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
Glee
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The wish for some easy, delight-filled painting time during the summer of 2023 inspired this one. Pink and orange are a very favorite color combination. There are no other flowers that get me than roses.
It’s another view into the opulent boquet of roses that became Lavish. I squished the roses all in together with Photoshop, since the bouquet is years past. The bush itself is also gone. It didn’t survive a garden remodel in Anne and Gary’s front yard. These two paintings will have to be the rest of the story.
As is the way with making art in the real world, my fantasies about this being skip-it-y-do-da kind of painting evaporated fairly early on. The mostly orange rose, tucked into the shadow in the center-right gave me fits. I got it too dark and murky. I have come to terms with the reality that as long as I paint, there will be stuff like this I’ll be faced with. There will always be parts of paintings I wish I could start back with bare paper. But, this is watercolor and the process has its limitations. Nevertheless, I am happy – enough – with it in the end.
I have no idea where the name came from, exactly. Glee just sounded right. The mood I was hoping for as I painted – and – a combination of harmonizing voices.
Summer 2023 – 22″x22″ – Watercolor on paper
Delight
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The Magnolia Artists gathered for the first time as a group – since March of 2020, in the gardens of Filoli in Woodside. It was early May 2021 and we had all received our two doses of COVID vaccine. It felt like we were safe to be in each others’ presence – especially out of doors. We were giddy getting to be together – especially in such a breathtaking place.
I’ve not painted many peonies – and not for lack of desire. I’ve just not had many peony images tell me to paint them. Roses keep butting in. This is a herbaceous peony, rather than a tree peony. The herbaceous type are not quite as showy, but the freshness and purity of this one got me. I love the petal curled over towards the center, making it almost demure.
I helped the composition along by inserting the field of buds, in pinks and greens behind the top of the flower, giving a more complete picture of what it was like to be there that day.
Zoom in to the upper right corner and you’ll see how our weeks-old puppy, Bozzy, added his creative touch to the piece. He scratched it with his sharp baby dog claws, which I hadn’t noticed until I put paint down. This will forever be the painting I was working on at the start of his puppyhood.
The title is a nod to Ross Gay, author of The Book of Delights, a wonderful book that reminds us of how small joys are found in the every-day and how making space for delight is a worthwhile pursuit.
Plus, for me it’s almost always about the light.
March-April, 2022 – 29”x29” – Watercolor on paper.
Roma
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There’s so much here in this painting!
There’s the trip to Europe with my family, the day walking around Rome with my sweetie and our nibling HLeigh, then the idea and the process of painting it…
In 2017, the year my sister-in-law Vernona turned 50, she organized a trip to Europe. She, my brother Joe and their four kids were doing a grand tour. When my parents signed on, I lobbied my Joe to join them – for at least some of the trip. I had a feeling it could be the last time we got to be in Italy with my dad. As it turns out it was. We savor the time we had there with all of them. And will especially treasure the time with my papa.
The trip included a trip to Rome. Dad wasn’t able to walk much, so one day, Joe, HLeigh and I set out wandering on foot. We made our way across central Rome to the Campo dei Fiori – a square that has a rich and varied history. It was the site for papal excecutions and book burnings centuries ago and has been a daily market for fruits, vegetables and fish since the 1860’s. Now it seems to be more a tourist spot than where Roman citizens do their shopping. The vibe reminded me of Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
We had breakfast at a café on the periphery and then took a walk around the square. There were some beautiful displays of produce and flowers amidst the souvenir and scarf vendors. I took photos of the splashes of color wherever I saw it, HLeigh took a drink from one of Rome’s many ever-flowing fountains and we headed on.
The prompt to actually paint it came in the summer of 2020 when “Zinoasis” – a large square painting of zinfandel grapes – sold to someone out of state. I took the painting out of the frame to ship it in a large tube, leaving me a really nice frame that needed art.
I was going to just do a straight painting of it but then on a hike it came to me to paint it through the map of Rome, just as I did the flower stall through the map of Paris several years ago.
The first thing was to figure out what part of the map to use and at what scale. My math head came in handy to figure out the scale of the Paris map painting – 2.7 kilometers, square. And HLeigh’s friend Livia, who is a bona fide native Romana gave me feedback on the section of the map.
Now for the real challenge! I chose to draw and paint it just as I did “Paris” – no contour drawing for the actual shapes. The only pencil lines on my watercolor paper were those of the map. Each plum, tomato and apricot were eye-balled from the map superimposed on the reference image. And I avoided the lines of the map with my brush; no masking fluid!
