Potato-Lovage Fritatta

In early spring, when the vegetable garden is at its beginning, with asparagus, because it is a perennial, the only vegetable ready for picking, there are the perennial herbs––lovage, sorrel, thyme––available for adding bright flavor to various dishes. I love sorrel's lemony taste, and have posted recipes for a Sorrel Onion Tart here, and Potato-Sorrel Soup here. Lovage is a large dramatic plant whose leaves look and taste like celery, a particularly pungent celery. It is nice added to soups and salads, and this recipe for a fritatta, which comes from Deborah Madison's The Greens Cookbook, is a favorite of mine for a spring meal. I still have some potatoes in the root cellar; although they beginning to sprout they're still good, so I used French Fingerlings whose waxy texture was delicious in this dish.



10 small or 4 medium potatoes (about one pound)
1 Tbs olive oil
3 Tbs butter
1 medium yellow onion, sliced into 1/4 inch slices.
salt
pepper
8 eggs
2 to 3 teaspoons chopped lovage leaves or 1/4 cup pale inner celery leaves. (I put in a bit more lovage because I like the flavor, but it is quite strong.)

1. Boil or steam potatoes till tender, then slice thinly.
2. Put olive oil and half the butter in a 10 or 12 inch non stick pan (I use cast iron) with the onion and cook at medium heat until it is soft and lightly colored.
3. Add potatoes and cook till they are also lightly colored, turning them from time to time. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper.
4. While the potatoes are cooking, beat the eggs, add 1/4 teas salt, some black pepper, and the lovage.
5. Add the rest of the butter to the pan, let it foam and then pour in the eggs. Turn the heat down to very very low and cook for 20 minutes. At that point the eggs will be mostly set. Put the pan under the broiler for a minute or two to brown the top.
6. Slice in wedges and enjoy, warm or at room temperature.

A New Textile: "Green Diamond"

Green Diamond, hand dyed wool on linen, 10 x 10 inches.

I've now finished Green Diamond, the second work of a pair with Red Diamond, which I wrote about here. I mixed a greenish yellow dye along with a warm grayish green for the center panel, colors that are a bit subdued in order to work with the grayish reds of Red Diamond. In this image, the central "path" is larger and widens toward the top. And, something I did not at all notice until it was done, the lines of hooking in the triangular sections move downward, while they move upward in Red Diamond, and this makes an interesting contrast.

Below you can see the two pieces hung together in the studio, and you can click on the image to enlarge. I'm pretty happy with how they work together, and look as though they are nodding and tilting a little toward each other.




And here's a photo of the textiles on my studio wall along with some paintings. I sometimes worry how the small paintings will work alongside the much larger textiles, but I think that their precision and illusionistic form hold their own with the softer textures of the hooked wool.

A Walk in the Woods: Spring Flowers

One of the great delights of walking through the woods at this time of year are the wildflowers that bloom in profusion. The lovely small Spring Beauty almost blankets a section of the path. Its flowers are sprightly, with delicate pink veins decorating the white petals. They seem a symbol of good cheer in the woods as daffodils are in the garden.




Bellwort's graceful pale cream flowers and long leaves nod alongside a stone wall.




This frothy flower reminds me of the wild Lily of the Valley, but its leaves and flower shape are different. It was rare in the woods last week, and I wasn't able to identify it.




While blue and white violets are now blooming in my lawn, the yellow violets are in the woods. Like all the flowers above, they are small but have a large presence as their color brightens the dun forest floor.




My favorite flowers in the woods in spring, which I look forward to seeing with great anticipation, are the red Trillium. They are a grand flower, majestic in their simplicity––three petals surrounded by three sepals, three leaves coming from a center––and regal in their deep rich color. They sometimes grow very large, as in the group above, which was a foot across, and sometimes they are smaller. Whatever size, it is always a thrill for me to see them; they announce, in impressive fashion, that spring has arrived.

A New Painting: "Yellow Tilt"

Yellow Tilt, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 7 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches.

Like the previous painting, Reds, Yellow Tilt is an exploration of a single color, warmer and cooler, in light and shadow. I find yellow a difficult color to work with, in that I have a tendency to make the shadowed areas too dark, without the light that even they must have. Cast shadows are cool in color and it's also difficult to get that greenish yellow at shadow edges but still maintain the overall sense of yellowness. This might be a good time to ask the question: "if I am trying to move towards abstraction, why is it important that form and color are realistically convincing?". I would answer that it's because I feel that it is in the tension between naturalism and abstraction that a large part of the interest and meaning of my painting resides.

