Essentially all of my recent paintings were hanging in the Hammertown Gallery. My studio was looking quite empty and feeling a bit lonely.  The only wall that remained populated was the screen on which I had hung my painter's smock (once a French farmer's smock), assorted scarfs, and one of my favorite Picasso posters of a seated circus performer.  The other walls were pretty bare.  


Giving Picasso's young man some company struck me as the right way to begin a restoration.  Across from him, I hung a large poster that I had recently gotten at a Lucien Freud exhibition, at the Aquavella Gallery in Manhattan (click here for a link to that exhibition site).  It is a reproduction, in a very enlarged form,  of "Head of a Man" that Freud had drawn in charcoal, in 1986. The poster was a nice reminder of a great drawing exhibition and a wonderfully inspiring image.   

Then, I pulled from storage a painting I had done many years ago at the National Academy of Design school.  In it was of one of the most delightful models we worked with in class.  Nice to have her in the room again.

I dug even deeper into my storage area.  I found a collection of small paintings that I had done in Maine over a number of years.  Since we hadn't been to Maine since 2008 and were not going again this year, it was great to pull out some of these pieces and be reminded of that wonderful light and air, and beautiful sky and water.  On rainy, dreary days in Pine Plains, it will be great to look over at these and remember how it smelled and how warm and bright the sun could be.  As a special bonus from this cache, I even found another friend for my wall.  

No question, this restoration process was fun.  I liked looking through the old work , making decisions about what to keep and what to get rid off, and just banging nails into the wall as I tried out different arrangements.  But it had to end.  I had to get back to work.  There were more still life paintings to be done this summer, and there were all those ideas about landscape work to be tried.  I could hear the words of my late friend Eddie who was such a wonderful painter:  "Never decorate."  He meant do what you had to do to make your studio an inspiring place to work in, but then stop and get to your brushes and paints.   

And so, the last wall was done as a temporary backdrop for a new still life that I have just begun arranging.  I like that another favorite model and two earlier still life paintings are keeping watch over it as I work.  

Having my work at Hammertown is special.  The stores are lovingly inviting and I am able to work with a group of wonderfully gifted and wonderfully nice people.  Among their skills is their talent for getting out the word about the exhibition and events around it.  Please check out their recent newsletter and my entry as "guest blogger."  Click here for that site.

To Hammertown, to Hammertown.

For the last several weeks, my studio in Pine Plains was chock full of paintings.  The pieces were in all stages of readiness for the exhibition currently on view through Labor Day at The Gallery, Hammertown, Rhinebeck (click here for their website, www.hammertown.com).  My studio walls were covered with paintings ready to go, easels held paintings I thought could still be made better, against the walls were frames that were still drying, and on tables were paintings being framed.  Work and paintings everywhere.

But now, the studio is near empty.
I finished the paintings, frames were prepared (with the gracious and skillfull help of my neighbor Ralph Boekemeier), paintings were placed in frames, and all were delivered to Rhinebeck.  The paintings now hang in that beautiful room alongside wonderful pieces of furniture.  It is as if the paintings have already found lovely homes.  Stay tuned to this blog for more images of the paintings on the gallery walls

Although I miss having all the paintings around me as I work and I find the studio a little ghostly now, I cherish knowing they are in a fine place.  Also, it is very rewarding to watch a painting go from a working studio to a gallery wall.

On the left is my Pochade box, the very same painter's box that I used in Wellfleet last summer (see post from August 25, 2011).  As shown here, it was on its way to 10 days in Paris.  Not wanting to arrive rusty at the Luxembourg Gardens, I practiced a bit with this traveling equipment on the upstairs roof of our apartment building in New York City.  What you see in the box's lid,  the lid that becomes an easel, is a quick sketch of our roof pergola against the city sky.  My plan was to visit Luxembourg Gardens and several other parks with this little box in hand, and to do quick oil sketches like the one shown here.

                    When  Joan Osofsky, my traveling companion, and I arrived in Paris on April 11th, the weather had changed from days of marvelous sunshine and warmth to days of rain and cold.  Paris was too wet and too chilly on many days.  I needed to put aside plans for outdoor painting.  But there were other ways of doing art work.  Paris, after all, is a wonderful place for painting inspiration and practice whatever the weather.  I was comforted and kept from disappointment by a story I remembered about the painter Bonnard and his approach to traveling as a painter: 

At the start of their journey, Bonnard is picked up by a painter friend who has filled his car with painting equipment.  Bonnard comes to the car empty-handed, no art supplies.   His friend is shocked and asks Bonnard how he will be able to do his work on their trip to marvelous sites for painting.  Bonnard responds simply:  "Moi, j'observe (Me, I look)."

