Snow Day Creations

Even though we only got about 3 inches of snow, there was enough hype over the "Blizzard of 2015" to get me two snow days.  I stayed indoors and off the roads like the good citizen that I am, and used the time to do some creative projects I've had on my mind for quite some time.

The first (above) is a Nugget pillow!  Nug loves to put her head on a small pillow.  I have one with sequins on it and another with embroidery from Mexico, both that I really like, that she is constantly drooling on.  So I figured I'll make her her own pillow.  (Because that's not a spoiled dog or anything.)  And then I saw this cat pillow, and figured "oh! if I make it look like Nugget then she will know it's hers."  And so far its working.  I always knew there was genius inside that thick head of hers.

Staying with the theme of pillows, I decided to give another one a face lift.  A couple months back I bought a box of Rit dye for like $2 to jump on the dip dye bandwagon.  I tried that with a white shirt and the results were terrible. 

 But I love the pillow pictured left, it was just getting dingy even after being washed.  So I threw it in a dye bath and rewashed it and I love it now.  It's funny because in my paintings I keep covering original paintings with a uniform layer of blue.  I think I just need to put my whole living room in a blue dye bath.

And what kind of snow day is it without cooking?  Especially a soup.  So I made a minestrone.  It's pretty classic although I used gluten free noodles which turned out surprisingly well, sometimes they disintegrate, and some aged balsamic on top.  

The one big family secret I will share and my mommom would be so distraught to know I am doing this...add a sweet potato to broths.  They disintegrate in a good way and sweeten and thicken the broth.  We do it with chicken soup and I did it with this soup and it really added to the flavor. 

  

And finally, I replanted this pig pot!  My friends gave me this amazing planter for my birthday and I had been keeping basil in it.  But that all died, its too cold in the kitchen.  So I split succulents and replanted them here.  I recently learned about this which I guess a lot of people know but I had no idea.  You can take an arm of a succulent and plant it in the soil and it will grow roots.  I tried it with another planter and its been about 4 months, so far so good.  It's great because when my original three little pots are looking leggy I just break them off and replant.  

On Openings

Opening with Hipsters, 2014, Oil on Panel

Above is a recent painting I made.  It came from deep in my subconscious brain.  I seriously started the painting with four pink balls and before I knew it they became heads and this was in front of me.  I have no clue who the people are except that the short head in the front is mine.  It came after a particularly awkward night of openings that prompted me to write this post -- an issue I have been thinking about for a long time: openings.

I always set out going to openings with such optimism.  From a month's distance they seem like the perfect social gathering -- people interested in the same things, looking at artwork over a glass of wine.  And then I enter the show and usually pretty immediately things start to go awry.

It's a type of awriness (should be a word) that is so subtle.  I mingle with a first person who its great to see but I'm simultaneously aware that I'm very sober and fairly sweaty from the walk.  The more I start thinking about how sweaty I am in the lights of the gallery, the more my hands feel like foreign objects attached to my arms that are growing quickly and need to be folded awkwardly over my chest to be contained.  I excuse myself to get a glass of wine.  As I am pouring, I am rewinding the scene that just occurred so spontaneously and still deciding whether my enthusiasm was way too excited over the person's comment when someone else usually pulls up.  We talk, I inevitably do something weird. 

The thing is: there are two types of opening goers.  There are those who want to really engage and have a great conversation for a long time broaching all subjects and those who want to bop around and say hi and take in the show quick and easy.  Both philosophies are great.  It turns out I am neither of these.  What I am is the opposite of whatever the person I am talking to is.  I don't mean to be but I must not pick up social cues well or something, every conversation I either feel like I need to pivot and run or am grabbing the person on the shoulder trying to scream a stupid story into their ear.  

The finale comes when, after so many of these start to accumulate, I eventually am talking to someone and the voice in my head is just replaying the 'aubrey's awkward highlight reel', the painfully weird and overly enthused things I have spewed at various points in the night and I can no longer take it.  Which is when I dash out to the nearest bar (hopefully I am with a friend or Alex) and drink away the socially inept artist that I am and wait four weeks to do it again next month.

Painting Coincidences

You know that thing that happens when you say a word at the exact same time it is said by someone on the TV?  Or you learn about something completely new to you and its casually mentioned in the fiction book you are reading that night?  Everyone tells me this is called coincidence but sometimes it really feels more personal than that.  Like the world could sense what was on your mind and brought it up to the surface to let you know it was listening.

