"Old Friends, New Work"

As I created work for my October-November show currently hanging at the Zolikoffer Gallery in White River Junction, VT this spring and summer, I thought a lot about consistency again. This is a controversial subject in the art world -- often between gallery owners and the artists. The Gallery folk want to see a consistent style, palette, whatever, and be assured that the same type of work they signed on for with the artist will continue to come in from the artist. Gallery owners are looking for a common thread running through all of your work that holds it together, and makes it recognizable to their clients from one year to the next. 

But we artists hear the word and feel a cold-sweat break out. We  understand the concept, and even see the validity of the gallery owner's viewpoint, but does it mean we don’t have any latitude to experiment and evolve? To my mind, real consistency can become a straightjacket to creativity. I remember how my friend Nancy Gerlach said, after leaving her successful pastel landscape stage and entering into the study of abstract printmaking in her 70's, that she just wasn't "THERE" anymore --  where the traditional landscapes had come from. 

I know some painters, such as my friend Henry Isaacs,  maintain a very consistent and recognizable body of work throughout their careers. Others grow as their visions change, either rather abruptly and dramatically as Eric Aho did, moving from a realistic and simple, striking impressionism to his current expressive abstractions which are far more cluttered and busy.

 What I have settled on, in an effort to be consistent but 
also to evolve, is to utilize the same subject matter for periods at a time. By focusing upon only two subjects in the past few years, I did not become at all bored, but rather found that that the more time I spend painting the intricacies of forsythia and seascapes, the more I began to see that there is an infinite  variety in the nuances of any subject. I have done this before: early on in my serious painting career, I spent years on oversized up close in your 
face flowers, mostly roses and iris. I did the same thing with horses -- in my past are a LOT of paintings of wildly flowing manes and horses' eyes.

  Constable went from painting a realistic landscape to an expressive one. There are a few whose work underwent quite dramatic change over a short period of time, such as 
Philip Guston who turned away from abstraction towards a narrative representation, combining a cartoon style with the luscious brushwork of his abstract paintings. I remember the shock of seeing this new body of work, and how long it took for viewers to accept it. I can imagine him just being tired of making those beautiful paintings, and wanting to shake things up.

For this show, "Old Friends, New Work" I am showing mostly my new seascapes, or rather my four-piece series of 
the place where the wave spill meets the sand on a beach, 
the seafoam, which I call  " ... where the dark, wet sand turns grey"  One of them sold at the show, which is kind of too bad, because they make the most impact as a group. But that gets rather pricey. This is truly where my heart is right now, I guess you could call that spot at the water's edge my muse.
 

This body of work upon which I have concentrated most heavily for the past five years are my seascapes. Not only because that is what the gallery in Nantucket which handles my work prefers, but also because, I am at my best physically and spiritually when I am at the edge of the sea. 
These paintings are the result of inspiration from the dynamic interactions between light, color and movement found on the sand by the sea ... the constant ebb and flow of the tides, the changing patterns of wind and surf, the sand just as it meets the water.

This is the raw material from which I try to move beyond

the particular into the eternal, suggesting the transient life of the waves within the larger permanence of nature -- and our brief passage through it.

I must have taken 50 photos of it this summer both in Nantucket and in LBI. Here are two examples of this painterly obsession.

12 x 12 oil on canvas

12 x 12 oil on canvas

As well as seascapes, I am also drawn to the barns and outbuildings of Vermont's vanishing farms for subject matter.  Like seafoam, the barns have begun their journey into nothingness. I paint the spindrift, the waves, and the seafoam because it is so ephemeral and heart-breakingly beautiful. I paint the far more representational barns 
because their simple dignity, in the face of their diminished value, speaks to me of emptiness and sadness, abandonment in the face of progress, and the hard work of long ago lives. 

The barn paintings are my efforts to honor and save the aged architecture surrounding me here in Vermont – I love the haunting imperfect lines of the buildings, the wonderful textural faded paint and rusted roofing, the lack of  symmetry of windows and doorways, and the  memories memories of lives lived.

Several years ago I also discovered the joy of painting forsythia, which offers a wondrous way to dive into pure 
painterly joy; several of the barn paintings in the show incorporate these yellow harbingers of spring.

