Laurelines

My Places Project part 1: Beginner's Mind

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."  from Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice.

 

For my Places Project, I'm choosing locations that, for all sorts of reasons, send my heart reeling. Alaska, Wales, and Bavaria are on the horizon in the coming months. I'm sticking closer to home for now. 

For this work, I'm adopting Beginner's Mind, reaching back to the four-year-old Laura with her box of unlimited possibilities, aka the 48 crayons. I want her spontaneous response to her surroundings, a response unfettered by the history of stylistic shticks and tricks that any artist working for a while has. Shorthand techniques are useful, but rely on them too much and your art becomes inert. Inert is the opposite of what I want my work to be.

My first numinous place is Peregrine Farm, in Alamance County, about 30 minutes from my house.  This is land owned by friends of ours, Alex and Betsy Hitt, who have farmed it for 35 years.  Their place exerts a pull you'd have to call spiritual. Here there is natural and human-made beauty, order, and, though it's a mightily productive farm, here there is peace. 

The things Alex and Betsy grow are of a rare quality, both in taste and in appearance. Terroir is at work here. It is a concept usually applied to wine, but I think it explains so much about anything alive and issuing from the earth.  

noun ter·roir \ˌter-ˈwär\

1. :  the combination of factors including soil, climate, and sunlight that gives [....] distinctive character

 

I want to embody (literally!) in my art this phenomenon of terroir, a distant country cousin to the ch'i, and to do so, I start with la terre itself, the soil.

Soil is our everyday experience of our earth, whether we are just trodding on it or working it for a purpose.  This spring I have been digging soil, collecting rocks, and making my own paint out of that very earth where the Peregrine lettuce and the flowers and the peppers grow.

This is my first time making  paint and I feel like a magician.

 I am bowled over by the granulation of my paints made from the earth! I could make them more refined, but then I would lose what I love most... a sense of the paint's/soil's essential nature and energy. 

  

 Soil into paint is just the beginning. I'm also making drawing tools and materials out of found objects, like the incidentally formed charcoal Alex led me to in his 35-year-old burned brush pile.

Here is a sketch of Big Branch, a tributary of the Haw River that provides one of Peregrine Farm's boundary lines. Sitting on a large rock in the middle of the creek, I drew with a piece of burned blueberry bush from Alex's ash pile. Later, I will make ink out of some of those ashes and I will draw with it, too. 

More blueberry bush charcoal put to work:

In keeping with the many possibilities of Beginner's Mind, I am branching out in lots of directions. In early May, I made use of rainwater I collected and the sun to produce my own images of Betsy's gorgeous anemones:

Mixed media: watercolor and rainwater:

Cyanotype: sun and anemones:

I'm at the beginning of Beginner's Mind, on this Places path. I'm where I need to be.

 

I'll be back soon with more images from Peregrine Farm and some thoughts about origins. Happy June to you!

San Francisco days, wet and dry, March 2016

Well, it looks like I'll be heading back to the Bay Area end of April because my daughter Cecelia is having her first art show there and I can't miss the opening! I'm SO proud of her!

I hope and trust the weather will be better than it was on this recent trip. It rained, rained, rained... rain with the weight of chicken soup... every day except my last.

So, here are some indoor sketches first from the rainy days, and then some from my happy, busy last day on the coast with my dear friend Kathleen, whom I've loved since we were freshmen in college.

I stayed in a charming, slightly quirky, but very commodious bed and breakfast place in north Berkeley. The decor was heavily Asian and very tranquil. Here's a peek:

 

Cecelia and I had lunch our last day at a Spanish restaurant on Shattuck Street. Inside: bright and dry. Outside: rain.

We went to Chinatown to an Asian art supply store so I could buy some BIG calligraphy brushes. Afterwards, we sketched on the staircase. Here is Cecelia:

Finally, three sketches from the day trip Kathleen and I took to the coast near Pescadero. I was in absolute heaven, witnessing this craggy magnificence and making attempts at capturing something of it. I can't wait to go back!