I do believe this is the most difficult painting I’ve done to date. I had to make each object read as contiguous and three-dimensional, even as each one was painted in separate sections. And those baskets put me through it!
The name of this one follows the lead of “Paris” Rather than call it “Rome,” I decided, when in Rome… call it “Roma.”
A fun bit of synchronicity: the beautiful frame that has been waiting for this painting is made by an Italian company called Roma.
29”x29” – Spring 2021 – Watercolor on paper.
Returning
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This is one of those paintings that come from mining the treasures I collect and hold on to (sometimes for a very long time) before making them into paintings.
The timestamp on the photo is December 2006. I was coming home from hiking the hill near our house with our dog BJ. As we walked by the house down the street, the lawn next to the sidewalk was strewn with the leaves from their liquid amber trees, iced with frost.
My eyes landed on this one vignette of overlapping and turning leaves. Even though this is not a rare occurrence, I’m still amazed at the wonderful mystery of how we are caught by something so specific within a sea of visual information. It’s as if I hear “this, this, look at THIS!”
I dashed home for my little Canon Elf camera – this was pre-iPhone – to capture it before the sun came up enough to melt the frost.
Two forms of hesitation have kept me from painting it all these years: first, how am I going to take on painting this? All that frost! And then: who is going to want a painting of ice? Most people are drawn to all the warmth and sunlight in my work.
But I appreciated the fire-and-ice quality to it – the warmth even in the cold. So, there it rested, patiently, in my “candidates” folder.
When the world shut down and we all stayed at home the spring of 2020, there were two more Saturdays on the schedule of a “Basics and Beyond” series I was teaching. With the shift to Zoom, I felt compelled to come up with a new group exercise, since I couldn’t support each student working on a painting of their own choosing, as I do when we are in-person.
I decided to use a piece of this image for the session called “Lost and Found in the Details.” In the process of demonstrating how I’d paint the multiple colors around the white spots of the frost, I found myself really liking the result – and having fun!
Adding to the impetus to do a full painting of these frosty leaves was the idea that came to me to create the 2021 calendar with paintings of images that were captured within walking distance from home – the beauty found right here in our neighborhood.
The name has a few connotations: returning home from the hike, returning to capture the image of these leaves as they are returning to the earth at the end of the season. We turn and re-turn.
22”x22” – April 2020 – Watercolor on paper
Farewell
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On the way back from a late autumn trip to Tahoe in 2015 we made a stop at UC Davis Med Center in Sacramento. John, Joe’s flying mentor, who had COPD, had gotten sick. It progressed into pneumonia putting him into the hospital with the expectation that he was likely not going to come back from this one. Since I’d only seen John once or twice in passing, I stayed away while they had their time together.
Right next to the hospital was a lovely rose garden, giving me plenty to occupy myself with. Though it was late in the season, and some of the roses were about finished, there were still quite a few that had painting-promise.
I followed a honey bee around for a while – always happy for the prospect of another rose+bee painting. But this was the image that won out. It’s not the first under side of a rose that told me to paint it, but this one had two-tone color, cute curled petals and a crazy-fun – but super detailed! – background to add to the allure.
I started painting at the beginning of 2018, but this one mostly sat on the back burner for two years. I brought out to work on it on only I needed something small enough to paint at the beach on Kauai – that is – until the start of 2020 when I thought: Ok, it’s time to get this one done! We were on Kauai again in January and I added yet more sand to my tiny travel palette as I hopped with my brush around the petals and leaves at the beach.
John left his earthly body a few days after Joe’s visit. Though he was still here when I took the photo, I see the rose looking skyward, following John’s final takeoff. We are all here such a short time, even if we get to live to a ripe age. Never before in my life has this felt more real as it does now, as I write this in June of 2020.
I see this brightly colored, late-season rose as a reminder that we can really live – be really alive – all the way to the end, just as John did.
2018 – 2020 – 15”x15” – Watercolor on paper
Hello
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There are pieces of art I’ve made that have held lots of meaning, some of them have become “important” even before I’ve started painting. This one, not so much. I decieded to paint it just for the fun of it- the colors, the light, the simplicity. And since I can be such a serious and purposeful person, this is really good for me!
I took the photo more than 10 years before painting. I noticed this sweet flower along a path in Anne and Gary’s garden – the same one that is the source of my peaches and apricot paintings, as well as the gorgeous roses that became “Lavish” in 2019. This dahlia was a tiny little thing, not more than 4″ across. In reality it was all pink, except for a golden center, but I had to mess with it, addig more orange, to make it sort of tutti-frutti – just for fun.
