Laurelines

Bringing the far North closer

When my beautiful daughter Cecelia won a scholarship to live and go to high school in Germany at age 16 for a WHOLE YEAR (!!!) I missed her so desperately that I started painting paintings of her at all stages of her childhood. In a miraculous way, those paintings brought her back to me during the endless 12 months of separation.

In a similar way, the paintings and studies for paintings I'm making for my upcoming show bring Iceland and Norway back to me. The studies below are quick and gestural, drawn from sketches and from the images in my mind's eye.

 

The trick will be to make finished works that share some of the energy of these studies. If I could, I'd spend one whole year just making large scale study after study like the last one shown here, acrylic on board. I wouldn't worry about producing a certain number of finished pieces, I'd just paint my heart out. And at the end of the year, I'd see where I'd been. Maybe that will be what 2014 holds for me. We'll see. There's a still-fresh 2013 to live first!

Introspection

It's been an in-drawing month, a time for introspection and reflection. I'm still here, though, and I'll be back more visibly soon.

 Norway from a moving ship, December 2009.

 

    All in calmness---

the earth with half-closed eyes

    moves toward winter

                            Dakotsu

Iceland, interrupted.

I was on my way. I'd left my home airport and was at JFK, waiting to board my flight for Iceland. But wait, my passport.... it was gone. GONE. VERY gone.

I, a most meticulous and frequent traveler, obsessive about my passport, had lost it... and then someone must have picked it up and kept it.  I, along with my husband, airline, airport, and TSA employees at JFK AND my home airport looked everywhere. Gone.

SO. My husband and I drive to DC Monday for an appointment with the US Passport Agency where, I HOPE, they will give me a replacement one. Then we drive home.

Then, the very next day, we begin again our journey to Iceland. I have rebooked all hotels, flights, etc. exactly the way they were... just seven days later.

Cross your fingers all goes well this time!

This forced hiatus has allowed me to test drive some of the supplies I'd packed to take. I was very eager to try  a Strathmore sketchbook with toned gray paper, my new Stillman & Birns Delta sketchbook with heavy-duty cold pressed paper.. and to use again my old trusty favorite drawing tools from art school, Caran d'Ache watercolor crayons. I figure I'll be sketching fast and loose (even more than I usually do) and in inclement weather... so the crayons will be perfect for getting down tones, gestures, textures FAST. I'll use them with other drawing materials, too.

I made sketches from photographs and sketches from my last Iceland trip and from references I found on the internet...just to get the feel of Iceland again. Some of these remind me of my sketches of Norway, which makes complete sense.

Here are some I've done. It will be so interesting, don't you think, to see how the ones done on site will differ from these? These do have, of necessity, a slightly generic feel about them.

 

Norway, finale!

Is it so wrong to covet a place? Well, too bad. Think of all the blue, dark, big paintings Norway would engender!! Okay, I'll calm down. Still, my eyelids and heart are permanently etched with the colors, angles, lines, splatters of wintry Norway.  In another life, perhaps, I'll be Norwegian and then won't we have fun!

Norway sketches, first part!

So here we are, home again, filled with memories of driving snow, northern lights, and polar nights! It was as exhilarating a time as last year's but colder and much snowier--which I, of course, loved.

 

Here are the first sketches. All the snow and otherwise opaque weather decreased visibility, thus I had fewer opportunities to sketch the scenery. But I loved every minute of being there and that, in the end, is what counts.