New paintings

Yesterday I hung new paintings at the Gallery to

replace those that had sold at the opening.

Landscape 1315  on the right is another painting

with fall colors although fall has pretty much

given way to winter here with a nice

sloppy inch or two of snow saturday night.

So I guess Landscape 1314 below would reflect

that change perfectly even though it was painted

months ago during the dreg-ends of winter. It has

more wildness and energy than the others I

have hung at the gallery. There's alot of scratching

and texture in the lower area. Gary and two other

friends who were looking while I was hanging

picked it as their favorite of the six on the wall.

Several people have suggested that I try to work larger. Most of my current work is in the 4"x10"

neighborhood matted to 11x14 but still quite

small. Marilyn pointed out several pieces    

she though would translate well to a

larger size. She said just go out and buy some

canvases.   I like keeping them small and therefore affordable - that's what we did best at Mill River Studio. But after nine days in DC seeing paintings that were as big as a house, I'm inspired towards a larger, more expansive and expressive form of     painting.

This de Kooning at the East Gallery - part of the       Meyerhoff Collection (1945-1995) exhibit  - was inspirational. Both Faroll and I thought it was beautiful and timeless. I later read that the critics called the period in the eighties when he turned away from the vulgar, grotesque women, his "old-age style".  Isn't that terrible? I guess he didn't like it either because when he moved to Easthampton he resumed the women series and his prices soared when it was disclosed that he had dementia - now we know it was probably Alzheimers'.

   http://hirshhorn.si.edu/dynamic/collection_images/full/82.135.jpg   shows another painting from the more lyrical examples. These personify the term "action painting" that was often used along with abstract expressionism and New York School to describe that group of post-war painters who now fill our museums. Can you imagine the reception if de Kooning had painted his women series today instead of  some fifty or more years ago?

Here's a good example:
 http://hirshhorn.si.edu/dynamic/collection_images/full/66.1197A.jpg

So working larger will be a goal for the new year. My make-shift studio at home seems a little small and confining for larger works so I'll have to do something about that or maybe just start marginally larger like 16x20. It would be nice to frame the painting without glass since they have the feel and texture of oil paintings so I'm going to try using some gessoed gatorboard. We'll see.

Holly

Art Glut

So Laura called Monday and said she had sold three of my paintings - two framed and one matted to three different people - one new and two who had bought art last summer from the gallery. Very exciting especially since it happened in the first few days the show was up.

I've been in DC for six days and am thoroughly saturated with art - post-war american art - which is all I'm really interested in these days. Two visits to the National Gallery, the Hirshorn, the Phillips Collection and the botanical garden and Museum of the American Indian and the Building Museum have left me dazed and confused but content.

I did see some kick ass art though and much of it was new to me. Many of the paintings owned by especially the Phillips Collection have never been licensed for reproduction (I'm guessing here) not because they are lesser works but because they don't seem to need the extra money. It's so refreshing to see "new" work that hasn't been diminished by over exposure. Who ever thought Van Gogh's sunflowers would grace refrigerator magnets and lunch boxes?

This tempera and oil on canvas called Le Tournesol )The Sunflower), c. 1920 is surprisingly by Edward Steichen who was both a photographer and painter although he threw away most of his paintings when he decided to devote himself full-time to photography.

It was the brightest thing in it's room at the East Gallery and, again, I had never seen it before.

I also saw the seminal painting by Helen Frankenthaler  Mountains and Sea which was the first painting to use thinned oil paints on unprimed canvas (soak stain) and paved the way for other artists like Pollack, Morris Lewis and Kenneth Noland. I love her work and the changes she has made over a long career but as many times as I have seen this painting reproduced, to see it in person  only  confirmed what I had already felt - I don't like it all that much. It's kind of watery and blobby. I don't get it. But she represented the second wave of color field painting and opened up a whole new way to do things differently even if it meant using a technique that is bound to keep art restorers in business for a long time. Luckily, she didn't like the halo effect the oil paints created and soon switched to acrylic which probably won't eat into the canvas as readily as oil paint.

I'll try to add a link to that image but have to end now as my brain is foggier than the Chesapeake Bay.

Holly

Up and Running

The show is up and I've gone to DC for a week plus of museum saturation and family Thanksgiving.

It took the better part of two days to hang the  small works by six artists but it looks great with distinct styles and palettes all generally held together by the landscape thread.

Now that I write that - I realize I'm getting sick of landscapes. Maybe it's just being in such a vibrant part of DC - near Logan Circle - that makes me feel that way. Plus I loved the view of the New York skyline from lovely Secaucus and parts south. The blue haze on the skyscrapers looked very much like the blue haze on the Taconic Range ( if it was umpteen years ago and erosion had yet to take place).

