carlos 1993-2008

"sleep safe until tomorrow"
--william carlos williams

Back from my wonderful trip with my dear friend Robin.
This morning I took my handsome old man Carlos to the vet and had him put to sleep. Dr. Moffat was wonderful: kind, decorous and reassuring. Carlos was skin and bones and could hardly walk; but he still purred--and that made us both hold on.

found still lifes

(7x11)

(7x11)

(10x14)

I'm taking a little vacation next week--a train ride to Wisconsin, with a two-day stopover in Chicago. I'm riding back to her house with my friend Robin, who, has just departed Tomah, WI, on her way here.
I'm trying to finish up some jobs and get myself ready to take time off--but I'm very bad at it.
I've also been, a bit at a time, trying to clear out a space to paint in. I have a room that I call the art room, but it's actually more of a catchall room.
So I haven't done any painting--maybe I'll get to do some in WI.
In the meantime, here are three still lifes I painted in a wonderful class at the Wayne Art Center in Pa. five or six years ago; found them in a box.

misc. distractions

(2x3)

(2x3)

A couple of miscellaneous distractions ... just little scenes I work on for a couple of minutes when I'm taking a break from working: dabbling. The top one is the Delaware Bay, near my house, and the bottom is the beach in North Wildwood, looking south to the boardwalk.

(5x7)

Today, taking a longer break, I worked on this scene of Plaza Blanca in New Mexico; this is the formation and from the same angle that O'Keeffe painted it. In mine the opening between the two rocks is wider, and so has less of the pleasing tension of OK's, but it was just a sketch: I want to do it again--maybe larger, with more striations, texture in the rocks.

*******
from elizabeth bishop's "chemin de fer"
............
"Love should be put into action!"
screamed the old hermit.
Across the pond an echo
tried and tried to confirm it.

John Marin's New Mexico

New Mexico Landscape, 1929 (14x20)

Entrance to Hondo Canyon, 1930 (15.5x21)

Two New Mexico watercolors by my favorite watercolorist, John Marin. I love the vitality and energy of his landscape, whether NM or Maine or NYC.
I think I also like his paintings because they couldn't be any more different from mine, but this is how I would paint if it were up to me, if I could change who I am and how I paint. I tried copying Cezanne and Hockney, and some others--Vlaminck, Derain--for my own edification and pleasure, but I have never attempted Marin.

I seem to be a little obessesd with New Mexico right now; perhaps it's because this time last year, I was packing to go!