Laurelines

New moons and portals

I've been in a long new moon phase, hidden from sight, but very here. Just recently I've begun to see  the 15 or so (!) paintings I've been making start to gel a bit.  Of these, how many will eventually be finished, I have no idea. The ones that need to be finished will make themselves known and I will just keep at it until I know which they are.

This process is very slow but it appears to be mine for now, so I accept it. Deadlines and rushing can come later.

Here's a detail of one of these in progress. This is one of what I call 'portal paintings,' small at 12" x12", but big enough for me to squeeze through to the next incarnation. All of the pieces I'm working on are inspired by my numinous places, this one in particular is inspired by a bay in northern Wales.

 

 

I've also been learning to make linocuts and I love that medium! After a semester long ago spent learning etching and aquatint, and workshops in lithography, and silkscreen, I've finally found the  printmaking method that calls to me. I feel it lends itself very well to my Caledonian Orogeny project, as a way of working back in the studio, after making  my on-site drawings.

Here's an example of what I mean.

 

Here's another. I beg your indulgence...I LOVE learning this art form and I love tweaking for color and texture changes! I will force myself to stop at posting two here.

 

 

My garden will be on view this weekend to at least 1300 visitors, so I have had garden prep very much in my life these past months. I am sharing, therefore, two garden images, one from my journal documenting two recent plant acquisitions and one sketch I made a couple of years ago at J C Raulston Arboretum, a sketch I recently rediscovered under a pile of other work.

My trip to VERY northern Norway is coming up in May! To say I'm excited is an egregious understatement. I have lots more to tell before I go and I will!

January/February, on paper and in color

I've had a good beginning of the year so far, a combination of studio time (feeling my way with matte acrylic paint, which I love) and drawing and sketching, some examples of which follow! 

Another early morning warm up in my studio: I loved making this tea light sketch with acrylics and brush pen on toned Stillman & Birn paper:

Stillman & Birn journal again, this time a collaged spread, with deep red accents on that matte gray paper:

Finding energy and joy in small things, such as this arrangement at my dear friends Jeffery and Stanley's house. Their place is full of artfully and heartfully arranged objects from their charmed lives. I will go back often  to draw there:

Here's a shift in mood! Just returned from a whirlwind trip to New York to see the David Hockney show at the Met, and made some sketches while there. I was delighted by several marble portrait busts of men with cascades of curls (wigs, of course) and wish I'd had days to sketch more of them! Drawn on site, red and blue gouache added later.

Breakfast was a sketchable affair, I felt, with those gestural pearly white globes, Vermont farm poached eggs, and other fun colors and shapes:

Last trip sketch, my patient, calm husband at JFK, waiting for our flight back home, reads on his Kindle:

Finally, my illustration for the Winter 2018 issue of Charleston Style & Design Magazine, accompanying a lovely essay by Patrice Gopo, writing of her travel and fulfillment dreams for her young daughter. This will be my last CS & D illustration until summer when I look forward to getting back on board with that lovely magazine. For the next months travel and other work will be on my front burners.

2017 into 2018: The straight way was lost

 

In the middle of the journey of my life,

I came to myself in a dark wood

And the straight way was lost.

Adapted from a translation of Dante's "Inferno,"  Canto I.

  

Not exactly lost, and the chronology is off, but it's just that a new, indirect, and wavy way seems to be taking over here. I believe it comes from that life force, the c'hi, that I sense so palpably in my numinous places, and which inspires me in my art life.

Well, I can't be in my numinous places (Norway, Wales, Iceland, Scotland, etc) every minute of the day, so I'm figuring out how to find charged experiences here, at home, in my daily life. And now, at the beginning of a new year,  I've started following this barely-intuited way, this wavy, meandering way, in my journal/sketchbook.

I feel a huge burden of guilt over unfinished paintings from the past year and more and this guilt has made it ever harder to return to that unfinished work. So, I'm going back, via this new way, to basics and to joy. 

The way appeared one very cold day on my late afternoon walk. Here is what I saw: 

  

I read the message in these lines and now I draw, paint, make marks, collecting my own images, from what I see around me, not just anything my eye happens upon, but scenes and objects that seem charged with a special energy, for whatever reason... and record them in my journal, to find out who... and where... I am.  Again.

I'm not making huge pronouncements or plans for now, just going step by wavy step. And I'm developing an awareness for presence of the c'hi in, say, a plate of apples.

It's a happy life.

 

Pink hyacinth in pot wrapped in pink foil, mixed media on toned paper:

Bowl of nuts with nutcracker, mixed media on toned paper:

Angel drawing after Melozzo da Forli, mixed media on toned paper:

Apples and tangerines on blue plate, mixed media on toned paper:

My new challenge is to be open to charged places and objects and settings near to home. Then, when I get back to Norway this May, I'll be more than ready to receive it!

Happy New Year! May we be filled with energy and joy.

Only Connect: My Trip to North Wales

Connections are surfacing everywhere in my life this phase. Without going into a long explanation right now on that topic, (but I will soon!), let me share some images from my two weeks on the Lleyn Peninsula and on Anglesey, two very different, but equally magnificent places. 

Walking along the sandy beach on Abersoch Bay, I saw several luminous blue mounds and wondered what they were. They were Velella jellyfish, washed up on shore, a phenomenon that has occurred on the various coastal regions of Wales often recently. Here I started with the Winsor & Newton tube gouache I took along and finished with crayon since the paint took so long to dry.