This happens occasionally when looking at paintings.  I notice something in one painting for the first time and it pops up in another.  Happened yesterday.  I have been looking a bit at Manet and stumbled upon this painting in a book at the library which I have never seen before:

Manet, Luncheon in the Studio, 1868, Oil on Canvas

It really struck me.  The way Manet uses black in such a flat, graphic way is something I really love.  In this piece it is especially beautiful, in contrast to the delicate stripes of the shirt which frame the man's face.  I looked at it for a while and then went on with my day.

Fairfield Porter, Young Man, 1968, Oil on Masonite

Then later at night, I was browsing images as I do on my computer.  I was thinking about Porter and put his name into google images and the painting above came up after a few scrolls down.  

I figured by now I have seen every Porter painting, yes he is incredibly prolific but so are my searches for his work, but I have never seen this one before.  In fact, it is very hard to find online, only a thumbnail and a flickr link to a picture that looks like it was a camera sneak while a guard wasn't watching (I took that image and cropped it up nicely)

So when I saw this painting made exactly 100 years after Manet's of a man in a flat black coat with delicate yellow stripes leading up to the face I had to feel as if the universe was involved.  It makes me happy to find these relationships among painters and even happier to wonder whether Porter had seen the same painting by Manet and went on to make his own.

Women and Biography at Woodmere Art Museum

I'm happy to share this announcement for Women and Biography opening at Woodmere Art Museum on February 8th.  I have a piece in this show which was bought by a woman who promised her collection to Woodmere.  So that's how that happened.

The show focuses on women who paint from their own life as a subject matter.  I am more than honored to be showing alongside these women, many of whose paintings have been the source of contemplative looking for me.  That first name though, Mary Cassatt, holds something particularly special for me.

Beginning in fifth grade, Mary Cassatt was to me what Michael Jordan was to many of my male counterparts.  She was my Justin Bieber to girls of that age currently.  If you couldn't already tell, I wasn't the coolest kid, but I was passionate.

Around that time, I already knew I loved art and knew quite a few artists -- Georgia O'Keeffe, Dali, da Vinci, Gauguin, Degas, Monet -- they were on my radar, but none held my intrigue like Mary Cassatt.  I had read all of their 30 page biographies in the library and decided Mary was who I needed to emulate.  Number 1 -- she spent time in Philadelphia and was a woman painter.  Check, I could do that.  Number 2 -- somewhat magically and simply (at least in the bio) she ended up in France alongside some of the best painters and thinkers of her generation.  That would work for me.

So when I found out that our final graduating project was the 'famous person project' I naturally knew who would be my subject.  For this project students in the entire grade had to create a written report and foam core poster and it would culminate in a one day event where we dressed as that person and presented them to the class.  

I worked so hard on that report.  The cover was a hand cut-out brown paper palette with collaged rainbow colored-blobs of paint.  The kicker was the binding -- I hole punched the side in two places and used a paintbrush to hold the rubber bands that secured it in place.  I was very shy at that time and I have to say normally pretty modest, but on that day I distinctly remember carrying the report in, casually facing outwards.  Not too aggressive but just in case someone caught a glimpse they would note that I was not only depicting a great artist, but also one with her own artistic merit.  HAHA! 

My love has spread a bit since then, to other painters and realities for myself.  But I definitely still have love for her.  This painting at the PMA is always a favorite of mine.  I love the way the darks fuse into one large abstract shape and what that suggests of the relationship of the father and son, form becomes content: 

Portrait of Alexander J. Cassatt and His Son, Robert Kelso Cassatt, 1884, Oil on Canvas

So my fifth grade self can't help but smile deeply at the reality of this Woodmere show and the proximity of our names on the publication.  Of course I am in no way equating the two of us but it is quite an affirming feeling to look back close to 20 years and know that this thing of making art which seized me then still possesses me.  And that I am lucky enough to be living a life in which I paint on most days I think would make that 10 year old version of myself pretty proud.

A Few Notes

My second computer just died.  So I'm on a bit of a blog-less streak which coincides with this week marking a year since I began ' Sunday picks'.  As much as I've enjoyed posting some favorite painters I feel like the backlog of artists I want to share is much smaller and I have an idea for a new sort of project for this year.  So for now I'm thinking of being a bit more sporadic.

