DUALITY

DUALITY 40 x 48" Acrylic on Canvas (C) Margery Caggiano

I delve into the internet a lot, to see what's been auctioned, to see if links are accurate etc, and to see whats popped up as more and more info makes its way online.

I found a registry of women artists named CLARA, in case you ladies want to look.

Then my name came up on a portfolio that's in the database of the American Art Portrait Gallery Library of The Smithsonian. The entry was for a painting of mine, titled "Duality", with an approximate date of 1896 to 1975. Naturally I contacted the person of record, suggested that I was still alive, and asked why that painting?

Answer: "Peter and son Paul Juley headed the largest fine arts photography firm in NY from 1907 to 1975. Their clients included museums, galleries, schools, art dealers, private collectors, and nearly every major artist of the period. The Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired the Juley collection from Paul Juley, just prior to his death in 1975."

It seems that the (wincing here)1968 Audubon Artists Nat'l Exhibition was documented by the Juley firm, and I was one of the exhibitors, with "Duality" above, which received a Medal of Honor. Nice.

I cleared up the date with the library and sent an image for the archives. The site is SIRIS

The painting in question is of a friend and fellow artist, Edith Borax Morrison. I've used her as a model several times over the years.MRS B 16 x 18" Acrylic on Canvas c) Margery Caggiano

I was in my one-eye- Larry Rivers period.

MOI with frame

Edith and I were also antiquers, and found this top part of a cottage dresser, sans mirror.

So I painted her to fit. The (my) hand is cast plaster dipped in wax (yes, and ouch), the bird is of course faux. Both are on the shelf (arrow)

She looks a little double jointed, but you can't have everything

EDITH WITH BIRD Acrylic on Canvas (Size?)

Edith is an extremely accomplished artist, currently affiliated with the Kehler Lidell Gallery in New Haven, Conn.
http://www.kehlerliddell.com/

WHAT'S A HENWAY?

MUTANT CHICKEN 24 x 18 Oil on Panel (c) Janet Culbertson

This is a good time to talk turkey (sorry), but I'd rather introduce an artist and friend, who is a dedicated environmentalist who puts her money where her mouth is, art wise.

Janet Culbertson in her studio on Shelter Island, NY.

When I saw the painting of the nude chicken in her studio I thought she (how clever) invented it, but learned from her that, unfortunately, they do exist ( and not pleased let me add). They're engineered for countries that are too warm for raising poultry with feathers. The eventual oven is pretty warm too, but by that time the poor things are not only nude but, hopefully, dead.

I never thought I'd want to knit a sweater for a chicken...

I first met Jan when we were two of the four women chosen in 1980 to exhibit in "FOUR" at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, LI, NY. The other two artists were Joyce Stillman Meyers and Susan Zises.

Malcolm Preston wrote in Newsday: "Each year, with funds provided by the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for The Arts, the Creative Artists Public Service Program awards fellowships to artists working in various categories. Four of those CAPS recipients are currently showing their works at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington. it is interesting to note that all four are, to some degree, realists. all four, too, by the way, live, work and have exhibited frequently on Long Island."

And, in the part of the review that refers to her work: "There is in Janet Culbertson's work a real concern for nature, for preserving the ecological balance, for protecting endangered species. Her large, beautifully textured mixed- media drawings include several of her earlier works like "Resting Tortoise" and "Iguana." Very skillfully handled, they affect a fossilized, prehistoric look, but really they ask us to respect those early residents of our planet and not destroy them, and perhaps ourselves, through carelessness."

Her paintings, drawings, philosophy and travels can be seen and read about on her website, along with an amazing resume. http://www.janetculbertson.net/

PS If you don't know what a Henway is, ask around.

HARRIS

HARRIS ONISKO 10" x 8" Oil on Canvas (c)Margery Caggiano

I've come to the conclusion, like I didn't know, that painting feels better than not painting. You can walk away. You can run, but you can't hide. You can complain, you can give it up and decide that there has to be something out there that doesn't cause so much angst. I walked away from the Art World for 20 years for a lot of reasons, some personal, some I couldn't define.

In retrospect, I had become good enough to know I wasn't good enough.

But there came a time when I needed to retrieve that lost limb, there had been too many real-time losses to deal with.

So my attitude has become ****** I yam what I yam.

I'll always whine and complain, that's the New York legacy.

While I'm at it, how come, with all of the talent out there, is one of the better few seconds on TV is a talking pothole? Frustrated with TV, I took myself to the movies last week, got some popcorn that cost more than the movie, put my earplugs in, and watched the world end.

Ahhhhh, that's better.

MIKE

MIKE ONISKO.... 10" x 8" .... Oil on Canvas .... (c) Margery Caggiano

I'm calling this series of 8x10 portraits "oil sketches"....Trying to get the essence of a person without doing a highly finished painting. This was done from a photo sent via email, on gallery wrapped canvas. I'm currently accepting commissions for this size, unframed, from your photo. Cost is $195, for this size only. The photo can be black and white, and even somewhat out of focus. Obviously, the higher the resolution, the better. Some candids "get" a person, whether alone or in a crowd.

But teeth, however sweet the smile, don't make a good painting. Nor will I, or should I, use a professional photographers studio portrait.

If I don't think I can do a good job I'll tell you. No charge.

CECILY (Gallery Opening)....Original 1.2 MB photo .....(c) Margery Caggiano

CECILY... Oil on Canvas ...10" x 8"..(c)Margery Caggiano

The painting can be seen in her gallery on Love Lane, in Mattituck LI

OPEN LETTER TO HELEN TUCKER

This was in the Letters section of the Artists Magazine last month. I read it for the first time yesterday, and am repeating it here in its entirety in case anyone else missed it, or doesn't subscribe.

ARTISTS OVER 60
"I'm very disappointed that The Artists Magazine is once again featuring a contest for the over-60 crowd. Here's my question:Why give extra points for the artist who's not able to compete with 20-year-olds? I find it distasteful. Art should be celebrated for art itself, not for the age of the artist. Why not keep contests open for all to enter? If the winner is then found to be half senile, to have partial vision and to create art while leaning on a cane-then you can celebrate the artist! Until then, please stop with the categories (both young and old)."
Helen Tucker
Via e-mail

An Open Letter To Helen Tucker
Dearest Helen,
I figured you for a sulky artist of course, and googled your name but could only come up with a bikini model on YouTube. (true) One Who Paints?
Which pretty much explains your attitude, if you're one and the same.
But you're right, I can't compete with any 20 year old in a bikini contest.
I'm also completely senile and proud of it.

Yours truly,

Margery

detail from 21 ARTISTS OVER 60, The Artists Magazine, March 2008

PS This blog insures that the brain of Helen Tucker will show up on a search or two for a long time. So sue me. I'm senile.

HOW TO RECOGNIZE AN ARTIST FROM FAR FAR AWAY

ARTIST 1
My last blog was about a painting I did (Cecily), using as a reference one of the photos I took last year at the Love Lane Gallery. There is no wasted film with a digital camera, so for me there is rarely pre-planning. It's useful for recording an event, a landscape, a seagull, paintable people.

I left the camera on auto and flash,-it was evening.

Anyhow, a few days ago I took a closer look at my photo files from that opening. (Technically, it was an auction). I enlarged the photo above, saw something interesting, lightened the photo, and got a little extra. Well well well.

ARTIST 2

I also saw that she had been wearing sunglasses.

In case she wanted to attend incognito?

LOVE LANE GALLERY

CECILY 8" x 10" Oil on Canvas (c) Margery Caggiano

I had previously invested in a bunch of 8 x 10 x 1.5 " pre-primed canvases that are a nice change from doing my own stretching, priming etc, but I'm not entirely happy with what is called "the mechanical look" (weave) of the surface, so I've been giving them another two coats of gesso, using a foam brush, then sanding. Not perfect, but it helps.
I've also been experimenting with closeups, using (sometimes) unposed, candid photos. The challenge I've set for myself is dealing with flat or overhead lighting, and trying to do them in a day. Sometimes it works out.
This particular photo was taken at the Love Lane Gallery in Mattituck LI, and Cecily, being the owner, was behind the counter at the time, pouring wine. Living dangerously, because some idiot decided that it was illegal to serve wine without a liquor licence. State? County?or local law. Strange that it only became an issue when the Long Island wineries took root, so to speak. At any rate, the media being the only message these days, I figure getting raided would be a good thing. Just think of that delicious headline "Love Lane Establishment Raided !"
I still remember (see?) an East Hampton artist (Robert Gwathmey I think, father of the architect), getting a lot of Coverage with a capital C for using the US flag in a work of art.

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2VSt15x12k

SHE DOESN"T KNOW MUCH ABOUT ART BUT..

yes, she knows what she likes

THE INNOCENT EYE Mark Tansey 1981
I think the original of this painting is at the Met. Since I've been blogging about cows, I remembered it.

Actually one of the first paintings I saw and loved, was on a high school trip to the Metropolitan. It was a landscape by John Constable, with you guessed it, cows.

John Constable: ”Wivenhoe Park, Essex” (1816)
I found this image on Google, thankyou.

The bad news is that it was used as an illustration for a german treatise on "foot and mouth disease". We all know that it's Hoof and Mouth disease, don't we?

My Back Yard, Oct. Photo (c) Margery Caggiano

The landscape I currently live in is much like this, except that they're Black Angus.
Beeves.
And then there are the traffic cops

GREENPORT LI Photo (c) Margery Caggiano

All together now, "mammeries, all alone in the moonlight........

THE LADIES OF LUMBER LANE

LUMBER LANE Oil on Canvas 20 x 26 (C) Margery Caggiano

COWS ARE NOT FOOD .......continued

Lumber Lane, in Bridgehampton LI, was close enough to where we lived that I sometimes used it as a shortcut to avoid the traffic. Even then, thirty years ago, traffic was bad enough to want to blow up the bridge over the Shinnecock Canal. If you've ever been on an interstate that was funneled down to one lane for 25 miles, that's what Montauk Highway became.
The curse of the Hamptons.
This particular painting was shown only once I think, and later destroyed. I do that occasionally.Sometimes its the right thing to do, sometimes it's not. The ladies on the beach, "Holiday" in my last post, resulted in a little flak at the gallery. oh yuk, cows on the beach.
Some people just don't get it.

COWS ARE NOT FOOD

Cows Are Not Food, Cows Are My Friends

HOLIDAY 9 x 12 Giclee Edition of 50 (c) Margery Caggiano

Once upon a time, my husband and I took the old Chevy pickup cross country, following back country roads . He fell in love with Nebraska and their shotgun surveying. Square and straight. Nothing much, that we saw, but miles of corn, and miles of sunflowers.

Heaven for a claustrophobe.

When we returned to Long Island, we bought an acre of farmland in Watermill. At the time it too was wide open, nothing there but potato fields, hayfields, and dairy farms, with the town comprised of a post office and a candy store, and an estate that housed retired nuns. The land was cheap at the time, and we could, and did, build a small house with studio space.

Heaven for a studio deprived painter.

Like still waters, still villages run deep. Turns out our farmer liked to ride naked on his motorcycle, our other neighbors were gender challenged, and a few doors down lived Carl Yastremskis' parents. (My husband was unimpressed, being a Cardinal fan.)

The neighbors to the north, being dairy cows, were naked but their gender was obvious. Meanwhile, our son had applied to join the Secret Service, and the Men in Black were required to interview our neighbors.

He got the job regardless.

The dairy farm was on the corner of Scuttlehole Road and Strongs Lane. The cows in the prints above were from photos I took at the farm. There was a milk machine on Montauk Highway which came in handy as you can see. The ocean was also nearby, and that also came in handy.

MILK MACHINES 8x12 Giclee Edition of 50 (c) Margery Caggiano

Milk Machines was never a painting as such, so technically doesn't qualify as a Giclee. It started out as a watercolor, unsuccessful as usual (I try) then pastels over, then acrylics over that. (I get stubborn about some images.) The mountains were added later, when we moved to Virginia.

So there.

