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
Flourish
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On the last day of the Pilgrimage to Paris I led in 2015 four of us took a day trip to another place of inspiration – Monet’s gardens at Giverny. It had been rainy and cloudy all week, but that Friday was spectacular with blue sky and puffy white clouds. My previous two visits to Giverny were both in the springtime, so I wondered whether there would still be much in bloom in autumn. I was happy to discover there was plenty of color – with dozens of varieties of dahlias at their peak, as well as the beginnings of fall color in the big, established trees that surround the lily pond.
So what did I need to paint first? Roses, of course! I’m pretty hopeless in my devotion to them. These late-season blooms were cascading down from a vine on the large turquoise arbor-like structure in the part of the garden towards the house. They had arranged themselves in a lovely composition and the splashes of color and rich greens in the background were a nice contrast to the delicately colored petals. The deal was sealed by the blue and turquoise in the colors of the arbor and the sky.
When I paint I’m more of a mixer of color than a layer-er. My brush hits different wells on my palette bringing various colors to a spot in the middle until I come to the color in my mind’s eye. But the shadowy parts of these roses told me to try something different. I was concerned that if I mixed too much I might end up with dull, dead colors. So I decided to layer using just three paints: a rose, a yellow and a soft blue.
I painted in that order: I first laid down rose where I saw it – either on its own or under yellow. Then where I saw yellow, then blue. There were a few places where I just had to mix – the dark neutral browns, but I still used only these three colors to mix – The five central roses were done with strictly three paints.
At first I thought the name might need to be something that would intimate the French connection. Starting with the French word for flower: fleur, I found my way to fleurish, which is cute, but a bit much. When spoken the sound of fleurish is very close to flourish, which has other meanings as an expressive gesture as well as to grow vigorously, which both fit.
May I introduce you to Flourish?!
June-August 2017 – 30″x22″ – Watercolor on paper
Eternal
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22″x22″ – $395
15″x15″ – $195
7.5″x7.5″ – $60
There is so much to say about this painting! I’ve written a journal post about it while I was working on it. In this post I share the time and place of the source images and the progression that led to the idea to paint it. Rather than repeat that here, I’ll share the process of actually creating this painting. The creative work for some of my paintings actually starts in Photoshop, piecing together parts of several photos. More than any other, this one was defined as a piece of digital art first. The original photograph, of me – standing in front of a clock inside the Musee d’Orsay in Paris – has substantial parts of the clock blocked by the structure of the building and the clock’s supports. I wanted to include some of this structure, to keep the spirit of place, without having it be too heavy and encumbered looking. Since, in my painting, I don’t make it up as I go, I needed the reference image to be well defined and refined before I even started drawing – which took many hours. Before drawing it, I shared the image with many people in my life, generating enthusiastic responses across the board as something altogether different for me – a new phase for my work. It was my niece Leigh who said she could see it really, really big and up on a ceiling. There does seem to be something cinematic about this image. The largest paper – in the heavy weight I like to paint on – dictates that I needed to paint this one at 40″x40″. In any case, painting it a lot larger would pose all kinds of logistical hurdles – that I’m not sure I’m ready for!
In my exploration of color and how it works, I’ve been curious about what might happen if I paint something using just three primary pigments. I used Phthalo Blue, Quinacridone Rose and Hansa Yellow Medium, which are very similar to the cyan, magenta and yellow in inkjet printers. Even the “black” in this painting is mixed from those three paints! The experience of painting this with just three colors was incredibly instructional and even in an odd way, freeing. If I needed to make a brown, or a dull, dark blue, I didn’t have to look to all the other paints on my palette, I had to find the color “solution” with just those three.
The name for this painting came out when I showed the finished reference image to Sister Mary, my spiritual director. She used the word “eternal” in response, which jumped out at me as the painting’s name. She described all the symbolism in it: the suggestion of a triangle indicates the Trinity, the roman numerals represent the human hand (one of the painters in my group noticed that the four is actually IIII instead of IV!), the X evokes the St. Andrew’s cross. And then, of course the rose which, besides being an anagram for “eros,” is so filled with symbolism and meaning. I find it remarkable that the little girl who ran around barefoot all summer and played hide-and-seek after dark with all the boys in Woodacre, is this feminine image. Most of my life I’ve had no idea that she was in me! I’ve learned from Alison Armstrong that the feminine is all about the eternal, yet we live our lives in a physical, time-bound world. It’s all here in this image – the eternal feminine framed in temporal world, supported by the masculine structure. Over a hundred years ago, there was a day when this clock first started keeping time; there will be a day somewhere in the future when it will stop, and in between, infinite moments when beauty can bring us into the experience of eternity.
February – March 2015 – 40″x40″ – Watercolor on paper
Chocolat
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15″x15″ – $195
7.5″x7.5″ – $60
Beverley Terry and I met at the Healdsburg Art Festival which resulted in my painting her dog Icarus. Then, she came for a while to the Tuesday watercolor group to learn watercolor and painted dogs herself (photos of them are in the art journal, late 2012). She also works at Wine Country Chocolates in Sonoma. She regularly and generously shared the gorgeous and delicious chocolate truffles they make and sell there with all of us on Tuesdays. We do miss her and her fabulous wit and paintings – as well as the chocolates – now that she doesn’t come anymore!!! But when I saw the first of these truffles, I immediately thought they needed to be painted! I set them on a footed glass cake plate so the light would come through the bottom and took some photos. I started painting this earlier this spring when everyone else was painting roses and tulips but the mood just wasn’t right for rich browns. I picked it up on our summer trip to Tahoe. I was challenged to stay engaged – I’m *such* a color junkie, that all the brown wasn’t doing it for me – plus something funny was happening with the paints where the reds settled on the top of the wash, giving it an off cast – too ruddy for chocolate. Manganese blue hue to the rescue!