In other compositional notes, like the green rectangle in Reds, Yellow Tilt has two color shapes not the main color of the painting: blue and green in opposite corners. I tried to make the intensity of color similar so that your eye would bounce back and forth between them, top left to lower right. The painting has several curves, implying circles, but the only circular form is the small circle at top, held down by a bolt. For me, this shape and the dark lozenge shaped hole are the two main characters of this work.

In this detail, you can see some texture on the surface of the painting, much of which is the tooth of the parchment. I generally prefer parchment that is scraped very smooth, but some parts of the skin are thinner and more frayed than others, so there are variations in the surface. Such are the surprises that come from working with a natural product and not one made uniform by manufacture.

Reading José Saramago

"The following day, no one died."
So begins the novel Death with Interruptions by Portuguese writer José Saramago. Like his book Blindness, which I believe is one of the greatest books of the 20th century, in which all the inhabitants of a city except one suddenly go blind, this novel begins with an unaccountable occurrence: the people of an unnamed country stop dying. The old and very sick simply linger in their close to death state. Saramago brings us an unimaginable world and shows us how individuals and different parts of society react to it. He is a serious skeptic, skewering government, businesses, religion (oh, especially religious institutions) and criminal elements. Human beings are shown as deeply flawed and wreak violence on each other in many ways.

What makes these novels so moving and so powerful to read––and I would add The Elephant's Journey, a more lighthearted story of an elephant traveling in 16th century Europe––is the great belief in a core of human, and animal, goodness and love; love that transcends whatever is weakest within us, that brings compassion and kindness, that after all, makes life worth living. After reading pages of very tough stuff, written in clear prose but with no character names or capitalization, no quotation marks around speech, we are greatly rewarded with a sense of spiritual beauty, and hope. I was in tears at the end of Death with Interruptions, incredibly touched by what had occurred. Saramago is one of the world's great writers, not for the beauty of his prose, but for his fabulous vision and his deep humanity.

Irrepressible Life

Vermont's cold, fairly wet climate is conducive to tree growth. Land that was open field or pasture, hard won from virgin forest at the beginning of the 19th century, has grown back into woods. I have three small fields, separated by roads, as part of my homestead. Years ago cows kept them grassy, but now I have to hire someone to brush hog them or they would quickly grow back to scrub, then woods. It's been three years since a tractor has cut the fields and small pine trees were growing up happily here and there, two or three feet tall and vigorous.




Even though I know this happens, I am still amazed at how quickly the trees can establish themselves. And they are getting ready to spread their seed. So I went out with the loppers and cut down 20 or 30 little trees; seeing the fields clear of the small verticals made me happy. My body and heart love an open space; I think my African savannah ancestry must be strong in me.




It is not only in open fields that plants have such a strong urge to grow. Even between the unfriendly large stones of the walls surrounding my back yard are many unwanted shrubs and brambles. Each year I cut them back and each year they grow again, undaunted.




And it's not just plants that grow and thrive no matter the conditions or how hard we try to get rid of them. As I was walking through a field, I noticed a spread of dirt, and sure enough, there was a woodchuck hole, a charming enough creature if I can keep it and its progeny out of my garden. ...Ah life!

A New Textile: "Red Diamond", with Some Inspiration

Red Diamond, hand dyed wool on linen, 10 x 10 inches.

With this work, I took a ten inch square and turned it so that it became a diamond. I've been thinking of using a diamond shape for quite a long time, ever since I came across the paintings of Ward Jackson (see below) on the internet a couple of years ago. It seemed like an interesting form to work with and I did some sketches which stayed in my maybe-to-do pile. The thumbnail sketch finally caught my eye; I worked some color into it and came up with a theme of grayed red and pink, which I dyed by adding some green, along with a bit of yellow, to the red. The composition is of a path, or an opening, dividing two triangular shapes.



I decided to hook the wool parallel to the sides of the work in the two large shapes, and have them move in different directions. I hoped this would create a visual tension, a push toward the middle, where the pink is hooked in a random pattern.




As I was working on this I started thinking about it as one of a pair, so went back to my sketches and colored in a second composition in green and greenish yellow. The original sketch is the one below; above that, next to the red, is an adjusted sketch, where I tilted the central shape toward the left instead of right, thinking it would work better for the pair. I am now working on the green diamond and hope it works well with the red.

Theo van Doesburg, Contra Composition V

When I was working on my blog post on geometric abstraction, I became very interested in the paintings of Theo van Doesburg, a Dutch artist of the De Stijl movement. This diamond shaped painting is a dynamic composition of triangles and truncated rectangles.

Ward Jackson, Ladder Series, 1996, acrylic on canvas, 34 x 34 inches.

Ward Jackson, St. Martin, 1983, oil on masonite, 34 x 34 inches.