Due to the computer situation, images are quite the ordeal to load unless taken directly from my phone camera.  So I apologize but I did see two good shows over the last week that I recommend. (check out the links for a visual)

First one was Reprefantasion at Fleisher-Ollman.  The other was William H Johnson at Arthur Ross Gallery which is on UPenn's campus.  Both were the kind of shows that require slow looking and reward with continual discovery of the painter's thoughts and process.  The best kind of painting.

Penn's campus is where I took the above pictures of an amazing tree and a salivating gargoyle. 

Sunday Pick: Thoughts on Paint

Today, I was sort of begrudgingly sitting down to my computer to put up my Sunday Pick.  Usually I am excited to share but this week no particular artist has been on my mind so much as one particular thought.  And then I had the epiphany that I write this blog and if I feel like changing it up, then I will.  So there.  My arbitrary, self-imposed categories are only as good as my own interest, so this week I am writing about something a little different.

Georges Braque,  Baluster and Skull, 1938

I mentioned that I visited the Braque show a few weeks ago.  That is where this kernel of thought first presented itself.  I was very taken with the surfaces of his paintings, thick, thick piles of paint in certain areas, and felt a strong link in that to something I have been seeing in some favorite contemporary works.  Then last week I read this post on Painters' Table by Brett Baker.  He writes about the third room in the show housing works from the 1930s saying: 

". Most striking are the surfaces - extreme examples of Braque’s method of adding sand to his paint. The sand’s heavy grit creates a surface that both reflects the ambient light and deepens that within the painting. In combination with the gentle outlines and washes with which he paints the objects, the sand creates a surprising fullness of space..." 

And his observations, sort of gave validity to my thoughts or at least renewed an interest in me to do the exhausting work of parsing out what all was sitting in the back of my mind. 

Still Life with Palette, 1943

 In person, it really was quite extreme what was being done with this thick paint.  For example with the painting above, the white squiggles on the outermost parts of the canvas operate as the illusion of a tablecloth's wrinkles or a twig branch in sunlight in the way representational painting functions but equally and confusingly also as that actual thing. The paint is so thick that parts become actual objects, relief sculptures that function not as an artifice but as a thing in themselves.  Like in the first painting, there is a painting of a wood table, but simultaneously also the actual surface of a table.

Now a contemporary example.

Jason Stopa, Watermelon with KB, 2013

 I really love this painting.  When I first saw it I couldn't stop thinking about it.  And then after the context of the Braque show, I felt like I really knew something of what was so engaging to me about it.  It is a painting of a watermelon, and yet it is also and perfectly equally a green thick circle of paint and also, the sculptural equivalent of the rind of that fruit.  

It's an idea that is so simple in a way that it is hard to wrap my mind around.  And also an idea that has been realized and analyzed before but it feels again new, like there is something to chew over here.

Trudy Benson, N, 2010

Sarah Faux, Hands on Hips, 2012

(those red fingernails!)

These paintings are bridging the gap between abstraction, representation and sculpture in a way that is positively electric.  Its the notion that these paintings can at once hold representations of the world, and actual real things that are impersonating nothing at the same time.  And they can sit comfortably together in one painting.  It feels like the right thing to say at this time, in painting.  Everything is at once masquerading as something else and also authentic in doing so.

I don't have much else conclusive to say, but hopefully it is enough of a thought to take away and look around with.

Gallery Hopping List NYC

My recent NY trip map (if you will)

Recently, a reader from overseas asked me for any recommendations on galleries to visit in NY when in for a short visit.  I have had a running list of favorites on my computer that I check before heading up myself.  But when my computer bit the dust a few weeks back, I realized it would make a lot of sense to put this list in a safer place: my sketchbook.  I also thought it might be something helpful to put up here after hearing there may be some interest for it (...and in case my luck goes really bad and I lose my sketchbook too.)

So here are my favorite, most solid choices (only in Manhattan):

Cheim & Read

Edward Thorp

Elizabeth Harris

Sears Peyton

Sikkema Jenkins

Tibor de Nagy

Here are my second favorite, most solid choices:

Ameringer

Anton Kern

Bowery Gallery

DC Moore

George Billis

J. Cacciola

Lori Bookstein

Matthew Marks

Mitchell-Innes & Nash

The Painting Center

Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects

And here are the enormous, monstrous galleries that are less my style but worth seeing anyway:

David Zwirner

Gagosian

Pace

So that is my usual rundown.  If you have any suggestions to add please leave them in the comments section. I will try any gallery once...

