Stained Glass

Here are some delicious images of plants from the windows of the British Columbia Legislature in Victoria. I would love to try to make something like this. The glowing colors come from the different pieces of glass but the details seem to be made by painting black paint on the surface and scratching it off. I may have to do some research...




There is a wonderful story about this window. It was designed and made before the symbols of British Columbia had received final approval from London and was rejected since it shows the sun "setting" over the British flag. Of course, the sun is never supposed to set on the British Empire!


I love all the plants. Roses for England. Thistles for Scotland. Some shamrocks for Ireland. But shouldn't there be leeks for Wales? What is the small purple flower? Maybe it is something Welsh.

Rebirth

I posted last week about the assault of spring. The ground was literally erupting with life and it wasn't gentle. Here is part of a painting about that feeling. I have been thinking about change and upheaval lately, both in the garden and in life. I have always embraced it and I know that change leads so often to good things, even when the change is disturbing. Sometimes I have to remind myself that giving birth is hard, whether it is literally the amazing act of giving birth to a new life, or simply the energy and faith it takes to disrupt the status quo. Rebirth, or Renaissance, is also hard, though we have more blueprints to guide us on our adventures if someone has gone ahead and blazed the way. This painting of rebirth is disturbing but also, I hope, beautiful.


Making a painting can also feel like being in labor. It can be painful and frustrating. Sometimes I feel despair, sometimes exhilaration. Maybe someone should bring me ice chips and hold my hand. The whole right half of this painting is a mess. I have painted and repainted a quince bush three times. I am experimenting with more atmospheric perspective and it is difficult to get it right. Who said we should do something that scares us once a day? How about doing something that scares us fifty times a day! That is what painters do.


The scariest part of all is that I have become attached to this little vole who is feeling overwhelmed by the spring upheaval. But I don't think she is the right mouse, with her stiff profile view, and I will probably have to "murder my darlings" and paint over her. Change is hard!

Dream

I planted an apple tree last week. So far it looks like a dead stick. But in years to come it will flower with pink and white blossoms, green leaves and fragrant apples.

This little mouse knows to dream big and to work hard. She hasn't read Robbie Burns' poem "To a Mouse". Her best laid plans will not "gang agley" but will see fruition. Go mouse go!

This painting measures six inches by eight inches and is oil on panel.

Unexpected

Spring is erupting all around me and I am almost feeling assaulted by it. Maybe I am just in a bad mood today but I am detecting something disturbing in the relentless pace of nature.


The Quince are too extravagant.


The Forsythia are screaming.


The Tulips are alarmingly sexual.


And the Fritillaria Imperialis are just terrifying.

Jerome

This is a portrait of Jerome who belonged to a friend of mine. Jerome was a house rabbit who liked to lie sprawled on the floor like this. I enjoyed painting the falling petals which are echoed in the spots of rabbit fur. I still may add some pea vines for Jerome to eat and to make the setting more like a garden but I think the painting is already quite busy. I'm still considering.

Blossom

The blog has had a lot of words and not many pictures lately so I'll share with you the view from the sidewalk in front of my house this afternoon. I am painting these blossoms and will post the painting tomorrow, if it goes well. I wonder if my neighbor saw me snip a little twig and steal away with it. It was small. Really.


When Isobel was a small baby lying in her stroller I would take her outside under a tree like this and slowly turn the stroller in circles so all she could see were the blossoms swirling above her. She is sixteen now but I made her stand under a tree like this the other day, look up and turn slowly around. Poor kid.


Ok Mum. I know you're reading this. Are these plums or cherries? I am thinking plums.

Update: My Mum says that cherries and plums are the same genus (Prunus) so it is hard to tell them apart. Wikipedia says "The name 'cherry' may also be applied to many other members of the genus Prunus. The fruits of many of these are not cherries, and have other common names, including plum, apricot, peach, and others."

Maybe I will call these ones "ch-ums". They are all over the neighborhood and are turning it into a wonderland.

बरस अरे गुड Too

While I am delighted to be showing at so many really good coffee shops this year I have also entered my work in an open call at Grey Gallery, which is actually a bar and one of my favorites. They have comfy seats, great drinks and some wonderful wall space for art.

Here is the blog site for the competion they are holding. There are lots of entries and it is fun to look through them all. If you scroll waaay down to #27 you can see my work and leave a comment. They are hoping for feedback from the public. Put in a good word for your favorites and enjoy the art!

You will see that my work is very different than the rest. Hmmm. There is a vibrant realist/pop surealist movement here in Seattle but I am not seeing evidence of it here. Perhaps my work is too quiet, intimate, for a bar setting? What do you think? My work has thoughtful meaning, as I explain on this blog, but with a casual glance it might seem simply pretty?

