three shows in three months

Since I last posted, I've been working on an unplanned series paintings that have me so juiced up and excited that I hate to waste time sleeping.
Here's what happened-
I made up my mind last week to throw something into the MOCA GA (Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia) pin-up show that opens tonight. I took a sheet of papyrus paper and gridded it with chalk and did a small oil painting of Rembrandt's staircase. It's all dark earthy reds and honey colored woods rising into the dark, with a thick ship's rope for a handrail. The limit of size for the show is 12x16," I left the edge of the papyrus raw. Working on an unfamiliar surface was really freeing. And it's doing something that's completely from my heart, and which carries three meanings for me - Rembrandt (art), steps (progress) on Papyrus (writing).

Another small works exhibition is going to be at the Dalton Gallery (a local non- profit college museum) and the deadline to submit work is Monday, Nov 24. Up to ten pieces, but nothing larger than 6x6." I bought 6 5x5" panels and am doing a series. These will be tiny, like a pages from a book of prayer. I've painted four and have two more to finish, photoshop, burn to a disc and get over to the gallery by Monday. Exhilarating to work this fast and this hard. No time for doubts or second guessing though, so in some ways it's easier.

Meanwhile my gallery, Huff Harrington Fine Art asked for some 'smalls, ( 8x8") for their December show. I am thinking about a wall of Delft tiles I saw in A'dam of children playing games. I'd like to do a set of four and somehow update the central figures while keeping old cracked and mottled 17th century cream background, and the Delft blue. Most of the fun will be in creating the surface textures of a three hundred year old cracked and chipped tile. Due the end of the month or as soon as I can send them over.
So - that's why I haven't blogged and that's why I'm headed into the studio right now.

paintings in progress

This is a cherry red velvet sofa in the hallway by the grand staircase of Kunsthistoriche museum. I spent today working on the whipped cream- colored view out of the window. There will be a drawing of one of Rembrandt's self portraits on the open page of the sketchbook. Working on the patterns in the marble, and have blocked in most of it, but there another layer or three of paint to come. The big challenge will be convincingly rendering the wall mounted sconce light behind and to the left of the sofa.

three on an easel

Since I've been home from my trip I've started three paintings:
•a shelf of vellum-bound sketchbooks in Rembrandt's studio
•my sketchbook propped open on a red velvet sofa in the Kunsthistoriche museum
•a cello lying on its side behind the gilt chair of the musician in the ballroom of the Palais Leichtenstien
The first is nearly finished, the second is halfway done and the third is barely started, but paint is on the canvas.
They each have companions waiting to jump on the easel - an image of books in the Leichtenstien library goes with Rembrandt's shelf. The cello speaks to two other images - a gypsy band's instruments (two violins and two guitars) leaning against the wall of San Paolo's in Venice, and a battered violin for sale in a market in Amsterdam. The sketchbook on the red velvet sofa connects with the sketchbook next to the San Marco chair.
It feels so good to have this well of inspiration to dip my cup into.

'Rembrandt's Shelf' in progress.

Amsterdam

1.People zip out of nowhere on bicycles, often texting on their phones while pedaling at manic speeds. Jump out of the way, or die.
2. Rembrandt. Vermeer. Jan Steen. Hals.
3. It's a young town. About half the people look under forty and 90 percent of the street population looks twenty-ish. The other 10 percent is pregnant.
4. Sausage plus croissant makes a brodje, the national food. Unless you are into raw herring.
5. Staircases are carpeted spirals that go straight up - or down, if you are unwary.
6. You can cross without warning into the red light district. A clue – street level picture windows that feature a metal kitchen chair with a handy stack of towels and bored looking women wearing lingerie. The red neon light overhead was another tip off.
7. The tram conductor that piloted the tram to Central station called out the various stops along the route using different voices and sound effects. At the end he sang a little Frank Sinatra ('My Way'). He was either a man happy in his work, or one who took his break in the local "coffeeshop." Fortunately he didn't have to steer, just stop and start.
8 At a local street market I bought a set of cards, drawings done of the canal row houses. The artist who made and sold them, a big, burly guy with a full beard, wore a lumberjack LL Bean type shirt, tights and a denim skirt.
9. Vermeer's maid pouring milk painting absolutely glows. It is in a room with nothing but masterpieces, including other works by Vermeer, and it is radiant. It shines. You can't take your eyes off it because you don't want to.
10. The Dutch have their own style. Nothing like the sleek, slightly sinister Italian bella figura. More Oilily than Armani. Colorful, cheerful, practical. Good for pedaling bikes and painting. I like it.