 Tea time at the beautiful house and gardens Plas yn Rhiw on the Lleyn Peninsula was a great treat. My husband and I were able to sit on the terrace and have our tea, a rare occasion on this often blustery, rainy, chilly trip. Here I used watercolor crayon and Pentel brush pen on site, adding colored pencil green later at home.

Traveling light as I do, I had pared down my paint and crayon palettes to just a few colors, one of which was not green, so I used my blues and yellows to make this sketch of the Italianate garden on the grounds of the house we stayed in at Abersoch. I ended up being glad I had no green; I like the retro Technicolor effect I got from those limited colors.

On Anglesey, at the café of the art gallery Oriel ynys Môn, I had for lunch, what else, Welsh Rarebit. It was warm and comforting on another one of those chilly, blustery days. Again, here I used Pentel pocket brush pen, watercolor crayon, and a blue colored pencil.  And you can't tell this from the sketch, but that was wonderful Welsh sparkling water in the small glass.

On the many, many walks I took on Anglesey, taking advantage of the lulls in rain and high wind, I often started by walking down a magical holloway, or sunken lane, behind our house, leading to the Anglesey coast path. Here is one of the parade of venerable trees that line that old way:

I don't have landscape sketches per se, because I was concentrating on a different way of looking at land forms and that was the underlying reason for the trip. This has to do with the Caledonian Orogeny and it has to do with connections and you've read some about that here before.  Here's just a snippet of the 12' drawing I made this time of the rock outcrops I found on LLigwy Bay, rocks that are 450 million years old, give or take a few million.

The story is longer and so is the drawing and so is the time it would take to tell it. But it's an important story to me and I will be back soon!

In a liminal state

Here it is, the end of one of my favorite months, the eve of another.

I am standing on a threshold, with loose ends to tie up before I leave for Wales and some miscellany to share.

Having finished my summer workload, I turned back to Alaska-inspired paintings. I felt as though I had, literally and figuratively, painted myself into a corner with the Copper Mountain series and their restrictive color palette. These are self-imposed restrictions, needless to say, and so are readily set aside for a while.

As a way to sneak up on and vanquish my stymied and procrastinating self, I turned away from orange and verdigris and thought about the cool blues and greens and earth tones that characterized 99.99% of the Alaska I experienced while I was there!

More studies. The trick is to keep the energy and verve of studies in my final paintings... that has been the hitch with the Copper Mountain series so far. Nevertheless, I persist.

Study of Lake Clark, Alaska and its turquoise waters and dramatic sky:

 

Standing here today, I believe I see some thoughts of Wales sneaking into this study! Liminal states are like that, with their rearview glances to the past and their earnest wonderings about the future.

I mentioned last time my brush pen technique as a solution for the garden illustrations I had to do and that worked well. I actually simplified shapes and tones and ended up with not a lot of nuance, but some fresh and light-spirited images which went well with the tone of the essay.

I can't share the final illustrations until they are published this fall, but here is a collage I made of leftovers from the process, all pasted into my journal/sketchbook. Color and light and simple shapes dominate here.

 

Having lately rediscovered my beloved brush pen for pleasure drawing I vow to make more drawings with it. Here is one of my daughter Kate from a few days ago. Pentel pocket brush pen and Caran d'Ache watersoluble crayons:

So now, again, back to the painting studio and to thoughts and plans for my upcoming trip to north Wales. See you soon!

Brush pen memories

Help! I'm working on illustrations to go along with the essay on my garden that I wrote for Charleston Style & Design's upcoming fall issue. Deadline: NOW or a time very much like it.

I have made dozens and zillions of drafts for these, mainly because I can't settle on the technique I want to use. My collage approach doesn't fit with this subject and the format of these images. My studio floor, the repository for rejected drafts, is a mess, 

What to do??!! Last night, I thought, "brush pen, why not?" I love working with my Pentel pocket brush pen. It feels almost like an extension of my drawing hand. I've used it for lots of sketch subjects and some illustrations over the years. I looked back at my Flickr account to remind myself of the ways I had done this and was waylaid by memories.

May I share some of these rediscovered images and memories with you?

Below: In Pasadena,a cactus garden, part of the larger Huntington Gardens, that I visited with my friend and brilliant artist Virginia Hein on a sketching jaunt fall before last. This brings back such wonderful memories of our time together.

I had hesitated to try brush pen with my current assignment because I wasn't sure I could get the nuances I want with it. But this sketch managed nuance!

Next a scene from Oakland Bay from 2015. I was visiting my daughter Cecelia. Looking at this, I am instantly back in that day, in that place. And I miss my daughter so much. Some nuance here, too!

In another vein, a portrait sketch of Sir Walter Raleigh for the cover of Walter Magazine in 2013. I submitted several images. They chose another one for the cover, but I have always loved this Sir Walter's sassy and flourishy attitude.

Jumping again to a quite different topic, here's a pretty atmospheric, nuancy sketch of a scene in Iceland. Drawing in the twilight, especially the Northern twilight.. aahhh. Heaven. 

The sketch below is another one-way express ticket to the past. David and I were traveling in the Dordogne with our friends Moreton and Drake. Moreton drew me as I drew this scene on the river near Bouziès. I spy nuance! Fabulous memories here, too!:

Finally, speaking of being overtaken by memories, I saw this pen and ink and crayon drawing of our Miles three or so years ago and, though it's not a brush pen drawing, it IS a drawing of a beloved baby, so that counts for a lot, doesn't it? Memories.

Back to work now, keeping my fingers crossed that my brush pen and I will get this done!