Laurelines

2022: Begin Again

Another year of disruption and acute distress for our world in so many ways. I look to this new year for a fresh start in my own world and a return to work and themes.  

I've spent a lot of the year outside of the studio, due to family obligations...

 

...obligations I entered into voluntarily and with deep love.  We thought the remote schooling process would be over in June, at the end of the school year, 

and it was, but a resurgence of Covid meant I was needed again this school year, with a different and greater time commitment.

My passion to make sure our new old home was ready for us, was beautiful, was a true reflection of who we are, has grabbed me with tsunami-like energy and has taken most of the time I had left over from child responsibilities.

. 

My house and my garden (see preceding post)  were my major artworks for the year.

But in these days after Christmas, I've cleaned and reorganized my studio. It and I are ready. I have several different series going on and I don't know where I'll go with them,  

but I'll find out. I also want to make another 12' long concertina book of the second year of my garden and I wouldn't mind making more portraits of the kind I did of the original owners of our 1860s house:

I continue with my red clay painting studies:

 

I have poured every single thing I have this year into family, house, garden, and regaining of health. 

It's time to pour every single thing I have into my work. Begin again. There's no end to the beginnings.

Let us join together in a fervent wish for the health of our planet, its people, ourselves and our loved ones, and for a world in which virtue and truth are once more the standards we strive to uphold. 

Happy 2022.

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. 

 

BLOG UPDATE: I have a new way to subscribe to my blog! All the old subscriptions have been transferred to follow it, the new service. If you have not subscribed before, and would like to, follow the directions in the upper right corner of the page!

SO much to share after a too long hiatus! New work, new garden, new life!

These past months have raced by. I am aghast that so much time has elapsed since I last posted. I have three ways to explain what's been taking ALL my time:ongoing repairs and renovation, helping with first grade remote schooling, creation of my new garden obsession!  But life should be freer for me now, so here we go!

Here is work directly related to my new house and my projects related to living in this area. 

A quick background recap from my earlier post:

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.

I have several lines of work within this general subject and I hope now to be able to begin work on all of them.

First, the portraits of the original owners of my new old house, Burkett and Mary Ann Jones. Acrylic on board, 16" x16". I worked from a blurry many-times copied photo so felt quite free to simplify their images, paring them down to what I felt to be their essences. I will hang these over a doorway in my kitchen where they will preside over a long interior vista from back to front of house:

 

Second, one of very few drawings (to this point!) of my surroundings. I SO look forward to getting back to this! Reed pen and ink sketch of the view from my studio window on a cold February afternoon.

Next a couple of studies done in my ongoing project to make paint from our red clay soil. I have not had a chance to take up this strand again but will do so very soon. I truly have no idea where these will lead, which is fun. My life, as I said, should be freer!

 

Finally, a series of photos showing my garden's progress from the early bare days to the present. I struggled to keep this concise! Ish. ;D. I have hundreds of photos of the garden already!

Here are two shots from early October:

  

And here are recent ones:

This does not look like a garden of only a few months, does it? The topsoil I had delivered and tilled into the red clay was obviously what the garden wanted! I consider this garden a full-fledged member or my art life.

More to come and I am so happy to know that!!

Happy summer to those in this hemisphere and happy fall to our southern hemispheric friends!

Janus, the god of beginnings: my 2020 version

My birthday is very close to New Year's Day, so I am in the habit this time of year, like the god Janus, of looking both ways, to the past/the old year and looking ahead to the new. I am a frequenter of liminal states and this time of year is a such a state for most of us.

These sketches from my Norway trip were made on my December trip to that sublime wintry country. They are from my recent past, but I have them in the studio now, as sources for paintings I've begun and will continue working on these next weeks.

This time of year in those far northern climes, the light is blue. For me, the light is not at all depressing, but celestial, ethereal, magical. It is everywhere and it changes everything.

