Winter WaterScapes

Watercolor on paper 8 1/2" x 5 1/2"

I've been continuing to work with watercolors.  I like them.  They are easy for me to set up, finish a painting, and easy clean my work area. I can work in watercolor paint without dedicating too much time to the process.   I have set up some new lighting in my studio. This helps me to have more flexible work hours and to be able to work at night.  

I've been out of my studio for a while.  I had a visitor who needed a bedroom for a few months, and I gladly gave her my studio/office to set up a room. I needed to change the energy in my place, and having her here helped me see what I was missing from life. During her stay, I stopped being creative and threw myself into my career. 

Now that I have my studio back, I've reorganized, and found a new desire to get back to work.  

I hung a large oil painting in my studio. It had been stored the past five years so haven't really been able to look at it.  The canvas fills most of the wall. It is the painting in the post titled "Green Blues" from 2012.  Looking at this painting everyday has inspired me to go back to this style in composition.  Calm waters in the background, with textured water or land in the foreground. 

 These watercolors include using my gold pen.  A fond memory from my days working in my atelier in Nice, France. 

Watercolor on paper 8 1/2" x 5 1/2"

Watercolor on paper 8 1/2" x 5 1/2"

Going Back

Acrylic on Canvas- 25"x 32"
tableau de Yannis

I call this painting tableau de Yannis.   While I was in Nice 2010, I asked Yannis for his advice several times for the direction I should take with this painting. 

I met with Yannis and Paulin again in September. It has been the first time to see them in five years.   It was good to see the gallery again.  It was time to go back, no regrets.   They have shared with me a significant part of my life that will not be forgotten, and for their friendship, I am grateful. 

There was always laughter between the three of us.  We were the three artists.  The best moments were spent filling my sketch book with characters and scenes while drinking vin chaude or beer in the afternoon.  We spent hours in bars sitting at a table, telling our stories conveyed in small caricature drawings.  There was once a day we spent a few too many hours at one of our favorite bars.  Our laughter and behavior started to become a little too disruptive, and eventually we were asked to leave.  There was much joy between the three of us. 

les trois amigos

 It felt good to be back again, like a second home, seeing them, and knowing that there could still be a small part of me in them as well. 

Transitions

Oil on Canvas- 36"x 48"

I finally finished my blank canvas in July.  My life has been transitioning with work, and I am feeling myself opening up for more travel again.   

Transitioning and acquainting myself with my past, and finding its bearings on my current path of Life Journey. Transitioning away from the daily routines that do not provide me growth, and cause me to question my place in the broader scheme of life.   Living and searching for more joys in life, and cutting out the persons and activities that feel like there is a weight wrapped around my ankles. 

Maybe I'm just tapping my heals wishing "There's no place like home, There's no place like home."

Day Dreams

Italian Water scape  Oil on Canvas- 36"x 48"

My work has been challenging in the real world, and as a result, I think my paintings seem to reflect some of the challenges that I am facing and the hope of some relief at the end of the year.  I started and finished this painting to help me work through a difficult time.  

My dreams of traveling are mixed with a feelings of entrapment, 
but I know that this phase of living will have an end. I'm already planning travels and filling my thoughts with day dreams along the Cote d'Azur with sunshine, blue sky, wine and the Sea.  

In subject and composition, I have started a new painting with this same theme, but it is laid out with a different point perspective.  I am anxious to see the future that the finished piece will reveal to me. 

Dreams

Italian Water scape  Oil on Canvas- 22"x42"

A few weeks ago  a friend and I were talking about vacations. We discussed what the perfect vacation meant to each of us.   The perfect vacation to me is time away from my routine life, and painting...Spending a little time each day painting on a canvas or in other types of creative endeavors. 

I have traveled twice this summer to two separate inspiring locations... but since the logements were not my own, my creative time was limited by participating only as an observer.   I have a dream to find a space one day that I can make my own, and set up "shop".  Somewhere to escape for productive and frequent times away; regenerating my energy. 

A place where I can explore the landscapes around me and feel the energy of my neighbors and life on the street.  A place that I don't have to feel isolated, but a place where I can be productive and focused with mes oeuvres and still have an opportunity to step out and interact in the world around me.  This dream is very familiar to me because this dream was once a part of my life.  And now I seek this dream again. 

These words come to my mind "Seek and you will find", but I know also that "when you dream, you are already there." 

Hyperbola of Nice

"Hyperbola of Nice" - Oil on Canvas

I completed this painting in spring of 2009, after my first trip to Nice, France.   I only stayed for a long weekend.  I call this painting the Hyperbola of Nice because after I returned, I felt worlds had collided, and something new had opened up inside of me.   A new energy in my life, an awakening of the spirit.   I did not know then the adventure and future that would unfold and develop for me.      

It has been almost a year since my last trip to Nice, returning with the remainder of my paintings.   I made a new years resolution to not dream or reflect back too much on the past;  to not live in the past and compare the past with the present.   In doing so, I have been able to feel a new sense of belonging in my home in Indiana, and l have not felt the restlessness that used to call me to a life far away.    I have truly found calm.  One of my friends noted that I am very "centered".   

