Thirty Paintings-Day 30

Well I did it!  For thirty straight days I showed up in my studio and worked.  It was difficult in many ways but I learned a lot about myself and my process over the course of the month.  I hope to continue daily but begin to work on larger things at my pace which is not necessarily a painting a day.  I still get hung up on subject matter and that is OK.  For now as I am in the transitioning phase of my life and all I want to do is paint or draw my husband in some form.  It is all I have of him though I know I really don't 'have' him but it works for now.  I also know my work and I as an artist is still developing.  I saw that the more invested emotionally with the subject matter the more involved I became in the work.  Took my time and made it to that place where nothing matters but what is in front of me.  Although in some of the work I did very quickly but also was invested in the subject.  It has been very interesting.  I saw the difference in the different pieces.  So it has been a profitable month for me in what I have learned.

I will post both of today' s work on here.  The painting, another non-representational one, will go to Leslie's website for the challenge.  I feel like I blended my grief and my work this month so I drew Richard today and I will post it here.  I hope this daily posting will continue as I have enjoyed writing on my blog again.  Some of my gadgets are missing and not sure why but didn't want to fool around with the blog mechanics until the challenge was finished for fear that I would loose everything.  Feel like I am writing to myself here but I am getting use to that...a solitary figure.  Not liking it either.  Miss my husband every minute of the day.  There is little rest from it.

                                                                The Veil Between Us
                                                                oil, 6"x6" Masonite

Thirty Paintings-Day 29

I really enjoy abstract or non-representational art.  It is an area of painting I am interested in exploring, learning the language if you will,  and experimenting more with.  So today as I prepped a small board I started to just paint with no objective other than paint, step back,  and go back in to either scrape paint off or add more.  I like where it was starting to go.

                                                                          Just Paint...
                                                                          oil,6"x6" Masonite

Thirty Paintings-Day 28

I take a lot of photos for different reasons but as I wrote earlier this week my dog, Maggie has been diagnosed with Horner's Syndrome and not much for me to do but pay the vet bill that is now on my credit card and watch her.  But the eye seemingly looking smaller and peering in the opposite direction from her other eye is beginning to grow on me.  She has this endearing look now that I can not resist.  She is twelve and has some arthritis issues which just adds to her look and posture.  This drawing and some studio cleaning was in order.  Drawing is right up there with painting for me.  I can easily get lost for hours in either.

                                                                          Maggie
                                                                          charcoal, 11"x14"  paper

Thirty Paintings-Day 27

Three to go...I am not counting or anything.  I liked this better when I had less on the canvas but the gesture is there, the essence of what attracted me to this photo of Richard and I.  I will probably go back into this one or start over but of course for the challenge I do not have the time.  So this is it.

Much was unspoken at this point.  So much left unsaid.  So much I wish I could tell him today, face to face.

                                                                    Unspoken
                                                                    oil, 8"x10" stretched canvas

Thirty Paintings-Day 26

Today a simple ordinary fall pumpkin.  No explanation other than maybe I use to love fall and pumpkins but since Richard died on the cusp of Fall I now have an aversion to it.  But for todays purposes...

                                                                          Pumpkin
                                                                          oil,6"x6", Masonite board     

                                                  

Thirty Paintings-Day 25

Found a photo of one of my favorite spots here in Rhode Island, on the island of Jamestown.  A spot at the southern tip of Jamestown called Beavertail.  I believe it is named so because of the outcropping of rock which kind of reminds one of flattened tails of the beaver.  At least it does me.  The sunsets are spectacular from Beavertail because one looks west across the bay.  The sunsets  leave beautiful reflections on the water, so a double treat if you will.

Another hard day of grief...waves after wave plus a sick dog which required an expensive vet visit which just produced more tears.  She is twelve and psychologically, my last link to my husband.  As I wrote earlier this month she was with me that morning he died.  I am so not ready to loose her.  It appears she has Horner's Syndrome.

                                                                   Sunset With You
                                                                   oil, 8"x8" Masonite

Thirty Paintings-Day 24

Just a little study today focus on the curvilinear shapes of the Snake plant leaves. Done in oil on 8"x8" canvas board.

Thirty Paintings-Day 23

It is said that it takes 21 days for a habit to form.   I tend to believe that.  It is becoming more common place for me to think about working in my studio than not on a daily basis.  I am now thinking about my work, what I will paint next for the challenge and even on a larger scale beyond the challenge.  I have a couple of things I want to explore from a couple of the small things I did over the last twenty odd days.

