Sunday, February 10, 2013

snowstorm!!!!!!!

This was the door I usually use to go in and out of my house. This was the sight I found on Saturday morning after 24 hours of wind and snow. All the doors out of my house, except for one were blocked like this. The one I use the least had had the snow blown away from it, so that is where I first tried to get out.
However, in order to shovel out this door, I had to fight my way through thigh high snow. At one point, I contemplated lying down and rolling down the hill. But then I thought I might not be able to get up again.
I finally made it to this door, and shovelled it out, and then I shovelled the deck, and then a path to the driveway, should it ever be plowed. Then I went to bed after the second day of storm.
This morning I awoke to brilliant sun and a plowed drive. I have never been so happy to be able to drive out the driveway. Cabin fever came early this year, but didn't last long.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Valentine Vegetables (and One Fruit)

In the beginning of my single life, I bought a leek and found a perfectly heart-shaped gingko leaf in its middle. So I started making valentines with messages from the vegetative world. This one was, "In the middle of the strangest places, you can find your valentine."
The next year, I found an onion with its roots intact. The message here, I think, is that, "Through tangled roots and deep inside, even an onion has a heart."
These carrots caused me to become more graphic. This one is called, "Heart's Desire," for obvious reasons.
Keeping with the theme, these parsnips float for me above a Marc Chagall-like landscape, i.e wintry and Russian, like where and when they grow. But I love them, so I call this, "Parsnips a la Chagall."
"Squashkin" is an aberration, but I painted him for the friends who grew him. And squash is a simple vegetable, good to eat and easy to grow, like love.

After a silly and dangerous fling, I cut open this apple and found this perfect heart. So what I said was this, " He sliced open an apple and found my heart." But the apple turned out to be rotten.
So this year, I found this perfectly shaped shiitake in my local food coop. "Out of the mud and muck of life, a perfect shiitake can grow." Though I am thinking that the mud and muck of life resembles chocolate this year.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Sunday, February 3, 2013

portfolio images

With my new camera, I have been retaking photos of older work, in my first attempt to put together a portfolio. The above photo is one of my favorites from California, called Chualar Rapeseed Field. Chualar is an old farmer worker community, in the middle of the Salinas Valley. The mountain is Fremont Peak. Sometimes I call it, 'Chualar Rape.'
'Where Once He lived' is a Tombo pen and ink sketch I did on my cousin's boat one hot day in the cove across from Castine, Maine. An old fishermans hut is barely visible in the undergrowth. No one has lived there in a long time.

'Foggy Dawn' is one of 4 watercolors I played with trying out large scale watercolor images. I love the mystery and romance of wet watercolor painting, and consider this a real Zen moment. It was in a Los Angeles watercolor show in the mid-2000's.

'Old River Dory" is an image I have worked on to try and add drama. But there is something quietly majestic about the dory shape that adds its own drama, so I've failed in several versions of this. But this one seems to be ready to go, as dories always are.
'Linekin Bay Island' is a pen and ink image from my cousin's porch in Bayville, Maine. There are several versions in some color, and in black and white. I love island images even though no person is an island. It sometimes feels that way.


Back in the Salinas Valley, I spent a lot of time up at a ranch above Soledad, where friends were planting and developing a vineyard. Grapevines have the most amazing shapes when they are pruned for growing wine grapes, and against the hills and mountains of that Valley, they have a special drama.


"Carlos" came to a costume class in Pacific Grove dressed as a golfer. Some people let him be a golfer, I think I saw something deeper. He was actually a Mexican radio man. His life was not simple.


'Cowgirl' came one day to a class in Carmel. She was quite shy though quite famous as a rider. She lives now at the ranch in Soledad. But she more than fills this screen.
'Yankee Man' teaches math at Cal State Monterey Bay, but his heart remains in Weld, Maine, on the shores of Lake Webb. Tumbledown Mountain is in the background.

That's enough for now. I've been at my son's 38th birthday party which he gave with his niece's, my grandaughter's 9th birthday. It was all very happy and fun...
To be continued...and on www.artcollectormaine.com