© 2023 Kathryn Freeman Studios

dogs

Alfred and Friends on the Farm, oil on linen, 20" x 24"

 

Alfred is the fellow sitting right in the center foreground of the painting looking out at you and he is a very lucky guy. He was adopted by a wonderful family who had recently lost their beloved Spaniel so in a mutual arrangement he filled their hearts with joy again, and they are giving him a life any dog would envy.

Next to Alfred is his buddy Lily. Lily is a demure city girl living in a nice building on the upper east side of Manhattan. She goes to the beauty parlor regularly and lives a posh life with her mum. But when Lily goes to visit Alfred on his farm, she becomes quite another beast completely, and has been known to get appropriately muddy for a farm dog. 

Behind the pups in this pastoral setting are Mason and Jake, Alfred's very curious donkey friends. Whenever Alfred is near they watch him closely and appear to be amused by his antics.  

And back in the field are the beautiful farm cows grazing peacefully. 

This painting was a surprise for Alfred's family from his grandmother who is also the former director of the Tatistcheff Gallery NYC where I exhibited by work for many years and my close friend. She  stealthily collected photos of the farm from her son and sent them to me one my one. As a writer, she had an amazing ability to describe all the subjects' personalities in great detail so that I could get them on canvas. It was  a cheerful project to work on together and now I look forward to meeting all the characters in person one day! 


"7 pm with Hopper and Bonnard" (If Edward Hopper's Model had lived during the Pandemic and had Pets")

2020 has been a very strange and disorienting year so far with lots of new phrases and expressions being added to our lives. One of these is the concept of "Staying Home" in order to "flatten the curve" and slow the spread of the COVID 19 virus. Besides sometimes being challenging- staying home had some silver linings mainly because people slowed down and had time to try things and do things they didn't have time for in their normal full and busy lives. Many people were sheltering alone which reminded me of the Edward Hopper paintings of single figures isolated in a room. Other people saw this relationship and many Hopper paintings were shared on social media. 

One of the last little trips I made before the pandemic hit, was a road trip with two friends to see the Hopper Hotel show at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. I have always been a Hopper devotee. My uncle, an art historian and painter, was a lecturer on Hopper at Washington University in St. Louis, and since I learned to paint from him, I looked at a lot of Hopper paintings over many years. I even named one of our dogs after him... The show in Richmond was fantastic and I fell in love all over again with the painting "11 am" which I have depicted on the left hand wall in this painting.  I also stole  the wonderful figure from Hopper, reversed her pose and made her the woman isolating alone in "Staying Home".

"Staying Home" oil on linen 36" x 36"

But she is not alone at all. Another silver lining to the pandemic was that many people realized that it was the perfect time to bring a dog or cat into their lives. Pets are companionship and comfort and that is what we all needed. A record number of animals were pulled from shelters and placed into loving forever homes. So the woman in this painting is surrounded by her dogs and cats in the warmth of a cozy interior. The other painting on the wall is Bonnard's "Woman with Dog" -another favorite painting of mine. 

Other activities that people were doing while staying home are represented in the painting; such as learning chess, (I think the cat is winning), making sourdough bread, and doing hours of handicrafts such as knitting and needlepoint. My daughter was staying home in Brooklyn. She described her experience being in the city and sometimes called us to let us hear the nightly 7 pm ritual of people coming to their windows, shouting and beating on pots to thank the healthcare workers for their hard work, devotion and personal sacrifice. So that is what is going on in the buildings outside. 
I titled the painting "7 pm with Hopper and Bonnard" to echo the Hopper painting titled "11 am".

