Portrait through Still Life

A few years ago a mother of three daughters asked me to do a little still life for the middle daughter as a high school graduation gift. She brought me various objects and photos to include that represented her daughter's childhood. There are two of her favorite stuffed animals, a favorite pink perfume bottle, her rosary beads, a special box, a bracelet, and a photograph of the Australian Shepherd she grew up with.  There is also a swimming medal (she is a great swimmer!), and an envelope with the Sacred Heart logo on it, representing her education. The background is a William Morris design with lilies for her name.

A few years later the youngest daughter was graduating from the same school and I was honored to do a portrait for her as well. This daughter was quite an outdoorsman and an artist well as a swimmer. She liked a different color palette. Her well worn hiking boots anchor the composition posed with her very much loved stuffed rabbit. Also from her outdoor life are a couple knives, one for whittling and one for everything else. Her school team swim cap is in the painting as well as her blue goggles. Some of her creative projects -an amazing duct tape cap, a cup and a few other items complete the composition. (She made a lot of beautiful pottery while in high school which I had the pleasure of seeing when I helped her assemble her portfolio). And not to be forgotten is her favorite book "The Hobbit" and a little photo of herself with her sisters. In this painting the Sacred Heart logo is pinned to the wall. 

The oldest daughter graduated in 2018 with an MBA from University of Chicago and her mom asked me to do a still life portrait for her on this very important occasion. (We didn't do a portrait for her when she graduated from high school because her parents had given her a study from the Jacksonville Murals that I had painted during the time she was growing up. She was a huge Harry Potter fan and the study was of Hedwig.) 

So this daughter's portrait became an amalgam of objects from her childhood as well as her current life as a young woman living and working in Chicago. Raggedy Ann and Andy were made for her by her grandmother. The mirror, perfume bottle and tray sat on her childhood dresser.  Other favorite objects in the painting are the pearls, a silver bracelet and her class ring which bears the logo of the Sacred Heart. The shared experience of being educated at a Sacred Heart school was important to the three sisters. They are very close to each other even though they live spread out across the country.   

The two books depicted are "book ends" to her love of literature. "Chronicles of Narnia" was read to her by her father when she was a child, and she read Anna Karenina while an undergrad at Northwestern. Another nod to her time at Northwestern is the purple lanyard draped across the mirror. Also on the mirror is a small photo of the three girls when the youngest was a tiny baby. The two older sisters hold her between them in their arms. A crucifix that  hung on her childhood bedroom wall is reflected in the mirror. The envelope that rests on top of the books displays the University of Chicago graduate school logo, emphasizing the transition of time/stages of life that are present in the painting. The Chicago skyline, her current home, defines the landscape behind the objects and reflects the foreground composition.    

Mending the Tigers

I just finished painting "Mending the Tigers". I have been working on it since March 9 when I last posted about it in progress. It has been almost three months. People often ask me how long it takes me to do a painting but I never keep track. So now I know. I guess keeping a blog is good in that respect. 

"Mending the Tigers", oil on linen, 4' x 5'

As I mentioned in my earlier post the idea came from a short story by Aimee Bender called Tiger Mending. It is a mesmerizing story so you should read it. It is in her collection called "The Color Master". Here is a link to her website http://aimeebender.com/.

I interpreted her story to have an environmental message. In my mind the tigers were coming out of the mountains to get help from humans. Their stripes falling off as symbolic of the fragility of this great beast in the modern world. The young woman mending the tigers represents the mindfulness, inventiveness and skill it is going to take for us as the responsible party to "mend" the environment. While she is the creative and the talent who has the ability to do the mending, her sister, leading the tigers in, is the facilitator-the person with the brain and resourcefulness to make things happen. 

(Note that this is my interpretation. There are others out there that focus on the relationship between the sisters). 

While I was preparing to do this painting  I looked at lots of paintings through art history that were about tigers both to see how they were handled by artists in terms of drawing and painting but also to see their place in art.  I went to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia to see Henri Rousseau's "Scout Attacked by a Tiger".  It is a brutal scene but Rousseau's vision is magical. They seem like mini figurines in long grass. The tiger's anatomy is a little odd but it makes for an enchanting painting. I hope the tiger came out on top of the situation, but Rousseau keeps us guessing. 

Eugene Delacroix was another great painter of tigers. I especially love his "Tiger Resting" which I also included in "Mending the Tigers", hanging above the Rousseau, and his beautiful watercolor and pencil study, simply called "Tiger". It is in the National Gallery.  I included it as a plate in the book in the right foreground- as if the young woman was studying it to see how to stitch the stripes back on. 

"Lake House, After the Storm"

I just recently completed a painting titled "Lake House, After the Storm".
It is a long canvas, 30 x 66 inches, oil on linen. I love working on this format as it lends itself to narrative and enables me to create a sequence of  events that tells what the beginning of the story is, (even if the catalyst for the narrative is outside the picture plane), what is happening in the picture plane, and what is likely to happen outside the picture plane on the other side.  The idea for this painting grew out of other images that I have been working on in the past few years - the floating room paintings like "Water Music" and "The Attraction of Fishing" as well as "Moon River" where the water is slowly wending its way into the interior.

"Water Music" 

"The Attraction of Fishing"

  

"Moon River"

I composed "Lakehouse"  using a series of arches to emphasize the right to left movement as well as to isolate the series of vignettes and images. I liked the idea of painting a room and then "flooding" it by glazing color over the floor plane.  I have always been fascinated by images of flooded rooms after natural disasters and how a room seems familiar but at the same time is rather disorienting.

