A Winter Morning

Winter, with all its difficulties of cold and ice and snow, has unique qualities of beauty unmatched at other times. There is the sheer joy of waking to a warm-colored sunrise and its promise of brilliance.




Among blue snow shadows, the low sun throws a pink light,




and the lace of bare branches appears as a soft red haze.




Henry David Thoreau wrote on January 11th, 1854: "Nature is now gone into her winter palace."

A New Painting: "Earth Red, Sky Blue"

Earth Red, Sky Blue, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 4 1/2 x 6 inches.

Thinking about a title for this new work, its color seemed to me to be calling for attention, so I decided on the metaphoric color description. Although not completely metaphoric, as the main color used to mix the reds is an earth color, Burnt Sienna and another earth Yellow Ocher, with some admixture of cadmium red and yellow. As with most of my paintings, the image is strongly frontal, with a shallow shelf pushing out into our space, almost as though that red circle is a nose pushed up against the window pane/picture plane.




I'm showing this detail because that small triangle of shadow gave me quite a bit of trouble. When I saw that the shadow wasn't dark enough, I glazed some ultramarine blue, mixed with a bit of burnt umber, over it. Instead of sitting back in space, the dark color popped out, and I was reminded that ultramarine blue is a very intense color; it's dark but vivid. I then mixed more color, adding a touch of white, which lowered its intensity; the lighter color over the dark, called scumbling, also cooled the color. This worked and the corner now moves back where it should be.

My Old House: The Guest Bedroom

In the northeast corner of the house is the small guest bedroom, its one window looking out past the ever expanding lilac bush to the White Mountains. The door opens from the back room and rests against a hand-planed beaded panel wall running the full length, nine feet, of the room and enclosing a large closet, two and a half feet deep. Many old houses don't have any closets, so I'm lucky to have this, along with built-in cupboards.




The walls of the bedroom, aside from the paneling along the closet wall and behind the bed, are plaster covered with wallpaper, which I painted. A chair rail runs along two walls. The landscape painting is by Ed Cato.




Above the bed are two framed still life photographs which I made several years ago when I had a small photo business.




Swinging around to the closet wall, you can see, behind the door, hanging bunches of onions, red and yellow, and garlic. In winter I keep the door to this room closed (not many guests in winter), and the heat register also closed so that I can store crops here, the vegetables that like cool temperatures but not the damp of the root cellar.




I had very good crops of garlic and onions this past summer and they're all hanging in the guest room. I twist the necks of onions around heavy string for hanging; because the garlic is the stiff necked variety, I tie them in groups of several bulbs.




The winter squashes and pumpkins store well in this room. The small squashes are the delicious Sweet Dumpling and the larger are a hybrid variety similar to Buttercup, but sweeter, Sweet Mama.




Holding the door open is a rose covered cottage metal doorstop, a charming miniature, a romantic vision of my little house.


*For earlier posts in this series, click on the following links:
The Back Room/Office
The Mudroom
The Kitchen
The Pantry

A New Textile: "Purple/Green Ground"

Purple/Green Ground, hand dyed wool on linen, 11 x 10 inches.

I've been thinking lately about some interesting abstract paintings in which there is no precedence of "figure" over "ground"; each color-shape has equal weight in the composition. So I thought I'd do a series of works based on this idea, trying to design a surface on which no particular shape seems more important than another. The two colors would also have to be balanced in intensity so that there's no illusion of depth. I decided to use the same dye color––turquoise––as the base for the violet and the green to help in that task.




I also outlined each shape by hooking around it to give an illusion of one shape bumping up against another. I usually outline just one shape, the primary one. To enhance the flatness, I used straight line hooking, horizontal and vertical, rather than follow the form. I hope that your eye bounces back and forth from the green curve pushing in from the right to the purple chevron, from there to the green triangles, each pushing out and back, demanding attention and then receding.




Here are 4 thumbnail sketches for the upcoming series. Today I dyed the wool for the orange and pink design of arch and semicircle. I'm enjoying the challenge I've set for myself.

