past love to mania

Two more, one on hot press, the other on cold.
Time to abandon the daffodils; the lilacs are in bloom! The Fist by Derek Walcott
The fist clenched round my heart loosens a little, and I gasp brightness; but it tightens again. When have I ever not loved the pain of love? But this has moved past love to mania. This has the strong clench of the madman, this is gripping the ledge of unreason, before plunging howling into the abyss. Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.

"what pleasure, what joy"

 

I'm sorry to say I'm a hopeless gardener: a rushed, confused, procrastinator ... But I did something right a couple of years ago and planted daffodils and grape hyacinths, which are now in bloom in little clumps here and there all around the otherwise barren yard.

I picked this little bouquet for the table when I had my mom over to dinner last night; I couldn't take my eyes of them all through the meal. Which makes me not a great host either!

This is my practice run at it. Seeing what doesn't work for me here, and studying the setup a little more, I think I can do better. Tomorrow.

Ithaka
by C. P. Cavafy translated by Edmund Keeley
As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon—don't be afraid of them: you'll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon—you won't encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you. Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind— as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars. Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you're destined for. But don't hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you're old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you've gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

spring and all

 

(9x12)

Spring and All

William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast—a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines—

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches—

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind—

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined—
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted they
grip down and begin to awaken

frail duration

The Wild Honeysuckle

by Philip Freneau

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, 

Hid in this silent, dull retreat, 

Untouched thy honied blossoms blow, 

Unseen thy little branches greet: 

No roving foot shall crush thee here, 

No busy hand provoke a tear. 

By Nature’s self in white arrayed, 

She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, 

And planted here the guardian shade,

And sent soft waters murmuring by; 

Thus quietly thy summer goes, 

Thy days declining to repose.

Smit with those charms, that must decay, 

I grieve to see your future doom; 

They died—nor were those flowers more gay, 

The flowers that did in Eden bloom; 

Unpitying frosts and Autumn’s power 

Shall leave no vestige of this flower. 

From morning suns and evening dews 

At first thy little being came; 

If nothing once, you nothing lose, 

For when you die you are the same; 

The space between is but an hour, 

The frail duration of flower.

dpw

Third and final go at the Daily Paintworks challenge to paint a white object on a patterned ground.

 

(6x9)

I do love patterned fabrics and papers, but, while I've accumulated a number of each, I rarely paint them ... Must be laziness: the idea of putting in the work to reproduce the pattern puts me off, or maybe it's the time it would take--I think that's it. I'm shorter than usual on time lately: I work for myself and so work a lot (and when I have no work then I spend all my time worrying about having no work!) ... the dog's old and sick, the yard's a wreck, and I'm tearing up the living room and dining room floors.

challenges, challenges ...

Hey, thank you everyone who took the time to write me with various solutions/fixes to the problems I've been having: I'm now overwhelmed with solutions instead of with problems, which is progress ...

This is my first attempt at a solution.

Normally I post directly to Blogger from Picasa--that is the only way I post, in fact: it's easy--I upload and edit my photos there.

These photos are from the photos file on my computer, which, in all honesty, I hardly ever look at--I don't know how to edit the photos there, and they're stored all haphazardly (or perhaps I should say I have stored them all haphazardly ...)

So here they are, unedited, my first two tries, both unfinished, at a deceptively difficult challenge at Daily Paintworks: paint a white object on a patterned cloth.

problems ...

Hello. Thanks to everyone who's written to say my images haven't come up in my last two posts; I'm sorry about that!
Right now, I have no idea what the problem is ... I've exhausted my small arsenal of computer fixes: i.e., I rebooted, which didn't work.

If I can't figure it out soon, I may just begin a new blog ... I've been thinking of abandoning Blogger anyway.

sunday on the porch with mike

My painting

Whenever I visit my friends Lisa and Mike now, Mike and I set up a little still life to paint. We paint, Lisa knits, and we talk and drink Mimosas. Not a bad way to start the week.

The setup this time consisted of a pewter vase, a pepper mill, a red bell pepper, and a leek. In our first drawings we both included all of the still life (and then some), but for the second try, both sensibly edited.
I love Mike's bell pepper, but am really impressed with the vase, which he has endowed with a luminosity it doesn't possess! Mike's painting

It also just works better in the composition than mine did; mine is dominating and boring. I may try to fix it by adding the pepper mill, but may also just move on!
My first start

touch of spring

The last two days--sunny, 50 degrees--have brought on spring fever. I had to stay in and work, but I went to the store and bought a small bunch of daffodils from Ireland; mine aren't up yet.
I painted these without drawing first, which helps me from getting too rigid ... although I did overdo these just a bit, as you can see from the in-progress one, below.

The daily poem from Poets.org:

The Uses of Poetry
by William Carlos Williams

I've fond anticipation of a day
O'erfilled with pure diversion presently,
For I must read a lady poesy
The while we glide by many a leafy bay,

Hid deep in rushes, where at random play
The glossy black winged May-flies, or whence flee
Hush-throated nestlings in alarm,
Whom we have idly frighted with our boat's long sway.

