New Fenway Painting

This is a new Fenway oil I just finished. It is more a Kenmore Square motif than a strict ballpark picture. But I am really feeling like the neighborhood around the park is becoming an extension of it.

I really like a lot of the ownership and neighborhood business’s additions.

This new painting is being exhibited and made available at Trees Place, Orleans Ma. And it’s not much of a stretch to admit I have done more Fenway Park paintings than anyone else ever. It’s been a great changing motif for me since my first Lansdowne Street attempt in 1986.

I am having an opening at Trees Place this Labor Day weekend and this painting among other new urban paintings will be available.

This “Boston Skyline, Kenmore Square” oil is 36×48″ o/c. It’s so fresh it is still wet.

For more information: www.Treesplace.com

www.Fenwayart.com

Go Sox

Hyannisport Artists

Today I was able to bring my students to MY teachers studio.

My generous teacher Sam Barber shared his waterfront property with the class, painted with them and handed out cold cans of beer for the critique after.

This day spent by the ocean in Hyannisport, a beautiful August day like today. Breezy, sunny, Kennedy’s everywhere.

He is not teaching anymore but was happy to see my students this once and let them paint on his gracious grounds. Outstanding beauty. Potted plants and statues silhouetting against the sailboats. I had all my students walk around and take photos before they take their supplies out of the car.

I only heard one “I didn’t bring my camera” and one “I don’t know how to use my camera”. If you forget your camera on a day like today it is a great loss.

There are many motifs, too many for just one afternoon. That is why the camera is so important. They were a little overwhelmed trying to decide where to set up and what to paint. But they all did a good job covering the canvas and getting a study down in the two hours there.

Please check out Sam Barbers work at www.Sambarber.com or www.Treesplace.com

That is my last class this month. Starting a new “on location” eight week class- September 19, 2008, please call the Conservatory 508-362-2772 for inquiries. Thank you.

The Marble Palette

It took two hours of scraping to get the old paint off my marble palette. The paint had to be two years old because I have been using a small glass palette in the studio for a couple years. The glass was too small and just not the best feel.

So I finally broke down last weekend and got out the putty knife and razors and took all that old paint off, colors left over from paintings long gone now. After a while I got down to the large marble surface. I even put it in my kitchen sink to wash it with soap and water for the final cleansing.

Yesterday morning I laid out my paints on the marble; light to dark;warm to cool across the top and began to mix the colors on the marble surface again.

What a difference.

Working oil paints and linseed oil on the marble is mixing your colors on a superior surface. There is a tooth to it. Mixing the oils actually makes a distinct sound on the smooth stone.

I will never use anything else in the studio again as my palette.

Contemporary Art Auctions

Are contemporary art auctions good news for living artists?

If I was a professional ballplayer, at my age, I would definitely be retired from hopefully a long career. But I am not. I am a professional artist, just hitting my stride, mid career, in my forties.

There has been a lot of talk about the auction scene on Cape Cod recently, especially about a recent painting at Eldreds Auction House in East Dennis, Ma. A painting had surfaced recently and put up for auction after being in the same family private collection for years. It brought big money and was highly sought after.

And this made me ponder the two small fifteen year old paintings of mine coming up for the Contemporary Art Auction there tonight, selling among many of my peers paintings. Artists I have painted with and show with.

I remember a few years back a conversation I had with a gallery sales woman about my paintings beginning to come up on Ebay and other online auction sites. That I was excited about this, and she looked at me funny like do you really think that is a good thing Loretta?

I don’t know if it’s a good thing, it just is.

It means your work is starting to take on a life of its own, away from your studio.

Fine Art changes hands.

Paintings are admired, bought, sold, and even stolen.

Paintings are moved. That is part of what art IS.

And to me it means I have been around long enough and produced enough good work to see my paintings be resold and begin to re-circulate.

But it also means I am beginning to compete with myself, the new paintings against the old paintings.

The paintings that pay my mortgage against the paintings my clients are hoping will now pay their mortgage.

It’s part of the deal.

Transporting Wet Art

As I drove down the old highway yesterday afternoon, I got a text message on my phone from a friend asking how I was, and how my day was going?