April is going to be a busy month, what with another trip to California, leading a sketching session at Duke's Nasher Museum of Art, finalizing plans for a very special trip to Alaska that I just got word I'd be making this year, and diving into my personal project for the year! More about all of this soon! A bientôt!

December in Bavaria: my sketches and good wishes to you!

Happy end of 2015 and happy tomorrow and the new year! I am just getting this post in in the nick of time... before the clock delivers us to 2016 in this part of the world! The sketches from our trip to Bavaria earlier this month are a fitting way for me to end this year's blog posts. We LOVED being in that part of the world. It is where I spent some of the happiest moments of my childhood and now, of my adulthood. We have already made plans to go back next December. It is not the home of my deep heart the way Norway is, but it is important to me, emotionally, aesthetically, and intellectually. Magnificent natural beauty! History! Great art and architecture! Interesting food and drink! Yes to Bavaria! And Austria, too! I'm not through with you yet!

Oh, the delicious confections in Munich! We succumbed, often.

The rococco grotto at the Residenz Museum in Munich wowed me with its rich textures and quirky figures!

Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a place personally important to me. David and I spent the day there, wandering, sketching, eating, drinking. Of course!

 

More Bavarian dining and sketching:

And just a quick sketch of the mountain shapes that thrilled me there. I have more of these. They will provide lots of visual and emotional information for later paintings.

I am so excited about 2016. I will tell more in the next few days. Happy, happier, happiest new year to all of you!

Woman at work, July-into-August

I've been quiet. The heat, not so bad the last two summers, is here with a big, fat thud. I am never my most effervescent self in this weather. Add to that the fact that this is the third summer in a row when I've had a late August, early September deadline for big projects. So I wait for cooler (and *cold) weather to be energized and extroverted, and I do my work.  

Magazine work:

I had a fun assignment for the summer issue of Charleston Style & Design, illustrating a lively essay (read it here) that didn't have a lot of visual content.  Well, there was a dead baby possum, but my editor and I agreed we'd leave that alone. A door hinge is the central image of the story, so here is my hinge!

 

Charleston Style & Design magazine, Summer 2015

Restaurant job:

In May, I accepted a job making illustrations and paintings for a new restaurant opening in Chicago this September. Along with some pen and ink work, I am to provide 7 paintings to illustrate key moments or motifs in the chef's life...  moments that led to her decision to open her own restaurant, after having been the executive chef at a four-star restaurant for several years. The seven moments/motifs are set out in stories that will be displayed with the paintings.

I love a challenge and this is one: the hotshot interior designers want the paintings done on vintage cutting boards! The boards have come from France, and Texas and the lord knows where. I've had to have the surfaces sanded and filled to be able to paint on them. Here are some of the boards in progress, along with some studies I made on regular gessoed boards to figure out palette and technique. This is not my usual kind of work (is it anyone's?), but the chef and her business partner are so nice and are great fans of my work and the featured cuisine is northern Italian. Could I say no? I could not.

Here are some boards and some studies, some things-in-progress. To give you a sense of scale, the large round board is 22" in diameter, the smaller round one is 16":

Here's a close up of a study for the painting which  will illustrate the chef's love for fishing in particular, and for nature in general:

Sketching classes at the Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University:

I'm going to teach classes on sketching at the museum for three Saturdays in September. I will tell more soon. I am SO excited about this and am full of ideas of things I want us to do! My approach will be different from the norm, but flexible enough to accommodate those who want and need more standard instruction.  I'm eager to get back to sketching myself. My effervescence is revving up, just thinking about this!

Travel to *cold places:

My husband and I are going to the Bavarian alps and to Munich and Salzburg with friends in December! The idea for this grew directly out of my trip to the Dolomites with the same friends last October. I need cold. I need mountains (my mountain paintings series have gone into pause mode for the summer and fall.) Going back to the Alps, as I learned while in the Dolomites, connects me with the happiest moments of my childhood. I haven't forgotten Scandinavia, though! It's on the 2016 To Do list! Effervescence, here I come!

 

I hope you are cool or warm, whatever works best in your hemisphere.  I'll be back soon with updates!

More travel sketches: Bay Area and low country SC.