My life here does not have all the architecture, culture, and food that I still love and miss.  Sometimes when I am walking I can feel in my world around me a dullness, and the environment (the city) is wrapped in a cold rainy grey.   But inside of me I feel a Light.   A joy inside of me that makes everything worthwhile.   A feeling of home.

I am working on a new painting.  I want it to reflect all the centeredness that I am feeling.  I am hoping to produce several of the same subject to study different textures, colors, and techniques of overlay.   It's been a slow process, but a bright spot in my life for grey winter days.

In the last week, I found myself reflecting again to all I miss overseas.   Indiana has had a few sunny days that felt like the Spring that I remembered in France and Italy.   I remembered my New Year's resolution.  I'm not ready to return yet.  I will return when I no longer anticipate how I am going to navigate through drama.   

Lost Painting




resides Hotel Star, Nice, France

This is the painting that was Lost in Nice, France, September 2010. 

I began work on this painting in May 2009.  I was challenged by the original composition that I lost direction with this painting and was not able to complete the work.   More than a year later in September 2010,  I revisited this painting, and was able to comfortably experiment with some new ideas.   This painting reflects the complications and challenges that began to develop in my life by trying to maintain a gallery and dream in France along side my life in the United States.  But most importantly for me, it also reflects a new freedom in my spirit as a painter that was beginning to unfold.  

Feeling confident that this painting belonged in the gallery for everything that it represented,  I sent it to the gallery 6 Place Vieille.  I was happy to have another painting completed in Oils to represent me in the gallery.

I planned a visit to Nice around the arrival time of the painting.  It never arrived.  I waited for the phone call from Fed Ex to confirm delivery, or neighbors who had offered to sign if it arrived in my absence.....   It didn't arrive.   It was gone.  I was nervous and disappointed the entire trip.   I called and talked to Fed Ex, but the details of its location were not specified.  Other details for its possible "Location" were speculated. (That is all I will say for my speculations)

This is a photograph of the painting after it was found and delivered to the gallery.    The one on the left shows the original packaging that had been left untouched, the one on the right... Voila!  the unveiling.   

I returned to Nice early January 2011 after spending the Christmas Holiday in San Remo, Italy (also located along the coast of the blue Sea).     While I was there, questions about the painting returned again, the stress for the lost painting, the unknown, and actually having the hope of finding its location.  Drama.  I called Fed Ex again, and received the name and address of the person who signed for it.    It was at the University's School of Medicine, "28 Vallombrose".    I went to the school and began my search for the "name".   Because of the New Year's holiday, the Doctor who had the painting was still on vacation.  I was able to obtain his cell phone number. 

After I left Nice, the painting was picked up by my friend.  It was still in it's original packaging.  Its voyage is still a mystery; the details unknown for the path of that voyage I have laid to rest.

This is the first painting that I sent to Nice for my first Vernissage to celebrate the opening of gallery 6 Place Vieille.   This painting was painted in my studio in Indiana, and directly inspired by my second vacation trip to Nice,  August 2009.  The inspiration and energy that came with me when I returned was intense.  I was able to start and finish the painting within two weeks after my return.  I was proud to send it because it show cased my skill in oil painting that was unfamiliar to my friends in Nice.  This was a painting that represented me in my new gallery.



This is me at the door of the gallery for the Vernissage, March, 2010.  I didn't have a large body of artwork to display for the show (wall of paintings on the left) but the evening was a success.  Lots of wine, live guitar music, and pizza, and many new guests and friends arrived to see the opening.    

First Painting

This is the first painting completed in Nice France.   December 2009,  I went to Nice during the Christmas holiday and spent time with my friend and also artist,  Paul.   He had just obtained a gallery,  6 Place Vieille, in Vieux Nice, and this location was the beginning of my two years as an artist in the south of France.  

Paul and I shared the gallery and expenses for the gallery until life inevitably took us into two different directions.   

The gallery was raw and unfinished.   An architect's paradise for me.   But later it was finished into something that I was able to exhibit regularily and display my work for a few "Vernissage" 's.   This is a picture of me and my blank canvas, with my make shift easel, and a wood plank for a palette.   I had to use acrylic paints.  
They were readily available and less expensive for me to set up my color palette- the Blues.    I wasn't pleased with my skill in acrylic, but I gave the medium a try. I have been a painter working in Oils for more than 25 years.   The texture, the flow of paint, and blending was very very  different with acrylic than with the oil paints that have been customary for me. 

This is the sketch I created for my first painting.   One night uninterested in a movie that we were watching,  I got out my charcoals and used some paper that I had found in a rented apartment.   I did a series of sketches, liberating my creative energy, and created an interesting body of work that evening.    Many of my paintings begin with a sketch.  I use charcoal as a medium that is quick to free ideas on paper before applying to a larger canvas.  

The gallery began as a place of good energy, for neighbors to visit, to sit outside, offer wine to guests.   It has a lot of good memories for dreams that were hopeful for success.... and for me, most importantly, a place of my own where I could just be a painter.   A place where I could focus on being an artist for 10-14 days, and liberate myself from the every day routine of work in Indiana.