Three reasons why “serious” artists need to make valentines too

 

1.     Materiality

Don’t worry about archival quality, Get over it. Grab a pair of scissors and go ephemeral. 

Use cheap and fun materials that you haven’t used since grade school, such as

glitter, doilies, stickers, crayons, and tape. You can spend a lot of money or none. It’s time to scour the junk drawers and baskets and find those cool wrappers you couldn’t throw out.

It’s a great time to recycle and use up saved detritus, like postcards, and ticket stubs.

 

2.     Message

It is all about generosity of spirit. Receiving and creating Valentines are meant to alleviate sorrows and burdened hearts. They aren’t about whether you are loved or not- they are playful exchanges of color and whimsy. Make one for the mailman! Give one to the cook at the restaurant! Share with strangers. (Though – I once gave one to an older gentleman who regularly sat in the last pew of my church. I was grateful for the way he always offered a smile when I needed it most. He pulled me aside the following week to nervously tell me that he was a confirmed bachelor!)

 

3.     Method

Play. Be silly. Cultivate a little garden of color in your own heart.

Lighten up. As the winter darkness weighs heavily on most of us, I believe the crafting of frilly pink cards can be a spring to the spirit. Let it all hang out. Creating these small tokens of color can be a meditation on all the connections we have to each other.

Don’t be so self-important. Create free art!

 

How do YOU measure up?

 As an ongoing investigation into both the Culture’s definition of beauty and my personal definition of self, I have been looking into historic fashion choices and not-so-subtle childhood messages handed down through toys.

 

Barbie was the first adult toy marketed for children. It was modeled after a sex toy, called the Lilli, made for German men. Here is one Link to learn more.  My mother strongly opposed acquiring the doll, but my sister and I managed to inherit our babysitter’s collection. Soon after, I had a nightmare of my Barbie aiming to kill me.

My fears of being less than the proportions idealized by media and plastic Barbie, may have led me to suffer anorexia nervosa as a teenager. After all, she came with a wardrobe and a teeny book called How to Lose Weight. Inside it just said, “don’t eat”.

 In less than 100 years, her tiny, pointed feet and wide-set eyes, that only looked demurely sideways, her impossibly narrow waist, and large breasts, and her pearly-pink hairless skin have become an ideal for today’s beauty standards. There is speculation that she could have led to the growingcosmetic surgery business today, the fear of body hair, and an embracing of plasticity as a filter.

 

Distorted body proportions and exaggerated poses are everywhere through time. In the 1800s the Hottentot Venus, (a stolen 20-year-old Khoikhoi woman from South Africa: Saartji Baartman), was paraded against her will and almost naked for the titillating the male European gaze. Here is one link to learn more about this. Women in France and England adopted bustles and Basques into their fashion to mimic the enlarged rear of the South African.

 As we look to history, I am amazed at the embrace of glamour through whitening of skin with the lead paint and arsenic wafers (that slowly poisoned the wearer). I am horrified by the bound miniature feet of the Asian nobility. I panic at the elongated necks of the Myanmar and imagine the dread of the daily use of a whale bone corsets. I willingly ignore the affect of the porn industry on beauty.

 

 

As recently as 2014 Kim Kardashian a woman who uses her sexual appeal as currency to sell a fashion line, posed as the Khoikhoi woman, balancing a champagne glass on her derriere for a shot which enraged many feminists and blacks. Beyonce is rumored to be thinking of making a film about Baartman, but that has led to it's own furor.

 

Fashion minimizes and exagerates the average body type. It always has and always will. How do you live with that constant feeling of falling short or being in the wrong time? How does your body measure up? I am interested in your thoughts.

The Artist Behind the Man on the Syrup Label

 As the maple sugaring season goes on, many people have asked if I made the label featuring my pa's smiling mug. I did not. But my boyfriend Michael did! He is an amazing artist who makes his living doing illustration work for many publishers across many genre. I think he is especially good at those "exploded views" for How-To books. But he can draw anything...and I mean anything!!! I have tried to stump him, asking for a drawing of a clear glass of vodka tonic against a fur wall with a rusty nail and a dead fish...but that is another story! 

