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"The true painter strives to paint what can only be seen through his world." ~André Malraux



After a year of intermittant "painter's block"  I am working again in my studio, and feeling in a tentative positive state. Painting is a solitary activity, and as artists, we are often working in a vacuum. Unless we have a show hanging, reaction to the work is minimal. With several pieces underway, I decided that perhaps if I write about what I am doing or am attempting to do, it might act somewhat as a muse for me as well as give me some feedback on the work I am creating -- hence the establishment of this blog. 

As for the blog title, traditional, representational painting is a language for expressing what’s visible. But I feel my work is the most successful, and most interesting, when focused on things not entirely visible. I paint what I see but also what I sense and feel by utilizing my interior and unseen world --- in other words, the invisible world. Plein air work or  studio work from photographs are only touchstones or landmarks which guide me to other inner spaces. By so doing, I find that I am pushing the boundaries between representational and abstract work.

You can enlarge the images in this blog by clicking on them.


Aug 21, 2012

Rose Madder Red Face

Or is it perhaps Cadmium Red? It is more than embarrassing that I have not posted a blog since late May. The world has been too much with me .... filled with family/friends visitors, gardening, giant five-family garage sale, vacations, and all the effort involved in closing on and moving into the condo, our new second home. 

All of that is behind me now, except for one last foray to the ocean, coming up Labor Day week when we always go to New Jersey's barrier island, Long Beach Island -- where I spent part of all of my childhood summers (in Loveladies)  on up until 1996. 
Daddy and me, Loveladies, 1951.
At least the beach, and ocean is the same, but the then very sparsely built on dunes are chock-a-block with one beach McMansion after another spoiling what was once a magical place. It has become too chi-chi, to Hamptonsy for me. But the next town at the end of the island, Barnegat Light -- historically a fishing village -- is about as unchanged as anywhere on the island. And that is where we go for a week each year, in my perhaps misguided efforts to go home again to cook some weakfish, eat some clams, sit in the sun, and smell that extraordinary smell of salt in the breeze that is unlike anywhere else I know.

But art has been on my mind. I was part of an invitational farm-themed  show with at The Justin Morrill Homestead here in Strafford in July, and submitted these paintings:

 and this one, very poor photo from a slide,  that dates back a number of years:

"Summer Shadows" oil on canvas  24" x 48"



I sold the latter for a good price, which was nice, but I always miss them when they go.

I also have my large forsythia painting in a show at the Twin River Gallery in Lyme, NH, but I have yet to take a photo of that piece. 

And finally, I took three new pieces up to my Nantucket Gallery, East End Gallery, which sold three of mine in the spring. I brought one home which I do not think she has really shown, but which I like, and will probably hang in the condo. This is a poor iphone photo of it: I will get a better one and insert it here later.

" Hummock Pond, Nantucket"  12" x 24"
Michael
I ran into my friend Michael Moore at the gallery who was mounting a show there. Good to see him, and I fell in love with one of his pieces, see below.

"Lifting Fog"  oil on linen  9" x 12"
I have been asked to be a curator for the May 2013 show at the Tang Museum of Art in Saratoga Springs for the fiftieth reunion juried show to be held there. I have accepted.

Otherwise, and indeed I have a life besides my art, life has been hectic but good. Our time in Nantucket was especially wonderful, with the entire family gathered on the little bit of paradise my son located up there about 8 years ago. It could not be more delightful, with all my children and grandchildren, extended family nearby, the old shingled beach house nestled on a dune, the ocean out the back, and the harbor (bay) across the street for a front yard. With so few houses on this little spit of land, there is never more than one other family in view, way down the beach, which makes it an ocean paradise, as far as I am concerned. 

But where has the summer gone, and how many more are left to me?



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