Winter Light: Creatures in the House

In addition to me and my two cats, my house is home to many creatures: flies and spiders, ladybugs and the occasional mouse. And then there are the inanimate ones, perched here and there on tables and shelves, adding a representation of life to bowls and vases and wooden surfaces. Alongside a real butterfly of iridescent blue is the multi-colored kookaburra salt shaker, the one remaining of a pair.




The cow, an "Ideal U.S. Holstein Female", used to be my model when I painted landscapes that included cows. In front of her is a charming wooden duck decoy, whose simple black and white paint fits the surroundings perfectly.




On a shelf in the bedroom, catching the morning reflected light, is the only human stand-in, a wooden pull toy, along with a clay pigeon, odd, but constant, companions.




A cast metal chicken does duty, delightfully, as a paperweight. The upright pincushion bird behind it was cleverly designed to gain a beak when a scissor is inserted in its head.




After the many birds, a group of tiny mammals, the handmade remnants of a Noah's Ark, missing limbs replaced by straight pins, gather on a windowsill to catch a glimpse of the world outside.

Liubov Popova, a Painter of the Revolution

The Jug on the Table (Plastic Painting), 1915; oil on cardboard mounted on wood; 23 1/4 x 17 7/8 inches.

Liubov Popova was one of the greats of the revolutionary period of Russian art. Along with Kazimir Malevich, she is the artist I look to from that fertile time. I find excitement in their use of flat and overlapping planes energizing a space, and far from cool, the paint surfaces are rich with touch and feeling. I only became aware of Popova's work at the survey exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1991 and it was quite a thrilling experience. (I photographed the paintings for this post from the excellent catalog from the exhibition; it's available online) Although she had a short life, dying at the age of 35 in 1924, her output was prodigious, and always innovative. She traveled widely, admired Giotto and Russian icon painters, but I have to believe that her trip to Paris in 1912 was most important because it was after that trip that she began to paint strongly cubist works. The painting/construction above came at the end of that period. I love its drama, its use of actual three dimensions along with painted form which curls and flows across the surface.

Painterly Architectonic with Yellow Board, 1916; oil on canvas 34 1/2 x 30 5/8 inches.

My favorite period of Popova's work is 1916-17, when she did her great series of painterly architectonics. With them she moved to non-objective painting, influenced by Malevich's Suprematism, from the Latin supremus, meaning ultimate or absolute. I see the painting above as being an amalgam of cubism and Suprematism, as the yellow board calls to Picasso.

Painterly Architectonic: Black, Red, Gray, 1916; oil on canvas; 35 1/8 x 27 7/8 inches.

Painterly Architectonic, 1916; oil on board; 23 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches.

Painterly Architectonic, 1916-17; oil on canvas; 62 1/2 x 49 1/8 inches.

Painterly Architectonic, 1917; oil on canvas; 31 1/2 x 38 5/8 inches.

The four works above show different approaches that Popova took in this period of her work, from the severely minimalist Black, Red, Gray, to adding some volumetric form, to more complex, jazzy layering of gorgeously colored planes and finally to lively diagonal layers of unconventional color. She did two architectonic paintings using pink and red, choices so dynamic and surprising that they inspired me to do a textile as homage:

Pink Triangle (for Popova), 2006; hand dyed wool on linen; 12 x 10 inches.

And below, a wonderful collage with a perfect balance of color and jaunty form. Popova went on to a series called Space-Force Construction and then, as with many Constructivist artists, to design: of stage productions, journal covers and fabric; "Art into Life". It's hard for me to imagine the turmoil and sheer excitement of this period; the paintings of Popova bring some of it to me.

Composition, 1920; gouache and paper collage on paper; 17 1/2 x 11 3/4 inches.

A New Painting: "Red Construction".

Red Construction, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 2 panels each 5 x 5 inches.

My first painting of the new year is a diptych, a pair of red and black paintings, each with many overlapping and adjacent flat planes, punctuated by bolts and holes. I chose to emphasize this structure by having two panels, as the jump between them pushes the eye around on interesting pathways. I simplified the images quite a lot from their original source, eliminating details in the blacks, making all the colored surfaces red. I think this makes the experience of looking at the painting a more abstract one, as shape takes precedence over naturalistic detail.