Michael has done all the drawings for Rita Mae Brown's Sneaky Pie Brown Murder mysteries as well as a series of maps for George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones. So we find ourselves in high quality company and are seriously proud of our labels!!!!

Twelve years ago when I was moving away from the farm, and sure to miss my pa, Michael secretly got together with my dad and drew this portrait IN PENCIL when he was at an artist residency. It's so special. I cried with joy and wonder when I saw it and had it framed with me in Miami. The original is a treasure.

 

Now that we are bottling a new batch of syrup and packaging the sugar and we have many different iterations that need tweaking for weight and date. Michael is working hard behind the scenes. It is not always easy and several computers need to be configured to line up the print exactly with the sticker edges.

We have a temporary set up in the sugar shack so that Dennis, who is full time sugar master, can make changes and corrections.

Michael is also gifted with another incredible virtue! He's positively willing to do what ever it takes to make us all happy. To see more of Michael's work check out his website:  www.mgellatlyart.com

Virus Anniversary Ponderings on a Plague Saint

 

Marking the anniversary of yearlong pandemic-induced closures and nationwide isolation, I am drawn to St Sebastian as a perfect devotional image. Depicted tied to a column, tree or stake, he is riddled with arrows and gazing, with a beatific smile, up to the heavens.

Back during Bubonic plagues of 17^th century Europe, Christians embraced the saint as an intercessor for their prayers. Sebastian, who lived in Rome, became a martyr who submitted to torture and was left for dead twice. He seemed to defy odds, surviving arrow wounds and beatings. For that reason, he could serve as a lightening rod to relieve and protect others from the plague.  

 

There are other saints to pray to for help in times of plagues, such as the Virgin Mary and St Roch, but St Sebastian seems to be the perfect one for me.

His ideal physique, riddled with arrows has come to symbolize the toleration of multiple zoom meetings and multiplying obituary pages, while the archers, who run away on the receding road, are the business commitments and goals of a “get-me-ahead-at-any-cost” lifestyle. The calendar is the rubble of antiquity around us. I strive for the verticality, and the connection to God.

 

St Sebastian By Botticelli

, Tempera on panel, 1474 (Berlin)

In the 14^th century the “Black Death” killed 30 million people in Europe alone, and an estimated 75 to 200 million across Eurasia. Some people blamed God and turned to focus less on the afterlife and more on a humanist philosophy of earthly delights. Many blamed marginal groups such as the Jews, and instituted brutal and devastating pogroms. The movement of the Flagellants reflected a growing belief that self –harm could win God’s favor and spare the body or even the community. Many people attended gruesome performances of the faithful whipping themselves into frenzy. In the port of Venice, they instituted a law for 30-day isolation applicable to all incoming ships, called a “trentino”, and then extended that for what we now call a “quarantino”

In the 15^th and 16^th century, with the European hunger for world exploration, (and exploitation), 80 to 90% of indigenous populations in the Americas were wiped out by small pox.

Just this week America reached a milestone of 500.000 deaths due to Covid. There hasn’t been public mass mourning until President Biden and VP Harris stood in silence with 500 lit candles. We seem like Sebastian, suspended between two deaths, those of our loved ones and possibly ours. St Sebastian reminds us of that as he is depicted still alive a moment or two before his death. He shares in our personal vulnerability.

 

 Featured art work:

Digital drawing, dimensions variable. Last May, my 82 year old mother had to undergo massive surgery on a rare abdominal cancerous tumor during the Covid crisis. We had to drop her off outside the hospital and wait to hear from her after hours of surgery and recovery. I did this drawing as a prayer and a nod to St. Sebastian. (And mom's doing great!)

Vision Vessel Valentine's Day Afternoon Fun

 Art has the power to transform and it was with that intention that Lisa and I hosted our first ever vision vessel Valentine workshop. We started with reading a list of affirmations and a short guided meditation to set the tone. Once everyone got settled into decorating their miniature cardboard houses, it was pretty silent and focused. Everyone worked with scissors and glue to collage the surfaces. After an hour, the houses were spectacularly unique. We felt refreshed and inspired. I could not stop smiling. 

I am still waiting for photos from Doug, Bobbi and Elena!

