Studio visits

acrylic paintings, art, contemporary, contemporary art, contemporary painting, female artist, feminist art, figurative art, Figurative art on canvas, portraits of women, studio visit, watercolor

It’s always surprising who comes to visit my studio and buys one, two, or more paintings all at once. The most satisfying sales are of paintings I toiled over, off and on, through the years, adding images, rubbing out the images, piling on paint and scraping off the paint. (Paper towels and Isopropyl are a must.)

Then there are the intrepid explorers who venture out to my garden house and patiently pick through all the dozens of paintings I’ve stored there. A lot of those paintings I would call “iffy.” With numbers, scribbles, and secretive messages only a skilled detective can decipher. Thankfully, I’ve had many intrepid explorers coming this year. I’ve posted a few samples here.

And lastly, a journalist from the Daily Freeman happened by one morning, and here I am on the front page of that newspaper with my good friend Elizabeth Shafer (right). Elizabeth, a multitalented, multimedia artist extraordinaire.

Moods and Patterns

acrylic paintings, art, contemporary, contemporary art, contemporary painting, contempory art, female artist, Figurative art on canvas, studio visit

A visitor to my studio:
“I look around at every painting of yours and don’t see a glimmer of hope.”

Ha-ha.

The joke is, I’m happy as a clam when I paint. The minute I enter my studio my spirits lift. Even in the face of a difficult painting, I’m ecstatic!

So what does an artist make of what people see in her paintings? Do people see what they want to see? Do they see what they don’t want to see?

Some of my favorite shows recently (and best of all, I was INVITED!):
Art & Words, Emerge Gallery — I wrote poems to my paintings and poets wrote poems to my paintings and then I did a painting inspired by a poet.

344 Second Street Troy — the curator and owner, Jean Tansey, herself a wonderful artist, selected a bunch of my paintings to exhibit, especially the larger ones, especially happy about that am I, since I’m painting really, really small lately. (I prefer to think I’m squeezing big ideas into small spaces.)

Albany Center — an email out of the blue invited me to exhibit in this beautiful space in the heart of downtown Albany surrounded by soaring brutalist architecture.
And… upcoming

The one and only Saugerties Open Studio Tour — visit me in my studio August 12 and13,
STUDIO #3 c’est moi ! Visit me, visit me. I love studio visits.

Like the Mirror when Nobody’s Looking

acrylic paintings, art, contemporary, contemporary art, female artist, male portraits

It’s as if you’re dead and looking at life through a veil, someone said to me at my recent solo show of my work.

Not a bad analysis — because I don’t paint from life.

My companions in my studio are fluctuating moods and passing thoughts and squelched memories bubbling to the surface.

I paint because I like being off-balance.

Teacher

Leave your sleepy rivulets to trickle down my wrist,

Teacher. Put up a mirror for an answer

so I can ask the same question

twice

Seal shut last year’s envelopes, your lesson’s feral cabinet,

Say, The mirror is facing the wall, your secrets are safe

Don’t ask me,

“Dear little cobweb: why so brooding, mysterious, and quaking?”

Don’t say, “I’ll seize this and this and this”

Leave everything alone as is

like the mirror, when nobody’s looking

“Truth Out” art show and Wolf of Wall Street

contemporary, contemporary art, female artist, Figurative art on canvas

One recent work “Wolf of Wall Street”

and installation photo from “Truth Out: current controversies, historical injustices”– group show curated by Rosary Solimanto and Jean Tansey, Unframed Artists Gallery, New Paltz, NY