Laurelines

Technical difficulties, begone! Scotland trip upcoming!

Hello! I have been frustrated for a long time due to a glitch with my renewal of Adobe services (i.e I now can't access any of them, including Photoshop) and my scanner and printer. It's a mess. I WILL get things sorted out when I have one or two 37-hour days to talk again with Apple support and with Adobe support. A word to the wise: don't forget to write down your system password. Ever. 

Meantime, I remembered I could at least post this update/outburst.  

My husband and two of our closest friends leave for almost three weeks in Scotland in less than a month. I have made a wonderful itinerary, she said modestly. And I WILL HAVE my computer problems sorted out by then, one way or another. She said, sort of ominously.

This will be a sentimental journey for me. I lived in Edinburgh for a year many years ago, during which time I got married, had my first child, and spent two terms at Edinburgh College of Art (second one was truncated by my advanced pregnancy.) I took my daughter back to Scotland on her 18th birthday and loved it then as much as I had at the very beginning.

I am thrilled to be going back, at long last.

Since I can't access images of my work for now, I am sharing photos from the places we will be staying during our three weeks.

The Farmhouse on the  Duffus Estate near Elgin in Moray, with views of Duffus Castle.

A cottage on the Ardsheal Estate, overlooking Loch Linnhe in Argyll and Bute.

A small hotel in a beautiful Georgian building at No. 11 Brunswick Street in Edinburgh.

And that's not all! You won't believe all the fantastic places we are going to see in the Lothians, Perthshire, Moray, Aberdeenshire, the Highlands, the Lowlands, Argyll and Bute, and the inner Hebrides and even more.
 
So that is all for now. I will be back! Technical matters are not completely out of reach for me.. but they are not, shall I say,  where I shine. But Scotland!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This artist's house: art now! garden later*!

We are in our second spring here and the house and garden are firmly ours. There's been the typical settling in and tweaking, furniture moving (and moving again), repainting some rooms whose first color didn't work, adding and taking away this and that.  Most importantly, we have artwork given or otherwise acquired especially by us for this house from some of our dearest friends, along with new work from me. And the garden is filling out exuberantly. God willing, we'll have many more years here to add to the story.

Here's a selection of recently acquired artwork currently hanging on our walls.

My recent painting, one in a series with the linear shape of our house as the point of departure. This one is called. "House: Garden." Pretty inventive title, eh? 18" x 30", acrylic on board.

This is "Carpel" by brilliant friend and fellow Hillsboroughan Robbin Gourley. The impressive gorgeousness of this photograph (48" x 32") has transformed the dining room, if not the whole house. You can see for yourself why. I even repainted in dark gray the large mantelpiece in the dining room to provide a response to the dramatic tones of this sublime piece. 

A centerpiece of the whole house is "Swimming Pool" by another brilliant friend (all my friends are brilliant, aren't yours?) and renowned photographer Elizabeth Matheson. I first saw a monumental print of this luminous image at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke years ago. My print is 24" x 24," smaller than the Nasher one, but it has a big voice.

The fabulous, and I believe untitled piece, above is one of a series of copper and calligraphic pieces made by my mad genius (aka brilliant) friend Roger Haile a few years ago. He knew I had lusted after it long ago and for my recent birthday, much to my  jawdropping and all unawares self, gave it to me, all wrapped up! It's copper, enamel, and ink,  24" x 24."

Finally, here is a stunning drawing by our (brilliant) science-publisher-turned-artist-at- age-83 friend and Hillsboroughan Neil Patterson. The title is "Octo," celebrating his now 88 years.  24" x24."

*Garden later. I have run out of space, so next time I will share this artist's garden with you. It's come a long way since you saw it last.

Finally, a shot of my studio with work in progress, another in the house series, on easel. For context.

More to come!

2022: Begin Again

Another year of disruption and acute distress for our world in so many ways. I look to this new year for a fresh start in my own world and a return to work and themes.  

I've spent a lot of the year outside of the studio, due to family obligations...

 

...obligations I entered into voluntarily and with deep love.  We thought the remote schooling process would be over in June, at the end of the school year, 

and it was, but a resurgence of Covid meant I was needed again this school year, with a different and greater time commitment.

My passion to make sure our new old home was ready for us, was beautiful, was a true reflection of who we are, has grabbed me with tsunami-like energy and has taken most of the time I had left over from child responsibilities.

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My house and my garden (see preceding post)  were my major artworks for the year.

But in these days after Christmas, I've cleaned and reorganized my studio. It and I are ready. I have several different series going on and I don't know where I'll go with them,  

but I'll find out. I also want to make another 12' long concertina book of the second year of my garden and I wouldn't mind making more portraits of the kind I did of the original owners of our 1860s house:

I continue with my red clay painting studies:

 

I have poured every single thing I have this year into family, house, garden, and regaining of health. 

It's time to pour every single thing I have into my work. Begin again. There's no end to the beginnings.

Let us join together in a fervent wish for the health of our planet, its people, ourselves and our loved ones, and for a world in which virtue and truth are once more the standards we strive to uphold. 

Happy 2022.

The story unfolds at last: my garden book finished!

Phase two* of my art projects relating to my new home, my new garden, my new life is finished! Using a Seawhite of Brighton concertina sketchbook, as I love to do, I painted, drew, collaged a narrative of images from May to October. Starting with my grapevine in spring and ending with the same grapevine in fall, I chose highlights of the garden to include in the record, and with each spread, I chose whatever method and media I felt like . The result is 12', unfolded, of colors, shapes, movements, textures, and, since it is a pollinator garden, a few bugs and birds hover here and there.

