"Opening Lines" opening soon

My new year begins with participation in a wonderful exhibit at the New Art Center in Newton, Massachusetts, opening on January 12. All are invited to attend this exciting show, curated by Susan Goldwitz, and the related reception, talks and workshop. Below is the invitation card which, I am honored to say, features my work. There's more information on the Center's website here.

Happy New Year to All! May 2009 be filled with all of the golden opportunities you are hoping for!

Merry Christmas!

This is our "Christmas tree" -- we decorate the pump organ in our dining room, that's been in my family for generations.

A very Happy Holiday to my blog readers! May your days be merry and bright!

New paintings

I made a couple of new pieces yesterday -- not sure what stage they're at, but I certainly had fun making them!

Valentines for Santa Claus

I spent the Solstice Eve making Valentine cards (examples, above). Sounds like an unlikely project just a few days before Christmas. But I am making them in anticipation of applying for the Artist Valentine grant, which has a deadline of January 19.

The way this annual grant works is: artists create hand-made Valentines and send them to the Artist Valentine Grant Committee, which sells them through various venues for Valentine's Day. The proceeds from Valentine sales generate grant funds, awarded by a Boston-area arts professional (a different person each year). Artists who have contributed Valentines are eligible to submit examples of their work, and from these the juror selects the group of grant-winners. Usually there are approximately five winners, who receive an average of $500 each, but this varies and is up to the juror's discretion.

For more information, visit the grant website here or email info@artval.org.

I was inspired by the beautiful Valentine that my friend Jeanne Williamson created for this grant last week. Jeanne was one of the grant-awardees last year, so that inspires me too.

My Valentines were made by drawing painted lines onto paper (the red ones) and spray-painting onto paper through lace cloth and a plastic "lace" placement (the pinkish ones).

Realization on selling work

The snow is still falling, and I'm still at my computer, finishing up some of the career-related projects I started yesterday.

One of my computer projects, just completed, was to create a chart listing all the paintings that have left my studio since I finished graduate school, where and under what circumstances they went. In compiling this chart, I noticed that I gave a lot of paintings away as gifts over the years.

Not that I begrudge any of these gifts (such as wedding gifts when dear friends were getting married). But I have to be honest: in general, I don't like giving away my work.

Now that I think of it, I realize that, as soon as I resolved to stop giving away my paintings and charging fair but firm prices for them, I began selling more and more work. This year, almost half of my income was made from selling paintings. Not that I have a particularly impressive income, but still I am proud of this fact.

So I guess the moral is, if you want to be thought of as a professional artist, you must think of YOURSELF as one.

The painting at the head of this blog entry was one of the first paintings I ever sold, back in 2000. Apparently the buyer, a well-known collector from the Boston area, liked the image of this painting so much when he saw it pictured on an exhibit invitation, that he came straightaway to the gallery to purchase the painting!

Step away from the canvas

This happens to me every December. There's a little pause at the end of the fall semester, and I have all my Christmas shopping done, so I "should" have plenty of free time. Plus, this year there was even a blizzard that pretty much kept me inside today. Sounds like the perfect setup for a painting spree, right?

Wrong! I am too fried from the semester, and I just have NO desire to paint! This condition usually lasts only a week or so, until after Christmas Day, and then I'm back in the studio with paintbrush in hand. But I've learned to deal with my annual holiday sluggishness with a good book or movie, and/or just staring out the window and humming Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Snowflakes.

I did actually spend many hours in my home office today, sorting through my filing cabinet and organizing jpgs of my artwork on the computer. For someone who is basically quite organized, I didn't have a lot of rhyme or reason as to how the images were sorted. I realized I don't even have a complete list of who owns my work and which pieces they own, so I need to get that together over the next day or so.

I found a huge folder of jpgs of older work that I thought I had lost. It was there all along; I had tucked it into another folder somewhere else than where I was looking!

I love looking at old pieces to figure out where I've come from, and if there are certain directions I might want to revisit. The piece at the top is from, I think, 2000. At the time, I was doing a lot of spray-painting through trivets onto fabric, then cutting and collaging the fabric pieces onto stretched canvas. I named it "Scallop" because it reminded me of seashells, but the stencil was really a little metal grille about 5 inches in diameter.

A Walter Mitty moment

The weather forecast for my area of the country is for an impending blizzard, up to a foot of snow, starting around noontime today, so like everyone else around, I hastened to the grocery store early this morning and chucked a loaf of bread and some milk (in my case, soy milk) into a shopping cart.

Back on the road, I had one of those Walter Mitty moments. Suddenly I was the woman with the white gauze dress in Botticelli's "Primavera," frolicking through the woods and picking wildflowers. Ahhhh. Sigh.

Now I love snow, and I love Christmas, and the salesclerks and my fellow shoppers today were polite and friendly. But I couldn't help having a little daydream ... that the sun is beaming down, and there's a warm breeze in my hair, and the fragrance of roses wafts through the air ... Ahhhh. There I go again!

Recommended viewing: "Home Grown" at New Bedford Art Museum

You have two more weeks to catch the amazing show "Home Grown: 10 From the Southcoast" at the New Bedford Art Museum, curated by David B. Boyce.

