Eyes are my Halloween specialty

Ummmm... the better to see with!

Working to the bone!

Got a hand (literally) from the athletic trainer's clinic, and the kids are creating details and inspiring me with their multi-layered hand projects. I only have three and a half more weeks and there is so much to cover! Not enough time to paint- though this is a small paper/paint and pencil study done on the sly.

Arts Awards Celebrations

Tonight the Dutchess County Arts Council celebrates the 24th annual County Executive Arts Awards!Liza Donnelly and Michael Maslin, two cartoonists living in Rhinebeck win the Individual artist award. We will toast the Center for Performing Arts in Rhinebeck as the arts organization leader of the year, and the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater for their art in Public Places.
Patrons Wayne and Brigid Nussbickel are to be feted for their arts patronage and Hudson Beach Glass as a successful artist-led business anchoring cultural development in Beacon. Anthony Scarrone is the arts in education winner and Elysia Roman is the youth with exceptional promise...
And last but never least- Lisa Fiorese at the arts council- the backbone and sweetie who does everything- for her 18 years of service at the arts council is to be cited for special exemplary service!

Leaf peepers

(all gone!)



What's really amazing these days is the quiet and stunning landscape. It's the peak of the fall season... and it inspires me into trying a little something different--- not much time or energy to really paint seriously. There's been a lot going on and I am over stretched.

Fall for Art

Town wide art party in Millerton this weekend. It's the third year and it gets better than ever.
I'll be at the 14th colony show about 4pm and then moving on to Hanbeck Gallery from 5-8, all hanging in the streets, all hanging with the art! Come say hi.

Christmas this year

is going to be delayed. My boys will be with their father.
I just don't feel like celebrating, I don't have the money to buy gifts, or the inkling to make them.

Acrylic on wood panel
6 x 9 inches

Coffee and cardboard

Lessons of life to be found with in a nature morte.



It's easy to find these materials around the home...
You don't need top of the line materials to make a work of art.



Here are some takes from class and through Alberti's veil.
It's all about relationships... fitting one shape next to the other- defining the space, and not crying over spilled coffee.

My bags are packed, I'm ready to go!

Two things happened on the way to the lawyers. (This is not a joke) I posted my application to the Women's Studio Workshop for an art residency... where I'd like to make these divorce papers into something really good, and the notary found my soon-to-be-former-husband's signature was both missing in places and in the wrong places. It's back and forth again. Here is an image of three of the individual divorce "papers" with the suitcase of forty...

I'm having a hard time getting out of the bed

mode... Is it me or is it hibernating season?
Small panels, each 8 x 9.5 inches, acrylic, on wood.
These are called- from top right and clockwise:
Hot and Sour
Flights of Fancy
Burning
Visitation

NEWS FLASH:
I will be hanging work at the TWISTED SOUL RESTAURANT in Poughkeepsie next month... Stay tuned to find out more...There will be a reception and I hear the food is awesome- they even have BUBBLE TEA!
Anyone want to do dinner?

Using some of the smaller painting to inform the larger

I did what I could in the few hours left to myself this weekend. Moved the paint around, and the challenge was layering the shapes in such a way as to sing with joy and imply intimacy without being overly explicit. I don't have a message to hammer out... just... a song, of sorts, to hum.
Spent the morning hours delivering signs to artists involved in next weeks ArtEast Open studio tour. It should be really great- almost all are new artists to the tour and several studio's are brand spanking new! The fiscal sponsor of ArtEast is the Dutchess County Arts Council. I will be going on the tour next Saturday and Sunday. Hope there is a good turn out... so much incredible inspiration is usually inaccessible. This opportunity is a rare one. www.arteastdutchess.com.

Day tripping

...with no singular brilliant thought in my head. Something about rubbing shoulders with the masses, and tunneling back out to my country home makes me want to just write out loud that I am alive. I exist! I am piecing my life into place, like a crane building a new tower. Moving out of my comfort zone and thinking outside myself as I just read 101 grant proposals and voted on giving away money... to organizations that house the homeless, defend the minorities, educate and put art in the public realm. It's a privilege to be so assigned. Great thinkers exist. You exist. I hear it and see it and read it. And I believe it. Together we can move from misery to celebration. Little steps, like one day at a time, a reach across worlds, a small movement...