For, lest o'ersaddened by such woes as spring
To rural peace from our meek onward trend,
What else more fit? We'll draw the latch-string

And close the door of sense; then satiate wend,
On poesy's transforming giant wing,
To worlds afar whose fruits all anguish mend.

thinking v doing

  
(8x12)
An imagined marsh: practice showing distance.
I want to do some paintings with skies that are not blue.

Ever since I found out I was accepted to Easels in Frederick, I have been thinking a lot about landscape painting, which is no substitute for doing landscape painting but which will be a good break from what I have been thinking about for the last month: decorating! I've been gathering paint swatches, flooring samples, and fabrics ... (Now I just have to teach myself how to sew ... and varnish floors and do mosaics ...)

But first, the requirements for Easels in Frederick: I have to write a short bio, which is something I really hate to do, or even contemplate, since I haven't done it. Do you think "Laura Starrett lives, works and paints in South Jersey" will do? Perhaps I can ask someone else to write it for me?

And I must submit a photo of myself, "preferably painting." These are my two choices: a photo my friend Shelby took of me painting at the Santuario del Chimayo three (I think) years ago or a painting Shelby did of me last fall when we attended the Charles Reid workshop together.

another fine mess ...

A friend and I entered the Easels in Frederick plein air competion: 30 artists would be selected to paint in Frederick, MD, for three days in June and then show their work and compete for prizes.

These are the three paintings I submitted with my application: all painted en plein air.

The artists who were chosen were announced today and I'm one of them! I'm stunned, and terrified.

Most of the artists have websites where you can view their work, and the ones I've looked at are very professional ... and all oil painters.

I think they may have wanted to throw a watercolorist into the mix.

Anyway, I better get busy practicing my drawing, painting, and setup, and getting my legs and arms in condition!

feathered inspiration

(7x11)
Chickens and roosters are a popular subject among painters; I decided to give it a try. They are a good subject: not hard to draw, and interesting shape, and they come in a lot of colors!
The background color was inspired by Don's barn at A View from the Green Barn--which is also a great place for feathered inspiration.

happy valentine's

(9x12)
It's been so long, I don't know what to write ...
I've good intentions, once again, to get back on schedule with my painting (and posting).
This is a painting I did from a photo about a week ago, trying to get my darks darker, forcing myself to use more pigment and less water ...
Started another, below, but wasn't too committed. I think one difference was that, for the first one, I chose my colors before painting and mixed them on a scrap sheet, to see what I would get; for the second, I skipped this step and then found myself unsure where to go with it.
(9x12)

happy holidays

Happy Holidays to you all. I hope they're merry and bright.
I'll be away on vacation for a bit. See you, with new paintings, I hope, when I get back!

An excerpt from one of my favorite songs from the 1970 musical version of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, starring Albert Finney as Scrooge and Kenneth Moore as the fabulous larger-than-life Ghost of Christmas Present, who sings this song:

I like life
Life likes me
Life and I fairly fully agree
Life is fine
Life is good
'Specially mine, which is just as it should be
I like pouring the wine and why not?
Life's a pleasure that I deny not

I like life
Here and now
Life and I made a mutual vow
'Till I die
Life and I
We'll both try to be better somehow

melyssa

(11x15)
An unfinished painting of Peter's daughter, Melyssa. I kept fussing and fussing with the eyes, especially her right eye, until the paper had become quite exhausted with it: me too.

"the darkling thrush"

(5x7)
County Mayo scene for this month's Virtual Paintout. I found a few lovely scenes that I'd like to paint, though, like others, I wandered further afield than the locale chosen for the paintout, Galway, into Clare and Mayo too.

Below is another poinsettia; the final version of one of the ones started in class.

 
And a poem emailed to me by Poets.org that seemed just right for this cold, windy, gray day:


The Darkling Thrush
by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
    When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
    The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
    Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
    Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
    The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
    The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
    Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
    Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
    The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
    Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
    In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
    Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
    Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
    Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
    His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
    And I was unaware.

poinsettias in the making

(12x16,
detail)

In out last class of the season, our teacher Marie encouraged us to try another method to paint our poinsettias. We started with loose (as loose as we could manage) wet washes of poinsettia shapes (below); when that dried, we started to pick out the shapes with negative painting (above).
I haven't finished mine yet, but I'm finding the method very relaxing!

(7x11)

(12x16, detail)

"lonely, or if you prefer, self-sufficient"

(7x10)
I find myself always admiring grays in other people's paintings, but can never seem to get to gray in my own. This seemed like a good subject for trying out some neutrals.
I also used watercolor pencils for the twigs in the foreground and bleed-proof white for the snow.

“The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.”

 Joseph Wood Krutch quotes (American Naturalist and Writer, 1893-1970)

Dejda

Dejda
(11x15)

I started this portrait of my friend Shelby's eldest, Dejda, from a photo taken when she was a little girl. The features are all off, but in the photo I like the backlighting and Dejda's expression, which I have not come near to capturing here and can't even really think of words for, so I think I'll try again, being more careful with the initial drawing.

Here's a poem I found in my inbox:


Sonnet
Billy Collins

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now.
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans,
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the end of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.