the girls

Cows are surprisingly curious creatures so when I was out walking with my sketchbook and found these girls in a pasture over near East Meredith, they came right over to the fence where I was standing and actually stood there long enough for me to draw them - sort of. I also took a photo and though we were leaving pretty soon for the city, I spent a couple of hours out in my studio trying to capture something of the cute profiles they offered to me as well as the color of the deep, rich, green foliage which - right now in Delaware County - qualifies as a wonder of the world. Sold

June Virtual Paintout - New Zealand

When I arrived at my son's college graduation a few weeks ago, I realized that I had forgotten my little point and shoot camera. So in a moment of largesse, brought on not only by the great pride of this second child finishing a degree but also by the happy conclusion of more than 23 years of paying tuition, my husband drove us straight to Best Buy where we purchased a much fancier camera than we either could afford or could figure out how to use! With a quick glance over the start up pages of the handbook, I managed to have it up and running in time for the ceremony and the family gatherings but now that I am back in my studio trying to take accurate photos of my paintings I am totally lost. This is the best image I could manage of this painting which is my submission to the June Virtual Paintout blog. What you see is way more vivid than the Google street view it is based on and only slightly more colorful than the actual painting. Next post, I hope to do better!

liberty and old glass

8" x 9" oil on stretched linen

click here to purchase

buttercups!

This is prime time for wildflowers in upstate New York. The fields and roadsides are covered with daisies and clover, little pale purple flowers that look like a cross between asters and daisies, tiny blue flowers - it is really quite something to see. I remember the first run I took here 24 years ago this month, I kept myself occupied by counting the different varieties of flowers I saw as I ran along the back river road: I stopped counting somewhere in the fifties and that didn't include flowering shrubs or trees. If you look out into the distance right now, you can see fields of pale yellow - not the brilliant solid patches of lime-yellow like the mustard fields in France, but a richer shade as if the color has been lightly scumbled over the green grasses beneath. Those are masses of buttercups - one of the daintiest little flowers around. When I was a child we used to hold them up under our chins and the bright reflection would prove just how much we loved butter!

some kind of flower

We don't really have a "garden center" up here in farm country. What we have is a house on the corner of Route 23 and East Meredith Road where, for many years, the family sold garlic. Yes, a garlic stand on the side of the road. A fine, french idea if ever I knew one. There was a greenhouse or so at the back, but their main product was, yes, garlic. Then several years back, they expanded. One greenhouse followed another and now, though they don't sell tools or fertilizer or wood chips or burlap, they do sell annuals and perennials, herb and vegetable plants and, if you get there early enough in the season, seed potatoes. Every year now, they expand ever so slightly and this year's improvement was a big one. It used to be that you would turn into the parking area from Route 23 then, leaving, have to back around and go out the way you came in. This year they bulldozed a driveway from the parking lot out behind their house and onto the East Meredith Road which makes the business of getting in and getting out so much easier! When I went there this past week, I bought a few herb plants and a huge tomato plant (having already ordered my seeds and potatoes from Burpees) and I also splurged on the annual (painted above). I think it is an annual, anyway. When I got home, the labels had fallen off so I don't know the name of the flower, whether it is an annual or perennial, whether it grows in sunlight or in shade or any other important pieces of information. So I planted it next to the herbs in my vegetable garden figuring that everything is happier around basil and rosemary. And because I spent a good part of the last few days digging and planting, I have only had enough time to paint this small canvas depicting my new, unnamed flower. For this week however, I feel that my beautiful potager, which is the french word for vegetable garden, is enough of a work of art.

Dandelion shadowplay

I know that we are not supposed to like dandelions because they muck up the grass and spread around the lawn like wildfire. And indeed, they are something of a problem in my vegetable garden once the new, edible leaves are gone and the thick, feisty ones arrive. But I still think they are delightful. They don't last long in the vase, just as they don't last long out of doors, but I was able to paint these two - and the beautiful shadow they made on the wall - before they started to fade. While I painted, I listened to The Hazards of Love, by the Decembrists, having been introduced to it by my son. He and his talented friends made a most thrilling theater piece based on this music which I saw last weekend at Skidmore College. The painting is 8" x 10" on linen-covered foam core.

Virtual Paintout - Cote d"azur

This months Paintout location is the Cote d'Azur which has far too many beautiful street views to choose from. I picked this one which is not exactly a street, but it is a view of a lovely little corner at the entry to a church. It feels deeply Provencal to me, what with the beautiful ceramic pots and the wonderful ochre and sienna colors and the quiet sense of timelessness. The painting is 8" x 9" on stretched linen and if you would like to purchase it, click here.

portrait study, Martin's friend

My friend Martin Wainwright who is a noted author and journalist, not to mention the husband of Penny, my long-ago flat-mate in London, can claim among his millions of interests a passion for the study of moths. He writes a blog on the subject which is by turns esoteric and amusing as well as a totally accurate written form of the way he talks! My father, who was also a journalist, was much the same: he wrote as he spoke, so when I read back over his letters now, it is as if he is still in the room. Martin's writing has that quality too. Recently in his blog he posted a photo of this gentleman Sir Harrison Birtwistle - a composer and, like Martin, a moth enthusiast. Even though the photo is a little blurry for painting purposes, it has a wonderful and very British feeling about it, what with the hyacinths in the vase at the back. So having nothing particular to do today since my model is coming tomorrow, I made this study. I hope, if Sir Harrison Birtwistle ever sees it, he finds that I did justice to his extraordinary face.

