Laurelines

The story unfolds at last: my garden book finished!

Phase two* of my art projects relating to my new home, my new garden, my new life is finished! Using a Seawhite of Brighton concertina sketchbook, as I love to do, I painted, drew, collaged a narrative of images from May to October. Starting with my grapevine in spring and ending with the same grapevine in fall, I chose highlights of the garden to include in the record, and with each spread, I chose whatever method and media I felt like . The result is 12', unfolded, of colors, shapes, movements, textures, and, since it is a pollinator garden, a few bugs and birds hover here and there.

 

The clip above was made in dim light and the resolution is not great, but you get an idea of the whole. Below are shots of half of the book unfolded in sunlight, in the very garden the book was made from and for. Below that are double spreads of a few key images,  scanned to give a more accurate idea of the colors.

 

For years, I have loved accordion books to record travel images as well as my Caledonian Orogeny drawings made on site in Wales and Norway.  Open these books up, and you find the very format for a story, moving from left to right. My blog's name is a clue to my love of the storyline, both visual and verbal, and these books give me a perfect springboard.

Here is one more example of my use of this format, my first record of the Caledonian Orogeny project, made on Whitesands Bay near St Davids, Wales, in 2017. Here you get a better sense of the spread, although this one is not completely extended either. It's hard to find a 12' long surface! 

Now I can move to phase 3 of my new house and garden art project: paintings made with pigment from the red clay soil we live on here and/or new pieces working with house and memory imagery.  I have started several of these and am eager to get back to them, now that the garden book is done!

 

*Phase one was the pair of portraits I made of the original owners of this 160 year-old house. 

 

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New house, new studio, new work, and a new poem from a friend

 

As I've written here before, I'm researching the history of our new house and its people.

A quick background recap:

The one-story farmhouse was built in the 1860s in Smithfield, NC, by Burkett Jones, a cotton farmer and entrepreneur, an exConfederate soldier, who had been injured early in the war and sent home. The structure was moved to its present site in Hillsborough in 1997 to prevent its demolition at the expansion of the Smithfield airport.

Since the house's story is now part of mine, I want to weave its history into my art life. First steps in this process have been making loose portrait drawings of the original owners, drawing a cotton plant from life, collecting red clay soil to turn into paint for use in the coming weeks.  Below are a couple of early examples.

Cotton bolls and stems bought at the state farmers market. Acrylic, ink, soft pastel on paper.

Drawing from a copy of a copy of a copy of an original photograph of Burkett and Mary Ann Jones, provided by the Johnston County Heritage Center in Smithfield. No doubt these faces will appear again in different format and media. Graphite, water-soluble crayon, and soft pastel on toned paper.

Recently, Rachel Victoria Mills, a local poet and a new friend, as yet unmet in person due to Covid restrictions, saw on Instagram my image of cotton above, and, in her words, "the fields opened up", and, after a long period of quiet, a new poem emerged. 

Here are Rachel's own words as they appeared in a recent blog post of hers:

On the nowhere road between home and office, those 18 years I lived in the Eastern part of the state, this time of year the fields flatten and turn to short-haired flax, much like the farmers driving their loads along the highway next to me.   Along the road, the cotton workers go about their work, hatted and gloved, darker and more serious as they gather the seed-specked balls in combine-waves across the landscape.  Trip by trip, I must have absorbed that common scene until years later it has impressed itself indelibly in memory.

But it is Laura Frankstone's Instagram photo of her painting, yesterday's "warm-up" (as she calls it), which brings that vision back to me.

 

Cotton, in its various envisionings, has been a sort of opening of the field, to borrow Robert Duncan's phrase. Laura has been writing about the slow work of getting back to art after a long time of personal trials and removals, and her days finally in her new studio,"warming up" again to the field of making.  Whether, like her, there is now a new, big bright space to work in, or like me at this small table before a window which looks out, just as brightly, to garden beauty, insights come from all the windows we look out of.

 

I feel happy and deeply moved by Rachel's response. Who knows what will prick the creative spirit and when? As for me, I have light and color, rich stories, new energy, and lovely new studio windows to look out of. 

Colors! It is not only red clay that is warming up my world. Christmas flowers in the new place have thrilled me. Ink and wash on paper:

Quick sketch of flowers I'm adding to my new garden. I will document this new creation of mine in the next blog post. Ink and watercolor wash.

 

And last, a glimpse of my beautiful new studio, until recently a two-car garage. In 2021, may you, too, have new windows to look out of and opening creative fields.

Happy new year!

The Canary in the Coal Mine: Sheltering at Home

On February 20th, I badly injured my left leg while at the gym. It's a long story, but the bare facts are that I was in driven pursuit of a goal and I was careless. I was not paying attention to my immediate surroundings. 

