New Year's Eve framing the new year

    Thinking about framing the new year and what one wants to do next, I will say I am really enjoying getting back to painting, the easy way. Painting takes time. I once painted from 9 AM until 9 PM.  Those paintings were more interesting, perhaps. But now I like to paint for a couple of hours before or after supper. I often finish a painting in a couple of hours. Is it the Pandemic? My attitude?

      

     My secret for fun is not to care whether the painting is good or not, or people's reactions. It is fun to paint. It is good to have easy clean up and since I have books and crafts over most flat surfaces, it is good to have painting that can be done in a very small area. Remember, Paul Klee painted at his kitchen table.

      Joe picks up 1/4 inch birch plywood at the lumber yard and cuts it into 6* x 8* pieces, usually 4 or 8 panels at a time. I go over them lightly with fine grit sandpaper. I brush on Golden's' white gesso, both sides, or a corner to corner X on the wrong side. Meditatively, I gesso the side I will paint several times, lightly sanding between coats. I next apply an orange, green or sienna layer of Golden acrylic paint. This gives me a color to paint on. It unifies and gives a medium value to work against. The panels are then set aside, ready to be transformed in a short period of time.

       I lay out Holbein Acryla Gouache, two amazing Holbein hair paint brushes to apply colors, water and tissue. Anything can be a palette, but I just fold heavy white paper. The acryla gouache dries fast so I put out very little at a time. I often paint from a photo from a trip. It will be dry by bedtime and the next day I can varnish the pretty matte with Liquitex matte varnish. A brush leaves streaks, but a foam brush floats the varnish beautifully. Then another day, Joe frames.

       Joe buys 1" x 2" pine boards to frame these little paintings. He uses his table saw that he won't let me touch. The paintings sit on the notches he has created and are glued down. I am sure that painting is in the frame for my new year. I have had Jim and Colin mail me photos from the Bahamas and I have my own to work from. I have more subjects to think about. The process is fun and instructive.

Creating calms chaos.

Joe and I find creating and reading in lockdown very calming. There was the exciting election, promise of vaccines, work to be done, but we found a little time in the studio. Joe wanted to make a boot jack for his comfortable boots and I wanted to add to my six little paintings last month (the October posting). 

Joe made a template from an old plastic bootjack. After all, you need to take off boots upstairs and downstairs. He took the buffalo head from a wall clothes hanger and screwed it  on some wood and showed me a photo of a field he wanted painted atop. Afterward he varnished the bootjack several times.

I painted a beach fence scene from a Cape Cod postcard photo. Then I repeated the lonely houses from last month series, a group from Truro that reminds some of the loneliness or solitariness of the lockdown. I keep wanting to add stars to the sky that form an LED of 2020...but I have controlled myself. There is after all, a Christmas tree to be decorated and a positive attitude to keep afloat!

Joe's template for boot jack

Vacation paintings

    Recently I was reminded of a research story where a ceramics class was divided in half. One half was  instructed to make as many cups or bowls as possible in a certain amount of time. The other half of the class was instructed to make a perfect cup or bowl. The group that threw themselves into making many bowls ended up with some bowls that were beautiful. The other half didn't get started...just clay dust to show. For some reason this liberated me to make a painting every afternoon in my non spare time. Also, I dismissed any concern about what people might think.

    I had Joe saw mostly 6" x 8" pieces of birch 1/4" plywood. I sanded and gessoed the rectangles with Golden white gesso and then added orange gesso atop since I have always put a color down as a background. I like orange for landscapes but it may not be appropriate for seascapes. I think I will work on the white next time. I got some Holbein Acryla Gouche paints that dry fast but are fun to work with. Easy water clean up. With a little bottle of water for moistening, a tissue and two brushes I started on these little paintings about 4 pm and they were finished by supper time. Of course I went back to touch them up and sometimes made a mess. I worked in a tiny area on a table.

    I started with photos of our recent trip to Cape Cod, and borrowed Colin's and Susan's of Maine. I had fun not worrying about anything. I just looked on my iPhone for reminders of the sites and painted away. Some are more successful than others, of course! 