Above are the two panels, right and left. And below is a painting by Liubov Popova, one of my favorite of the Russian painters of the revolutionary period. While working on Red Construction, I was thinking of the Suprematists, such as Popova and Malevich, and my title is an homage to their work. My next blog post will be on the work of Popova.

Liubov Popova, Painterly Architectonic, 1916; oil on board; 23 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches.

Gaze and Gesture: Bresson's Au Hazard Balthazar

Sound, image, touch: in a world without words we are introduced to the foal Balthazar, gently caressed, brought into the world surrounded by sheep and the sound of their bells, as he will also leave it, after a lifetime of pain and pleasure, patience and suffering. Robert Bresson is a poet of the cinema, whose art is one of distillation, essences, allusion. Watching Au Hazard Balthazar (according to Wikipedia au hazard means "chosen by lot" which I also take to mean "by chance") is a deeply emotional experience, as Bresson's technique––using non professional actors, who he called "models", reciting their lines over and over until they are no longer performing them, but feeling them––creates a strangely powerful, though minimal, cinema; it's a cinema far removed from traditional story telling which Bresson calls "theater", a cinema of slow images and few words. When I first saw this film a year or two ago, it stunned me and I was afraid to re-watch it because Bresson's work had become familiar. I was no longer startled by it, but still found myself swept up in its emotions. Then, in order to take screen shots for this post, I watched it again on my computer, and seeing it small, close to me, made me more aware of the intense intimacy of its images and ideas.




Each gesture, each gaze––and in this film, we mostly see those of Balthazar the donkey who is the main character––takes on weight and meaning. Marie, a young woman who grew up with Balthazar and loves him with a pure love, as he does her, the only pure love shown in this film, has adorned him with flowers and offered him the gentlest of kisses.




But even Marie will betray Balthazar. In this incredible scene, almost excruciatingly painful, a male hand, that of the evil (yes, there is unalloyed evil here) Gérard, steals up on the hand of Marie; open to the possibility of carnal love, we see her future changed, her innocence destroyed, her love for Balthazar compromised.




Balthazar is a witness to the seduction of Marie. She softly touches him, his intelligent eye tells us: what? we can but guess, but Bresson makes him a moral center of this tale.




From the unfathomable gaze of Balthazar, we go to that of Marie focused on Gérard, pain and doubt, and maybe frightened longing, on her face. We then see a hand of Gérard, open on the auto's seat, a gesture of temptation. There are several sins explored in Au Hazard Balthazar––pride, avarice, cruelty, greed––and Marie's of passivity may be most tragic.




The images that stayed with me after my first viewing of the film were those of animals at the circus. In another chance occurrence in his life, Balthazar spends some time at a circus. In this scene the camera moves from his face to that of the tiger, then back to the donkey, to a monkey and back, then to, most uncanny of all, the elephant. Throughout we sense a communication between animals, a world that we cannot enter. This reminds me of John Berger's essay "Why Look at Animals?" in which he describes the "abyss of non-comprehension" between humans and other animals. Marie's mother, after great grief, describes Balthazar as "a saint": he endures, with occasional rebellion at cruel treatment, but mostly with acceptance. As I write this, tears well up, as they did watching the end of Au Hazard Balthazar, a complex (I've only touched on some of its themes), deeply moving exploration, through a four legged creature, of the human condition.

Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage

Cabbage is a delicious winter vegetable. Each year I grow four green and four red cabbages and store them in the root cellar, where they will keep until spring. During the cold months I make cabbage soups (see recipe here), cabbage with pasta (click here for recipe), smothered cabbage, stuffed cabbage, cole slaw....the list goes on. One of my favorite dishes is from Deborah Madison's marvelous Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage. Madison's version is a spicy variation on a traditional recipe. It is a quick and simple and delicious dish.

