AmaZin
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Oh, the story of this painting - nothing close to a straight line from start to finish.
I first drew it out in September 2021 and started it the next month. The final touches went down in late October 2023 - and then, only after a decision to buckle down and bring it all the way through, already!
The spirit of this painting has been patient and faithful.
The grapes are Zinfandel, from my friend Sue's ranch in Cloverdale. After Zintopia, it's my second painting from this vineyard. The way this patch of grapes is postioned on the hill, the sunlight shows off their late-summer colors spectacularly. A few more fabulous images from this vineyard wait for me in my "candidates" folder. Maybe some day...
The background is one of the more elaborate I've ever done, which took it's sweet time to come together. Somewhere in that phase I decided the way I had it composed had to change. I needed to prune some of the grapes at the bottom and replace them with leaves, covering my tracks along the way - tricky!
The photo included "markings" on the grapes - watermarks? Curiously, they were in the bright sunlit part as well as in the shadows. I painted these variations for the first time in a vineyard painting. Something new!
The name is simply me being playful. The jury is still out about whether the "Z" should be capitalized or not.
For now, we'll go with AmaZin
Completed October 2023 - 30"x22" - Watercolor on paper
AmaZin
Grapes and Wine, Originals
Zinoasis
Original Sold
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29"x29" - $595
22"x22" - $395
15"x15" - $195
7.5"x7.5" - $60
These grapes that I've painted since 2007 are part of a tiny vineyard (29 plants) on a red-dirt hillside in my brother Mike's backyard in San Anselmo where he and his wife Julie created a wonderful idyll - an outdoor table and chairs in a corner surrounded by thick cannas and under a bright red umbrell and the canopy of a walnut tree. They had tomatoes and lots of other vegetables growing, roses growing on the fence, dahlias, sunflowers and stone-paved steps going up into the grapes. In a small house and small yard, they created a beautiful, life-filled environment.
Last year Mike started a demanding job for Apple in Cupertino prompting them to move to the city and sell their little house. It's now someone else's home and I can't just pop over with my camera to take photos of the grapes anymore. I need to have a connection to my painting subjects. If I'm to keep painting grapes, some new source will have to appear in my life!
I love making square paintings. Since painting "Persimmon Rain" in 2006, it's been a format I've come back to again and again and is now part of what I do. All the paintings I've done of Mike's zinfandel grapes have been vertical, following the orientation of how grapes grow. I wanted the challenge of another format. I couldn't find one that was horizontal, but this square image worked. It's also distinct from the other paintings as it places the grapes and vines more in their environment - a bit of the hills to the south in the distance, a rose bush and even some bare dirt in the lower yard behind the clusters of fruit.
I find myself saying all the time that I "find my way through" every painting. Even though I'm working from a photo and am fairly faithful to the colors, I really never know how they will end up. I used a lot of cobalt blue in this one and it gave the grapes a really cold, almost frosty look. I wanted them warmer, so I layered over them a wash of new gamboge (yellow orange). The colors ended up even more bright and vibrant than I'd expected.
I've been told lately there is a more luminous quality emerging in my paintings - I think I see it here. I was at Light Rain, getting it captured for giclee prints and talking to my friend Julia about what I might name it. Wanting to keep it simple, I thought I might call it simply "Zin" but then was telling her how this painting depicts for me the oasis that Mike and Julie created. It's both, a Zin...oasis. And I'm so grateful for all the hard work my brother put into this patch of land - the source of inspiration for these paintings that so many people have loved. Thank you, Mike!
September 2013 - 29"x29" - Watercolor on paper
Zinoasis
Grapes and Wine
Sonoma
Original Sold
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The events and circumstances that lead up to a painting coming to be - at least as they come through me - is hardly ever a direct path - especially this one. It started with a photo that I took in the early fall of 2008 - just a year after I started showing my art. I was driving back from an errand at the North Bay Gallery in Sonoma when I saw these white grapes along the side of Highway 12, just south of town. There is something so incredibly alluring about the sight of rows of vines with bunches and bunches of fruit hanging from them. It’s nearly impossible for me to be near this sight and NOT pull over and take pictures. And, the series of photos I took that day ended up in the “grapes” folder in my photo collection for nine years before the time came to do something with them.
It was actually another image of white grapes from my parents’ garden that had been beguiling me over this past summer. Something had me second guess the image, wondering if there wasn’t something else that was more interesting. I went back to my stash of white grape images and was taken by the withering, leaf that was turning brown on the left - it’s so interesting! And I loved the one grape wrapped in a leaf on the right. I'd never have made that up! The original cluster of grapes was wider - requiring a full sheet of watercolor paper. But, I decided to do some Photoshop magic to create a composition to fit in the same tall, skinny proportion as two of the other grape paintings - Mid-Summer Zin and Juicyfruit.
