A Miniature: Oblique Orange

Here is the beginning of my most recently completed miniature painting, with a thin layering of color on the surface, some of the ground still showing through the paint. The orange on the largest shape is still quite transparent, while you can see some opaque light cool color on the foreground shadow. I then painted many more layers of color, adding depth and richness.




Here is the gouache study, 26 x 12 inches, done on site, that I did during the summer of 2009 and never developed into a painting. I chose to paint a small section at the bottom of the image, with crisscrossing angles, two dark shapes, and repeating circles.

Oblique Orange, tempera on vellum, 4 x 3 inches

I love the idea of having done a painting that is essentially a single color, with its variations. There are enough changes in value and color to keep it interesting to me. Someone had asked me if the color with this technique is richer than egg tempera on panel; at the time I didn't think so, but now I do. There is something about the surface of the calfskin vellum (vellum is the word that describes calfskin parchment) that accepts the paint yet keeps it enough on the surface to allow for great depth of color.

I'm in the midst of reassessing the direction of my work, inspired by these recent small pieces. I feel thrilled and excited and off on a new adventure.

My only puzzlement with these small works is how to show them? because they wave and curl after I work on them; perhaps keeping the vellum in books kept it flat. Right now I have the paintings hanging using small binder clips, which I really like because the clips mirror the industrial subject matter. But as you can see, each piece curls in its own way, reminding me of the living animal origin of the vellum. In some ways, I don't mind this refusal to sit still and flat, but I suppose I would have to frame them under a mat. Another idea is to try stretching the vellum over a small piece of plywood; I'll report on this when I've given it a try.

Green Shoots

Another glorious day, and I was outdoors pruning an apple tree (a post on that coming soon) and noticing––hurrah!––small bits of green coming up through snow and ice and the debris of last summer's garden. Above are daylilies, poking their heads up along the warm south side of the house, next to the granite block foundation. The warmth thrown off from the stone creates a mini climate encouraging the early emergence of the old-fashioned daylily.




In a south facing border in front of the shed, tiny heads of small early daffodils (I think these are Jet Fire) are showing through a thin layer of ice, a layer gone by afternoon. The snow is retreating, but it may return, so we'll enjoy this weather with its spring notes to the full.

Sugaring Season

Today has been a spectacular very-early-spring day, with bright sun and mild air. I spent an hour on the porch, lying down on the floorboards, protected from wind, soaking up the light. It felt like full spring, warm and clear, with the only sound the wind blowing in the trees. It was a perfect day for the maple sap to be running––temperatures above freezing, after a frosty night––into old fashioned buckets or through plastic tubing. In the photo above, taken at a neighbor's house, you can see the holes from previous years of tapping. Each year, the ritual of maple sugaring is a paean to spring, and to the bounty of the land around us.




Plastic tubing, beautiful with its array of color drawing linear designs on the gray-brown bark, catching the light, is now the preferred way to collect sap, unless you're tapping just a few trees. The tubing, which is set up to flow downhill, collects the sap in a tank, saving a great deal of labor. If you look carefully at the image above, you can see the sap about 1/2 way up the blue tubing.




I could see the sap flowing through the 1/2 inch sky-blue tubing, creating bubbles on its way.



And here is a modern tap; in years past, metal taps were used, and wood before that. After collecting, the sap must be boiled: 10 gallons of sap yielding only a quart of syrup, a delicious, heavenly essence.

A New Rug Hooking Project: Blue Sweep

It's been awhile since I've done a shaped work with my rug hooking, having been mostly focusing on rectangular pieces, so I thought it would be fun to do something different. I rummaged through pages of thumbnail sketches and did a few more, and came up with this pair of curved shapes, which I illusionistically rounded by value and color changes. It's a bit of a wacky design, with two narrow shapes looking almost like a sky view through a clerestory window; I have no idea if it'll work, but why not give it a try.