1 1/2 pounds red cabbage
1/2 teaspoon allspice berries
1 1/2 teaspoons coriander seeds
4 cloves
1 1/2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 onion, finely diced
3 small bay leaves
1 Tablespoon brown sugar or molasses
salt and pepper1/4 cup diced tomatoes, fresh or canned
1/2 cup water or juice from tomatoes
2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1. Remove the core from the cabbage and slice crosswise into 1/2 inch strips.
2. Grind spices or bruise them in a mortar. I do something more simple, which is use ground spices instead. I use scant amounts of each spice because I don't like the dish intensely spiced.
3. Heat the oil in a wide skillet with the onion, spices and bay leaves; cook over medium heat until onion is translucent, about 4 minutes, then add the sugar or molasses and cook an additional minute.
4. Lay the cabbage over the onion, add a teaspoon of salt, spoon the tomatoes over, and then the water or tomato juice. Cover and cook gently, until the cabbage is tender, about 15 minutes.
5. Remove the lid, toss everything together, and add the vinegar. Raise the heat and cook until most of the liquid has evaporated and everything is covered with a syrupy glaze.
6. Taste for salt, season with pepper, and serve.
   

about 4 servings

A New Textile: "Three Ovals"

Three Ovals, hand dyed wool on linen, 12 x 11 inches.

When I first did the thumbnail sketch for this piece, I had the three ovals enclosed within the rectangle, with the lowest one cut off at its edge. But since I've been doing shaped works lately, I decided to have the shape flow outside the traditional confines. I thought this might enhance the sense of movement, of three paramecium-like shapes swimming in a textured sea. The idea for the color came from walking over fields in late fall, where the few remaining greens of ferns stood above varying hues of dried leaves and grasses.




You can see the subtle variation in the color of the background in this detail. The way I dye a variegated piece of wool is to place the wool, crunched together, in a wide flat pan, below. Then I drop the different colors of dye in spots here and there on the wool. I used a couple of warm ochers and reddish ocher and, in a few spots, some of the green of the ovals. The results are random, always something of a surprise, fun to work with.

My Old House: The Back Room/Office

I'd like to now welcome you into my office, which is in the back room of the house, on its north side. It is one of three rooms, along with the kitchen and living room, that had a fireplace in it. I don't know its original purpose, but now I spend a lot of time here, working on my trusty aging iMac, sitting, as now, in the gray chair. The door on the left is from the kitchen, and the wall alongside is made up of hand planed beaded paneling, like the walls of the pantry.




Turning toward the right, you can see the tiny bathroom, around 4.5 x 6.5 feet, which was built into the room. This is the only concession to modernity that the previous owners added to the house. The glimpse of the guest bedroom..



continues in this shot, of the eastern side of the room. Facing us is an original cupboard, with top and bottom door. I use this as my linen closet. There's a glimpse into the living room, which like the kitchen is on the south side of the house. There are wide plank wood floors painted gray in this room, the bedroom and the living room. Then another beaded panel wall..




with a low bookcase and art hanging above it. We've come full circle with our view into the kitchen. The small white bowl holds my sourdough starter, which I feed every day and use to make bread about once a week.




Now for a little tour of the art hanging in the back room, with apologies for reflections. On the upper left, a collage by Chris Esten; below that a painting by André Laroche; two mixed media works by Peter Gallo, one on tennis racket, another with buttons sewn on canvas. On the desk is a drawing by Leonard Dufresne. The two painted wood rectangles are old shingles that I bought at a salvage store. I enjoy their color, shape and texture.




Above is a drawing by Roberto Ohrt; a cityscape print by Shoulberg; and a print by Joan Mitchell that had been a Christmas card from Tyler Editions, a prize possession.




Two photogravures by Karl Blossfeldt (you can see them better here in a blog post that I wrote about him); a small engraving by Asa Cheffetz and a small etching by Adam Sultan.




And on the last wall, a landscape, oil on paper, by David Vereano; a landscape oil by Helen Miranda Wilson; below that, framed, a gouache on board landscape by Nancy Grilikhes. There are also four of my earlier works on parchment: two done unstretched and two with a border around the image. Before I figured out exactly what I wanted to do with these works, I painted them as though they were images in an illuminated manuscript, with the page around them.

I feel very cozy working in this space, with art around me, and a view out the window behind the computer into my back garden, now covered with snow, receding from the past few warm days, an early January thaw.

*For earlier posts in this series, click on the following links:
The Mudroom
The Kitchen
The Pantry