clementines

When we buy a bag of clementines, we put them in this turquoise blue ceramic bowl, and they sit there looking gorgeous, and every time I think, I have to paint those colors together. 

So, I finally did:

"Clementines"

oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

I did it on a whim, using mostly palette knife, and finished it in one sitting. It was incredibly satisfying. It has all the looseness and serendipity in it that I want for my portraits. There's this really magic thing that happens when I'm uninhibited and unconcerned -- the paint has such life and freedom in it. I can never get that feeling when I try too hard. So, I either need to treat everyone's faces like bowls of fruit, or I need to do all my painting at the end of the day, with only an hour to go.

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then again

Speaking of time capsules... all of my artwork is turning out to be an accumulation of years and bits of inspiration and ephemera. I do have a special fondness for geological phenomena, so maybe it's an unconscious nod to layering on a planetary scale.You know, it's like, The Way Things Happen.

This is the partner of piece I posted recently; I started them both together, so it's only fair that they evolve together, too: 

"Then Again" 

12 x 12 inches, oil and mixed media on canvas

I think it's done.

(But did you know the Himalayas continue to grow a centimeter every year?)

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time capsule

I was going to write something about how packing things into boxes during a move makes each box an unlikely little time capsule.

I thought of it when I was taking apart my drafting table: loosening wing nuts was like reading a log of all the other times I have taken it apart and packed it away. Songs and conversations and the kids just the way they were at that moment -- it all gets lodged into the things I'm packing up, like an entire exact snapshot of my life, revealing later the things I don't see right then, busy as I am with my screwdriver and sharpie.

And, to accompany this witty and poetic something about time capsules, I was going to put in a photo that Jason took in the midst of our packing, of Isla, gracefully contorted in a wee box and taken from above; her sweet little face the very specimen I most wish I could preserve.

But I couldn't find the picture anywhere (and OH, I looked). It's probably on the hard drive of the big computer, the one that got packed away and stayed behind, and that's just it, isn't it? That's just the rub.

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