Ward Jackson was a New York based artist whose later paintings were intensely colored, very dynamic minimalist abstractions. I find his diamond shaped paintings particularly inventive and very compelling. The link above to Metaphor gallery shows more of his strong work. Joanne Mattera is an artist working today extensively in the diamond format. Go to the link to see her current show "Diamond Life". It is fun to work on something other than a rectangle, but I leave this exploration of different shapes for my textile work; with my paintings I will stick with the quiet of the rectangle.

New Life: From Eggs to Tiny Tadpoles

The vigorously calling frogs that I recorded a couple of weeks ago at my pond (see this post) were very busy procreating, laying huge masses of eggs that floated on the surface of the water.




The eggs that were fertilized were clear and contained little dark beings, curved within their shelter.




After the rains of recent days, only a few masses of eggs were left, hugging the shore. Just five days were enough for the teeny creatures to begin to swim and move about. They are less than a half inch long, but we can already see a swelling of the head, which will eventually get much larger; legs will develop and the tail will disappear as they grow into their frog form. It's wonderful to watch this growth process; I feel almost like a proud godmother, even though I realize that most of these vulnerable beings will not make it to maturity. I couldn't resist adding a very short video because the sight of their wriggling about, breaking free of their nurturing egg and entering their wider world, is simply life affirming.

Small Paintings, Large Scale

Blue Bucket, Barnet, Vermont, 1998, egg tempera on panel, 12 x 12 inches.

The paintings on parchment I've been making for over a year are indeed very small: they were primarily inspired by medieval manuscript paintings, particularly the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, exhibited at the Morgan Library and viewable online here. But although the works are small in size, they do not seem small as I work on them because the forms in relation to the size of the panel are fairly large. Scale is a word of relationships; my tiny paintings have relatively large scale. To make this more clear I thought I'd show you a couple of earlier landscape paintings, images full of very small details. We see the large form of the blue bucket and culvert in the foreground, travel back on a curving road to a piece of logging equipment and back again to a tree covered hill in the distance, all this described with precision.

White Hillside, Barnet, Vermont, 1998, egg tempera on panel, 9 x 14 5/8 inches, (with added black lines to illustrate size comparison).

Here is another landscape, with foreground and background full of visual incident. I drew black lines on top of the painting to show, in the lower left corner, the approximate size of several of my recent works on parchment. Nothing I am doing now comes close to the level of detail in that section of plastic covered hay bales and tree.

Detail of Blue Bucket above, Plus Minus below, each 5 x 6 inches.

Finally, here is a direct comparison of size and scale. Perhaps now you can see why I don't feel that my paintings are so small after all.

At the Met: Tang Dynasty Ceramics

Camel and Riders, late 7th century, earthenware (detail)

When I am at the Metropolitan Museum of Art there are many things I like to visit often; among them are the ceramics in the Asian galleries. I have written before on how much I enjoy taking photographs of objects at the museum, how it helps me to see the works more clearly and enables me to capture them and bring them home, even if in just a digital form. On my last trip to the Chinese collection I started by shooting the imposing black and white vase below, and as I continued to photograph, I realized that the work that interested me that day was all from the Tang Dynasty (618-907), a period of calm, prosperity and high culture. Some of the most thrilling pieces are the earthenware sculpture of figures and animals. A grandly shouting camel, certainly not a demure beast, has a man and child on its back.

Horse, 8th century, earthenware with brown glaze.

A horse stands sensitively alert, his strong body ready for work, yet elegant. The green glaze on the horse's hooves makes me wonder if it was a custom to paint or decorate them.

Resting Dancer, second half of the 7th century, earthenware with pigment.

This is a very small piece, maybe 6 or 8 inches high, but embodies such thoughtfulness and grace, with lines flowing beautifully from arm, around the head, and back to the knee.

Vase, 8th century, earthenware with black glaze.

When I look at a vase like this, which has so much presence, I can't help but see an equivalent of human form in the abstract. Its severe simplicity heightens its expressiveness.

Jar, first half of the 8th century, earthenware with dappled yellow and green glaze.

This is another very beautiful vessel, with an elegant outline enclosing a full, broad volume. Our eye follows the colored glaze flowing across and down the form, emphasizing its wide shoulder and narrow foot.

Jar with Two Handles in the Shape of Dragons, 7th century, porcelain with white glaze.

I love the fanciful handles on this pot. Look at the little blobs of porcelain laid along the handle; they add rhythm but also look as though the maker had a happy time adding them.

Covered Jar, Tang Dynasty (618-907), earthenware with blue glaze.

This pot is a very deep blue, almost black, and we feel as if we are looking into deep space and not onto a simple surface. It is another bulbous, full form, with a capped mouth whose double line of jar top and lid with a third strong line below balance the large volume of the jar's lower portion.

