‘Thank God for yellow ochre, cadmium red medium, and permanent green light.’
-Philip Guston from “I Paint What I Want to See”
Late summer flower painting
Poem 1058
Bloom—is Result—to meet a Flower
And casually glance
Would scarcely cause one to suspect
The minor Circumstance
Assisting in the Bright Affair
So intricately done
Then offered as a Butterfly
To the Meridian—
To pack the Bud—oppose the Worm—
Obtain its right of Dew—
Adjust the Heat—elude the Wind—
Escape the prowling Bee
Great Nature not to disappoint
Awaiting Her that Day—
To be a Flower, is profound
Responsibility—
-Emily Dickinson
Naxos underpainting
Another new painting in process. 18”x24” on cradled board
naxos underpainting, acrylic
Very loose underpainting to help me control the values for this painting. Mid-values of gray mixed with cad yellow deep acrylic. Sky is already painted with oil over the acrylic.
New landscape painting in process
Stage 2, oil and cold wax; pthalo blue, cad red light, yellow ochre and titanium white
Stage 1, acrylic base painting (ochre and white), pencil and then washy oil block in; wooden panel is 18”x18”
Painting table, 8/20/23
recent small landscapes on my painting table
Studio shot, 4/12/23
My doors will be open at Somerville Open Studios, May 6 & 7, 12-6 pm
Work in progress in my studio at 57 Central Street, Somerville
Public Library Love
In high school, my after-school job was working as a library page, spending many happy hours shelving books and folding clear book jacket protectors. To this day, I can’t pass a shelf without aligning the edges of the book spines.
Public libraries are marvelous resources, and mine has a small gallery space. As a way of giving back a little for all that I get from my local library, I’m showing some of my antiquities paintings there through the month of March.
Antiquities: Speaking Across Time
Paintings at the Gallery@SPL
Somerville Public Library, 79 Highland Avenue, Somerville
Paintings on view through March 31
Painting 80 times bigger
Not sure if this was decisive or impulsive. I heard about a discounted canvas at a local art shop last Friday, and I imagined it was just what I needed to paint bigger.
How much bigger? Well, it’s 80 times bigger than my 6”x6” paintings. So big that it wouldn’t fit into the back of our CRV. So big that my daughter and I had to worry about the wind blowing us over as we carried it in a hail storm to my studio.
And here it sits, all 4 feet by 5 feet of it. It’s massive.
Now I have to figure out what to paint. There will be updates.
Here are some other things in the works. The “big” paintings here are 30”x22”.
Many more paintings to show soon at the Somerville Public Library in March and Somerville Open Studios in May.
-Pam
Faux bois
I’m doing a few new paintings exploring the concepts of flatness vs 3 dimensionality, along with my love of painting wood grain. This also has a limited palette: ochre, venetian red, black and white.
The painting above is a 10”x10” oil, and I think I’ll enlarge it to 20x20” in both watercolor and oil.
This painting really feels like “me”, since it pulls together solitary object with a long shadow, plus technical interests from drawing to printing to watercolor to oil painting.
Rachel Carson quote
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
Casein still life study - clementines
I’ve been doing a lot of studies using casein, also known as milk paint. I love the super matte quality of the paint, and it’s a fast way to check whether color harmonies will work before I embark on the much longer process of an oil painting.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, NYT obituary 10/28/21
“We can’t afford to become trapped within ourselves, our jobs, and religions, and lose sight of the entire tapestry of life. When the self loses itself in a transcendent purpose — whether to write great poetry, craft beautiful furniture, understand the motions of galaxies, or help children be happier — the self becomes largely invulnerable to the fears and setbacks of ordinary existence.”
The ‘Father of Flow,’ psychologist Csikszentmihalyi was a proponent of the benefits of intense focus as a path toward happiness.
Still life painting at StoveFactory Gallery, Charlestown
“Ironstone Bowl with Reflection,” a 10”x10” oil painting will be at the StoveFactory Gallery in Charlestown for one more weekend: Oct 30 & 31st, 12-5 pm. The show is entitled “Attached” and is about our relationships with people, places and things.
Color studies to expand my range of neutrals
I’ve been working on color studies to deepen my understanding of how to mix beautiful neutrals. This is a modified Zorn palette: cad free yellow deep, cad-free red light, ivory black and white with Liquitex acrylic gouache. I painted 2 inch squares on cheap paper with Liquitex acrylic gouache. There’s no method to the paint swatches. Just wanted to create an overall feeling of the potential colors.
Small painting of Trum Field, Somerville
“Gold graffiti swims
Koi in the shaded pool of
Once green cinder blocks”
Gouache painting
Painting a lot of little gouache sketches to see which should be enlarged as bigger paintings. I am loving the opacity of the gouache paints and the velvety matte appearance of the paint.
