A Bit of History

Milking Time, Landaff, New Hampshire, 1991, oil on canvas, 32 x 110

Irrigation Pipes, Barnet, Vermont, 2002, oil on canvas, 50 x 84 inches

Young Pepper Plants, Gilroy, California, 2001, egg tempera, 20 x 22 inches

Blue Shield, 2004, egg tempera, 16 x 18 inches

Rope, 2005, egg tempera, 32 x 40 inches

These five paintings show a condensed overview of the changes in my work over the past 15 years. Thirty years ago, I started out as a painter of Victorian architecture, reveling in the volumes and details of those eccentric buildings. I worked outdoors, from life. Soon I began to include landscape and found myself interested in the human-worked landscapes of agriculture. I painted mid-sized paintings on the motif, going back day after day to complete the work over a period of months. I also began to work on large paintings, done using studies and photos, in the studio during winter.

In Milking Time there's a sweep of landscape space, moving the eye up and through the three roads, with the road on the left leading to a man on a tractor. During this time, I added figures to the image, which gave them a narrative intent I later decided I no longer wanted. I became more and more interested in the implements of farming and what they meant, so a work like Irrigation Pipes resulted. The drama of deep space still attracts me here, as it does in Young Pepper Plants. I had learned to use egg tempera in the mid 90s when I moved to Vermont, and did a series of small studio landscapes in tempera, including Young Pepper Plants. I loved the brilliant quality of light I could get with that medium, its rich color, and crisp handling.

Tempera turned out to be perfectly suited to my artistic temperament, and I've worked with it exclusively since 2002. Another big shift in my vision came after buying a digital camera. While learning to use it, I photographed a lot of still life; I then went out to farms and began to see the equipment of farming as so much large still life material, with strong shapes and colors. So I painted a picture like Blue Shield, with its abstract movement of curves and diagonals. Some paintings done after this one, such as Rope, are more complex in design and allude to the body, as here flesh pressing against constraints. Recent work, shown in earlier posts, has moved back to the more abstract simplified vision of Blue Shield. I am aiming towards an abstraction based in perceptual reality.

A note on technique: for many years, I painted with egg tempera using cross hatching, with many pencil-like brushstrokes building the form. In 2007 I decided to loosen up my mark-making by using my brush in a more fluid manner. In some ways this is more difficult than the seemingly demanding, but predictable cross hatching: in addition to describing form, the marks must have life and energy.

Tomato Flowers

Sungold is the name of a very delicious and prolific cherry tomato, even in this lousy-for-tomatoes summer. The plant grows and grows, as though it thinks it's in California, not in northern Vermont. This shot is a group of flowers, above my head, which is 5 feet high.

Work in Progress 4

Today I worked on the green planes. I am attempting to get the sense of light flowing underneath the yellow curve, and on the right, the movement from dark edge forward. Then there's the challenge to get the light/shadow transition convincing so that what we see is not just color, but color carrying light. An area I'm not convinced by is the forward edge of the horizontal plane on the right; I think it might be too cool in color and too abruptly transitioning into the curve downwards, which prevents the illusion of coming forward. (and I love those physical illusions)

So next time I'm in the studio I'll be able to see with clearer eyes what's working and what's not. Having breaks between painting sessions, even a lunch break, helps me to see what's right or wrong about what I've recently painted.

Hydrangea Annabelle

Annabelle is one of the hydrangeas that will do well in northern areas. I really love the blue/pink hydrangeas, so I tried a cultivar that was supposedly bred for zone 4, but had no success with it: lots of foliage, nary a flower. Perhaps 10 or 12 years ago, I planted 3 little Annabelles along the east side of my house; they looked so small and forlorn. Now they've spread into a large, beautiful hedge with 8 to 10 inch flower heads, which you see as you drive up to the house. Later in the season, as the flower heads turn greenish, they are perfect for drying.

Watermelon

Here's a young little watermelon, about 3 or 4 inches long, beginning to grow on the vine. I love home-grown melons; their flavor is generally excellent and you can grow varieties that are hard to find at market. This one is Yellow Doll, a small yellow-fleshed watermelon. When I first took one of these to a family dinner, the kids were at first very skeptical of the weird yellow (you know how conservative youngsters can be about food), but the taste got them hooked.

Some of my nephews still refer to my home as "the farm" even though all I have is a 2000 square foot vegetable garden.

Cabbage

This summer's cool wet weather has contributed to the most beautiful cabbage plants I've ever grown. Here's a red cabbage called Ruby Perfection. Cabbage stores till spring in the root cellar, so is a useful vegetable to have. I'm particularly fond of sweet and sour cabbage made with red cabbage.