Some focused on their goals, or warding off their neighborhood  threats. Others focused on dreams of vacations, or getting back into their hobbies. Others focused on manifesting their affirmations.

Vision vessels are really 3D vision boards. We collage on top of a house everything we wish for our "nest". It is reinforcing positive vibrations and giving an image to what we desire.

To help the art work it's full magic, the houses have to remain visible for a while. Many have openings, (doors and windows), where we can stuff little notes of dreams or worries as we manifest big changes.

Rollercoaster love affair

As much as I love trees, (being in them, under them, and surrounded by them), I have found my desire to draw them meets constant resistance.

This started in 2nd grade. I had just finished painting the Christmas tree for the class holiday mural and stepped back to assess it with my beloved teacher. She leaned in and said, "you really don't know how to paint trees, do you?" I had, in my defense, been turning the brush this way and that for texture, but I guess it did not translate.

The shock of that exchange has lived inside me for all these years. When students ask me to demonstrate a tree in paint, I can do it, but often there is an echo inside my head that wonders if they will catch on and see that I "really don't know how to paint trees."

It's hard not to paint or draw trees when you do a landscape, or create a place. Being a fictionalist, my paintings often illustrate a real setting and trees often sneak into the frame. My trees grow out of small gestures, blurred as if my reading glasses had failed me in clarifying the languages of limbs and leaves.

Then in college, my professor declared that I must eliminate green from my palette. Apparently green paintings are unsuccessful and never sell. So my greens come in shades of purple and ochre and pyrollian orange.

So I am starting this project of painting close to 100 small paintings of trees at the ripe age of 59 in order to move through the critics, the ghosts, the self-talk, and the comparisons. I hope to explore different ways to convey the importance of trees and I know it might take close to 100 times get it right.

I hope you can join me when I present my tree stories going forward. Thanks for looking.

Tilly

Image of the "Mother of Modern Medicine" Inspires Hope for Vaccine.

As we try to “flatten the curve” of stress on our medical facilities and healthcare workers, we pray for a vaccine against Covid19. Doctors are studying patient responses and leaning over lab Petri dishes with questions. No doubt they will turn to the immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks, called HeLa cells, that have helped fight numerous diseases from Polio, Ebola, Parkinson’s to AIDS.  

Who was Henrietta Lacks?

Henrietta Lacks, a young mother of five, died in 1951 at John Hopkins Hospital from cervical cancer that her Doctor noted "looked like pearls". He had stitched tubes and pouches filled with radium inside her cervix, as was standard treatment at the time for invasive cervical cancer. He also took some cell samples from her cervix, without her knowledge or consent, which was also standard practice at that time.

Henrietta, the great, great, granddaughter of a slave, died that same year at the age of 31. Her cells in the lab replicated quickly and continually and amazed the doctor with their seeming immortality. They were the first human cells to reproduce outside the body! Afraid of being sued, the doctor gave the cells a code name, “HeLa” and shared them in labs across the country. They are still the most commonly used cells in research today.

The story turns rough when you learn that in the 1970’s some scientists, with secret agendas, did research on Henrietta Lacks' children without their informed consent. Then in 1975, a family friend asked about the source of the Lacks cells that his coworkers, at the National Cancer Institute, were studying. It brought a light to the two decades of darkness that the Lacks family had been kept in.

A book was written, then an HBO movie. In 2010 the John Hopkins Hospital donated a grave marker to her unmarked plot. It says: “Here lies Henrietta Lacks, Her immortal cells will continue to help mankind forever.”

To say that Lacks is a global phenomenon would be limiting. In 1962 her cells were launched into outer space aboard a Russian satellite for study. Two years ago, the National Museum of African American History ofCulture and the National Portrait Gallery jointly acquired a painting of Lacks. It adds a beautiful and much needed face to the woman often called “the mother of modern medicine”.

Kadir Nelson with his painting of Lacks

Who painted her portrait?

