This recently finished oil pastel painting was especially challenging. Faces of people very familiar to me and hands take a lot of trial and error. The small size I work (8.5″ x 11.5″) makes it worse of course. I’m calling this finished for now, but there are still a few things which may get tweaked (again!) down the line. The subjects are four fishing guides in New Brunswick, Canada; at a camp I’ve visited every summer for 15 years. The border was closed in 2020 and this year may be another miss. I have my fingers crossed that a vaccination may be an entry ticket. Some of these guides have been doing that hard work for fifty years. They pole a single angler in 15 ft canoes up and down a mile of tumbling, rocky, private water.They really know the salmon and the river and are a pleasure be with. This is my ninth painting of the area. I hope to get there in the autumn some time to incorporate the colorful foliage.
My immediately preceding painting was a detailed street scene with lots of straight line features and strong perspective demands. I needed a break so I chose to do something very different, sort of a “palette cleanser” (pun intended). I settled on a photo I took a year ago while visiting friends in Tasmania. The eucalyptus pictured is right near their front door and the ant infestation was so fascinating I took snaps almost every time I passed it. Sadly, I just found out that the tree needs to be cut down. This is my memorial. My alternative title is “Waiting for Dali”.
These two abstract paintings were done in tandem starting in October 2019. The first, Structures and Forces started with three or four frothy swirls of acrylic paint slathered on with palette knife. I knew it needed something more, but I was stuck, so I started the second, Breaking Up. It too started with a frothy swirl, the red crescent that you can still see on the bottom. I countered that with straight sided forms, vertical, horizontal and diagonal, done with the same paint application. Still no resolution. Fast forward a year, to October 2020. As I cast about for a bit of playful painting I found these two embryos languishing in my box of unresolved paintings, and finally heard what they were asking for.
I’ve always been drawn to our National Forest in the Hector Land Use Area of the Finger Lakes in Upstate NY. It’s a mixture of pasture and forest, filled with gorges, ponds and both intimate and distant views. The Interlocken Trail near Teeter Pond is a favorite inspiration for my work. This painting captured the long shadows of a June evening as the wind swept through trees on a ridge overlooking Seneca Lake. The place was clearly dramatic, yet a strong sense of peace came over me, making me feel glad to be alive. It’s that aliveness that I try to convey to my viewers.
Intersections, as I use the word here, refers to cross-connections between locations such as streets, or larger categories such as islands. It can also refer to the connections, intentional or otherwise, between artists. This post will connect five images from different times and places. The painting shown above is of a location on Appledore Island, Maine. This small island is the site of the Isles of Shoals Marine Laboratory which is an educational and research facility now jointly operated by Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire. Appledore Island also has a rich history in the late 19th century as a summer gathering place for artists, including the American Impressionist Childe Hassam. I’ve always had a fondness for Hassam’s cityscapes and seascapes. I was fortunate to make many trips to Appledore while I was teaching at Cornell. When I started doing oil pastel paintings about 15 years ago, I had the thought that I’d try my hand at an Appledore seascape, but it took me many years to get around to it and also obtain a reference photo to my liking which was produced on my last trip to Appledore. While working on the painting, I made a conscious effort to loosen my technique to pay homage to Hassam’s style of brushwork. The painting title is an expression of that effort.
A couple of years ago I decided to determine the exact island location I photographed and painted, but more importantly, determine whether Hassam had painted the same spot. I enlisted the help of a friend (Dr. Hal Weeks) who has taught on Appledore for many years and has also catalogued all of the island locations of Hassam’s paintings. This was a painstaking effort, but the results were included in a museum show a few years ago. Hal’s determination was that the location I painted is a geological feature now known as Broadway and 42nd Street. This is not a name used in Hassam’s time. It also turned out that Hassam painted the same area (although from a different point of view) and called it “The South Gorge”. Here is his painting and a recent photograph for comparison.
Now it gets interesting. Hassam painted many cityscapes, including some very well-known ones, in New York City. One is titled “Broadway and 42nd Street.” Here it is:
Childe Hassam-Broadway and 42nd Street
Just to complete the circle in this discussion, I did a cityscape a few years before the Appledore painting. The location is NYC and it shows the intersection of Broadway and Spring Street. Too bad I didn’t chose a location further uptown.
Not a normal subject for me but I could not resist the multiple images in the window. Hard to tell what is real and what is reflected or magnified. We had gone to Moosehead Lake, ME from Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park to visit friends. This image was taken in Greenville, ME not far from their lake house. So, while not a normal subject for me, it does represent my life long interest in all things “graphic”.
Just a sketch, drawn in pencil, massaged in Adobe Illustrator — explained by the text at the top — but for those of you who celebrate Christmas, this is for all of you… Merry Christmas and a Happier New Year!!!
And if anyone wants the recipes for these, let me know! The Kremscnitten came from a friend of my Jewish Grandmother in Cincinnati, to my grandmother, to my mother, to me… they are a version of an Eastern European confection that I have never seen made this way anywhere else. The hamburger cookies came from one of Ron’s grad students, years ago. So ess, meyn kinder!
I was riding in a taxi from the Guggenheim Museum back to my hotel and encountered a crowd marching near the horses and buggies. It was the time when animal activists were urging the release of all the horses from their servitude. The argument was that the animals were being mistreated etc. Actually, the horses were being treated quite well, with adequate food and reasonable schedules. Who would have taken care of them if they had been put out to pasture so they could romp around? Rumor had it that builders wanted to secure the property where the horses were kept, which was not an animal rights situation.
Since that time, not much has been said and the horses continue to provide a pleasant, although expensive, way to tour the park.
This image is printed on canvas, 16×20 and is for sale.
We have about two feet of new snow on our hill in Caroline. We’re waiting for a plow to clear a path to the garage and down the driveway. I shoveled the walkway by the front door and stepped out with my camera to capture the view of a favorite stump. My husband says it looks like a mushroom. Any other suggestions?