The other hurdle was the need for them to be smooth and I was painting in a very dry environment in the mountains where my washes were drying faster than I’m used to. This one put me through the paces! Painting all the toppings was fun – the colors and shadows – which really brought me alive and engaged with the piece – at last.
Back at home, I showed it to my mom and asked what I should call it. “Chocolat” she said thinking of the movie with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. I LOVE that movie! It’s a favorite genre – the intersection of food and the mystical. “Like Water for Chocolate” is another. Here’s where I’m suggesting this painting take you – to that place where the heavenly taste and smell of chocolate can transport us. Like no other substance on earth.
July 2013 – 22″x22″ – Watercolor on paper
Paris
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In the spring of 2012 I painted a piece I called “Blossoms Squared” where I superimposed a grid over a reference photo and painted it one square at a time. This triggered a stream of ideas. I thought about simply rotating the grid so the squares were on the diagonal, but also thought about other “screens” through which to create an image and started seeing them everywhere: a brick wall, detailed scrolled ironwork… But then, I thought about maps. I love maps! One that I know well and is very close to my heart is the street map of Paris. Thus emerged the seed for this painting.
These flowers were in a florist’s sidewalk display on rue Monge in the 5th in Paris – not far from my apartment when I spent half a year there in 1996.
Setting it up was a challenge which took some technical skills to pull off. If I simply enlarged a street map of Paris, the width of the streets would be so large that they’d obscure too much of the flowers. Using my projector and Photoshop, I was able to create a workable “screen” out of the map. In order to have a the right level of detail, I ended up including only the very center of Paris (not even the Eiffel Tower made it in) to superimpose over the image of the flowers.
This is an entirely different way to think and paint. I had to find the image within each of the shapes on the map. It was interesting to watch myself switching back and forth between concentrating on the image of the flowers and noticing where I was in the city, while either remembering when I’ve been in that spot or wondering what is there on that stretch of street – apartments, restaurants, bookstores? Even without the street names, I still recognize a remarkable number of streets and bridges.
I wonder if I’d painted this image as I normally do, from a contour drawing, if it would be as interesting.
I’m so grateful for the creative spark to explore ideas like this. Now which map/image combo is next?
I tossed around myself and talked about possible names several times with others. More involved names seemed forced, so I decided to keep this painting’s name super simple. This is Paris.
May – June 2013 – 29″x29″ – Watercolor on paper
Bijoux
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15″x15″ – $195
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When I painted the first fruit tart “Fruit Tart,” I missed the color green in it. Every single other painting I’ve done before and since has had green in it somewhere – even “Fauchon Eclairs” has green-colored candies on some of the eclairs. So when I saw these tiny kiwi fruit in the market I bought some to make another fruit tart with them for a painting. I love to cook and actually think of it as my first art-form. I love making food beautiful, like these fruit tarts – arranging the fruit so the colors are pleasing is so satisfying. Whereas my creative process usually starts with a camera, sometimes it actually starts with making pastry! I painted this one differently than I usually do. Normally I paint the background to the foreground, painting the focal point last. This one I painted row by row. It was fun to see it take shape, like a wave of color working its way down the paper. All of my pastry paintings have some sort of French or Paris connection, this one is its name – I named it “Bijoux” as they seem like sparkly jewels sitting in their box of pastry.
February 2013 – 22″x22″ – Watercolor on paper
Dazzling
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With all the trips to Kauai that we make, you might think these two hibiscus flowers were growing there, but they were in a pot on the patio outside our kitchen here in Fairfax (Northern California). They will not survive our winters without protection (we do get frost). In the summers, though, they are quite happy. Alas, this plant is not still with us.
It lives on in this painting.
Beside the yummy color, I liked this image because it has a sense of companionship – the two are aligned, facing the same direction. With all the work I’m doing with PAX and masculine and feminine and partnership, it really spoke to me. I had been scared of all the detail on the surface of the petals – there’s a lot going on there. Recently I’m looking at why that is and realizing that it’s the left brain that both is freaked out about the detail and makes mischief in the painting process. It so gets in the way of making good art.
It’s useful for standing back and analyzing why a particular part of the painting doesn’t read. I find that listening to music while painting helps keep the spacial right brain engaged – and it soothes the overworked left brain too.
My papa gave me the name – it was his reaction to seeing the finished painting. Thanks, Papa.
July 2012 – 22″x30″ – Watercolor on paper
Lily Reflections
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20″x15″ – $250
10″x7.5″ – $75
These lilies are in a pond outside the Plantation Gardens restaurant in Kiahuna Plantation in Poipu on Kauai. When we go there, I often visit for painting ideas. In addition to the lily ponds they have the most extravagent collection of orchids I’ve ever seen! Though the same dimensions as the previous water lily panting – and the subjects are of similar scale – it still amazes me how different each painting ends up being. Paintings really do have a life of their own. A space of nearly two years between the painting of them and a whole other thing emerges. There’s so much more going on in this one. The reflections of the lilies are the star of the show for me. In Southside Lily Pond, the light was such that the reflections had very little detail, nearly black. In this one, it was earlier in the morning, making the reflections the most full of color and richness. The reflections of the reedy succlulent plant growing at the back edge of the pond is also makes a big impact. There are differing opinions about the dark shadow in the center of the painting. I like that you cannot tell exactly what it is – it’s mystery and murkiness. And it wasn’t until I was really in close doing the drawing that I realized there was a little dragonfly or damselfly on the lily on left. So, I made it bigger and spread its wings in the tropical light.
March 2010 – 30″x22″ – Watercolor on paper
