I’m starting to feel the panic, and that is a good thing. I’ve been steadily working toward getting paintings ready for the Salem Art Fair, but today I am officially 2 weeks away, and feeling the need to crank it up a notch. This past week I have only finished one painting >:( because of some pretty major distractions.
First came the kitten… Luckily she has a new home, but we are hosting her this weekend since her new family went to the beach. She is so cute, and now that I know we aren’t her ‘forever’ home, I can really enjoy her. Even Lola has learned that she’s not so bad!
Those of you who follow my blog or know me well, know we’ve been looking for a new home for over a year. Well, I think we’ve finally found it! We have an accepted offer on a new place, with acreage and a beautiful newer home.
Front of the house
back of the house
The best part of the house is that there is a seperate (older) home on the property which we can turn into my studio! No more sharing a bedroom with the college kids! If you ask my husband, the best part is that the property has river access. I’m just holding my breath until we can get through the inspections and all the legal stuff so we can start moving in! There will be things to do to make it ours, and things to do to our current home to get it ready to sell, etc. And of course, almost 20 years of stuff to sort through and move. Not my favorite part. But I am looking forward to being there!
Also, I’ve been immersed in a good book: The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It is our book club read for August. I won’t take the time to summarize it, but it is set in Mississippi in the 1950’s and tells the story of the black domestics of a group of Junior League women. I enjoyed it very much!
I’d better get up to the studio before it gets too hot! I hope you all have a Fabulous Fourth of July! Looking forward to seeing some of you at the Salem Art Fair, July 17, 18, 19 at Bush’s Pasture Park. See the Salem Art Fair website for schedule, map and directions to the park. They have some great entertainment lined up, fun stuff for the kids, food, shade and of course, lots of great art. The biggest art fair in Oregon.
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I’ve been learning all the cool features on Etsy, the online venue I signed up with this month. One of the coolest features is the ability to create ‘Treasuries’ of some of your favorite items. These groupings often follow a theme. Getting one can be a challenge, though! They only allow new treasuries when the lists fall below a certain number, and you have to act fast!
This morning I missed my dental appointment (I totally forgot!) but I did get to snag my first Etsy Treasury! Take a look and let me know what you think! I called it “Very Cherry” and included some of my favorite finds.
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Yesterday, Donna Zagotta’s art blog had a great essay on creativity that began with this quote:
“If we are able to stay with a situation, it will carry us to a new place.” Shaun McNiff
I hope you’ll check out her blog for the entire article… This is something I believe in, and have been pondering for a couple of weeks. I saw something recently on another blog (sorry I can’t remember where) that says basically the same thing….
One does not stand still looking for a path. One walks; and as one walks, a path comes into being.” - Mas Kodani
Basically…. work, stay with it, keep your mind open, and a path will appear. That is very encouraging stuff for an artist, and something I always try to keep in mind when I go into the studio. The hard part, is getting time to be in the studio. I know other artists struggle with this, and the successful ones are those who find a way to overcome it.
This summer it has been a challenge to keep my own schedule amidst getting the kids to the dentist, sharing cars, moving them all in etc. This morning, my daughter revealed that she snuck another distraction into the house last night.
Meet ‘Kimora’
She is so darling… but thin and covered with fleas…. and we absolutely cannot cannot keep her! I was hoping to get rid of the cat we already own as soon as Tim gets his own place. Anyone looking for a new little buddy?
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"Explorer" Original Watercolor
It is always difficult to decide what to enter in a competition. Some artists try to guess what a juror or judge will like, perhaps from entering previous entries in competitions judged by the specific juror. Other artists try to submit something very unique, unusual subject matter for a painting or an unusual technique. Still other artists enter a painting that has broad mass appeal.
If you are an artist who regularly enters exhibitions, what do you usually choose? I’m interested in how others choose paintings. I am getting ready to enter the National Watercolor Society competition… the deadline is rapidly approaching!