 

The clip above was made in dim light and the resolution is not great, but you get an idea of the whole. Below are shots of half of the book unfolded in sunlight, in the very garden the book was made from and for. Below that are double spreads of a few key images,  scanned to give a more accurate idea of the colors.

 

For years, I have loved accordion books to record travel images as well as my Caledonian Orogeny drawings made on site in Wales and Norway.  Open these books up, and you find the very format for a story, moving from left to right. My blog's name is a clue to my love of the storyline, both visual and verbal, and these books give me a perfect springboard.

Here is one more example of my use of this format, my first record of the Caledonian Orogeny project, made on Whitesands Bay near St Davids, Wales, in 2017. Here you get a better sense of the spread, although this one is not completely extended either. It's hard to find a 12' long surface! 

Now I can move to phase 3 of my new house and garden art project: paintings made with pigment from the red clay soil we live on here and/or new pieces working with house and memory imagery.  I have started several of these and am eager to get back to them, now that the garden book is done!

 

*Phase one was the pair of portraits I made of the original owners of this 160 year-old house. 

 

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SO much to share after a too long hiatus! New work, new garden, new life!

These past months have raced by. I am aghast that so much time has elapsed since I last posted. I have three ways to explain what's been taking ALL my time:ongoing repairs and renovation, helping with first grade remote schooling, creation of my new garden obsession!  But life should be freer for me now, so here we go!

Here is work directly related to my new house and my projects related to living in this area. 

A quick background recap from my earlier post:

The one-story farmhouse was built in the 1860s in Smithfield, NC, by Burkett Jones, a cotton farmer and entrepreneur, an exConfederate soldier, who had been injured early in the war and sent home. The structure was moved to its present site in Hillsborough in 1997 to prevent its demolition at the expansion of the Smithfield airport.

Since the house's story is now part of mine, I want to weave its history into my art life.

I have several lines of work within this general subject and I hope now to be able to begin work on all of them.

First, the portraits of the original owners of my new old house, Burkett and Mary Ann Jones. Acrylic on board, 16" x16". I worked from a blurry many-times copied photo so felt quite free to simplify their images, paring them down to what I felt to be their essences. I will hang these over a doorway in my kitchen where they will preside over a long interior vista from back to front of house:

 

Second, one of very few drawings (to this point!) of my surroundings. I SO look forward to getting back to this! Reed pen and ink sketch of the view from my studio window on a cold February afternoon.

Next a couple of studies done in my ongoing project to make paint from our red clay soil. I have not had a chance to take up this strand again but will do so very soon. I truly have no idea where these will lead, which is fun. My life, as I said, should be freer!

 

Finally, a series of photos showing my garden's progress from the early bare days to the present. I struggled to keep this concise! Ish. ;D. I have hundreds of photos of the garden already!

Here are two shots from early October:

  

And here are recent ones:

This does not look like a garden of only a few months, does it? The topsoil I had delivered and tilled into the red clay was obviously what the garden wanted! I consider this garden a full-fledged member or my art life.

More to come and I am so happy to know that!!

Happy summer to those in this hemisphere and happy fall to our southern hemispheric friends!

Atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere: why I love toned paper

 

Yesterday, I posted on instagram a sketch I made of a still life in our new/old house on that cold, rainy afternoon. I made this on a Stillman and Birn gray Nova sketchbook, using colored pencils and other assorted materials.

This sketch took me right back to another interior still life I made at the house of dear friends four years ago at just this time of year. Atmosphere!

 

These started me looking back at the many drawings and sketches and some paintings I've made on toned paper for many years. 

Gray and tan paper automatically provide a lovely mid tone to give lines and colors a soaring start in life. This has many advantages. For a traveler like me, who takes only a carryon suitcase even on long international trips, I can pack a few pens, crayons, pencils and still have the range and flexibility I want.

Crucially for me, this paper guarantees the kind of atmospheric work I strive for.  And since I love to travel to, shall we say, atmospheric places like Norway, Wales, and Iceland, quite often in atmospheric seasons like winter, it is perfect for the task.

I have used three kinds of toned paper over the years: kraft paper, pastel paper (very rarely), and both Strathmore and Stillman and Birn toned paper in sketchbooks.

When I went to Alaska for an art residency a few years ago, I took along some high quality kraft paper to use for landscape studies. The ability to make atmospheric drawings with an economy of means was critical. Here are two of many from that project:

Toned paper has traditionally been used for pastel drawings/paintings. I'm not a pastelist, but I have used it occasionally, for my own purpose. Here I've used watercolor on pastel paper. The toothed softness of the paper gives the watercolors a texture boost and the bright colors against the gray/tan paper come to life.

Finally, I have so many of the above-mentioned atmospheric travel sketches to show you that I'll have to sit on my hands and just pick a few. Before there was Stillman and Birns toned sketchbooks, there were Strathmore ones and I used them plenty. Below are examples from both brands.

If you've seen this blog before, you've seen scores of my cold weather outdoor atmospherics on toned paper, so I won't repeat them, but here's a link to work from a recent December trip to Norway.

 

Atmospheric indoor scene at a Norwegian café in December:

Woman waiting at the Vienna train station on another chilly December day:

Blue jellyfish washed ashore in Abersoch, Wales. I adored how the cool colors and degrees of opacity behaved on the warmish gray Stillman and Birn paper!

New Year's Eve warmth and light in our seaside cottage on Whitesands Bay, Pembrokeshire, two years ago:

Hot chocolate helped ward off the cold at an outdoor market in Vancouver a while back in a Strathmore sketchbook:

I'm now sitting on my hands. Enough atmospherics! I do have other uses for toned paper, particularly in the making of expressive drawings and museum drawings!  Let that be a story for another day.