A memory

Song of the Lark by Jules Breton, Art Institute of Chicago

July 6, 2016

What inspires me?  What gets me back to the studio, or out in the field with a french easel?
I have thought about that a lot recently and have to say I  just marvel at the fields of hay and oats in my neighborhood, the  gentle green hills and the lake, the blend of pine and maple  timber and the shoreline that bless this strip of land in northeastern Wisconsin.
Lake Michigan is just a mile to the east of us.
Today,  I write from home with window views to Kangaroo Lake.  There are families of Canada geese and merganser, kingfisher and herring gulls, and in the winter, a lone otter runs past.
When I drive to my studio in the old farm house two miles away, I pass through Land Trust property, farm fields and old cemeteries.

The changing light, fickle in its forms of expression, continues to intrigue and bring moments of wonder and awe. On one side we have the vast waters of Lake Michigan, and on the other, the more contained but equally wondrous waters of Green Bay, not the city, the actual bay. This place has both the sunrise and the sunset covered, crowds gather on either side, while others seek solitary  hikes to places like Tofts Point, Anclam Park, or the waters end roads on the Green Bay side of the peninsula.

When I was a toddler, I  discovered the joys of a tulip, it is my first memory, standing outside our home on West Harrison street, there is my brother beside me, reaching to the blossom encouraging me to look into it. I  was enchanted from that moment, by light, by color, and by the miracles of the universe.

Sometime after that we moved to the country, to a farmhouse that provided a roof and four walls, and vast fields of corn, beans and pastures, unencumbered by visual distractions.  There was a large pasture, cotton wood trees falling over a creek provided a natural bridge to exploration. I was horse for most of those years, and lived in perpetual joy of  the outdoor life. Each day the sunset with  new glory, and at  night the stars would rotate around the barn, with frequent glimpses of throbbing northern lights. In the winter the house would sway and moan, as Mother stuffed rags in the front door that was never used during the cold season. The sky and the weather  which filled it became a crucial element of our daily lives from season to season.  This was necessity for farm life, but also became necessity for the artist's eye.  I entertained myself with activities out of doors. One summer, I discovered  the luminous quality of tiny  wet stones in our gravel driveway and would spend hours with the  garden hose, trickling tributaries of water into the gravel, creating my own universe of tiny blue butterflies which came to drink and taste the minerals of the wet gravel. Hundreds of them would land and linger there, I was deeply impressed.

Other activities there included painting the sidewalk with a bucket of water, which my Mother devised as a distraction. Treasure hunts around the yard and Hide The Thimble also seemed like fun at the time. Another memory came to me the other day. I had a little round plastic mirror when I was very young, the  flip side of the mirror was the painting I posted at the top of the page.
Song of the Lark by Jules Breton is a painting of a peasant girl out in the field, the sun is rising I would guess,  and she may be singing, or perhaps there is a bird in there somewhere and she has stopped in her labors to just listen.  I knew larks, and this little mirror was hardly the same as looking at the real thing but I spent a lot of time staring at this reproduction. Is she  weeding a field much like I did as a teenager, walking beans for my Dad and my Uncle?

To be overwhelmed on a daily basis by beauty,  That is what it is like to live where I live. I don't paint every day, I spend a lot of time thinking about it, and about why or what I should paint, but it all boils down to this,  singing, painting, writing, its all the same, its all about gratitude and honor, and most of all, praise.

I found a youtube item on this painting, Bill Murray attributes this painting to saving his life one bleak day in Chicago. The painting is hanging in the Chicago Art Institute. As an adult, I  have seen it hanging there,  but its the memory from my childhood, of that little plastic mirror that stays with me.

The mild and moderate days of December winter have given way to an early February blizzard. We have been  at home for several days, skipped the studio visit, skipped the swim at the Y, and kept busy watching the snow plows go by, the banks of stuff  building up with each new pass of the big trucks that keep our roads safe for the die hards who have to get to work.

I am working on  ideas for my gallery talk which I will give at the Miller Art Museum in June, on portraiture and the history of its evolution. This means I have a stack of  things on the dresser, books on Farum paintings in Egypt, a biography of Chuck Close,  another on Lucien Freud, a book on the self portrait throughout the ages, and another on the Society Portrait. There are also books on silhouettes and another on  portraits in the age of abstraction.  Each morning I sip a cup of tea in bed and read, making notes on  index cards, in hopes that after a few weeks of this activity, I will have a
concise yet  comprehensive grasp of history and style, as well as a few interesting   stories on artists
that I have long admired but had little knowledge of. Its a self directed art history course I am taking, and I am re thinking the way art history could have been taught, approaching it from a thematic rather than a linear chronological approach. For example, Albrecht Durer was probably the first artist to paint a landscape for the sake of the landscape, not as an afterthought in a narrative about peasants or Icarus falling from the skies.  Artemisia Gentilischi was invited to live at the court of the King of England, where she was employed as a court painter.   Could we have a book on nothing but court painters??? Or how about a  talk on the artists who were all thrown in jail or sought by police for things like murder, theft, corruption... Courbet was forced to flee his home country, he died of malaria, while in transit to seek asylum from a patron. His paintings were banned from exhibitions. He missed the ferry he needed to catch, and that is where he  became ill. I took a number of art history surveys in college, and in grad school
I audited  the Renaissance class one semester just to brush up, but working in museums like the Blanden where I  shared space with paintings by Miro, Chagall, Beckmann and many other early
twentieth century greats, I had plenty of hands on experience albeit a generalist approach.

