A Mother's heart

Everything changes when you have a child. Your heart expands and you become incredibly vulnerable. If you are lucky the child will make you try to be a better person than you ever were. This is an old painting- a triptych- I did when my son was a toddler. I call it "Heart Transplant for Superwoman".
I am pushed to the edge by my sons- who just yesterday cut each other's hair. I was in my studio at the time. This is what we have to face just days before school starts. I am freaking out and probably making an a-- of myself. Why does this upset me so? I tell them:
1. they will be judged by strangers
2. their teachers will not like them
3. it looks so low class
4. it's not even artistically well done
5. it just looks hideous
6. they look like thugs
7. why can't they fly below the radar at the start of a new school year?
And they respond:
1. Do they care what strangers think?
2. Their character is more important than their outer appearance
3. We should not judge others
4. Perhaps my snobbery should be in question
5. it is a means of self expression
6. it's only hair
7. teachers can't grade kids based on their looks
8. as an artist am I really saying we should not draw attention to ourselves?
Sigh...
I am going to shave them bald by midnight.

Chickens- up in flames

this is a small wood panel- 6 x 9 inches
collage and paint
Even though this was painted pretty fast- it changed a lot from an initial
walled eden-like garden scene to a tinder box of match sticks...
Sometimes I enjoy a painting that leads the way...something like
Lucid dreaming?

Bird Brain washed

Canvas, 6 x 9 inches, with paint and collage
If I did this again I would include, as a collage element, the LISTS and lists and lists of what has to be done to get this family to their schools, jobs, out of trouble, into the fast lane, etc...Oh my.

Hallucinating Hen

This is collage and paint on canvas. A "sketch" for a larger work. I gessoed 4 large panels today and hope to hit them with paint soon. The headlines are full of good stuff...emotional and dark. There is so much to be afraid of. We should all be chickens.
Next week is a transition week- kids back to school, and I can get back to work in the studio with real chunky hours. Of course, just as I need to focus, I am fantasizing about a day at a spa- a massage, pedicure, facial, a glass of wine, some olives...but, slap myself, and shape up- there is work to be done!

Sky over chickens

I am recovering from drama and getting my paintbrush a little wet.
6 x 9 inches. Acrylic and collage on canvas
Is the sky falling?

Paisley cow

my brother in law shot this outside my studio

flowers

SOLD This is reworked a bit from an earlier version. The summer flowers are in full glory and turning autumnal in hue. My sister is leaving today...as well as my mother, my brother-in-law, my two neices, my nephew, and a dear friend. The house will soon echo empty. I will distract myself between the piano, which is buried in unattended mail and the deck chair that whispers silence.
acrylic on panel
I am a little worried about what I will paint next.

Picky picky Hen

So much to do...so many deadlines! So many people to care for. I do not know where to focus next. I am not much fun. I am like the picky hen... searching the ground for clues oblivious to the beauty right above me.
Wax on paper on panel. Detail shows sewn paper area

Poultry in motion

I think this work looks as though the hen is conjuring up a rooster out of the wax. Within the paper on the panel is a sewn drawn image I did of the autumn woods. It all invokes a feeling of motion. Time does not stand still; neither for the hen, nor with the seasons.
Today I take my son to look at a couple colleges and I wonder at the pace of the world. My baby is more and more a man.

Celebrating the farms

...Of Dutchess County- this is a quick 7 x 8 foot panel I put together for the Dutchess County Tourism booth at the Dutchess County fair. Yesterday my son and his friend helped me install it on site. It will be there all week for people to take pictures- to actually place themselves in the bountiful landscape. The fair starts this Tuesday! wooo-hoo.

Stahford and Lydia

SOLD
Who knew? My favorite piece so far... It playfully combines my sewing, my pulp paper, wax, color, drawing, and of course...Stahford and Lydia my chickens. The neighbor has just had a baby- so the egg is in their honor. Stahford, meanwhile, better stop crowing out side their window at 4 am...or else...