In order to dye to wool in graduated tones, I dipped one end of the 12 inch wide, 56 inch long, piece of wool into a pot with the blue dye Cushing's Robin's Egg Blue. Dipping in and out, gradually letting more of the wool accept the dye, the end of the piece got darker as the rest picked up less dye. When the mid-tone was the way I wanted it, I added a darker blue, Copenhagen Blue to the pot and re-dyed the very end, giving it a color change in addition to a darker tone. To get the lighter blues, I dipped the other end of the wool slightly in the Robin's Egg Blue, then added drops of a light gray-yellow, Maize, onto it to warm the color. The photo above shows the single piece of wool, folded to show the variations in color. I will try to use the color changes in hooking the curves so that they appear not just curved along the surface, but also curved in space...3D anyone?

A March Morning

A beautiful March morning, with blue shadows streaking the white snow, melted into small corrugations, looking like wind blown sand. It's perfect sugaring weather, with freezing nights and mildish days, which encourage the rise of sap. The frosty night hardens the surface of snow into an icy layer, so Blinky can wander across it, and then sit regarding the frozen pond, hoping to spot a small creature.

Uncertainty

In the last narrative scene of Andrei Tarkovsky's majestic film Andrei Rublev we are swept onto a desolate landscape; the artist-monk Rublev cradles the very young bell maker Boriska in his arms––a 15th century Russian pieta––consoling him with the first words he has spoken in many years. Boriska, the son of a bell maker, is prostrated by grief, by the fear he's hidden, by the release of pent-up tension: he has directed the work on casting a great bell for months, claiming his father had passed along the secret to make it, but this wasn't true, he was relying on his bit of knowledge and his own instincts; he took on this enormous task, knowing he would lose his life if he failed.








Leading up to the final scene was a remarkable sweep of camera work, high over a Bruegel-like landscape, busily peopled with workers and townspeople coming to see the raising of the great bell; the camera moves across the landscape toward the scaffolding and ends by looking down into it where the bell is being lifted. By showing us this enormous effort at raising and moving the bell, Tarkovsky has emphasized its importance, which is then made even more clear by the rising tension: will the bell ring, or will it be a failure?

What is making art, after all, but a huge gamble, a leap of faith, such as that of the young caster of bells? We never really know if our work has merit, even if it achieves worldly success, but we must carry on regardless. There is a brilliant statement on uncertainty from Willem de Kooning, in an interview with Harold Rosenberg, which I used as a lesson for my students. He imagines himself making a sphere without using a ruler or other instruments:

De Kooning: If you yourself made a sphere, you could never know if it was one. That fascinates me. Nobody ever will know it. It cannot be proven, so long as you avoid instruments. If I made a sphere and asked you, 'Is it a sphere' you would answer, 'How should I know?' I could insist that it looks like a perfect sphere. But if you looked at it, after awhile you would say, 'I think it's a bit flat over here.' That's what fascinates me––to make something I can never be sure of, and no one else can either. I will never know, and no one else will ever know.
Rosenberg: You believe that's the way art is?
De Kooning: That's the way art is.

Winter Light: Three Vases

This morning I woke before dawn and saw a luminous red sky streaked and patched with dark violet-blue clouds, one having the leaping shape of a dolphin poised above the dark hills. As the sun rose, its light fell across the three Chinese vases on my dresser, making a drama of their shapes, shapes based on traditional Chinese porcelain. They huddle together, their smooth surfaces enlivened by reflection.

The bright sun did not remain through the day, but shone occasionally through high and mackerel clouds. The air was mild, though, and when I went into the village I heard that the maple sap was running. This may have to be my last post on winter light, since the start of the sap run marks the beginning of a new season.

Simplicity

Jean-Francois Millet, The Sower, c. 1850, oil on canvas, 40 x 32.5 inches

After finishing a second Beckett novel, Malone Dies (oh, how I love his writing!), I turned again to Willa Cather, who I wrote about here: her 1915 novel The Song of the Lark. Surprisingly, I didn't feel an aesthetic jolt going from one to the other, as both are masters of clear, simple, direct prose. In my copy of The Song of the Lark is a brief essay by Cather "On the Art of Fiction", which sets forth an essential attitude:

Art, it seems to me, should simplify. That, indeed, is very nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole––so that all that one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader's consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page. Millet had done hundreds of sketches of peasants sowing grain, some of them very complicated and interesting, but when he came to paint the spirit of them all into one picture, The Sower, the composition is so simple that it seems inevitable.