 

In a lecture on polar explorers, I sat and drew. Their stories were deep, often disturbing, sometimes, of course, triumphant. These men took themselves to the far limits of human coping... and sometimes they couldn't. Here we learned about Fridtof Nansen, Roald Admundsen, Hjalmar Johansen

 

 

More blue light, inside and out. My wonderful husband reads by the light of the sky and fjord and a small Christmas star.

Fellow passenger, reading.

And now, speaking of thresholds, I want to tell you that David and I will be moving this year from the house and gardens that we designed, built, lived in, and loved for 26 years. We are moving houses, but will stay in this area. It is exciting and anxiety-producing all at once!  I will tell more once I have more concrete things to tell.  I know this: in 2020, we will find our new happy home. It will be an adventure. I will have a new garden! I will share the story and images with you.

  May Janus, the god of beginnings, thresholds, and transitions, watch over us...and you.

Surfacing from the maelstrom

Or as I like to call this period, My Cuisinart Life! Ouch, there are way too many, big and life-changing things going on.  I do feel like I've been tossed in a giant Cuisinart and chopped and mashed and swirled for several months. I assume I'll emerge relatively intact, but I know I'll be transformed. In many ways, it's been an exciting time. It's been stressful. It's been necessary. It's not over yet.

Anyway, I will tell more when I can, but for now, let me share a bit of what I've been working on in the studio and to say I'm so looking forward to a return, with my husband, to Norway in December!

I've got several paintings going in my Places Project, as I mentioned, and some of them are even finished! I'm applying for a show of this first phase of work, excluding, unfortunately, my Caledonian Orogeny drawings (they can't be exhibited in the place I'm applying to,  because of their unusual format.) But I've got several paintings, acrylic on board, of various sizes, and I will keep working on this series in the next year.

My trip to Norway is part of this Places Project... it's been several years since I was in Arctic Norway in the winter and I need to go back and get an inspiration re-infusion. And, my husband and I love that part of the world anyway, so it works out well.

Here are some of my finished pieces. I won't hog your bandwidth with photos of all of them.

 Polar Twilight 1. I've attached a number to this one, because I plan on making several more in this sub-series, after our trip to Norway. I can't WAIT.

More Norway:

Wales, a painting of a stormy scene from Anglesey I have shared only a detail of in the past:

More Wales. This painting was inspired by my polar swim on Whitesands Bay last New Year's Day:

On Whitesands Bay, one cold and damp day last January, the sky was covered in a network of chevron-shaped clouds:

Just to show there are blue skies in even my cold places, here's a painting I made of Dulas Bay in north Wales, after a recent autumn trip there.:

After Norway, I still have northern Scotland to go to, my last place in the work inspired by the Caledonian Orogeny. Not sure when that trip will happen. 

I'm now turning to that age-old question: which art supplies should I take on my coming Norwegian trip??!  This is an issue we traveling artists always wrestle with, but for me, who travels only with a carry_on (that has also to hold my winter gear!!) it's a real puzzler!

I'm so glad to have resurfaced and I send thanks and love to all who (still) follow my wanderer's (recently subterranean) life.

 

Artist in the studio, artist in the garden

I'm really mostly in the studio these days, walking my long and slow painting path.

As I work with the cool, atmospheric palette of the littoral paintings of my Places Project, though, ( the example shown here is a poor reproduction I nabbed from my Instagram feed, but you get the idea),

 I begin to think of the colors waiting on the other side of my studio door, ready to smash through winter's gray barrier. 

The earth is turning and it's calling me as a witness. 

Last April, 1300+ people were here to see my garden, one of several on the Chapel Hill Garden Tour.  My garden was a total party girl, bedecked in many shades of pink, purple, green, yellow, blue. And, lordy, there were blossoms.

Since I didn't share with you images from our star turn last year, I thought it would be timely and fun to do so now.

First, a bit of history, a 2010 ink and wash drawing I made of the early stages of my garden,  a major redo after my life-changing visit to les Jardins Agapanthes in Normandy:

And here we were last May, many years later.