Work in Progress 3

Today I worked on the lower part of the painting. I paint areas from back to front visually, so that edges sit properly in space. For instance, here I will finish the green areas before working on the white hose; in that order, I'll be able to make a smooth cylindrical form and a continuous-looking green surface.

I think I've finished the black triangular area at the upper right, and the light area on the left, but I might find myself dissatisfied later and rework the areas.

Poppy

This delicate, papery red poppy reseeds itself all over the vegetable garden each year, adding some brisk color to a mainly green environment.

Green Beans

The green beans are finally ready for picking today. I grow what I consider to be the best tasting bean ever: Northeaster. It's a flat-podded pole bean that stays tender and delicious to an 8 inch length. The wonderful thing about pole beans is that they produce over a long period of time, as opposed to the condensed harvest of bush beans; they also taste much better. I like the beans just steamed, though sometimes I'll stir fry them with a black bean sauce, or lightly dress them in olive oil and lemon juice. In winter I'll make a stew with onions, peppers, tomatoes and green beans. These beans are tasty out of the freezer all winter long; they may not have the fresh crunch of a supermarket-purchased bean, but they won't taste like a cooked pencil. Taste wins over texture for me.

The Long Rectangle: Painting Studies, Diptychs

Red Hose, each panel 10 x 24 inches

Rust Disks, each panel 6 x 20 inches

Now that I was involved with using long rectangles, I thought that it would be very interesting to make diptychs using them; instead of the side by side relationships of the squares, an up and down one would work. I love the way the elements echo one another, or flow one into the other panel at a slightly disjunctive place: a syncopation. Having these variations on the theme enriches each image.

The Long Rectangle: Painting Studies

Black "V", 20 x 10 inches

Archimedes, 10 x 22 inches; A study for a 20 x 44 inch painting

Black Slant, 10 x 28 inches; A study for an 18 x 50 inch painting

Living in the far frozen Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, I am eager for each summer to arrive so that I can go out to farms and work on painting studies for the upcoming year's work. All my studies are gouache on paper; I also shoot black and white photos for detail. I never know beforehand what my eye will pick up or what will interest me, which makes for an adventure. Each year my work changes a bit. This summer, I've been influenced by my hooked rugs again, in that I've done quite a few long rectangles. I find the shape an exciting one to work with; it allows for very different pictorial tensions than a conventional rectangle. The pull of blacks in Black Slant with the pings of yellow on green create an interesting rhythm. The repetitive curves of Archimedes roll across the wide surface. The emphatic triangular movement of Black "V" is emphasized by its length.

The Long Rectangle: Ruglets

Ovals, 2008, each panel 16 x 7 inches

Boxed Circles, 2009, 10 x 24 inches
Reddish Rectangles, 2009, 7 x 21 inches

A year or so ago, I began hooking in a long narrow format. The first piece in this series, Ovals, was inspired by Robert Mangold's ellipses. I cut the loops surrounding the form to make a low relief work. I went on to do Tall Geometry pictured in an earlier post, and others. This is an intriguing shape that requires a composition that moves the eye across the surface without getting stuck. As opposed to a square or a compact rectangle, where the image strikes a more unified note, there's an element of "reading" that happens. The fact that it's a less commonly used shape adds to its interest.

Corn

The corn began tasseling a few days ago, the male flowers producing the pollen, carried by the wind, which will pollinate the corn silk.

The ear of corn is quite a wonderful construction; each silken thread carries pollen to a kernel. If you get an ear of corn with some kernels missing, they just didn't get pollinated.

Work in Progress 2

Yesterday I worked on the drawing of the white hose on the lower right, attempting to get the curve graceful and convincing, and the drawing of the lower curve of black bounding the big yellow form. I also laid down a few more layers of color over the entire painting. As I mentioned below, egg tempera is translucent, so before putting on final layers of yellow, I will make the tone lighter than I want the final color to be. Doing that enables me to glaze a darker yellow over the lighter one, which will yield a more light-filled color. I don't always go for this effect, but in this case, the painting is based on a yellow plastic tank that is itself translucent.

Salad

Although this cool and wet summer is miserable for many crops––the corn is a foot shorter than normal, and who knows when I'll get a ripe tomato––lettuce and other greens are very happy. Here are a Green Deer Tongue lettuce, Merlot lettuce and arugula. I plant these crops closely together and harvest by cutting the leaves, which will regrow fairly quickly. Once a month, I plant a new crop for fresh greens all summer.