Box with Cover, Tang Dynasty (618-907), earthenware with three color glaze (sancai).

And finally, a small round box, colored with the technique known as sancai, or three colors, developed during the Tang dynasty. The effect is warm and rich, as the colors emphasize the form of the box, circling its top, running down its sides. There is so much beauty to be seen in even the most humble of objects.

A Walk in the Woods: Mossy Rocks in Vernal Pools

Two weeks ago I drove through Groton State Forest; a thin coating of snow was on the ground and the numerous glacial boulders were bright mounds of moss green above the white. The snow is finally gone and the melting snow and heavy rains have created the temporary shallow ponds of spring, their moisture feeding the soft mosses covering scattered rocks.




Reality becomes confused, as sky comes to earth and rocks become huge land masses.






The grand shapes of rocks are softened by the velvety covering of moss, and their simplicity stands in contrast to the intricate weaving of space, near and far, that we see as we look on and through the pools. Reflections of sky and branches float above the layers of fallen leaves, their color made rich and warm by water.

A New Painting: "Reds"

Reds, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 7 x 5 inches.

One thing that interested me in making this painting was the color red in many variations: lighter and darker, warmer and cooler. While I was working on it I worried that I wouldn't be able to balance the different hues, especially the warm orange-red of the left part of the painting with the cooler reds to the right. It took lots of adjusting and repainting of color until I felt satisfied that the whole was fairly harmonious. The red is made more insistent by the small rectangle of green; the gray curve echoing the red one is another non-red element. I also enjoyed the planes: rectangular, triangular and curved; parallel to the picture plane or tilting forward and back. I like the sense of a piling up of shapes. And then there are the holes, from the oval containing a tiny hole at the top right to the large holes right and left. Many of my paintings contain holes cut through surfaces in this way; I could easily leave them out, but for me they create a rhythm in addition to that of the other shapes and colors as your eye bounces from one dark round to another. And they are a humorous invitation to look deep, beyond the surface of things.

Elizabeth Murray's Narrative Geometries

Yellow Blue Center Fall, summer 1974, oil on canvas, 15 x 15"

I love Elizabeth Murray's early work, so was very happy to be able to see a great show at Pace Gallery "Elizabeth Murray: Painting in the 70s". From the beginning we can see that Murray had a love affair with paint, pushing it about with the brush, building juicy textures, globs and glops, solid presences of shape and line. With this paint that refused to stay politely on the surface, Murray took the pervasive geometric abstraction of that era and turned it inside out, from mind to heart, from intellect to emotion. Small brilliant squares within an off-kilter circle express the heart of things, the hidden treasure.

Heart Beat #2, 1973, oil on canvas, 12 x 16"

A rhythm emerges from wavering black lines radiating from a center.

Up Step, 1973, oil on canvas 50 x 30"

Pink and Blue Steps, 1974, oil on canvas, 36 x 44"

In these two paintings of steps, Murray takes forms that seem so straightforwardly geometric and infuses them with stories and off beat humor. In Up Step, those very delicate outlines floating on the green paint make rectangles that become a staircase, and an invitation to climb, to dream? And what wild colors in Pink and Blue Steps! a thumbing of the nose at seriousness, an exuberant march up and out.

Two or Three Things, 1974, oil on canvas, 68 x 66"

There are more than two or three things in this painting, 5 tiny shapes expressively placed withine the large green and yellow triangles. They convincingly shout "here we are" and we are compelled to pay attention to their color and their placement, dancing within the whole.

Falling, 1976, oil on canvas, 9' 10'' x 9'11''.

A thick red line curves and curlicues and ends just shy of the tilted point of the canvas, where it is punctuated by a tiny blue square. All the life energy of the painting, embodied in that line, is humorously held up by it, in my eyes prevented from falling. With this large painting, Murray begins to play with moving away from the traditional rectangle, to great effect.

Twist of Fate, December 1979, oil on canvas, 56 1/4 x 54 1/4"

Druid, 1979, oil on canvas, 54 1/2 x 56 1/2"

With these two paintings, Murray has begun to shape her canvases, to have the wall push into the painting and the shapes push in odd ways against it. Twist of Fate, with another red as life shape zigging up the canvas, has buoyant blobby forms on a jolly lime green ground mostly held in by the edges. The blue shape, by some happenstance, is cut off. The green shape of the Druid exists within its allotted space, but pushes against it, encircled by a blue bar. These paintings are so alive that they pulse and seem to jump off the wall. Elizabeth Murray is a storyteller in paint, who imbues each shape with feeling, and with implied meaning that we are free to tease out as we will.