A couple of weeks ago, I had an unexpected detour after some chest pain. I had quadruple by-pass surgery, and am now home recuperating. Some of my pictures were taken in the hospital before the surgery, and now I am home and ready to go again.
New Year. New Project. 365/2023
On January 1, I started a 365 project of photographs. I doubted my ability to keep up, but after 20 days, I am feeling a little hopeful that I can keep this thing afloat. Here is my first photo. Check out the album 365/2023 for the remainder.
In The Night Kitchen
I love the feeling of the kitchen at night, it is closed down and waiting. The flowers in a pitcher on the counter glow in the low light. These little double tulips were glorious. Their white petal tips reflecting the light.
Spring = color
In New England, March is the dreariest month. It is mud season, either because of melting snow or frequent rain or both. The landscape colors are all muted browns, grays, blacks, and the dark green of evergreens. Here on the Cape, the ocean offers a respite on sunny days. BUT by the end of March we see a glimpse of what lies ahead. We have had snowdrops, which are the first signal of spring, then crocuses. Now the daffodils are ready and waiting for just one sunny day to bloom. This week, while I am waiting, I found my spring color with bright tulips from the market.
Snowdrops!
Spring is coming to Cape Cod! The first snow drops were up last week and then daffodils are coming soon!
Boston Photo Walk
I went on a Photo Walk in Boston. It was great fun going on a walk with a bunch of people who WANTED to stop all the time and take pictures. A little awkward at first we evolved into a merry band. I took my black and white camera and initially chafed at the limitation. A rainy day, colors were so saturated and it was so excited to be back in the city. But as the day progresses, I grew happier as I accepted the limits and found things I never expected.
SCorton CREEK IN BLACK & WHITE
Last week, on one of the prettiest of fall days, I took my Q2 Monochrom. It certainly made me look at things differently. Without the fall color to carry the image, everything seemed new. I took a bunch of macro pictures of seed pods (coming soon to their own blog entry). But this is my favourite vista and it is beautiful for a reason. It has fine bones and each season decks it out in amazing colors. But this is what it is at heart.
Scorton Creek in Black & White
Are We Out of the woods?
After 19 months of the pandemic, this is what we all wonder. I do not have any answers, but when I look out from my yard, I wonder what it is that is safe to do, and for how long? Meanwhile, the seasons rotate a second time, and here on Cape Cod, we are embarking on a beautiful warm autumn.
Reading ON THE TERRACE
I just bought some new “crayon” brushes for painting on my iPad. Sometimes things just fall together in the right way, and I am in love with the new brushes. They look like crayons, but being digital, have some wonderful advantages. I love layering them to get more glowing color, while retaining the roughness of the marks. Varying the opacity of the marks adds textured glazing. Unusually, I used only the crayon brush when making this image, changing only the size and the opacity of the marks.
When my daughter-in-law was here, I tried to sneak some pictures of her one morning while she was sitting at the kitchen counter. I was struck by her bright shirt, her hair piled on top of her head, and her headband. She caught me at it half way through and sat up and smiled, but I preferred the earlier unposed images to use as a base for a painting. I transported her to our terrace and surrounded her with the roses and lavender that line the path. I think the softness of the crayons foster a relaxed feeling. I continued with the decorative details I’ve been working with, but they come across in a whole new way.
Seeing something new sparks my creativity and sends me down a different path. It can be anything, a new brush in this case, or an unusual composition that catches my eye, a different color palette, a new app, interesting juxtapositions of color and textures, a new location, even the change of seasons in my yard or on my daily walks. Looking at art in museums and galleries is a huge catalyst of ideas for me. The pandemic has limited many of the ways I find that little spark. In looking harder for that spark at home, I find myself making different decisions about where I am going with an image and that the process itself can create the spark!
FIRST DATE: NIRVANA
I am fortunate to show my work at the Nirvana Coffee Company in Barnstable village. A five minute walk from my home, it is a bustling cafe with delicious coffee and food. My nephew’s recent bride, Lily, snapped a picture of a couple having their first date outside Nirvana on a beautiful summer day. I used her photo as a reference for the happy couple’s poses and took it from there!
First Date: at Nirvana!
My Sister
One sister sent me a picture from forty years ago. It is a beautiful photo of her, but what is amazing about it is that in it she looks like my other sister and me, so much so, that it is hard to tell who is who! I loved her pose and red shirt. So this is my interpretation of it.
My Sister
FATHER’S DAY ON THE TERRACE, TAKE 2
I love going back and forth between taking photos, drawing, and using parts of my photos in my drawings. It is what drew me to digital art in the first place. I have a very different mindset when drawing than taking photos.