In his Journal, Henry David Thoreau wrote of the clarity that memory brings, a similar searching for that which is most important:

I would fain make two reports in my Journal, first the incidents and observations of today; and by to-morrow I review the same and record what was omitted before, which will often be the most significant and poetic part.

Often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had after years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, only the most significant facts surviving in my memory.

And, saying something a bit different about writing, which still amounts to a call for simplicity, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:

All writing should be selection in order to drop every dead word.

The inevitable, the most significant, the cutting out of all dead wood; all this seems to me to be something to aim for, whatever our art.

A Miniature: Yellow Arc

I've completed a second small painting on parchment, very different from the first, Red Teeth, in composition, light and internal scale. The image takes in more of the object, so doesn't appear as much of a closeup, but it is still a detail of a much larger study. Here the object is situated in more of a real space, since we read the blue shape as sky, existing behind the other shapes. The yellow shape carries more light than the blue, and this heightens the illusion of space.

What you see above is the painting, 4 x 3.5 inches in size, the same size as Red Teeth, in an early stage, when I first put a layer of thin color on the parchment ground.




This detail shows the blue, which I thought was done, but then noticed, when seeing it in a slanting light, that it had gotten covered with bits of dust and tiny hairs. (you'll be able to see this better if you click on the image to enlarge it.) Oh dear. I was having as much fun doing this painting as the one before, but I didn't have this problem before. When I tried picking out the dust, all the paint came along with it and left white spots. Oh dear. So I did what I thought was my only option, tried scraping off the paint, and it worked! using a palette knife, the paint scraped off quite easily from the parchment and I was able to start again with the blue layers of paint. Sorry to say I had to scrape a second time, but the third try at painting was a success.

The calfskin parchment is a beautiful velvety feeling surface; because I'm a tiny bit uncomfortable with the idea of painting on an animal skin, I just went into the studio to look at my hand-made paper selection; maybe paper would work just as well. But no paper came close to the feel and look of parchment. I'm thinking of trying to stretch it over a wood panel, so the painting won't have to be framed; it might also solve the not-flat, a bit wavy, result of wetting the parchment during the painting process. I believe the paint, tempered with egg white, is tough, so won't have to be protected by glass.

Yellow Arc, tempera on parchment, 4 x 3.5 inches

I am so enchanted by this process of working on a small size, where I feel intensely tied to the surface of the painting by precisely observed details. My focus and attention are heightened; my brushwork must be exact, but this is a thrill and not a chore. I feel as though I'm becoming addicted. And where else would I be able to paint with 24 ct gold, limning a border around the image?

To give a sense of size, here's a photo that I shot of Yellow Arc leaning against the painting Black V: an amusing illusion ensues.

Tilt

Tilt, 12 x 10 inches, hand-dyed wool on linen backing

The small gray square tilting
dancing
on a green field
while balanced
on a lilac curve.Straight lines above
or perhaps behind
the crazy quilt below.
The colors of spring?

Blueberry Buckle

It's been a while since I've posted a recipe, so here is a tasty dessert that uses some of those blueberries you have in the freezer from last summer's crop. Last week I had a craving for an afternoon treat, a pick me up for the low ebb of the day, and remembered a recipe from a Ladies Auxiliary of the Lunenberg Hospital Society cookbook: Blueberry Buckle. I spent a summer over 30 years ago in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, a very beautiful town surrounded by bays and inlets, a traditional center of shipbuilding. As in Maine, there was a large crop of wild blueberries, so there were recipes using them that were a bit quirky, for instance Blueberry Grunt, in which sweetened blueberries are covered with a biscuit-like dough and cooked in a saucepan over a flame. Blueberry Buckle is more traditional, a cake dough layered with blueberries and a crumb topping.