I thought to myself well it’s a wonderful late July day. I am so happy.

I am in my old illegal ride, driving down this beautiful road. I have the doors off the jeep, the sun in my face, the wind in my hair and two large wet paintings jammed in the back giggling around. I wanted to take the hightway but chickened out at the last minute. Heading to the photographers to have professional slides made for Fall contests, these are two of my best paintings of the summer, hence the slides before delivering them to the gallery.

My only worry was a smudge to the paint or something sticking to the wet surfaces. Why do I take these chances? Because I like to ride in the Jeep with the doors off and the top down,in the summer, and I know I  am lucky.

This makes me think of another time in my even older van driving into Boston to deliver two very large expensive paintings to Liberty Mutual for a sales presentation. As I drove just south of the city I kept looking over my shoulder to the side doors that didn’t appear to be closed well. I could see and hear the highway streaming by the door crack just beside the art. I prayed i would make it without the doors flying open and my paintings flying out on the South East Expressway causing traffic jams on the evening news. But it never happened.

As I parked into the photographers parking lot yesterday, I pulled out the wet paintings and looked them over closely. Perfect, not a flaw. It’s good to be lucky.

Summer Birds

You know in Brittany France this time of year it doesn’t get dark till after ten p.m. at night. The birds chirp right up to the end too.

I would listen to them in astonishment, even when it was dark. They would be so beautiful singing everyone to sleep. It made me think New England birds get a lot more rest. I can remember watching this little French country bird sitting in a cherry tree singing his little heart out, like raising way up and singing so that his whole body shook happy to hit those high notes. I can remember thinking well here he has this cherry tree and several types of peach trees to bee bop around in, never mind all the fields. If you are a French bird all you have to do is stay away from all the cats and it’s a nice life.

Which brings me to this morning, on Cape Cod where the birds are not singing so sweet. As a matter of fact the bluejays make me want to cut down all my trees. I can’t stand the racket. They are really getting under my skin and pretty soon I just can’t be responsible for future actions.

They are not all jays here though. On a happy note the female cardinal has moved out of the nest in my outside shower for the time being. So i can shower without fear of attack. Actually she was pretty good about it. Whenever I came over to use the shower she flew right out and chirped down at me from a nearby oak. I never knew there were so many birds in these woods. It has been two years since I have had a cat and I see and hear the difference in the yard.

Sometimes I think back to places i have lived and traveled to and for some reason I always notice the birds?

From the swallows darting like acrobats among the vineyards in Tuscany to the roosters waking me from their barns in Brittany. The “blackbirds singing the dead of night” in Dingle Ireland just like the Beatles said.

Checking my luggage in a rent a car at a strip mall, just outside Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris some sparrows even taught me a lesson before a flight last year. I was watching them dart in and out of some hedges bordering a parking lot. Living happily among the concrete and asphalt of a strip mall, they could be anywhere. So close to the fountains of Luxembourg Gardens, and the parks and cafes of Paris. They choose to live in a hedge by the airport.

Oblivious to life’s possibilities.

The Cape Cod School of Art

If you type in your web browser www.capecodschoolofart.com -it goes straight to Lois Griffel’s Arizona web site.

The Cape Cod School of Art was an important little school in Provincetown. It was founded by Charles Hawthorne in 1899. He is really credited with Cape Cod Massachusetts and Provincetown in particular becoming a world class art colony for students, artists, writers and collectors of art.

He passed the school on to Henry Hensche who carried on the teachings at the Pearl Street location for many, many years. I had the opportunity to study with Hensche in the summer of 1983. I also had the opportunity to meet at their home with him, and his wife Ada Raynor also an artist to talk about art and see how they lived and worked.

It was a wonderful summer school though by the time I got there Hensche was old and was not very active, at least with the new students. But I was there for a little while and before that I had studied with Sam Barber at his Hyannis studio, Barber a longtime Hensche student had encouraged my study in Provincetown. I am grateful to all my teachers.