 

As of today, spring is still in babyhood. I'm tweaking the garden design, of course, simplifying and rethinking shapes and colors.  Likewise, In the studio: tweaking, simplifying, searching for solutions. I'll be back to share some of those solutions when they emerge.

Happy spring to you! 

 

PS Here are links to a couple of essays I wrote on the history of my garden, in case you missed them and are interested!  

Photo essay in Walter Magazine 

Illustrated essay in Charleston Style & Design

Going Places

The thing about working on a Places Project, as I am, is that, well, you go places. And that going does interrupt the work flow (not to mention the blog stream!!), though it keeps the inspiration rushing at flood tide! So, it's a matter of trying to do both, of staying balanced. i won't always be at the flood tide stage and in fact, I see 2019 as more of a steady work year, with less travel. (But Iceland! Back to the source!)  More about that in December.

Anyway, here are some paintings, or parts of paintings, I've been making. I have so many more in process and am delighted and vastly relieved to feel that I am at last in a kind of flow here in the studio.  Withdrawing from illustrating and teaching and my various Other-oriented art activities this year has been a hard but very fruitful thing to do.

Before turning to Norway as a subject, I have been thinking of Wales. There is something so compelling to me about western coastal Wales. Like Norway, it is a land of pronounced darks and lights... or so I see it. And it appears, at my hands, to be a land of shards and angles, too,  and infinite atmospheres and textures. In short, it's heaven (one of several)  for me.

 

Lligwy Bay, afternoon drama. Acrylic on board, as are all of these paintings:

 

 

 Lligwy Bay, after rain:

 

Dulas Bay, blue hour. This is the very first stage of this painting. I have since gone farther, but haven't finished. I want to remember this early, airy stage! I love painting on natural wood surfaces.

 

And my latest start, a detail of larger painting... another dramatic sky over Lligwy Bay! The foreground of this painting isn't shown, but once it is done and the whole pulled together, I'll be so happy. Won't be long now.  Texture! Atmosphere!  Yes! You can see my mind is turning to Norway! My numinous places connect in many ways. 

A sketch of my dear friend Michael, a Yorkshireman who took Penelope, his love and my dear friend, around Yorkshire this past October. Yorkshire proved to be a magical place and one that I learned, to my great surprise, is a very important part of my life story!  I drew this in a delightful pub in Whitby, where Penelope, Michael and I had lunch one cold and rainy day.

And, last, an image I treasure from the Yorkshire trip: I'm in awe before Gordale Scar, imagining the ancient glacial melt processes that created this striking topography.

I'll be back in December! My emotional logjam has broken and I'm once again a member of the visible world!

Happy Fall-into-Winter to you!

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!

Norway in May and June: first glimpses

Well, those were three glorious weeks! My Inner Adventurer emerged big time, much to my delight! i'm still crowing with pleasure and pride over kayaking in polar waters! We went just beyond the 80th parallel, as I mentioned we would and it was all that I had dreamed of! It was celestial. It was never to be forgotten.

More later about all of that. For now, a scattering of sketches,  quiet glimpses of things we saw and did when we weren't being swept away by magnificence. 

A large carved wooden sculpture called Kongetorsk, (cod is one of the traditional mainstays of Norwegian cuisine, commerce, and culture) located in a small square in Bergen, is a favorite subject of mine.  David and I woke up early so I could draw it before clumps of view-obscuring tourists arrived.

I had *drawn this one December a few years ago, so it was fun to revisit and draw it again! See below for earlier drawing.

Oh, man, trying to capture the splendor of that scenery in a little sketchbook seemed futile, but I made what I call little mnemonic devices... images that endlessly reopen to me the moments of being there.

