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
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
Sonoma
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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
Zintopia
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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
Juicyfruit
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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
Rest
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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
Zinoasis
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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
Zin of Many Colors
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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
Mid-Summer Zin
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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
Lunch on the Terrace
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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