In My Studio: Thoughts on White Space

The Backyard (looking out and from above), 2013, Oil on Panel, 36 x 48 IN PROGRESS

In the last few months, I have been very preoccupied with this idea of using the white of the panel and how it can interact in a painting and if so how it can do that successfully.

I was always taught to quickly paint out and address any white space, and, if I am being completely honest, I usually encourage my students to do the same.  It is necessary in achieving a sort of dominance over the materials when you are a beginner feeling so hesitant.  

But what about now, when I feel I have a real ownership or at least understanding?  I make paintings that have always engaged the question of space.  I like to see how it can flatten and extend and condense.  In fact, I would say it is one of my main overarching obsessions in the construction of a painting.

Using the white of the primed ground is something I have always done in my drawings and so in recent months I have been trying to make paintings this way too.  In the most successful outcomes, the two areas marry and lock together like a puzzle almost.  It creates this push and pull of what is 'background' or behind that makes the art nerd in me positively giddy.  It also has been challenging me in a new way to make a painting that works.  

The drawing that kicked off this thinking...

One of the first paintings I did with this in mind...

A larger more recent painting
The right wheel and seat, things that should be most solid are made from saved up white ground

 I think I am most pleased by the piece at the top, it is my most recent large painting.  I did it completely from memory of our backyard both from looking out our third floor bedroom door and our living room window at that blue hour of night.  

Of course, since I felt I had finally got a good stab at this marriage of ground and paint, I promptly told myself I now needed to make a painting where the entire background was addressed and then smeared away.  It ended up being the weirdest painting I have ever made and I can't decide yet if it is horrible or I love it so I won't put it into the blogosphere to live for eternity.  But things are churning here in my little studio -- hope they are in yours too.

New Painting and Titles

Fruit for Lou, 2013, 16.5 x 18, Oil on Panel

Here is a new painting of mine, done in the midst of an awful studio week.  Not a typical type awful studio experience you may be picturing, awful in that I was doing everything but painting required of a painter.  

Documenting work, applying to a show, applying to a few jobs, (which includes the dreaded updating aka complete re-writing of all materials)...you get the idea.  So I was glad to see that somehow I made something I am really excited about in the few hours I could free my mind.  Maybe the creative energy that was utterly dying inside came out my brush?

Anyways, I needed a title for the piece right around my breaking moment when thinking of one more word to describe myself, my work, anything, felt like a death sentence.  (I know this is all sounding a bit dramatic but it was, especially the moment my computer bit the dust with three more pages to print.)

  So I turned to Alex, who ironically works as an attorney defending people on death row and will not enjoy my reference above and did not find my predicament the least bit life-altering, and said "title this pleaseee!" 

Because I think titles are so important to get right.  Ideally, they operate just as the painting does, so for me I guess its some sort of poetic reference of the world and objects around me.  And right when I think, I don't care I'll just title it, I think what if Rosy-Fingered Dawn wasn't titled that way?  It can be such a missed opportunity. 

And Alex then casually pulled me out of my neurotic mental spiral downward with 'Fruit for Lou'? Lou is a nickname for our dog and there you go, it was personal and weird and seemingly normal but actually illogical and exactly like the painting.

Caught in the Studio: Before the Storm

Here in Philly, we've been waiting for the snowstorm to show all day.  For some reason, it has just exhausted me (and Nugget).  I think it may be the strange sort of light the clouds have created coming in the window.  I am really hoping it comes soon and when it leaves, so does winter.  You can tell from my painting from memory that I have spring on my mind.

Another Look: Rodin and Drawing

Recently, in the Q & A after giving my lecture at Millersville University, I was asked if I find it important to draw as a part of my practice.

I answered yes.  But I liked the question and have been thinking about it.  Drawing is crazy because it can be so many things to different artists.  For me it is something to do alongside my paintings, not as a preparatory thing but as a way of aiding my looking.  When I draw something, I see it differently, more -- its ingrained in my memory better somehow.  Drawing is also something I do when I need to reset myself, get back to the center, refocus.  

Some can make drawing their solitary practice.  It can be taken so many places.  But I do think regardless of what type of drawing it is the thing many visual artists have in common.

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), so well known for his sculpture, was an avid drawer (examples above).  He never did drawings for his sculptures but he always drew.  Which makes sense -- a writer reads a lot.  I think its sort of like that -- a visual lexicon that you accumulate for yourself and can use with a greater freedom when working in other mediums and ways.