The show highlights a diverse range of styles and mediums including etching, blown glass, graphic design and oil painting, all made by artists who were born and raised in the New Bedford area.

These artists include the amazing Peter Pereira, a master with the camera whose sensitivity ranks him among the greats of photojournalism, and my dear friend John Borowicz, whose portraits manage to capture every wrinkle and follicle, but also reveal the personality underneath.

Other artists in the show include David Baggarly (gorgeous jewel tones in oil inspired by icon paintings), John Cox, Jason Duval, Hoyt Hottel III, Mark Parsons (you've never seen etchings with textures this rich), Ben Shattuck (complete characters described in gliding shorthand brush strokes), Carolyn Swiszcz, and David Walega.

The photo above is a view from the show, taken by John Borowicz, as museum visitors contemplate his paintings. For more information, click here.

An interview with Carol O'Malia

My talented friend Carol O'Malia currently has a solo show up at the Julie Nester Gallery in Park City, Utah, this month, and the local TV station filmed this interview with her last week, available here on youtube.

I always find it fascinating when artists talk about what they do, why and how. They always get a gleam in their eye, and it reminds me of why we are all here in the first place. Carol's eyes gleam a lot during this interview.

She is offering painting workshops in her studio in Framingham, MA, this January and February. For students looking for thorough and individualized training in working with oils from a true master of the medium, this is a great opportunity. More information is available here.

Feeling appreciated

How many times have you seen the words "artist appreciation reception" together in a sentence?

If I told you that a large corporation had hosted such a reception, you probably would think I had started in too early and indulgently on my holiday eggnog. But I have the photos to prove that it actually happened.

Meditech Medical Information Technology, a Massachusetts-based medical software company, has done the unusual for years: filling its five locations with original works created by emerging New England-based artists. This year they expanded into a new building in Fall River, built along the bank of South Wattupa Pond, and they purchased 440 works from 50 artists with personal ties to Southcoast Massachusetts to decorate the walls.

But they didn't stop there! Yesterday they invited all of us artists to a reception at their gorgeous new facility, where we were treated to a catered reception and a chance to walk around and view the artworks in their final destinations.

The paintings were beautifully grouped and displayed over individual desk spaces, in conference rooms, and along the walls of public display areas. All of the curatorial decision-making was done with sensitivity to the wide diversity of individual styles, colors and moods.

The photo above shows one of my works in a conference room (it looked great sharing the walls with a piece by Jason Fiering). You can see how gratifying it felt to see my painting in this setting by the look on my face!

I also had my work in two other areas of the building. In the image below, I had “my own” conference room, with two of my gold/brown paintings on the walls. (This is why I love seeing what talented consultants and curators do with my work. I never would have thought of putting these two works together, but they really play off of each other even though they’re from different series.)



In the image below, two of my black and white paintings share a wall with two awesome paintings by Shawn Gilheeney.



My deepest thanks to Meditech, for buying our art and for treating us like royalty. I have to admit, it feels great!

Also thanks to my husband Kevin, who documented the space and the event with nice photos like these.

Happy Birthday, Grandma

Today was my grandmother's birthday. Dorothy Marsh Parrott died in 1995 at the age of 88.

This photo shows her when she was in her 20s, about to embark on an ocean liner voyage to Sweden. (The picture was taken by my grandfather, who saw her off at the dock in Boston. He had plans to propose the minute she got home.)

The photo below is how I will always remember her. I have missed her every day since she died, but I know she is with me still.

Non-teaching teachers

Just in case my last blog entry sounded too warm and fuzzy, I wanted to add that as well as providing an environment that's conducive to creativity, I feel it is also my obligation as a teacher to give my students precise technical guidance.

I have heard many distressing tales from students about past teachers who presented them with a detailed and expensive supply list, only to offer the advice to "paint whatever you want" and leave the class to fend completely for themselves, with no demonstration on how to use the materials! This seems grossly unfair to me.

I even had one student who told me that the members of her former class would surreptitiously read "how to" books under their desks, fearful of offending their non-teaching teacher, but desperate for SOME guidance!

I have certainly had my share of teachers like these. One particular teacher whom I had at the Art Institute of Boston (now retired) never did anything but stand in the back of the classroom and read the newspaper. Many years later, I found a coffee-table book of his paintings at the library, and realized that this talented and apparently famous painter had been my teacher. I was heartsick to think of how much he could have taught me (and how much he was being paid to teach me), yet he never offered one word of advice, to me or anyone else in the class.

As art teachers, I don't believe we should present one technique or style as The Only Way (like the brush-twirling demonstrators on TV), but at a minimum, a clearly presented curriculum of basic techniques shouldn't be too much to ask.

Frankly, I feel sorry for non-teaching teachers, maybe more so than for their students. They are denying themselves that feeling of satisfaction that comes from watching students take what you have taught them and venture forth into their own world of creativity. It's like a parent teaching a child to take its first steps. You get them started and your gift is to watch them move forward on their own, knowing you had a hand in helping them. What could be more rewarding?

