Saturday, May 25, 2013

What a Spring!

And it's not over yet! I still have tulips and daffodils blooming in my yard, while the lilacs and apple blossoms are ready to burst just as soon as it stops raining and gets above 50 degrees.

Just like Congress will bloom -hopefully - after the next Congressional election! There are so many issues that need attention, that are being worked on by the more sensible Members, but the Tea Party rain and the chilliness of Obama are keeping everything from happening. Although the time was ripe for background checks, just as I dreaded - the NRA won out. Their bullying fingers were pointing words like Goya-esque paintings, at people who wish to make some kind of progress.

In the meantime, my life has been blooming. I've been asked to be a part of a show at Unity College in Unity, Maine, this summer. Another painter, Patty Ritzo, and a photographer, Barbara Goodbody, have come together under the aegis of Michele Leavitt, a poet and the wife of the President of the College. The theme of the show is a line from Emily Dickinson, "and Place was where the Presence was..." about a bird landing on a branch outside her window, and then flying away.

One of my small ink and watercolor paintings is my lead image:

called, "Where once he lived..." All of the others, with one exception - an abandoned barn in Carmel Valley, California, - are of islands. Some are larger like this one:


called Island Vertigo because sometimes when the fog is coming in, you can't see a horizon line at all, and it always gives me vertigo.

And others are smaller, like this one:


and one is all about light:



called, "Winter Light".

The barn is out in the middle of an old ranch, Garland Ranch, which is now a park in Carmel Valley. It is a quite wonderful redwood structure now falling to ruin:




Though I have tried to match color and tones, it is difficult to do even with Photo Shop, so I have decided to go to a workshop at River Arts in Damariscotta to learn how better to use Photo Shop. I hope it helps because these paintings actually all have very similar tonalities. But yellow is hard for me to find on my machine!

There's another show, which I am putting together with Linda Burley, which will play for two weeks at River Arts. Linda's mother, Lina Burley, was a very fine, nearly abstract watercolorist and oil painter from Boston, who came to Boothbay each summer to paint. I think her work will complement some of my other island paintings even though many of them are snowy. Showing snowy paintings at the end of June is a bit daring, but so be it.

So the invitations will go out soon: the Unity show opens on June 27, at 5 pm, and will be around until early August. The Burley/Smith show will open on June 21st and be up at River Arts in Damariscotta until July 3. Do come see!