Cover-up!

     A nut for journals, I started a self-portrait-a-day and learned a few things. I like to create each one in a new medium. My first surprise was working in black Akua intaglio ink from Speedball. You just roll this ink on a Gelli plate, put a soft cloth on your finger and wipe. You can work with semi-stiff brushes as well on this monotype.A beautiful demonstration of this is Art Professor Demos Gelli Plates & Monotype Printmaking - YouTube.I highly recommend the viewing on YouTube by Art Prof: Create and Critique. So Pro!  Eager to use the medium and clean up with only baby wipes, I messed up the nose and mouth. Solution: paint on a mask. I need some shadows and a design for the fabric. (Click to enlarge)

    Next I thought I would try a watercolor as the first piece in my journal. I find watercolor not easy, but I did this in about ten minutes before bedtime with my little acryla gouache portable paint kit. I felt free, and I thought it a sweet effort. You don't want all portraits to look the same and certainly not like me!

     The important thing is to leave paper and tools out so you can do art work ten minutes a day. I had a block about going into the studio to paint. Then I read something that made me think it is more important to paint or draw lots (quantity over quality) and not worry about what anyone thinks. This has been so much fun to just create and not worry about any comments. Periodically, quality will appear! Waiting, waiting! I have also started to work on some stitching-on-paintings projects to share later. 

Crafting away during strange times.

     Yesterday, Joe and I dropped by my old crafting friends, the grandchildren, to drop off the last Sunday of the month children's newspaper from the NYTimes. I took over several white masks that I thought they might like to paint. I had painted one that made me look like The Joker. I used textile paints from my quilting days and a permanent marker and felt very incompetent. Brush too wet, so paint ran. Eager to see what the grands do! It was fun to try. I found these Hanes 3 ply cotton slightly stretchables at Walgreens when we went to get our senior flu shots. I hope it was not too early in the season, but our drugstore in Cambridge had already run out of the senior shots.

       While up in the studio, I spotted a Gelli plate that I bought years ago to do some monoprints. After watching a Harvard webinar I got out some acrylics, a soft brayer, baren and papers. I collected some leaves and thought it would be so easy. I watched some videos as well. Wrong. Not easy. Lowered expectations. You can go so far to do intaglio printing and photo lifting with these Gelli plates; but I barely got started. Easy cleanup, small area production. Google "Gelli monoprinting leaves" and watch videos to see some possibilities. If you learn from mistakes, there is great instruction! Should be VERY easy, but I was humbled.

                                                  The Joker!

         

       

Missing Painting Maine during a Pandemic

      Joe and I were invited to join our children in Bar Harbor ME mid-August, a spot which has not seen a lot of the virus. Of course we are staying home, but it is a sign of the time that Massachusetts people really are not wanted in ME since MA virus numbers are not good enough. NYC numbers work! But I started looking through my old photos of painting getaways in ME since I am going to the studio soon.   

      A favorite trip of mine is to attend a painting workshop at Rock Garden Inn, Sebasco Estates, Maine. I have driven up to attend workshops for oil and watercolor painting landscapes and portrait painting.You live in little cottages on a point surrounded by water with many amenities, the best being the fabulous evening meals. You get a breakfast in the morn, a takeaway lunch for your painting adventure and return for gourmet dining in the evening after an energetic day wielding a brush with colors in the out of doors.  We venture out to rocks near the water, docks and cottages, to gardens and beaches. Should rain happen, there is an indoor studio.

 

       

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    Teacher Don Nice would work on watercolor that would remind me a bit of John Marin's modern Maine watercolors. Then he would go further, tearing or cutting the old paintings to shape new pictures in collage. I did better in the oil and acrylic portrait and landscape weeks. Watercolor has always challenged me!

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       We would paint one or two or three paintings a day and I had many canvases and tablets to show the effort. I found some photos of my studio before the fire and down almost at the bottom of the white shelves you can see lineups of canvas and cardboard of my enriching summer get-a-ways.