The challenge in the painting process was twofold: I wanted for the colors of the grapes to have enough variation to make them interesting and I wanted to represent the light accurately. All my previous grape paintings have been more intensely colored - blues, purples, reds - where it was easier to pile on the pigment, leave white paper and I’ve portrayed the light. But these colors are lighter, more subtle, plus the light doesn’t just shine on one side of the grapes; here the light seems to skip from grape to grape with darker grapes interspersed. I found this difficult to paint while keeping the relative lights and darks so it would read.
While I was in the midst of this painting the worst wildland fires in California history raged through the area not far from where these grapes grow. Though it’s a minuscule gesture in the scheme of the devastation, I’m calling this painting “Sonoma”: to honor and appreciate this precious and beloved part of the world.
September-October 2017 - 30"x13.5" - Watercolor on paper
Sonoma
Grapes and Wine
Napa
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These leaves were on the side of Highway 29, the main route through the Napa Valley - it was late November or early December and I was coming back from a lunch at Greystone in St, Helena with Joanne - a dear friend visiting here from Boston. The afternoon sun this late in the year was already fairly low in the sky. The sunlight caught these leaves on the side of the road - making the reds and yellows incandescent. I am obedient to inspiration, so I pulled over on the rough shoulder and climbed between the wires of the fence with my camera.
As almost always happens, of the dozens of pictures that I snap (grateful for the freedom to do that with digital photography), one or two stand out – this was one of them. But a reluctance to paint it was there too. There were no grapes… the main leaf is curled and does not have much of a “grape leaf” shape… and through the bright colors and the lovely light, I felt a certain melancholy. I remember saying this image made my heart hurt in the best way. Who would want a painting of melancholy?
Fast forward a lot of years to October of 2017 when a great firestorm raced through this part of our world… I was painting some white wine grapes from an image I’d snapped on the side of Highway 12 in Sonoma – the Valley of the Moon. In the midst of the devastation and grief everyone around here was feeling – especially because of how beloved these areas are - it occurred to me to call the painting of Chardonnay grapes “Sonoma” and be brave enough to paint this one and call it “Napa.”
Being a meaning-seeking junkie, I had to know if the name Napa means something. It turns out the origin of Napa is a mystery. So it will have to suffice that these paintings are simply my connection to these beautiful valleys.
November 2017 - January 2018 - 22"x30" - Watercolor on paper
Napa
Grapes and Wine, Originals, Shell and Leaves
Zintopia
Original Sold>
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All but one of the paintings I’ve done of grapes to date have been the Zinfandel grapes that my brother Mike grew in his sweet little backyard vineyard in San Anselmo. But Mike and Julie sold their house and moved to the City a few years ago. There are plenty of grapes I could paint – we live a short drive away from one of the biggest wine centers on the planet here in Northern California. But I love veraison, the uneven ripening that Zinfandel grapes undergo – perfect painting subjects for this Life in Full Color girl. I wondered where I was going to find then when I could no longer pop by to see my brother and sister-in-law. But in that wondering I forgot that we live in an abundant universe!
Sue Rink is a talented artist and with one of the brightest spirits I’ve ever encountered in a person. She and her husband Paul live up on a hillside above Cloverdale, in the Alexander Valley – northern Sonoma County. They are surrounded by something like 15 acres of cabernet they grow for a Napa winery. But right near the house is a single acre of Zin that they make a delicious wine with for their own use. Sue has been coming down from Cloverdale for our Special Saturday classes for a couple of years. In the process, our student/teacher relationship has evolved into a deep friendship. August of 2016 Sue invited a half-dozen of us to come spend a weekend at their ranch. I had just the best time taking photos of grapes, apples, plums, flowers – even the horses. We spent the rest of the weekend painting – and eating! It thankfully was not scorching hot as it can be up there in the summer – we felt charmed. It was a weekend filled with pure pleasure: warm sunshine, inspiring sights, rich color, sweet friendship, delicious food and wine.
This image was the one amongst all I captured that begged to be painted. I had taken another on Friday evening that I’d begun on Saturday, but when this one appeared in my camera on Sunday morning, I had to set it aside to jump into this one. I love the complex background and the full-spectrum of color. I see what a difference it makes to be so taken by an image that I’m painting. It amplifies the pull to work on it and the suspense in awaiting its completion. I see that colors are becoming more intense in my work. It’s not intentional; it’s just happening. It’s fascinating to watch work evolve through each of us as artists.