Today's subject was a challenge for me and I refused to give up for hours.  It was paint, scrape, paint...and repeat.  I found it difficult to really pull the mushroom color.  I saw it but was finding it hard because it is such a neutral color.  But challenge is good.  I guess my theme has turned to 'ordinary' food and Richard.  It is all good, just follow your brush.

                                                                   Mushrooms
                                                                    oil, 5"x7" canvas covered board

Thirty Paintings_Day 22

Today's painting is a Delicata squash.  With Autumn approaching all the fall vegetables are showing up in the stores.  I love squash of all types.  Time to turn on the oven to bake them or to make soups.  It just kind of happened.  No fanfare, no hurricanes, or very hot or cold days.  Just here we are.  Another year has passed and taken each of the seasons with it.

                                                                       Fall
                                                                       oil, 5"x7" canvas panel

Thirty Paintings-Day21

My son sent me some photos he had on his phone as well as a video.  They were moments I had forgotten early in the in-home hospice phase.  He was starting to loose weight and in many I am looking tired, the beginnings of a fatigue of mind and body I will never forget.  But then there were the moments when we would still hug, hold hands, and just show our love for each other.  He was the love of my life and I his.  As hard as it is sometimes to only be able to see him on a video or a photograph some how I am comforted to paint him and us.  Grateful that I can.  I am not looking for realism especially something done in a few hours but rather the gesture, the essence in this case of us.  I think I succeeded in catching that.

                                                          Embracing You in My Heart
                                                          oil, 6"x7" Masonite board

Thirty Paintings-Day 20

Day twenty.  Hard to believe I have painted everyday for twenty days.  This painting was inspired from one of my favorite photos of my husband.  He was young, healthy, doing what he loved, driving a truck as a Teamster.  This is the photo I drag from room to room some days because I so need to see him.  Some days I hold the frame to my chest and sob.  It is something to hold, to touch.  Strange but that is what I do.  Not much more to say on that.  That day it was on the table as I sipped coffee and wrote in my journal, one of my mainstays.

                                                                  All That is Left of You
                                                                  oil, 8"x8" canvas panel

Thirty Paintings-Day 19

Well showed up and I used a knife and did it quickly.  Not sure if i like it or it is so ugly that I am intrigued with it.  Just not sure.  But they are items on my drafting table that I use daily thus very ordinary to me.

Football game at URI, out to dinner with two of my children, a three mile power walk, then home to paint.  Off to finally relax and watch a movie.

                                                                    Solvent Can and Windex
                                                                    8"x8", oil on canvas board

Thirty Paintings-Day 18

This has been an insanely busy week with a busier weekend coming up.  So I feel like I am constantly playing catch up...and I am.  Tomorrow my youngest grandson, who is a sophomore and a football player at URI is playing his first home game in the afternoon.  So we will be there as will be my husband in spirit, who loved football, the New England Patriots, and would have become a Rhody Rams fan and would have gone to every home game, will be with us.  He would have been so proud of this young man.  And Sunday there is a cook-out at another daughter's home.  So a full weekend and the deal will be to keep up my painting for the challenge.  So the paintings may be a hair clip or a knife.  But it will be something truly ordinary.

I decided to paint the cairn again but loosely in oil this time.  Thanks for reading.  Have a good night!

                                                                     Cairn #2
                                                                     oil, 6"x6" canvas panel

Thirty Paintings-Day 17

Today I pulled out my watercolors and tried my hand.  I have not touched my watercolors in probably two years at least.  For a first attempt after all that has happened and the time away from them, I am satisfied.  The subject is a cairn made up of stones I picked up a few weeks ago at the beach.  Actually at the very rocky 'beach' at Point Judith Lighthouse, which is the very tip of our state.  Richard and I would go there during the summer to eat clam cakes and chowder.  We would watch the surfers or I would go hunt rocks or shells.  They have been riding around on the floor of my car ever since.  Today I dragged them in as I had the urge to paint them.  They were simply placed on one of my clean but stained oil painting palette, an 18"x24" piece of plexiglass.  The stones will make their way outside as one of the cairns for Richard I want to place around our yard.  Another hard day today...I miss him so badly, I miss us, I miss being married and being a wife.  I feel like I am bobbing up and down in the ocean with no real direction...just another facet of grief. 