Someone once asked me how I would use one of my “serious” photographs in a digital art piece, and the answer is that I wouldn’t! When I take a picture and work on the composition, the color, the content, the feeling, the editing: the art is taking place in those decisions. I don’t think of it as a successful photographic image if I want to do more than enhance the regular intent.
Drawing is a different process and a longer way of looking (looking informs my photos too, only it is expressed more instantaneously). I feel I have more control over color and composition, because I can move things around however I want to! I can add photographic elements from real life to add a touchstone to reality.
Both photography and drawing are about encouraging the viewer to move around the image to trace the fullness of the moment, but the ways I can do that are radically different and each present their own challenges..
Here is our Father’s Day lunch as seen my mind’s eye. The dappled effect of the tree on the terrace with my feeling of settling together into the afternoon. Here is our daughter unconsciously stretching into this lovely pose, contentedly basking in being here and being seen. I purposefully caught it with my camera as a reference to draw from. To me, iit contrasted our before pandemic normalcy with where we are now, as we cautiously start feeling our way back into a world where we can happily gather together. Her appraising gaze guided me was an acceptance of our resilience. Sometimes resilience is seen in the small things, such as this simple stretch on a beautiful June afternoon after a long period of isolation.
Father’s Day 2021: Dappled Light
Father’s Day: 2021
We were blessed with a visit from two fo our children for Father’s Day this year! We had a low key day abetted by perfect weather and good food on the terrace. The afternoon just unfolded with warm conviviality, helped along with wine and a slow grazing lunch.
LOOSENING UP
I’m working on loosening up my landscapes so they start to have a more universal feel and the colors tell the story. Here is a re-visitation of my New Seabury in Early June. What do you think?
New Seabury in June, version 2
THE STUDIO IN JUNE
I am back in the studio again — after houseguests, sick dogs, early summer beach days and other pleasant and mundane distractions. This spring has not been all that productive, but what I am making is expressive of these times for me. I am enjoying the here and now - and recently that is what I am drawing and collaging!
The New New Normal
Just like everyone else, I am figuring out how to stay safe during the post-vaccination phase of the pandemic. Where I live, the number of cases has gone way down and vaccination rates are high, particularly amongst those 65 and older. Yet I am finding it uncomfortable to venture out and resume any of my old activities. Last weekend I attended a memorial service for a friend who died in January. The room for the reception opened into a garden so the airflow was good. We sat at huge round tables to watch a video that beautifully wove together her artwork and photographs of her life. I saw some friends I hadn’t seen in real life for 14 months. Yet I still hesitated to take my mask off. But I did it. I certainly don’t know what is coming with the pandemic, but I do know, that right now I am safe to do things that were scary last summer. It is hard to do them, but I want to follow the science and not my fear.
The New New Normal
MARCH 20, 2020
What was I doing last year at this time? I went back in my camera roll to see was going on visually. We had been sheltering in place for two weeks, and all of a sudden it looked like we might be staying home longer. Maybe it would even be a lot longer. I had been working on my son’s wedding invitation and the dress I bought in the mail, but I was just getting the idea that there would not be a wedding in Costa Rica even as late as In July. On the home front, I was playing around with things, images from a recent trip to NYC, taking pictures of flowers using my iPad as a light table, dabbling, recalibrating.
Dazed - March 20, 2020
TOKYO AT THE STUDIO DOOR
I am still spending my creative time editing pictures. Although this week there has been much to attend to and I have been out of the studio. I am spending as much time as possible at the beach while I can still take the dogs (our beaches are closed to dogs fro May 15-September 15). In the winter we mostly have the beaches to ourselves and the dogs play and I can take pictures. As the weather warms, more people come and I can’t focus on photography. This is a picture of Tokyo at home. She is almost a year old. I liked the peak into the studio.
Tokyo at the Studio Door
THE LAST VINEYARD IN PARIS
Travel still seems a long way off. But spring is coming to Cape Cod, just as bountifully as it came to Le Clos Montmartre in Paris five years ago today. This small plot is the last active vineyard in Paris.
Le Clos Montmartre.
OUR ORANGE PAPER BARK maple
Spring is unfolding, but slowly this year. We have some warm days that are normal and then back to unusually cold days. And so much wind! This year I have really appreciated our yard. I spend more and more time in it. That’s what a new puppy does in combination with a global pandemic. I’ve spent more time observing all its inhabitants, particularly the trees and how they go through the change of the seasons.. My partner has been planting trees since we moved here. This is one of our newer ones. The bark on a Paper Bark Maple curls up in ragged scrolls revealing fresh bark underneath. Our daffodils this year have lasted and lasted, and from this view form clouds of yellow behind the tree.
Our Paper Bark Maple