Sunday Sketchbook: Figure

"The mirror is not you...the mirror is you looking at yourself." What I take from George Balanchine's words is that we are more than what others see in us--and more than what we see of ourselves reflected back from others.

Still Life in December

Sending you a wish for hope, peace and joy.

Sunflowers, Vermont (detail)

This month's The Artist's Magazine is featuring my painting in an article that asks five artists how they approach composing a still life.

Sunday Sketchbook: Figure

A person I can't remember at a meeting I've forgotten. Memo to self: this coming year, always carry my sketchbook.

Street Study, Provence

I'm planning another multi-panel (or "polyptych" in art lingo) oil painting that will explore sun and shadow patterns of the old, narrow streets in European towns. On every trip to France or Italy, I'm drawn to sketch, photograph and paint these dark and light, warm and cool designs-- now I'm looking forward to making a more developed composition from all of these studies.

Memory: Noon Vista, Provence

I'm sitting in my studio this frigid afternoon (garbed in four top layers, long underwear, and a wool hat), trying to extract a little of the warmth of this sun-saturated July afternoon last year in Joucas.

Sunday Sketchbook: Vermont

I'm back on the road again this week, gathering sketches and impressions of towns small and miniscule for my blog Let Me Show You Vermont. Here's a view from the southern part of the state of Main Street, Wilmington.

Twelve Pitchers (detail)

Each of the panels in "Twelve Pitchers" has a different value relationship between object and ground (pitcher and table), and every tabletop is a different color or pattern. They'll fit together at the end to make a new value and color composition that can't help being more than the sum of its parts.

Sunday Sketchbook: Roadtrip

Driving into New York from Vermont on an early winter morning, greeted by a cold sun and the first billboard of the day.

Twelve Pitchers (detail)

Perceptive readers will remember that this painting I'm working on was called "16 Pitchers" in my last posting, and while I like that title more, I'm leaning (this morning, anyway) towards a square composition that needs a dozen rectangles.

16 Pitchers (detail)

I'm working on a new multi-panel piece, one of a number I have in mind that explores the idea of "theme and variation".

Memory: Morning View from Moonhole

Here's another painting from my trip to Bequia, on another balmy morning looking out towards a fishing village and the island's tiny airstrip.

Memory: Cliff from Moonhole, Bequia

I painted this during a winter trip to the Grenadines a few years ago. Seeing it again brings back the feel of breezes and sun on the terrace where I stood at my easel high above the ocean, and is a nice antidote to the cold, rainy morning outside my studio today.

Sunday Sketchbook: Vermont

My blog "Let Me Show You Vermont" is up and running again with a report on my adventures in Bennington. I'll be happily exploring new (to me, anyway) Vermont towns this winter and posting back to you on what I find. You can click the link above to subscribe, and join me from the warmth of your computer!

Motel on 302 (study)

Starting a new painting requires "confident groping", or maybe it's "tentative decisiveness". That's the acceptance that there'll be moments of abject uncertainty about both the image conceived, and the ability to develop that image to a successful completion, while at the same time believing absolutely in an idea that exists only in mind's eye.

Woman in a Garden

Now that I'm home again in my studio, here's one last painting (an experiment in the style of the "Douanier Rousseau") brought back from the past before I dig in for a new series of work and a long winter.

Floodline

A gray day, and piles of dead wood pushed by high waters against winter's trees.

Vine and Bramble (detail)

While I've been going through some things at my mother's house, I've come across reams of my drawings from art school days. Here's a painting of seed pods brought in from a field I've now forgotten, years ago, in another autumn.

Sunday Sketchbook: Road Trip

I'm on my way to Washington, DC to deliver the NRECA commission--and hopefully have some time to explore museums. It's a beautiful cool, sunny day, perfect for a drive down Route 2, through the Mad River Valley, and due south.

NRECA Commission

My approach for this mural is "WPA Meets Post-Impressionism"--a stylized landscape combined with vivid color shapes. Click here to see more images from this project.

When I'm in Paris this spring, I'm going to see Raoul Dufy's mural about the history of electricity, and try to figure out how he managed to design a similar narrative in his wonderful decorative style--that's over 120 feet long!

NRECA Commission

For the next ten days I'll be an artist resident at the Vermont Studio Center, where I'm working on finishing a commission for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. My painting is a forty foot long landscape with a winding road (with power lines!) spanning coast to coast. I've enjoyed the chance to work like a WPA artist, finding a stylized, decorative language to state the organization's goals and history.

Sunday Sketchbook: Montreal

I've been leading a workshop with Karen Kane in Montreal this weekend, touring studios and painting exhibits with a group of fellow art lovers. We've seen varied and exciting work, from academic realism to installations--and we also enjoyed sampling the wonderful selection of food that Montreal has to offer. It's an accessible, vibrant city that I hope to keep exploring in the coming years.

Sky and Maples

Looking up past a bank of orange foliage, towards blue sky and cumulus clouds.

Mom Napping

I drew my mother many times over the years, sleeping, knitting, reading, or just posing patiently. The dress she's wearing here, 25 years ago, the gesture of her hand in her hair, the turn of her leg--all bring her back to me so vividly.

Portrait of a Woman

In loving memory of my mother, Ruth Grace Abbott.
March 19th, 1920-October 14th, 2009

Fields and Mountain, Stormy Morning

A constantly changing sky creating constant shifts in light and shadow across the landscape.

Bowl of Plums

A paper bag of plums bought from an elderly lady with an old fruit orchard in her back yard; a bowl from an Iowa hardware store; a handkerchief from a thrift shop in Vermont. Maybe objects can speak their memories in a painting.

Bend in the Road

A look up Hollister Hill Road on an October afternoon.

River through Plainfield

I painted this as a demonstration for my landscape workshop that finished yesterday. When I teach, I'm always harping on the point that art is a process not a product, and that for even the most experienced artists, every painting is a touch-and-go experiment in coaxing form out of the nothingness of white paper or canvas.

Pond and Rocks

All of a sudden the color of maple, aspen and birch are at their most vivid, and we're in the midst of brief and beautiful autumn.