MAY 30, 2007

This is the 6th year that I've participated in a Chinese New Year print exchange sponsored by the Baren Forum, http://www.barenforum.org/index.html, an on line group for woodblock printmakers. About 50 people sign up and agree to make and send a print to everyone else on the list. They don't all come by Chinese New Years, in fact some never come. But it is fun making and receiving them with the surprises coming in the mail all year long. I spent much of a week cutting blocks, printing, and sending mine out. This year is the year of the boar or pig and this is my print:



For the sky, I carved 3 woodblocks and printed with the Japanese technique (Hanga) using watercolor and rice paste. I copied the sky design from Hiroshige's "Three Wild Geese Flying Across the Moon." I was not successful carving the pigs with wood... they looked more like aardvarks than pigs.... and finally carved one pig on an eraser and stamped it 3 times and then painted with watercolor.

The calendar tells me it's time to plant my vegetable garden, but I think I'll wait another week. My tulips are just now showing some color. This time last year the petals were falling off.

I'm missing action in the eagle nest that I view from my window. The pair have deserted the tree after many years. They moved the nest lower a few years ago, but now the nest seems to be angled down more, so probably the limb that its on is breaking. Last fall a new nest was built in a cottonwood about a mile away. I think it is being used now, and I hope it is the same pair.

On the Saturday before last, Marilyn and I went to the lake on the other side of the runway and painted in the morning. Good to see some different shades of green.


I've tried to paint the lake several times..... each time most of it gets cut off the painting.



I've changed the day for getting a group together for plein aire painting from Saturday to Fridays. It seems to be a better day for the people who say they want to come. So far (3 weeks) it's been just one other person and me. JoAnn came with me on Friday. It was raining a bit and we went down to the beach. We set under the dock for a while...I started 3 little paintings and none got dry enough to go back into.... then went and set in the car where I painted this. Some one wrote "the war" under the "END". Probably one of the people who walked with me and about a dozen others in the peace march on Memorial Day.

MAY 18, 2007

Lots of catching up to do here. I was in the midst of preparing for my show when I posted last. The opening was April 6th and I was happy with the sales. It was quite a job boxing everything up. We were planning to take them into Juneau on the boat but the weather didn't cooperate, so I had to fly in with them. On Easter Day, I flew down to Florida for a 2 week visit with relatives and friends. I was mostly in my hometown of Bartow in central Florida, but traveled as far south as Miami Beach and made 3 trips to the Gulf Coast. I met my nieces husband for the first time and 3 new grand-nephews.


I didn't do much painting there. This is one of the few.... a papaya tree as seen above my cousin Madelons back fence after a refreshing swim in her pool in Palmetto. I did see a lot of art, a lot of inspiration, beautiful places. Seemed like I was going somewhere all the time.

On the way home, I stopped in Washington State for a few days and visited more friends. Back in Juneau, I boxed up the paintings that didn't sell.....


this is one of them.... I got home on April 27th.



And now finally spring is here. Green is showing up in the fields, migrating birds are coming through, and "snow birds" are returning to their summer homes. Finally there are a few flowers in bloom... the marsh marigolds in the ditches and my lavender primroses in the garden.


I painted this from my car on the dock road last week... some hint of green in the field.

I have been asking people to join me for plein aire painting on Saturday morning. Kate joined me on the 12th.... I'd better change the date on the painting. We walked the path to the beach south of the run way. I painted from about the same place last year....



This was on March 5, 2006..... probably the way it looked a couple of weeks ago this year.... Its been a much later spring.

This is another postcard size painting I did last year in March.



... and this one also, started on the same day... March 22, 2006. Its larger... about quarter size paper. I added some crows in the foreground after taking this picture of it.

I spent this afternoon walking on the loop south of our house with my friend Artemis. We walked down the Salmon River, had a picnic on the beach, Artemis napped while I painted. Walked up the section-line path. Each year the willows look more and more pathetic from the moose browsing. This is the first really clear days in quite some time and the Fairweathers are beautiful. The sweet gale is blooming, not quite as rich in color as it gets. I must go back and paint there next week.

This is the dock from the beach today.

Van left for his summer of fishing last week. I'm getting into my summer routine, more time to myself and so dear friends, if there are any still checking here, perhaps there will be more regular postings.

SNOW, SNOW, SNOW

This has certainly been the winter for snow around here. I don't know how much has fallen but it keeps piling up. It is near record for the year and Eaglecrest, the ski slope in Juneau has the deepest snow than any ski area in the whole world.... 19 feet, I think.