Work in Progress

Since my paintings take quite a while to complete, especially in the summer when gardening activities take so much of my time, I thought I would follow the progress of a new one in this blog. In Yellow Curve, a 24 x 16 inch work, I have the interesting problem of picturing a broad expanse of luminous yellow that should describe a volume. So, the color and value have to be convincing, and the use of the brush must be lively enough to have surface interest but clear enough to show a real form.

These photographs––the whole and the detail––were taken after the first application of color on top of an underdrawing in black ink. The handling is very broad and loose at first, and the drawing not completely accurate. Egg tempera is a translucent paint, so subsequent layers can be influenced by what's underneath. There are often many many layers of paint in one of my works; this first day's work already has several.

Blueberries

My blueberry bushes are loaded with fruit this year; they seem to be on an every-other-year schedule, like my antique apples, and this is their on year. I've covered the bushes with a spun polypropylene garden fabric to keeps the birds out, otherwise my yields would be considerably diminished. Before I had noticed that the berries had started to ripen, I saw lots of birds hanging out around the bushes; like raccoons sniffing out ripe corn, the birds knew berries were ready.

Lots of blueberries for the freezer, for jam, for desserts, for simply eating. Last night I made a blueberry custard tart for guests. The recipe came from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and was very simple: just mix 2 cups of berries with 3 Tbs molasses and some lemon zest and put in a layer on a prebaked tart shell; cover with a custard made of 1 egg and 2/3 cup sour cream with 1 teas vanilla and a little nutmeg. Bake at 425 degrees for about 30-35 minutes. There's not much custard or flavoring, so the stars of the tart are the berries, whose taste really shines through here. We all agreed: excellent dessert.

On The Square

The square is next to the circle as a perfect form. It is seemingly neutral with its four equal sides, but at the same time is a powerful format in its clarity and simplicity. I love playing with varied elements within a fixed format; it's a challenge to make each image different and fresh. Squares are very well suited to being hung in groups, where their shapes and colors play off one against the other, highlighting contrasts or revealing connections.

Tiles

Tiles, a 17 by 10 inch work, was inspired by a horizontal photograph of an author standing in front of a patterned wall. On the right were beautifully colored octagonal tiles, and on the left, a rough plaster wall of wandering colors. In dyeing the wool for this piece, I tried to come close to the brilliant Islamic-tile-color, but as is true with most dyeing, the color is wonderful but not exactly what I had in mind originally.

In this process from conception to completion, the dyeing of wool fabric reminds me a great deal of printmaking. When making a print, I would never be quite sure how the plate I was working on would translate into ink on paper. Part of the interest of printmaking is that surprise that comes from a lack of total control. This is very different from painting, where you see right away what you've got. So, when I put the wool into a pot of dye, I'm never sure of the precise color and value. And that's fun. Traditional rug hookers use careful measured formulas for each color variation so they can reproduce a desired color at will. With my long years of mixing color for painting, I like to wing it, to put in a little this and that until I get a color that looks right. Sometimes, after the wool is dry, I see that it's really too far from what I needed and I either start again or overdye that piece. Other times I'm just pleasantly surprised.

To get the variegated coloring of the top part of this ruglet, I used a process known as spot dyeing. The fabric is scrunched into a flat pan and different colored dyes are dropped onto the wool; because the wool isn't laid out smoothly the dyes are taken up in differing amounts in the hills and valleys of fabric. In this case, I used the same two colors as for the "tiles"; their mixing and differing values created a fabric that echoed, yet extended, the colors in the lower part of the piece.

Diptychs: Paintings

Here are four diptychs from 2009. From the top is Grooves, 8 x 8 inches each; Red Curves, 8 x 8 inches each; Triangles, 10 x 10 inches each; and Rust/Green, 10 x 10 inches each.

Diptychs: Textiles

I've done many multi-part textile pieces; it is a way to expand an idea, explore relationships. From the top are Love and Kisses, 2009, each 10 x 8 inches; Ten Straight Lines (for LeWitt), 2008, each 10 x 10 inches; Pale Pair (for Malevich), 2007, each 12 x 12 inches.

Recent Paintings

Here are 3 recent paintings; from the top is Crisscross 22 x 22 inches, then Lozenge 16 x 16, and Yellow Geometry 14 x 20.

Grid of Textiles

These ruglets were made during 2006 and 2007. They are all 12 inches by 10 inches. Several of the works are homages to artists such as Piet Mondrian, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, Andrea Belag, and the Russian constructivists Lyobov Popova and Olga Rosanova.

Tiger Lilies

The Tiger Lilies have just begun to bloom.

More 12 inch squares

Here are a group of 12 inch square paintings done during 2007 and 2008. As you can see from the post above, of a grid of ruglets, my paintings have been influenced by my textile works.