I've had quite the spring. Lots of travel relating to family and friends and some business matters and then, week before last, we hosted a wedding reception in our garden for 120 people! So, blogging was scarce in these parts!

And I'm just now recovering from the whirlwind of going and doing.

However, I do have some sketches from last week in San Francisco and one from last month in Mt. Pleasant, SC to share. 

 My hotel in Oakland was located right on the bay and there was a nice long public footpath that I took to, with my sketchbook in hand!  It was a quiet, soft spring morning and I had fun sketching those blues and yellows in that watery place.

 I LOVE to draw and paint crustaceans, so I couldn't resist sketching the crabs in a tank at the San Francisco Fish Shop near the ferry building. Here's one sketch. I have others to share later.

This sketch of two men sitting at a cafe in North Beach shows my more typical San Francisco palette... subdued yet still colorful.

Lions are another favorite drawing subject for me. Marble lions or bronze or anything other than up-close flesh and blood, if you please. This lion sculpture on the grounds of the deYoung Museum had the most exquisite expression on its face, somehow tender and full of longing. Not what you'd expect to find there.

Taking advantage of free models at San Francisco airport, I sketched this couple who were, of course, attached to their devices.

Finally, a sketch from our April weekend in Mt. Pleasant, SC, another watery place.

 

I'm going to stay put now for a while and work. I have a fun new illustration deadline looming, my paintings waiting for my attention, and two other projects in the wings. Hope your summer (winter to my southern hemisphere friends) is productive and very, very happy!

Oregon sketches, last batch

It's always fun to sketch with another person. Sketching with my daughter Cecelia is more than fun... it's thrilling and so gratifying. Because we were together, I sketched more in the short time period than I often do. Well, and it was so beautiful where we were. That kind of incentive works well, too!

I drew the mountain several times, as you have seen, each time from a slightly different perspective and in different light conditions. I could have gone on forever, I think. I'm hoping to go to the Bavarian Alps next December and that may be my next mountain trip. I'll be more than ready when the time comes.

Here is my daughter drawing in her large sketchbook on our first morning. It was warm enough that day for us to sit and sketch without (fingerless) gloves and hats.

I am always drawn to figurative sculpture, from the fountains of Paris to the folk art of New Mexico. At Timberline Lodge, the interior of the building is animated by lovely carved wooden animals. These and much of the original furniture were made by artisans expressly for the building, in accordance with the Works Progress Administration's goals of providing work for laborers and craftsmen during the tough economic times of the 1930s.

Another quick sketch of the mountain, made with Caran d'Ache crayon, Cretacolor nero pencil, and watercolor wash.

Finally, a sketch of the restaurant/bar area at the Residence Inn in the Pearl District of Portland. Cecelia and I sketched there together last August and we did do again last week.

I'm home now and glad to be here, but I miss Cecelia and our time together in Oregon. Good thing I have these sketches as mementoes!

My birthday celebration with Kate: at the museum, reading, and sketches

When my firstborn child, my daughter Kate, was very young, I started reading to her and taking her to libraries and art museums. In fact, I started reading to her before she was six months old. I'd sit her on my lap and we'd take flight... off to the world of Good Night Moon, Beatrix Potter, Mother Goose, Eric Carle, Arnold Lobel, Kate Greenaway, A Child's Garden of Verses, and many, many more. We never looked back.

We visited London often, and also Edinburgh, where she was born. We lived in London, in fact, during her kindergarten year. And we went to art museums there, her first ones, and then everywhere we went, all the time. 

Now, Kate has her own children---two little boys---and she reads to them and she and her husband take them to museums and to libraries.

And she herself still reads. In fact, she reads more than any person I know, including me, and that is saying a lot in the world we live in. And she goes to art museums. Often. As much as possible. Everywhere.

Earlier this month, it was my birthday. We celebrated it together, at the art museum, at a library.  Of course, we did. Looking, reading, talking... mother and daughter.

 

In this sketch I made of Kate reading, she is exactly the age I am in the photo above.

As she read, I also sketched the scene behind her.

It was a wonderful birthday.