Ode to My Bed

8 x 10
paint and collage on wood
Not sure it doesn't need a little more paint.

Teaching students

is sometimes like dragging the voice out of them... attacking the inner critic, arming them with media and forcing them to make a choice. I try to give them a formal framework so they are not standing out in a barren field of ideas. They have to think of composition, placement, color, value...look to light sources, inspiration, use their eyes!
But its just a rainy day and no one seems able to invest themselves in the process to the level I want them to. Shapes dribble out on the pages. I wipe them off and make them start over.
Are we getting anywhere, I wonder?
Tomorrow, it has just been announced, is "Mountain Day"... so no classes will be held. Will the kids remember what we went over or will we have to repeat everything in two days?
ARGH!-
says the wicked teacher

Nature Morte

One year ago

It seems I have survived. Don't know how! Looking back it's surreal... getting ready for the walkway over the Hudson grand opening just as my sons left home, my father-in-law got sick and my husband left. How did I do it? I haven't had a lot of days, like this photo, where I am walking in air. I have more often tunneled my way.
But as we look to file the legal documents next week, I see that life has it's bridges, and even tunnels mean you can move forward. (ndp)

playing with bones

Student studies in arrangements of shapes and tones to move the eye through out the surface... these are warm ups for the real project this week!

I'll understand the story... tomorrow

This started as an homage to Cuban artist David Rodrigues. (See post: Thank you). Having worked on several paintings the same evening, I let this one sort of slip on it's own course. I began with an idea of woman in side profile wearing an elegant red dress made out of maps. Well, she soon gained weight (ugh), and, in spite of that, the ground formed fingers lifting her. The "thought bubbles" are text from pages ripped out of an old journal. I'm a little frightened of the house in the background! Don't know where it came from, but it looks dark and on stilts. I have no idea what the image says about me or about anything... yet.
Here's a sample of how story telling can get completely out of control.

Lick for the third time

With incredibly perfect ice cream flavors... lime, vanilla, lavender... you should hurry to Hudson's Ice cream store on Warren. Christopher and Michael have about a week or two left of being open. It's such an awesome place. And I am not just saying this because 8 of my paintings are hanging there. This is the third year in a row they have invited me to hang my work in their windows over the annual Columbus weekend's Artwalk. I put in one rooster because they love chickens, and one cow (Udderly Delish) because it's an homage to the source of ice cream, and the other paintings follow the course of designing a sundae, from the cones at rest to the toppings to the empty dish (After Glow).
Posters of my Month of Sundaes are available for $20 and the individual 8 x 10 x 2 inch paintings for $200

Turkish delight

What's a weekend without a fabulous feast? Not only do I thank George, Peter and Amy for their cooking... I have to say the belly laughs were the best of all. Somehow the camera falls short in capturing it all, flash on or flash off. It puzzles me. How do we add laughter into an image?... Peter gave a tour of his studio after dinner and it was divine, intriguing, and more.
Laughter is Peter's medium. It might have to be my new theme. Gotta kick the misery out of my paint brush soon.

Washed away

We've had torrential rains and this stream bed- which was dry all of August and September looks like this today! Isn't there some natural symbolism to water and it's flow? I am mesmerized and distracted by it... all sorts of things come to my mind as I stand on a bridge watching it go under my feet... am I dramatizing every detail of my life?
My husband says he signed the papers. I guess I wait for the lawyers to call. Because my job ends in December I need to send my resume back out. Anyone need an art teacher this winter? First things first.

Pit of Despair

First painting in ages... it's therapeutic for me. Organizing my studio table and uncovering old CD's... I put Shania Twain on and it was an immediate "call to brushes". I also uncovered a printed email from Steve, with the subject line "the Trap", written in 2007. He says: "Death is natural, and the closer it gets the more peaceful it seems. Easy to say that now of course, it's still far enough away. I would like you to be here when it happens. And, unlike Johnny, there won't be a single thing for you to feel guilty about. You've been an incredible friend. In some parallel universe we'll be laughing and painting for eons."
I have friends who are capable of sinking under an emotional mental weight and finding it impossible to lift themselves out of bed. I've been there.
I want to, as Steve says, be laughing and painting...
For the first time in a month my house is empty and I am able to nap when I get home from work and then paint all night. Need to kick start myself here! 7 x 5 inches mixed media on wood.