It is still compelling to me to attempt to find a single word to name these paintings with and I wanted to bring “Zin” in to the name. I started with “Zinful” – fun but maybe a little cheeky. Somehow Zintopia came to me – a whole world of Zin. Seems like that very well could be what this one has to share with us.
November 2016 - 30"x22" - Watercolor on paper
Zintopia
Grapes and Wine
Rest
Original Sold
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In November of 2010, I took a trip up to the Valley of the Moon in Sonoma to meet Icarus, Beverley Terry’s stately Russian wolfhound so I could paint him. Joe suggested that, while I was in the area, I go check out a Christmas tree farm we’d heard about. It was on Moon Mountain, which is a very special place to my family.
For many years dad belonged to a San Francisco-based Italian men’s cultural club, called Il Cenacolo. They held an annual opera picnic at one of the vineyards owned by the Martini family up at the top of the Moon Mountain. My dad is one of the few members who brought his whole family. Mom has pictures of all of us and the kids (our nieces and nephew) at all ages over the years. It was always a Sunday afternoon in late September, when everything is cast in a golden light. The property, called Monte Rosso, because of the red, red dirt, was enchanting: an old white wooden house, a huge two-story stone barn and an enormous arbor that covered enough picnic tables to seat a hundred or more people – all surrounded by acres of ancient grape vines. We loved to wander around, duck under the enormous old fig tree to smell that warm fig tree smell. The food, catered by the Orsi family was always the same, nearly-burned lasagna Bolognese, barbequed chicken with herbs and garlic, green salad, French bread, zabaglione and berries, and of course the Martini wines. It was like a trip to Italy. The opera outing doesn’t happen there anymore. And we so treasure the memories.
Back to that November 2010… I was driving back down the road and one of the properties along the way – just someone’s home, not a big vineyard – had some grapes near the fence. The sun was coming through them so that the colorful leaves were all lit up. It was one of these moments I write about all the time in these painting stories. Something I see is so astonishingly beautiful, I must stop and take a bunch of pictures.
It’s curious to me why sometimes it takes a few years before then I make paintings from these photos. I think I had doubts about whether this was really to be part of my work. It’s quite different. For whatever reason, I started it right after this year’s (2014) Sausalito Art Festival, in the hopes that I’d be able to jam to get it finished in 2 ½ weeks, in time to show it at the Healdsburg show, like I did last year with Zinoasis. With about a week to go, I decided against pushing. The name of this painting had already occurred to me. I liked the double meaning of “rest” – one being the remainder, the leftovers, the grapes passed by. And the other, the season the vines were heading into, when they aren’t working to push out new canes and leaves or ripen fruit – it’s when they go dormant – to sleep. This is something that I find myself craving more than ever, to have deep, restful sleep as well as some time to be not feeling like I need to be producing something – some rest! Given that I was considering giving this name to the painting, it followed that I’d not bust my butt to paint it! So I've taken another month to finish it, enjoying the idea of painting it in the spirit of its name.
I continued in my inclination of late to limit my palette. The rusty-maroons are a mixture of Pyrrol red and Cobalt blue. The greens are mixed with my new-favorite Cobalt teal. Beyond those three pigments are a few yellows and a couple of quinacridones (coral and rose). I really let myself be less precise in how I painted than ever and it was fun, and more rest-ful. I’m not sure that these hot and bright colors are exactly what many would associate with the word “rest,” but it’s very clear to me it is the name of this painting!
October 2014 - 29"x29" - Watercolor on paper
Rest
Grapes and Wine, Shell and Leaves
Juicyfruit
Original Sold
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Many of my paintings in the past few years, have had stories that connect to something deep and meaningful. And this isn’t one! I was driving home from an overnight at a campout, my husband goes on every August. It was a sunny Sunday morning, and in my peripheral vision on the side of River Road, were these grapes. The somewhat orange color caught my eye. So I pulled over on the lumpy-grass shoulder and hopped out in my flip-flops, to take a bunch of pictures with my iPhone, while Bo waited for me in the car.
I’ve been wanting to paint another long narrow bunch of grapes in the same size and proportion as “Mid-Summer Zin”, and hadn’t found another image in the eight years since painting it – until this one. It was a Photoshop project before it was ready to be painted. In the original image, the whole lower left section was just dirt. And there weren’t enough canes to make the image interesting. This has me really appreciate the compositions that I just happened upon, in my early paintings before I knew how, or even thought of collaging images together to make a better painting.