I'm hoping I'll become more inured to the traffic noise which seems  assaultive.  And at 7 am the dogs spied a large rat running across the sidewalk and decided to give chase. But I like the vibrancy and diversity. This is a particularly good neighborhood as it  runs the gamut from  sew 'n vac  and Vegas Lounge to a ratty 24 hour 7/11 followed by a gentrifying Whole Foods, very modern galleries and chi chi residences with rooftop party rooms.

            Here are a couple of paintings that Laura didn't choose to include. She likes the pretty ones.              
            These have a little more grit.

         I'll be posting photos of DC as the week wears on. This afternoon nephew Ivan and I are going to to the Phillips Collection- he likes Rothko and I am wild about twentieth century american art

         up to about 1980.

         Okay, scratch that. The sun just came out and the C&O Canal Towpath in Georgetown      
          beckons. We'll go to the Phillips during the week when it is free. Cheep, cheep cheep.

          Holly

Whew

Miraculously I am finished after three weeks of pulling everything together for the gallery group show.
I've got everything photographed, matted or framed, signed and titled and labeled on the back, an artist's statement, numerical and photographic inventories and a postcard which came out much darker than the proof. I still have to add to my mailing list and send cards but for now I'll just put them in all the obvious places and make sure to carry some with me when I go to the Co-op for lunch.

People have been so nice to me that I feel  like I'm living a good
version of the movie Groundhog Day except it's my
birthday and I'm maybe ten years old.


At Liz's urging, I've included some of the pieces with multiple openings. She liked them and thought others would as well. It's difficult to predict what will grab someone's attention.

Her favorites were a couple of pieces that I really didn't think anyone but me would like. One was very monochromatic and still while another vibrates with color and is unlike anything else I've done. And the third she said reminded her of a scene in the Alps. I'll include photos of them when I get back from DC.

 These multiples are a little hard to see since I've cropped the mats. I've got to spend some time rigging a better way to photograph the art. I've got it on an easel now and it isn't exactly 90 degrees so the corners slope away. It isn't as noticeable on the single opening paintings which can be slightly cropped but it really shows on the three included here.

Tomorrow, as the ultimate luxury in winter preparedness, I'm having all my windows and doors professionally washed. This will be a first for me in the twelve years I've lived here and there is quite a bit of baked on fly hieroglyphics, etched spider tracery, dog nose schmut and grackle poop.

Holly

Sunrise - Sunset

Thought I'd give it another whirl today and see if the formatting issues have been resolved after a little tinkering.

I've read that the reason sunsets are better in the fall is because it's drier then. That's not much of an explanation but it's true - the sunsets are so vivid  they seem like a pop artist's rendition.

The only good thing about switching off daylight savings time is that I'm up at the same (old) time which is a  lot earlier now. Okay that was a joke but I do seem to be catching a lot more sunrises.

So  here's sunrise this morning from my deck looking east, (obviously). The intensity of the burning white hot sun in contrast to the shadowed mountains can be almost frightening. How would you ever be able to suggest it in a painting? I don't think you could do it with paint. It's molten and slick.

And here's tonight's sunset from my porch
looking southwest. The photo is tame compared
to the real thing. I see some geometry and shapes in these two shots which could be interesting to
pursue in a painting. Although I've tried this kind of dramatic silhouette before with poor results. I think it was the dark outline of corn stalks and tassels looking up at a bright blue sky. Really didn't cut it at all.

Okay then.  I still can't drag and position the text or photos. And although everything looks okay now - it probably won't after I publish. Had I known this site was so wanky.........





Holly

Yikes

And while I'm complaining - if you noticed that the text went all e.e. cummings in my last entry believe me it wasn't intentional. I can no longer drag and position text or photos and this seems to be a problem many users have.

The solutions proposed are nightmarish so I guess I'll just have to let go and go haywire gracefully. Here's a new fall painting.

                                                                     Landscape 1318




Here's hoping tomorrow brings better communication between human, software,
printer and Howdy Doody.


Holly

More show paintings

Landscape 1307


 Laura picked this for the show. It was painted
 in late summer when I always miss the ocean
 and start yearning for blinding sun, salt,
 fried clams and soft air.

Landscape 1308


This is another Laura pick - again, the
height of summer - very green, very bright.

                 Landscape 1304


                This has some graphite as well as
                the usual gouache. Fall colors
                with a wintry sky.

 Landscape 1306


This recent painting was inspired by a view near the top of Baldwin Hill. It's more realistic than most of my paintings but the evergreens are leaning in one direction which they don't do in real life and the mountains are wild and unkempt as if they are wind blown also.


