Titania's Faery Nest is ready

for Mid Summer's dream... the set up, and the director, Cait Johnson trying it out!

Also here are a couple of the umbrella flowers opened to reveal themselves.

The play is one night only, June 18, rain or shine (umbrellas are the main props anyway). 8pm at the Center at High Valley on Sunset Trail in Staatsburg, NY

As with every family of artists, we have soldiers too

Unfortunately this Memorial day looks thunderous and rainy. The parade will go on, no doubt, regardless. My dad will be carrying the flag.
These pictures are from two years ago, (because last year I was in France).
In a small way, today we pause, as a culture, to reflect on the wars of our past and also the three wars we are currently embroiled in, and the profit we make from our military machine ... remember the sacrifices of those no longer with us, and also celebrate the beginning of the summer season, at last!
Happy Happy Memorial day.

Lift off!

Amid the distractions of summer beauty unfolding all around me... family descending, meal prep, yard work, home repair projects, and housework, I do not know what I am doing in the studio...or where these map butterflies are going.






A new "project" of mine is to try to notice as many miracles a day as possible! Yesterday it started with the luscious sunrise glowing pink through the comb of my healthy rooster, to the free warranty covered repair of my computer, to the moment shared over a quick catch-up impromptu dinner with a girlfriend, to the safe arrival of my eldest child. I wonder what is in store today for me to discover!?

LIVING room again

acrylic on wood panel
9 x 17 inches

Here's a room where the living is easy

Took me three beautiful-sunny-I-should-be-outside days to get this far in the painting... so many distractions. And when I couldn't play outside because of the pouring rain, the light was wrong.

eek! seeing it on the screen points out some obvious areas I need to touch again... so this is not finished!

10 x 16.5 inches, wood and acrylic paint

Rcommending this movie!

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans(1927)

Director F.W. Murnau's emotional odyssey stars George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor as a country couple whose marriage is threatened when O'Brien falls prey to cosmopolitan temptress Margaret Livingston's feminine wiles. Imbued with an intoxicating ambiance in style and substance, the lyrical silent film -- which is, by turns, quixotic, blissful, sensual and terrifying -- chalked up Academy Awards for Best Actress (Gaynor) and Best Cinematography.

Available on netflix.

Don't let it terrify you that it is 2 hours and 58 minutes long... it absolutely flies by, though I did stop it halfway and take a phone call. This was recommended to me by my friend Kylie and she told me, " It is my favorite silent movie and it was also the first movie to win an Oscar for art direction-- before that, there was no category, so they created one called "Creative Excellence"."

It is so worth it to see. If you do, tell me what you think.

The 5 x 5 inch painting is one from my divorce document series.

Wish I were in there

Maps haven't been part of my language for a while. Now that I am facing a move... a separation from the norm, I'm in the

playful process of turning maps into butterflies

ARTIST SALON

Butterflies are free

fly away!

Mylar, paint, metal foil tape

Botanicals

Umbrella flowers are shaping up for Cait Johnson's production of A MidSummer Night's Dream scheduled for June 18 (8pm) at the Center at High Valley, in Staatsburg, NY.

The challenge is finding nice days (no wind or rain) where I can work on them on the porch. I'm too superstitious to bring them inside.

These will be opened by the performers and laid on the ground to serve as points of the fairy dance obstacles. I am hoping the scale will make the human performers look smaller...Also working on some large butterflies...

I feel rich (more sculpture to live with)

It's a wonderful time to be outside. Everything is in bloom and the ecstacy of green budding life and renewal spreads through my toes up to the top of my head. Here are some of my sculptures hidden in the garden. The magnet with willow shoots is by Michael Gellatly, the fox and the squirrel are by Rosemary Barrett. ndp

LAST NIGHT'S SALON AT THE FOUNTAINS

was really wonderful. I am grateful to the Barrett House for organizing the event. They will be hosting future art salons in their own place in Poughkeepsie rather than at the Fountains. But it was such a pleasure to share my work with residents and visitors in a truly lovely space with banquet tables for seating and plenty of cakes and wines. It was my second powerpoint ever... I put together 41 images and, due to the help of Christene and Terresa, it worked without a hitch!
My focus was on the practice of daily painting and how it has helped me- since 2006- move through loss of children to school, friends to cancer, time, youth, and divorce. The chickens and ice cream became sublimated icons for the human journey.

When I get rich...