Hen and butterfly encaustic

Now I am just playing! So happy to try new things, to create messy images and then untangle them!
We have a full house tonight and I don't quiet know how we are going to manage meals, baths, politics... I wish dynamics of personality mixes were as easy as art.
I am going to fly out to the art opening at GAS...

Rooster and Hen in wax

SOLD
The paper has a piece of wall paper in it- so there is a faint floral pattern to the background that echoes my folk's guest bathroom wall! I believe it gets darker in different lights, and possibly with time. The chickens (aren't they wonderful?) are drawn in carbon transfer and painted loosely in candy color wax pigments. I LOVE R&F wax! 12 x 9 inches

Hen encaustic

Tired of poetry and deep symbols, I slide back to my faithful playful chickens. Hens fall easily from my brush. To start this work I slapped a colaged embedded hand made piece of paper (corn and abaca pulp) onto the hot plate and slid it around to absorb as much wax as possible. The results just "looked" like chicken feathers!
7 x 9 inches

Apple Reach

Tempting?
Here is another wax 9 x 6 inch embedded collage

Apple Aficionado

Wax variation on the apple theme. In the surface upper right are two lovers- on the back the transparent wax shows a woman at her desk with letter- is it a Watteau? Anyone know?
Tonight I have all three of my sisters and my cousin here with their kids and significant others for dinner! Seventeen in all!
Perhaps one of them will know who the artist on the backside is...

Apple falls

This is a wax painting with embedded images of the backyard woods with ink transfer of apple. Continuing the theme of fruits and surroundings. You have to ask---what feeds us. Is it the healthiest of produce, or a poisoned crop?

The Guide

6 x 12 inches
wax encaustic on maps on panel
I may have found help.

Reach again in wax

encaustic painting 10 x 12 inches on panel
Lots going on here...
Maybe I need a hand?

Pear for a Pair

9 x 6 inches
part of a diptych

Pear in wax

9 x 6 inches
wax images- this could be part of a diptych
I love the strokes of pure color, the decorative quality of the pears, the appeal of abstracted combinations...l

Reach in wax

This 6 x 9 inch encaustic work is really a paper sandwich encased in a wax coating. The wax can be buffed to a more glassy surface. (I didn't do it as fully because of anticipating difficulties photographing). The maps embedded within the work are forest maps. The backside shows the kenaff brown pulp and some of the embossed edges of the inclusions.

Upcoming art show

Stolen Moments in wax

This is 6 x 9 inches
The paper is a sandwich of kenaff and abaca pulp sheets laid on top of each other with images (of my backyard, classic statuary, as well as music scores) in between. The wax application renders the paper a wet appearance and enables light to pass through the image.
Visually you can detect a lot of movement in the work- yet the nature of sheet music and statues and wax is to freeze a sensation for eternity.

Come out and play in waxed paper

This 9 x 6 inch sheet of paper was dipped and saturated with wax so that the pulp became transparent and the inclusions became visible. I love experimenting in new materials and the way it helps me express fresh and personal visions... such as the ferns I plucked from outside the door combined with an image of an inviting hand.
The title comes from a line of music visible within the image.
Would you like to take a walk in the woods?

Dance in Wax

COLLECTION of Clive Davis
This is one of my encaustic paper paintings. 9 x 12 inches kenaff and abaca fiber paper pulp with inclusions, coated with wax and ink transfers. Multi media through and through! I tried a little of everything in this work- embedded images, transfers, stencils, tape, and dry brush. I love the sensual process of working in wax. The light dances off and through the work.
The workshop in Kingston- at R&F- was a dream come true.

Perfect tree

I've been spending too much time in the car... and not getting enough sleep. Here I was, sitting at a red light when I looked over my shoulder and saw this tree. I felt as though it had whispered to me. We had a conversation and then I took a picture. Don't know why I am posting it to my blog- except to share the possibility that the Muse strikes in the oddest forms. Soon this tree will be in a painting...or a poem.