The snow is quite beautiful and I've gotten out a couple of times cross-country skiing in the last week. I've taken my paints out a few times but it has just been too, too cold to do anything, and the view from the window just doesn't inspire. I did find a couple of ones I did in December and didn't post.


This is the view North of our house, out the bedroom window. All the others I've posted have been the view looking South.

I didn't date this one, but I'm pretty sure it was late in December. The snow was melted down for a while in places around the trees and some of the open fields were clear. We didn't see very many moose for a while in January and February but they have been quite abundant lately.

FEBRUARY 11, 2007

Here it is almost the middle of February, a month since my last posting. How fickle I am with my many varied projects! There has indeed been some guilt over my abandonment here and some thought to change the name or start another blog with another name to follow my latest artistic pursuits.

Every day I look outside my window and think I ought to do a little painting, but my wandering commitment is elsewhere. My latest paintings have been in the studio. I've been working on a still life for about a week and when it is finished. I'll post it here. I'll be having a show in Juneau in April and am under some pressure to get things to frame and hang.

I did these little paintings on a trip to Juneau and Sitka the end of last month. I took the M/F Fairweather to Juneau to Sitka and back.... a very pleasant ride both ways, the first I'd made on this newer fast ferry.



In Sitka, I stayed in a lovely home on the beach and painted the scene out the window many times. Here are 3 of them. I never did get my paintings to my liking. The second 2 here were cropped and I did some outlining with some new jelly-row pens and iridescent paint in the sky.


On my last evening in Sitka, I watched the sun go down at Whale Park, an area south of town with board walks down from the road to the beach. I didn't see any whales but there was one the next day as I waited for the ferry to leave. A few humpbacks stay around Sitka in the winter.... younger one, I think. The ones up here where I live go to Hawaii in the winter. This was the only day with sunshine for the whole trip.... I ended up spending a couple of extra days in Juneau because of fog before flying home.






Waiting for the ferry to leave Sitka and as it was leaving, I did these of Sitka Sound. I added the trollers in a couple of them.

These masks (hawk and bear) were on the ferry and "carved by unknown Haines carvers ca.1971" and previously in the Seattle terminal. I did some more little paintings on the ferry, and as they are so unlike anything they really were, I'm not putting them here.... traveling so fast, reminded me of painting on the train.

It has been a cold clear day. Now 5:15 p.m. and there is still a good bit of light.... its good to have the days a little longer.

MY FIRST POSTING FOR THE YEAR

Here it is almost halfway through January. I didn't resolve this year to do a daily piece of art work which was the reason for and subject of this blog, and I just haven't been into painting the little landscapes I've mostly shown here. The weather hasn't been at all good for going outside and doing much of anything. After falling on the ice a couple of times, I don't go out side without studs on my boots. When there isn't anything wet and cold falling from the sky it is much too cold to hold a pencil or brush. And I'm just tired of painting the trees outside my window.

Most of the people who have told me they enjoy reading and looking here say it is seeing the watercolors of where I live. Well, I've been living almost exclusively inside, so that is what the pictures will be of for a while.

I didn't pick up a paint brush for a couple of weeks, the perennial slump I have around this time of year. Over the holidays I did made a little progress on a couple of projects...a quilt and organizing hundreds of photographs....and last week, on schedule, I got back into the studio and after a couple of failed starts have painted a still lifes and am setting up another.

The days are starting to get longer. There is now a little bit of daylight left at 4 p.m! Yesterday was sunny, but down in the teens. Still cold, but cloudy today and snow expected tomorrow; we've had a few inches in the last week. Much of the 4 feet accumulation from November and December is gone. A 5.8 quake north of here woke me up Tuesday morning.



This was done at Kim and Waynes' brunch on New Years day. Kim made potato pancakes.

....and this was yesterday morning, visiting and drinking coffee with Aimee in her kitchen.

This is a little 4x4 sketch, one of several I did while setting up a larger painting.

SOLSTICE WAS YESTERDAY

..... and the shortness of daylight does indeed make for what seems like a very short 24 hours. Though we do have several hours of daylight, we haven't seen much sun lately. But I do find it a pleasant time of year. After 3 rather hectic days in the big city, I returned Wednesday and relished being here at home where the only requirement is to watch the weather rather than be out in it.... a few inches of snow yesterday and now a wind storm is suppose to come. Lots of wind on my trip to the city..... and rain.

I didn't rush back into the studio on my return, instead have dug out a quilt I started some years ago and hope to finish soon. The postcard paintings posted today are from last week.


