Mother's Day- Artist as Mom

(In a nod to Mother's Day, this is a repost of a previous writing. To bring you up to date, my daughter is now going to be 23 in a couple of weeks and preparing to go off to Thailand with her boyfriend for a summer of teaching English and adventure. I'm so proud of her and her fearless spirit and miss her terribly at the same time....)


My life is never seperated from my work and I have created a plethora of paintings around mothering as I journey along in one of the greatest adventures of my life.  I thought I would continue with this subject in this month when mothers are celebrated. 

Most of my paintings come from a very personal place. Even some of my cow paintings tell stories about what's going on in my life, such as in "Eat Your Broccoli" which depicts a momma cow and her  calf in a surreal field of raining broccoli. (A nod to Magritte) This painting was inspired by my Kayla who wouldn't eat broccoli as a little girl.

Before I even knew I was pregnant, I painted "My neighborhood", which depicts myself, my husband (in between the two houses) and our neighbors on their respective porches. There I am talking on the porch, very preggers, while my husband looks on.

 When I was actually pregnant, I painted this one, "Pregnant Artist." I have to laugh when I recall my pre-teen girl begging me to take it off the wall so her friends wouldn't see it. So much for being sophistcated about a little artistic nudity even though I tried to not actually show much :0) Note the Van Gogh calendar in the background and the rooster in the window. Van Gogh is my favorite and the rooster is symbolic of my husband whose last name in German means "rooster".

Sometimes I run into women who tell me that they were artists until their kids were born and then they stopped. I would just as much have stopped breathing. I don't know how they could do that, maybe they were less driven than me, but I never stopped. It helped that she was such a good, easy baby. I used to get up around 4:30 in the morning before she woke so I could paint a little, or sometimes she would sit and watch me in her little bouncy chair. At 19 months, she had her own plastic easel, paint and tam. She too created very colorful works, though she was an abstract expressionist at that time :0)..

As wonderful a baby as she was, just the shock of becoming parents can be overwhelming. The shift that takes place in your life from self centered to other-centered, and the responsibility of it all is all encompassing. I have depicted these feelings in the painting "New Baby", where the beautiful little diapered one is a giant in the space, overtaking the picture and the lives of the Mommy whom she holds in the palm of her hand and her Daddy by a string.

Having a child also was bringing up a lot of stuff for me as she grew. It was like she was holding up a mirror that reflected my life, causing me to worry and wonder about if I could make her life bettter than my upbringing had been. In this painting "Toddler" she is a hybrid of herself and me. She stands, again overwhelming the picture, but she is standing off the curb in a street between two houses, representative of the New Jersey street where I grew up. (Boy, did I have fun painting that bunny)

I painted her many more times as she has grown up, less as she approached her pre- teen and teen years when I could barely get her to be near me or smile, until this one (Flying through Life) which I painted last year, when she was leaving to go to college. It was so hard to let her go and I couldn't believe that that she was leaving already.

She and I are depicted flying through the air in our matching Mommy-Daughter dresses that I had made, through a world of things that I had taught her about or that we had discovered together.

 As I write this I am tearing up again......I know there are plenty more paintings to paint and the journey with her is not over. I just miss my baby.

The action packed first few weeks of a New Year

 My family and I went to New Orleans for a family vacation Jan 2-9. It was fun. Not a place on my "go back to" list, but a great family adventure which was the whole point.

For my artistic curiosities in New Orleans, I looked up and visited a few pottery joints and the Ogden Museum of Southern Artists and the Scuplture Garden at the New Orleans Museum of Art. I went into quite a few galleries and an artists co-op in the French Quarter and perused a lot of art on the street. I found  a very talented young man and bought a print of his charcoal drawing of a parade on Royal Street.

We walked 30 miles around the city that week so we were pretty tuckered out when we got back to Pa. so we came home, layed on the couch and watched almost every previous episode of Downton Abbey with my daughter each night, drank a lot of wine and lamented that she would be going back to school within days.

My awesome niece Suzi came to visit and she and I and my daughter visited Isaiah's Magic Garden in Philadelphia. (ok, they call it Philadelphia's Magic Garden now because it became a non profit to save it from the bulldozer, but the city didn't build it, Isaiah did, so I'm still going to call it that!)