BIRTHDAY

Stage 1

Stage 2


Stage 3 Lisa and Will Oil on Linen 18 x 24

This one was, is, a challenge. The source was a 328 kb email I received. The lighting was hospital , and it may have been taken with a phone. ( Will wonders never cease)
Being a glutton for punishment, I decided to give it a shot.
It was drawn in with thinned acrylic paint, and a then a general wash. I tried a very dark background but didn't like it. So I sanded it and broke out the oil paint. Stage 2 is oil paint, and I still didn't like the background. Blech.
At that point I put it away and spent a week on Tilghman Island, my last blog. It hasn't been easy to get back to normal, whatever that is.
And now, for better or for worse, I've fallen in love with a mongoose brush that's angled.
I don't do advertising, so I'm free to pan or promote.
I found a source for brushes in the UK. They make their own brushes, almost unheard of these days. And it's the only source that I know of that makes mongoose brushes that are angled.
Rosemary and Company. http://www.rosemaryandco.com/
Keep in mind that the prices are in pounds, and there is shipping. Google is handy for converting currency. They have a catalog of course, a necessity for the details that aren't online.
I'll post the next stage in a few days, I hope.

EAT YOUR LEAD-FREE HEART OUT

While visiting Saint Michaels, I roamed through an annual rummage sale put on by a Main Street church, and pounced on a cardboard box that held ancient looking art supplies. Cans of turpentine, linseed oil, copal medium, large never used tubes of paint, and 2 very heavy little cans of Dutch Boy white lead, again, never opened. Since lead paint was taken off the market in the mid- seventies, except for housepainters etc, I knew this stuff was pretty old. But still good!A code number in a Grumbacher flyer tucked in with a tube of paint put it at 1961 or so.

A loot list, some with original prices: 2 pounds of Dutch Boy lead

Large Titanium white ($1.60)

Large MG Underpainting White ($1.50)

16 oz can of Copal Medium ($.65)

Glass jar with approx 10 oz dammar varnish

2 32 oz. cans of turps

1 16 oz can of linseed oil, plus 2 8 oz cans

Except for the lead, everything was Grumbacher, and their enclosed flyer was a treasure as well.

You don't want to know the brush prices, trust me.

The box full of stuff was $2, should I have haggled? Nah.

I coudn't resist getting my Jerrys catalog out and comparing to today's prices; without the cans of lead, the total came to about $140. Of course I have enough linseed oil to last well into the next century. I intend to use the lead to make my own grounds for oils. I promise not to eat it.

For our own good, the lead based artists paint has been off the market for a long time, except for flake and cremnitz whites.

Unfortunately, lead based paint is why many wooden buildings, as well as paintings, have lasted as long as they have. A must for tin roofs, for sure. But it has done a lot of harm. A nursery man on Long Island once told me that they thought nothing of seeing dead cows, from the lead arsenate used on the farms. Altogether a long list of lead-related tragedies.

I found this 1923 children's coloring book on an interesting blog named http://www.weaselmouseonmarketing.blogspot.com/

A PAGE FROM THE BOOK
He also blogs about classic advertising that includes unreal but true past cigarette ads, and a fun section of monsters running off with big bosomed women.YAY

PS I thought to sell the cans of lead on ebay, but reconsidered on the grounds (pun there) that it was probably illegal. Could the church Rummage Sale Committee have been busted?

SAINT MICHAELS

Chesapeake Waterway photo - Margery Caggiano

I've been playing tourist for a week, staying on Tilghmans Island, MD, and investigating nearby Easton and Saint Michaels. I've missed being near the waters of Long Island.

The Chesapeake Bay alone was worth the trip.

Oxford from the Ferry photo - Margery Caggiano

D.Cheney and D.Rumsfeld supposedly have second homes in Saint Michaels, but the house in the above photo seems more likely for either or. Easton is as beautiful as they say, more than a town, less than a city, and very much attuned to the arts. But Saint Michaels is funkier and more to my liking.

Think I'll move........

ANGLOPHILE GO HOME

I don't know why they haven't made a t-shirt with this. I for one would wear it.

Terry Gilliam's illustrations for Monty Pythons Flying Circus were the initial draw, so to speak, that in no time at all made me a fan when they first came to the USA via PBS in the seventies. Since then, with the advent of computers etc, the sketches have been swiped and so badly reproduced on YouTube that the Pythons decided to have their own YouTube channel, with links to buy their DVDs, books etc. (Can't blame them) But there are only 26 sketches that have been digitally improved.

Two of my favorites for this blog at any rate, are not on the list. One is The Art Gallery, (in drag and chomping on a Turner), the other is Picasso (painting) On a Bicycle. He falls off of course.

I don't think it has anything to do with my ancestors, but a lot of my favorite books, movies, comedians, and it seems, artists, are from the other side of the ocean.

From The Water Babies as a child, through Jane Austen, The Brontes, HG Wells, Robert Graves, George Orwell, Graham Greene, Roald Dahl, John Wyndham, Mary Shelley & Frankenstein , Breaking The Sound Barrier -great movie- to traveling the world with Michael Palin, to Pink Floyd (who put $20000 into Life of Brian) to of course the Stones. (Eric Clapton is canceled out by Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles by Elvis) Come to think of it, Alice in Wonderland was written by an Englishman. But canceled out by The Wizard of OZ.

What the English don't have is jazz, the original, the roots. (And ok ok a few other things)

Right now, and for a few more days, I'm in a cottage on Tilghmans Island on Chesapeake Bay, and if I'd had the brains to pack my camera cable, I'd be feeding some photos into the PC
and writing my next blog.
Anything but what I'm doing, trying to put some magic into a stubborn painting.Blimey.

FREUD, NO NOT THAT ONE

Photo Courtesy of Max Wehlte

I love this palette. It's every ones' idea of An Artist in Action. Try this with acrylics

And I love this unfinished portrait of Francis Bacon, by Lucian Freud, grandson of Sigmund.

It appeals to me, not in spite of, but because it's unfinished, and shows the process. I think it epitomizes the magic and the lure of realist painting in general, and portraits in particular.

The two met in 1945, Bacon was 36, Freud 23. They became friends, and were destined to be subjects in each others paintings for many years. Freud sat while painting, so it was knee to knee with, so it was said, constant grumbling by Bacon, until he finally got up and left.

As a result, the portrait was never finished.

It was auctioned at Christies in 2008, and sold for $9,403,306 US

Portrait of Francis Bacon by Lucian Freud
This was the first of the only two portraits Freud did of Bacon, it took four months to paint in 1952.While it was on loan in Berlin it was stolen, and has disappeared.

The paintings of Lucian Freud by Francis Bacon, however, are a whole nother ballgame.

NORA AND EMMY

NORA Oil on Linen 18 x 14

EMMY Oil on Linen 18 x 14

I thought I was finished, but I decided to use the same background on both paintings.

They kind of go together.

and

They're sisters

FAUX VAN GOGH

HEAD OF A MAN 13 x 16 Formerly Attributed to Van Gogh

After some comments, and a lot of interest in the discovered photo of Van Gogh (last months blog), and my ongoing interest in fakes and forgeries in the art world, I got interested in a story that made the rounds last year, mostly in Australia and the UK, but a story that I've just come across..In 1940 the "oil sketch" above was bought by the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia for the equivalent of a few thousand dollars, destined to be their only Van Gogh. And valued at 20 million or so. Pounds? or dollars? No matter now. The painting spent a lot of time on loan to other museums, and after questions regarding its authenticity, the folks in charge belatedly decided to send it to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in 2006. The experts there spent a year testing it (really?) and decided it was old, but No Van Gogh.

Further reading led me to an article in The Guardian, written by Germaine Greer (that caught my eye) this past April. She rightfully claims that "any fool with an eye, let alone two", could tell it's not Van Gogh. She proposes that the painting could be one of the many oil sketches done by Rubens. I'll pass on that.

My personal opinion when I saw the painting? And why not. It doesn't claim to be cropped, but it obviously is. The anatomy is off-eyes too far apart, the back of his head is missing, etc. And the cross-hatching of brush strokes in the background is not something an accomplished artist does. Aside from the fact that the marks look like they were done with a square brush, and Van Gogh not only used round brushes, but his brushstrokes followed the contours of his subject. Beyond that, when I read that they traced the painting back to Berlin, 1928 -I immediately thought of Han van Meergan, the famous forger of Vermeer, who happily sold one to Herman Goering. (6/9/09 Blog "Good NewsBad News"). Could he have branched out.? Wow. Further searching turned up dozens of forgers, but one caught my eye because of the resemblance. Self portrait?This is Eric Hebborn, forger etraordinaire, even the Getty Museum has him in its collection. He has written "The Art Forgers Handbook", born 1934, murdered in 1996.

And so it goes......

NORA, NOT QUITE

NORA Stage 3 Oil over Acrylic

I thought I'd post this stage now, even though I don't consider the painting finished yet. I can't come up with a solution until I know what the problem is. So I need to put it away for a few days at least, and get on to something else.

Like another painting, or horrors, cleaning the house.

NORA, ALMOST

NORA Stage 2 18 x 14 Acrylic on Canvas

NORA Stage 1

I decided pretty early on to use the turtleneck sweater as a slash of bright color. I converted the photo to gray scale on Photoshop so that I wouldn't be tempted to stay with what she was wearing. It also enabled me to experiment somewhat. Her jacket was originally burgundy, but the design works better in white or a light color.
I thought it would be easier to get a resemblance using a profile, it usually is, but not this time. Or not yet anyhow. If nothing else, I hope I can do her justice.
To be continued......

EM PORTRAIT FINISHED

EM Oil on Linen 18 x 14

The first stages were painted in acrylic (see below), and the final stage was refined using oils. I changed her (faux) raccoon collar to a (faux) silver fox so that it wouldn't be confused with her hair. I have a few minor details to bring out yet, the zipper for instance, but will wait until it's dry.
EM is her nickname, and her initials, and this is how I see her.

EM Acrylic on stretched linen
This is partway through the painting, blogged as "Portrait in Progress, Sept 7

SMALLVILLE

http://www.6x6gallery.com/

If you live in or near NYC, save the date.

Friday night, Oct 2 is a reception from 6 to 8 pm. I wish I could be there. I don't know if there will be "liquid" refreshments. I was in a co-op ( The Spectrum) on 57 St a long time ago, and they, we, stopped serving wine. It attracted the homeless and thirsty, shall we say. (Not to say that we wouldn't have wined and dined them if they bought art instead of Ripple.)

When the co-op moved to SOHO the openings were moved to Sat, daytime. But still.

I don't know if I'm going to put anything in this new gallery on a regular basis, but for this show, my Yorkie puppy will be there.

So go already.

WILD THANG

STAR Original Photo- 72 k

This is a candid snapshot of a lovely Irish Setter.

I had previously painted a puppy (Emily) using a low resolution email for reference. I've painted a lot of things over the years, but never dogs. I wanted to see if I could do what I considered an interesting challenge. Even if I could get an animal to sit for a portrait, hardly likely, I would undoubtedly get lost in the detail.

WILD THANG 32 x 24 Acrylic on Linen (c)Margery Caggiano
So .........my preference for working from photos has enabled me to tackle subjects that would otherwise be impossible, seagulls for instance.

Unlike Audubon. I'd really rather not kill them in order to paint them.

GULLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN

LITTLE GULL Oil on Canvas 8 x 10" (C) Margery Caggiano

I've just set up a page on Artshow for six paintings, all oils.

Five are new seagull paintings that I'm fond of.

http://www.artshow.com/MargeryCaggiano/

With the ability to buy via PayPal.

I'm fond of that idea as well.

POQUATUCK HALL AND STAR TRUCK

POQUATUCK HALL Orient, NY Acrylic on Linen 24 x 32" 2001(C)Margery Caggiano

Up until yesterday this painting was on my website, but I decided to pare the site down and just leave the more recent paintings, while adding some new ones. Luckily, or not, I have a do-it-yourself website. I couldn't afford me otherwise.

We were living on Main Road in Orient in 2001, hopefully making some cosmetic improvements on a ca 1780 house. The Village of Orient is a little gem, and off the main road. Poquatuck Hall is the town hall, and adorned with a huge flag. For anyone not familiar with Long Island, we got rid of the natives many moons ago, and kept the names. I'm not sure I want to know what Poquatuck means.

I was working on this painting in September of 2001, and the flag itself on 9.11, believe it or not. The painting took on a whole new meaning for me. I changed it from sunlight, which bored me anyhow, to moonlight, which was a challenge. I've only done one other painting set in moonlight.

