You Been Axin’ Where I’ve Been?

Not painting. That’s where. Here’s the winter line up so far: Major outside land overhaul, some with help, much of it by my own hand.

To the tune of ” Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend”

” A kiss on the cheek may be quite continental, But a pick ax is a girls best friend”.

Yup, pickin’ and axin’ for back trouble but the good things grow as fast as the unwanted ones so you have to work fast after the land is cleared. All 39 holes dug and filled. Quick before those relentless snake plants take over again. Here, they’re referred to as Mother in Law Tongues. ( that’s only if the son in law is a jerk ).

More beds defiled of unwanted invaders and enhanced with things I actually like looking at:

Done. Actually the bottle of Advil is empty.

Next on the lineup: Coordinating a considerable size art show as a fund raiser for a newly formed non profit organization called the Sunshine Foundation. They provide much needed low cost spay/neuter services for those families who otherwise could not afford it. Overpopulation and feral packs of animals are a blight here.

” Artists For Animals” is going to be held on December 5th in a beautiful gallery space here. We’ve received eager responses from 32 of the islands most sought after artists to show for a one night event.

Pulling this together has many of the same characteristics as herding cats and collecting spilled mercury from a broken thermometer ( yes, before digitals ). I’m putting three of my newest pieces in the show and luckily they’re already completed.

And then, and then, the arrival next week of FIVE, yes FIVE friends from NY and Boston who expect to sleep in beds devoid of spider webs, mold, unidentifiable rust spots, and wish also to eat, and even imbibe in some beverages generally associated with vacation.

I’m in uber-cleaning, shopping, vacuuming, laundry mode ( damn where’s that bottle of Advil and Advil PM?)

Three of the five are friends first but also fellow bloggers:

Judy of Lobos Rants, Carol of Carolking, and Mary of 2Frames per Second

Away went the paints, easel, dropcloths and the nasty detritus of an oil painters warren to allocate sleeping space on the Murphy Bed in my studio which will become a photographers’ dorm since both Mary and Elise are professional photographers.

Fearful that my painting hand would not only atrophy but strike at midnight for better care and, well, some kind of recognition from it’s owner, this same owner thought it a good idea to try something in watercolor. Much less to take out and put away.  I’ve been a long time fan of Peggi Kroll Roberts and the gorgeously simple way she sees shifts of color and values. I’ve had some of her postcards on my bulletin board for a few years and have been reading about her terrific workshops of late, taken by Faye Christian Phillips and Ed Terpening. Ed’s comes with a video demo by Peggi- very cool.

I’ve tried an imitation as I don’t know how better to flatter her and thank her for her great work. It’s not that I want to paint like her as much as I want to SEE like she does.

So Peggi, pardon the pedestrian-ness but here’s to you!

Peggi’s

Not Peggi :

Well, excuse me, but I’m off to find little paper umbrellas for beverages  for friends who think they’re coming to the Tiki room or something……

St.Croix This Week – A Magazine Cover

So what if it’s published once every two months and calls itself St. Croix This Week.

Everyone knows time takes its time here.

A week can seem like two months when you’re trying to schedule a phone repair. Or tracking down the last ream of laser printer paper until the ship ” literally ” comes in. But I’ll not pick the nit of ceremony being stood on about it’s title.

It’s a great publication, generously heaped around the island at hotels, shops, offices, public places and our only airport. It’s free, glossy, informative and a favorite of tourists and residents.

Nice exposure, half a page on the inside for a personal blurb and photos of some of my current work. When the November issue comes out, it will have the same inside content but the cover will be the second one I did.

So follow along: this month you’re seeing the one I did for October, at the end of October the one I did for November will be out and at this rate, 2 months = 8 weeks=2 covers.

The theme for this cover was our Sunset Jazz Concerts one Friday of every month. I used gouache and pen and ink. Gouache has the best properties of water color and tempera. Thin or thick. Water-y or opaque. Was great fun and whimsy.

Any busier, and I’d be a…….

They’re busy too.

It’s called How to Conduct Successful Negotiations as a Domesticated House Pet.

I think the pup has more reading to do. The cat has long embraced ennui.

Place Your Money Here

How to turn a generic, unexciting plexiglass donation box into something that you’d feel guilty NOT putting change or a bill or two in.

Can’t rely on puppy faces or kitty poses. It’s all about fresh food for our island.

I spend every Saturday volunteering with the VI Farmers Coop at the produce tables, connecting locally grown vegetables and fruits to locally eager shoppers.

I’d never painted on plexiglass before and didn’t know if the paint would adhere. What kind of paint? Some online research pointed to acrylic. No drawing, just fearless brushes, my favorite Sta- Wet Palette and artistic latitude with fruit pigmentation. After I painted the outside, it occurred to me that the colors would pop more if they were on black. So I painted the inside black. Not only a forgiving surface for painting, but great fun- something I haven’t felt about oils lately.