I'm going to have a sculpture garden, just like my grand-daddy. I have so many sweet memories of visiting my mother's father and silently wandering across his art collection. There were giant iron sculptures on the lawn, and small glass ones in the den. Once I came across a fiberglass Humpty Dumpty perched on the rose garden wall. Many of his collection went to the Museum of Modern Art upon his death and the plantings in the MoMA sculpture garden are in his honor. Another collection of sculpture, across the country, is housed in a building in Minneapolis provided by my cousins Sage and John. There is magic and whimsy in living with sculpture.
So today I am feeling rich.
I just re-installed Johanne Renbeck's Goddess outside, though this time in a new space. She stands in my small garden outside my kitchen. She lives under the bowers of a lilac tree. When I look at her she inspires me to slow down and admire the beauty of nature.

Hallway

My house. I don't want to forget it. I just love the way during spring and summer you can live with the doors open, to screens, and the vibrant outside. My Adirondack chairs...

I'm working on these latest paintings starting with a dark ground and adding the "white" light... no underdrawing or prep work, just eye-balling measurements and making bold visual leaps with paint. It's punishment for saying I don't like white... now I need to explore it... go to it...
I am also doing a drawing a day with my left hand. It's in a sort of rehab from lifetime of laidback living. I swear the left side of me is WEAK. Michael left yesterday for a months painting residency, and I tease him that I am making these drawings about being "left" behind. I would love to be painting at a residency!

But instead I am loving my house. For the moment.

happy mothers day

So many memories. I love mothers day! It's my favorite holiday with it's blooms, luncheons, family connections.

My boys are well and healthy. I don't ask for more. (Though I am thrilled with my lavender hand lotion!)


This painting, fearless floats of flowers, shown in progress, was done a year ago and celebrates the flowering of our "smelly" plant... It was loaded with feelings of tearful loss when I painted it last year. It is amazing how one year...time...changes everything. Now it is once again in bloom and I am thrilled to smell is aroma wafting in the sunshine. It has TRULY lost the weight of the past, through the purging of paint.

Mother's Day medals

For "Laundry with a Smile"
"The Cleanest Bathroom"
"A Perfect Supper Night after Night"
"Doing More than Two Things at Once"
and "Broom Supervisor"
I made these for myself back in the 1990's and just found them. I guess I was desperate for attention! So much of what mother's do goes unnoticed.

These are color pencil and ink sketches magnetized for the fridge. I would add "Dust Bunny Slayer" if I made one today.

Come to the opening

at Noble Horizons tonight
5-7pm

About 60 artists from the 14th colony arts group have hung a small work. Up all month! Enjoy!

I can't remember what I put in... (oh my! Where is my head?)

Work over the studio corner

Before I pack everything up, I think I will record the rooms of my home.
This is just the first couple layers of sketches done today... I decided to add a bed and signs of a meal for the record... this corner is where I dream and get nourished in more ways than the obvious.

A roof over my head

makes me luckier than a huge percentage of the world's population.
I don't know how I was born so lucky... here in beautiful hilly New York, with family, friends and lots of personal space. I could have been born in Palestine, or Libya, or even Alabama.
My daily list never gets tackled and stress can bring me down. I have to constantly remind myself to take moments and count my blessings. I am so thankful to be where I am today!
My chickens have a roof over their heads too!

I am not in my right mind

when using my left hand. Posing my right hand with the egg was a silly choice that unveiled a shocking deficiency in control of my left hand. This started as a study in white... (read my previous post), but didn't stay there. Two weaknesses are my uncomfortableness in white, and the practical motor use of my left hand. So that will be a new goal for the short term. Everyday for a month I will draw with my left hand. I will not shirk away from the light of white! Painting, for me and a lot of other artists and non professionals, is the place to explore weaknesses and strengths, color, change, choice, beginnings and endings.

I Just Can't Stand White

I spent 6 hours of the sunny weekend cleaning, cutting in and painting the hallways of my house WHITE. What an atrociously boring color. It's so sterile and blank. I left the front door, with the cat mural as it is and I am loath to paint the rest of the trim, like I am supposed to, a glossy white. I have a can of cobalt blue in the wings. There was plenty of time to ponder my restless urges to rag roll or scrape or alter the surfaces in some dramatic way. I guess I never like to start with white and so many of my panels in waiting are already darkened with marks and hues...I think most artistic angst comes from facing a white surface... feeling like you have to know where and what to mark down. Starting with a color, especially an uneven color mix, makes the subject so much more likely to surface with very little effort for the artist... just look for it.