STAR TRUCK Oil on Canvas 16 x 20" 1980(c) Margery Caggiano

I was reminded by this blog, so dug this out of my archives. This truck was kept parked by the side of Montauk Highway in Wainscott, and had been a honey wagon belonging to the Town of Easthampton. Those were the days.

PORTRAIT FINISHED

FRIENDS Oil on Linen 26 x 20" Margery Caggiano

This is my daughter Jean on the left, a fine artist in her own right, and her longtime friend Bobbie. Way back when.
I have a habit of working close to the edges, which doesn't bother me - we are all fond of our habits - but it dictates the use of a floater frame. If a frame at all.

I don't like to intrude on the painting with a copyright notice, but I'm finding out how many images are scooped out of Google's search. That's show biz

WTC

DENNIS photo by Margery Caggiano

Date: Sunday, September 16, 2001 8:07 PM From: ryugin0447@...........

To: margcagg@optonline.net >Subject: Re: Thoughts from me too
hi marge & bill i was in the city on tuesday driving downtown in a cab the driver says the wtc is on fire i look and smoke pouring out a long dark river of smoke on his radio it says a plane hit the tower were getting closer and closer hipmotized for a while i tell him its to close and pull over i get out and pay tell him not to go any closer and walk down heading for varrik st stiil looking up with everyone in the street thinking it is surreal people on cell phones with cmeras focused then the second plane hit the second tower and a moan went up from the people louder then the fire engines and ambulances and police rushing rushing down towards the towers i made my way back up town to the bus tunnels and bridges closed word on the street the towers have colapsed i look down town and its gone ingulfed in huge cloud of gray smoke people streaming north I we walk uptown ti 95 st squeeze into a bus to 125 st get a train to yonkers and my family feeling like a refugee stund and numb only now am i wakeing up and its still a bad dream and its only the begining ive been going to the ocean a lot this past week alone looking out to sea for something i dont know what. love you guys.dennis

PORTRAIT IN PROGRESS

This started out to be on an 18x24 linen that I stretched and triple primed. But a few minutes after starting I realized that I wanted the head to be smaller,closer to life size, and switched to a 14x18 pre-stretched and pre-primed linen from Fredrix. Since I am forced to get my art supplies online and can't see them first, there will be an occasional disappointment. In this case the linen weave was not square, a very obvious downhill slant. Which can be corrected to a point by sanding and a few more coats of gesso. But I wanted to start, and got lazy.

Live and learn? Never happens.

EM 18x14 Stage 1
This is from a photo I took, which I prefer if at all possible. Once I bring it into Photoshop, I'm able to crop and compose and experiment with the values. I also like to convert the photo to greys for a better idea of the composition. You can do all of that in any simple photo software.

I did the initial drawing in watercolor pencil, then went over that with thinned black acrylic. When that was dry the the pencil drawing was washed off and a transparent acrylic wash of burnt sienna brushed over the face, and wiped down. I then mixed burnt sienna with cerulean blue and laid in the darks with a thin wash, except for the face.

EM Stage 2
My initial intention was to do a thin underpainting in acrylic as a basis for an oil painting. As usual, and instead, I let the painting tell me what to do as I went along. So I washed some more color on the face, and went back in with an opaque white. I usually use gesso instead of titanium so that the paint won't build up too early. If the acrylic paint becomes thick and shiny the application of oil paint over the acrylic becomes, I think, structurally problematical and harder to work on.

I always use the fluid acrylics, and thin with water. (distilled is best if you have a well)

If I need to thin the paint extensively, I add some polymer medium.
I can see that I'm going to have to make sure the raccoon (?) collar on the coat does not get confused with her hair. And vice versa.

EM 18x14 (c) Margery Caggiano

To counteract the orange in the skin tones I added a little ultramarine blue to the mix, and lightened the shadow side. Did a little re-drawing here and there if I was losing the shapes. Except for lightening the fur on the collar somewhat, I'll leave it til last, and after the hair is done. I gave the background another coat of gesso, and partially covered the lines that were drawn on the arms. I'm playing with the idea of leaving as is, the black and white thing that's going on. Sometimes less is more..... To be continued

PORTRAIT

FRIENDS 26x20 Oil on Linen (c) Margery Caggiano
I've been working on this; the combination of using an old photo for reference and using oils from scratch has been a bit of a hassle. I had a lead primed, stretched canvas, a lovely surface to paint on, and it was was nagging me to use it.
It's my oldest daughter on the left, who I've painted many times, and her best friend, who is still a good friend. There are still some things to be done on the painting..the tiniest changes can alter the expression. A good way to go nuts.
Time to put it down and start something else. Only I'm going back to an old method that I've used, doing a thin monochromatic underpainting (grisalle) in acrylic, then glazing and or scumbling in oils. I'll take photos in stages while doing the next portrait I have in mind.

ALLA PRIMA

FIVE OR SIX CEDARS 15x21 Acrylic on Linen (c) Margery Caggiano

Sometimes I forget and call it Four or Five Cedars. Who's counting?

Sometimes things come together; events bring to mind a painting from "before" that has become "now." I'll be picking up this painting from a gallery, along with several others, in a few weeks. It's a favorite painting, one of a few done in 2002, where I experimented with the Alla Prima technique of putting the paint down and Leaving It Alone. Not easy for a nudge.
Which is why I'm not successful with it's counterpart, Plein Air.

I just can not do it outside.
But I've made a vow to try harder. I've been working on small sized canvases for starters. Anyhow, this landscape is on Platt Road in Orient, Long Island. We lived around the corner on the Main Road to the Orient Point Ferry. Extremely paintable beautiful area. The distant light is Hallocks Bay.
I'm not sure why the best paintings come out of the saddest times.
This painting was also the one picked for last years "Artists Over Sixty" feature in Artists Magazine. Now there is a conflict. To be in a magazine and give away my age, or not? Oy. They're doing it again this year, and now the artists are getting $100. Too bad it's not retroactive.

MORE MURALS

GULL Acrylic Mural by Margery Caggiano

The last post was of our main bath mural; all four walls were painted even though few photos have survived. This mural was done first, and was in our half-bath. It too survives as far as I know. The only mural I've done over the years that deteriorated to a point where it had to be painted over, was done on a plaster wall, rather than primed sheetrock as these two bathrooms were. This photo was from a slide, unfortunately done on a sunny day.

Christopher Street Magazine Photography by Robert Giard

This bath, like my last post, was also used as a background for my friends photographs. The background used on the photo on the left was a 4x6 ft (oil) painting I had done of a sky and clouds. It was in my studio, so Bob (Giard) placed me in my wicker chair in front of it, and took the photo. And named it "Woman Sunning".

These photos were used in an article about him, and his photography, in Christopher Street Magazine.

FISH TALE

JAWS & STONEHENGE North Wall

WEST (sink) WALL

I painted murals on the walls of our main bathroom , in acrylics of course. This was back when we didn't have personal computers, much less digital cameras. I've only these two photos that have survived, that I can find at any rate. The actual tile stopped at four feet, the ledge is painted. A photographer friend, Bob Giard, and fellow teacher at Southampton College, used the bathroom as a background for posing his subjects. When they weren't posing for him, they wore towels, which was a relief for my husband and I, since we didn't know them. Or even if we did.

Especially if we did.

A few of the photos were published in a book, "New American Nudes", and I scanned them from my copy. I'm including only one of his portraits, because the second is, as they say, full frontal nudity, and the model is recognizable. I don't have his permission to post the photo, or the publisher's for that matter.

MAN IN AQUATIC BATHROOM by Robert Giard

When I inquired about the murals several years ago, I was pleased to learn from the new owner that they were in perfect condition. Surprised and pleased, because it is, after all, a bathroom. And in a humid part of the country, Watermill, Long Island.
I painted Bob a few years later in a suit of armour, which can be seen on my website. http://www.margerycaggiano.com/

THREE COLOUR CEZANNE

Still Life-Paul Cezanne

I've been watching DVDs about artists via Netflix. When you do a search for "artists"- one name on the list is Con. I like that.

This week I watched "Three Colour Cezanne". I kid you not. A BBC production. It goes without saying, because there's a U in Colour.

So we have Mafioso artists? Three Colour Cezanne, , Vinnie The Ear?
Joe Bananas and Eggs Benedict were amateurs and don't count.
Being Italian is no longer a criteria.
I mean Marlon Brando as The Godfather? Come on now.

Why is it that the DVDs about artists come equipped with heavenly music (No wonder people whisper in galleries) that's supposed to be background music, and isn't? It usually drowns out the dialogue, which is at times heavily accented. Without the benefit of closed captioning.

(If I had that option and a mute button, I'd go to the movies more.)

THE BATHERS Paul Cezanne

Back to that particular Cezanne DVD. Flawed, but interesting, since I recognize his importance in Cubism; but he's never been one of my favorites, (except for the wonderful apples and such), therefore my knowledge of his personal life is limited. A little intriguing gossip, an implied connection, between his nude bathers, his boyhood swimming with Emile Zola, his lifetime hatred of being touched, all on the DVD.
It comforts me to know that the Art Gods are human. Boy, aren't they.

SIX BY SIX

YORKIE 6"x6" Oil on Canvas (c)Margery Caggiano

Like they say, it's a small world. I haven't been to Greenwich village in years, or been in the outdoor show in decades, and it's come up again via Woodstock, (last weeks post), and now a new gallery that will be having a running exhibition of 6"x6" paintings. The location is the lower east side, and more specifically, the East Village in NYC. I'm going to give it a try, the little guy above will be sent in a few weeks. Chris Beck, thank you, sent me a link, and I did some investigating. I like to know what I'm getting involved in, and with who. They seem to be extremely well organized, which is a big plus, but it's your call.
http://store.6x6gallery.com/forartistsonly.aspx

VAN GOGH PHOTO?

This is from the book, "The Van Gogh File, the Myth and The Man", by Ken Wilkie.

I found it to be a fascinating account of the authors investigation into the life of Van Gogh; where he lived and painted, his family, his physical and emotional health and the doctors that treated him and Theo. (I used this book as a source in my first post, "Isolation")

There are no formal photographs of Van Gogh as a mature man, in spite of the fact that photography as we know it had been developing, so to speak, since the 1840's.

This photo was found, luckily by an artist who must have jumped on it, in an antique dealers shop in Massachusetts, bought for $1, and taken for forensic image comparisons. It eventually was evaluated at the H.C.Lee Institute of Forensic Science, University of New Haven, and the conclusion was "in all probability, this is a rare photo of Vincent Van Gogh as an adult". The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam doesn't agree, but museums don't like their apple carts upset.(my opinion) Van Gogh painted between thirty and forty self-portraits. I've taken some and reversed them for easier comparison to the photo. The last image is a painting of Van Gogh done by an Australian compatriot, John Russell.

Vincent Van Gogh by John Russell

THE ART FAIR THAT WASN'T

In late May of 1969 I was set up in my usual spot, the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street, in Greenwich Village; doing the semi-annual Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit. If memory serves me, someone made the rounds handing out fliers about an upcoming "music and art fair" somewhere upstate. We were a good source for a lot of the outdoor shows since we were (more or less) juried in. But I might also have gotten the flier in the mail, being on the mailing list, which is more likely, because even June might have been too early. Whichever it was, I sure wish I'd kept the flier....

I thought about it (Woodstock) for about five minutes. Nah.

I had to look it all up on the internet this week, and it jogged my memory, which is pretty good ordinarily, considering how much ground I have to cover. I understand that if any art, or artists for that matter, survived Woodstock, the art would be very valuable.

Anyhow, while surfing for information, I learned a few things about the Washington Square show that I wasn't aware of. It began in 1931 during the depression when some of the Village artists put their work out on the sidewalks to pay the rent. Among them were Willem DeKooning, Jackson Pollock, and Alice Neel. Oh My.

I don't remember when I dropped out, but The Village show continues.