The painting above was created by Amber Wenger, also a student in the watercolor professional development class I taught during the Fall 2008 semester at the Danforth Museum School.

Freedom in the classroom

It’s been a long but rewarding semester, and yesterday I taught my last class of the fall season. Phew!

My favorite part of teaching is seeing my students put all the concerns of the outside world aside and allow themselves simply to create art.

An artist’s world is an inner sanctuary that represents complete freedom. Freedom to try and fail, freedom to express with honesty and without judgment, freedom to be utterly oneself. It’s a rare and unique opportunity in this day and age, when we are beseiged with financial and familial obligations, scare tactics from politicians and the media, and constant pressure to conform.

I am honored to be a teacher, a role in which I can offer this kind of freedom to my students, by creating an environment in which they can explore this inner world in safety and with joy. This is teaching art at its highest level.

The painting above was created by Lisa Rogers, who was a student in my professional development watercolor course at the Danforth Museum School in Framingham, MA.

Ingredients of Yellow Webs

Here's another brand-new painting (acrylic on canvas, 50 inches high by 30 inches wide).

Everyone has her favorite brands, types and color combinations of paint. Mine is the mixture I use as my top layer to get this greenish brownish goldish appearance: Golden fluid acrylics in nickel azo yellow mixed with raw umber and lots of Utrecht-brand gel medium. That's my personal language.

Thank you, Mr. Handel

My dear friend Wendy and I saw/heard the Handel and Haydn Society perform Handel's "Messiah" at Symphony Hall in Boston yesterday. This is an annual tradition that we've enjoyed for the past five years, and we intend to continue it until we're old ladies in our 90s. It's a sublime experience for both of us, like hearing the angels sing.

Confession: When I was little and I heard "All We Like Sheep," I used to think they meant "we like sheep" as in "we think sheep are cool." Being an animal lover myself, I was happy to think that someone else liked sheep too. I was disappointed when I got older and realized what the words really meant.

Opening doors

I have a theory that showing one’s artwork has a lot in common with finding a romantic partner.

I kissed a lot of frogs before I met my prince of a husband. I dated a lot when I was in my 20s, and it always felt wrong. Conversations dragged, interest flagged. There were no sparks. Something just wasn’t right.

Yet I never stopped wishing that each one I met was The One, and I spent considerable time trying to force each relationship into being. I spent hours primping to get ready for my dates. I pined for days if a boy stopping calling me. I couldn’t concentrate on my daily life, but would go over and over the minute details of each date in my mind, wondering if I had said something wrong or worn the wrong thing. Even if I had no interest in the boy. I just wanted to be wanted so badly, and I didn’t care by whom.

When I met my husband, everything was different. Talking to him just felt comfortable, even about insignificant subjects. When I was with him, I didn’t worry if I looked perfect or if I said witty things; I just felt a little glow inside, no matter where we were and what we were doing. No effort, nothing to force; being with him was as easy and pleasant as lingering over a hot cup of cocoa, or drifting off peacefully to sleep in a warm bed. I didn’t have to impress him; he simply loved me and I loved him back. And we felt this way because of each other’s little quirks and whimsies, and not in spite of them.

I’ve had the same type of experience with showing my artwork. It seems like I have applied to every show, grant, and gallery on the face of the earth. Each time, I tried to show the work I thought they’d want to see, or struggled to say the words I thought they’d want to hear. When the inevitable rejection letters came, I would spend hours thinking about the possible reasons and study the work of people who had been awarded a show or grant, trying to figure out what they had done right and I had done wrong.

But just as with meeting my husband, there have been times when my work just FIT. I didn’t need to justify it or explain it, or worry that maybe I should have used different colors or tried another style. The gallerist or the venue or the collector just loved the work. No words were necessary, no tricks were necessary, the work never needed to be anything but what it was to find the right destination.

This is an important lesson, I believe. Not that an artist shouldn’t be aware of what a gallery or grant-giving institution is looking for, and select where to apply accordingly. But when the situation is right, it is right. Everything clicks. There is no need to force anything; the door just opens to you.

Same thing with the wrong situation. No amount of scheming or reinventing yourself will make something happen if it’s not “meant” to happen.

We don’t need to spend time standing at the wrong door, rattling the handle or trying to pick the lock. We simply need to try another door, and eventually the right one will open to us, gently and easily. And if we remain true to ourselves, this WILL happen, it’s just a matter of time.

Carole Rabe's exhibit

Yesterday I visited a three-person painting exhibit that included Carole Rabe's sun-splashed interiors. If you're in the Metrowest Boston area, I highly recommend visiting her show at the Mazmanian Gallery. Below is one of her works on display.

For more information on the show, click here.

For more information on Carole's work, visit her website here.

Yellow Web series continues

I had some quality time to spend in the studio over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and I made a couple of nice paintings, this one being my favorite. These are part of the Yellow Web series, acrylic on canvas, 50 inches high by 30 inches wide. Top image is a detail; below is the full view.

Deck the halls

This weekend we got started on our Christmas decorating, with some help from Petey.