By the way, my blog titles keep being translated into Hindi. I have decided to embrace it. This one says "Bars Are Good Too"

Shows

My calendar is filling up with some wonderful things this year and I am feeling pretty great about life and art. So far, probably because the weather is so warm, I haven't even been stricken with the usual winter blues. This is a good thing since I will need a little positive energy to make enough paintings for the four Seattle coffee shop shows I have booked this year. Here's the schedule:

April - Fuel Coffee in Montlake
May - Fuel Coffee on Capitol Hill
July - Fuel Coffee in Wallingford
September/October - Fiore Coffee in Queen Anne

I have decided that I like showing in coffee shops rather than galleries! Coffee shops don't usually take a commission so I can keep my prices low. Galleries charge a 50% commission and provide support and advertising in return. I seem to have enough support and a wonderful mailing list so I am doing it on my own. It feels a little subversive.(This blog is a big part of my support system and I value the friends and comments it brings me) I also like the intimate atmosphere of coffe shops. My paintings are about intimacy so it feels right. I conduct all the sales myself which means that I get to meet some wonderfully sweet customers. Besides this is coffee-land. For now I will take my art with a tall skinny double latte, extra foam.

UpcomingEvents

I am excited by some upcoming lectures in Seattle this spring. There is a wonderful art history series at the Frye Museum by Rebecca Albiani who shows great slides and seems to have a boundless amount of information in her head. Both her series are sold out but I always show up at the door and buy a ticket on the spot. I just saw her speak about the mosaics of Ravenna and it was marvelous. The next in the series in a lecture on Van Gogh on March 11. I am looking forward to her series on Vermeer which starts on Feb 24th. I hope they can find me a seat.

I have never been to any of the events offered by Gage Academy but I just filled up my calendar with tempting lectures there. Tomorrow, 21 Feb, is one in a series about color looking at Impressionism. The following Monday will be color and Picasso/Matisse. Since I am unfamiliar with this venue I think I'll call them first to make sure they have room for me.

I have been wondering lately if I should be living in the suburbs so that I have more gardening space but when I get excited about events like these I remember why I like living in the city. Last week I popped out to Rebecca's lecture and popped back in time to make dinner for my kids. City living is great!

Contemplation

My cat Opal turned out to be a good model for this painting of quiet contemplation. (She is actually quite manic but I have calmed her down here). As I mentioned in the previous post I had difficulty painting only the dormant hydrangea and hibiscus plants while my garden is actually erupting with bulbs and fat furry blossom buds. It is such an early spring here but I wanted this painting to be about that earlier time of year when perennials and shrubs are dormant, invisible or apparently dead. There is such peace in dormancy. I have painted that feeling I get when I watch the sun set and I feel completely alone with the sky. I am not achieving anything tangible. I am not engaging or performing or displaying myself in any way. I feel peaceful and dormant but so happy.


I was going to call this painting "Sweet Silent Thought" after Shakespeare's Sonnet number 30 but I don't like how he says that in times of quiet contemplation he realizes that his life has sucked and only love can rescue him from his misery. My painting is much more positive than that.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

Sorry William. I will call it something else...but what?

Mouse or Cat

This painting, barely started, is only 12 inches wide. A much smaller scale than my last four foot winter scene. My garden is full of dead plants that have such wonderful shapes and textures like this hydrangea and I want to capture some of them even though I am being tempted by new spring flowers already. The helebores, snowdrops and daphnes are blooming but I will try not to be distracted until this new one is finished.


I put a little mouse watching the sunset but I think I might change her to a cat, using Opal as my model. I find it very hard to imagine the anatomy of an animal and get more satisfying results working from observation.




Spring is strangely early this year. It's nice but odd.

Finished

I added some shadows to the snow which was fun. I will hang this painting at Finch and Sparrow in Fremont if you would like to visit it. (or buy it!)

Almost Finished

It's almost finished. I still need to add some snowberry leaves and some more dogwood twigs.


I usually wait for my last painting day to add the whiskers but couldn't resist this time. So much fun to put in the finishing touches. The snowy ground was also nice to paint, especially since we haven't had a flake here this winter. I worked from photos I took last winter.

I hope to finish up today but I will be at the Garden Show this afternoon so I'd better get up to the studio this morning.

Introducing Some Red

There were such wonderful and thoughtful comments after my last post that I have decided to continue the discussion about this painting. Thank you if you left a comment. I love having other people's opinions, even when I choose to ignore them! It seems most of you were generously encouraging me to include what ever plants and animal combinations are appropriate to my artistic vision. But I am leaning more toward science in this one and have added some red twig Dogwood and some Oregon grape. Both are native to this area, though whether or not they would ever be found in a grouping like this I will not worry about.





I didn't mention that this painting is four feet wide so there is lots of room to play with. I want a dramatic effect as though we have come across this hare in a sunny clearing, with the foreground in shadow. This is causing me such problems and my always helpful family keep pointing out that the snow in shadow looks more like dryer lint than snow.