Kadir Nelson (b.1974), an American artist, was commissioned by HBO for the 2017 movie premier of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, to paint the first portrait of Lacks. An author of several best-selling children’s books on African-American culture and lead artist for Steven Spielberg’s 1997historical drama Amistad, Nelson is known for his larger than life portraits of African American leaders. According to his website, Nelson chooses “subject matter that has emotional and spiritual resonance and focuses on the journey of the hero as it relates to the personal and collective stories of people."

There was no portrait in existence of Lacks save for two small family photos. Nelson used those as well as a vocabulary of symbolism to tell Lacks' story. Standing in a red dress, Nelson paints a yellow straw hat as a halo around Lacks’ head. Her strong faith is reflected in the bible she holds with her hands crossed over her womb. A complex “Flower of Life” pattern against which she stands is the ancient symbol for immortality and exponential growth. The pearls around her neck reflect the doctor’s note about how her cancer grew. A pendant of a nest represents motherhood and the hope of fresh birth. The repeating flower pattern on the dress symbolizes the biological bounty that she shed without knowledge for our salvation. The most poignant details are the two small buttons missing from her dress. They symbolize that something precious was taken from her.

Hopefully, soon the HeLa cells will demonstrate another cure.

Poignant Art in Times of Panic

Today with all the news headlines are of crashing stock markets and shutting markets, uncertainty (and insensitivity) in political leadership and a contagious, possibly terminal, epidemic on the loose, we can look to the arts for humor, brevity, distraction or focus. Artists ideate and imagine. Ideation is the process of pulling forth solutions to a question. The role of the artist is to imagine- and that means to give form to an image, movement, or sound as a solution.

I am reminded of an artist who was able to alter a simple iconic image and make it resonate as the voice of the disenfranchised. In his best images he combined rage and tenderness. David Wojnarowicz, (1954-1992), was an American artist at the peak of his career in the 1980’s. Working under the slashing (and insensitive) government of President Reagan and amidst the scorched-earth Aids body count. He turned personal confessional expressions into powerful political activism. Wojnarowicz suffered a life of childhood abuse, homelessness, teenage prostitution, and by the time he was a young adult he was losing his friends to the Aids crisis. His art famously clashed with forces of censorship and repression. He called out, with his art serving as a social critique, the political mythmakers such as Jesse Helms and the conservative Christian’s who would insist that condoms and safe sex not be talked about in schools. Wojnarowicz most famous work, Untitled, 1988-89 is a platinum print photograph taken as a section of a natural history diorama. It is of the American buffalo jumping, one after the other, over a cliff. The image is beautifully developed and hauntingly cropped. It symbolized the hopelessness people felt within the medical crisis looking at government policies. His image brilliantly spoke to the marginalized, from the Native Americans (the diorama story) to the Aids victims.This was seen not only as the swan song of the poor, sick and politically invisible, but as the prediction for our society as a whole if we continued without a change of heart.

Untitled by Wojnarowicz

When a friend apologized for making art that was less than political, that focused on beauty, Wojnarowicz replied, “…these are so beautiful, and that’s what we’re fighting for. We’re being angry and complaining because we have to, but where we want to go is back to beauty. If you let go of that, we don’t have anywhere to go.”

self portrait by Peter Wojnarowicz

 I'm thankful for Wojnarowicz and artists like him that do the dirty work, remind us of death, and of what is valuable (and worth fighting for) about life.

Art Made of Matchbooks to Ignite Awareness

This article was published in the Millerton News, Compass, February 20, 2020,  page A8.

In the cool crisp air of the cavernous Wassaic Project grain elevator stand or drape 7 large quilts in a show titled, Heirloom: Quilts from Another Country Quilt Cycle.

DARNstudio, "Amplify"

Walking through at first glance they can seem silent and even severe. It takes further reading, and peaking closely, to decipher the conceptual layers and emotional heat behind the works. The labels inform of title, ingredients, dimension, and date completed, but there is so much more to share.

Quilts are the quintessential heirlooms passed down through generations. They map our stories and stitch together family and community. A friend of mine in college had a quilt on her bed sewn by her mother commemorating the send off to school with an aerial view of her ancestral home. Quilts such as that one have warmed us, aided with healing, and silently comforted us in our beliefs. Historical lore has quilts serving most famously as poetic signposts pointing black slaves to promises of freedom along the Underground Railroad. 