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 cup milk

Mix above ingredients and spread in a 8 x 8 inch pan.
Spread with 2 heaping cups of blueberries (frozen is ok)
Sprinkle with the following, mixing with fingers till crumbly:

1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/4 teas cinnamon
1/4 cup butter

Bake in 350 degree preheated oven till golden brown, about 45 minutes.

Paintings, Larger and Smaller

Here's a photograph of my worktable, showing two miniatures and Triangle and Curves, which is 14 x 22 inches, so you can get a sense of scale of the small paintings. I've begun a second miniature, very different from Red Teeth in internal scale, in subject, and in its light. I found it convenient to work on the small piece of parchment by taping it flat onto a watercolor pad, which is 9 x 12 inches. The parchment absorbs water and becomes wavy while I'm working on it, like paper would, so it's helpful to have it taped around the edges. You can also see my reading glasses, which are necessary for me now in close work. Gone are the days when I could do small, detailed work without glasses.

The Return of Winter

Just a few days ago, I wrote of a "Hint of Winter's End", but this morning I awoke to a very white world, with wet snow hanging on trees and shrubs, leaving only slight details of dark lines amid the pillowy paleness, a lovely sight. Not much snow had been predicted for this area, but when I went outdoors to shovel at noontime, I was surprised at its depth, a thick covering of 12 inches. It then continued to snow the rest of the day, adding an inch or two more. In true New England fashion, the weather is always surprising.

A Miniature: Red Teeth

I was so thrilled and inspired by the exhibit of the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, which I wrote about here, that I really did dig out the two pieces of calligrapher's parchment, each 5 x 7 inches, stored away for years in my flat files. Then I went through my agricultural files, looking at photographs that never made it as paintings. Working with images that had some interesting abstract potential, I cropped them to make what I hoped were strong compositions. Here is the first of my forays into miniature painting, and my, did I have fun!!

I first made a tracing of the photo (with some adjustments), which I'd printed full size, 4 x 3.5 inches, then transferred it to the parchment using a sheet of paper covered with chalk. That is the red color that you see above. I went over the lines with ink, then wiped off the chalk as much as was possible.




The binder traditionally used to make paint for manuscript illuminations was glair(e), made with the white of an egg. Egg tempera, which I use for my panel paintings, is made with the yolk of an egg, which is quite fatty; for that reason, it wasn't appropriate for manuscripts, as it would be easily abraded with use. The white doesn't have that problem, yet still is a strong binder for paint, and for applying gold leaf. To make the glaire, the white has to be beaten in order to make it liquid and easy to apply. So, using a hand held electric mixer, I beat the egg white till stiff, then let it sit overnight in a cool room. When I tilted the bowl, a clear liquid ran from underneath the froth, which was the glaire. (the glaire continued to form as the day passed.)

As with egg tempera using the yolk, I added about an equal amount of glaire to the pigment paste in my palette wells, and thinned a bit with water. The image above shows the painting in its beginning stages, with some colors thinly washed in, and others with more layers of paint. I found myself using similar techniques to my panel work: layering color for greater depth, using a tint with white for opacity, thinly glazing some color for richness. The paint was very nice to handle, with a real ease in rendering detail––of course, considering medieval manuscript painting––and yielding a lovely subtle sheen.

Red Teeth, tempera on parchment, 4 x 3.5 inches image size

I had such a good time working on this painting; the parchment and paint are lovely materials; leaning in and focusing on something so small felt pleasurably intense; painting the small details was very satisfying. I decided to paint a thin border around the image, as is done in medieval manuscripts; it finishes off the painting and creates a frame, or window. What a treat to have a new medium to explore, a new art adventure.

At the Met: Buddhist Sculpture

Seated Luohan, ca. 1000, Yixian, Hebei Province, China. Earthenware with 3 color glaze.