PS: In case you missed my latest News In The Department of Self-Promotion, and if not me, who else? I made the finals for this years ArtKudos. I'm pleased mostly because I'm in some great company, go see

http://www.artkudos.com/index.html

LO THE POOR MONGOOSE

A mongoose is a member of the family of small cat-like carnivores. Mongooses are widely distributed in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and southern Europe. There are more than thirty species, ranging from one to four feet in length. Mongooses mostly feed on insects, crabs, earthworms, lizards, snakes, chickens, and rodents. However, they will also eat eggs and carrion. Some species, such as the Indian mongoose, are popularly used to fight and kill venomous snakes, even king cobras. They are able to do this because of their agility and cunning, but typically avoid the cobra and have no particular affinity for consuming their meat.
Some species of mongoose can be easily domesticated, are fairly intelligent, and can be taught simple tricks, so they are often kept as pets to protect the home from vermin. However, they can be more destructive than desired; when imported into the West Indies for the purpose of killing rats and snakes, they destroyed most of the small, ground-based fauna.

For this reason, it is illegal to import most species of mongooses into the United States, Australia and other countries.

Mongooses were introduced to Hawaii in 1883, and have had a significant impact on native species. Mongooses are sometimes referred to as "the most dangerous animals on the planet" for this reason. Wikipedia

In India they're listed as a protected animal under the Wildlife Protection Act.

Go figure

I recently ordered half a dozen mongoose brushes, Isabey series, which I've used before and liked. At the time the handle said Isabey-France. This time, no France, but "Memory". They didn't look right or handle well, and the black tips pretty much came off in the wash. Only one art supplier refers to them as "Mongoose-like", others as Mongoose. So beware.

I don't like to think that an animal has to be killed for my paintbrushes. Or my hamburger, for that matter.

The best bristle brushes as everyone knows, are hog bristle. Or as one source delicately put it, male pig. If porkers were butchered only for paintbrushes, they would probably be on our Wildlife Protection Act.

And what of the badger blender? The sable? Better a brush than a coat?

POLLOCK

ACCABONAC HARBOR Oil 20x24 (c)Margery Caggiano

This is a painting I did many years ago of Accabonac Harbor in The Springs, East Hampton. Not to put myself on the same page, so to speak, as Jackson Pollock, but to illustrate the connection I feel, and the lure of the place, at least as it used to be.


It was 53 years ago today that Jackson Pollocks' car didn't make the curve on Springs-Fireplace Rd, in Easthampton.

When we moved to a cottage in the area 15 years later, the tree he slammed into was still there, and had a huge scar- like an X that marks the spot. At the time he lived there Springs was a blue collar and fisherman's' village, and a lot of the locals were drinking buddies of his. The cottage that he and Lee Krasner lived in on the edge of Accabonac Harbor, is now the Pollock-Krasner Museum.

I've been watching some DVDs about artists via Netflix, which got me interested again. Although very few are done from an artists point of view. There are several about him, but some are really dumb. I highly recommend the BBC documentary named "Jackson Pollock, Love and Death on Long Island". Though a little too much time is spent interviewing his paramour, Ruth Kligman (in some Victorian, pseudo-arty and hopefully age hiding getup); she who survived the accident and wrote a book of course. Lee Krasner, a top notch painter in her own right, who gave up her painting to promote and nurture Pollock when she married him, was in Paris when he died. You can tell whose side I'm on.

Also interviewed in the documentary was Ed Harris, a little clueless, who played Pollock in the movie. Supposedly he has taken up painting as a sideline. As long as he doesn't give up his day job.

I tried to find an example of an early figurative painting of Pollocks', with no luck so far. He studied with Thomas Hart Benton, which seems a stretch, but the influence was obvious. I had read somewhere that Pollock wanted to get back to figurative painting. I'm sure he wanted to paint, not make paintings, and was trapped in a method that was making everyone rich. Life magazine put him on the map in 1948, but also referred to him as "Jack The Dripper".

He was beginning to be a bit of a joke (my dog can do that etc); and contributing to his notoriety were gleeful stories such as a drunken Pollock peeing in a collectors' fireplace.

(Try that, ladies, and see where it gets you)

His "action" paintings were done between the mid-forties and the early fifties. (He didn't paint during the year before his death.) Instead of posting an example of those paintings , I found two that I think bracket them in time.

Stenographic 1942 Jackson Pollock

Easter Totem 1953 Jackson Pollock

There is a website where you can do your own "Pollock", and Googles' image search is crammed with the results. Try it. http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

TILEMAN

TILEMAN Acrylic on Linen 40x26
To continue the previous post, where I painted over a landscape.
This is one of those rare times when I can see it painted before I start. As a result it seems to go easier than most. Plus I'm always more comfortable painting people that I don't know, and more than likely may never see the painting. Our new house was finally being finished, and I was able to walk through and see the progress on a regular basis. As I was talking to the man who was setting the tile, I was also taking in the clothes and the colors. Luckily I had my camera, asked for a quick "stand by the window", and hoped for the best. It was a year or so before I got around to starting the painting. I probably gessoed over the landscape before I started him, but it might have been interesting if I hadn't. I didn't consider that for more than a few minutes. It would have been too much to deal with, trying to draw a figure on a vertical, very colorful landscape.The background was originally red-bless those acrylics-and as I repainted I left some of the red showing through. .

TRASHED

THE EGRET Acrylic on Linen 26x40

I found this on my computer a few days ago. I had completely forgotten about it, and with good reason. This was painted about two years ago. It was giving me a lot of problems that I couldn't seem to resolve. So instead of putting it away and working on something else, I sanded it down, turned it vertically, and painted "TileMan" over it. The size was just what I need for him.
OH WELL
I'll put him on my blog next post.
I think that, at the time, I was missing that part of Long Island very much, and was wallowing. Besides, I wanted to get back to figure painting.
It's not the first time I've cannibalized a painting for the stretchers, and probably won't be the last.

A PLEIN AIRE PAINTER

A PAINTER GOES TO WORK -VVanGogh

WHEATFIELD WITH CROWS- VVanGogh"

......but go and paint out -of-doors on the spot itself! Then all kinds of things happen. From the four paintings which you will receive, I had to wipe off at least a hundred and more flies; not counting the dust and sand; not counting that when one carries them for some hours across the heath and through the hedges, some thorns will scratch them; not counting that when one arrives on the heath after some hours' walk in the weather, one is tired and exhausted from the heat; not counting that the figures do not stand still like professional models, and the effects one wants to catch change with the passing day."

From "Dear Theo"- the letters of Vincent Van Gogh to his brother.

AN OLD MAN IN SORROW -VVanGogh

MUNCH and THE VOLCANO

THE SCREAM Edvard Munch
Just about everyone is familiar with this image, it's been used and abused. Never as much as the Mona Lisa, but still, done to death.
The critics and explainers have given it all kinds of deep meanings, but sometimes a painting is just a painting and a red sky at night may be no more than a sailor's delight.
Sometimes, but not always.
Munch painted this in 1893, painted it twice in fact, plus a pastel and a lithograph.
Krakatoa (more properly, Krakatau) erupted in August of 1883, when Munch was twenty years old. Some say that one has nothing to do with the other, but he is not the only artist that may have been affected by the dramatic colors in the sky that lingered for years.

"In the weeks following the eruption, fine fragments of tephra and dust that were propelled kilometers into the stratosphere began to make a ring around the equator. They would remain suspended there for years causing remarkable solar effects and atmospheric hazing as they bent the incoming light. Also the enormous volumes of sulfur dioxide gas molecules that were ejected into the atmosphere combined with water to make sulfuric acid. These acidic aerosols sufficiently blocked enough sunlight to drop the Earth's temperature by several degrees for a few years. Their presence in the atmosphere also created spectacular effects over 70% of the Earth's surface. Effects such as halos around the sun and moon, and amazing sunsets and sunrises were seen. For years these particles would remain suspended in the atmosphere being the final reminder of the massive and fatal blast that occurred in Sundra Straits. Simon Winchester, "Krakatoa"

JMW TURNER The Fighting Temeraire

Turner painted this in 1838-1839, which would have been much earlier than the Krakatoa event. But there was the eruption of Tambora, also in Indonesia, in 1815. And, between 1822 and 1838, there were eruptions of Vesuvius, Stromboli, and Etna.

Turner, like a lot of artists of his day, visited and painted in Venice.

OH PLEASE

I knew he'd come in handy some day.

I won't even need to give this photo a title, because I know you can think of a good one, even though it's a cliche'.

This En Plein Aire thing is beginning to annoy me.

Time was, you painted outside. You could do it like Monet, with a canvas for every hour so that the light would be consistant with each painting. Like him, you could sit in a boat and paint, even. With mosquito netting as well. Truly, a happy camper. If I could paint like that I would sit in a boat , even if there was no water under it.

Monet Painting on His Boat, by Manet

John Singer Sargent, not to be outdone, painting on a gondola in Venice

Or you could schlep all that equipment into the countryside every day, and stand in the sun with crows pooping on your paintings, maybe sell one or two out of a thousand, and end up shooting yourself. The choices are endless, when painting outdoors.

FURTHERMORE

Time was, if you put each paint laden brushstroke down on the canvas without playing with it by underpainting, glazing, scumbling, and worst of all, overpainting, you painted Alla Prima, which is Italian for "at once". Not a la prima, which is a spinoff of a la carte and a la mode. So to my way of thinking, En Plein Aire is to painting outdoors as Boeuf a la Mode is to potroast.

I'm getting lost here. Louis Prima?

FINI

IT'S ENDLESS

Lewis Zirkle left Pennsylvania and arrived in New Market, Virginia in 1760. He bought 1500 acres in the foothills of the Massanutten Mountains, built a small log cabin on Smith Creek, and a little later, built a field stone bank house a little north and on the other side of the creek. In Virginia, there are rivers, creeks, and runs. As a northerner, I consider Smith Creek a river, especially when it floods. Which may not matter to anyone but me, because it happens to be in my back yard.
Caves were discovered on the property in 1879, and that area later became Endless Caverns. There is more extensive information on the Internet about the recently updated caverns, and on the genealogy of the Zirkle family.


A few years ago I met a contractor who lived near the caverns who told me there was an abandoned field stone bank house on his property. I was immediately interested because my husband and I did some restoration on a similar house in Hillsboro, in Loudoun CountyVA, some years ago. (See my post Brushwashing, which included the faux stone fireplace.) He took me to see it-it's hidden and private-and it turned out to be very similar. Both houses had similar roots as well, Pennsylvania Quakers, who sure knew how to build to last.

I took photos of course, grateful to be a studio painter rather than Plein Aire. We have snakes, coyotes, and ticks, oh my.

ENDLESS 24x36 Acrylic on Linen (c)Margery Caggiano

Not to mention, buzzards. Who are only a threat if you're small or dead, or both.

GOING TO THE DOGS

A few years ago a member of the family sent me an email of his puppy. It was a low resolution snapshot, and she had a temporary case of pink eye as well. But I was intrigued, especially since I had never painted a dog. The scarf gave it some color possibilities, at least. The low resolution can be an advantage at times-in this case it prevented me from getting mired in detail.

There's always the possibility of terminal cuteness. But what the hell.

EMILY 18x14 acrylic/linen (c) Margery Caggiano

TWO TOYS 14x18 acrylic/linen (c) Margery Caggiano
I painted her again when I met her in person, who could resist?

SHE'S BAACK

NO MORE! I'M DONE! I'M FINISHED! THAT'S IT!

(well,maybe a little bit more to do on the hair)
THE REDHEAD 16x20 Oil /Acrylic on Linen (c) Margery Caggiano

Above is the last image posted
What I should not have done, was put it on my web page.

Even knowing I have to live with a painting.
Sometimes it only takes a day or two, sometimes a month or more.
I decided that the background was contrived and unnecessary.
Besides, I had wanted to paint her before I knew who she was.
I was in the audience at an event held at The Parrish Museum in Southampton, NY. About 10 years ago I think. It was to be a talk and slide show by Christo and Jeanne Claude about the Gates project in Central park. As the audience filed in, an apparition appeared.
Wow. Would I love to paint her!
She kept walking and went to the stage. Well well well.
Back to the painting and my original MO, which is usually to isolate the figure -aren't we all-and not tell a story. In her case, I felt that she could handle the color.

