The few evenings ago, Michael said you have to see this, so I got the camera and he suggested a panoramic shot.
After he pasted it together, we get the full effect.
I think my mother took this photograph (above) several years ago when she and my father came to visit.
This the only one I’ve doctored with saturation, to bring out that rainbow. It turned the sky into neon lavender.
The Spirit of Charlie lives on, looking over things.
“loveline”
“learning on the line”
Last year I let the little garden go completely wild. Different types of grasses grew, all kinds of weeds, the place was buzzing like a city. The usual characters came back and a few new ones I hadn’t seen before. The honey bees came earlier in the spring and hardly any in the summer. There was an noticeable absence of the Monarch butterfly and the Japanese beetle. Also, surprisingly, there weren’t as many mosquitoes. No vegetables were grown, just a few left over sunflower seeds from the year before and a couple pots of basil. All in all, it was a lush little garden which will grant me fresh, rich soil for this year’s planting.
We had so much rain last Spring. We were soaked.
I placed a pot, flush with the soil, for a make shift frog pond.
When I was getting it ready guess who came to wait, our good friend Basil. Can you see him?
When I finished placing the rocks just so, Basil jumped in and looked like he approved.
Once the rhododendrons bloom, the bumble bees come out and the place starts buzzing.
And of course, the Ruby throat.
The beach rose bloomed for the first time!
The grass grew and so did the infamous Milkweed.
With it comes true delight; honey bees, bumblebees, butterflies and all kinds of insects.
I put a pot in another spot where I had seen Basil sitting once, but the frogs did not take to it.
Still letting it grow wild and free.
Then the Hibiscus comes along, giving everyone so much.
Its a favorite of the Green Leaf Grasshopper
Waiting patiently for my sunflowers to grow…
… and grow they did.
When summer is in full swing, the lawn gets mowed, but the ‘small corner’ keeps growing.
And more visitors arrive.
This time a smaller frog.
Here is the teeniest, tiniest frog on a mint leaf.
Even a toad came to our door step.
Underneath the walnut trees near the road grew some amazing fungi specimens.
The beauty of summer
The hydrangea is always a good indicator of the seasons changing.
And when the Milkweed start to open their pods of seeds.
The End
“windzip”
“in a garden”
“static moonlight”
This last image was taken outside. I did add more yellow notes and brightened up the white.
From the ink sketch, I knew that I wanted to keep this image as simple as possible. The horizon line was the most important part of the scene, it needed show how expansive this space can be. After adding more layers of wax to get that eroding feeling of things past, the picture became a heavily textural piece with the overhead viewpoint just askew. When there is plenty of texture, it seems to create a more energetic feeling with a sense of time moving along.
This is the final sky. I gave it some more light, although once with a greyish background it’s hard get pure white, that’s why I like to paint with gesso. Since gesso is acrylic, it stands out from the more muted oil and wax with a brighter, more chalky appearance.
sketch in oil pastels
wave XVII
wave XVIII sketch in pen and ink
Wave XVIII may not be done yet, looking at this I think the sky will get a little lighter, here it’s a gloomy day.
When I first started to paint and feel around for subject matter, rooms were always something that came to mind since they are often in my dreams. I noticed, going over the ‘wall’ sketches, ones that I had done several years ago, were the beginnings of another series called bleedthrough (past). This is a group of paintings about memory, where imaginary objects in large, expansive spaces are in a process of dissolving or decaying with layers of wax being scraped away to get a worn, used effect.
Here are the very first ideas of ‘walls’.
“wall III”
“wall I”
“wall II”
This one above, being the cross over idea of a factory setting with a ship sitting outside the window, led to the sketch below, an actual mill building, in Easthampton, Massachusetts.
The idea of a dress form was important for this story. I wanted a room of labor with the machine to the left, in foreground, attached to the dress form, a robotic, objective element. Desks in a row are production lined up and the white sheet that hangs from the machine is illustrated with a body laying down and small figures around it, giving it life. The sense of escape or release is the ship, waiting patiently outside, a steady way to transcend into another world.
“bleedthroughit” 1999
“In the Tailor Shop” is a of a story about a mannequin who gained a soul through a tailor’s imagination. The story was from an obscure French play written by Anim D’Alo, taking place in the early 1800’s. Synopsis: An orphaned little boy runs away and finds a gentle blind tailor who wants someone to help him create his masterpieces. The orphan becomes his assistant and sews the tailor’s magnificent dresses for the town to see. They set them up in the window and as the passersby look at the mannequin who graces these clothes, the mannequin gains a conscience and ends up falling in love with an eccentric man about town, Monsieur Beau. This gentleman ends up saving her in a fire, a fire she starts by accident in one of her imaginative episodes and it is this man, who finds her in the ashes and brings her to life. Unfortunately, the Blind Tailor and his assistant die in the fire. A strange story, partly because of the subject matter, but also the feeling it imparted. As the very essence of the tale came to me, I sketched out these scenes where she imagines her thoughts coming to life. They translated into “still lifes” that were haunting and vague, yet intriguing pieces.
The first is “Dress”. The dress they made was intended to startle the people and make them look. It is an orange garment glowing with hints of cyan blue ribbon, giving the mannequin fire and an impetus to create.
After getting the kind of feel I wanted out of this piece, I started sketches on the next scene, where the mannequin is haunted by the eccentric man, Monsieur Beau. He rides a unicycle through town and has taken special note of her display. She is dressed in green, an olive, lime green that symbolizes her envy. She so desperately wants to become real that she emanates this green hue of color the blind tailor sees in his dreams.
In the next scene, named “The Resistance”, she knows of the mannequin heads that sit on her dresser waiting for her to look out of, this makes her sad because they remind her of what she is not.
There were certain colors described in the night scene where the little orphan puts together a purple, lavender silk dress that shone through the hallway light.
She lends her magic in the neighboring meat shop by lighting Chinese lanterns .
The following is the last piece I have done, titled “In the End She has Her Captors” where the mannequin imagines taking all of the vital belongings of what make up Monsieur Beau, the blind tailor and the little orphan and placing them in a net bag. She believes they are ‘soul parts’ for her taking.
I am hoping to continue this series with one more painting, depicting Monsieur Beau riding his unicycle in the distance while the mannequin is picking up scissors and making her wedding dress.
channeling the abstract 