Finding your own way

Two of my (8!) classes this semester are for students who need "professional development points" -- that is, public-school teachers who need to expand on their current knowledge and abilities in order to maintain teaching certification in the state of Massachusetts.

What wonderful students I have! Dedicated, enthusiastic and talented. There's a watercolor class and an acrylic class.

After two weeks of seeing their work, I notice a common issue. It's one that all artists share, but particularly those like my students, who find themselves in the position of spending all day helping young children make art projects but often don't have the time they need (or sometimes ANY time) to develop their own visions as artists. It's like working in a candy store, but not being able to eat the candy yourself.

The most important thing for an artist, I believe, is having the opportunity to experiment, try and fail. That's the only way to learn and grow.

Many of the students in this class are going back to their own art, as part of this class, for the first time since college. It's interesting to me that they are finding their interests and abilities are back at the stage they were in college, yet they are more experienced, mature and aware as people than they were at 22. So their visions have outpaced their abilities to express them.

Many of them want to branch out and explore, take a risk, but they're unsure of how to do so. It is a pleasure and an honor for me to be in a position to advise and encourage them.

I believe that one of the best ways to deal with feeling stuck when painting is to do something, anything, even if it's the "wrong" thing. Paint a layer of yellow all over the surface. Tear up random papers and glue them all over the surface. Take a big oil stick and scribble all over the surface. Anything to make a change, cause a spark, get yourself moving.

It takes bravery to push yourself like this, and risk wrecking the painting, but if you stay where you are, you'll never move forward.

We artists must never settle for a painting that is OK but not what we really meant to say. And in order to be honest painters, we must paint who were ARE, not who we were.

The above painting was one that I almost gave up on, but extra intuitive layers ended up tying it all together.

Field

Here's a recent painting, destined for an upcoming holiday sale. It's called "Field" (perhaps the influence of burlap as one of the collage elements), and is 16 inches square, on stretched canvas.

A rant on nutrition

I know this is an ART blog, but I have come across a non-art situation that is bugging me so much, I have to write about it.

My local food retailer chain has a so-called “Well-Being” column in its weekly circular, in which a supposed nutritionist – a friendly-looking young lady who has three fancy college degrees listed after her name – offers advice on “healthy” food choices. This week her topic is “women’s health,” and this week her “advice” is even lamer than usual.

The subject of women’s health is a very important issue to me. I am not a particularly passionate cook myself, but I am convinced of the benefits of a diet of vegetables, fruits and whole grains. I firmly believe that by making informed nutritional decisions and treating one’s body with care, attention and respect, we can live longer, healthier and more productive lives.

So many women, in particular, are so busy caring for their families that they neglect themselves. And with the terrifying threat of breast and uterine cancer and bone-related problems, women obviously have special considerations when considering caring for their bodies.

This is why the friendly grocery store adviser ticked me off so thoroughly this week. “Studies show,” she writes, “that the average woman’s diet lacks sufficient folic acid, calcium, and iron while containing excess calories. Translation [thanks, ‘cause we’re too stupid to digest this sentence on our own]: women are choosing foods with ample calories, but little nutrition. Try these items to make sure well-balanced nutrition keeps you going strong.”

OK, so what foods does she advocate that we buy at her store, and eat to stay healthy? Believe it or not, these are her suggestions:

Kellogg’s Smart Start Cereal (far more expensive than plain old whole oats, and filled with additives), plus a “fitness” drink called “Joint Juice” (Heaven only knows what scary ingredients are in this stuff), yogurt and milk (there are far healthier and more potent ways to ensure healthy bones than eating dairy products, including eating certain vegetables and engaging in weight-bearing exercise). So while this advice is misleading, it is likely not directly harmful (although many anti-cancer diets are emphatic about eliminating dairy products).

But the other two suggestions from the smiling nutritionist were ridiculous. She advocates chocolate and a pre-packaged pasta dinner. !!!

Now I know that dark chocolate has been touted as a “health food” recently, and I do believe that we all deserve a treat now and then, but how is that low calorie? And PASTA?! If you have the metabolism to keep your weight down by eating pasta, more power to you, but why not eat healthy vegetable pasta that you make yourself, rather than some pre-packaged crapola?

I wish I had this woman in front of me, so I could ask her, “Do you honestly believe that your female customers are THAT stupid, gullible and uninformed?!” Apparently, she does.

Fashionable lips

Phew -- a busy first week of teaching a new semester (and still two days to go before a day off to collect myself!). Tiring but very, very fun.

Today's class is a fashion illustration course for teens; we're starting with the face and features, so one of the exercises is filling a page with lips copied from magazine pages (example above). This gives students a chance to practice using colored pencils and markers, as well as learn the basic shape of lips. (We also do a page of eyes.) I've found it helps to give them a good grounding in drawing believable heads and faces; without that, the fashion figures they draw wearing their designs look less real.

We'll see how many of my new students are Project Runway fans!