HAIR

I try to avoid most reality shows. It seems that they're thriving on what used to be the subject matter of artists, now the foundation of television, The Seven Deadly Sins. Plus the ability to effortlessly reproduce, which should be the Eighth. I call it littering, big time.
Be that as it may, I have a weakness for Makeover shows. If I was given a week in Manhattan, $5000 to spend on clothes for moi, and a haircut by a guy (I'm also a sucker for a cockney accent) who usually charges $500 to $800, would I blubber when some hair fell on the floor? It'll never grow again? It's spun of gold? What? Even Hercules didn't cry.
To get to the point here, I remembered taking my teenage girls, they were only a year apart, to Sassoons on Fifth Ave (Madison?) for a classy haircut. All of $25 each. Well, it was a long time ago.
I've painted them a dozen times over the years, but I loved the shape of that particular haircut, so I had to paint them again.

JEAN 16x20" Acrylic (c) Margery Caggiano

DORIS 16x20" Acrylic (C) Margery Caggiano

The painting of Doris was in the Nat'l Competition, MAX:24 at Perdue University. It's now in her sisters possession. Unfortunately, I lost track of whoever bought the painting of Jean.

YES VIRGINIA

This was just east of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Northern Virginia. Loudoun County, to be precise. Since then development straightened the roads and leveled the land. It came to a screaming halt when the real estate market tanked, but too late.

GOODBYE VA 28x44" acrylic on linen (c)Margery Caggiano

I've always been fascinated by hay rolls, and thought that the ones in this painting took on a menacing quality. Like rolled up Triffids. Does anyone else remember John Wyndham's

"Day of The Triffids"?

The Shenandoah Valley in July photo-M.Caggiano

This is New Market, looking west towards the Allegheny Mountains. I took this yesterday because it's Triffid season, it was a beautiful day, and I needed to play catch-up in the garden as well. Sure enough, the aliens have landed. For the first time in my life I saw this thing in my butterfly bush. It looked like a cross between a Hummingbird, a huge bee, and a shrimp. My camera wasn't able to get the wings.(now I know why) A call for help and some time spent on the internet, and, voila, a Clearwing Hummingbird Moth. Who knew? ....I've christened it a Humbee.

I'd like to thank Cathyann of Cathyann's Studio for forwarding the Bella Sinclair Award to me.

PAINT MEDIA and MESSAGES

It was one of my few down days when I opened the door to the UPS"Men in Brown"delivery guy. I was thrilled to read the return address on the package.

The FULFILLMENT CENTER!

Were my prayers answered? Or was I in a Steven King novel?

Nah. It was my hard copy of Norton 360.

Symantec is getting fulfilled, is who.

On that note, (how's that for a segue?) here's a little about paint media for oils. For starters, when the quick drying alkyd paint came out, I bought a set. It didn't take long to realize that using the medium only-Winsor Newton calls theirs Liquin-with regular oils accomplishes the same drying speed. Without the concern of the paint drying in the tube. Duh. Alkyd resin is available as a gel also under different trade names. It also contains dryers, sometimes silica for body. I don't particularly like the surface buildup, for lack of a better word, so I cut it with mineral spirits. A so called "magic" medium such as Marogers contains many additives along with mastic varnish . Trust me, it won't make you paint like Rembrandt.

SELF PORTRAIT Rembrandt

Pretty impressive drawing, yes? Especially considering that the original is the size of a postage stamp.

Blockx, which makes an exceptionally high quality paint, also makes an "Amber Medium", a resin that lays claim to"transparency and radiance" etc etc. I'll never know, because a 50 ml bottle is $441 list. So Keep It Simple. Skip the dryers, they can lead to cracking. You don't need turpentine. Don't use unrefined hardware store linseed oil.

A good practice is to start your painting with rapid drying paint: Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, Burnt Sienna, Pthalo Blue, Pthalo Green, Flake White (aka Lead or Cremnitz White) and a rapid drying medium: 6 parts mineral spirits, 2 parts sun-thickened linseed oil, and 1 part dammar varnish. Slow drying paints and medium are: Any of the Cadmiums, Ivory Black, Lamp Black, Vermillion, and Zinc White. All other colors fall in between.

If anyone has anything to add or correct, feel free, I'd like to know. Also, the finished Keith Richards painting, and The Redhead, have been added to my website.

PAINTING ON BOARDS

It's been awhile since I painted with oils from scratch, rather than over an acrylic underpainting. Between that, and doing small paintings that aren't a casual kind of experiment has forced me to go back to school, in a way.

GOLDSMITH INLET Oil on Board 9x12" (c)Margery Caggiano

I think I need to change my approach to subject matter and size. It was never intentional, but whenever I've done figurative painting the figures have been life size or a little larger. So why a 9x12 landscape that should be a big painting isn't pleasing me, becomes obvious.

Shouda woulda coulda.

Better to go for segments, small glimpses, single objects that are nonetheless life-size.

As far as painting surface, I much prefer linen or canvas over board. I had a few pieces of Masonite that I had previously primed, and a roll of lovely oil-primed linen that's a bugger to stretch, (double primed even more so). I cut the linen about 2 inches bigger than the board, and glued it to the Masonite with acrylic gel. So we'll see.

GOLDSMITH INLET STAGE 1 (Gulls later)

This is an inlet in Peconic, on the Long Island Sound. The tides bring the gulls, one of my favorite birds. Almost as funny on the ground as Gary Larson's chickens. I never realized how big seagulls were until a motorist brought one to the vet wrapped in a towel while I was sitting in the waiting room with my cat. (He got goggle-eyed.) The gull had been hit by a car, and this particular vet (North Fork Vet.Hosp) would take in wounded gulls, ospreys, and even seals. Gratis.

What I want to know is, how did seagulls get to to the dump in Denver?

CHEAP TRICKS WITH OILS

I'm probably the last person to advise on how to save money on art supplies. When I sell a painting the first thing I do is take stock, and if I don't have it, and may need it within my lifetime, or even beyond, I buy it.

I'm glad now, because the mongoose brushes I bought last week not only cost more but are skimpier than the ones I bought a few years ago, same size, same brand. Another change is "mongoose like". It's Read the Small Print time, which is why the catalogs come in handy.
Most of the time I hang a painting on the wall to work on it; and maybe a second on an easel. Which is fine for big stretched canvases. But I occasionally work on boards or small paintings and find it frustrating to keep either one stable on an easel made for big paintings, especially if you don't want to sit down while painting. So I blew the cobwebs out of my lovable, adorable and most of the time, useless, french easel. Low and behold, it's perfect. But in the cheap tricks category, it's not.

All of you plein air painters -and you seem to be multiplying exponentially-are experts at setting up french easels, but I was thankful that no one was around to watch me. I'm going to leave it set up. I can't go through that again.

GOLDSMITHS INLET Stage 1 Oil on Panelli Board Margery Caggiano

This is a suggested list of necessary supplies for painting in oils on a budget.

Supports: Gesso primed watercolor paper, cardboard, or 1/4 " Masonite. A place like Lowes or Home Depot will cut Masonite to size. Make sure it's Untempered(oil free). Also seal both sides before gessoing to prevent warping.
Palette: Plate glass taped over neutral grey cardboard- or a disposable pad.
Brushes: Bristle or mongoose, better to have 3 good ones than 6 cheap ones. Try round and filbert shapes. You can gesso with a sponge.
Brush and hand cleaner: Goop, available in hardware store.
General cleanup and medium: Low odor mineral spirits, quart. Available in hardware store.
Refined linseed Oil, small bottle. Dammar Varnish, small bottle.
Paint: (Don't buy "student "grade. Don't buy "hues") large Titanium White,-Ivory Black,-Raw Umber, Burnt Sienna,- Yellow Ochre,-Cobalt Blue,-Ultramarine Blue,- Alizarin Crimson,- Cadmium Red Med.,-Cadmium Yellow Med.
Make Your Own Medium: Use a glass, not plastic, jar with a lid. Mix 1 part dammar Varnish, 2 parts Linseed Oil, 3 parts mineral spirits. For slower drying, eliminate the dammar varnish.
Make Your Own Retouch Varnish: If the painting is dull and dry. Use a glass jar. Mix dammar varnish and mineral spirits 50/50.
If you are a beginner, you can learn a lot by starting with the first five colors, which are also the least expensive. Then add others one at a time.
The books say to lay out every color you have, and even suggest an order. But a beginner will use them all and end up with mud. Then they'll dry out. Look at Andrew Wyeth's paintings, (even though they're egg tempera.) for what can be done with a relatively limited palette.

SILLY PAINTING PART 2

Like a dog with a bone, there are some paintings that I can't leave alone. For better or for worse I returned to Greenport Lions and tortured it some more. Below is from my first post, Part 1.

GREENPORT LIONS Stage 3

Sometimes you have to back up and re-focus. When I remembered that the lions that I photographed on Main Street were white, and neighborhood icons, I changed the values. One of the advantages of a small painting is that it will fit on my scanner.GREENPORT LIONS Stage 4 7x10" (c) Margery Caggiano
Adding to the confusion was a recent comment that suggested I put Bo behind the screen door.

Absolutely right.

BO & FRIENDS photo by Margery Caggiano
Which reminded me of my own lions.
But for now

I"M OUTA HERE

NIAGARA RISING

When I read that the UK's Poet Laureate was a woman, I was curious, and discovered that she's all that and more. I am now a fan of Carol Ann Duffy's.

This is from "THE WORLD'S WIFE"

MRS. RIP VAN WINKLE

I sank like a stone

into the still, deep waters of late middle age,

aching from head to foot.

I took up food

and gave up exercise.

It did me good.

And while he slept

I found some hobbies for myself.

Painting. Seeing the sights I'd always dreamed about:

The Leaning Tower.

The Pyramids. The Taj Mahal.

I made a little watercolour of them all.

But what was best,

what hands-down beat the rest,

was saying a none -too-fond farewell to sex.

Until the day

I came home with this pastel of Niagara

and he was sitting up in bed rattling Viagra

Carol Ann Duffy

Assemblage (c) Margery Caggiano

TORTOISE

Moving from Nassau County, NY- to The Springs, in East Hampton was a pretty exciting time, for me especially. Since I only like to drop one name at a time, I won't tell you who was living two doors away while fighting the town of East Hampton for permission to build a studio in a residential area nearby. However, across the street was the Green River Cemetery, and aside from the usual suspects, there was the unfortunate Jackson Pollock under a huge stone. Big rocks for monuments became the In Thing after that, and real estate in the Green River Cemetery became highly desirable for those that could afford to spend eternity in the world of art.

http://www.findagrave.com/php/famous.php?FScemeteryid=64703&page=cem
Meanwhile, our son, who couldn't care less, was collecting turtles in our back yard and labeling them with a marking pen. (Names? Numbers? Latitude&Longitude?)

With the help of our border cat.

KITZEL Photo by Margery Caggiano


BILLY Photo by Margery Caggiano


Photo by Margery Caggiano

I did my part in my own way. This is oil on Masonite, mounted on a board that I cut to fit in an antique tortoise, what else, frame I found.

TORTOISE Oil on Board 5x7"plus frame (c)Margery Caggiano

A SILLY PAINTING

This is one of those paintings that never worked for me, maybe because I stopped too soon. I put it away and have been schlepping it around for years. I came across it this morning and decided that it was aged and cured enough to either finish it or toss it.

GREENPORT LIONS 1 7x10" Margery Caggiano

This was done on 1/4 " untempered Masonite, called floor underlayment in some areas of the country. Not to be confused with the more common 1/8 " tempered (oiled) Masonite. Under 16x20 or so it doesn't have to be backed. Larger sizes should be glued to stretchers or a 1x2" frame. I gave both sides a thinned coat of shellac sealer- BIN (shellac+ white pigment) will do. Then sand and give several coats of gesso, again both sides . An alternative is to glue linen or canvas to the Masonite, then gesso.

GREENPORT LIONS 2 7x10" Margery Caggiano

Since the first stage was done in thinned, almost transparent oils, I stayed with oil paint for this stage, and used some opaque colors. I lost the graphic quality of the first stage, which had more
drawing than painting.

I don't know if it's any better. I do know that it's even sillier, because the lions now look like dogs.

VANITY AND BUPKAS

Just when I think it's safe to dip a toe into the art world, another shark or two come along.
I've been "nominated" to exhibit in the Florence Bienniale. Huh? Blah blah blah blah feet of wall space blah blah blah euros, converts to about $3800 to put a pretty fancy name on my resume.
That doesn't include crating and shipping of course.

Silly me. I'm assuming that's Florence, Italy.

