lovers point

Sometimes a photo triggers such a strong positive reaction, that it is impossible to try and duplicate it in paint. So I did it in ink and wash, from a slightly different perspective.

IT's been wonderful being out here in California, even though the weather has not always been like the above photo. IN fact, it has been chillier than usual except for the few days when it has been toasty.
Lovers Point in Pacific Grove is not historically meant for romantic lovers; it is so named because Pacific Grove was begun as a chatauqua community, or summer community, founded by the Methodist and Epsicopalians of the Bay Area. They were, in fact, lovers of Jesus, and the point was where they would gather on Sundays.

Despite the attractiveness of the water off Lovers Point, it is as cold as any water in Maine, and usually only children go in without wet suits. Surfers wear their wet suits while surfing there, and wet suits are worn in the annual Triathlon here. Once, in the entire time I lived here, 13 years, I went swimming - when El Nino brought the warm waters of Baja north along the coast, and the water rose to about 68 degrees. IT was tolerable then, but it certainly isn't now.

Soon, I'll be back in EBB, where the water will be snowy and cold still, and not nearly so blue. BUt it will get better, and bluer, and then summer will happen. I can't wait.

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.

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



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

3 views, 3 paintings

I've been working on 3 paintings, of one view, in 3 different media. By putting them out on the blog, I hope to be able to better see what's effective and what's not. The view is of the mill pond just below my house, with Scrimpy Lewis' red lobstering dinghy in the foreground.

The above image is a water color. The next one is oil on raw linen canvas:

I guess the difference in sharpness would be the difference betwween a photo (oil) and scanning the image directly into the computer (watercolor). I'll have to play with that with my new Christmas camera! The next image is an acrylic painting on canvas, and will have a different tonality entirely:

The camera does seem to have a foggy effect...I guess I'll have to retake a number of photos of my work, in order to get them to be as crisp as the first watercolor is. Let's hope it works.

Black and White show at River Arts

In this season of snow and darkness, the River Arts Gallery in Damariscotta has put together a remarkable show of artworks in all black and white, and gray. Some are photographs, some are sculptures, many are drawings, some are paintings or other kinds of wall art. But it is a great show, even allowing for my pleasure at their having included two of my works, which are below:

Called Big Snow, I painted this with gesso, acrylic paint and inks while the snow was blowing outside my barn windows.

Called Figure V, this was done with black oil paint and Q-tips, on yupo paper. Yupo is a new paper made from recycled plastics, kind of like white board. But if you make a drawing and don't like it, you can simply erase it all no matter what the material. But if you do like whatever you've created, you must put a spacer between the paper and the glass over it, or else it will smudge. While this drawing is far from perfect, it has some power to it, so I've left it as is, and it's in the show along with Big Snow.

In the meantime, in lieu of driving through the snow to Vermont for New Year's, I have spent the last two days painting all day! Tomorrow I will venture out into the snow, and go to Vermont with skiis, snowshoes, warm clothes, and new camera!

a sad and difficult day, after a beautiful fall

It leaves me nearly speechless, this latest bit of brutality committed by a young man with weapons and body armor in an elementary school. And, after a lifetime of avoiding the issue which ruined my ex-husband's political career, I think that I will make sensible gun control my dying issue.
Some background: I grew up where guns were not present though they were all around in Orono, Maine. People would always bring my father some venison, or moose, or even bear meat every fall, because he did not hunt though many of the men he worked with in the woods, did hunt. I went to Girl Scout camp, and then to a bigger summer camp in Sargentville, Maine, and learned to shoot a 22. I shoot well still.
My former husband learned to shoot in Vermont, and while he did not hunt, he did own a left-handed 22, and eventually, a shotgun that I gave him to keep the raccoons out of the chicken pen. When, however, he was elected to Congress, on a whim and without talking with either his staff or me, he signed on as a sponsor of a semi-automatic gun control bill. It was a decision with terrible consequences for him, and nearly for me and our 3 sons, although in the end I had to support his position.
In large measure, I made the decision to move to DC because of the harassment that both my sons in public schools, and myself at our home in the country, suffered. While nothing bad happened in the end, people would drive by the house and point their fingers at me. People watching us in parades would do the same. In the schools, several teachers spoke ill of my sons' father.The State Police had to be called one night after several threatening phone calls were received.
So, we moved and all of a sudden I understood the difference between guns used for hunting, and guns that are used primarily for killing people. My youngest son was 10 when we moved to DC. He and I were quite used to watching the evening news while eating supper. As a politician, his father was rarely home for dinner, and was often in Vermont, on TV news, so we were used to watching. In DC, however, David stopped watching the news. It was all about all the crime in DC rather than politics, and I began to see the difference in guns.
It has been impossible to articulate that difference with the NRA all over the issue with threats and money, and too much bull. But it is time to get on the bandwagon to stop this killing. We do know what to do - to control access to all guns reponsibly, to sell only after background checks are done nationally. Perhaps we should also restrict access to body armor also, since these latest killers all wore lots of body armor. But this is not Afghanistan! though we seem to be eager to let our young men own the weapons of war here at home.

It is time to make some changes! Please!