August 7, 2015

What I did On My Summer Vacation

Chez Cheryl Artspace is back to normal, a quiet interlude of pastoral bliss, monarch's flutter  past the milkweed and  wild carrot, tall stalks of spent ditch lilies and grasses gone to seed, and wind blows through the pine and maple.  I  often see a family of turkey vultures preening on the ridge of the barn roof, Coopers Hawks in the meadow, indigo buntings in the apple trees and across the valley, a deer   emerges from a cool thicket to cross over a stone fence, venturing into the field of newly cut clover.  On the walls which a month ago featured portraits in a myriad of media and presentation, I now have my growing accumulation of paintings I have attempted over the past few years, a series of abstract impressions of winter, a few still life studies, and en plein air or the valley and environs I have just described above. 

We were pretty dry, and I prayed it would rain, refilling my rain barrel and the water bins at the back door, and last Sunday we got that rain, plus 60 mph winds which  wreaked havoc on many, with downed trees, no power for at least 12 hours, and  marble sized hail throughout the county.  The garden is nearly feral again, but yielding spaghetti squash, cucumber and zucchini, tomatoes of  all sizes, potatoes, broccoli, eggplant and basil and peppers. Earlier there was  a handful of radishes, and spinach, and sweet raspberries, just enough to pick and eat while standing in the garden.

All of this takes me away,  my focus in life seems to be less of the world out there, and more about the internalizing of this pastoral  setting. Painting as meditation, painting as movement, the path of a butterfly, the shadow of the turkey vulture, the sound of the  pine trees singing in the wind. Painting to make the palpable yet invisible  patterns more visible.

This is where I live. I live in a place where people stop to move a snapping turtle off the busy county highway, I live where when a storm hits and knocks out power, puts trees on car tops and roof lines, the grocery stores cook up burgers and  have water ready for people who are hungry. I live where  I know the guy in the emergency responder truck is also the same guy who tends bar, he is a neighbor and he is always on call.  I live where you can't go to the grocery store, library or post office without running into at least 2-3 artists or poets or musicians. And the post master brings garden surplus in to the lobby for the FREE box, if anyone needs a zucchini, or a lily bulb.

Door prize for Portraiture 2015

Chez Cheryl Artspace was open for those interested in seeing 26 of region's most creative and unique artists in this annual invitational exhibition that pays homage to the genre of portraits, in all forms. Guest Juror Grame Reid, Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend Wi selected three honorable mentions and one Best in Show, and new this year was an award for the rookies,  or newbies of the group. Honorable Mention awards went to Rick Risch for his pensive portrait. TOMORROW,  Cynthia Wolfe, for her Mixed media assembled clay and wood visage  PORTRAIT IN SEPIA, with surface treatment of elaborate zen tangle drawing on clay; and Mark Zelten for his expressive  and classical capture of THE ARTIST'S FATHER, Best in Show went to Paula Swaydan Grebel for her double portrait THE PROM, which features her daughter and date for high school prom seated  in formal attire, barefoot, in an explosion of painterly pink chiffon.
The newbie award went to Colleen McCarty for NATURE GIRL, a self portrait in graphite, portraying the artist with feathers, leaves and tree limbs as body parts.

THE ARTIST'S FATHER

By Mark Zelten of Green Bay WI

Honorable Mention Award 2015

THE PROM

By Paula Swaydan Grebel of Plymouth WI

DOOR PRIZE BEST IN Show 2015

GUEST JUROR

Grame Reide of Museum of Wisconsin Art, West Bend, WI

Presenting awards and offering comments, with Cheryl Stidwell Parker to a crowd of over 100.- photo contributed by Suzanne Rose

NATURE GRl by Colleen McCarty, Sturgeon Bay, WI

Copperhead  by David Franke

Urban Portrait by Ken Klopack

Where have the weeks gone...

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.

Selections From my Final exhibit of the Year

at the Fellowship Center, Unitarian Universalist's in Ephraim WI

October 2014

   Franne Dickinson standing in front of a few of my paintings, Bird Bath in Rainbow Flutter on the right, and Tree of Life on the left.

Me with Franne Dickinson   who dropped in to see the work and offer some encouragement.

Jan and  her husband, artist Emmett Johns with Steve Lavell

Artist Sally Everhardus and Steve Lavell. Sally and I have exhibited together twice this year, begining the season with the Door Community Charitable Foundation  exhibit in late May, and ending the season with this UU show in October. Steve was our entertainment for the afternoon, playing guitar.