I finally got a photo taken yesterday…. This is the next painting in a series, similar to “Knowing”. I like it more, I think. It feels less harsh. I know this painting is more on the unusual side as far as content. I like the composition and color. In this particular competition the paintings are viewed by a panel of three jurors and there are only a small percentage of the paintings accepted.
I’d be interested in hearing your feedback on your favorite painting from the ones I’ve posted recently, or the painting you feel would be more likely to be accepted….
"Small Talk" Acrylic & Watercolor
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It has been a busy weekend… our last two kids came home from college… I just about wrote ‘teenagers’, but our oldest just turned 21! How did that happen? Seems like just yesterday I was driving her to pre-school! She and I share the studio space for the summer, so I had to do a big clean up and major re-organization to try to make space for her. I know she feels a bit crowded with me there, but the room is so large, it would be a shame to have it sit empty the rest of the year….. She is looking forward to sharing a house with some girlfriends next year, and we have been having fun getting the basics of furniture, etc. together for her. Such a hopeful, new feeling!
Before the ‘kids’ came home, I finished the painting I’d been going back & forth with:
This is what it looked like before
This is the final version "Knowing" 22"x15" Original Watercolor
I like the revised painting much better… the hair fits with the rest of the image now. Thanks to my friend Ted for the ‘virtual’ critique. I actually think I like the virtual critiques better than our meetings in person when I hear about half of what is said. To see the comments in written form helps me put aside my insecurities and objections and consider each suggestion thoughtfully.
The rest of my weekend was spent trying to restore my blog posts from April and May and setting up a new Etsy Shop! After chatting with my friend Linda Rothchild Ollis about her new shop and seeing friend’s shops like Blenda’s I decided it was time to take the plunge into the online market. For now I have a few small prints available, but I plan to add some smaller originals after the Salem Art Fair this summer. I want to have as many originals available as possible for my loyal collectors who attend that show. Looking forward to seeing you and your friends there!
I hope you’ll visit my Etsy store and share it with your friends. I really appreciate your referrals. If you refer a friend and they buy an original, I will give you your choice of 8×10″ prints! Word of mouth is my most powerful marketing tool, I find. People who live with my art & love it, generally know others who have the same inclinations!
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Oregon Poet Laureate Lawson Inada
I got an email tonight about the opening reception of the “Perceptions of the Past” exhibit. Apparently we made the local news. Here is a link to the video about the exhibit on The Daily Courier’s Website. My painting is the first image shown in the video 
The exhibit is set to travel to Central Oregon Community College in Bend for October & November.
I loved visiting Grants Pass… the curators made us (the artists & writers) feel so special. And it was inspiring to hear the readings of Lawson Inada and Carlos Reyes. I also enjoyed meeting JS Bird and Bruce Bayard. I had been hoping to meet Sherry Wolf or my author, Lauren Kessler, but they weren’t able to make the opening reception.
Melinda Thorsnes and her Painting
Melinda and I had a great time ‘pillaging’ Grants Pass. She is not only a terrific artist, but has a wicked sense of humor and makes a great roomate/travel companion!
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You paint the way you have to in order to give, that’s life itself, and someone will look and say it is the product of knowing, but it has nothing to do with knowing, it has to do with giving.
-Franz Kline
I love the above quote by Franz Kline… for me it is one way to explain the process I go through in painting. I am seeking to give something from myself to the paper, not putting down what I know. Each painting is a discovery.
I have quite a few new images to post tonight… took photos and finally took the time to crop & resize them, etc. I’m trying to figure out which ones to take to critique tomorrow night (we usually only show 2 images). If you have thoughts on which ones might need further work, I’d love the suggestions. I’m feeling pretty good about most of these, but I’m always open to feedback.
Flower Market, 11x15" Original Watercolor
"Scent" Original Watercolor 15"x11"
"Song" Original Watercolor & Gouache 15"x11"
"Knowing" Original Watercolor & Gouache 22"x15"
I’m feeling the pressure to be in the studio every day for this final week that I have the room to myself. On Friday my daughter will be home from college and I will have to share the room with her There is something about having to navigate around her piles of clothes etc, that keeps me from being so productive.
