The October Blur

I was here. I am here. But much of it feels a blur. We had open studios over two weekends, and family. With 20 other #arteastdutchess creatives we opened our spaces and invited people to explore and see the world a bit like we do. We invited my brother's daughter Natalie to exhibit, Michael's daughter Kylie to read her published poetry (the Fever Poems), and my sister Gwen arrived from France to read from her book.

wolf paintings in the barn

Pa (julian), Michael and Me- with art clinic barn in the background

Invite to the Author reading Saturday the 16th

My wall art calendars for 2022 printed: For the Birds

Wolf painting painted during the open studios: Sneak

Author reading: Kyle Gellatly, Gwen Strauss, Julian Strauss

For a while the barn showed what was inside

Natalie Strauss with studio visitor, artist Alexis Rockman

We had over 77 people visit each weekend. The interaction was so valuable. It is hard to produce art in isolation and then open wide the doors to anybody. But I found it strengthening and invigorating. I also got a lot of tips and recommendations from people. I am full of gratitude.

Alyssa Kogan article on our Amenia portion of the tour in the 10.5.21 Hudson Valley News

 

Tree Conversation about to be Launched

 

assorted painted 8 x 6 oval panels from newest series

That I am not a natural at languages clearly stands out with a father who speaks about nine and a little sister who lives and speaks fluently in France. It was truthfully my crayon and paintbrush that helped me communicate and make friends.

 

Trees were my first friends. At age four, I attended an art school located somewhere between an ancient stone temple and the massive aerial roots of a banyan tree in Kuala Lumpur. I have the earliest, distinct, memory of the sound, smells and visual abundance of walking on paths strewn with a variety of shaped leaves.

 

Art School (with my mom) in KL, painting arches and trees

During the lock-down last year, when the calendar cleared and everything went quiet, I undertook a painting project that would pit my skills against a variety of arboreal characters.

 

As an art teacher, I have exhorted my students to identify their inner critic. We all have one or two, (or more). The tenacity of those belittling voices can ruin the fun of any painting session. It is through my teaching that I confronted memories of my own.

 

In second grade, I painted a mural of a holiday pine tree in my Haitian classroom. Proudly standing back to look at the result, I was crushed when my teacher leaned to my ear and whispered, ‘You really can’t paint trees, can you?” Granted, I was trying a new “textural brush work”, but her voice still rings true over 50 years later!

 

As I contrived to once and for all learn how to paint a tree, I studied the limbs, roots, bark, and crowns. Entering into the space of a tree I felt their energy emanating towards me! I can hardly pass one nowadays without saying “hi” or “hello”. Just looking closely at them brings me a sense of understanding, peace, and joy.

 

Be Like a Tree

Each of the Tree Conversation paintings is in acrylic on a hand-cut birch-ply oval panel. Every panel is 8 x 6 x 1/2 inches and drilled with a recess in the back so to hang flush to the wall. In addition, every painting’s backside contains quotes or thoughts taken from a variety of sources and pertaining to a leafy conversation.

 

Starting the first weekend of May, at our open studio on the farm, I will have a couple dozen to share. On May 3^rd I will launch a website sale of my favorites on my store for a limited time only. Please email me with any questions you may have. It is my hope that we all use whatever language comes naturally to us, to converse with nature. I have found it an easy way to get a spiritual measure of oneself.

 

Please subscribe to my blog by email. (top of the right hand column) I post once or twice a month on subjects ranging from what is happening in the studio, to art historical revelations, to seasonal delights of farm living. I’d love to have you in the conversation.

www.tillystudio.com

Why I collect art?

 To be totally truthful, I can't answer this.

But there is some history and a flash point I can share.

I've grown up among artists and always enjoyed walls, cabinets, shelves and lawns full of art. My parent's friends and my grandparents all had amazing collections or were creators themselves. So there was always lots of art around. Not only did it tone the atmosphere of the settings, but a surplus lay stacked under beds, lined racks in the basement and moldered in rolls up in the attic. 

Then there was my Selina Trieff moment. 