 

These  and others I've already posted are being framed for the gallery show.  I've almost got

a system down for keeping track of them. All the business aspects of pulling together

my paintings in order to sell them has been frustrating and time consuming. I'm looking forward to just painting which is why I'm looking forward to winter.

    Holly

  

Hudson

Another damp saturday and Cindy can't paint so I'm off to Hudson across the NY state line and always interesting because of the galleries and stores and  federal architecture but mostly because it's constantly evolving - every couple of months there seems to be new ventures opening and yet it remains community rather than mercenary oriented. I like it there and at one point considered moving there. But there is also crippling poverty like the Berkshires has never known.

   This photo pretty much sums up the day.

But Hudson didn't disappoint and I had a great time. I decided to start from the bottom of Warren Street and work my way up since the newer, edgier galleries have clustered down in the one and two street blocks where rents are cheaper.







You can rent this building very inexpensively. But the heating bill is a bear.




 I loved the photocollages by Nadine Boughton at Davis Orton Gallery. Could have been corny but they weren't.  Called 'The Pleasures of Modern Living' you can look at some of them yourself at davisortongallery.com .   Okay I just looked at the website and the images are too small and don't do the collages justice. Pity.

Usually I can't resist having lunch at Le Gamin - because it reeks of France - and when I want ratatouile, I'm not going to spend three hours cooking each vegetable separately - even the plain old coffee tastes like Paris. But since I was switching it up - I tried a more formal place - Vito - and had a very good tuna caesar salad. Unfortunately, the music playing was about as real as canned laughter and the view was marred by a large seventies style apartment building - the kind with rimless windows - like sans serif type capped off with dirty cornflower blue plastic panels.

The other highlight was a unusual show at the Deffebach Gallery called 'Out of our Minds / Ooom.
It was hard to tell what was going on and the gallerist was a little snotty - she said the film was just beginning - I said no thanks thinking - film equals video equals performance art - no, no, no . I recoil at performance art - live or taped. Meredith Monk is my idea of a recurring nightmare.

But it was hard to resist the tent, the dramatic music and the brand new HD Panasonic monitor.  So I sat in the tent - it was good - for more than 20 minutes of the 28 total - the whole thing fell apart when we got to the lumber camp and everything they axed turned bloody plus the lumberjacks were crappy actors and the music got commercial. Check it out for yourself: ooomfilm.com/trailer. Also, the tent was cute but it's hard to concentrate in a light room. It should have been pitch black.

The farmers market was good - here's a still life of my bounty and a candlestick sparrow I bought at lili and loo.




Holly










oomfilm.com/trailer

Busy

A beautiful sunny windless day helped to break the stupor inflicted on me yesterday by a combination of dreary endless rain and a printer that went inexplicably stupid and printed everything in blue ink. Very frustrating but I learned how to use the draw program in appleworks along the way. That is fun and kind of a cool way to abstract a landscape with geometric shapes and wild patterns.

Today I was able to finally design and print out labels for the back of my paintings. I'll write the title, media and price by hand in the nifty gray box I designed.

Then I took and edited photos of the 46 paintings I had culled that might be contenders for the small works show - Laura had picked six for the wall and said others could be kept unframed in a flatfile drawer. Here is one that has a fall-ish feel.

I found that if you double click the blog images they will expand - not that that will necessarily insure an improvement - paintings, like people often look better from a distance. Actually always - the paintings, that is.

Here's another with fall colors  - this is from a new series in which I use multiple mat openings. I'm so glad we kept the computerized mat cutter from the now defunct framing business.

 This is all one painting but it didn't work as well without the dimension the triple opening gives it. I'll be showing more paintings with multiple openings - some symmetrical - some not and another type in which each opening has a separate painting although  they are all on one piece of paper. These are fun to do - maybe less serious - usually all the same scene in different colors or seasons. I know, it sounds tacky - well now I have to show one.

Holly

Wet

The grimness of the late fall is upon us -
even the dogs are sidelined by cold wet weather and dim skies.

During our saturday painting session the rain came down heavily and the colors were so rich I had to take a few photos out my back door. Why is it that colors outdoors pop when it's overcast? I guess the brighter the sun the more the reflection. Maybe Arizona would look better if the sun didn't shine all the time. I suppose that's why traditional art studios face north so the light will be ambient and allow true color vision. I honestly thought it was so it wouldn't shine in your eyes while you were trying to paint until I began this train of thought.

