Wake up to Spring with Paula's Paintings!

       Belmont is fortunate to have a spacious art gallery in a town hall building, run by creative administrators. Not only are there a variety of shows, group and individual, but art shows pop up and are installed in the main library. Always surprises!

   

       Jumping into spring, the BGA called for Spring Awakening: birds, blossoms and botanicals. I had not been painting, but found past paintings w birds. Friend Paula didn't think she had something to enter, but I said, "You have lots of birds!" The juror was to be a landscape architect, botanical artist and editor of the papers of Frederick Law Olmsted who designed the green spaces in Boston.

        Paula www.paulapitmanbrownart.com teaches at the MFA and is a prolific artist who leaves me in the dust. I enjoyed classes with her. Her imagination, so obvious at her website, is always a thrill. I sent her photos of what I was entering and she mailed me hers. I thought you would enjoy the thrill I got when I saw her choices. They woke me up that Spring is here!

        You will want to look closely at the robins. As Paula said in an article in the Boston Voyager http://bostonvoyager.com/interview/conversations-inspiring-paula-pitman-brown/, "When I step out of my house each day, especially to walk my dog, I delight in the small animals I see along my way. I am also painfully aware how stressed they are by pollution, pesticides, traffic, noise and micromanaged plots of land. I am hoping my paintings can be a reminder for people to take care of animals and make better choices in how they maintain their properties and ultimately the planet."
All paintings below are by Paula Pitman Brown!

  

New Effort: Urban Sketching

urban sketch by Andre on Harvard move-in day

         Always ready for a new direction, a new craft, I landed one on Joe's and my 56th anniversary. We were at the Fogg Museum on a Sunday, looking at art and enjoying a treat in the courtyard when I noticed a young man drawing and journaling. Later I saw him a block away entering the Harvard Book Store where I said, "Didn't I just see you drawing and journaling at the Fogg?" "Yes you did. Would you draw a picture for me?" "Certainly, what would you like?" He said he had the idea to send a wandering sketchbook out into the world. The idea was a person would draw in it and post at Instagram online and leave for someone else to find to draw. Andre Behrens handed me the book and it took a week for me to get up the nerve to draw in it. Then I passed it on to the head of the Belmont Gallery of Art who had someone to pass hers on to. I had to learn Instagram to post it and that is where the torture and fun began.

         Andre said there is a local and international group of urban sketchers. He works during the week and sketches on weekends at meet ups w other sketchers. I enthusiastically looked in urban sketching books and got a couple of sketch Handbooks at Artist and Craftsman Supply. A Pigma Graphic pen fits just under the elastic that Andre showed me. Quick sketches are not easy but I set up lindapaintingtime at Instagram for urban drawings and two other accounts for other art as well: lindadrawingtime and amovingline.I am trying to keep the photos consistent.I am thrilled to learn Instagram via online instruction. It is good to get out into the world w no purpose but to record what one loves and to show what it looks like today. Google urban sketchers to look for guidelines.It is fun to interact w strangers in waiting rooms, eating places, and on the street. I recommend the terror and the imperfection.Maybe not the snow in coming days.  https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/blogs/learning-draw-think-better-learn-smarter-and-be-less-distracted-

Andre's sketching which caught my attention

Andre's instruction in the wandering sketchbook

small sketchbooks that hold a pen under the elastic

books to get me started

my first very nervous urban sketch

My Art Month while the sun shines

     The sun is out and the grandchildren are off at camp after year- end concerts, graduation and birthdays. I still found time to get Joe to frame the Kitchen Still Life for the CAA Still Life: Captured Moments show in Harvard Square.Unfinished, the painting was hanging in the laundry room with other circular activity, a perfect fit. Today I saw it hanging in the big entrance hall at University Place, minus a label. The reception is July 12. I like it there!

        Settling in, my frame-making husband every day finds time to mow through books between plantings in the garden. His book club got him back to reading ravenously.I also am picking up some more books to research and read.I am excitedly awaiting the July 10 release of Van Gogh and Japan which I have heard so much about from Joyce whom I met at an Apple Procreate class. She is 85 and just flew to Amsterdam for 3 days to see the show about the major influence of the Japanese prints in Van Gogh's development in Arles.Research that show!

      In the meantime, I have started on Modernists & Mavericks by Martin Gayford and am really enjoying it. He talks about the London Painters whose work I know and what they were thinking and doing as they struggled to paint. Provocative. Just for fun, I wanted to read Old in Art School by Nell Painter just because she did later what I did at age 50, take off for art school. I am reading several others at the same time.

      I continue to add to my art book collection much of which I lost with the fire. A local library is a good source, in that Friends of the Library donate books which can be bought for special prices. This benefits scavenger me and the library.There are always surprise discoveries. I read between evening efforts  to salvage that painting of the Southwest I talked about last month. Belmont Gallery of Art  has an upcoming show of paintings inspired by music: Rhythm and Hues.I hope to enter three paintings. Ever hopeful.

   

April's March Mixups

     Snow moved the March opening reception to April for the Belmont Gallery of Art's Fairytales, Folk Tales and Fables. I have three paintings hanging: The Fire Trilogy.

       After the fire in 2016 at our home of 40 years, I found painting therapeutic.

       In the first of the trilogy painted shortly after the conflagration, in Medieval imagery, the Mouths of Hell were consuming in fire all our earthly treasures — including my beloved library of art books, unfinished paintings, easels and a studio full of art supplies.

       In the second painting, Courage, ladders reached to Heaven through the smoke, destruction and chaos for strength to bear the insurance negotiations and restoration predicaments.

       In the third, Phoenix Rising, our house like the ancient Phoenix rose from its ashes; and its champion, the Sun, broke back through.

      The weather was confused and snowed the day after sunny Easter. However, I am thinking sunflowers. I got some good artificial blooms from Michael's and look forward to painting them again in my new upstairs studio w lots of sun. I want to do more Southwestern themes for Joe to finish as he did my recent sunflowers that I love. Joe is a super in-house picture framer. He also replaced my table jigsaw at a Sears closing so I can cut out some clever shaped canvas/frames in the future. His wood workshop is in the basement along with my other art studio.I always said my jigsaw machine was the first thing I would take out in a fire, but I took out myself, wisely, instead.

        Easter was a two-day celebration with surprise additions, food and activities.I will only say my "aging" grandchildren are never too old to hunt eggs and turn it into Olympic seriousness. In the drugstore, I ran into other mothers who still send off chocolate eggs to children in their 20s and 30s and fill baskets appreciated by their spouses or boyfriends as well. Good bye March and April Fool! The children did giggle at asparagus and broccoli in some of the plastic eggs.