Read the small print, and decide whether it's worth the gamble. Paintings sent to big venues in Europe have been known to disappear. Do some research. Luckily, I could never afford to show in Europe.
And if you want a show in New York, or any other big city, and don't know a vanity gallery from a co-op from a legitimate gallery, stay home and save your money. I have no problem with co-ops, (only if they're artist/member run) they can sometimes be an introduction to contacts you wouldn't get otherwise. Not to mention feedback and friends.I've been in several, and they're a good solution if you want to control your work.

While I'm feeling irritable, which seems to be a lot of the time, I'll repeat my mantra.

READ THE SMALL PRINT!

Jerry's has been for many years, one of my favorite art suppliers. They're running a series of art competitions that I looked into. Wow free entry? That's a surprise. Of course you have to buy the brand that's sponsoring the contest. Hmmm. No big deal. The big prize money is kind of a gift certificate to use at Jerry's. Hmm. Retail value I presume. Oh well. They get a great mailing list. OK why not. At least it's free, right?

WRONG.

"All entries must be sent copyright free and be allowed use in future Jerry's Artarama advertising promotions"

Not just winners, all entries. How do they get away with that? You let them.

The response will be, so don't enter. So screw the artists, there are plenty more out there.

And if, somewhere down the line, you see your work used in a way you never intended because you gave it away, don't say I didn't warn you.

LANDSCAPE DESTROYED

SHORELINE 36' x 60" Acryic on Linen 2001 Margery Caggiano

About 1980 or so I took a photo of this landscape while standing on top of the dunes. The village is Sagaponack, on the south fork of Eastern Long Island, N.Y.

I thought it was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. I did two paintings, one at the time I took the photo, and again in 2001, slightly different.

The fields on the left were potato crops, grown right up to the edge of the dunes. It was rare to have to irrigate the potato fields because of the moist ocean air. And at the time, you could drive up a dirt road , park, and be almost alone on the beach. There were a lot of ways to access the beach, public, private, and farm roads.

FAST FORWARD TO LAST WEEK

While trying to kill interminable time at the terminal at Denver Airport, I bought or, mostly, picked up, any and every piece of reading material I could find. Including People (who are these people? And why?) A name caught my eye in the business section of the NY Times. (How often do I go there?)

IRA RENNERT!?

Ira Rennert-NY Times International-June 25, 2009 by Simon Romero Re:Toxic Site+Andes
I'll leave out the details, just quote what is revelant to this post. "Mr. Rennert is a NY billionaire, who built one of the largest homes in the United States, an Italianate mansion sprawling over more than 66,000 square feet (that's just the house, folks) in the Hamptons. whose privately held industrial empire includes a Peruvian smelting company named "Doe Run Peru", in La Oroya, high in the Andes. Quote: "LaOroya has been called one of the world's 10 most polluted places by the Blacksmith Institute, a non-profit group that studies toxic sites."
There is a lot more to this article, including "providing employment" while 97% of the chidren in La Oroya have toxic levels of lead in their bodies.

AS YOU MAY HAVE GUESSED, HIS MANSION WAS PLUNKED DOWN ON THE EDGE OF THE OCEAN IN SAGAPONACK

At the time, the Town of Southampton had no zoning regulations that would prevent building such a huge house. They had covered minimum size, height, dune protection etc. They have since closed the barn door as far as maximum size.

If you're interested, there's a lot more to be found online, in Dan's Papers, the Southampton Press archives, etc. If nothing else, check out how many bathrooms one man needs.

Personally, I think he should be sharing a cell with Bernie

PS- I decided to post the link below. I know its a free country, that birds eye maps can be an invasion of privacy. I don't care. Sue me

http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&where1=Sagaponack%2C%20NY&encType=1

OIL OVER ACRYLIC-UPDRAFT

I moved from Long Island, NY to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia about three and a half years ago because of a series of events that I wouldn't want to live through again, if indeed I could.

That said, the Valley is heartbreakingly beautiful and a reminder of rural life as it was, kept that way because you can't get there from here, and vice versa. There are no trains, no buses, no airport limo service (Dulles Airport is 100 miles). Without a car, you've had it. And in that case, the only way out of the Valley is by ambulance.

UPDRAFT 12x12" Oil over Acrylic (c) Margery Caggiano

The hills are alive-with buzzards and bats, as a result, mosquitoes are few and the roads are clean.

My recent return flight from Denver, via United -we stand, we sit, we walk, we wait, but we don't fly-Airlines took , door to door, 17 hours. Since Denver is about 1300 road miles, I figure that I could have driven it in the same amount of time. Well, almost, and with no pit stops. To be fair, the weather was bad, and the Captain refused the first plane because of electrical problems. Considering that it was an Airbus, I was grateful.

Actually I was stopped on the earlier drive to Dulles by a peach-fuzzed 16 year old state trooper who smelled of baby powder. He had me cold doing 83, so I was surprised to get only a warning. Sweet thing. What may have saved me was the birth date on my license-I could hear the wheels turning, and a clean record, no credit to me, as a result of being married to a current, then retired, Nassau County policeman. No, I didn't mention that part to him.

Back to this painting, which was done in acrylic. I felt that it was lacking something, so I did some glazing with oils using Liquin as a medium, which I modify with 50% or so of mineral spirits. . There is a danger of getting slick with any full bodied medium, and I try to avoid that. Finally, I used a painting knife to apply touches of almost pure white to the clouds

YUMMY

I've been lax about blogging this past week. Visiting family in Denver, one of which arrived on this earth six months ago. Shiny and tiny and silky. A star.

Will

Instead of a day trip to the mountains to see the wildflowers, supposedly spectacular this year because of more rain than usual, my daughter and I drove to Loveland. A happy discovery, that Wayne Thiebaud's "70 Years of Painting" was at the museum there.

I've been trying to learn where, as a traveling exhibition, it will be going next. No luck there. At any rate, if you paint, or if you don't, see it!!

If you like to eat, see it!

http://YouTube - Artist Wayne Thiebaud at 87

Yes, he's still alive and well and articulate, (don't miss the video interview that accompanies the show) still "painting what he wants to paint", and always returning to his favorite themes, food, the beach, California land and streetscapes.

But his painting is not about subject matter, it's about how he applies the paint, the stunning color, the high-key versus low-key, the surprises that you find in a single mundane eclair. Rather than an "artists' artist" he's a painters' painter.

"Candy Apples" Wayne Thiebaud

I used to haunt the galleries* in the sixties and seventies. Whether it was Alan Stone, or the Whitney, he was one of my favorites. Wrongfully, I think, lumped in with the "Pop" movement. His landscapes are beautifully thought out-twisted perspective-true abstracts.

*Sorry, I'm referring to New York. Never referred to as New York City. On Long Island and New Jersey, and probably Connecticut, you were going to "the city". And for you out of state tour guides -they are not "New Yorkans". Jeez.

The critics and writers, (rarely can they do both well), do love to pigeon hole, to categorize painters. I think they need to compare, to drag out the art history, to use the names.

While I'm at it, the French probably hate us because they haven't been the center of the art world since the Impressionists. Well, one reason anyhow. It takes a snob to know a snob.

BRINGING IT HOME

Every once in awhile, a great while, I'll see a show that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I could always count on that reaction if it was Francis Bacon.

Francis Bacon's Studio, Kensington

This is a photo of his studio, which had been in London. After his death the studio was painstakingly taken apart and re-assembled in Dublin.

CAN YOU IMAGINE DOING THAT WITH THIS ROOM?

I can't, but watching would be fun.

The Metropolitan Museum in NY is currently having a retrospective of his work, and it will run through August 16.

I think something that always fascinates artists are the sources used-the photos that some of the paintings were derived from. The collected trivia.

A sampling can be seen on the Mets website.

http://www.metmuseum.org/

Bacon's early paintings are my particular favorites; if I can manage to get there, I'll get there.

This is a link to the first of six videos about Bacon

http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhaqwlZxJZI

STUDIO STORY

With children and no room to spare, I painted in the dining room. Everything had to be put away before it was time to start dinner. I became a permanently neat and tidy painter.Like it or not. I tried to make a studio work in the basement, but it was dark and depressing.

I tried to make a studio work in the garage, not for winter, no privacy.
I rented space in town, but I couldn't spend much time there.
Then we added a room to the back of the house, which was lovely until we needed more room.

(I should have fought for it)

A few years later I applied for, and received a MacDowell Colony fellowship. The colony is in the New Hampshire woods, with scattered cottages /studios for artists, composers, and writers. One of the studios was based on an Italian villa (I think). You don't know which studio will be yours until you get there. Lunch was delivered to your studio doorstep, dinner was shared in the main building, as was breakfast.

So for a month this was mine, all mine. Shared only with a few resident mice.

YOWSA

Alexander Studio, The MacDowell Colony, NH

PHOTOS Margery Caggiano

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Studio Interior

What kind of work did I do there you ask? And well you might.

Nothing I could do would live up to that studio. It was like singing in a cathedral. Solo.

If it was a permanent arrangement I would have adapted, but adapting takes time, and then your work usually changes depending on the light, among other variables. It was overwhelming. And I kept thinking that I should be grocery shopping, making dinner, wifely things-never having painted away from those interruptions. Necessary of course, but still...

I went to the Colony again a few years later, and this time got a normal cottage. The breakfast conversations were still a high point.

After that we moved out to the Eastern End of Long Island, and it was back to a garden shed. Again, for the summer only, I rented studio space and gallery in Montauk. I was told by another artist that psychologists and psychiatrists that summered out there preferred non-objective paintings. I'll leave it at that.

As a matter of fact, one year a gynecologist won the Annual Shark Tournament. I'll leave that alone as well.

We finally built our own house with, space and skylights for me, the children were grown, and that's where I did my best work. It was nice while it lasted.

Whoever you are, male, female, or anything in between.

1.YOU NEED A WIFE. and 2. YOU NEED A ROOM OF YOUR OWN

http://www.macdowellcolony.org/

DEATH BENEFITS

Found on Google Images, no origin available

That about sums it up, doesn't it?

I had this pinned to my cork board for a long time. If you're prone to over-analyzing and lint-picking, artwise, it simplifies things.

I was once asked by someone who had recently bought a painting, if it was true that an artists work becomes more valuable after his/her death.

After a long pause, like Jack Benny's bit, "Your Money or Your Life", I was still groping for the right words. Its not always easy being diplomatic. I wish I could remember what I said.

Does anyone have a good reply ?

AIN'T NATURE GRAND?

This is a satellite image of the Syrian Desert.

Nasa's Earth as Art website is a treasure trove 0f stunning images taken by Landsat-7. All are free to use and most can be downloaded in high resolution .

The Malaspina Glacier, Alaska

Bermuda Sand

I use them for computer wallpaper. And for anyone that wants to try their hand at abstract painting, these are pretty good sources.

Come to think of it, this could be titled "Everyone's an Artist-Part 2"

THE REDHEAD 3

If you weren't sure of who this was before, you should be now.
She's pretty easy to identify. See Christo & JeanneClaude link .

"The Redhead" acrylic on linen 16x20"

2 earlier stages

I've been playing with the idea of going back to the way I used to work, which was starting a painting in acrylics and finishing with oils. It's one reason I prefer to start by painting thinly, and especially with as little gloss as possible, for the sake of adhesion.
I miss the smell and the lush quality of oil paint. The oils I have were bought a long time ago, including a bunch from a store that was going out of business. I wanted to try a better brand and looked through a few catalogs yesterday.

WHOA!

Let's stop this absurd piece of fiction- List Price versus Sale Price.

Isn't it ironic, or sad, that of all of the businesses connected with fine art make more money than the artists do.

Even the elephant that paints (see "Everyone's An Artist") gets peanuts.

Luckily I learned a long time ago, out of necessity, that a lot of colors can be made from the primaries, if you get the right ones. There are a lot of reds, but only one or two that, when mixed with the right blue, can make a brilliant purple. For instance. But you know that.

Are you also aware that oil paintings will bring a higher price than acrylic paintings? It's not for archival reasons, if so it would be the other way around. It's tradition, it's the public and the galleries and yes, judges. Listing Acrylic under medium may have worked against me with my "Rejected, Dejected" painting.

If I do more on The Redhead I'll post her on my website.