The perfect triad: We buy fresh food, farmers do what they love and make a living at it, and none of these characters have to go homeless again…….

Or would you still rather have a puppy?

Post Partum Post Script

This isn’t primarily my news although I’m involved, I’m not the focus. The focus is a new person, 8 and a half pounds new. Born on Labor Day Weekend. And one of the surprises that I couldn’t reveal on my last post.

Some may remember a painting I did a little over a year ago called CaptuRED. You can read the complete post here.

It was bought as a surprise by a friend for his lady who had admired it. She was told for years that she couldn’t bear children and had resigned herself to accepting  that as final.

The night the painting arrived, she made liars out of a Rolodexs’ worth of doctors’ names. Women know when ” something happened “.  Little Quinn was born 9 months later.

Now on her way to having what she calls ” Irish Twins”,  she was expecting their second baby right about now. This time SHE contacted me and said she wanted to buy another painting as a surprise for her man, knowing she was having another boy. This is the one she thought he’d like.

Shallow Water

So Labor Day Weekend, her labor produced a brother for Quinn. Since they both read my blog, and tried to get a leg up on the mysterious lack of detail in the last post, HE thought SHE thought that HE was surprising her with another painting.

She had the last laugh and probably the last full night of sleep for the next 18 years.

I think the next painting I do, should be of a full time nanny accompanied by a houseman.

Bet they’d fall over themselves to buy it first.

Congratulations Sean and Toni! And thank you too.

Second Cover- Gouache and Ink

The second cover completed but shown only in stages. Can’t reveal the finished piece until it’s published in September.

I used gouache for it’s richness of color, washiness similar to water color, and it’s compatibility for canvas board and drying quickly. It had to be finished and photo ready- can’t use oils.

Theme: Sunset Jazz in Frederiksted

. Once a month, the best local jazz performers hold an informal concert as the sun sets on the western end of the island. We bring chairs, blankets, Off, ( what did you think? ), and open ears. Free, and delightful.

I did small studies in a notebook to establish a color story and rescue my watercolor technique from the morgue. The beauty of gouache is that you can water it down or lay it on.

Did a larger sketch to place the key figures and work out details.

Then I hit the canvas board with pen and ink, ready to place the actual colors on the finished piece.

So now you’ve got hair and make-up but you can’t see the dress until the not fat lady at the magazine says ” I’m Singing “.

It’s otherwise  summer torpor,

new puppyitis,

and watching geckos eating mangos.

One more secret confession: I’ve sold a painting that also can’t be revealed as it’s a surprise from the person who bought it to someone who reads this blog.

More fodder for a September post.

Work in Progress, But a Different Sort

I was invited to do the cover art for a Virgin Islands-centric publication that’s widely circulated in the territory. Two separate covers- one for October, one for November.

The editor had a general topic in mind  and left the execution to me. The subject incorporates our amazing stilt dancers called “ Mocko Jumbies ” known as our Guardians of Culture.

Pencil sketch for the angular poses and foreshortening I was looking for.

They loom 12 feet over the crowds on 5-6 foot stilts and parade down cobbled streets with agility the rest of us couldn’t know of in sneakers.

I’ll post the finished piece and the official cover after it goes to publication.

But I enjoyed the process of sketching out ideas, working out color placements, and experimenting with mediums and techniques that I haven’t used in years.

Watercolor sketch for color and perspective ideas…

Working out some scale and composition ideas. Exaggeration is good for eye appeal.

Gouache on canvas- a new combination of effects. Lots of experimenting on cotton canvas panels before going for the finished piece.

Now I’m starting on the second cover- different theme.

Aiming for productivity despite the cutest damn puppy ever:

AND, the looming threat of Tropical Storm Bill, churning up the Eastern Atlantic, moving towards, we hope, not us.

Cloud Nine- A New Work of Art

Meet: Cloud

Gauge scale of dog by size of laundry basket.

” You are kidding, puppy, “ I say to this face.

She ambushed me with her extreme cuteness and baby goat-like appearance. Could you pass this by if you saw it on the side of a road? Two days in the house and she’s already a lady.

A push and play puppy already assembled with amber eyes, Zen calm, smarts, sweetness and delivered by the spirits, maybe not coincidentally, on my birthday August 5.

Ears suitable for aircraft landing signals.

But as an artist, you can’t let yourself get poleaxed by sentimentality. Time to stop mooning over this puppy and concentrate on an art deadline coming up at the end of the month.

How am I doing so far?

Then there was THIS:

What was I supposed to DO?

I did the best I could- and here is the result.

Maybe tomorrow……..

But right now, I’m a little busy…….

As precious as Cloud is, and as lucky, there are far too many dogs and cats running feral, unwanted, abused and non-neutered here on St. Croix.

Support and encourage neutering and spaying programs wherever you can. Right here, we’re lucky to have The Sunshine Foundation, a non profit, educational outreach spay and neuter center within the walls of The Sugar Mill Veterinary Clinic. Their goal and message is to end pet overpopulation.