Seeing Rembrandt's studio has changed my life. And I'm in love with Breughel.

Vienna

10 things about Vienna

1. If it moves, paint it cream. When it stops, slap some gilding on it.
2. This town runs on caffeine and nicotine, making the quaint cobblestone streets one big ashtray.
3. The Kunsthistorishe museum is paradise. It is like hanging out in a palace covered in wall-to-wall masterpieces all day long for ten measly Euros. There are plush blue velvet sofas in every gallery room, eight in the big rooms.
4. The Germans have a different philosophy about photography in churches. They are methodical and businesslike; as long as you pay, you can play.
5. Breugel! Durer! Vermeer! Rubens!
6. Einschlammer is an espresso under a pile of whipped cream...a double espresso
float.
7. An amazing number of women have hair exactly the orange red color of Bozo the clown.
8. You can ask directions from Mozart –or a guy dressed just like him in a white powdered wig, buckled shoes and a blue silk frock coat.
9. Leaving the Albertina museum one evening, I heard a black southern woman singing the title song to Cabaret in German.
10. Sunday at the Liechtenstein palace offered the royal art collection, a special exhibit on their family estate gardens, and a Bach concert on antique instruments. I sat on a gilt chair in a ballroom and sketched away. They threw in lunch and a melange (espresso with whipped cream) Pretty much heaven.

Venice

Home at last, with so much I want to paint. But I'll start by updating this blog, one city a day.

Ten random things I like about Venice
1. Hearing church bells strike the hours.
2. Getting very very very lost, but always able to find my way at last. Getting lost meaning finding things you otherwise would miss. I got lost, ended up near a church, turned left, and walked into a gallery filled with original Tiepolo drawings.
3. Drawing lions, because stone lions, especially winged ones, are everywhere.
4. Having an espresso in the campo San Barnabos, then riding the vaporetto down the Grand Canal to the Rialto, where a fish market has been in continuous business for 1000 years.
5. Eating luscious figs and jam croissant for breakfast.
6. Sitting on a bench in San Polo, and drawing the church façade (badly) for three happy hours.
7. Watching the crowds of tourists come through, wave after wave, like fish in shoals.
8. Having risi & bisi for lunch and then taking a three hour nap.
9. The city smells like an aquarium - not bad exactly, but pungent. The tourists smell worse - lots of hot people sweating perfume.
10. The masks Venice is famous for comes from a day when the city spent six months of the year in revelry under the cover of masks, doing things that they otherwise might not. I thought how the internet offers a similar veil of anonymity today.

Two stories

Nephew William took me for a boat ride. The boat he uses is a loaner and an old wallowing clunker, kind of like rowing our old black Volvo station wagon, if you can imagine. The oar looks like a Yule log. Gondolas are like Ferraris. If you collide or scrape one, the fine is 60,000 euros, so the objective is to never never touch a gondola. Drowning is preferable. William manned the oar, and his fiancée Elsa and I sat perched on the boat’s right side so it would go straight. William assures me it’s all physics. He moves the oar with a motion like stirring turtle soup, or folding in egg whites. We went down canals so narrow we could touch both sides. We pulled over when any other sort of boat came by. We yelled ’oy’ at all the canal intersections, kind of like golfers yell ‘fore’. Gondoliers had no problem maneuvering past us without touching, their dexterity is amazing.. We even went down a stretch of the Grand Canal which seems as big as the Mississippi when you see it from the vantage point of a small boat.