This show does not point to freedom.

These DARNstudio quilts have a more sinister air. The patterns and colors are comprised of units made out of souvenir matchbooks lashed together and backed by thick grey felt. The places commemorated on the books of matches are of mundane sites: a train station platform, a convenience store, a sheriff’s jail cell, a traffic-stop intersection.

Put together by the collaborative duo of DARNStudio, based in Roxbury, CT, these quilts are part of a larger series-in-process making a statement about the killing of unarmed black American men.

David Anthone and Ron Norsworthy, the DARNstudio artists, design logos for each new place where such a killing has occurred and they then print thousands of custom-designed matchbooks. 

Flipped back to front for the sake of variety and rhythm, the matchbook fronts bear letters and numbers, codifying the names and most recent dates of a death of a victim by the hands of police,  stand-your-ground policy and other traumatic events. 

Vaguely resembling the patterns of coded quilt signage, these are contemporary pictographs where crows in the sky replace flying geese. In the quilt titled Amplify, the volume symbol of our cell phones is replicated over and over. 

Pattern titles such as "Snake in the Garden", "Go High", and "Double Cross" are an update for a vehicle that explores inherited trauma, and policy bias. 

 

This is the new story quilt that we, as a culture, are creating as heirlooms to pass down through generations. Each quilt of 2800 matchbooks appears colorful and comforting, but in actuality they are flashpoints. Each matchbook is a spark and a part of an overall blaze of conversation that needs to be shared. 

"Heirloom: Quilts from Another Country Quilt Cycle" is at the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY until March 28th. The Maxon Mills Gallery is open from noon to 5pm every Saturday and Sunday; admission is free. To learn more go to www.wassaicproject.org/events/2020-heirlooms

Moon calendars

Like the first photos of our blue planet from taken by the astronauts in space, a lunar calendar can make me feel small and also part of a bigger thing. There is the visual data to showing Time in it's best wonderful logic. You can't look at a lunar calendar without seeing the waves and undulations of nights. I highly recommend everyone consult one. For years I have bought and given these lunar calendars to others. This year I got two!!!

#lunarcalendar #time #visualdata

Craven's New Nude show really is New

This article appeared in the Lakeville Journal's compass magazine December 12, 2019

painting by Bruno Leydet

Andrew Craven’s show is not your Grandmother’s nude show. It is smartly curated to include a dozen diverse artists who work with an evolving range of nude subjects spanning across the spectrum of skin tones and gender. The word “New” is important for the show’s title, the “New Nude”. For here, the antique fantasy of the passive odalisque in stuffy mausoleums is nowhere in sight. Different perspectives, new materials, shadows, and models that have a tendency to hide challenge the gaze of the viewer. In an era of selfies and “sell me” social postings, these subjects are not craving to be seen, instead they are caught passing through, and in self-reflection and it is the viewer’s unconscious input that haunts the work. There can be no complacency walking through the show.

In cropped environments of textures, the artist’s hand skillfully deconstructs the nude subject. She/He doesn’t lie down. There is a generous supply of chaos with fragments of clothing, skin and thoughtful composition. Each piece of artwork in the room teases.

In Mickalene Thomas’ “Left Behind 2 Again”, a de-saturated naked woman with only one spike-heeled mule showing is surrounded with animal, botanical, and geometric pattern swatches. Her shaded eyes, hidden feet and hands lend a guarded feel, as if she could quickly retreat into the setting of abundant fabrics and drapery. She is claiming her space. Diamonds and stripes form a flag behind her. A gold brocade fragment frames the left side of the image. It is a powerful piece that gives the model agency in the setting that redefines the art historical trope.

Who is looking at whom? In some works there is a definite peering through a peephole effect, yet most of the work seems to relate a feeling of internal privacy.

The subjects can seem lost in thought. Their gaze is internal and our gaze is drawn into their puzzling world. Erwin Olaf, a Dutch photographer of worldwide acclaim, orchestrates scenes of emptiness and longing inspired by the masters. In his “Keyhole #2” a European styled woman, seemingly spied on, clutches her deco baubles and turns away from the viewer. There is emotion under her skin.