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In literature, as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
-Andre’ Maurois
How do other artists deal with rejection? I tend to cocoon… after getting a ‘declined’ notice this past week, I found myself wanting a nice little mini-vacation. It could also have had something to do with the head-cold that I was incubating, but I’m pretty sure if I had had an acceptance notice, I would have been right there in the studio continuing my ‘roll’.
In talking to other artists, they often see the same painting rejected from one show and accepted into another. I’m currently considering whether to re-submit the images that were declined, and if so, into which shows.
It is always difficult to reconcile a rejection from a juried competition with the fact that I still like the painting that I submitted. This weekend found me cocooning in a long novel:
I couldn’t put it down, all 600+ pages of it I loved the historical bent, which “lavishly evokes the land and lore of Scotland, quickening both with realistic characters and a feisty, likable heroine.” It was recommended by my massage therapist, Odette. Now I am battling the impulse to order all of the 5 other books in the series…. If I do, I may never paint again!
I always seem to battle the impulse to fall into a book vs. the desire to actually accomplish something! Luckily, I don’t have a large book budget.
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I apologize for the long pause between posts. I know it drives me crazy when I go to one of my favorite blogs frequently, and then the writer takes an unannounced vacation! I am always wondering, what is happening in their studio!?
After my server debacle, I thought maybe I would wait until I (hopefully) restored the missing posts from the backup… but that is taking way too long. I will just have to deal with that mess when it comes back (if it ever does). So here are my thoughts for now:
In one of my favorite blogs: The Colorist, by Casey Klahn, he has been talking about editing work that doesn’t make the cut. His criteria for making cuts is very interesting, I hope you will check out the full post above.
It’s so interesting what happens to a painting that has been sitting in the studio overnight. You return in the morning to find that the head is way too big for the body, when it looked just fine yesterday, or the contrast is way too stark, etc. It always amazes me to find that my perceptions can change so radically between the time I make the painting and the next day’s viewing. I think many times, collectors don’t realize that the work they see at an exhibit is generally just a fraction of the work that had to be produced to be able to cull the pearls.
Even more interesting is how emotional content changes during the painting process. Today I started a small painting that was going to be similar to a large painting I did previously called “Flower Market”. Amazingly, this girl did not want to be alone… the pencil felt compelled to add a male companion who bought her flowers! How sweet!
I’ve been focusing on trying to keep the emotional content of my current work focused around the theme of “nurture’”. I am interested in how we nuture others, our environment and ourselves. So this painting would be a great example of how others nurture us. What I am struggling with a bit is in trying to get a little more abstract or mysterious with it. I don’t want the work to be a simple illustration. I’m hoping the emphasis on color will help with that.
Since my internet has been malfunctioning, I’ve taken more time to be in the studio, with mixed results. I hate to post the images right away, as they often look better or worse to me after a few days.
Here is one from last week:
Listen, Original Watercolor 15"x11"
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I am truly sorry if any of you have had trouble contacting me in the past week. My web server crashed, leaving me without website, blog or email for 5 days. ;(
I finally switched to a new host today, and after spending the better part of the day getting the switch made, I am up and running again!
Woo Hoo!
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Hi Ruth,
I am learning about Etsy too! I have had some things on for a couple of months but it is learning process to find out how to keep things upfront for people to see them. If you find out how to get an item featured in the art showcase, let me know. Every time I try to promote there, there are not any days available. Good luck with your prints. I love your work. I am working towards getting some prints on, just haven’t yet.
Have a lovely day,
Catherine
Thanks Catherine! I will let you know if I discover any secrets, and hopefully vice-versa
Happy painting…
Ruth
Watching with interest…don’t have time to get into the details of Etsy, so any light you can shed in your blog will be appreciated!