Pam, an artist in our Friday group, helped me with the title. Just about finished, I had it up on an easel in Larkspur. She walked in the door and said “Well that’s a big ‘hello’!” Funny, I was considernig calling it “Hello” but was, as I often am, doubting it. I love having my inclinations accidentally affirmed! So, just after finishng a small rose painting I called “Farewell,” here is “Hello” – marking the partings and greetings of life.
January-February 2020 – 22″x22″ – Watercolor on paper
Fascination
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Inspiration and energy to make these watercolor paintings have been relatively steady resources in the past dozen or more years. I have a folder of “candidates” – photos I’ve taken that have given me the message they are worth spending my time on. Most of the time when going through this folder, looking at all these beautiful pictures, I can imagine myself jumping in to start painting pretty much any one of them. My problem is not having enough time.
But after finishing “Aria” in July, I was fresh out of something to paint and a look through my candidates left me totally flat. I spent 2 or 3 days digging through the rest of my image library looking for something that I may have overlooked. I never know when something from a while ago will reach out and grab me by the throat (ok, by the heart) – as it did with both “Sherose” and “Lavish.” Even there… nothing.
The thoughts were scary. Uh, oh. What if the inspiration well has run dry? What if I can’t paint flowers, fruit – all the stuff I’ve loved to paint for two decades – anymore, then what?
Then I went to my friend Samantha Davidson’s. Sam gives the most heavenly facials on Earth. On my way out the door, all tension drained from me, I saw this amazing faceted glass bowl, about the size of a cantaloupe, on her dining room table. It had a single stem of a pink hydrangea in it. The way the squares of glass caught and reflected the light, all the colors and iridescence! My gosh! It HAD to be painted!
Sam happily lent it to me. I came home and found a few things in the garden, waited for the sun to dip a lower in the sky and took several dozen photos. It felt great to come alive, to have something I couldn’t wait to paint!
I let myself pull out all the stops in Photoshop: use the image with the most colors in the pieces of glass, and then add in a few more; use the one that had a break in the flowers to keep it from being too heavy, add a leaf at the top to carry the eye skyward, and of course shift the colors to give myself maximum joy.
As I watched myself paint the glass itself, I realized how important it is to really paint what I see. The grid-like, linear aspect of this would make it really easy for my left brain to jump in and “organize” it all. In order to make it look real and alive, I had to let the uneven borders, bending lines and diminishing sizes and proportions be as they were, in order for it to really live.
Our Tahoe vacation was busier and more distracted than normal, so I came home having made very little progress and with a fire under my butt to get it finished in time for the Sausalito Art Festival. I took it on a camping trip in mid-August and even painted it on the picnic table in our dusty Russian River campsite, by (LED) lantern until well past dark. I was determined to get it done!
Somewhere in the last couple of days working on it the title sifted in. The root of the word “fascinate” in Latin is connected to “spell” and “witchcraft.” When overcome by the hunger, the need to paint something like I did this one, I do feel bewitched. That the word “facet” has a similar sound doesn’t hurt either. Here it is – meet “Fascination.”
August 2019 – 29”x29”– Watercolor on Paper.
September
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Walking back up our street after a hike up the neighborhood hill with the dog, I saw fruit on the plum tree. Not unusual, plum trees do bear fruit. But this was in September! Normally the plums are gone by at least mid-August. The leaves were starting to turn colors already.
The sight of the autumn leaves along with the reds, pinks and even violet colors in the fruit, still moist with the morning – was just beautiful. So, I came right back with the car, a ladder and my camera to take a bunch of pictures.
All of this was 5 or 6 years before any painting happened. None of the images were painting-ready from the get go. I spent hours and hours in Photoshop collaging, removing, adding. I loved the colors and the leaves. Still, something was missing.
A Saturday workshop on fruit had me hunting for something to demonstrate on – and I thought: what the hell? I started it for a workshop late in 2017 and then it was usurped by other paintings that insisted on coming through first.
As happens, after it sat patiently unfinished in my studio, I found renewed energy for it. It was high summer and I needed something colorful to work on. The background was fun – a particularly lively fuzzy background where I felt free with color and shape. This is the first thing I’ve painted where there were out-of-focus elements in both the background and the foreground.
The magic in this painting continues to be the fact that there was still fruit so late in the season. It’s not happened since – I’ve been paying attention. That was a special year. I’m happy that it’s been memorialized. Cherry plums in September.
August – September 2018 – 29″x29″ – Watercolor on paper