I was 20 years old and living in Boston, and it was a weekday I had off of my gallery job. Suddenly, with no plans, I took the Provincetown ferry out to Cape Cod. Strolling along the shops, I found my way into the Berta Walker Gallery where there was a show of oil and gold leaf portraits by Trieff, a mysterious artist who lived and worked from 1934 to 2015. Looking at the picture above, a painting I eventually had to buy, I had a visceral reaction: shivers on my limbs, a spinning in my head. I left the gallery for fresh air and spent the rest of the afternoon looking at other pieces of art in other galleries. No matter what I was looking at, this painting of Trieff's kept floating in front of my eyes! I had to have it. I had fallen in love. Negotiating with the gallery I set up a plan for installments and soon was able to bring her home. It has been almost 40 years and 4 homes since then. I love looking at it everyday. I wonder at the texture and the mark-making, the way her dark shape fills the frame. I wonder at the character, "what is she thinking?". I marvel at her hat. And the eyes! The eyes still look deep inside me and seem to ask me, "what are you thinking?"

This Trieff piece has been joined by a second one, given to me as a gift by one of my sisters, who also owns a delightful sleeping pig painting by Trieff.

Look at the attitude of that Goat!!

There is a movie, Their Lives in Art:Robert Henry and Selina Trieff, available for schools and institutions through Vineyardvideo.org, that I would love to see someday.

Storms and blessings as Tree stories continue

We had a terrible storm. 

The trees were thrashing about, their limbs flying through the air. Leaves and acorns and twigs covered the ground. I heard cracks and soft heavy thuds. Every tree around me completely defined the wind.

 After the storm passed, the next day was sunny and the air filled with sounds of chainsaws and generators. My Pa was out there removing huge trees off the fence lines and feeling gleeful about the winter fuel. 

Living on a farm in the country means you live in the company of trees. I continue investigating into my insecurities, by painting 100 trees....

I am tapping into my youthful artist within and reflecting on the models and memories of my artistic path.

This is an early memory of the first art club I belonged to. My dad started the Home Farm Artist's Association by placing his daughters and nieces on the hay wagon, with a can of crayons, while he worked the fields. We drew all day, side by side, eeking out our own interpretations of the landscape, and mounted shows in the evening for our grandparents and their cocktail party friends to enjoy.

Such is the life and the good foundations of an artist's family. I feel blessed.

Numbers and Alphabets in the Forest

Ever wandered into a fairy tale?  I took as many photos as I could before fear of loosing my grip on the camera forced me to put it away. A white fog surrounded the wood. I was looking for signs.

Inside the forest, at the furthest corner of the farm, I felt in another world. Towering over me, the trees were half a century old, initially planted when one of my sisters was born. Did my grandfather plant the seedlings for Annie, the Mathematician, or Gwen, the Writer? I cannot recall. But clues were there, in writhing shaggy vines and tripping roots. Mystified, I almost had to cut my way through.

Whistling while we work

getting organized

One of the best things we have done since returning home has been the transformation of my dad's clinic into a sculpture studio for his play.
Dad retired from the veterinarian business at the beginning of this year. He was forced out by all the drug company regulations and mandated attendances at far away conventions. In order to keep his license to practice he had to attend a convention every couple years and have his badge scanned as he entered lecture halls to hear panelists discuss the newest drug or industrialized benefits. At 83, he didn't feel old, except when dragged through the networking "parties" and herded into sales rooms, so it was agreed between him and his wife that when the year started, he would stop.
And it seemed as if he really did just STOP. When I showed up mid June, the clinic waiting room smelled musty and still had bags of dog food in the corner. The operating table had a set of calipers, an empty syringe and his lab coat draped across it. When I asked dad what he was going to do with the space he sort of shrugged his shoulders...

Clinic waiting room Before

Partial crowd of helpers with Dad

Dad's office area, Before

After a memorial event in the city for my dear Uncle Pat, a crew of 19 siblings, children, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends gathered at the farm. There was a clip board, a whistle and the promise of just 3 hours commitment. (Lunch was already waiting at the pond for when we stopped). You could check off the list and choose whether you wanted to clean, paint, destroy, or set up.

during

getting ready to repair and level the concrete floor

Natali in the operating room

Noah and Sophie cleaning the waiting room

Annie doing the windows

Erin mans the vaccuum

Lois and Julian paint the cabinets

 Meanwhile upstairs in the kennel room....