In the chilly dusk, we walked through a park, and to one of my favorite restaurants for an early dinner. Then it was home for each of us... her to her two little boys and husband, me to my husband and our dog. A day to remember, a day with a long and sweet history behind it.

New Mexico sketches

 I've had a hard time scanning the double spread landscape sketches I made in New Mexico. The paper I used had buckled a fair amount ( and these buckles showed badly) and the sketches were too big for my scanner. I finally resorted to taking Iphone photos of these wide pieces. The images are fuzzy and the color is a bit off, but they somehow convey more of the originals, even with those limitations. I spent so much time trying to get good reproductions of the landscape sketches and then I realized it was just not going to happen!

The originals of the two landscapes are 17 1/2" wide and 6" high.

 

After four hours in a jeep driving through the spectacular landscape, we stopped at Madrid, a tiny, quirky town between Albuquerque and Santa Fe,  and had a delicate and delicious meal at the Hollar Restaurant. There were many regulars dining there the afternoon we had lunch. Clearly, Toto, we were no longer in Kansas.

On the day we drove to Taos, we were pressed for time at lunch, trying to make it back to Santa Fe before the impending snow storm. We had a quick and very tasty lunch at the Bear Claw Bakery and Café.

Another IPhone photo of a wide landscape sketch. With the same disclaimers as above. Frustrating to have to post such fuzzy images, but there we are.

 

We visited the International Folk Art Museum in Sante Fe and were enchanted by the carved wood animals of celebrated Hispanic artist Felipe Benito Archuleta. Of course, I had to draw some!

Soon to come, a post about drawing in museums, in preparation for my upcoming sketching workshop at Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art. I've done a lot of this in my life and it's one of my favorite sketching activities. I am always surprised by how meaningful this can be... and in what surprising ways we learn from it. Then I'll have an end of year post, reflecting on what has gone on this year (an awful lot!) and what I hope for in the year to come. Happy December!

Italy sketches, October 2014, part 2

I call this post Italy sketches, part 2, because I didn't want to use the adjectives 'last' or 'final.'

 I am now so thoroughly in love with Italy that I'm superstitious about using such words. I will be back. Italy calls me.

Still, here we are... for now.  A few representative sketches from my last, my final days ON THIS TRIP.

How, again, to render the Dolomites in a small sketchbook? It's a tough one. Here's the best I could do... just the energy, lines, subtle colors, and basic textures. 

Here is the double spread from that day in the Dolomites. I have Photoshopped out the big wire rings from my sketchbook and joined the two pages as best I could.

Can you believe this...those jagged peaks were once coral reefs at the bottom of a sea! This was in the Miocene epoch, 20+ million years ago. I remember it as though it were yesterday.

Enlargement of righthand side of spread:

My friends and I spent one glorious night in a hotel above Cortina. At the bar we drank our favorite aperitifs and I caught a moment on paper of the mother of the family who runs the place. She was looking a bit tired after a long day of dealing with guests.

 

After our trip to the Dolomites, my friends and I returned to their lovely home overlooking the Val Liona. Sitting on their terrace, I sketched Penelope's peach tree, edged by a bed of lavender, with the valley and Eugenean hills as backdrops:

And then it was one last round of coffees together before they drove me to the train station in Vicenza:

 

I miss Penelope and Michael, and I miss Italy. I'll be back sooner rather than later, that I promise.

(Oops, here's a sketch I forgot to include yesterday, the icing on the cake, as it were!)

In print, recent past and near future!

An update on the recent illustration front. I did 8 sketches for an article on Saxapahaw, NC for Walter Magazine for their May issue. Saxapahaw is a happening little town, about an hour's drive from Raleigh. Here you will find great natural beauty, music, art and craft, delish food, and lovely people.

Here are some images from that article. Click on link above for full text. All 8 illustrations appear in the print version, but not online.

 

 

My oyster illustration appeared in the Florida Weekly/Charlotte edition newspaper on April 24, 2014, on behalf of The Nature Conservancy, as part of their Coastal Awareness campaign. 

 

And today, I start a new assignment for the August issue of Walter, having this week finished one for the upcoming issue of Charleston Style & Design, a new client. I'll share these after they are published.  

Now to paint!