Adrienne's Feast, oil on linen, 24" x 40"


I loved doing this painting because it reminded me of an Italian predella panel that tell the story of the life of a saint in the various stages of their life and work.
This is Adrienne, mother of four, cherished and adored wife, talented and much traveled cook, and animal lover. Adrienne saw my painting "Lake House after the Storm" and related to it having experienced the flooding from Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas where she lives. She had a birthday coming up and her husband Jody contacted me. After some discussion, and learning that Lake House was no longer available, Jody asked me to create a painting specifically for his wife, including things that were dear to her. Jody was wonderful to work with as he had studied a number of my paintings and had a good idea of what I needed. He also liked the composition in Lake House-a series of arches that structure the rectangle so we decided to do something similar for Adrienne's painting. He sent me family photos and pictures of their home and their dogs and cats (a wonderful menagerie!). He told me some great stories and family legends including the phenomenon of the Christ figure statuette from Rio de Janeiro that continuously turns to face them no matter how many times they straighten him to face forward. The figure is included in the painting on a pedestal...facing Adrienne. Adrienne's three sons are grown men now but in the painting they are young boys playing ball, visible through the arch on the left. Adrienne lost a baby girl but the child lives on in her heart so Jody asked that I include a little girl in the painting. She is in the arch to the right, in a translucent pink dress, releasing white doves into the sky, where images of Adriennes's mother and father and brother Michael, are subtly represented in the cloud formations. The bookshelves are lined with Adrienne's collection of cookbooks that she formed during many international trips. Adrienne is wearing a formal blue gown that she wore as mother of the groom in her son's wedding. Some other small things are another painting of mine, called White Stockings, which they have in their collection as well as a few images of creatures that come and go on their property in Houston including deer, a white heron, and the hen that is watching Adrienne closely while she prepares a feast. Note- a favorite book and film of Adrienne's and Jody's is Babette's Feast, and Jody decided that Adrienne's Feast would be a perfect title because of the way she instills love into all aspects of her life. 




"The Sunday Paper" and homage to "La Grande Jatte"

I finished this painting, "The Sunday Paper", just in time to frame it and put it on a truck to Dog and Horse Fine Art, in Charleston, South Carolina. My show there opens on Friday night and I am very excited about it. http://www.dogandhorsefineart.com/index.php/exhibits/item/kathryn-freeman-a-perfect-reality  Come to the opening if you are going to be in Charleston! There will be jazz music and cupcakes! Along with wine, of course. Charleston is known for its Friday night art openings.

"The Sunday Paper", oil on linen, 36" x 48"


 As you can see the interior of the painting is a typical Sunday morning in some houses-guy on the sofa, dozing off while reading the Sunday paper. His faithful dogs would love to go to the park, but their owner won't wake up and take them. So the park is coming to them.

Georges Seurat's incredible painting, "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte", has had a huge role in my development as a painter over a period of 30 (at least) years. I fell in love with it when I was in graduate school, -for its formality, compositional brilliance, such as the use of the golden section and diagonals, use of the silhouette, shape repetition, shape symbolism, and about a million other reasons. Seurat was a genius and so much more than the "pointillism" technique he used for awhile, which tends to be his big claim to fame in art history books. He died at age 32 and I always wonder what he would have produced if he had lived longer. He was a skilled draftsman as well as an auspicious colorist, so he was capable of anything.

Whenever I feel confused about painting (frequently) I return to La Grande Jatte along with going back to look at Vermeer's "Woman in Blue Reading a Letter". Those two paintings clear my head, reinforce what painting is about, and restore my faith.  I had seen lots of studies and reproductions of La Grande Jatte but I had never seen the big finished painting until last year when I finally got to Chicago. The painting took my breath away and I felt dizzy standing in front of something I had studied and admired for so long. I spent the entire day there.

It was time to pay homage. So I decided to make the park in "The Sunday Paper", La Grande Jatte.

I had to expand Seurat's landscape a little bit so that it was visible out the door and the side window, and I borrowed a few figures from some of his other paintings and studies. As you can see, a few elements of the painting have already seeped into the room. The monkey on a leash being held by the woman with the black parasol has sneaked into the picture along with her hat, as have some of the vertical elements and diagonals. I do realize that there are a lot of people who are not reading a hard copy of the newspaper anymore, so there is a tablet (maybe a kindle?) on the coffee table on top of the red book. So that is me tipping my top hat to new technology, while also tipping it to one of the greatest paintings of the 19th century. Thank you Georges. 