 

We visited a toy museum at the tiny village we stayed in near Reine, in the Lofoten Islands. I made friends with Dagmar Gylseth, the owner of Sakrisøy rorbuer (fishing cabins and cottages) there and drew this little scene from her marvelous museum. What a moving experience to be surrounded by her collection of hundreds of artifacts of Norwegian childhood.  Their stories and their meaning were palpable in the atmosphere there.

While in the Lofotens, David and I had our evening meals at Underhuset, the fabulous restaurant which is owned and run by Dagmar and her son Michael. Fresh seafood was offered in abundance! In fact, I ate seafood and fish three times a day most days throughout the trip. I expect gills, fins, and shells to sprout on my person at any moment! And I'll put my current Omega 3 count up against yours any day!

We went to a lecture on the geology of Svalbard given by a French geologist on board our ship and while I listened, I drew. Geology! Svalbard! Caledonian Orogeny! All my favorite subjects!

Rounding out this miscellany of moments on our Norwegian trip is a sketch I made in Bergen, at one of the city's art museums, during the last days of our visit. Shiny, compelling objects that here, too, arrested my eye and my imagination.

I have several more sketches as well as the accordion sketchbook I made of Caledonian Orogenic outcrops and will share those in the next days. I have begun some studio pieces as well, deriving from the images I lived and breathed and stored in my mind's eye.

Balancing my accordion sketchbook... Laura on the rocks! More to come! Come back soon!!

 

*Here's the same cod sculpture pictured above, but drawn on an earlier, winter trip. 

*

80° North, anyone? Art supplies for the Land of the Midnight Sun!

 

That's where we'll be the first part our trip!  Far, far, far northern Norway, off the mainland. I am going to try to get some sort of memento with that latitude engraved on it! I'm a north-going spirit, that's for sure. 

This being such a once-in-a-lifetime trip, I vow to document it fully in writing and sketches, in addition to the separate group of drawings I'll do for my Caledonian Orogeny project.

But what supplies to take with me?? I travel only with a carryon and that has to contain clothes for winter weather (still there in May and early June in Svalbard) as well as for cool spring days, which I hope we will find in the other parts of Norway we are going to. Yikes!

Wakeful at 2am today (and you can understand why!), I looked at past sketches of similar atmospheric situations. Here are my tentative choices. If you have any suggestions, by the way, please do make them!

I know you've seen most of these before, but bear with me. I have to think.;D

1. Caran d'Ache watercolor crayons: I use these often. Here are some examples from  the past:

Iceland, Budir Bay

More Iceland. Here there's a wash of Daniel Smith Lunar Black with the crayons. I'll take that and Lunar Blue and those will be my only watercolors. Right? I can add more washes later. if I want to.

 

Mt Hood, Oregon. Unlike my previous trips to Norway, which all took place in the Arctic Twilight, this trip will be, as I mentioned, under the Midnight Sun!

    2. Pentel pocket brush pen. These are practically extensions of my hands. I use them everywhere.

In Bergen, Norway, with white gel pen and watercolor wash

 

In E.Lansing, Michigan, with watercolor crayons! Two for the price of one!

    3. Inktense pencils? When you must have bursts of juicy color!

Don't you love how a mere spritz of water makes inktense sketches ebullient!

Inktense pencils at Carn Llidi, Wales. Speaking of atmospheric, as we were:

     4. Cretacolor Oil pencils in Nero. I have to have these for regular drawing, right?  With these, you can be both gestural and precise:

And I'll need these for my Caledonian Orogeny drawing, of course;

    5. Sketchbooks: I'll have a couple of custom handmade concertina sketchbooks for the rock drawings and then two Stillman & Birn softcover 8 x10s, one in gray, one in white.

    6. Blue and red colored pencils, not watercolor ones. Oh, let's add orange and green, too. I just like to draw with these and they come in handy if you want quick, dry color.

 

 Oh, I've given myself a headache now.

I'm serious... if you have any suggestions, any new products you like for travel sketches, or old favorites of yours (not watercolors, though, or fountain pens for this trip, unfortunately,) I'd love to have them!

Takk!