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