I'll tell you what - given the chance to build a studio from scratch - I'd opt for a western exposure. Who wants to shiver in the stingy northern light and listen to the wind whistle all winter. As for summer - you can always get bamboo blinds. I think the newish Smith College Museum and art studios have a northern clerestory for the perfect light but I'd rather have bright light anyday.

My idea of preparing for the long winter is to replace all my 60 watt bulbs with 75 watt bulbs - the place is operating room bright now.

I started this piece on saturday - it's not finished - the lower area is a bit shaggy and needs some smoothing. I could wet it a little or I could pile on more paint - I'm not sure. The blue is very bright and rich. I'm not going to change that part. The middle is less defined than usual. My palette is clearly changing with the landscape although often the fall can look very much like the spring. Until you look down at the ground and see all the dead stuff.

I've picked an off-white mat with a black bevel and a narrow gold frame for my pieces that are due at the gallery in a couple of weeks. Much agonizing and consulting have led to what I hope will be a focused, simple, rich look with a wide appeal. (lay it on thick Holly).

I'll post again with the finished version of the above painting although editing sometimes goes awry but if that's the case I will turn it over and begin something new. If that goes south also, I will tear it up. If I can't get at least one good fragment that will work in a 5x7 mat, I'll post a photo of the huddled shredded pieces.


Holly

More Paintings

I've been taking photos of some of my latest paintings as I have to come up with a business card very soon and thought it would be more interesting to use a full bleed of a painting rather than an existing art  template of something like a palette and a handful of brushes and a logo: Holly's House of Paint.

It's hard to get the color right when I start snapping at 4pm or so - what happened to the daylight? I have to turn the flash off to avoid glare but the natural light produces reflection and if I have used a reflective paint like silver or stainless steel - the light bounces badly.

So instead, having little patience, I use the technically difficult method of holding the painting under a light bulb and clicking away at arms length. With alot of  cropping and color correction (you know you've underlit when the white mat reads brown) I can approximate the feeling of the painting although so far, the photos do little to show the texture and values and generally have a slightly unreal feeling to them.

I chose the above photo for my business card - I had to crop it a little to get the proportions right and who knows how it will turn out - the days of going to the local print shop, waiting forever and then having to confront them when the color is wacky are long since gone for me. I like shopping at night.

This is one of many paintings I've done which clearly has its genesis in the airport.

I'll have to wait for better lighting before I take any more photographs.

Tomorrow is a  Saturday with Cindy - we paint, we critique, we eat. I'm thinking grilled pork tenderloin, advocado, asian slaw and jalapeno hot sauce wrapped up in a tomato basil  tortilla. Maybe I'll take a photo of that.

First Post

I'm lucky to have this kind of inspiration to look at from my porch. The sky was filled with unusual clouds today that reminded me of Navajo weaving patterns - triangular with jagged edges.

The buildings are the small Great Barrington airport and the runway and surrounding cornfields are what give me the luxury of an unbroken view and exceptional light.

While I don't sit down with a photo and try to "capture" a scene from nature, I do draw inspiration from the extraordinary colors, patterns, and textures that make up my surroundings. When I paint I start with no plan, pick a few paint tube colors and let things evolve. My subconscious has registered a great deal of visual information and often the painting takes on the life of where I've been recently or the seasonal changes in color and density that happen every year.

My blog title describes my surprise every time I paint at how many colors can be made with mixing, layering, glazing and thinning. I like to break rules and combine colors that are both warm and cold, rich and acidic, transparent and opaque.

I mainly use gouache on rag mat board or heavy printing paper but technically, my paintings are mixed water media as I use combinations of gouache, casein, watercolor and occasionally gel medium or white fluid acrylic for texture. Sometimes I use frottage (fancy name for blotting) or shallow incised marks (my favorite tool is a lobster pick) and that's why I like mat board because it can take a great deal of abuse.

I favor scraping tools over brushes - they help me stay abstract - symbolic - rather than too small or detailed - I try to involve the observer as much as possible by leaving my paintings open ended. The more detail and realism - the less involvement for the person looking at the work.

I love ambiguity and the possibility that people will "enter" the painting and inhabit it in very different ways. I think the more possibilities a painting presents, the more staying power it will have - the longer it  has the possibility to engage you.

This is a photo of a recent painting - Landscape 118 which is 7''x3.75". I like the bluish lavender sky and that is my color for the day.

This painting, along with several others will be available for sale in a show of small works at the Sanford Smith Gallery on Railroad Street in Great Barrington, Ma starting a week before Thanksgiving and continuing thru the holidays.




Always feel free to contact me - I'm always working in my studio at home on Seekonk Cross Road and welcome comments, emails and the occasional, informal studio visit.


Holly