I bought clay while I was in Philly and a new glaze at The Ceramic Shop that I have never used  called "Magic Glaze" (how fitting) and that allegedly produces different results with almost every firing. Hmmm, can't wait to use it. I bought a gallon. $49 bucks! Hope I like it!

We spent the rest of the weekend binge watching more Downton Abbey with my daughter and niece drinking a lot of wine (did I say that already?) in our pajamas and  only surfaced into the world to take my neice to the movies for her first Dine-in Theatre experience, where we ate food and drank martini's and wine.

You may be wondering, since this is a blog about my artistic life, where does the art part come into this post?  Well, sadly for me, my daughter went back to school, my niece went back home to North Carolina, my husband went back to work after his long vacation and I have been at home again alone just  starting to rekindle the momentum of producing art and letting ya all know what I'm up to through the cyber world.

Now that all is quiet and I have returned into the studio, I have:

 *begun work on a new painting for that show in March which  I mentioned in my previous post.

Cat at Cafe du Monde in progress

 *spent a couple of afternoons making some cute little miniature houses which I intend to add to my wholesale catalog

These are not fired yet. I will post next week with the WIP

*Designed and printed postcards for upcoming March show

*Designed and printed new business cards.

* I've also begun a new relationship with Mala Galleria in Kennett Square where my pottery will be available for sale.

 
We got snowed in for a day during the great northeast Snowmageddon, so I did some baking and cleaning and purging of some closets and rooms.

My studio after round one still looking like springtime

My burnt pumpkin cheesecake. It still tasted good.

So there. See. It was action packed and I did do a lot despite the languishing around in pajamas watching television. (Sometimes a body just has to take time to rejuvenate) !

Today, as I work around the studio on my current painting , I am going to start another one as soon as I figure out what it will be.

Next week, I will post some works in progress in painting or clay or both. Gotta keep it going!

Studio Sale Sneak Peak

I have been jamming for weeks now in preparation for my once a year big Studio Show and Sale. I like to show these before pictures so folks can see that I do in fact work in my little 12 x 20 foot studio. It took me 3 days just to clean, but it look so nice when I am finished that it is worth the effort.

It is so nice having my awesome daughter Kayla at home from college helping me. She is seen here painting my road signs, making them much more beautiful than I would have and her help is invaluable to me. This is my once a year Studio blow out meant to clear space for new creations in the coming year. That's why all of my paintings are 30% off. That even includes my very newest painting pictured below which is still in progress but will be finished for your viewing pleasure at the sale. Also new this year will be one of a kind pottery pieces (there is plenty more than is pictured here) and gift certificates. If you go to my website and sign up for my newsletter you can also get in on special savings on prints for newsletter subscribers only. I think this years sale is going to be lots of fun and I expect to see a lot of familiar faces. It is free and open to the public and everyone is welcome to just come and browse and have a glass of cheer and a nibble. I also have a free gift just for stopping by. With that, I bid you all a very Happy Thanksgiving and wish to say that I am very grateful for everyone who has supported my life as an artist especially my darling husband and daughter.

I've Come a Long Way baby

Back in January, Istarted throwing clay pots and totally fell in love with it. I began veryhumbly, creating little pots. The clay and myinexperience, totallydictated to me what I was going to make and the result was never very big, tall or exciting. Iwas proud of what I did, but I think Iam progressing very nicely. I have begun making some very cool pot bellied vessels with lids, that are still evolving. some bowls, that are a nice
size, some vases... the list goes on. I still love my paintings,but look forward to when the clay studio reopens in September. I have already made a list of things I am going to make for Christmas gifts and to sell at my open Studio in the Fall. I love the challenge of the new medium and the camaraderie with other artists in the studio. Below are some examples of my new pieces. Some are already sold, which really blows my mind since I just started. Thanks to those of you who have been buying both my ceramics and paintings.

Double Art/Author Night

I had a wonderful time last week at Petey Possums Hangout in Oxford, Pa.. Its an adorable little children's bookstore on the corner of Rte. 472 and Old Baltimore Pike. I had a reading with the children, signed copies of "Millicent and the Faraway Moon" and answered questions about being an artist and author from 6-8 pm.

From 5-6 I enjoyed the company of my fellow artists and patrons at the Opening of the Oxford Artists Connection members show where I displayed 4 of my paintings. I wanted to show that i do other things beside the cow paintings so my people on the couch paintings took up their place on the wall right along side them. It was a very nice show with lots of variety from the other artists. It was also very well attended.