Sometimes it happens that an artwork which I've found silent, and far from my understanding, will suddenly, marvelously, open itself to my previously closed heart. I remember this happening with the paintings of Henri Rousseau at the MOMA exhibit 25 years ago. One day I walked into a gallery at MOMA which contained several Jackson Pollock paintings, and they stunned me with their beauty, which had completely eluded me before then. This same kind of electric bolt struck me when I visited the Metropolitan Museum back in December. I'd been wandering through the Asian galleries, visiting some favorite ceramic pieces, such as this Tang dynasty Horse and Rider, when I walked into a gallery containing a selection of Buddhist sculpture, including two remarkable ceramic sculptures of seated Luohan, each larger than life size, and of compelling presence.

Seated Luohan, ca. 1000, Yixian, Hebei Province, China. Earthenware with 3 color glaze, 41 inches high.

Why had I not noticed these powerful works before? I don't know, but something in me has changed, so that I now see humanity, compassion, strength, and patience in these portraits of guardians awaiting the Future Buddha. I think that the portrait above is one of the most humane, and penetrating, that I've ever seen. He has an air of proud authority, but at the same time seems full of quiet understanding; his gaze penetrates, demanding a deep response.

Seated Buddha, Tang Dynasty, ca. 650, China, dry lacquer with traces of paint and gilt, 38 x 27 inches

Another beautiful sculpture in the same gallery, of a seated Buddha, was made much earlier than the Luohan, using a complex process of dry lacquer. With its more idealized and simple form, rendered with subtle and refined modeling, it is full of grace and repose. It seems an embodiment of quiet, of introspection, and of peace.

"Tilt" in Progress

I've been chugging along on Tilt, and finished the curved shape, having decided to hook it in a random pattern. I'll be doing the square in concentric lines, following the outline until the lines of hooking meet in the center. The most unusual decision that I've made is to hook the green background vertically; it would naturally seem to ask for a horizontal patterning, to go along with the implication of land and sky, so I thought I'd confound that expectation. We'll see if it works....

A Hint of Winter's End

Today was one of those late winter days that point toward spring: the temperature was in the upper 30s, with a brisk wind that did not have the bitter edge of cold, but brought a smell of growth. As I walked on the snow, not needing snowshoes with the thinner layer, I felt its wetness underfoot. Snow is receding from boulders, revealing surfaces covered with mosses.




A sight I associate with maple sugaring season with its warm days and frosty nights is the circle of sunken snow surrounding tree trunks, their warmth pushing back the snow. Soon the ground will begin to show and form a brown skirt around each tree.




Small branches, seeds, pine needles, begin to sink into the snow, nestled into a perfectly shaped bed echoing each form. All these images of late winter, so heartening, will likely be hidden by coming snowstorms; winter is still far from over in northern Vermont.

Triangle and Curves

Triangle and Curves, 2010, egg tempera on panel, 14 x 22 inches

While working on this painting, I found myself uncertain about it; it felt like a very odd composition, with its combination of volume and flatness, red and green, and I wasn't at all sure that it would be somewhat successful in the end. But I found that as it neared completion, the painting began to satisfy me, especially after a second repainting of the green triangle. I was trying to have a textured surface on the green areas, next to the more smoothly painted reds. The jutting triangle seems to both lie on the red ground and float free of it. This work is full of metaphor, that I did not intend, as I was looking only at form, but I leave it to viewers to read into it what you prefer. I enjoy the intimation of narrative, a rich layer added to those of color, form, and design.

At the Met: Animals from Ancient Iran

Vessel terminating in the head of an Antelope, 7th century BCE, glazed ceramic, northwestern Iran

When I was in NYC in December, I took my camera to the Metropolitan Museum for the first time to photograph some of my favorite collections; see the posts on the Greek and Roman Study Collection, Chinese Porcelain, and Egyptian art. It was intensely pleasurable to form a deeper relationship with objects by photographing them; the close attention necessary to make a good photograph helped me to see each work more clearly; writing then aided in thinking about the art. Because of this I now carry my camera into the city and will try to gather images whenever I can.