A PAINTING A DAY? ARE YOU KIDDING?

EXTREME BRUSHWASHING

Tired of making Art with a capital A?

Looking for new ways to stay out of the studio?

Are your brushes clean?

Give it up for awhile and paint a wall.

Chimney wall...Detail

Our new house has a gas fireplace, which I've grown very fond of. Especially when all I have to do is flip a switch. I didn't want to overdo it, so didn't order the remote control. A little humility here.

The builders idea of a mantel was painted particle board.

Original chimney wall

I looked around a little and found an old yellow pine mantel. Luckily for me it fit, with no room to spare.

From the beginning I had thought to reproduce the chimney my husband and I discovered under the plaster when doing some restoration on a 1780 Quaker house some years earlier.

With paint of course, what else?

The existing walls had been painted with an off-white acrylic based paint, in an eggshell finish, so I didn't have to any prep work.
I wasn't about to build a scaffold, or climb up and down a ladder-this is a 10' ceiling- so having the stones only partially exposed appealed to me.

And stopping within reach.

I drew the stones very loosely with charcoal, then thined acrylic and a brush. It was important to arrange them so that they would make sense structurally.

Since they were fieldstones, I could play with the color, and used sponges a lot.

STONE WALL...Detail

I've removed the glass door, which is probably, no certainly, a code violation.
There needs to be something, if only a nail, on the upper white part.

I'll get around to it one of these days.

Subscribe to FROM THE STUDIO

THE REDHEAD 2

The Redhead Stage 4

I haven't made up my mind yet about the background. Although it won't be gray. Whatever colors I use usually demand changes elsewhere.

My inclination has almost always been to leave empty space, to isolate the figure. I'm tempted however, to put the figure in a related (to him or her)environment and see where it leads.

Out of habit I like to paint in series, to build bridges between paintings.

I'm going to have to work out the problem of sources. Not to violate copyright issues, for instance. When I've worked from photos, I've taken them.

I'm incapable of painting a figure that is posing, much less having someone in the same room.

There is an immediacy in the candid snapshot that I like. Confrontation? Or maybe because it engages the photographer.

It took a few dogs and a cat to prove that to me. Silly.

Images from the internet allow me to find a photo that I want to use, particularly if it's someone that I would never get to photograph in person.

But in some cases it will come back to bite me. As in the Keith painting.

If it's on the internet, someone will paint it. I just hate it when it's better.

THE REDHEAD

I downloaded another photo from the internet, a woman in a crowd, taken by a tourist. I tried to trace him with no luck.

I isolated and cropped the figure I wanted , then flipped it horizontally.

The canvas is linen (J66 from Utrecht), 16x20. I saturated the linen with a sponge and water after stretching it, gave it one coat of toned gesso while it was still wet, and then let it dry overnight. Then a second coat, and when it was dry, I sanded the surface lightly.

The drawing was done with a watercolor pencil, then a brush with thinned burnt sienna acrylic. The pencil is then easily washed off, or not.

I don't do a tight detailed drawing, because I don't want to stay within the lines, and I might. Aside from placement and composition, the lines are unimportant at this stage.

The Redhead Stage 1

Since this canvas doesn't have a landscape under it, as Keith did (see Downloading Keith, May 5) it is still fairly absorbent, so I thinned the paint and initially applied it in transparent washes.

The Redhead Stage 2

I wasn't happy with the dead-on shoulders, so cut in with the gray ground. At this point I decided to play off her yellow-orange hair with the blue-violet complement. Its only paint.
I'm not trying for a likeness, and don't actually want it, but not trying is the only way to get it. We'll see. But this is really painting about personality via hair.

The Redhead Stage 3

I'll have a few more stages next post.

Keith is still propped up face to the wall and waiting. (ho)

I've found that starting another painting helps to resolve the first. If anyone cares, I'm unable to paint sitting down, so standing all day, even propped on a stool, has become more difficult. My 8 hour painting days are over I fear.

GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS

During WW2, an art forger named Han Van Meergan claimed that the Vermeer "lost" paintings in his possession were the real thing.

The bad news was that he (incredibly-because he was a hack) was able to fool the so-called experts.
The good news was that he sold two of them to Nazi Field Marshall Herman Goering.

I recently saw, courtesy of Netflix, a fascinating documentary titled "The Rape of Europa", about the looting and forced sales of art by the Nazis before and during the war.

To this day the original owners or their estates are trying to reclaim what was theirs, from private collections and even from museums.

This has all been written about extensively, and will continue as long as lost or stolen masterpieces continue to turn up at auctions or private sales.

Essential Vermeer.com has, on its website, some of Van Meergan's forged "Vermeers", and it amazes me that anyone could have been fooled.

A Vermeer whose authenticity had always been in question, and had been in a private collection, came up for auction at Sotheby's in July, 2004. A public sale of a Vermeer is an extremely rare event, the first in 80 years or so.

Aside from the fact that his entire output, accepted as genuine that is, amounted to only 35 paintings, including this one. He died at 43.

"Young Lady Seated at The Virginal" 10x8"

It brought a mere 31 million, and was supposedly bought by a Las Vegas Casino owner.

On the other hand, and while I'm on the subject, an Andy Warhol brought 71 million at Christies in May 2007.

"Green Burning Car Crash" Andy Warhol

REJECTED DEJECTED

I took a candid photo at a gallery (Love Lane) opening in Mattituck, L.I.

The usual refreshments and a lot of wine, being a wine growing area.

I liked the photo and started a painting.

Stage 1

Stage 2 Detail

I wasn't happy with the lower right side of the painting. It's always something.

Stage 3 Detail

So I turned the water into wine-sorry- and fiddled with the olives.


Final Stage

Beth and The Counter (c) Acrylic on Linen 36x24"

I kind of liked it, and being competitive and fairly new to the area, I entered it along with a few others into an annual competition near where I live in Virginia.

All were rejected. I don't mind rejection (well I do, obviously) if its a healthy competition with qualified judges.

I can only assume that my paintings weren't what the judges expected good art to be. Or didn't fit in. I guess that can be a good thing.

Many years ago I taught a course that I named "Contemporary Realism", and was told by another art professor that there was no such thing. Huh?

At any rate, take heart all of you who agonize over judges decisions, and know it can be a crap shoot.

Since revenge is a dish, as you know, that's best served cold.......

A few months later I entered the painting in a national competition, The Fort Wayne Museum of Art's "Contemporary American Realism 2008 Biennial", a nifty show with a full color catalogue.

If I hadn't been juried in , I wouldn't be doing this post, now would I?

http://www.fwmoa.org/exhibits/past/biennial08.htm

PAINTING KEITH

Stage 1

So that you don't have to go back to Downloading Keith to compare.

Stage 3

Stage 6

I've skipped a few in-between stages. Particularly the last one where he had purple hair. To my way of thinking, (once I started thinking that is), he is his music and his clothes, and that's where the color should be. And that's why I preferred to work from a black and white photo.

Sometimes when something is done as well as I can do it, I stop and leave it. But this painting is particularly challenging, and I know it's not finished. I'm trying not to give him too much color, to keep the color in the clothes. And I'm not going to age him, he's doing a pretty good job of it without my help.

So I'll put it on a wall and wait until something about it really annoys me.

Sometimes it takes a really long time.

Jasper Johns once said " Take something, do something to it, then do something else to it."

EVERYONE'S AN ARTIST

Not bad, actually

He needs a proper studio

Plein Air

Excellent Non-Objective

An opposing thumb helps

Color is not her forte'

It's not the age, the gender, the species that bothers me. Its when any of the above is given a show - and then - sells out. That hurts

AND EVERYONE'S A CRITIC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUj_dIsTvU8

Subtitle: I Don't Know Much About Art But...........

FISH TALES

So far what I've written about The Stones and Warhol in Montauk has been as true as I can ascertain. Vermeer and family of course, being the exception.
I had a studio in Montauk in the early 70's, so the research has been unusually interesting.
Last year a BBC documentary, "The FBI at 100", revealed that the Hells' Angels plotted to kill Mick Jagger. They felt that they were unfairly targeted for being responsible when a fan died at the infamous Altamonte Calif. concert, and angry about being locked out of any future concerts.
To quote former FBI agent Mark Young- " their plan involved making entry onto his Long Island property, going by boat. As they gathered the weaponry and their forces to go out on Long Island Sound, a storm rolled up, which nearly sunk the watercraft they were in, and they escaped with their own lives".
And according to Long Islands' Newsday:
"Details of this plot were also released in a book published in 2001 by the Smoking Gun.
Interesting if true. The Altamonte concert was in 1969, but Andy Warhol did not buy the Montauk property until years later. The compound was on the ocean, not the sound, and even then, I doubt if any of the Angels was capable of scaling the bluffs there, which were closer to being cliffs. They would have had to charter a boat in Montauk, I would think. At any rate the whole mess would not have been a secret for long. But what a concept.

I don't like to pass up a creative opportunity, however:

True: In May, 1975, Mick Jagger cut his wrist on a glass door while in Montauk, and received stitches in the emergency room of Southampton Hospital. I was told (by an onlooker, my best buddy) that word got around fast. Then it was like moths to a flame.
True: For those of you unfamiliar with Montauk, but familiar with Jaws: Quint, the sharkhunter, was inspired by Frank Mundus, who ran a shark fishing charter out of Montauk.

THE STONES & WARHOL-PART 2

To continue with The Mysterious Guest at the Memory Motel..........

It is said that the proprietors of the motel did not like rock music. True.
They also did not like contemporary art in any form, and thought that the Stones and Andy Warhol were a good match and out of earshot.
They were thrilled, however to welcome J. Vermeer and family on holiday.

Note: See previous post, "FUN WITH VERMEER"

You know whats coming, don't you?

Plein Air Painting on Gosman's Dock, Montauk...MC

Vermeer read about Warhols' Montauk compound in Dans Papers, and as a fellow artist attempting to be open-minded, and certainly curious about the new art, arranged for a visit.

Note: As much as I'd like to claim that they met while surfing at Ditch Plains, I'm trying to keep this within reason.

At any rate, since Vermeer didn't drive ( for obvious reasons), Warhol, whose famous motto, or one of them, was " look poor and think rich", picked him up in his Rolls Royce.
Vermeer was so impressed with Andy's paintings that he commissioned him to paint his teenage daughters' portrait. She put her best earrings on.

The Girl With The Pearl Earring .. J.V., A.W., M.C.

While sitting for her portrait at the compound, Ms. Vermeer was entertained by her sister, equally bored, who played the lute.

As night follows day, the girls heard the Rolling Stones rehearsing nearby, and need I elaborate on what followed? Pandemonium. They even treed Keith.

Of course, since the sitting was so abruptly terminated, Andy couldn't finish the portrait. He decided to change his approach to portraits by leaving them unfinished , and multiplying the image on the canvas.

Note: Technically, they were serigraphs, but its my blog.

Epilogue: Mr. J.Vermeer, upon learning that two of his daughters were groupies, and fearing for the chastity of his other daughters, and sons for that matter, quickly booked a barque and took his family back to the Netherlands.
Note: It may have been too late. See "Cherry Oh Baby", R.Stones. 1976

THE STONES & WARHOL- PART 1

In the 70's, Andy Warhol and his friend, filmmaker Paul Morrissey bought a 20 acre, 5 house property on the ocean bluffs in Montauk, Long Island. Together they paid $220,000. It included 600 feet of oceanfront.






Warhol had designed many album covers for musicians, the most notorious
being the Rolling Stones "Sticky Fingers"album.
In 1975, to rehearse for a US tour, the Stones rented the compound from Warhol for $5000 a month.



They hung out at the Shagwong

(they must have liked the name, being British),

because it had a pool, jukebox, and bar, but they wrote a song

about the nearby Memory Motel.
All hell broke loose in what had been up to then,

a relatively quiet fishing village with a drinking problem.

Later referred to as a drinking village with
a fishing problem.
Next Installment: The mysterious guest at the Memory Motel.

DOWNLOADING KEITH-2

Stage 1 Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4

I'm not sure where I'm going with this painting, or rather, where it's taking me.

