I want to do a whole series based on our trek last summer on a pontoon boat!   The gorgeous evening was providential.  We were in South Carolina at Brookgreen Gardens, one of my favorite places in the world.  Our family took the 7 pm Creek Trek that they have.  I snapped photos the whole time!  I know everyone on the boat thought I was nuts, but I didn't care!  We don't go many places, and this was my chance.  I took I don't know how many pictures, as many as my trusty little point-n-shoot could handle.  I was sticking my arm way out as not

to capture our sailing vessel.  Thankfully the tour guide didn't tell me to stick my arm back in until the trek was just about over.  I haven't begun any of the paintings until last month, not sure how to paint them all.  I like to think of this first one as rather spiritual, because I was praying for guidance the whole time I was painting.  There is a quietness, a concentration that is required...not having music was tough, but whenever I would turn music on and my concentration went down, I would ultimately have to remove the paint that I put on during that time.

Well, here is the progress on "Slowly...into Glory".  It's big, about 22x28, which is just huge for me.  I wanted to do a larger piece to emphasize the feeling of seeing the real live oak.  Here is the drawing and the current progress of the painting...

It's been great to plunge into this.  More to come.

An apple for the first day of school!  This is an apple from my son's tree.  He wanted fruit trees for his birthday a year ago, and he received two, one of which was a red delicious.  When he picked this one this summer he thought it was pretty enough to paint.  I mumbled something about not having time and planning to do other things, so I put it in the refrigerator.  But it came out again, by my own hand; I wanted to do a small pastel to get used to them again.  (After illustrating the book, I am not as familiar with my most familiar mediums!)  Well, this apple emerged, and I have to say it has a partially prosthetic bottom.  It was a funny-shaped apple, and I thought painting the odd shape would take away from the pattern of the leaves, my favorite part.  I filled in the missing apple flesh with a kneaded eraser so it would stand up.   

Now here is something I am really excited about.  This is a live oak from Brookgreen Gardens on the SC coast.  It's at least 200 years old, and all this time it has been pulling up, twisting, getting girthier in immense slowness.  Earning its glory over much time.  Its branches are massive arms (see the one on the right!).  When the kids go back to school next week I'm planning to do a large oil from this study.

This is at the library, which is very naturally landscaped to encourage butterflies and birds.  I was out in the morning, trying to capture the lighting during one of the times of day referred to as "the golden hour" when I turned and saw something bounding.  I wished I had a greater zoom lens at the time, but now I think it's okay that I didn't because you can see the grandness and vastness of the setting.  Can you find the deer?

Though this is a question I often ask my ten-year-old son, it is actually useful at the easel.  It's one of those questions that's so obvious it gets overlooked.  What am I thinking that is making me mix this color?  What am I thinking this shape will do for the focal point?  Once my daughter was watching me paint, and, since this made me feel self-conscious, I thought I would let her in on the process.  So I explained what I was doing in each step and why.  When I stepped back and looked after a few minutes of this, I was amazed.  My painting looked so much better!  "Being intentional" I suppose is the same idea.   

Whatever Zen is...maybe it's like fung shui, but there is something so oxygenating about not tripping over a thousand things to get to the easel.  Anyway, not only did I declutter, I also painted the walls!  What an agonizing decision.  You don't want something neon green as my daughter suggested, but you don't even want something that's too golden of a beige, or too dark that may be depressing on rainy winter days.  So I chose this kind of warm mid-gray.  I know some portrait and figure painters use a dark greenish gray, which is actually great with a model that you shine spotlights on.  But for my everyday landscapes and sometimes still lifes I went with the color in this pic.  When we moved in (eight and a half years ago!) the room was this pastel blue, which was unoffensive, but reminded me of my childhood bedrooms in Methodist parsonages--something that would do for me, and the next occupant in four years.  I had dabbed some golden beige behind my still life set up at one point, but by now, just wanted the walls to all be the same color!  Now I'm hoping to be able to maintain the minimalistic decor.  What with Christmas presents in the closet and emergency stashing that we do in there when company comes, it will be a challenge! 

Although my pride would prefer to have everyone think I only paint all day, I don't!  I am also a wife and mother, which I love.  This summer since the kids have been out of school, I've enjoyed them very much, but finding enough time to paint has been difficult.  I worry that all the skills I have tried to gain though practice are slipping away by the minute.  When I've found time to paint while they're reading or something, either it's not enough, or I have already begun to feel neglectful of my precious kids.  I love summer, the relaxed pace, no morning rush, etc., but feel paint-guilt.  Next week they are in camp all day, and I will be back in the studio!  (Missing them!)  Let me instead be grateful for it all.     

Last night, a visit to the Germanton Gallery to see Scott Burdick's and Susan Lyon's paintings.  In a way I hate the internet images, because they have underrepresented what can only be taken in when you are close enough to the paintings to converse with the subjects.  Not that I would be going about doing that!  I can't say my breath is taken away very often by paintings, but the three-dimensionality of these faces is amazing.  Scott also juxtaposes absolute blobs of impasto paint next to the faces, making up the surrounding landscape or some props, or, most amazingly, a thick (measurable depth of paint) highlight on the subject's face or neck.  Susan's paintings don't have the impasto, but an otherworldly softness.  Her painting is to the left.  These are two people wholly dedicated to the study and practice of painting and drawing, and it shows in every square inch.  They are nice people too.  Hurrah, hurrah--a jaw-dropper. 

What is the romantic landscape all about?  I look forward to finding out more.  But I can't imagine it without some background music, which for me would be classical romantic composers:  Debussy, Ravel, Rachmanninov...how unromantic of me to misspell that last one...but this landscape is, more than others, a mindscape.  My mindscape, something I own.  I must get better at expressing it.

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