On Drawing as  A Lifetime Activity

Horse Head in wax crayon by me at age 8, when I wanted a horse like this to be real, and standing out in the barn waiting for me.

I am taking a break from painting, just for the next few weeks, I am enrolled in a life drawing class at The Artists Guild in Sturgeon Bay WI, with the instructor Craig Blietz  and about 9 students, I am learning a lot in these three hour sessions about  anatomy, weight bearing muscles and light...not to mention the advantages of a light hand, using a knitting needle to sight the proportions of head to shoulders to hips, to knees. That was always something that I avoided, it drove me nuts, proportion.ugh.

 We are drawing from a model who has challenged us with some dramatic lighting and articulated poses. Everyone in the class brings  with them a fairly competent level of experience, but its the masterful words of our instructor that has us all marveling at how quickly time goes by, from doing 4  six minute poses to twenty minutes to forty, suddenly its 9pm and we are packing to go home. Craig has  encouraged us and challenged us simultaneously, at the end of each 3 hours session we walk around  looking at each others work, our errors and victories out there for all to assess.

My friend  artist Emmett Johns talked about the need to draw, and he keeps at it with life-drawing groups in New Mexico, and it was because of his urging that I decided I should get back in the ring and do this. I have not had a life drawing class for nearly 20 years, last  time with artist Loren Wiley at the West Bend Art Museum in the mid 1990's. Before that I had a semester at ISU with Brenda Jones, who had studied with Jules Kirschenbaum  at Drake University, the lineage is staggering really, when considering the background that Craig and other masters bring to the teaching experience.

It is getting harder for me to deal with the physical requirements, can I stand for more than 10 minutes, not really, can i climb the 30 some steps up to the drawing studio, not without some slow steady pausing every now and then, can I sit  with elevated arms drawing, sort of, but by the end of the night I was dropping my conte  crayon  every few minutes, and finding small relief in my Chinese drum movement to loosen the side ache that was reminding me I am not 40 any more. After our 4th session I may sign on at the drawing co-op, also run by the Artists Guild.  I am  so grateful to have landed in this community and can take advantage of these opportunities.

 Drawing has never come easy for me. I have known some people who had a natural gift for it, I did not, but it was a gift to have the compelling urge to pick up a crayon and make marks and that urge has never left me.  A few books saved from youth are evidence to that, with drawings of birds and rabbits and horse heads along with other scribbles of sun, trees and farm animals  littering the margins and front piece of  Childrens Book of Prayer and bird identification books.  So thanks to people like Craig and Loren and Brenda, and way back, my highschool art teacher Hildred Finson, and my mother  Doris Stidwell, who would draw for me during the church services just to keep me quiet.  My drawing gets more interesting if not improved in many ways because of them.

September 2012

A selection of a few unfinished paintings, started during the first week of September, I painted one afternoon with a friend at Waseda Farms, in their garden, in view of several barns, a coffee pot silo and a shed. Waseda Farms is just a short drive from my house, and has some wonderful  garden produce, grass fed beef and hogs-  they are generous and were willing to have us sitting around painting in the middle of their hard working gardeners

 This quick sketch was done one afternoon  late, at our farmstead on High Plateau Rd., the building is the granary, with the barn off to the left and an ancient arbor vita.

Windsor chairs seem to find their way into my world and I needed some ideas, painting the chair is a challenge and I am not sure I can do much with this.

This is another outbuilding on the property of Waseda Farms, and is also an unfinished image. I work on these small canvas panels, 6"x 8" doing very quick studies, with no goal in mind other than to see how much I can put into the panel without overworking it.

During the workshops with Emmett Johns, I went outside one day to paint, but the weather turned very wet and windy, with our class going in doors for nearly two days.   I also managed to find time to visit Hickey Brothers Fish place on Ridges Road, just off Lake MIchigan, the place has a lot of interesting stuff sitting around. I photographed  and started a study which I have yet to get back to. My energy level comes in waves, I have been distracted lately with the stuff of life,  I admire those I know who are able one way or another to do this every day, making a living from their own art work. I have the benefit of social security which helps, but am feeling a little discouraged, with no sales this year.  Still I go to area galleries and see red dots on paintings - someone somewhere is buying work.


So-----

Looking at Hickey Brothers Fish Market, near Baileys Harbor Yacht Club, I keep going back to this place, this road, so close to the lakeshore and the Ridges Sanctuary, this stretch of property near Lake MIchigan is becoming one of my favorite things about living in Door County,  very local, very much the product of lake culture, the buildings and old boat sitting here  have been painted and photographed countless times but never ceases to draw me in on a regular basis, and promises something new and different, if you look for it.