Posting Challenges during Pandemic

In Lockdown there seems less time.Weeks and months Zoom by. I watched a Webinar offered by Harvard Business School on leadership forged in a crisis to organize your life.  My Webinar smartly suggested narrowing to three things rather than try to do all temptations, but once again, I go for more.

Having made a Father's Day iMovie for son and been surprised that so many don't make iMovies (what originally drew me to Mac computers), I thought I would write how. Go slowly. Read all words carefully. Keep trying. It is worth it! (See way below)

How to make an iMovie:

1. Click on iMovie (Star in dock) and choose Project (new) and name it.

2. Above your Project name (formerly My Movie), go to Audio (up at the top) and choose a song that fits the project or person.

3. Slowly and carefully drag the song down to the bottom canvas (the song will open up and be a long green line).

4. Go back up to My Media:  Photos (on the left side), and find pictures to carefully drag in above the green lines of music. Drag photos from elsewhere to the top of the green line music.

5. Organize (click on and move) the photos along the line into a story by choosing with arrow and moving them around. Again, slow down.

6. Go back up to Titles and drag a title over a photo at beginning of your photo line and a title at the end. (Later you can add titles or text throughout the iMovie.)

7. In the preview box in the upper right hand corner of your screen where you are watching your progress, look for a cropping symbol for the Ken Burns effect and adjust the beginning and ending of how each photo will appear....each one.

8. On the lower canvas, the photos above the music can be shortened to fewer than the 4 seconds they are set at default (or lengthened. Just push and pull on the right side of the photos.

9. Let me know if you get something going!

10. You can Save and Send in iCloud or Dropbox and others, but for the moment, enjoy and play around learning all the other features in this delightful software.

LOCKDOWN: the Pandemlc at my house

    During the Pandemic care is taken to stay home, wear masks, wash hands, and socially distance. As a child, I always loved rain so I could stay inside to color. Thus, I love a lockdown, so I have an excuse to stay inside and not worry about socializing or people' dropping in. I can work on or play with anything whenever I want. I am blessed. I dread the end of the lockdown for elders.

     But lockdown is not easy. The mail accumulates. One has to learn to order in food, All groups Zoom and that takes time. Grass to mow!

     My favorite thing is to be on the computer and at other times have the tv and iPhone on. I like being virtually connected to people. I enjoy research of movies, musicals and art. I savor my church's sermons, Bible Study and book club zoomed in as well as zooming with friends from high school and college. The pandemic is a great connector.

     College friends and I have been answering the questions in Michelle Obama's diary I Am Becoming. We write an essay a week in response to one of the questions we have chosen, adding to family histories. I have finally made some face masks that have a place for a filter. Joe put together an indoor upright bike to add to our exercise opportunities. He reads constantly. Each lunch and supper we made gourmet meals for fun, suffering unaware the caloric intake. Spring outfits are tight. We haven't budged from the house, except to walk the dog and give him a drive.  Tonight a dear neighbor invaded with drinks to our back deck. I hope that doesn't blow our efforts, because how do you shut the door on a good friend. Easy for me, but not Joe. 

And how did I forget the new app COMICBOOK! for people who don't draw! There is plenty to do and learn during Lockdown!

Hidden in Plain Sight

     A call for art in these Pandemic times led me to look around our study where hidden in plain sight were 13 little ceramic figures with masks on. I created them in the early 90s, to express the muzzling of speech, hierarchies and caskets. Today, masks stop social intercourse and droplets, but still suggest freedom attacked such as that of the press. There on the wall in the dining room was Killing the Virus with credit to El Greco whose composition was used in a "paper prayer" at the time of AIDS awareness. Today we are fighting another virus w Dr. Birx who helped control he earlier epidemic.

     

      I headed on to my overstuffed file of photos and website (lindahicksweb.com) to find even more paintings that would fit in with art in these times. There were The Mouths of Hell from the fire and The Mother in Law holding photos rather than babies in a lockdown. There were piles of wiped dishes and balls of chaos.Amazing. Not only history and times repeat themselves but so does the art we create that we feel strongly about. There are clearly surprises to be discovered in one's own house, hidden in plain sight.

