Sketching in Graham, NC

A few weeks ago our family and a friend went to a movie at our favorite family-run second-run theater, in Graham, NC (the theater we call "The Graham").

I didn't feel like seeing the movie - I felt like sketching, and getting my dessert somewhere in town. So I sketched this old brick building, because I like the arched windows and the brick ornamentation on top. I sat on the side of the portico of the big granite courthouse that fills the traffic circle at the heart of the village, and drew until my legs went to sleep.

Then I walked into the building I'd been drawing, into the corner business, which is the Graham Soda Shop, where I sketched this group of teenage guys while I had a strawberry shake. The exterior drawing is in a larger spiral bound sketch book, the inside scribble is in my larger moleskine.

Click images for closer views.

I visited one my art professors recently (Marvin Saltzman, a painter mentioned in my art profile, here), and the visit (and a gift he gave me) have inspired me to draw more, and to paint even more to please my muse and no one else... So you may see more drawings, as I try lots more things in my various pads and moleskines, and you may see fewer paintings, as some are for my own internal exploration.

Palouse Painting

I spent an evening in the Palouse, south of Spokane, WA, back in the fall. I loved it. This photo captured some of the feel of the valleys and small canyons that show up between the long hills. It also reminds me how the light was at the end of the day, though the camera doesn't do it justice.

This piece of paper has already been three other things, and has been painted over several times. It has a history, and some texture as a result, and colors that show under the others, particularly the cadmium orange.


I am finding my way with this painting, trying various colors as underpainting, and painting some areas over and over. I am on completely unfamiliar ground, trying to see what colors and approaches work for this piece, and for the mood I am trying to capture. So here it is in three stages.


I'm not sure any of the colors showing now will be the colors showing at the end. It's far too disjointed and garish right now, but these colors are just the extremes that will vibrate through and under the final colors.

I'm trying to figure out how I want to put the paint on, as well. This is far smoother than canvas, and has a different feel. The direction of every brush stroke matters, and I get it right sometimes and other times I have no idea how I should apply it.

It's good to be lost but not so lost I can't find my way eventually.

Arc of Sky

When I think, "What do I want to paint?" the answer is often "trees and sky." I have been trying to capture what I feel about trees, particularly "tree skeletons," as I call them, since I was in junior high. I recall a postage stamp assignment we had (probably in 1974 or 1975). I did mine for the upcoming bi-centennial, with a colonial lantern theme, but the stamp was dominated by a huge tree trunk and branches (a tulip poplar).


My cards, when I make them, all have "Tulip Tree Press" on the back - because I heard, again in junior high, that artists named their presses. I joked that mine was a spoon, since that's what I have used for a printing baren all my life. I use the press label on any card, though, even hand drawn. It started with a book project with limericks done in linoleum block prints, and then to Christmas cards made from linocuts, as well. Even the year at UNC-CH that I made them on a silkscreen, I still used the press symbol. Trees.

Here is the photo that inspired the painting above (ink and watercolor, 19 x 19). I took this several years ago at the waterfowl impoundment north of Durham, near the Butner Seed Nursery. It's a quiet place with some impressive trees, with souls. I have exaggerated what I love about these trees - the arc of sky they seem to hold, the way they form it together, the off center balance of the two. I want to try this again, but capture the reaching more, the weight shift, like a dancer reaching. This painting is more still, like an arched stained glass window - the next would have more movement.

Other paintings/posts about trees: Here, and here, and here, and here and here.

A Flag for My Dream Country

In a post almost three years ago, I wrote about the wall paintings in the main harbor of the Azores. Joe Taruga (see his Flickr page at the link above) wrote:

"Before sailing away, everyone must draw on the marina wall (Horta - Faial) a flag for a dream country, some sails filled up with the wind of love and doom, a geometrical or sophisticated figure, and write down the name of the yacht or sailing boat that went by, and leave messages and poetic phrases - for this will mitigate the wrath of the sea gods and grant the trip back home."

When I read this the first time, my heart immediately reached out to the idea. It filled all the playful and wistful parts of me. I was delighted that a real place on earth would practice such a poetic and lovely ritual.

I've tried once or twice since then to create my flag, but could never get what I wanted. A few weeks ago I finally got it. The words say:

"Outward hungry,
Homeward filled"

And the name of the boat is "Glee."

This image works well for me because I feel like I travel as I paint. I go without leaving home. And I tried to make this look like the rough, thick look of paint on other paint on stone.

This painting is also number three in a "House" series. The others are Mistletoe House and Caribonsai House.

Acrylic on Arches hot press - 19 x 19. Two completely different failed paintings lie underneath this surface...

Copse

For as long as I can remember I've been fascinated with small groups of trees surrounded by open space. Even better if the trees are on a hilltop. It has always seemed to me that places like that have a presence, a sense of something being there out of the ordinary, and out of reach of the senses. As if someone dwelled there out of sight. I've sometimes felt it for single trees, but very seldom. Many civilizations have worshipped in groves.

We have a stray cat, declawed, fragile and careful with age, wearing a belled collar, who has adopted us. We're trying to find her owners, and we're caring for her outdoors (our indoor cats would cut her to ribbons - they're not declawed). The contrast between the plump, solid little calico outside, and the long agile ginger tabbies inside has put cats in my head.

The painting above emerged naturally from a nest of lines blind countoured from a series of unrelated art images. I wasn't surprised to see the trees or the cats coming through. Most of the art was of the human figure. Everything can morph into everything else.

Watercolor on Arches hot press - 19 x 19. This is the line drawing as it stood when I took up Abner and started to paint.

Click on either image for a larger view.

A Pouch of Seeds

My shadow reminds my soul that as a young teen it lived in the woods and fields. The pouch I slung over my shoulder caught up seeds and stones, cones and dreams. I invented a rolling gate I called the mile-eater, which I used on old dirt roads at dusk, hungry and afraid of the dark. My hat and my stick had a pact to fence my heart and hold my head together when the light was too beautiful or the trees bid me disperse and fly up into them like a drunken swarm of bees. I was filled to bursting with linden leaves and emptied by the distant calls of crows, like respiration. Striding between the landlocked sycamores, the portal to my principality, a young mage caught in the tidal flow of my own longings.

Where Have I Been?

Not here, that's for sure. Dearest mentioned to me today, as we took daughter to a dance audition, that it had been over a month since my last post. Where did the time go?

There was a little 4 day trip to Charleston in there (with a boat trip to Fort Sumter, and staying at a cottage on Folly Beach) - and another overnight trip to Asheville for another college related thing. But mostly it's been work and work travel. Keeping me too tired and talked out to post and making the time fly by. It's a critical point in a very large project, and I need to stay engaged. But I finally caught a cold - symptoms started last night.