To answer my own question, posted previously this month - I have  proceeded to a final outcome, to work on both panels and double the size of the painting which I hope to submit for the exhibit THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND. The piece is informed  by awe for the wind and  my walks and photographs of White Cliff Fen and Forest Reserve, near Egg Harbor WI.  The exhibit opens November 10 - December 22  at the Miller Art Museum in Sturgeon Bay WI. This is the second time I have been invited by the Door County Land Trust to participate in an art event under their sponsorship- I am always thrilled to be included in events like this.

First stages  of the diptych sometime in late June, when I decided to start a second painting to expand the picture.

Late July, the piece is nearing completion. Not an exact interpretation of the area but the influence is evident.  I  worked from a photograph, usually I do a smaller plein air study and return with it to my studio but I was not up to hauling gear and was more interested in getting a feeling for the walk, how did the forest feel to me, what had happened here,  why was I feeling an extreme sadness walking through this place? This  feeling of loss  hit me while I was painting it, weeks after I was there to observe. I sat quietly, looking at what I was sure was a young Beech tree and thought about the beech trees I once had on my property in West Bend WI, and how I loved those smooth gray trees, it was a grove of 14 trees until a storm hit in 1998.  I lost only two  but they were old, I could barely get my arms around any of them.  The city had built a sidewalk that curved to allow for the trees there, someone else loved Beech trees as much as I did. All those thoughts came back to me as I walked White Cliff.

Young Beech Tree- White Cliff Reserve

Moss growing where there once was tree, moss grows without roots- I just realized that after reading The Language of Flowers - a novel by Vanessa Diffenbach(Spelling?)

  I worked on the painting throughout the months of June and July, and found myself thinking about the forest fires in Colorado and then the forests I used to know in Australia, miles of  eucalyptus forest, sub tropical rain forest, trees like Davidson Plum and Firewheel, trees I once saw every day, drinking in the aroma of their mist in the hills near Byron Bay-trees I knew as a kid in Iowa.

Door County was hit hard last fall with wind, and during the winter, ice storms played a hand as well, adding weight to already weakened trees, the path was often punctuated by leviathans of maple and beech, uprooted, tentacles of root mass exposed to the elements, and large cauldrons of unearthed soil and rock, now make room for new layers of foliage, and cubby holes for a fox.  I find myself torn between my love of open spaces, long view vistas and an  attraction to water, contrast that to the closeness and temple-like  spaces of the woods.  Sometime back in the 1980's I was camped in a tipi in Iowa, and when a tornado came through,  we  held down the poles as the wind walked into the side, the heavier  door (eastside) pole,  of pine, was stuck into the ground an extra 6 inches after that wind left us, we were the only tipi left standing in what had been a tornado in north central Iowa, fast forward about ten years, I sat through devastation over ten years ago when I lived in West Bend WI, old-growth maple, my mother maple I called it,  twisted ten feet above the ground and came down on the neighbors garage- if it had fallen few inches to the north and I would have been hit  with its mass.  On the other side of the house, three huge ancient beech trees toppled from the roots.  I lost a lot that year, but rehabilitated my yard and my life and by the next year was living in Door County.

 detail  WIND TEMPLE


There is hope and encouragement on the heels of any  natural disaster, and that is where my  thoughts traveled while working on the paintings inspired  by White Cliff.

WORK IN PROGRESS PAINTINGS OF WINDFALL

To diptych or not to diptych, that is the question

I am working on a piece for an invitational exhibit at the Miller Art Museum, due in late October. This is for the Door County Land Trust exhibit, "This Land is Your Land" and there are a number of artists doing plein air pieces on site, celebrating  the amazing amount of land that has been set aside for the purpose of preservation and conservation throughout the county, land on which we can hike, meditate, photograph, bird watch, paint--------

I went to White Cliff reserve near Egg Harbor with painting gear and my camera. Steve and I had driven through this area last winter after an assault of ice and wind. On the day I returned last month, there was heat, humidity and a new crop of insects emerging from a recent rain. I was too tired to haul out the paint box, too daunted by the ache in my hip, although a recent shot of corticosteroid in the knee gave me confidence I could walk with my camera for twice as long as normal. So that is what I did. I shot photos of beech trees, images of fading wildflowers and followed a path for about forty minutes, finding trees uprooted from excess wind, or weight of ice and snow. I started thinking about the leviathans of maple now giving it up in the soil, exposed roots  leaving kettles of earth which  were now being overtaken by bracken and woodland flowers and new trees.  I photographed for about an hour, turned around and headed back to the road. 