Gathering people in a pandemic

    Artists are known for their imaginations, creating worlds they want on canvas or letting worlds create themselves on canvas or the page. I paint people and my house is full of them.

     When I first arrived in Belmont, I went to a home with a huge Robert Freeman painting of At the Party or one in his Tuxedo series. I wanted one of RF's paintings in my living room since it would be a party around the clock. Beautiful black and white tuxedos, red and blue w dancing figures, life-size or bigger. Instead, I have Linda and the Painting Teachers and a number of Last Supper compositions with modern art themes and artists.But plenty of people, family and others!

    During this Covid-19 pandemic, our lives seem not too different; because although alone, we are surrounded by people in paintings. Joe is retired, we are home a lot with our dog Harry, and both enjoy reading and making things. To mitigate the virus curve we are under orders from our children to stay at home for protection of ourselves and others...to stay alive and not to kill. The only challenge is to find a grocer's time slot when food can be ordered and delivered. We enjoy new recipes for meals. We have no guests; but with paintings and photos, we are surrounded by people, not just in Facetime or Zoom, but on the walls in every room. The other night, I lingered at a painting of the family in a bedroom and the enormity of the pandemic FINALLY hit me.

      All of a sudden I realized life has changed and we won't see our grandchildren in the same way. What about their disrupted lives? Things are very different and the immensity is staggering and poignant. Despite having continuous news, living away from the front lines, we slowly realize the shock and enormity. Looking at the paintings and photos both comfort and disturb. Painting a new world might console and inspire. Art has a way. (Click to enlarge photos.)

      

    

     

    

It's often a beautiful day in one's own neighborhood

      It's Leap Year; and the armchair traveler knows that leaping high one sees ideas all around the neighborhood. Harry never completely rests. always fearful of missing the action. Check his ears. In troubling days such as these, we want to engage creatively, randomly lifting our spirits from our neighborhood.

          At book club, clever Sally Baker gifted Molly's new grandchild with this adorable bib...so practical for dining, Sally let her grands choose some of the trim for the gift, spreading the color and joy through generations. I wish I had another grandchild to make one for! A good size mess could be enjoyed. The gifted grandmother tied one on and it was dazzling. For my gift, I had hoped to find a square yard of off-white Merino wool to bind with satin blanket binding; but I couldn't find where to get the wool. Do you know?

      Joe and I enjoyed a chamber music festival w neighbor Sarah in charge, inspiring me to up my piano practice and find someone for duets. I found Schumann's "Kinderszenen" on-line, printed it and taped it to a book for proper height;  plus, at Staples, I added spiral binding to son Bill's surviving music book which is about my level after many years of little practice. I picked up some more music (and books) at the Bryn Mawr used book store in Cambridge. Making music together is fun; so I am hoping to teach Joe the easier parts on some duets. Crazy, but so far he has been a good sport.

      Last night I went to Quilter's Connection, a resumption of attendance even though I no longer do much quilting. The speaker was a printmaker who won a traveling fellowship to the Middle East and Europe. She mined the patterns in churches, synagogues and mosques for her own museum quality works. Some of the rugs or hangings spoke to my interest in meditative stitchery, big stitch and boro hand stitching that I will enjoy in the Winter Workshops where quilters teach quilters. Also, I want to add some narratives to small pieces that I can carry around with me. 'Twould have been better learning a sampler as a child. In miniature I want to embroider the so-called prayer of St. Francis of Assisi to self-improve in these troubled times.

      Tomorrow I hope to learn more about my granddaughter's leadership week in Israel. I have been enjoying studying Genesis from several angles. I am hoping to read more books about our times of turmoil. I am reading American Dirt that some tried to ban. Cultural appropriation concerns need a careful, not knee-jerk reaction.

       And then there is drawing and painting. Ran into the MFA to see the Lucian Freud self-portrait show. I was struck by his early painting, Man with Feather and the thick oil paint on the older Freud's nose. Was the feather a gift from older girl friend as he said in late interviews or a chicken symbol of not participating in the fighting during the WWs? So many artists create self-portraits and the narratives are moving.There are many stages in lives to perform on canvas.