The kernel of the idea for "Lake House" came to me one day when I was walking my dogs in a fundraiser for Best Friends Animal Society with Lucky Dog Rescue. For part of the walk I strolled beside a young man who told me that he first got into animal rescue after Hurricane Katrina. He was working for a company in the south, so he went to New Orleans to help. His job was to paddle around the flooded homes and pick up animals that were stranded. He said it was a very moving experience and he has been involved in animal rescue ever since. The image stayed in my head and even though I know his experience didn't look anything like this painting, the image was inspired by his story.

I tried to make the interior in this painting some what timeless with the classical columns and arches, and the fresco on the exterior wall. I wanted it to create an association for the viewer of ruins or a once beautiful place that is being threatened or destroyed, so the title "Lake House, After the Storm" is meant to evoke an association of the threat of global warming on our environment.

Here are some images of the process:

Graphite study for composition and light

Underpainting in grisaille on gessoed linen

First glaze or "imprimatura"  over the underpainting

Image where some of the interior and the floor plane are in

The finished painting

 (click on it to enlarge the image)

When the Size of a Painting and the Size of a Wall don't Match Up

Sometimes it happens...A person falls in love with a painting they see in an exhibit. They take down the dimensions at the gallery, then go home and measure their wall, and they come to the conclusion that it doesn't quite fit.  In some cases the wall is expansive and the painting is just not quite large enough to engage the space. And in some cases the painting is too big or not the right proportions.  In the past year I have had two clients who originally saw one of my paintings in the gallery, but then asked me to do a similar piece for them, custom designed for a particular location in their home. I love to do this as it allows me to get to know them, and see the environment where the painting will go. It also gives me the opportunity to make the painting more personal.

I painted Oliver's Dream last fall after visiting the client in Hobe Sound, Florida over the summer. They live very near the ocean but do not have a view, so she asked that the painting open the space with a view of the water, and she also wanted to bring some of their tropical surroundings into the room. I used a palette that related to the interior while introducing some new colors such as the vibrant clementine wall.  I  painted a tile floor and worked with multiple point perspective with the eye level on the eye level of someone standing in the room to give depth and a feeling that one could walk right into the painting. I also incorporated some architectural elements from the room, such as the large Palladian windows, and symmetry.

My client asked that their adorable King Charles spaniel named Oliver be the main character in the painting, so he sits rather royally in the arm chair on the left, making eye contact with the viewer.  He loves to chase salamanders so there are salamanders of various colors hidden in the flora of the fabrics as well as on the glass table top and in the flowering vines. The client had especially liked my mermaid paintings so we placed a mermaid sitting on the windowsill, playing the flute for Oliver and the various seabirds. There is also a painting within the painting of her grandchildren, and the couple dancing below the palm trees by the water represents her three happily married sons.

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

Mrs. Paisley's Night Up

I love this poem by India DeCarmine and it inspired me to do this painting.  In the painting Mrs. Paisley takes a break about half way up, to catch her breath and gaze at the moon. The painting is oil on canvas 36" x 36".

The Gift: Wherein Mrs. Paisley

Rights One Wrong of Her Misspent Youth

When Mrs. Paisley was a child

She wasn’t what you would call wild.

She never deigned to skin her knee,

Bake with mud or climb a tree.

In short, for all of her young age

(when beastly girls were all the rage),

her main aim was taking care

not to disarrange her hair.

Mrs. Paisley eyes an elm,

hitherto within the realm

of things she’d not meant to ascend.

Yet lately she’s discerned a trend

whereby categories shift.

With fine, long limbs, this tree’s a gift.

Mrs. Paisley’s not elastic,

and the angle is quite drastic

of that first limb. While she heaves

her butt up towards  the new spring leaves,

she thinks of neighbors with a view

and hopes they’ve better things to do.

She strains, she gains the branch, how sweet

to feel its curve beneath her feet.

Yet soon she knows that sweeter still

is the second branch; a thrill

attends each branch in turn. Her knee

is skinned as she goes up the tree,

but Mrs. Paisley doesn’t stop

until she’s reached the tippy top.

Here she grins and looks around.

How pleasant to have left the ground. 

Goodnight Moon

This painting is titled "Goodnight Moon". It is oil on linen, 48"x48". It is the second in my summer series of moon paintings. ("Moon River" is in an earlier post)

 Many of the elements of the painting are inspired by the wonderful poem/children's book by Margaret Wise Brown that has lulled so many children to sleep.  It starts off:

"Goodnight Moon...

Goodnight room 

Goodnight moon 

Goodnight cow jumping over the moon.

Blues for Dogs

Here are two images of a painting I just finished. The first one is in process and the second image is the finished painting.

It is titled "Blues for Dogs" and is oil on linen, 36" x 48". It will be in my upcoming show at the Marin-Price Galleries in Bethesda, Maryland. The show will be comprised of landscapes with figures, inspired by Block Island, as well as interiors with single female figures. "Blues for Dogs" is sort of the linking painting between these two groups.

The painting was inspired by a Piero della Francesco fresco- a reproduction of which, has been pinned to my studio wall since 1983.

And yes that is my dog, Rembrandt, sitting in the first archway on the left.

The show opens March 3rd.