The light on these grapes was higher in the sky, making the way it cast shadows different. There was a clear hard edge and a soft, graduated one – trickier to paint! In an attempt to bring in some blue, I ended up bringing in too much. So the cluster of the darkest grapes got painted twice. I’m becoming more comfortable taking whole sections of paintings up and re-doing them. There’s such freedom in doing this! The name just came to me – as playful and fun.
September - November 2015 - 30"x13.5" - Watercolor on paper
Juicyfruit
Grapes and Wine
Zin of Many Colors
Original Sold
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41"x26" - $650
30"x18" - $495
20"x12" - $250
12"x7" - $85
This is the largest painting I had made to date. And I worked on it fiercely to get it done in time to be framed for my first time at the Sausalito Art Festival. Mid-Summer Zin has been so well received, I've been looking forward to creating another painting of wine grapes. These are again Mike and Julie's Zinfandel grapes. Though the lighting is different, it was the same evening last summer. Yet, painting this I kept wondering how the colors were ending up so different from the first Zin painting. They ended up being brighter and more stained-glass-like. I also liked including and painting the post. It's solid and neutral and is a grounding influence in the painting.
This painting speaks to me of transformation. Zinfandel grapes start out all green and they end up all blue. They become all the colors in between as they ripen. But they don't all ripen at the same rate. Kind of like us. As we evolve, it's mostly not a uniform process. The gift is that the light illuminates and shows us the beauty in each stage.
August 2008 - 41"x26" - Watercolor on paper
Zin of Many Colors
Grapes and Wine
Summer Zinfandel
Original sold
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There's nothing like a deadline to put a fire under my butt to get painting. I really wanted to have something to submit to the California State Fair Art of Wine exhibit the summer of 2011. I had a painting accepted in that category the previous three years in a row and I wanted to try again, but I didn't have any originals that hadn't yet been submitted to this exhibition.
I had been deliberating for a while about whether or not to paint this image. I loved some aspects of it - the fun colors of the grapes, the detail in the leaves and especially the grapes that are peeking from behind and above the upper left leaf. I couldn't make that up. Something about the composition seemed busy and that's what had me wondering if it I really wanted to spend the time on this one. I've learned from past images and paintings that sometimes a just-ok photo can be a wonderful painting. Besides, I didn't have any better candidates. In I dove.
This is the second of two paintings I finished in April 2011, after spending five months and only finished one painting. It felt good to be able to sit down and focus on my work.
The leaves on the left side were pretty scary. My mind told me I had no idea how to paint them. I just sat down and gave it a go. The first time I stood back from it after painting a section, I was blown away at how the pillowy texture of the lower veined leaf came to life. It's so odd how up close, it's messy and just a bunch of brush strokes, yet from a distance it comes alive. The mystery of art shows up again.
April 2011 - 30"x22" - Watercolor on paper
Summer Zinfandel
Grapes and Wine
Late Summer Zin
Original Sold
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30"x22" - $495
20"x15" - $250
10"x7.5" - $75
I was working on this when BJ died. In a strange way, painting this was harder than painting BJ. In resuming painting it, I am moving on with life. I finished it on vacation in Tahoe, where BJ was a big part of our time here - his incredible dock jumping and our morning hikes on the mountain trails. Another layer of acceptance. This is my third painting of grapes. I love the leaves in this one - each leaf is quite different from the other and they come in from the corners framing the cluster of fruit - which is softly cast with the green light on the darker side. New life shines in the shadow.
July 2010 - 30"x22" - Watercolor on paper
Late Summer Zin
Grapes and Wine
Mid-Summer Zin
Original Sold
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My brother, Mike and his wife, Julie had a small hillside backyard in San Anselmo, terraced with stone and covered with rows of Zinfandel vines. Each autumn, he made the grapes into wine with our brother Matt, a winemaker.
I had been waiting and wanting to paint grapes for some time. Mike and I spent an evening in July 2007 with our cameras, the sun low in the sky illuminating the grapes in these outrageous colors. Matt tells us this time of year the grapes under go what is called "veraison." The grapes begin to change colors in an irregular way - not all varieties of red grapes do this. That they don't change all at once gives a remarkable show of color. Just as we humans change, in stages.
This image I cropped from one of the photos that Mike took, the first I've painted from one I did not shoot. Of the dozens we both took, this one jumped out the most clearly as the one I had to paint first!
