which I am very grateful.

About a year ago, I was making the drive back from a show in California, and wrote about not being sure where home was. But Sunday, as the high desert of New Mexico gave way to the rolling hills of north Texas, I knew I was heading in the right direction.

A Natural Painter

Hay Field Evening

30 x 40
Available at Hildt Galleries, Chicago

For the last two years I have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand. I have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which I set out, but have rather tried to make my performances look like the work of other men…There is room enough for a natural painter. The great vice of the present day is bravura, an attempt to do something beyond the truth.
John Constable

As readers of this blog may know, I count J.M.W. Turner, the great 19th century English landscape painter, as one of the influences on my work. Turner and John Constable have come down to us in art history as the twin stars of early 19th century landscape. And though Constable has always had my admiration, it has only been in the last year that I have come to feel a deep kinship with his art and aesthetic point of view.

In art history, Turner plays the shooting star to what seems at first glance to be a more earthbound Constable. And in fact, Turner did burst on the London art scene, becoming the youngest member ever elected to the Royal Academy at age 24 , while it took Constable over twenty years to achieve that status. Both exhibited artistic courage by raising the art of landscape from its third class status and laid the groundwork for the Barbizon School and the Impressionists. Turner's emphasis was on the Sublime and his audacious use of color and technique nevertheless were often used in service of history or classical themes which found more favor at the Royal Academy than the pure landscape paintings of Constable.

Constable's art was based upon a deep and abiding affection for the landscape in which he grew up and to which he returned during his entire life as a source of inspiration, saying that for him "painting was but another word for feeling" and that his art "could be found under every hedge and down every lane". Constable's approach to his art, grounded upon plein air work and close observation, combined with painterly technique was in fact, quietly revolutionary.

At a time when representational landscape painting is once again beneath consideration, if not contempt by the post modern art world (today's self protective gatekeepers as surely as the Academy was in its day), I take great comfort in Constable.

I should paint my own places best, for they made me a painter.
John Constable

On the Cusp

Late Afternoon at the Pond
8 x 8
Please contact me if interested in this piece

This summer my husband became slightly obsessed with hummingbirds. We have always had a feeder or two, but this year he bought several more, then another and another. He was filling the feeders three to four times a day, and right before Ike blew through, it seemed like we had hundreds of birds. A few days after the storm the overnight temperatures dipped into the fifties, and the next morning they were gone! The next day I noticed how much earlier dusk came and that the sunset had moved to the south along our west facing property line. In just a matter of days, summer was over.

I know all this seems trivial in light of the momentous events of the last few weeks. But in a strange way, its the same: in a matter of days, things changed. Its just that hummingbirds and the coolness of the morning air seem much more real to me than hedge funds and securitized debt instruments.

Hayfield Moonrise

Hayfield Moonrise
10 x 12

This is the third small piece for the Albuquerque Museum Miniatures & More show next month.

Waiting for Ike

Backyard Sunset
10 x 12

This painting is also a slightly larger version of a previously posted study. It will also be exhibited at the Albuquerque Museum Miniatures & More exhibition next month.

We are in the path of Hurricane Ike as it heads north through Texas. So, I thought I'd post this before the power goes out!

A Blog Birthday

Evening Pond
12 x 10

This is a larger version of a study I posted a few weeks ago. It will be exhibited -with two other pieces this size, and the larger piece posted here- at the Albuquerque Museum Miniatures & More exhibition in October.

This week marks a year since I began writing this blog. When I started I had a few ideas about why I wanted to blog and what I would do. Most of that went by the boards in the first few months. Instead this blog sort of took on a life of its own and led me in directions I hadn't really anticipated. As with any creative endeavor, the journey became as important as the result. I thought about writing a post about what I hope to accomplish in the second year. But I think I'll just wait and see what happens.

Calm before the storm

Soft Summer Evening
oil on birch panel 8x6

Last night as we drove home from dinner in a neighboring town, the evening sky was so beautiful. Recent rain had greened up all the fields and it was a perfect late summer evening. Hard to believe Gustav is on the way.

Cool Water

Cool Water
oil on birch panel, 8x6

When I was a little girl I was, like many little girls, horse crazy. I started riding when I was about six and within a year had convinced my parents I had to have my own horse. During the school year, I rode in the afternoon and on weekends and in the summer I spent a good deal of my time on horseback exploring the fields, pastures and woods in north Florida where I grew up. There was a large pond (or at least it seemed large to me) on the edge of a pasture at the barn where I boarded my horse. After a ride on hot summer afternoons, I would strip off my horse's tack (and my own shoes and socks) and ride bareback with just a halter and rope into the pond. As we moved out to the center of the pond where the water was deepest, I would float like a leaf off my horse's back, holding on to his mane and the halter rope. His legs would begin to churn beneath me and the cool water from the bottom of the pond would rise up and envelop me. It was the most perfect sense of freedom I have ever known.

Creative Capital

Evening Pond
10 x 8
Please contact me if interested in this piece

You know how sometimes it seems like an idea keeps popping up everywhere in things you are reading, or looking at or thinking about? I've been thinking a lot lately about what I choose to paint- what ideas and imagery interest me and why. I wrote a bit about that here (quoting both Annie Dillard and Thoreau) and since then, it seems I find references to this notion- that your aesthetic sensibility is a like a vein of ore you are meant to mine. Then last week I was rereading The Creators by Paul Johnson, and there it was again- except this time Johnson had given it a name- creative capital.

"By experience I mean the combination of observation and feeling that leads to a creative moment...this precious capital can be spent- thrown away, as it were...and replenished by undergoing fresh experience...of an intense kind."

I'm not sure I would have agreed with that a few years ago, but now it seems just about right, at least for me. In my own case, I can't help but notice that certain imagery- water, for example- and certain times of day- evening, night- are favorite motifs. Although it was mostly an unconscious thing, I think the change in my painting techniques were directly related to my desire to explore these ideas. Perhaps the most dramatic change came about because of our move to a landscape which in many respects reminds me of the landscape of my childhood. There are powerful associations for me, childhood memories that I hadn't thought of in years-but which now seem to inform everything I want to paint.

"There are a lot of things I could say about the art (of poetry)....it should be about major adventures only,outward and inward-important things that happen to you, or important things that occur to you. Mere poeticality won't suffice."
Robert Frost 1928

I also think there is an edge of melancholy and sometimes a sense of sadness or loss in my work, that wasn't there until the last few years. Perhaps this is just an acknowledgment of the loss of my parents, who I miss terribly, and the fact of my own mortality. At 58, I am not exactly at death's door (at least, not that I know of, but I do feel a sense of urgency and mourn the loss of so many creative years when I was otherwise engaged.

"Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case."
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

But truth be told, I am not so sure I would have been able to tap into that vein 25 years ago or even 10 years ago. So perhaps this is my time and these are the things I was made to give voice to. One thing I know for sure, there's no time to waste.

Piney Woods Sunset

Piney Woods Sunset
8 x 10
Contact me if interested in this piece.

This part of Texas is referred to as the Piney Woods. I love the look of a pond through these tall pines, particularly at sunset. This painting is also a study for a larger work.

Evening Study
8 x 10

After a couple of weeks of really hot weather and almost a month without rain, we finally got two days of rain and temperatures dropped about 10 degrees. As the skies cleared at the end of the second day, the evening sky was the most beautiful shade of violet.