                    If it was okay for Bonnard to gather observations that he would later use in his studio, it was okay for me.  So, on those rainy cold days, I replaced my Pochade box with paper and pencil and the ipad I looked, drew, and took notes and photographs as we made our way through the city streets, parks, and in museums. 
Here are some of the images and notes from my travel journal.

This photo was shot through the window of one of the many stunning interior design studios on the Left Bank, near the Seine.  It speaks to me of the power of fabric -- how it folds, spills over itself, its color.  I need to put more fabric in my paintings.

Again, a photo with a store window (that's me you see taking the shot).  This is a poster showing a detail from a very large painting by Pascal Vinardel, a contemporary artist whose work was being exhibited at the Galerie Mezzo (click here for www.galerie.mezzo.com). This image says to me:  Keep painting women who are sitting at tables.

Even in the very bad weather, the light in Paris is amazing.  I love this shot for both what is says about light and what it evokes about painting.  So many other painters have captured the Seine with this wide sweep of the river in the foreground and the border made by walkways and the street.  As you stand here, it is so easy to imagine Matisse looking out his studio window and seeing this scene with his own distinctive eye and then capturing it for all of us on canvas.  I wish I had a studio that looked down upon this.  How many times could I paint this view!

 I love to paint cabbages.  Cezanne had his mountain, I have my cabbages.  These are cabbages from a display at the market on Rue de Raspail, just minutes from the apartment where we stayed.  Every stand was a visual delight.  
In New York city, I make regular trips to the Union Square Market to find vegetables, fruits, and flowers to put in my still life paintings.  That market is a very special part of living in New York and I enjoy the gift of its location right between my home and the painting studio where I work.  But no matter how much I love Union Square, it doesn't take my breath away the way Paris food markets do.  

This is the view from the window of what is now a museum and what was once a marvelous private home.  I am taken by the arabesque that fills the garden and the iron guard in front of the window.  A painting rule:  Include the arabesque in a painting, whenever you can.  Matisse knew why.

Our visit to the Museum of Hunting and Nature (Musee de la Chasses et de la Nature) was a delightful surprise.  Don't be put off by fears of animal head trophies and endless paintings of hunting scenes.  Yes, those are there but so is so much more.  Add this museum of things that need to be seen in Paris (click here for museum website, www.chassenature.org).  Near the end of our tour, Joan and I came across a wonderful little room, an installation intended to be a portrait of the wife and husband who were the great patrons of the museum  (the museum is made of what was their private collection).  Francois and Jacqueline Sommer were great hunters and conservationists.  The artist Mark Dion created as a portrait of them a hunting cabin filled with some of the couple's books, furniture, art work, travel souvenirs, smoking and drinking paraphenelia, etc.  He did their portrait through objects that were meaningful to them.  I have been working on this idea of portraits through objects for a while --- my own self-portrait through my painting of my favorite shoes, Dorothy's portrait that includes items from her silver and antique maps collections and her favorite jewelry, portraits of Beth's Aunt Rose and Uncle Jack through a painting of objects she gathered from the porch of their lakeside house.  Seeing this room in Paris gives me lots more to think on and work with.   

Yes, Paris style.  Sometimes, the amazing fabric in Paris becomes amazing clothing.  This is only one of countless shop windows with something fabulous in it.  Looking at a jacket and shirt like this one, I understand why Matisse collected both textiles and finished pieces and clothing, and why they were so important for his painting.

This is a small section of the architectural gem that is Ste Chapelle on the Ile de la Cite.  In that space, the amazing stained glass windows capture your attention.  But there is more.  For me, I fell in love this time with the walls and with what happens as you look across the walls and the columns.  Color and pattern everywhere -- many different patterns artists put together to create an impressive effect of variety but also of complete coherence.  It all works together.

Oh, this view in the Luxembourg Gardens.  So many painters have painted it, but my favorite remains John Singer Sargent's versions (for an example, click here).

Yes, I did use the Pochade box.  There were days when it stopped raining and it warmed a bit.  On one of those, I finished this oil sketch of that view in the Luxembourg gardens.


And, when I returned to my studio in New York and the one in Pine Plains, I was able to put some of the Paris inspirations to work on canvas.  See the fabric, the arabesque in that little dolphin fountain element, the strong color, the patterns, the influence of Cezanne in the arrangement of fruit and clay jar.