This painting was accepted in the 2008 California State Fair in their Art of the Vine exhibit. And a giclee print won second place in the 2008 Marin County Fair Fine Art Exhibit.
November 2007 - 30"x13.5" - Watercolor on paper
Mid-Summer Zin
Grapes and Wine
August Bounty
Original Sold
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My husband, Joe came up with this idea. It was mid-August, 2008 and I had just come back from the farmer's market with some ripe figs and rich, red grapes. They were sitting on the kitchen counter next to some Bartlett pears from my parents' tree. He said matter of factly, "you should put that fruit in that plate and paint it" - pointing to the piece of Italian pottery hanging on the wall, that he'd bought as my birthday gift on our first trip to Italy.
The large decorative plate was from a shop owned by a young woman faence artist in the small Tuscan town of Montaione. I fell in love with it. We'd already bought "the" piece of pottery we'd planned to buy on the trip, yet I couldn't stop thinking about it. I asked if it could be my birthday present - he said yes.
It ended up arriving from Italy ON my birthday. Later he told me that one of the reasons I'm in his life is that I respond to things like that. He'd barely noticed it on the wall in the shop with all the other pottery. Because of how I did, now he gets to enjoy it in our home.
Making the painting was a trial. The ivy was really dark in the original photo and hard to make out. Without a strong drawing, I was painting half-blind. Not being very good at making things up, I was making a mess of the background. More than half way across and I gave up on it.
I put the whole piece of paper in the kitchen sink and washed off the paint as best I could. So empowering! I took a new photo under better light, photoshopped the new ivy background in to the original, dried and flattened the paper, redrew the ivy and began again. Better. Much better. The tablecloth was challenging too - without a decent drawing I had to again make it up.
With all the surroundings done, the fun started. Painting the plate was a delight. I kept imagining the moment when the ceramic artist had originally painted on the glazes, appreciating her as I re-traced her brush strokes.
This painting speaks to me of generosity - that of the earth, of another artist half a world away and of my wonderful husband.
August 2009 - 16"x 30" - Watercolor on paper
August Bounty
Grapes and Wine
Lunch on the Terrace
Original Sold
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This was a lunch I had with my parents on the back terrace in the little place we stayed in Quarante, in Langedoc in France - the same village where the Blue Door is. I love the colors in the salad and wine and was intrigued to paint the reflections and shadows in the glasses and plates.My mom encouraged me to replace the white plastic chairs in the background with something else. I found the idea for these chairs in a picture in a Provence cookbook. I really am more a journalist than an inventor, so the great challenge was making up the details of this change in composition. The most fun was painting the components of the salad - tomatoes, eggs, anchovies, black oil-cured olives. Yum.
August 2008 - 16"x30" - Watercolor on paper
Lunch on the Terrace
Grapes and Wine
Lunch at La Valencia
Original Sold
June 2009 I showed my work at the La Jolla Festival of the Arts for the first time. My first long roadtrip, I loaded Joe's "Mighty Toyota" with the art and the booth equipment and headed south. It was a challenging weekend it RAINED!
The festival organizers with the Torrey Pines Kiwanis seemed to like my work, because a couple months later they asked me to be one of three artists to present ideas for the next year's poster art. Holy cow! Was I excited! This meant another trip down to La Jolla to hunt for painting subject ideas.
My inspiration was to have lunch on the balcony of the La Valencia Hotel, overlooking the ocean. I had to come up with something that said "La Jolla" within the realm of what I paint - which is intimacy in some form.
I flew down for the day and had lunch with Ronn Rohe, the festival chairman and Chris Palmquist, a wonderful woman who lived in La Jolla at the time. She and I met at my first year at the Sausalito Art Festival. It was a perfect day; we had lobster salad and the staff graciously saw to it that all my crazy photo shoot requests were attended to.
Don Ludwig, the 2010 Chairman and his committee helped me improve upon the composition, and after a few rounds of changes - including replacing the actual wine bottle label with my brother Matt's pinot noir label - I got painting. I got most of it done while Joe and I were on Kauai. I finished it the day before the earthquake an Chile spawned a tsunami that was headed for the Hawaiian Islands. What a trip!
This painting put me through quite a bit - starting with flying down there for the day to get the photo, to all the Photoshop revisions, I drew it three times and painted it nearly twice. I started over after having done two thirds of it!
The original painting was auctioned off as a benefit for the festival's charity benefactor, so no prints were made - only posters. My hope is that the poster makes people think of being on vacation, taking the time to appreciate the abundant goodness that life can offer.
February 2010 - 22"x30" - Watercolor on paper