Sometimes I walk through the galleries of ancient Near Eastern art on entering the museum; I was very taken, last weekend, with the sculpted forms of animals, refined and sensitive, on ancient Iranian vessels. I believe I was especially open to seeing the beauty of these pieces because I'd just read The Cave Painters by Gregory Curtis, recommended by fellow blogger Julia Moore. The work of the prehistoric painters, especially in the earliest known, Chauvet cave, is sophisticated in its understanding of animal form and movement, and is very beautiful. It is stunning to think that the paintings were made over 30,000 years ago.

Vessel with a handle in the form of a Ram, 8th-7th century BCE, Iran, ceramic and paint

The Iranian sculpture shows the same love and attention to each animal, described with subtle grace, that we see in cave paintings, or in ancient Egyptian art. In the three vessels, the bodies of the animals are inventively integrated with the large cup shapes. I also wanted to show these works because, these days, we too often hear about bad news coming out of Iran; it is good to be reminded that Persian culture is a rich and ancient one.

Rhyton terminating in the forepart of a Ram, mid-5th century BCE, silver, Iran

This vessel, which has a pouring hole at the front, is made of carefully worked precious silver. Although there are decorative elements on the ram––his horns, a bridle, a round shape on the shoulders––the feeling I come away with is of a wonderfully present, real creature, full of breath and life.

The Hours of Catherine of Cleves

The highlight of my art viewing while in the city was an exhibition at the Morgan Library: the remarkable illuminations from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves. This book is an exquisite small––7 1/2 x 5 1/8 inch––manuscript, made around 1440 by the Master of Catherine of Cleves; it consists of a series of prayers, with 157 miniatures included in its pages. You can see every one of these images online at the link above; the Morgan has been very generous in publishing each page online, with crisp and clear enlargements. The manuscript, which had been divided into two books, has been taken apart for rebinding in proper order in one volume, so we have the unique opportunity to see all the pages before they are again within the covers of a book.

It is a pure delight to see the miniatures (take a magnifying glass, or reading glasses); surrounding the central images of saints or stories are marvelously imaginative borders. The small images seem to distill and heighten our viewing experience, as we are drawn into their worlds. The dramatic pages above begin the manuscript; you can see Catherine in prayer on the left; the borders display, among other things, the coats of arms of her family. The depictions are refined and full of precise detail, while being fresh and lively at the same time. It is a magical combination.






The miniature of Saint Lawrence shows him holding a gridiron, the method of his martyrdom, surrounded by fishes and eels; this border is one of my very favorites in its almost wacky surprise, its combination of reality and pure invention. It is speculated that the artist chose fish because they are cooked on a griddle. Are we meant to be amused?






In another wonderful border, of mussel shells and a crab, the artist is pairing the saint with an illustration of his attributes: Saint Ambrose reconciled enemies; the crab and mussel are enemies, as crabs feed on mussels. The design of this page is striking, with another use of a subject we don't at all expect to see in a prayer book, or in any medieval art.








The deathbed scene above is full of mundane touches, of a doctor examining bodily fluid and a table full of the necessities of the sickroom. Below, we see the dying man's evil son rifling through his treasure chest. Alongside death is Purgatory, in the maw of a frightening animal. I imagine that the elegant flowery border indicates looking forward to souls being purged of their sins.




This last detail is of Saint Valentine, holding the sword of his martyrdom. He is surrounded by a lovely, graceful border of flowers and leaves, and at the bottom, the violence of nature, as two dragonflies attack a fly, another marvel of attentive descriptive imagery.

______________________

Illuminated manuscripts––European, Persian, and Indian––have long been some of my favorite art. A number of years ago, I even bought two pieces of parchment from a supplier, Talas in NYC, thinking I would try a small painting on it. Traditionally, pigment for manuscript painting is used with the white of an egg for binder, instead of the yolk as in egg tempera. As described in Daniel Thompson's The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting, the egg white is beaten till frothy and then allowed to stand, at which point it becomes fluid and can be thinned with water. After seeing this beautiful and inspiring show, I am again thinking of pulling out those pieces of parchment.