And now for something completely different......

SHIELD PAINTINGS

 Animal Imagery and exercises in meditation

Incubator-2014

Lunar Landing- 2014

My painting activity has slowed somewhat, since my last  (August) blog posting I have undergone total knee replacement, which put me in the hospital for two days and nights, then  a conga line of physical therapy sessions ensued, meeting every other day for the next five weeks.  I slept a lot, I iced a lot and I read a lot. But I didn't paint, nor did I cook, or swim, activities that I usually pursue with great discipline. I  quickly graduated from the walker to a cane, and finally was able to manuever sans aide, walking the dog for about a half mile daily, and have returned to swimming that same distance at the pool in our local YMCA. I also returned to the studio sometime in late October, and even managed to debut the series of abstract work I spent almost the entire year on, at a two person show at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall and Gallery space, once again showing with Sally Everhardus, as shown above.  

 I wonder where the people are who might find something that resonates within my paintings.  Maybe I have some  form of attention deficit syndrome,  I  now find myself coping with  the world news and urge to run away and hide, or go out and scream and rant... and painting seems as good a place as any to go and hide for hours at a time.

 The rabbit has been with me since my first art work that I can remember making, I drew and colored a rabbit, it was pink, and I glued a cotton ball to its bottom, and cut it out and carried it with me, in my pocket, when I was probably barely 4 years old. I clearly remember placing the rabbit in the glove box of our 1948 Buick, and when I went to retrieve it later, it had been crunched and tossed by someone, not realizing what it meant to me.  The rabbit is a harbinger of fertility, creativity and mischief in some cultures. The rabbit is journeying to the moon in a boat, to sweep the moon clean, in Japanese mythology, and as I look to the night sky, I think about that and wonder what kind of junk must be on the moon these days. We follow the rabbit down the hole, we get Easter eggs from the rabbit, we  carry it's foot, or used to when I was a kid, in hopes it brings good luck. So the rabbit was my first choice in my animals and myth series. My rabbit in Lunar Landing is busy at the edge of the dark side of the moon, cleaning it, or eating the darkness away, to reveal the lighter side, the side reflecting the sun.

Incubator focuses on the balance between destruction and creation. The turtle to me is a slow but determined creature, who  out of the mud and muck, creates a place that is nurturing and full of life. A friend suggested too, that the turtle lives between two worlds, of air, land and light, as well as darkness, water, muck and unseen worlds, both  hold on to life, both are necessary to create a whole, a balance. My turtle is placed as if on a banner, the animals become a form of heraldry.  

In the coming months, I hope to  launch into several more "Shield Paintings" which  explore the use of animal symbolism and convey my feelings and impressions of thoughtful contemplation andmeditative awareness.  

August 2014, Reflections on Summer

.... the Door Prize for Portraiture is now closed for the year. Artists arrived to pick up their work the last weekend in July and I have now transformed the space. These flowers were gracing the reception table and lasted through  the better part of Julybut they are gone now, and I feel the passing of another wonderful event.

We had just under 200 guests come through to view the portraits. There were several episodes of people locking keys in their cars,  and that provided those concerned, a chance to sit and savor the moment while awaiting arrival of a spare set of keys.  We had the Broad Salon group meet here, and also lots of friends and family of many of the subjects featured in the paintings. The comments this year continue to be encouraging and favorable. People I don't even know now want to be a part of this event. I change the list around every year, and plans for 2015 include expanding the list.

Meanwhile, I have  my own art work in three different spaces, all nonprofit art venues, the DCCF office lobby gallery in Sturgeon Bay, featuring work by me and Sally Everhardus, which will be up until Sept. 10. 

The Hardy features a Collection Invitational each summer, and I was invited this year. My work is hanging next to my esteemed friend and favorite, Emmett Johns. The  pieces featured include a small piece up for auction, a fundraiser for the Hardy. Also included is a duet of abstract work which showcases the direction I pursued last winter. 

This dyptich is titled Eccentric Orbit and is currently hanging in the Hardy Gallery in Ephraim WI.

Magpie and Bush 2014

is currently on exhibit and available in the silent auction fundraiser being held at the Hardy Gallery, Ephraim WI. through the month of August.

This painting relates directly to the pieces currently on display at  ON THE ROAD, the Miller Art Museum in Sturgeon Bay, which features work by 11 artists, and their work while traveling. I chose work from Australia 2005-2009.

Magpie Family 2005

I include an example of my work for that exhibit as well, although it is older work and may be a repeat from a posting on this blog a few years ago.

Parting shots today include a reminder to myself, summer is fleeting, and here art imitates nature....

Bird Shadow on Snow
this photo may inspire some future work next winter

Sticky Snow Cover

photo on top from early 2014 snow cover

and a study in water based oil of similar subject, 2014