We all know what he looks like now, but I prefer to paint the '70's look. More than likely it's the late 60's. I used to paint to their music sometimes, and Ravi Shankar for those trance-like non-thinking painting times.
I don't have him right yet. Its always the eyes, the "windows to the soul" . I thought of "The Portrait of Dorian Grey", where he stayed young and the portrait aged.
I'll probably put this away for a little while and start something else. A change-off, a back and forth, gets me out of the visual rut.
It's reached the Stop and Listen stage. I'll post changes again, later.
Meanwhile I'll be taking the Stones to Montauk via this blog, where I'll get a chance to have truth meet fiction.

DOWNLOADING KEITH

Ordinarily I don't take photos as I go along. For one, it makes me too self-conscious of the painting procedure, and two, I don't want to look back and think "it was better yesterday". That happens sometimes, maybe because there's more promise in something about to take place. And sometimes I just prefer the drawing stage of a painting.
This is from a small photo found on the internet, (thank you Google Images) ,obviously taken a long time ago. With no attribution available to the photographer, sorry.
The canvas is 32" x 24", stretched raw linen, gessoed, and started out as a horizontal landscape with a pink ground color. The image was graphed up as a guide. And the medium used is fluid acrylics, so far.

KR......Stage 1

KR......Stage2

KR......Stage 3

UNFINISHED-STAY TUNED

ORANGES AND SARDINES

Frank O'Hara (1926-1966)

Why I Am Not a Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.

Why? I think I would rather be

a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg

is starting a painting. I drop in.

"Sit down and have a drink" he

says. I drink; we drink. I look

up. "You have SARDINES in it."

"Yes, it needed something there."

"Oh." I go and the days go by

and I drop in again. The painting

is going on, and I go, and the days

go by. I drop in. The painting is

finished. "Where's SARDINES?"

All that's left is just

letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of

a color: orange. I write a line

about orange. Pretty soon it is a

whole page of words, not lines.

Then another page. There should be

so much more, not of orange, of

words, of how terrible orange is

and life. Days go by. It is even in

prose, I am a real poet. My poem

is finished and I haven't mentioned orange yet.

It's twelve poems, I call

it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery

I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

(1971)

Mike Goldberg 'SARDINES'

MY CAT IS 80

According to Google search-cat years to people years.

He's got a pretty good life, mostly does what 80 year olds do.

He got to spend last summer on Peconic Bay

And found the worlds biggest litter box

"BO" acrylic on linen 24 x 18 " stage 1

"BO" Oil over Acrylic Stage 2

ACRYLIC PAINT TIPS

For the beginners, the curious, and the penurious

This is a table in my studio, not an ad for a brand .

I can't imagine a more tortuous way to paint than to squeeze acrylic paint out of a tube onto a disposable paper palette and, using a nylon brush, apply the paint to canvas board.
Yet this is the way a lot of beginners in acrylics paint. No wonder they go back to oils, or watercolors, or give up altogether.
In its natural state, acrylic paint is fluid. It takes a lot of filler to have it come out of a tube like oils.

But this seems to be what a lot of people want, and with no smell, quick dry, and water wash up. Oh boy.
The quick drying, however, causes problems; it hardens on the palette while you're trying to manipulate it on the canvas. So you mix your colors on the palette, add some retarder (something relatively new), and keep trying.
Meanwhile you may have forgotten to keep your brushes in water.

Oh dear.
If you can deal with this and come up with a painting that works on all levels I salute you. Remember, however, that canvas board will always brand you as an amateur.
A beginner will think," how can I put money into art supplies until I know if I'm going to like it or, especially, be good at it?"

But....How can you enjoy the process and turn out something you're pleased with when every step is frustrating?

1. If you already own acrylic paint in tubes, fear not. Throw out the cheap brands. Collect a lot of small glass jars with screw-on lids. Baby food, Jr. size, is good. If no babies are in reach, buy the vegetables anyway and put them in soup or gravy. Pimento jars are good.

Shop with small glass jars in mind.
Even using fluid acrylics, I make a lot of mixes in jars. Different shades, tonalities, etc. I've always used gesso instead of white for mixes. Its cheaper, tougher, and has less gloss.

2. Squeeze each tube into a jar, add a little distilled water, and stir. Don't thin more than 25% or so. Distilled water is important if you have a well, especially if there's a lot of iron in your water. I've known it to subtly change a color. If you have a well with a filter system that uses salt, not good for paint. This may be nit-picking to some, but paint is expensive. For you high-fliers, the last time I looked Cobalt Blue was going for $ 3 to 5 per liquid oz. That makes a quart cost..... well never mind.

3. This is a good time to experiment with mixing leftover colors and put the results in a jar. Use any brush that feels right- bristle, nylon, or mixes. Just keep them from drying out. My favorite is mongoose.

4. For long term storage, or if you live in a hot climate, use about a tablespoon of white vinegar to each 8 oz. of water and use a little to top the jars.
It should prevent mold, which sometimes happens, and won't hurt the paint.
If you do find some mold, that won't hurt the paint either, just scoop it out.

5. If you work from the jars, you will almost certainly contaminate the colors with your brush. A sensible palette is a Teflon mini-muffin pan. 12 or 24 size. Using disposable tongue depressors, coffee mixers, or plastic spoons scoop from the jars into the muffin pan. The paint will last longer, and its easy cleanup. When there's too much built-up dried-up paint, immerse the pan in warm water and let it sit awhile.
The paint will peel off nicely. And can be used in a collage, even. Don't laugh, top prize in a museum show was won with a small sculpture covered with paint peelings. I knew what they were.

ACRYLICS MY WAY

I use heavy duty stretchers on sizes over 18” or so. When assembled, I measure diagonally in both directions to be sure the canvas will be square.
Then I tightly stretch, by hand, unprimed fine weave linen around the edges and staple on the back every few inches. When initially cutting the linen I allow a minimum of 2” per side so that the fabric is more easily gripped.
The next step is to saturate the linen with water, and apply acrylic gesso with a brush or sponge. This has the combined effect of tightening the fabric and thinning the first coat of gesso.
When the canvas is dry, I lightly sand the surface, then apply gesso again, thinned with about 25% water. Repeat the process.
Sometimes I tint the third coat of gesso with a warm color . If I have a definite painting in mind I use a complement. For instance, a light orange if there's going to be a blue sky. Yellow for lavender hills, etc. Sometimes a pale gray just to tone down that sometimes huge white elephant.
Acrylics don't become somewhat transparent as the painting ages, as oil paintings do, so there is no need to work on a white canvas for luminosity. The exception being the artist who applies acrylics in transparent washes, as in watercolor.
I do a preliminary drawing on the canvas with watercolor pencil or charcoal, then usually jump in and lock in the drawing with brush and thinned acrylic.
An exception to this habit was, rare for me, starting at the top of the painting and working down. No glazing or over painting or fiddling or going too far.
See below.

" Yellow Field", acrylic on linen, 24 x 32"

PAINTING WITH ACRYLICS

I hung around my high school art room so persistently that my art teacher eventually gave me an old tin box full of oil paint. I think it had been his, and I hope it was an extra. His name, if I remember, was Sydney Gross. I was 13 or 14. As a result oils became my medium of choice until 1953 or so when I was introduced to the new acrylic paint at a class I signed up for.
It was developed by Leonard Bocour and his nephew and partner, Sam Golden, and called Bocours "Aquatec".
A few of the New York School of painters were using what was then called "latex" house paint because it was cheap and pourable. Jackson Pollock was said to have bought cans of unlabeled house paint on Canal St, and paint doesn't come much cheaper than that. (I'm pretty sure, however, that he used a thinned oil based enamel.)
(There has never been latex in latex paint.)
One of the first painters to pour acrylic paint onto unprimed canvas, then proceed to manipulate the flow and saturation, was Helen Frankenthaler. She had been a water colorist, so staining the canvas suited her.
This modus operandi became the trademark style of Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland who made no secret of being influenced by her.

Helen Frankenthaler 1958

Morris Louis 1960 This canvas measures 8 ft x 14 ft!

Courtesy of MOMA

The fast drying and brilliant colors of acrylics changed the way some artists worked, such as the ability to do hard-edge and color field painting as well as pouring and dripping. Which was a spinoff of the early surrealist movement.
A plus was the fact that acrylic resin serves as its own sealer/primer, and won't eventually rot the unprimed canvas as oil base paint does.

It took some getting used to, and still does if you've always worked in another medium. Bocours' acrylic paint was thick, and came in jars.
I was initially frustrated by the gloss and viscosity, but happy that it was much harder to end up with a mud color, which was the tendency to mix a lot of very expensive colors on the canvas, and end up with blech.
I learned to thin the paint with water and leave the top off for several days, with an occasional stir.
I'm not sure why that should cut the gloss, but it did.
Happily for me, Sam Golden retired from Bocour Paints, then opened his own line of fluid acylics, then added matte fluids and a host of other goodies.
YAY

MORE FUN WITH VERMEER

From the darkroom...

Fire Island

Easthampton

Gosmans Dock, Montauk

Watermill

Gallery Opening (with Bill DeKooning)

That was then. Now we have Photoshop

The End

FUN WITH VERMEER

Most of you are familiar with Vermeers' self portrait.

Many of you may know that he had eleven children.
I wondered if he ever took a vacation from those two rooms?

So I thought I'd bring the family to Long Island for the summer, preferably an inexpensive motel in Montauk, the nearby Hamptons being pricier, what with eleven children and a few servants, one just to pour the milk.
So...

I proceeded to do a painting titled "J.Vermeer Spends the Summer in Montauk". Oil on canvas-50 x 38"

This was many years ago, the painting was in a few shows, but it seemed like a dead end. I wanted to explore the vacation concept further, so took him into the darkroom. (If Photoshop was around then, I wasn't aware of it)

To be continued........................................................

DEMENTIA or Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder

I've heard and read many theories regarding the madness of Van Gogh.

He mouthed his brushes to improve the points, he ate paint, he drank turpentine, he had epilepsy, he had lead poisoning.....

True, the pigments he used, the colors he preferred, were highly toxic. Differing with the color, they contained lead, arsenic, cobalt, copper, manganese, cadmium sulphate, gambogic acid, singly or in combination.

At least he was not obliged to grind his own (and possibly inhale) powdered pigments, which was the custom in earlier times. Purists still do it, but with full knowledge of the chemicals, and with safer alternatives.

As far as his some aspects of his technique and palette, its also been said that absinthe to excess changes color perception, that lead poisoning can produce visual halos, blah blah and blah.

Can't we just say he was a wonderfully unique painter; lonely, poverty stricken, driven, rejected, under-appreciated probably an alcoholic, possibly in an advanced stage of syphilis and leave it at that?

The Myth Seekers won't be happy.

More About That Dashing Dueling Duo

For all those who are curious about the legendary relationship and the ear thing, a link to a book review in the UK's Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/5274073/Van-Goghs-ear-was-cut-off-by-friend-Gauguin-with-a-sword.html
Its been said before, that Gauguin was an amateur fencer, that it was only the lobe, not the whole ear, that it was an accident, that they had been -surprise-drinking, that it was a cover up.
I would like to add a comment on the other legends of Van Gogh's madness and suicide.
Great artists are commonly romanticised to a fault, by the public, by the gallery system, by the collectors, at times by the artists themselves.
I recommend a book titled "the Van Gogh File"by Ken Wilke, a nifty piece of detective work. Aside from the Ear Incident, there was his misery about being supported by a loving brother who now had a wife and child to support as well. Theo's support was more than rent or food or love, it included massive amounts of paint for an artist that literally lived to paint.
The "madness " was explained by a disease that was accepted in the generations before, but not in the Victorian era. Thence another cover up. There were other complications of course, including his family history.
The irony is that Van Gogh (albeit by his own hand), Gauguin, and even Theo, ultimately died of the same disease.

ISOLATION

Gauguins painting of Van Gogh painting sunflowers

The act of painting is usually a solo act. A one man show. Pardon. A solo show.
To be alone is desirable, except when it's not. Most artists work intensely in solitude. When they come up for air they wonder where everyone went.
Lets party!
This is the nature of the beast.
There are some who work best in a group, but I wonder if it's their best work?
Poor Vincent desperately wanted Gauguin to stay with him. For awhile they both painted sunflowers, they both painted A Chair, but ultimately I like to think that as good as Gauguin was, he knew in his heart that Van Gogh was better. And so it goes.
Lend me your ear.
More on that fiasco later.