The one on the top is my most recent barn, titled "Dusty With September Sun."

Several other barns are in this show -- which will be up until November 19.

You can see some barns in the photo below from the opening of the show on the right, next to two horizontal paintings done by the other woman in the joint show, Judith Pettingell who lives in the area. Judith and I were classmates at Skidmore College, and connected these many years later when I moved here in 1997. Hence the name of the show --  "Old Friends, New Work." Judith and I met in 
the Hathorn Studio classrooms, where we learned some basics from the same art professors.

Another burgeoning interest for me right now are trees catching the sunlight. I had hoped to make this very large painting, below, the focal point of the show. However, I exhibited it at the Morrill Homestead 4th of July show, priced it high so it would not sell -- and some woman from Connecticut bought it and whisked it away.

"Sunlight Laced with Shadow"  30 x 46   oil on canvas with tissue underlay

Right now I am working on a very difficult commission for a man from Boston who wants a painting of his Vermont house pond, and I am also about to complete another tree painting in the above mode, done ALMOST alla prima! It is truly wonderful when that happens, when it all comes together so fast....I only wish the commission was going that way. But I think I made a breakthrough today!

So, is my work consistent? Not really probably. It is in subject groupings, and I handle paint similarly in all, but I am not at all sure it shows much commonality. So be it.

 

Evolving, I Hope

Several readers -- I guess I have a few-- have asked why I do not post blogs anymore. No quick answer to that. It has been a hard year for me, heath-wise, and I kind of shuttered the windows and hunkered down. Nothing fatal, but hard nonetheless. 

A bit more than a year ago I sought help from an orthopedist and a rheumatologist at Dartmouth for a lot of unexplained flu-like pain I was having, and my total exhaustion. Many tests and conversations later, and I was diagnosed with arthritis of the hands, feet and knees -- which I already knew-- bursitis of the hips and knees, and get this, fibromyalgia. Once they told me that, and I googled what it was, a lot of things made sens ... I looked up the symptoms and saw this:

• Chronic muscle pain, muscle spasms, or tightness, a feeling of having the flu
• Pain in a number of diagnosed pressure points during flareups, or chronically.
• A low tolerance for pain (in other words, you feel feel pain more than most people do.)
• Moderate or severe fatigue and decreased energy
• Insomnia or waking up feeling just as tired as when you went to sleep
• Stiffness upon waking or after staying in one position for too long
• Difficulty remembering, concentrating, and performing simple mental tasks ("fibro fog")
• Sensitivity to one or more of the following: odors, noise, bright lights, medications, certain foods, and heat and cold
• Feeling anxious or depressed
• Numbness or tingling in the face, arms, hands, legs, or feet
• Irritable bowel syndrome symptom, irritable bladder
• Tension or migraine headaches
• Jaw and facial tenderness
• Reduced tolerance for exercise and muscle pain after exercise
• A feeling of swelling (without actual swelling) in the hands and feet

I can totally relate to all but a few of these things. I felt so vindicated, so much less "crazy." My pain, tiredness, sensitivities, need for anxiety medication all had a reason! BUT -- what to do about it?

The normal course of action is for the doc to prescribe heavy duty pain killers for the arthritis, bursitis and fibro. Because I am on Coumadin, that was not an option. All I can take is Tylenol. So I searched for for more holistic things I could do. First thing I kept reading these admonitions----GIVE UP GLUTEN, GIVE UP ASPARTAME, GIVE UP PROCESSED FOODS, and if you eat meat, eat only pasture fed and free range and organic, local if possible.  So I did all of that, (although I was already eating very little processed food or supermarket meat or chicken) and within a few weeks, the flu like symptoms went away, and the tiredness gradually improved. It was like a miracle. I had been a Diet Coke addict, drinking at least one a day. After I quit, a month or two later I drank a half of one, and whammo, pain was back. For me anyway, it is a lethal thing.

Then I also started having monthly massages, another thing that really helps, especially when in a flare.