Troy Michie, young American collage artist hailing from Texas and Yale grad school, investigates identity and power in his life-size work, “La Bicicleta”. His cornered image of a man with three eyes on a bike is portrayed so intriguingly complex, that the collage keeps you looking. It is a mischievous puzzle of design.

Jeremy Kost’s “Adam Upstate” is a collage of Polaroids that fragment the small exposed figure and lends significant weight to the details of the landscape.

It feels as though the nudes in Craven’s show must deal with the sensitivity of being searched for.

One of the two 2019 Whitney Biennial artists in the show, Paul Mpagi Sepuya presents an image, called “Mirror study”, that negates the nude, the artist and the viewer. Using mirror shards, drapery and taped collage, he teases us to piece the scene together. It is a symphony of whites, warm to cool, with the artist’s black elbow and hand running like a snake in the background. We are given just enough, and then some.

Bruno Leydet, a Canadian painter, juxtaposes patterns, textures, tamely cropped nude males and florals. Even ensconced in their tight settings, the expressions in both of his portrait paintings show the nude model to be miles away.

Local Washington CT author and artist John Frederick Walker is given a table laden with one-of-a-kind altered books. Most have the pages ripped out and collaged nude photos of females, heavily cropped, interact discreetly and audaciously with the spine and gutters of the book. They are sculptural statements of handy transactions of porn through the ages.

There is another table of fabulous art books not to be missed. The monographs on each of the artists in the show will teach you more about them and put them in context. If you ask really nicely Craven might show you the hidden extra drawing among the show.

The show will be up till mid January.

 
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Picasso Gives it Over to the Women, Version N

My copy of Picasso's version N

I think the second to last, this Version N, is my favorite. I love the fracturing of space and simplicity of color within the integrity of the scene. The floating teapot, highlighted in a triangle, the machine-like legs of the reclining figure and the winking belly button of the seated woman are all tongue-in-cheek-Picasso-playful.
It is on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Wash U/St Louis.
The label says: "Here Delacroix's scene of imagined sexual invitation and passive femininity becomes one of female self-possession and confidence"

Do you agree?

Full Moon notes

Full moon painting by Gretchen Kelly of gretchenkellystudio.com

This is the last of the 2019 full moons. They are important to me because they remind me of the cyclical nature of time and, when bursting in brightness, they fill me with awe.
For the last several years Michael and I have followed Lena's monthly forecast: the Powerpath where she connects us and the planet in spirit.
It's always thought-provoking and helpful to get the bigger picture of what is going on with the energies and the lunar cycles.
May this moon bring you blessings of playfulness and peace!
Tilly

Topiary Time Lapse

Our Giant Rooster brings us so much joy and wonder.

Photos are from July 24th to December 3rd. #timelapse #seasons #treeseasons #tree

Go see the Icons Salisbury, CT

On a grassy knoll, down the Twin Lakes road in Salisbury, sits a simple white clapboard chapel that promises an experience both dramatic and inspiring. A delightful sensorial surprise is had upon entering the All Saints of AmericanOrthodox Christian Church. Picture a space with angels and the heavens sparkling down and around you. Saints and martyrs look out, with eyes of resilience and wisdom, and catch the gaze of all who enter. Brilliant colored Icons and relics line walls and a large mural of Christ as Triumphant King encapsulates the spectator from overhead.

Icons are a distinct art form of the Orthodox Church. They serve as an art-based path to direct revelation, giving the viewer access to the spirits. The holy images may be on wood, canvas, mosaic or fresco. An iconographer creates an icon, “written with light”; to be a transparent window and, using an inverted perspective, the church installation manifests a great cloud of witnesses, reminding the assembled that they never worship alone. The interior warm white plaster walls reflect the abundant gold leaf, and bounce the light which combined with the pungent smell of burning wax candles and smoking incense, transports you to another place

The enthusiasm of past visitors has prodded the church into initiating free Saturday afternoon tours before Vespers. Rev. John J. Kreta and the abundance of available literature at the door, reassure the secular visitor of the gregarious hospitality of the church. My tour guide on this third Saturday of touring was Evelyn Kreta. She was bubbling with enthusiasm. She is choir director as well as an experienced icon painter. The first thing she explained to me is that icons are not painted, instead they are “written”, because they serve as a way to transcribe the scriptures just as any words might do.