( just glad Cloud entered the population……..)

Thinkin’ Bout It- A New Painting

Don’t Just Do Something, sit there!

We’re used to the opposite edict.

Hurry, do something, clean, paint, organize life’s relentless messes, write letters to Congress, save a life, call your mother,  but do SOMETHING!

I’m going to do what she’s doing. My doppelgänger, above.

ˈdäpəlˌga ng ər| noun
an apparition or double of a living person.
ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from German, literally ‘double-goer.’

It’s high summer, and low motivation. Why do I  think I can be Superwoman in the Tropics? Why am I the only senseless organism  still pushing it at 3 in the afternoon when every other mammal in the house is sleeping off the mid day heat?

Because we were supposed to Not Just Sit There- We were supposed to Do Something.

So I did this 6X8, loosey goosey, alla prima, fear of green painting. I’ve photoshopped for corrections in sharpness, but fear overcompensating and losing it completely. She really looks sun sprinkled in the original.

As I expect to be this week. A good friend arrives tonight from NY for a weeks’ vacation with us. And I’m going to show by example, how taking your time is not only essential, it can garner you extra attention.

Maybe a manicure though……..

Beating an Inanimate Horse

It wasn’t dead until I got my hands and brush on it. Then I really killed it.

The sienna wash sketch seemed a good start. Trying to minimize painting an outline but a horse’s anatomy isn’t familiar to me. Thought I needed some lines for proportion.

And then! And then, with a few deftly and consistently  wrong swabs of a brush, I kept at it until I ruined it.

The horse is full speed ahead, the young man, bareback, barefoot, confident, slender stick in his teeth.

This is the only section that had redemption.

If that.

What started out a steed, ended up looking like the equine version of Carol Channing. Like a carousel horse. With garish make-up and curly mane.

When you start dabbing and poking at it, it’s time to scrape.

Especially after looking at Frank Gardners‘ new painting of a horse called Ben. One brush stroke at a time you can see how he sees color. And the shift from sun to shade. Just go look at this painting and double click to see it close. It is so beautiful.

I don’t have it this week. This might be why.

Our beautiful girl Beamer 1/99-7/09. She was just as she looks. My first dog. And never went anywhere without her football purse. A very sad day.

Or maybe THIS is the reason:

Cute? Yes. Claws like Freddie Kreuger? Times velocity? Plus a lower lip ( not mine ), a moving vehicle ( my husband ), all together equals a trip to the emergency room.

Cliff note version: ( so aptly named if you saw the hill I’m on ): walking above cute dog on our hilly road. Daddy passes in pick up truck, stops, and dog, all 58 pounds of him tried to leap like a Chihuahua through the open window and instead makes contact with Kellys’ lower lip. I see spurts of blood, I hear expletives. I know it can’t be good. He drove with one hand, holding his lip together with the other. I ran home with the dog.

With only two people ahead of us, we thought we’d be a quick in and out. That turned into almost 4 hours.

By 10:30 PM we were back home, 8 stitches later. A double cocktail week- both stirred AND shaken.

Decided to read about art instead- another Gardner- Isabella Stewart Gardner and the world’s largest and most mysterious  art theft.  The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser.

Still, none of this really explains why I don’t have it this week. Does it? Anyone??

The Details are a Bit Sketchy: Life Drawings

Being away for a month without picking up a brush reminds me that my next cocktail should be Rust-o-leum on the rocks and not a Cosmo. How best to re-enter the atmosphere of painting than to sketch.

It’s been decades since I’ve had a life drawing class and was thrilled to find one here when I got back home.

Through a grant from the Virgin Islands Council on the Arts, a fellow local artist, Cindy, applied for and recieved a VICA grant to open her studio to anyone wanting to draw from live models at a ridiculously low fee for two hours.

She’s providing the space, the advertising to keep the word out, and live models in all stages of dress, period and regional costume and no stages of dress too.

Photos remove a critical dimension that flattens your perception. The flesh and muscle of a live model moves your pencil without trickery or shortcuts.

It’s hot, didn’t want to dally around details so I tried drawing from the feet up, to think of the model as a landscape of body parts and not a head on a neck on shoulders.

After 40 years of not doing life drawings, and feeling like a rust bucket, I wasn’t horrified.

It’s an exercise of stretching before doing a race.

And it makes you see what’s really there, not what you think you see is there.

And while mentioning buckets, how could I leave without some organic reminder of where I live.

This is another kind of bucket and although not of a rusty nature, it was a surprise from my husband who brought it home with the same pride your 4 year old would have shown in handing you roadkill.

It’s bat guano. The best darn fertilizer an urban transplant gal like myself could ever wish for after, perhaps a gift certificate to Bergdorfs’.

He really, really missed me.

Eat your hearts out ladies…………and you men, take notes.

It’s good to be home.

Now I’m going to open a tube of Ultramarine and see what a sniff of oils will do to get me motivated again.