These two were done on the 14th, snow and ochre sky, around 2:30



And this one the next day, a little after noon With hopefulness for a sunny walk on the beach,
I drove down to the dock and pretty soon the wind and snow got me back into the truck where I painted these looking across the strait:

DECEMBER 3, 2006, MONDAY

Short, cold days with some extreme weather last month... several feet of snow and some sub-zero temperatures, breaking records for this time of year. I've been painting quite a lot in the studio, but not getting outside and painting my postcards and feeling just a bit guilty, so resolved to finish off the year with more to show here.

Here's the view out the window on Saturday between snow showers,



and yesterday after the weather turned warmer and a lot of wet snow overnight. Some damage in town from collapsing porch and out-building roofs, and a few trees bent over from the weight. Our poor willow along the path to the house lost a couple of limbs.

We've had a steady parade of moose through the yard since the snow started. One day we counted 8. We quite often see them bedded down out in the snow in the morning.

I rode down to the boat harbor with Van yesterday at high tide and while he shoveled snow of the boat, I set in the truck and sketched the floats in the river.

Not too many postcards last month and as of now I've misplaced most of them. This one is the view out the window on October 27th.

Here's another older postcard, done in May of a sweet dog named Pearl. She passed away a couple of weeks ago and I gave the card to the owners but scanned it, so thought I'd put it here

TRAIN TRIP


Finally, my long overdue post about our train trip:

Van and I flew to Seattle on September 24 and took a bus to Bellingham where we visited relatives and friends for a couple of days. We got on our first train, to Vancouver BC, on the 26th where we met up with Van's sister Lea and her husband Jack. In Vancouver, we boarded the Viarail "Canadian" late in the afternoon. We had bearths which were quite comfortable, but the movement and noise didn't make for a whole lot of sleep. We awoke the next morning in the Rocky Mountains and the foliage was beautiful.
I painted this from when the train stopped for a few minutes. We arrived in Jasper mid-day and got a ride to the Robinson Guest House. (we had places booked along the way before we left home.) This was a very comfortable place and the host (a watercolor artist) and hostess were friendly and helpful.

The town of Jasper is small and we walked around all afternoon. The next morning we rented a car and drove down Highway 93 to Athabasca and Sunwapta Falls and rode up the Jasper Tramway for great views of the country, then to the Fairmont Jasper Lodge where there was a wonderful art gallery.



Doreen, an artist friend from Olds Alberta, and her husband met us in Jasper and she and I spent the part of the next afternoon painting at Jasper Lodge. I painted this looking across the lake in front of the lodge.

After 3 nights in Jasper, we boarded the Canadian again and started the 2 night trip on to Toronto. We were out of the mountains and on to the prarie before dark the first day. People had said that after the Rockies that the scenery would be pretty boring. I found it gorgeous!




I painted these from the moving train second day on the train....

and these 2 the third and last day before arriving in Toronto. Van and I thought this part of the trip was one of the most beautiful... lakes and forests of many colors.



Meal time on the train was a grand event... wonderful food, lots of choices. I was amazed that they could produce such meals on a train.


Always a pink table cloth....and alstromerias on the table.


In Toronto we stayed at the Admiral Saint George B and B, a lovely old home in the Annex district full of antiques. We spent our one full day there walking and ended the day tired with pizza on the porch when I had some time to myself to paint.


From Toronto we went by train to Quebec City. We stayed in a small hotel within the old walled city 2 days. Much walking, seeing the sites and eating fine meals. Too busy to paint.

This writing is taking too much time...I've been at it for several postings now, so from now on its going to be short.

Then on to Halifax Nova Scotia .... a wonderful 6 days in N.S. where we rented a car and drove the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island and saw a bore tide from the Bay of Fundy and experienced gale force winds in Peggy's Cove. Didn't paint much as I was driving much of the time.
I painted these in Sherbrooke Village, the house across from where we stayed and trees in the yard.




And this from Fisherman's Cove where we spent our first and last night in N.S.


Back to Montreal overnight on the train with a comfortable room and a long day , beautiful scenery on the Amtrak Adirondack to NYC where we changed to a train to Washington DC.

Enjoyed a busy 4 days seeing the sites there, concentrating on the galleries and Smithsonian.


An overnight Amtrak to Chicago and then 2 more nights on the Empire Builder to Seattle and flight home.



These four pages of my journal were done on the train, the first near Rugby, ND, the geographical center of North America...I got the lucky bamboo in DC and got it home in good shape. The last 3 were done the last evening as we neared Glacier Park.

Whew! Glad that's done; now I can get back to the present soon with something new.