A few weeks later I took time to review the images and was not impressed with the usual amount of green,  but intrigued with the  patterns of the trees still standing, the light filtering through it all, and the idea of worship. Wind has always driven me to anxiety over the years, and its aftermath  stands as witness to the power when fully unleashed, to re-make the world. The root balls took on an architectural  quality for me, and the idea of a temple emerged. There is the distance is yet to be seen, a Leopold bench, for observing quiet passages that were rendered in the moments after this tree came down. I will return to it again next season to view the progress.   And as for the painting, I will      return to that as well, finalize my intentions, and submit the work, in progress still.

There has been a hot wind today, locusts singing carried in with the staccato of chickadee off in the arbor vita, the ceiling  fan whirs and I can see clouds of grey on the western horizon, along with veils of new spiderwebs in the corners of the windows and walls of the farm house. Waiting for people to arrive to see Door PRize for Portraits and  connecting with the locals, that is what I have spent today doing.  I am also looking at a few paintings laying on the floor, drying,  I am trying to decide what needs to be done.

A SAMPLER OF THE DOOR PRIZE FOR PORTRAITS EXHIBIT

One of my favorites for this event was this painting by Emmett Johns,  friend and well known Wisconsin writer, Door County favorite Norb Blei

Graeme Reid of the Museum of Wisconsin Art, West Bend WI, reviewing his notes as he announced the Door Prize for Portraiture Best in Show

Portions of the party going on outside and in. 

Liz Maltman did this portrait of her friend Lynn Gilchrist

The party outside, includes Stephanie Trenchard and Karen De Noto and inside, Karen Overbeck and Paula with others unidentified. There were about 60-90 people in attendance.   The portrait above is titled THE HAT, by Chicago artist Ken Klopack.

BEST IN SHOW, ELENA, by Archelle "Buttons" Wolst

Archelle "Buttons "Wolst enjoying her win

                               Honorable Mention winner Mark Zelten of Green Bay celebrates after awards.

Me with Graeme Reid, artist Paula Swayden -Grebel of Plymouth WI and Craig Blietz, artist, of Door County.

When the night was nearly over, Suzanne caught us, the host and hostess winding down for the evening in the coolness of it all.

 Honorable Mention was given to Suzanne Rose for her portrait of daughter Delilah titled DEAR ONE.
my apologies for the reflection in the image

Door Prize for Portraiture third Annual Invitational Exhibition

DOOR PRIZE FOR PORTRAITURE  THIRD ANNUAL INVITATIONAL EXHIBITION
June 29-July 29 2012

This exhibit opened at my art space/studio/gallery/farmhouse on the evening of June 28, one of the hottest days of the month and we have no a/c. Worried about labels curling off the wall, people fainting from heat, food going bad from sitting out too long, I had a lot on my mind for a few hours. One thing I did not have to concern myself with - the show. It went up like a dream, 21 works from artists who I have known for some time, witnessing their growth and  efforts at meeting new challenges, some of the people in this exhibit are very old friends, some are new. All of them are talented individuals who Steve and I wanted to honor. I get to play out my fantasy curator-ship and since we seldom entertain, the evening is our once a year bash for friends and artists.  I  felt looked like I stepped out of the shower,  the heat/humidity index was brutal while we were greeting guests, maybe 70-90 people arrived and filled the airy space with lots of talk, renewals  after a long season away, several confessed that this event, still in it's infancy really, is one of their favorite art events of the season. Steve poured wine outside, tables set up and plenty of soda, water, raspberry tea and inside, tables piled high with some delish  delights from Top Shelf Catering and Town Hall Bakery, my catering friend Linda Hegner and some new friends including an artist named Arnie who has a gallery up by Ellison Bay. 21 artists responded to our invitation last fall, to submit a portrait. Included  were some returning artists and some newbies; Sharon Auberle, Cal Bonnivier, Lori Beringer, Julia Van Roo Bresnahan,  Emmet Johns, Lynn Gilchrist, Liz Maltman, Rick Risch, Archelle Buttons WOlst, Tudy Ekman, Cynthia Wolfe, Mark Zelten, Randy Rasmussen, Shelby Keefe, Mary Ulm Mayhew, Stephanie Trenchard, Sarah Bradley, Tim Nyberg, Ken Klopack  Suzanne Rose and myself.  Winners were Archell "Buttons" Wolst for her portrait ELENA, and honorable mentions went to Mark Zelten for GIRL IN VIOLET SILK and Suzanne Rose for her photograph DEAR ONE.  Graeme Reid, Assistant Director of the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, WI was the awards  judge. He presented the standing room only crowd with his observations and commentary on the overall   quality of the show, describing his job as difficult, because the 21 artists presented their best work, the show was the creme de la creme. When awards were announced there was audible joy in the house,  and it was the moment that I had been working towards,  the moment when I can sit down and share a glass of wine, take my shoes off eventually, and savor the friendships, the talent and the beauty that surrounds me .