"Armchair Blues"

This is my most recent painting. The inspiration for it came from multiple sources as is the case with most of my paintings. As you all know by now, I am a big advocate for adopting shelter dogs. The before and after photos are among the things I like best about the dog rescue world. So in the first photo you see a skinny, sad, mangy dog on a concrete floor or tied to an outdoor dog house in a dirt yard. Then the second photo shows the same dog looking well fed, happy and relaxed on a comfy couch in someone's living room. A few months ago I discovered there is a little company that produces piano music especially to calm the nerves of stressed dogs. I downloaded some for my two, and oddly they did seem to enjoy it. One of my favorite Italian Renaissance painters is Fra Angelico. Lately I have been looking at his interesting and often dissonant color palettes, which influenced the yellow and blues in this painting. And lastly the title... there is a great tune that Ray Charles performed called the "Rockin Chair Blues".  It is the perfect music for this painting but since the dogs are in armchairs, not rocking chairs, (that would be tricky), I changed the title a little.
And I also need to thank Ellie, of Two Blockheads fame, for letting me use her photo for the dog in the striped chair.

                                "Armchair Blues, oil on linen, 36" x 48"
                     

Here are some links you might like:

Music to calm dogs:  http://throughadogsear.com/
Two Blockheads:  https://www.facebook.com/TwoBlockheads
Rockin' Chair Blues:
Remdog and Loulou enjoying some tunes:





For the Love of Dogs

As a compassionate lover of dogs and as an advocate of animal rescue I am constantly seeing animals who are saved by rescue organizations that are in heartbreaking physical condition from neglect and abuse and in dire need of veterinary care. Every time I see one, I want to respond with a donation to help the organization to save the dog. A couple years ago I decided that I would start doing portraits of dogs and that each time I did a portrait I would make a donation for a specific dog in need that had captured my heart.

Recently the timing of this was like clockwork. A dear friend asked me to paint a beautiful spaniel named Milo. It was to be a thank you gift for her close friends who live in Italy. Milo has the most glorious life a dog could imagine in a beautiful place, going out on boats regularly and playing on the beach. His owners love him deeply and take very good care of him. His coat shines, he is athletic and healthy and has a huge smile. It was a joy to paint such a happy dog and it was also a joy to paint his surroundings of blue sky and cobalt water with the Capri Faraglioni behind him on the horizon.  Just after I painted this little portrait, I heard about another dog- Griffin, who had just been rescued by Second Chance Rescue in NYC. When Griffin was found he was so emaciated he couldn't raise his head. He needed immediate and intensive vet care and Second Chance set up a fund for him- which I was able to contribute to because of the portrait of Milo. Two dogs worlds apart in their life situation and their health, but I truly believe that animals share souls and in some strange way Milo and Griffin's souls will always be connected.




Dogs with Wheels

I have always loved seeing a dog in a car, hanging out, acting like he owns the vehicle- proud of his wheels and being a little bit off the ground, for a change. I especially like watching  dogs on vacation, riding in their jeeps, trucks and other recreational vehicles. This selection of "Dogs with Wheels" is inspired by the dogs of Block Island. Each painting is oil on panel, 12" x 16".





The Evening Entertainment

This is a painting I finished recently for a show at Dog & Horse Fine Art in Charleston, South Carolina. It is called The Evening Entertainment. The narrative is open to interpretation, but I think any one who comes home from a long day at work to be greeted by their dogs, will be able to relate.  The painting is oil on linen 36" x 48".  Check out the Dog & Horse gallery website when you have time!
http://www.dogandhorsefineart.com/exhibitions.html

The Calm before the Storm

oil on linen 36"x48"

 In this painting a cellist plays alone in a quiet room. As she plays, the room metamorphosizes into an enchanted forest and birds begin to fly in and congregate on the tables and chairs. The cellist’s dogs listen  and are seemingly undisturbed by the visiting birds. Outside the window the sky is getting dark, and storm clouds move in over the city, in contrast to the calm silvery interior. I was inspired to do this painting after reading about birds displaced by the high winds during Hurricane Sandy. Gannets were spotted in New York Harbor, Jaegers at Cape May, NJ, and Petrels on the Hudson River.  I started thinking about the room as a sanctuary, like the calm before the storm, in the face of impending chaos.