Life began to improve, slowly. By summertime, my mood was improving as well as my health. Time at the beach always helps me.I think for the first time in my life, I had been depressed. I am still unhappy over the state of my health,  but when I look around and see what others are going through, I feel very fortunate. Four friends are fighting cancer right now, and I cannot compare my problems to theirs. However, the inevitable -- at my age (72)-- of the now constant stream of funerals and illnesses of loved ones is taking its toll, and the Effexor is not keeping me on an even keel. I feel so sad so often because of the loss and/or pain of my friends, and my fear of losing them.

The end result is that I have not been painting. I have not done  anything all year except seeing family and friends, a little gardening, a lot of work writing for the book for my Skidmore 50th reunion, and taking on an obsession to find homes for rescue dogs. I did not even read as much as I normally do. This hiatus seems to be what I needed, but this month, I did finally get back in my studio. I need work for a local gallery, will need work for my Nantucket gallery come summer, and have a two-woman show with Skidmore classmate Judith Pettingell coming up in September. I need some new work.

So far my efforts have been a disaster. Nothing is working. I wail "I cannot paint anymore!" But I think I just need to start playing in the studio, with no end result in sight, no aim, no goal, and see what happens. I am probably trying to paint last year's paintings with a this year's soul and outlook. I think I am transitioning. At least I hope that is what the problem is.

 As I created work for the show last year, I thought a lot about consistency again. This is a controversial subject in the art world -- often between gallery owners and the artists. The Gallery folk want to see a consistent style, palette, whatever, and be assured that the same type of work they signed on for with the artist will continue to come in from the artist. Gallery owners are looking for a common thread running through all of your work that holds it together, and makes it recognizable to their clients from one year to the next. 

But we artists hear the word and feel a cold-sweat break out. We  understand the concept, and even see the validity of the gallery owner's viewpoint, but does it mean we don’t have any latitude to experiment and evolve? To my mind, real consistency can become a straight jacket to creativity. I remember how my friend Nancy Gerlach said, after leaving her successful pastel landscape stage and entering into the study of abstract printmaking in her 70's, that she just wasn't THERE anymore --  where the landscapes had come from. 

I know some painters, certainly the old masters, even the Impressionists, and my friends Michael Moore and Henry Isaacs, are able to maintain a very consistent and recognizable body of work throughout their careers. Others grow as their visions change, either rather abruptly and dramatically as Eric Aho did, moving from a realistic and simple, striking impressionism to his current expressive abstractions which are far more cluttered and busy.

 What I settled on for my show a year ago, in an effort to be consistent but also to evolve, and in an effort to present a cohesive show, was to utilize the same subject matter. By focusing on two subjects over the course of a few years, I did not become bored at all, but rather found that that the more time I spend painting forsythia and seascapes, the more I begin to see that there is an infinite variety in the nuances of any subject. I have done this before: Early on I did over sized up-close in-your-face flowers, mostly roses and iris. I did the same thing with horses: in my past are a LOT of paintings of horses' eyes.

  Constable went from painting a realistic landscape to an expressive one. There are a few whose work underwent quite dramatic change over a short period of time, such as Guston who turned away from abstraction towards a narrative representation, combining a cartoon style with the luscious brushwork of his abstract paintings. I remember the shock of seeing this new body of work, and how long it took for viewers to accept it. I never really did! But I can imagine him just being tired of making those beautiful patchwork, painterly paintings, and wanting to shake things up.

So maybe that is where I am heading once again, to change. I think the forsythias, being too realistic, are over for me. I have one started from months back that I will finish, but will start no more.  But the seascapes, ah, they can evolve, and I think I can go there. Only time will tell.
__________________________
After the show last year, in March almost a year ago, I wrote this. 

They have changed their protocol for openings at DHMC, wherein they only invite from their own very limited list, have a small reception, and then lead guests on tour of the work of four artists featured for the next few months. I was unaware of this and invited some friends, and am glad I did! I was also totally unaware that I was expected to talk about my art to the tours, but somehow I muddled through.

We ended the evening with dinner across the street at Jesse's, with Andrea and Ed Doughtie, Jim Wilson and Margaret Parsons, liz Clark and Mary Vic Giersch. 

The forsythia series were very well received, and these seascapes, I think, garnered the most interest.

California Coast 12 x 12 oil on canvas

Monotone of the Sea. 20 x 20 oil on canvas