Walked into the famous San Giovanni & Paulo church. Noticed about halfway down the aisle that organ music was playing – ah, I thought, a concert, how lucky. A little farther on I saw a seated group in the pews, and a priest wiping the rim of a chalice. Oh, I thought, a mass. I slipped into a side chapel out of respect. More music, lots of incense and a violin solo of Ave Maria later and the congregation stood. That’s when they rolled the carnation-covered coffin down the aisle and I realized I had crashed a funeral. All the time other tourists in cargo shorts and backpacks and maps had wandered around. It must have been someone important to rate a funeral in the second grandest church in the city, but not powerful enough to stem the tide of tourism.

latest profile

Usually I post images of my works in progress or on their way out the door to the gallery.
This time my other half - the writer - takes a bow. Here's what I do when I trade the brush for my key board.
My latest profile. Find out what happens before, during and after Robert Spano waves his magic wand.

writing in the morning, painting by afternoon light

I try to do it the other way around - paint in the morning light, edit in the aftrnoon, but today I had to cut my time to suit my clock.
Worked on the right side and bottom edge of the wood bench. Layering grain, exercising patience.

shine up your party shoes

Look at what will be in Huff Harrington Fine Art's New Works show in September. If Frari Candles was for sale, it would be going too. Instead I'll be searching for another candle image to paint from among the hundreds of photos I (stealthily) took on my last trip.

you may already be a winner

I've been honored with a Kick Ass Blogger Award ...
I think this is the bloggy version of 'tag, you're it!'


It is my duty, as the recipient of the Kick Ass Blogger Award, to anoint five lucky winners.
Jocullum - an erudite and original voice of diffident passion, sometimes art-related.
John Sugg - farewells to print journalism on the CJR website.
Paul - at learning to see in the UK, started with the goal of reclaiming his artist's soul one painstaking exercise at a time. I followed him for a couple of years, and missed him when the site went quiet. He's back.
Stephanie - aka yarn harlot. The title speaks for itself. It's all about chicks with sticks.
Emily - a bold young voice of art, and a creative geyser.

I'd like to thank the academy, that is Nancie, for bestowing this honor upon my blog and then patiently explaining to me via email how to embed links, knowledge I was shamefully lacking.
Okay, it's your turn. Awards come with responsibilities. First, you have to read the instructions and follow the committee rules. Then choose some of your favorite bloggers to pass the award on to.

the numinous

One of the great pleasures of being a painter is choosing to paint what tugs at your heart and your eye.
I was seeking a way to make visible the point where the spiritual and physical intersect. The most difficult part was figuring out how to convey the feel of immensity.
These three sky and sea scapes were the result. They are a gesture gratitude for the chance to be a witness in the world, a valentine to 'being itself', to quote Thomas Merton.

Beauty shots

Back in the day when I was a working model, close up photographs for hair and make up ads were called beauty shots. It was all about the lighting.
Here are four of my Table For One series, carefully lit and photographed.

updating images

First a confession. My earlier paintings were photographed on the floor in uneven light at an angle that turned some rectangles into wonky trapezoids.

Every painting needs a sharp, well-lit photographic image, a jpg to post on a gallery website or send to a potential patron.

I will be photographing my inventory of paintings over the next couple of days. I'm glad to say I've made progress in photography along with with painting skills, and I've learned enough photoshop so I'm able to crop the image cleanly and size it properly for juried show applications.

As I work through my inventory I'll post the images here.

As usual I'm bouncing between two paintings. This is the beginning of a painting that comments on our drought and contemplates the innate, undeserved beauty of crumpled plastic in sunlight. It's like painting dozens of neutral abstract squares, and there is something about working on a chalk gridded mid-value gray canvas that is like taking a long drink of cold water.

Loving painting this.

I'm blocking in the slatted seats, arms and legs. I thought it would be really challenging but it seems natural. I'm drawing with paint, instead of painting a detailed drawing, new territory to me. I feel so in the zone that I am thinking about making a sketchbook series part of my upcoming trip. Sketch what snags me then take a photo of the sketch and the scene. I usually figure out why certain images hook me afterwards. At the time I'm working by instinct and hunch.