What Happens When You Wait
I have spent the last five months puzzled and frustrated by my own lack of interest in the tubes of paint sitting on my paint table. I started a portrait in January, and it sits on my easel still, unfinished but slowly evolving into a statement of some sort. I also have paintings from the 90's which have been getting cut into strips and wrapped around the thrift store horses I find on my fossicking about. The horses have been well received and sell in a gallery shop in Iowa. And I hope to sell them again here in Door County, but I am saving them for a fall garden art fair in Sturgeon Bay.
I went into a regimen of physical therapy following knee replacement in September, and by the end of the year I was walking without a cane, and able to get outside daily through the winter, and at least one or two days a week I spent at the studio, wrapping horses, and struggling with the idea of painting a portrait of the daughter of a friend. It still lures me in to paint now and then, but the countryside is loaded with lilac and the cherry and apple orchards peaked last week. The garden plot beckons and the county is begining to boil with the hubub of art openings, and galleries opening up for the season.
I am able to do a nearly weekly drawing activity, figure studies which allow me to experiment with a variety of materials, but mostly I favor the vine charcoal and water color pencils, in two hour drawing sessions, I am thrilled when I get one or two good renderings a week.
Reading has also been a focus, and when people ask what do we do for maintaining sanity through the winter here, I reply, "go to the library" or I shop online, and load my kindle or find a treasure trove of art biographies. Alice Neel, Eric Fischl, Joan Mitchell, William Merrit Chase, A Wolf Called Romeo, and currently a bio on Fairfield Porter, have kept me company through out the season. And there are the books, mostly novels, from my book club selections, in which I do not fully participate..
Lately I have focused on our Sixth annual Door Prize for Portraiture, inspired by the Archibald Prize of New South Wales Gallery of art, we have invited more artists each year to show protraits in the studio farm house... with a good juror attending the party, we announce winners, drink wine and artists meet each other. Each year there is a new batch, some returning, and others, newcomers, but all leave as friends and look forward to the next year.
Unfinished portrait
working title
The Hundredth Hihii bird
paint table still life
Memento Mori
started this painting in 2012, finished it after a year of incubating, 2015
Rag Nags, horses upcycled and wrapped with paintings from twenty years ago.
