SUMSUM Summertime

Summertime

Colleen Mccarty's Self Portrait with Chicken

Door Prize for Portraits 2017

I am in the midst of preparations for the 8th Annual Door Prize for Portraiture, which is being held back at the artspace, and will feature 28 artists working in all variety of media. Last year the show was at the Miller Art Museum,  in Sturgeon Bay,  and was twice as big. Wanting to keep the ball rolling, I decided to offer it again and have a number of new faces, but all are full time  door county residents. Shan Bryan-Hanson is the juror.

I entered the Hardy Wall to Wall Salon exhibit in Ephraim,
which went up over Memorial Day weekend, and was up two weeks, then juried, and again I was eliminated so threw a party for all those brave souls who entered and were also eliminated. It was sort of a dress rehearsal for the Portrait Prize show, we had some nice food, and the art looked good hung in a setting that was more conducive to presentation. On an up note, I have a buyer for my painting, many felt that it should have been included in the show. Frankly, after seeing all the entries I was not surprised I was not selected. The showing this year was strong, with 170 artists, and only 70 were juried in to the  final exhibition.

Its been quite a long gap between entries in this blog, partly because in January my dog Daisy  died, and shortly after that I developed some horrid symptoms, facial nerve pain and it never went away. I have since been on increased medication, an anti convulsive, which makes me tired, and slightly high at first. As I adjust to it I have facial nerve pain return, and then have to increase the dose. This has made my hands shake, and while the pain is gone,  in the last few days, I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the source of the problem has not, and an MRI in mid March revealed a meningioma, or tumor, which was coming out of the meninges which lines the brain, and its pressing on the trigeminal nerve, it is also quite close to the brain stem. I am now facing either radiation or surgery and at least another year of medication. It is a struggle to remain up beat. Painting has helped me get through the  sadness over loosing my dog and offers some distraction from the facial nerve pain.

Here is a shot of Daisy mae in the studio taken several years ago. She went with me most days and seemed pretty content to the point of falling asleep while I painted.

Enter Autumn

 Deep into October

Its been raining off and on all day, the leaves are falling with the rain drops, and the skies are a mass of gray. The colors of autumn never cease to bring one to pause and just stare. The other day i longed for a camera, it was brilliant light that stopped me in my tracks by the back door of the farm house, light shining on the red geraniums, the enamel water bins, and pumpkin, and the three remaining chickens in my diminishing flock who had chosen that very moment to squat and  wallow into the sunny warmth of the cement slab at the back door. It was a moment I spent etching it into my brain.



After  hosting a solo exhibit of work by artist Kristi Roenning over Labor Day weekend, and several weekends of house guests at the farm, I have moved  my easels back to their  spot and rolled out the paint cart, suddenly I realize I am out of canvas.  I managed to do two small studies,  in August, holly hocks that were begging to be painted,  inspired a larger piece as shown below.  I also pursued some printmaking activity in August, signing up for a workshop with artist Donna Brown in her printmaking studio just a few miles  down the road. One of the pleasures of living in Door County is the proximity to so many talented people.  the resulting mono prints included several versions of magpies and a moody tree study, as well as a formal abstraction  in multi colors. Play at its best. And since I am currently  short of canvas, I started to coat heavy smooth watercolor paper with gesso, and have  played around with waterbased oil on paper taped to masonite boards. It seems to work.

High Plateau Hollyhocks, September 2016 water based oil on canvas

18"x18" 

This piece made the cut recently in the Annual Juried Five County Exhibition at the Miller Art Museum, Sturgeon Bay Wisconsin.

This annual exhibition opens November 5 with a public reception  3:30-5pm.

portraits and salon de Refusé

Seventh Annual Door Prize for Portraiture
Miller Art Museum, Sturgeon Bay WI
June 4- July 25 2016

Some may have noticed, there are no portraits at Chez Cheryl Artspace this summer.  Instead, the Miller Art Museum has graciously hosted this exhibit which has doubled in size this year. Opening In early June with a public reception, the exhibit runs through July 25. I must admit great pride in seeing this exhibit grow and to such an exquisite level of talent and expression. The opening reception was wall to wall, food and drink ran out before the reception was over. My face hurt from smiling.

The following week I presented my talk  to the Miller Art Museum volunteers and general public, Speed Reading the Portrait;a brief history, which went well thanks to Michael Nitsch and Elizabeth Meissner Gigstead for their help with my images I requested for the talk.  I had spent most of the winter months reading and  compiling information to make my talk thorough yet not bogged down with too much linear thinking. My audience laughed when they should and I felt confident that no one fell asleep during my hour long  excursion through art history.

 I stopped back at the Miller the other day and attendance seemed to be very good that day, the count was at 56 and that was noon. More people in one Saturday than I would have had in a week at chez Cheryl.   Best in show award went to Craig Blietz for his self portrait, with two cats, honorable mentions included Sharon Delvoye, Shelby Keefe and Bonita Budysch. I felt strong pieces included a painting by Buttons Wolst, also a self portrait by Emmet John's, and last but not least, an incredible portrait of her granddaughter, by Jan Comstock.

Next year the show will go back to the farmhouse studio at chez Cheryl, and may introduce some new people, wih possible sabbaticals for a few others who have been regulars since its inception. It's fun to stir the pot now and then.

 I struggled to make a portrait this year, working on a tiny ampersand clay board, with gouache, over and over again, until I was sick of it.  Learning to handle gouache, and working in such a small  format, I found the combination of those elements too challenging but learned a bit of handling a media that tends to dry quickly.  At the 11th hour I went back to larger format, oil paint and a bigger brush and the self portrait Touch of Grey/ The Green Scarf evolved in a matter of two days. This painting evolved with the joy of the paint, and brush strokes were allowed to take over the  image for their own sake. It is all about the movement of paint, less about the actual likeness, yet I feel an image and expression  of some small degree of accuracy in this selfie.

TOUCH OF GREY/GREEN SCARF 2016
water based oil on canvas
at the Miller Art Museum in Sturgeon Bay WI

CAT WITH SPIDERWORT 2016
waterbed oil on canvas
Community Mosaic Project
Hardy Art Gallery, Ephraim WI

 MOSAIC PAINTING PROJECT
The fundraiser known as the Community Mosaic  event is happening at the Hardy gallery in a few weeks. I have submitted a piece again this year.  A still life with cat and spiderwort, with space divided into flat color fields, the piece is inspired by Japanese prints, with no visible light source, no shadows, just the articulated forms of the cat and the arcs of the spiderwort leaves to give it interest.









COLLECTION INVITATIONAL
HARDY GALLERY- July 22- August 2016

APPROACHING STORM 2016
water based oil on canvas
for the Collection Invitational Silent Auction
Hardy Art Gallery, Ephraim WI

I have donated a piece to the Hardy, for their annual silent auction. Two pieces go on exhibit, one for show and one for sale. I chose to submit  for sale, APPROACHING STORM in water based oil on canvas. It  is a good representation of the recent storms that moved through quickly  the last several nights. Inspired by the view from the farm house studio windows looking west toward the Peil creek valley and Door County Land Trust property on the McNeil Farm. The view has been painted by many but probably not as often or as intensely as i have studied it through seasonal changes, in snow and rain, in summer blossoming and autumn golds, the view is my muse.

SALON DE REFUSÉ or What Steve calls THE HARDLY, with no ill feelings or malice, we have decided to honor those rejected each year, or for the next year at least, by holding a pop up show for one day only, with a party, for artists who bravely enter the Hardy annual salon each year, and face rejection, because the show is so popular and  hugely supported with entrants each year, nearly 50% of the entrants do not get accepted into the final showing.

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