The perfect destination

I just received this cool picture of one of my paintings in its new home! I am delighted with how much the new owners love it; they have designed their living room around the style and colors of the painting. I am honored!

Plunging ahead

Next week, I plunge into full fall teaching mode! I've done all the planning I possibly can, many hours of it, and now there's really nothing more I can do but DO IT.

Among many other things, I'm teaching a landscape painting course which will involve some work en plein air. The above photo shows me walking at Callahan State Park in Framingham, Massachusetts, one of the lovely locations that I enjoy taking my students to for painting. My husband Kevin shot it during a visit we made last week, one of the last blissful days of summer, before autumn and then holiday busy-ness set in!

I just spent several hours filling in my calendar for the fall and into next spring. My time will be full of teaching, but I also have three wonderful shows coming up in the spring to look forward to. Finally, I'll have a chance to get some of those new paintings I made over the summer out of the studio and into the world!

New triptych

I've just created this triptych from strips of fabric, painted with acrylic, on 10-inch canvases. I made one and didn't like it, but my husband said not to throw it out. So I made two more, and now I like them, especially as a group.

Life gets in the way

The new exhibition season is here, and with it comes a flurry of invitations from friends to attend their fall openings. And I've already missed my first one!

I wrote a "sorry I couldn't make it" note to an artist who had invited me to her opening last Saturday afternoon (between you and me, my car was in the shop until early afternoon, and then Hurricane Hannah was threatening), and she wrote back a kind reply, saying not to give it a second thought. "Life is busy and we just can't do everything," she added.

She's right, of course. I know there's no obligation to attend an opening just because you're invited to it. And when I first became an artist and fellow artists began sending me invitations to their exhibits, I felt no obligation and would just pin their postcard to the wall to admire, and forget about the opening.

Then I started showing my work, and in the process of addressing and stamping invitations to my shows (this was 1997, before email invites became the norm), I would often include folks on my mailing list who were old friends or who lived far away, not expecting them to attend, but just sending the invitation as a way of saying hello and letting them know what I was up to.

But lo and behold, so many of the people I would invite actually made the effort to attend my openings, and it felt wonderful to see them. I realized that attending an opening is a way of saying, "You GO!" to the featured artist, making them feel supported and appreciated. So I always make an effort to voice my support by attending others' openings, as so many people have done for me.

But my artist friend is right; sometimes life gets in the way, and you simply can't make it to every show you're invited to.

But this makes me feel guilty! I want the artist to know I'm thinking of them and congratulating them on the achievement of their exhibition, in mind and spirit if not in body! I guess I could send flowers, but I know a lot of artists, and the florist bills would add up fast. An apologetic email will have to do, or maybe just hoping that they won't notice one less body in the crowd.

I just know how great it feels to look around at your opening and see the smiling faces of all those loyal fans! So I enjoy being a loyal fan myself.

The photo above was taken of me by the husband of artist Deborah Bohnert (I apologize that I don't know his first name!) at an opening of a show Deborah and I were in at the Brush Art Gallery in Lowell, MA.

Hooray for Naugahyde

Ever since I bought a remnant of Naugahyde (a.k.a. "pleather") at Joann Fabrics about a year ago, I've loved integrating this type of upholstery fabric into my collages. The texture of the surface is perfect for the acrylic lines I draw on with squeeze bottles; the lines "sit" well on the surface without spreading. I've bought Naugahyde in cream and two versions of beige, and yesterday I made the collage above using a scrap of blue-gray.

Love this stuff! But I wouldn't want to wear a coat made out of it, or sit on a couch made out of it.

My website is updated

My website has just been updated, containing the new pieces/series I completed over the summer (an example, shown above, is "Grid 9," which is acrylic and paper on canvas, 20 inches square). Please click here to view.

The site is designed/maintained by the talented and capable Jeanne Williamson, herself an artist. If you're looking for a web mistress, I recommend her most highly.

Acrylic technique practice

I had SUCH fun today! This fall I will be teaching a class called “Beyond the Palette: Experimental Acrylic Techniques.” In anticipation, today I made pages of the various techniques we will be working on in class, to hand around to the students so they can see actual examples. Some of them are as familiar as breathing to me, as I’ve been using them in my own paintings for years. Others I have never tried before.

I’ve been referring to my favorite acrylic how-to books: “The New Acrylics” by Rheni Tauchid, and two books by Claudine Hellmuth, “Collage Discovery Workshop” and “Beyond the Unexpected.” I am bound to admit that several of the techniques in these books absolutely DID NOT work for me, despite the fact that they are touted as “easy” or “simple,” and I had to abandon them. But the ones that do work are SO beautiful that all is forgiven.

The absolute best ones are Claudine Hellmuth’s “Elmer’s Glue Crackle” and “Layered Masking Tape.”

Can’t wait to teach this class! It’s intended for K-12 teachers who are earning master’s degrees in education or professional development points. I am sure my students’ students will LOVE these applications when they practice them in the classroom.