Afterwards, I was basically bedridden for two weeks and then I had to have surgery. In all the weeks since my injury, I've worn a full leg brace and now it's been seven weeks that I've been confined to my house. 

I posted bits of my story and some sketches I made on social media. People were lovely and sympathetic, of course. They urged me to have patience and fortitude. Life went on as usual in the world outside my own.

Then, the pandemic hit and soon, everyone was confined. My personal story blended in with the world's story. I had a four week's head start for sheltering at home, so I knew what it meant.

Now we are all trying to be patient and have fortitude. We are all trying to stay whole, healthy, and sane. 

I've on and off felt like drawing throughout this period. I've had some really down moments, as have we all.  I miss my family so much. I miss my friends. I miss walking. I miss all sorts of physical activity. I miss being in my studio and working on my painting project. Under these circumstances, both personal and societal, sadness is normal. 

But this will pass. All things do.

Here are some sketches I've made in these past weeks.

As soon as the pain medications diminished, I felt like drawing. The bedside table was handy.

As days went on, I found myself obsessed by the bottle of hand sanitizer on my table. While I was drawing it, I realized that the bubbles in the bottle, frozen as they were in viscous liquid, sheathed as they were in harsh plastic, felt like me, my spirit, my ability to move. I was drawing self portraits.

Bored with my bedside, I drew faces from Netflix screen captures. It was something different to do:

 

Kind friends brought food and flowers. These gorgeous sunflowers captured my longing for vitality and the sun:

Well, and there was always, and again, that bedside table. It grew crowded with jostling objects. It still is.

Tulips from a beloved friend seemed to yearn for freedom after a few days in a pot on my bookshelf. They became another self portrait.

Eventually I was able to sit in my garden, in a wheelchair, and draw a bit.

So here I am and there we are. Together, I hope. Patient, I hope. Blessed with fortitude, I pray. I send my best wishes to all and my deepest hope for a brighter world waiting.

Québecois Detour!

In the midst of months of painting and family events and obligations, a dear friend and I took a liqhtning quick 4-day holiday to Québec City last week. I had been to Montreal and Mont Tremblant, but never to the oldest (founded in 1608) city in Canada. Friends who had been had raved about it and since it was much easier to get to than my usual places (arctic Norway, anyone?) I decided to go.

Robyn and I stayed just outside the walls of the old city and it was a lovely 9-minute walk there. We walked everywhere, in and around, up and down, 7-10 miles each day. We sketched, we ate delicious food, and we drank an Aperol spritz or two (not quite the national drink of Québec, but still ;D.) We were charmed by this vibrant, small, deeply historic place.

The sketches I made are all over the place, stylewise, mediumwise, and subjectwise and just as I was getting a feel for being there, it was time to go. Fortunately, I'm going back for another short stay in August, but this time with my husband and two of our grandsons. I look forward to seeing the child-centric parts of Québec City and I hope I have time to make a sketch or two then, too!

I had long had a passion for sketching fountains. It felt like coming home to sit down and sketch this lovely Fontaine de Tourny, near l'Assemblée Nationale!

I'm not a great one for sketching architecture, normally, but in such a city, with such architectural richness, wouldn't it be churlish not to!  

And, on the other hand, I AM one to sketch people and flowers, so voilà! Me in my element with brush pen, ladies, and geraniums, after eating a delightful mushroom and ham crêpe at le Petit Chateau.

More architecture, but Chateau Frontenac... need I say more?

Continuing my mixing up of mediums and styles, I drew this fantastic salade Niçoise on a sunny, warm day at lunch with Robyn. I felt this happy subject called for my Koh-i-noor Magic Pencil, with its multi-colored lead. I love this drawing tool that leaves magic behind wherever it goes!

And I can never resist drawing figural sculpture, particularly men with curling locks, knee britches, and supercilious expressions.  I'm sure my DNA is involved somewhere here.

This last sketch is actually the first I made. I'm using a small, stiff-nibbed pen here and so the drawing is a bit stiff, but I still enjoyed making it. And I loved loosening up again over the next days.

 

I feel refreshed and clear after this little trip and I hope I will be able to transfer that feeling when I get back to the studio tomorrow. Oof, what a time it's been!

Happy, happy summer! May your heart be light and all your colors Québecois!

Back on track:Norway story, continued

Summer heat has cast a pernicious spell on me, it's clear, but the winds are changing, the light is changing, and, finally unwilting, so am I.  Weather aside, reentry to normal life has been very difficult after such an exalted and inspiring time in Norway.

My chief reason for going on this trip was in pursuit of my Places Project,  to see and draw another vestige from the Caledonian Orogeny, circa 450-250 MYA.  I had fewer days to do this than I had for my first two drawings, made in Wales, one in Pembrokeshire, one on Anglesey.