Shortly after my time with Hensche I had heard stories that the school was to be left to one of his students to carry on the Hawthorne tradition. Lois Griffel was chosen to keep the school going in Provincetown, and she did for a few years. I heard good things and saw her one foggy morning with a group of students up in Maine on Monhegan Island in the 1990’s.

So I know living in the Mid Cape, I am out of the Provincetown loop a bit.

Because I was flabbergasted yesterday while in Provincetown to hear that it was old news that Louis Griffel gave up the school, sold the property and left the area for good several years ago.

That school should never have been allowed to fail and for that property to have been sold to developers.

I wonder what happened? Maybe nothing happened.

The Provincetown dealer I was talking with is very knowledgeable of all Hensche students over the years, and we both agreed that there had to be one hundred students that would have loved to take that school over and keep it going for future generations of art students, and keep it in Provincetown.

We need to be aware of the things on Cape Cod that make it special and preserve them and build on them.

Not sell out. Especially a Fine Art tradition in the truest sense. The Cape Cod School of Art’s demise, what a great loss to all of us.

Just remember…

www.capecodschoolofart.com

brings you right to Louis Griffel’s Arizona studio where I am sure she has a desert painting to sell you.

Cape Cod Painting on Location

On location early July 2008. High tide coming in so I needed to work fast.

This canvas 24×36″ is finishing up very strong after a loose start on site. When I am on location I am just trying to gather information and get a groove going with the painting. Get a feel for the site and the day.

Tomorrow I am teaching a class from The Cape Cod Conservatory. It’s supposed to be a studio class but I am mixing it up a bit and taking everyone to a beautiful site not far from this painting.

Another week or so the green-head flies will come out and make painting or swimming out here painful.

Why wet art auctions are bad.

What type of artist are you?

(Brittany on Location)

Now I had a student call me recently to discuss her painting on location for a local wet art auction. She said her plan was to do a study or two from her chosen location ahead of time and to familiarize herself to all her colors ahead of time so that when she went on location to paint for the actual auction she would have everything lined up in advance.
When she asked what I thought about the fact she would be painting different times of day and worried that the colors would be different? I replied that she was missing out on what painting outside was all about.
Because the colors WILL be different on the study days and the auction day.
The light will have changed.
Everything will be different.
And then she was going to have to decide if she was going to paint the true colors of this day or the prior day?
Paint your time.
Paint on location with an urgency to capture what is there right then.

Trying to do your painting ahead of time even for a pressure situation for these one day fundraising wet art auctions are not a good idea. Though I have seen even the most accomplished artists show up at the begin one of these events with an almost finished painting.

Wet art auctions are not good for anybody except the fund raising recipient.

It is not good for the artist to attempt deception as my student was thinking about. It’s not good for the collector to buy paintings that are never going to be lived with by the artist and therefore never finished.
And speaking for myself when I used to participate in these, it is not good for an artist to whack out a painting in the morning, sell it in the afternoon and never see it again.
Never having the chance to live with it to see if anything you have painted bothers you and rings untrue.
The artist would never get a chance to see the painting under different light and to look at it critically.
Wet art auction pieces don’t get a chance to dry thoroughly so that it will have it’s final varnish; so that your painting will have a beautiful patina. Unless a collector gets in touch with an artist or their gallery to return the painting for the final glaze, (which never happens.)
I want my paintings to have a luster to them and I want to live with my work before I put any paintings on the market. I want my collectors to have the best I can give.
And that is why …
Even with painting on location being my forte, I haven’t participated in a wet art auction in years.

Fenway in the Rain

Beckett on the mound, threat of thundershowers, hail. I could not see one empty seat in the stands.

I didn’t really want to drive up in this weather. Dinner with my friend Dean at O’Learys Pub on Beacon Street for our pre-game meal. I left him relaxing there while I walked up to Yawkey Way to take my pictures. Just as I got up near Lansdowne, the skies opened up and the umbrellas came out. I took terrific shots, got drenched.

Hard work fighting the crowd and the weather for my reference material, looking like a tourist. I am sure there are worse ways to earn a living.

And I will look back at last night, glad that I made the effort to get the shots for great paintings of Fenway Park to come.