Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Commissionable

Someone came in on Saturday and commissioned me to do a painting for him.  GREAT!  But I'm not sure I can do it -- it's not a word painting.  YIKES!  Sunday I painted the backgrounds of four test papers, and yesterday I bought the model from which I will work (it's really cute).  Tonight will be the real test.  I am not one hundred percent confident I can pull this off, but I AM one hundred percent confident I can try very hard.  I will keep you posted.

On an unrelated topic, Poodle is feeling punky today.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

What's your dinosaur name?

This one is for poodle:


This next one (and for my next number...) is still under consideration.  The panel is just laying on top of a frame to show what it would look like, so disregard the somewhat raw edges that are visible.

I think I like it.

Thirdly, here is the current view out our front window.  The furniture piece is new (100 year old mesquite top with a black walnut base -- stunning).  The Big Dig is also new.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Rainy Days and Mondays

We are re-hanging the gallery.  Christine gets the blue wall ...


... and poodle gets the couch.


On a side note, my sister has dissed the incomplete painting in my last post.  She thinks it should say POO.  Maybe it will, and maybe I will give it to her for Christmas.  That'll teach her.  (I can say this here with no fear of a poo-laced rebuttal because she can't figure out how to post a comment on my blog.  Heh heh.)

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Painter's Block

Yeah hi.  It's me.  I've been suffering from a little painter's block the past couple of weeks, but I think that might be over.  Unfortunately, I have simultaneously been suffering from a little writer's block.  I have four canvases and one panel at home waiting for their words, I just can't figure out what those words are.  And in an unprecedented move, I am going to show you one of them.  I don't like to show people my unvarnished canvases because the varnish really makes the colors pop.  So, against my better judgment, here you go:


See my problem?  I have no idea what this is trying to say.  Ergo, writer's block.  Poo.

Anyway, loads of other things have been happening these first two weeks of September.  First a report from Vermont, specifically Route 4 in Killington.  You remember this:


I think my dad took that picture on Monday or Tuesday, August 29th or 30th.  Here is what the same part of Route 4 looked like on Friday, September 16th:



Holy.  Moly.  How crazy is that?  They put the river back where it belonged, cleared out all that crap, rebuilt the roadbed, paved it and put the guardrails back up.  I don't think they ever found the house that totally washed away (it used to live just to the right of the stump pile -- the base of the For Sale sign is right in front of the pile).  Amazing.

Updates from Bigfork:  the airstrip right down the road from my house had been turned into a heli base because of the wildfires nearby.  This thing was my neighbor for quite a while:


I call it the Sigourney Weaver helicopter because I can't remember its real name.  Hold on a sec - let me look it up .... oh yeah, a Sikorsky something-or-other.  Although it might be an Erickson Air-crane.  I don't know.  I'm sticking with Sigourney Weaver.  There has also been a smaller white helicopter -- the kind with the bucket swinging below.  That one flew right over my house every time it left the airstrip.  Needless to say, air traffic in my neck of the woods has been heavy.

Bear traffic has also been heavy.  My neighbor told me last week he has seen a momma black bear and two cubs at least 15 times this summer between his house and my house.  I told him to stop hogging all the bear sightings.  The very next day I saw a black bear down by his house.  Roxie and I sat in the car on the side of the road watching it for a bit.  Cool.  Two days after that, we were walking down Carly Lane and there it was again, sitting right in the woods by the side of the road, not moving, watching us.  Oops.  We went back home.  Judging from the amount of non-poodle poop in our yard, I think a zoo passed through this week.  Crikey.

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I have come out of retirement, and I chaired my first meeting as President of the Interim Board of Directors of the Bigfork Museum of Art and History on Thursday morning.  (Side note:  I used the word "of" six times in that sentence.  I'm sure that's a grammatical no-no.)  I never thought I would end up back on that board, let alone as president again, but here we are and all is well.  We are going to kick ass and take names.  Game on.

Poodle may be going in for another hoof-ectomy this coming week.  I think they will have to remove the whole nail this time.  Her toe is pretty swollen and I am afraid to try and trim the nail myself.  She is not limping or anything, and we went for a two mile walk yesterday and played ball twice.  But her foot could be a mangled and bloody mess and she would still want to play ball.  What a dork.

On a final note, I have turned over so many new leaves this year there aren't any left.  Enough said.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

30 days hath September

I got a nice, heavy box full of painting junk from Dick Blick yesterday.  LOADS of new colors, and only two of them mildly exploded in transit.  My problem now is that I want to use ALL the new colors AT ONCE.  Actually, that is my second problem.  The first problem is that I can't seem to paint anything I like.  I think this is post-Irene nonsense.  Hurricane Irene devastated Vermont.  My home state.  The state to which I hope to return.  The photos and videos I have seen are absolutely heartbreaking.  Here is a picture of my mom inspecting some minor road damage:


Yeah, I said minor.  And here are two pictures my dad took of Route 4 in Killington:





Unbelievable.  I feel so helpless, being so far away.  Last night I thought I would be able to paint my way to a happier place, so to speak, but I ended up painting over the same panel twice because I didn't like how it turned out.  And today I am going to paint over it again.  My head and my heart are too stunned by all of the devastation.  I have been knocked off kilter, and I can't paint.  Bleh.

But today at work I was typing the bio of one of our artists, Tabby Ivy, and her artist's statement totally resonated with me.  If she weren't a friend I would steal it for my own.  This is what she said:

"I have come to welcome the calm that comes to my life when in the midst of creative expression.  Oil painting has become my vehicle to convey on canvas a mood, scene or thought that broke through the everyday to touch my soul.  The end result is often a surprise, but if successful depicts a truth from within."

Yes.  Exactly.