The accordion sketchbook I drew in here was custom made for me by book artist friend Josh Hockensmith. It is 10 1/2' long when stretched to its full length and each page is bigger than those in the Seawhite of Brighton concertina books I used in my first two drawings. The paper is ivory and slightly toothed, not white and smooth, and so the resulting drawing has a slightly different look from the first two.

The rocks I drew were very different, too. The rocks in Wales were faceted, sharp, angular, with mostly smooth surfaces. The rocks in Norway were flowing, textured, and multi-colored in shades of grays, ochres, some siennas and subtle blues. These outcrops will lend themselves to later studio pieces, some collages, some linocuts, perhaps,  and I am looking forward to seeing what will emerge!

 

In between my days of Caledonian Orogeny drawing, I sketched, as you will have seen in my last post. Here are some miscellaneous moments, caught in my sketchbook. On a remote island in the Barents Sea, magenta saxifrage grew improbably and brashly between rocks in the tundra.

Later, in the Lofotens, I drew another view of the majestic Olstind mountain, seen from our cabin near Reine.

My husband and I love Bergen and it was in Bergen that I had this delicious vitello tonnato dish for lunch at a café near the Kode Museums. Note the candle, lit in the middle of the day in sunny, summery Bergen. This is one of the things I love about Scandinavia, the use of candles, a profound celebration of light, at all times of the year, at all times of the day, in the Polar Night or in the time of the Midnight Sun. I have taken this to my heart and I do the same thing in our home in North Carolina.

Circling back to Longyearbyen, here is a drawing of a bus passenger, who was a wonderfully monumental figure, compelling to draw:

On the painting front, two recently finished pieces.The first is another work belonging to my Places Project. This is a Copper Mountain sunset painting, inspired by my artist residency in Alaska, fall before last:

The second is an example of What I Did for Love, a snowy owl painting requested by my four-year-old grandson Miles. I have two more requested owlish pieces to finish, but I am returning to Norway in the studio in the next days, too.

I won't wait so long to post again. Soon I am taking a shortish trip with two dear friends to Yorkshire, not on the trail of the Caledonian Orogeny. The main focus will be to spend time with my friends in the birthplace and childhood region of one of them. Though I have lived and traveled widely in the UK, I have never been to Yorkshire. It turns out that my long-ago ancestors from Norway, settled in Yorkshire (coincidentally near where we will be), before much later emigrating to the US, so I will be, in some small way, returning home. Who knew??? See you soon!

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!

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!

Getting back to 'Yay'

I've been drawing all my life, from at least aged three, that is. From my twenties on, I've sketched while traveling, just for the delight and curiosity of it.

Lately, though I've continued with travel sketching, I've fallen off the daily sketching habit, I realize this has to do with all that sketching I've shared here and on Urban Sketchers and other web sites over the past twelve years.

Sketching on location began to feel like a performance, an obligation that grew onerous. The spark that this sort of drawing held for me dimmed the more I felt it a duty and not an inner-generated (even if outwardly shared) activity, the way it had been all my life

This weekend I had to fly to Michigan to attend a memorial service for a dear friend. I wasn't sure if I'd feel like sketching or if I'd have any time to, but I packed some crayons and a brush pen just in case. Out walking in the early morning, I came upon a garden scene in reds and greens and lights and darks. I thought, 'I want to draw that!'  I broke out the few crayons I'd packed and my brush pen and I set to.

After a few minutes I ran out of time and had to wrap it up.

There was my sketch.  'Yay," I thought, yay!' 

'Yay' is child speak and it perfectly expresses that spontaneous delight I'd been missing. I agree with psychologists who say that we carry our child heart inside us all our lives and that is where our creativity lies.  

This quick and modest sketch of a slice of a summer garden seems to me a kind of breaking of a spell. I have lots of other work going, work that I (mostly) enjoy, illustrations and a much-procrastinated-upon painting series, but this is different. This was made by the crayon-wielding child Laura who looked at something she thought was beautiful, took out her colors and said, 'Yay!'

  

 

I have four illustrations due in the next few days and then it will be time to think about my next trip to Wales. As of today, August 1st, I can say I'm leaving next month, even if the date of departure IS the end of September.

I still have so much to say about that trip and where it fits into my larger Places Project. After my deadlines, I'll be back to tell more.

Yay!

Midsummer update: painting, drawing, following a trail

Here you go: some miscellaneous news and images from midsummer. First: several paintings still in process (albeit a very long and frequently interrupted one.)  Well, it takes what it takes and I am who I am, so there, as I often think, we are. (Update from yesterday's studio time: moving forward! I'm learning more what the paintings want to be!)