Before

During

Kent and Gardner take down the kennel framework

Daniel and Dad

The Kennel room today

the old waiting room is now a gallery for Dad's sculptures

Women with Swords...on the way to the Stake?

One line of imagery that seemed to interest Cranach was Death and the Maiden. Biblical stories such as Judith and Holofernes depicted women as heroic defenders of Germany as well as provided cautionary tails for men. Even though Cranach painted at least 40 of them, there was not a single Judith in any of the churches and cathedrals we visited.
Looking on the internet I quickly located 23 versions painted by Cranach and his assistants. They are spread around the world in collections from NYC to Vienna, Frankfurt, Washington DC, Glasgow, Ponce, Kassel, Stuttgart, San Fransisco, Dublin, Syracuse, Cologne, Budapest, Greenville, and (one) in Berlin!
The paintings are enigmatic... decorative and almost titillating. Cranach painted aristocratic women richly dressed calmly smirking as they run their fingers through the hair of their decapitated foe. The lopped off head is most always shown with the gore and hints of vertebrae turned towards the viewer. It is a creepy yet elegant scene and I wonder if it in some way excited the male gaze of the 16th Century courts.

I am torn between thinking of them as a perfect revenge trope for the #MeToo movement or an early advertisement of warning that precludes the next half century of rabid witch burning. The paintings, made by a man for other men, might have been a best seller sold under the guise of patriotic heroines to admire, yet I don't think the women benefited from the depictions. The models were real women of the court and little is known about their lives. For men, the image clearly presents women's sexual behavior as a real threat to society. These paintings are of the vulnerability of man and the passionate, violent,  sexual beings of women.  These images would have justified retaliation by society. Within 50 years there is widespread "witch craze" through out Europe of the 1600's and 1700's.

Wittenberg Printmaking History

The home of Lucas Cranach and his workshop was a dream destination for me.

Wittenberg Castle, home of the patron of Cranach

my sister on the streets of Wittenberg

Map of the center of Wittenberg

The Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise, hired Lucas Cranach to be his court painter in the early 1500's. Cranach made his entry into that employment by preparing the hunt fields (trapping and sealing exits for the animals) and then painting very quickly the trophies and catches for all involved. He was very quick and able to convey a sense of abundance in his souvenir paintings so that he soon was in high demand by all the participants. That caught notice of the Elector. Once hired as the official court painter,  ( a position he kept through out the life of Frederick the Wise and his two successors), Cranach's responsibilities increased tremendously. Not only was he in charge of the castle decor, documenting historic events, embellishing and highlighting the nobility of the Saxon family by placing them in scenes of biblical and mythological settings, but he designed the fall and spring uniforms for the staff, created the themes for entertainment, decorated all horses, wagons, and squares for the pageants and tournaments, designed the wedding beds, painted alter pieces, murals and portraits, worked as ambassador and politician and printed pamphlets for both the Roman church authorities and, most famously, Martin Luther and the reformation.

 

 

Cranach was awarded a family seal of a winged serpent to show all the world how amazingly fast a painter, Pictorus Cellerimus, Cranach was!

 

 

The Cranach seal on his press

me inside Cranach printing office

The workshop is now an art school, exhibition space with an apparent resident printmaker. It was great to be able to stand in the space and smell the ink!

Night printing on the streets of Berlin

The sewer caps in Berlin have these marvelous images etched into them of the landmarks of the city, from the Reichstag to the Brandenburg gate. Our hip hotel, the 25 hour Bikini Berlin, was right across the street to the Kaiser Wilhem Kurch, which was one of the memorials on the street cap as well.

Tools needed-
 baby wipes, ink plate, water soluble ink, new German-bought hand roller, sheets of paper and a look out person.

new roller bought first day in Berlin

the Reichstag image

adding pressure and being nonchalant

My sister was a great look-out person, and even took these pictures. So ended my first day in Berlin, a fantastic city to play in.