Happy Birthday Adelie Bischoff!

Happy 87th birthday to Adelie Bischoff!  I was so delighted when a friend of Adelie Bischoff's contacted me to say she was showing my previous post on a painting of Adelie's to her because she thought she would get a kick out of it on her 87th birthday.  

I know I didn't meet her or even directly interact, but for some reason I felt starstruck to even for one second be in the world of such a great painter.  The whole thing sent me into a tailspin, picturing how interesting and wonderful her life must be, living in California, painting, and participating in such a group of painters as the SF Bay Area group.  

I can only hope that I have as many great memories when I am 87 -- better go paint -- enjoy these other exquisite paintings by her.

Bird Duvet with Dog

The story goes like this:  I have been waiting and waiting for West Elm's Cubist Bird Duvet to go on sale.

And it FINALLY did, and thanks to wedding gift certificates -- it was MINE!

And I love the way it looks! Our room is perfect...except for the weird space between headboard and bed... 

...where Nugget, the biggest diva in the world, has to have her ottoman with pillowtop mattress so she's not scared in the night.

Good Morning-ish

Breakfast. Eaten.  And for this week, that small accomplishment will go down as a win.  For really no big reason, I have had such a week of struggle.  A few bad studio days and a glimpse at my bank account can really make the self-doubt flow much too easily.  But being up in the wee hours of the night has given me some fresh ideas of things I need to do...now to sort out how they look in the glaring light of morning.

New Painting: New Process?

Here is a new painting of mine.  It looks somewhat serene in the end but I can tell you painting this one was anything but that.  There are at least 4 other paintings underneath -- but sometimes that is how I make my best work.  I completely abandon any sentimentality I have for the piece and weird things end up happening that I think are clever -- like the laptop becoming an arm of the chair.  

It also ended up being interesting in that it is a semi self portrait with my backyard out the window, but with all these household objects I don't own -- just wish I did.  It was freeing -- I abandoned painting my things, and just went with any things the painting needed( and things I'd need if I had gobs of money.)  

I threw in a West Elm lamp, Anthropologie pillow, Etsy bookends, a glass table and other one of a kind items.  This could be a new budget friendly shopping option for me :)  But seriously, I think it is much better than some of my works which adhere more to my reality -- painted with more instinct and less rules.  I'll see if it keeps up -- somehow I blame and thank Pinterest for this.

The Best Gift Giver

Alice Mumford

As my brother-in-law explained in our wedding toast, Alex (my husband) likes to be the best at things.  He proceeded to list those things Alex has claimed: best at cleaning up dog sh-t off the sidewalk, best at persuading me to give him a ride to work, the list goes on.  And to that list I could add: best at leaving socks in every single crevice of our place, best at falling asleep (near narcolepsy) when the dishes need done, etc etc.  But I have and will always give him credit for this title: the best gift giver.  

His competitive nature with himself has worked to my great advantage.  A trip to Spain, an slr camera, totally outlandish things -- a kind of elaborateness that is nowhere else in our lives or relationship.  This year he got me a truly exquisite painting (above) by Alice Mumford, one of my favorite contemporary artists, shipped from the UK.  I would have probably passed out from surprise and delight, had he not left the receipt (an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper) laying on our ottoman.  Regardless of the delivery, he is the best and I look at this painting every single day.  It is a true beauty.

A semester gone...

As an art teacher of eight children's classes per week (without an art ed degree mind you) I made a sort of private vow to myself that students would come away with a better understanding of the art world and really, in general, the world at large.  Meaning, even though its really fun and easy to make marshmallow snowmen (see below) the large majority of classes need to focus on the seriousness and real importance of art and artists.

On that note we have made Lascaux cave paintings, Greek red figure vases, papier mache sarcophagi, Inuit owls, Chinese ink landscapes, Yoruba beadworks, Mexican tin tiles, Goldsworthy leaf collages, Charley Harper illustrations, Van Gogh night paintings, and Calder circuses, among other things.  I'm not sure that even 50% of what I have attempted to express to them has been understood in words.  But I am very proud of the respect they give their art through their best efforts every class, captured non verbally in the work below:

   

And so even though I know there will be days where the energy just flows right out of the room and all we can muster are edible snowmen, I know the large majority of days we will learn a lot from each other about this crazy business of art making and after a long holiday break, I will be happy to be back.