Lucia Douglas Gallery

I'll be part of a group show at the beautiful Lucia Douglas Gallery in Bellingham from Dec 2-22 and Jan 4-14. There is a reception on Friday night from 6-8 and I'll be there. I'm looking forward to seeing art from my friends Susan Melrath and Jennifer Phillips and for the first time I'll see work by Emily Peck, Alison O'Donoghue and Kim Murton.

So if you live in Seattle but are driving up past Bellingham for the holidays, why not stop in! It's right off the Fairhaven Parkway.

The Old Apple Tree

I met these goats in the Methow Valley this spring. The tree is an old apple from Piper's Creek Orchard here in Seattle. 

Landscapes!

This year's Turner Prize may go to an landscape painter, George Shaw. A landscape painter! There is a nice video about him here.



He reminds me of Seattle's wonderful Christopher Martin Hoff.

Swans not Turkeys

A wet and beautiful Thanksgiving Day in the Snoqualmie Valley. The river is rising.

A tree farm.

Trumpeter swans resting on their migration south. I painted one of these amazing birds here a couple of years ago.

Weird and wonderful plants. I think it is kale but it was pouring so hard I ran back into the car without checking. 

Cathedral

I heard a while ago the idea that many secularist people are treating environmentalism and conscious food consumption as a new sort of religion. Maybe this is so and maybe I am a believer.

I think about this when I wonder why I am drawn to the organic farms I have been painting. Wild nature, not arable land, is the traditional subject of nineteenth and twentieth century American and Canadian landscape painters. But for me there is something brutal about nature. I walk in a forest to be filled with awe, but not to find comfort. If one of the functions of religion is to bring solace to the human condition, then I  look for this solace in the gently managed landscapes of sustainable farms. They remind me of all that is positive in being human. They are places of nurturing.

For much of human history art has been used to express ideas of religion. Giotto did not paint still lifes. Raphael did not paint abstracts. The study of European art history is frequently the study of religious expression. (Music of course followed the same journey) Some think that the greatest European art of the pre Renaissance was the cathedral - a celebration of art, science and community, drawn together under the flying buttress of religion.

When I am alone in a farm field, surrounded by the extraordinarily harmonious combination of nature and civilization, I am consoled as my medieval great great grandmother must have been when visiting her church. And maybe she also felt this when tending her crops at the end of a long day.

This painting is 36x48 inches and is oil on canvas. It is a reworking of a painting I started a couple of years ago. 

Cabbages for Kings

The rich golden light of the November afternoon saturated all the colors in this Full Circle Farm field. The cabbages were dazzling against the green grass and the shadows were deep with the sun so low. Wow. I felt like a queen surveying a palace of jewels.

This painting is 9x12 inches.

November Trees with Leeks and Parsnips

I was so lucky to enjoy yesterday's glorious weather at Full Circle Farm. A couple of paintings were made, many little airborne spiders were lifted gently off my sweater and my boots were dignified with farm mud.

This  painting is 5"x7" and is oil on canvas. The parsnips are the bright green leaves on either side of the leek bed.

Full Circle posted this wonderful link on their web site about the root systems of vegetables. It blows my mind! A carrot root system running 7.5 feet down. Really makes you wonder what your veggies have been eating down there.

Price List for My Exhibition in Wallingford

An Announcement!

I you are on my mailing list you can expect to get this email invitation some time soon. If you would like to be on my mailing list just ask! It's nice to keep in touch.



Chickadee on a Swing

The chickadees are very active in my garden right now eating sunflower seeds. Their call makes me think of winter. 

I have called this "Chickadee on a Swing" in reference to a favorite Fragonard painting "The Swing". The style of the background is similar.

This painting measures 5"x7".

Friendly

I visited this friendly goat with a sweet face on a farm in the Methow Valley. This painting is small. 5"x7" and is oil on canvas. It will be part of a show I am hanging on Wednesday at Fuel Coffee in Wallingford and will be priced at $250.