The artist, Reverend Andrew Tregubov, is an award winning iconographer and historian. Commissioned by All Saints of American Orthodox Christian Church, Tregubov has written the majority of the icons in the style of Father GregoryKroug. Father Kroug was born in Russia in 1909, but left after the revolution to study at the Art Academy in Paris. When he became a monk he was given the name “St Gregory the Iconographer”. He died in 1969 in a small hermitage outside of Paris after he had written 550 different icons and wall paintings. Tregubov has received grants to study and archive the work of Kroug and other master iconographers.

The iconostasis, or icon stand, divides the nave and alter. Hung with icons of angels and saints and portrayals of events from scriptures, the structure has three doorways and is meant to serve as a bridge between heaven and earth. Written dark to light, the figures have gentle delicate features that seem lit from within. Garments are brushed with all shades of colors and the folds are highlighted with bright streaks of lines. Red outlines surround much of each figure and frame. The contrast of the frenetic lines to the simple expanses of background gives the figures a feeling of active presence. Brilliant details attract my eye and standing in the space I sense the feeling of collective inspiration.

Eleven relics of American saints with expressive eyes and symbolic gesturing hands are assembled in the prayer niche to the right of the alter. Each follows a prescribed pattern with minor variations between them. Small shards of bones are encased in circular cavities below each portrait. Layers of transparent brushwork enrich the robes. The large searching eyes are the most striking. Young and old, the American martyrs engage us in their story of faith. This is an encounter that must be seen!

Tours every Saturday from 3:30 to 4:30 before Vespers at 5.  

All Saints of American Orthodox Christian Church on 313 Twin Lakes road

THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE LAKEVILLE JOURNAL SUPPLEMENT, "DISCOVER SALISBURY", OCT 2019

www.allsaintsofamerica.us

New Peacock painting Merchandise

I am so proud to offer up five of my most recent paintings inspired by the tropical nature of Miami. I just uploaded five new peacock paintings onto my Fine Art America site. That makes 63 paintings and drawings now available for any economic budget on almost a hundred products. You can get a print on canvas, metal, wood, framed paper, or as a greeting card, a mug, a phone case, a tote bag or a shower curtain, throw pillow, duvet cover, yoga mat, and more!!!
Check it out on FFA! Have fun!  I will travel north with memories of the south Florida tropics on my bath towels and greeting cards.

Ships within 2-3 business days! Let me know what you get.
All the best-
Tilly

Cranach's enigmatic signatures

Lucas Cranach must have the coolest signature emblem ever! On January 6th, 1508 he was granted the rights to sign all his works with this seal by Frederick the Wise, his employer and the elector Prince of Saxony. A winged serpent with both a crown on its head and a jeweled ring in it's mouth was soon used on all Cranach workshop products, sometimes with the initials L and C. In 1537 the emblem changed. With the murder of his eldest son Hans, who was traveling to Bologna, Italy, like all good artists were expected to do as part of their studies, the heart broken father folded the wings and turned the serpent in another direction.

This is part of my Climbing up the Family Tree: Art and History Lessons for my Kids, "Searching for Cranach", a text booklet project. I plan to publish a 7-8 page book on Cranach, with a pocket sized original print in the back, by the end of this spring.

This teacher loves her apples

Part of the hurdle of my art class is the inevitable "paint me an apple" assignment. This is closely followed by a random paint-color-matching test, and then, only then, can the student propose their own subject for a painting.

It's that time of the semester now!!

I am feeling Artsy

Check out my work online on a new gallery venture called Flow-305. 
It's easy to see the work of my friends and check out individual pieces that represent the best I have to offer. Please look at it and if you can, forward it to a friend. I have some new paintings, all inspired by the joy of living in a tropical zone.

Birds of a Feather

All acrylic works on paper, 12 x 18 inches. Right now I am asking $400, but the price might have to go up.

Flamingo Pat Party

Also these are uploaded onto my Fine Art America account for printing onto Merchandise!

Outdoor Flamingo Party