And this grouping of snow covered berries in shadow looks more like a manatee than anything else! Clearly I need to get back into the studio and work on this.



I am really enjoying the way the edge of the Oregon Grape leaf forms a zig zag. I could never think these things up. Nature amazes me as always!

A Question

This unfinished painting of a snowshoe hare in a winter landscape has crystallized a question that has been looming in my work as, over the past few years, my paintings have become more realistic and less surrealistic. I used to invent plants and creatures and set them in imagined spaces but now I am happier painting "real" plants and animals copied accurately from nature.

But the accurate depiction of a plants and animals is still not the purpose of my work - it is just the language I use to tell the story. The animals represent me, or you the viewer, surrounded by a world of emotion. For this reason, I do not consider myself a "wildlife artist" or a "botanical artist". I suppose I am anthropomorphising the world, even though I don't dress my animals in cute clothing and give them cell phones and cars. I paint, not so much the world around me, as the world inside me.

I use nature as my language and she kindly provides me with plants and animals more fantastic than anything my imagination can conjure up. I also feel so humbled by the world around me that copying nature as accurately as I can has deep meaning for me. It now feels arrogant to try to invent anything to rival what nature has developed over the Milena. So I have reached a place where the plants and animals are as real as I can make them.

But how far should this go? In this painting I have invented a snowy landscape full of snowberries. This part is scientifically possible. Snowberries, snowshoe hares and snow can all be found together in nature. But now I find I want to introduce some color to this painting and have been tempted to paint one of those beautiful Yuletide camellias with the deep red flowers which would turn my nice sciencey landscape into something imaginary. Should I honour nature by assembling only the elements that she herself has orchestrated? Or should I clumsily throw in all sorts of plants that showshoe hares would never encounter in the wild? Would this be sloppy? Arrogant? I want to be sensitive to my environment. It feels right to honour the natural world and, as I write this, I feel myself leaning toward science and away from fantasy. Surely I can still tell the stories I want without messing around with the natural world.

I welcome any opinions on this "nature" vs "nurture" question. Really it is "reality" vs "fantasy". Robert Bateman vs Mark Ryden. Ouch my brain. Is it ok if I still indulge in a few flying weasels when the need arises?


Robert Bateman


Mark Ryden

Sunrise

I am thinking about Haiti of course. The sunrise yesterday lifted my spirits a little. I took this one facing east.


And this one facing west. I have never seen the water so pink. The beauty was breathtaking but also vaguely unsettling.

After the Storm

I love the drama of stormy weather. My cosy studio or my cosy coat and boots keep me safe from any real danger and discomfort. I suppose that is the difference between something thrilling and something truly frightening. I feel the same way about my emotional life. Usually I stay safe and cosy but sometimes I venture out into the big, beautiful, thrilling world to find adventures that make my heart beat faster.




This painting shows the snowberries that decorate Seattle in the darkness of winter and the beauty berries (calliparpa) that I love so much this time of year. It is oil on panel and measures 11'x14".

Snowshoe Hare

I have painted snowshoe hares before but always in their winter white coats. This one is still wearing her brown summer fur and is looking at the snowberries as if wondering when she should change her own color.

I love these fluffy characterful animals and find them even more interesting now that I am aware of how much they are affected by climate change. I recently read an article that described how some hares are changing their fur color to white in the winter even though their habitat doesn't become snowy any more. This leaves them uncamouflaged and even more vulnerable to predation. Sorry to describe something so sad here on the blog.

A funny story about this little painting might cheer us up. When it was freshly wet I brought it down to the house to prop it on the fireplace mantel to dry over night. As I was doing this is slipped out of my hand and landed face down on the hearth rug, where the cats sleep. When I picked it up it was so covered with cat fur that I spent half an hour with a scalple picking the hairs off my hare. Yes I know I should vacuum more often but there are so many paintings that I want to make and I hate vacuuming, don't you?

This little study is oil on canvas and measures 8"x10". If you visit the article about climate change here you can see the photograph that inspired this painting.

A New Year's Pudu

I made this little painting as a Christmas present for my friend who shares my love of Pudus - the smallest deer in the world. The black background was inspired by a show of seventeenth century Dutch paintings I saw in Vancouver last month. This painting looks dramatic but is only 5x7 inches.


I don't know who took this picture but the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle had a baby pudu a while ago so maybe this picture is from there. Even if you don't like cute animals (really?) this baby has to make you say "aaawww". The mother is less than two feet tall.

Happy Solstice

Huckleberry looked so wonderful and black yesterday on the darkest day of the year. Now it is the Solstice we can look to the sky again for warmth and light. Or, on dark rainy days like this we can at least eat sun-shaped traditional Scottish solstice shortbreads.

Huckleberry Shows How It's Done

After posting about Opal not camouflaging herself very well this morning, I found Huckleberry sleeping on my fake fur coat. He is so competetive.