                                                                         Cairn #1
                                                                         watercolor, 6"x8" cold press

Thirty Paintings-Day 15

Day 15...I see why it is called a challenge.  I still agonize over subject matter with ordinary everywhere but I do not see it.  But something is working it's way in.  I also normally take more than a day to do a painting so this pushes me to think fast, or maybe thing less, and let my knife or brush fly.  But the important thing I remind myself is that I am painting every day, thinking about it daily, and becoming my intentional.  So day 15, half way there.  I feel somewhat like I am back in art school again and not a bad thing.  I am getting back into a place I once was but was so overwhelmed for so long with Richard's illness and my loss I could not see that place in me. 

Today a little, a very little harvest of cherry tomatoes in a little desert bowl.  So much for my little garden as the weather appears to be changing quickly.  I can hear Richard.  Carol, Carol, you did not fertilize, you did not water, you did not tie them to the stakes...no, Richard, I did none of those things.  And you should have been here to do them yourself.

                                                                     Life is a Bowl...
                                                                     oil, 6"x6" canvas board
                                                                    

Thirty Paintings-Day 14

Went with another tomato.  During this challenge I am also exploring techniques and watching and feeling what comes more natural.  What happens when I relax and get out of my head.  I am not looking for literal anymore. I want something more.  So today the edges were blurred, so much so that one is not sure where the tomato leaves off and the back ground begins.  A metaphor of my life these days.

A hard day.  Up early, way too early.  Needed to nap then a phone call from one of my wise daughter's who understood completely what had happened to me with the loss of her father, my husband and how I had to work through so much and how exhausting it all is.  But she encouraged me to stay with it and do what I needed from cry, scream, write, sleep, whatever it takes to get to the bottom of it, to me.  So I then had some lunch and began to work.

                                                            Tomatoes for Richard
                                                            oil, 6"x6" canvas panel
             

Thirty Paintings-Day 13

Today I finally picked three tomatoes from my garden.  Still not terribly red but orange will do I suppose.  Tomatoes from the garden so remind me of Richard because he enjoyed them so.  Being hit with heavy waves of grief today so not so much to say other than I showed up.  These fast paintings for each day do challenge me to get out of my head and work fast.  Probably a good thing.  Anyway...

                                                                     Summers End
                                                                     oil, 6"x6" canvas panel
                                                                     100.00

Thirty Paintings-Day 12

In sticking with the ordinary I have an egg every morning, a poached egg between two pieces of whole grain toast with my second mug of coffee.  It is my favorite time of the day,  where the day is still fresh and before me.  Anything is still possible...

                                                               Remains of the Morning
                                                                6"x6", canvas panel

Thirty Paintings-Day 6

This little painting was an impromptu deal.  I tend to take the left over paint on my palette and mix it up in luscious piles of greys to cover with plastic wrap and save for the next painting session.  Other times I play around and see what I can come up with by using what is on my palette to make a painting as was the case with this pear.  I pretty much used the palette knife and what was there for paint.  That's the rule, can't squeeze out anymore paint.  I can only use what is there already.  Sometimes I do them from out of my head and other times as in this case, the pear was sitting there from the other day.  Pretty ordinary.

The last two days made for difficult painting as the heat and humidity here were both unbearable.  In the ninety's, both measurements.   My in house thermostat read at 85 degrees.  I do not have air conditioning.  I do not respond well to this weather and find it even hard to think or do anything.    Everything seems accentuated thus I was miserable.  But I did paint,  did some much needed computer housecleaning, and grieved hard today...but made it through.

Thanks for reading!

                                                                       Pear
                                                                   oil, 6"x6"
                                                               canvas panel

Thirty Paintings-Day 5

The thing that gets me up is the thought of that first cup of coffee in the morning.  Pretty ordinary but with many memories attached to the act.  I so enjoy it and feel revived like no other drink in the rest of my day.  I am also attached to my mug.  I like the feel of it in my hands.  I am a tactile person always checking how something feels and that includes mugs, bowls, and glasses.

It reminds me the many times we made pots of coffee for each other.  How many times did I wake to being handed a mug of coffee by Richard.  Or how I would set up the pot for him at night for the next morning because he had to get up at a ghastly 2 AM for work.  Having the the pot ready for him to just hit the switch seemed like the best thing to do, seeing as I was not getting up with him.  Almost to the end, while he could still swallow, I gave him a mug of coffee in the morning.  Now it is coffee alone...

                                                               Grey Morning
                                                                oil, 6"x6"