two-hour Kate

Not only does Kate have a full time job, but she is also in a play at the Flea, so modeling for me is way down on her to-do list. But when she has a couple of hours on the weekend, as she did yesterday, she comes over and sits for me. I figure that with only two hours every now and again, I should just go for it and paint as good a picture of her as I can in the time allowed. So this was my first sortie into the territory of alla prima portraiture. I found it a little nerve-wracking, but invigorating - kind of like an athletic event. And in the end the study is both not as good as I hoped it would be (I didn't get back to correct the values on the nose, for instance) and better than I expected because it actually does look like her. So I hope she comes back soon for another try!

the old Chapman farm, a plein air-ish study

Our road is strictly a farm road. It goes nowhere, really, though I think that the few cars who drive along it on weekends are using it as a short-cut to get from Route 10 over to Route 23 and then on to Oneonta, where there is commerce - the inescapable Hannaford, Home Depot and Walmart - on the outskirts and at the center, a charming main street where several independently owned stores and restaurants struggle mightily to stay afloat in the face of the behemoths at the periphery. But our road is all about the farms - four of them, all dairy. Our farm is not exactly a working farm. We have no cows of our own and the only crops we raise come out of my yearly vegetable patch but the three other farmers from the road make use of our land - take its hay, pasture their heifers, store tractors in our barn and so we feel very much a part of this increasingly rare agricultural community. From my studio I can see the Chapman farm which has been in the same family for at least two generations. It is a little run down now but I have always loved the look of those old barns nestling into the valley as if they grew there as organically as the trees that surround them. The colors of the land right now, just before it turns spring upstate, are beautiful and subtle and a heartier woman than I would have bundled up against the chill and painted this scene outside. But I didn't. I positioned my easel next to the window and while listening to Schubert, painted quite comfortably and with only the faintest twinge of guilt.

drapery study

vase wrapped in liberty scarf

graphite on paper

Rambouillet, recalled

gifts from le patron

5" x 5" oil on linen board

My husband and I spent two weeks at French language school in Rambouillet last fall. Every day after school, we went to one particular cafe for coffee (for my husband) and hot chocolate (for me). Then we would go home to our studio, complete the day's homework and then go back to the same cafe for a glass of wine before dinner. Little by little, the owner of the cafe came to know us and, treating us like true regulars, stopped taking our order each time and just simply appeared at our table with coffee and chocolate or wine (red for my husband, white for me). The last visit we made to the cafe, we mentioned that we were leaving the next morning and after he brought us our wine, he went back to the counter, and returned to our table with a gift of a deck of cards and a tiny bottle of Ricard pastis for each of us. I put a small liqueur glass with the cards and the Ricard and painted this thinking of that cafe with great fondness and a certain amount of longing. Sold.

porcelain roses

5" x 5" oil on linen covered panel

the great Kate

portrait of an actor

oil on linen-covered panel
sold

Virtual Paintout March 2011

The Virtual Paintout location for this month is Cape Town South Africa. There were a lot of rather spectacular seascapes and mountain views, but I was moved by a rather blurry photo of three children sitting on their steps in a shabby neighborhood. In the actual photo you can't make out the features on their faces, but the positions they are in speak of curiosity and enthusiasm as the Google camera car passes by. The details in the photo were indistinct, but the shape, colors and sweetness of the kids intrigued me, so I made a painting that looks somewhat like a poster study. It is 5" x 5" in oil on a linen covered panel.

Oscar Day flower

I hate to admit how excited I always am to watch the Oscars. No matter how lengthy, dull or self-congratulatory the spectacle is, I love it! The dresses, the red carpet, TIM GUNN - what's not to like? What this flower has to do with any of that, I don't know. I found a few dollars in my pocket yesterday as I was walking home from my run in the park, so I bought a stem of these beautiful white flowers which, though they look like roses, are not! Don't know what they are called, but they are really pretty and I had fun painting them while anticipating the evening's big show.

Pink day

skm + gsm

Hot peppers in the cold winter

Depending on your point of view, it is either a sad fact or a wonder of globalization that hot peppers are available in an upstate NY supermarket right now, in February! Being a fan of local foods, I usually pass right by the winter assortment of mangoes, bright red tomatoes, nectarines and fresh basil on my way to the leeks and butternut squash and other more seasonally appropriate, if not exactly local, produce. But last night, I couldn't resist these brilliant peppers. Not for eating, but for painting. They really lit up my studio which, right now, is bathed in a cool blue glow from the three feet of snow on the ground outside. So, yes, I chose art over principle. There you have it. This painting is 5" x 7" on a linen covered panel and if you would like to purchase it, click here.

Virtual paintout submission

This month's Virtual Paintout location is Boston which I found to be an interesting, if slightly difficult challenge. Although there are all kinds of tempting old townhouses and colonial churches and some interesting juxtapositions of steeples and modern towers, there is not too much drama in the cityscape, so paintings didn't jump out at me from every Google street view as they did last month in Ireland, for example. But I found myself drawn to this modest grey shingled house in the Melrose section of the city - probably because it is from the same era as the house I grew up in outside of Philadelphia. I painted it with a limited palette of ivory black, yellow ochre, french ultramarine, alizarin and titanium white on a 5" x 7" linen covered panel. Sold.

Valentine's Day??

When I was putting the ornaments away after Christmas, I kept this one out thinking that with the hearts, it would make a good subject for a Valentine's Day painting. Now having painted it, I can see that is not the case. For Valentine's Day, you need pink or red or fuschia - candy or doilies, something sweet and tacky. So herewith, a painting of a Christmas ornament - in January! The gorgeous orange cloth it is sitting on came from Fabricana, an Etsy store that sells wonderful fabrics from India. The painting is 5" x 7" in oil on a linen covered panel. Click here to purchase.