Other news:  a writing and illustration assignment for Charleston Style & Design Magazine, due August. I'm to do a double-page spread on the subject of my garden in words and watercolor sketches. I'm in the midst of this and, whew, it is not at all as sticky a process as the painting one. 

Recent photos of my garden so you can see some of the context for this:

I will be teaching another three-part drawing series at the Nasher Museum of Art this fall, but I've asked for November dates, since I'll be in Wales again in September!! This series will focus on the figure and I am to tie it to the important Carlo Dolci exhibit, opening late August and running through December. I'm very, very excited about this series! We will have live models and we may hold the sessions out in the open space next to the galleries! What a lively and outreaching museum is the Nasher! 

And then comes Wales! We will be going to north Wales this time, to Anglesey and the Lleyn Peninsula, following the Caledonian Orogeny trail! Oh, and on the subject of that unfathomably ancient mountain range, I have more plans and ideas! Odd, perhaps, to have a 450 million year old mountain range as a muse, but I do have it and so there, once again, we are. Once I get the summer obligations met, I will tell all about my plans and dreams for the Caledonian project over the next two years. God willing, it will be the project of a lifetime, with thrilling trips to bring it forth.

Finally, some miscellaneous sketches from my time in Pembrokeshire in May.

View of Carn Llidi, near St. Davids' Head, in blues and orange.

A slice of the disused slate quarry at Abereiddi.The colors of the stones and rust from the abandoned quarry are stunning:

Carn Llidi again, with rapeseed field, late afternoon into dusk:

View of Carn Llidi and jackdaws from the window of my apartment on the first day, a day of mist and rain:

Ink and watercolor drawing of green sandstone outcrops at Whitesands Bay:

Tidal leavings harvested at Whitesands Bay and later drawn as still life, with sand from the beach applied to the page:

My beloved Carn Llidi, drawn this time on a sunny day with brush pen and watercolor:

A little collage in my sketchbook of some of the wildflowers in bloom in the May hedgerows around St. David's. I fell in love with those hedgerows! This spare collage is more of a mnemonic device for me than anything. I will return to that subject later.

Though we will be in northern Wales this fall, as I said, I am not through with Pembrokeshire and St.David's yet! There is so much of great personal meaning for me in that area and we were, with our friends, so happy there!

 

 

See you soon on the Caledonian trail! 

 

 

Copper runs through it

Well, here I am with a post from February, which cheekily ended way too soon! 

For months I have been elatedly immersed in thoughts of copper and copper-related minerals and copper-related colors, ever since my residency in Alaska last August. One Alaskan sunset in particular was seared forever on my mind's eye and heart... the sky all tints and hues of orange, pink, red, and the glacial waters of Lake Clark looking like pale oxidized copper,  and then the mountains, Copper Mountain, in particular (yes! That is its name!) was set on coppery fire by that sun. It was one of those holy moments; I felt lifted to a world of thrilling and pure beauty.

And then, everywhere I looked afterwards, I saw copper... in the salmon leaping from the water, in the colors of the native blue geranium leaves as they turned autumnal, in the bonfire flames, and on and on. My work started to be filled with burnt orange, cadmium oranges and reds, phthalo turquoise, cobalt green, teal, burnt sienna, ochre... the orange/blue- to- red/green world I saw when I thought of Alaska.

This is a bonfire built the night of that coppery sunset.The magnificent fire was a brilliant celebration of that place, that day, that glory. Here we see my orange/turquoise palette in an early manifestation.

Below are two of many, many studies I'm working through to try to figure out my own idiom for expressing what I saw and felt in the coppery Alaska. In addition to those zillion studies of all sizes and impulses, I have 12 paintings in progress, filling up my studio walls and floor. Who knows which of these will end up resolved? I don't mind, though. This is the slow way I work. I am an eternal pioneer in the studio, scrabbling for ways to get where i want to go.

Here is copper in the vegetal world, spangles of it appearing overnight on the leaves of wild native geranium:

Later, on my trip to Austria, I was thrilled to learn that the Natural History Museum in Vienna has a vast mineralogical collection. I headed straight for the specimens that were copper-related. Oh, those colors, my new colors! I stood my ground there on the cold tile floor, sketching carefully for hours, as rivers of school children flowed everywhere around me. This was the micro view of my copper world and with my love of geology, I reveled in it.  Here are two spreads from my Vienna sketchbook:

Since my return, I've made several sketches, unrelated to my Alaska project, without realizing as I drew that I was still using my coppery palette!

A bystander at the Women's March in January asked me why I'd chosen the colors I used for my sketches. It was then that I realized what I'd done!

I want to finish at least SOME of the Copper Mountain series before I leave for Wales again in May. I'm slow, but I'm optimistic!