I have one more drawing planned from my set-ups in the hoop house over the summer. The light in there is diffuse and very white. I plan to start the 2010 flower season by  constructing a table-top  in the house to take advantage of a large south facing window for compositions with bright slanting planes of lights and shadows, yellow highlights and winking green glass bowls. I’m looking for an abrupt transition from Renoir to somewhere past Janet Fish – can’t wait!

My family wrote hundreds of letters when I went away to college. Going away to college was new, but they’d had experience with going away to war and that’s how they approached it. Hundreds of letters about food. About their lives back home, actually – but I’d never realized that food was so much the overarching motif of those lives. I’m working the letters up into a collection. The Old World sent food, but the New sent a facsimile – a Jerusalem Airlift.

Mary came back to the Firehouse after, and we arranged platters of meats, breads and salads for 100. They gave us much more and also sent a beautiful whole ham for Mother and Ben. Dad cut it in chunks last night with the big knife so it could be divided easily. Mother froze the bone for soup later on. PS Thought I’d send nuts – maybe you can use a hammer and something for a pick.

It is supposed to snow this afternoon 2 – 8″ stopping around midnight. I am working overtime tomorrow, then on Sunday we are having your father’s birthday party. He wants that coconut pineapple cake of Doris Watkins’. It always falls apart, but he always asks for it.

I have plenty of excerpts to work with, and hope to begin setting up material to draw as illustrations. (I’m going to skip the ham.) A perfect frontspiece for the book, I think, will be a picture of me standing ghostly in the back yard, holding a layer cake.

Louis Harrison Barnard’s Japanese Tea Set, with cosmos and calendula blossoms.

Birch St., Bangor Maine

And now, for something completely different, my warm-up page for this drawing. Sadly, I didn’t get to use the hat.

I took a few nights off and drew exercises out of the book. When I’d had my fill of bushy eyebrows and huge ears (Loomis is inordinately fond of drawing old men), I tried a study of Rubens, “Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus”. Sisters Phoebe and Hilaeria were abducted by Castor and Polydeuces, and of course their cousins Idas and Lynceus avenged them, killing Castor and starting the chain of events that led to the Trojan War. This is the most popular scene in that long chain because it involves beautiful half-draped women being swept up on horseback, or grappled with, or clinging to, swarthy men. I think this Rubens is the most intimate interpretation: note how Hilaeria’s and Lynceus toes are rested together, and her hand on his foot. In many places the participants are locked together like puzzle pieces, trapped by the horses rearing dangerously close.

The painting suited my purposes nicely – all that force and direction expressed in twined limbs and rounded flesh is the perfect exercise for the theory that all animal action can be drawn from a foundation of spheres and dissecting lines.  So, Rubens via Loomis:

The “one that got away” series is all about work on its way to the dumpster. I have one more chance to record the remains, and this is it. “Land O’ Lakes” was my first pastel after a long period of working in oils. My schedule does not allow long stretches of time to set aside for painting and I was continually grousing about dry paint, dry canvases and ruined brushes. My husband, and fellow painter, suggested I try a medium that was dry to start with and eliminate the problem at the root. I love living with another painter – it would have taken me another year to figure that out.

“Land O’ Lakes” was  named for its resemblance to the actual lakes and not the butter. I have another yellow iris called “Evening Sky” – it’s very confusing. That pale blue translucence makes a beautiful flower but a very difficult drawing. And there are other problems: the composition is large and sprawling, the figures  complex and the color range much too close for my inexperience. Also pastel is very fragile, even on the very forgiving surface of the Ampersand board. You’ll notice the turquoise vase is looks flat and unconvincing because I added layers of chalk to get it right. Doesn’t work, does it?

Another day, another drawing to Strawberry Hill.

]]> http://amy.pollien.com/2009/12/21/the-one-that-got-away-part-2/feed/ 0 http://amy.pollien.com/2009/12/14/new-work-12/ http://amy.pollien.com/2009/12/14/new-work-12/#comments Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:46:40 +0000 admin http://amy.pollien.com/?p=755

Fortunately, I live with someone who can code, heck, someone who speaks DOS. Not that he needed much of his expertise to show me how to link the small image above to a larger version. It was actually pretty easy with WordPress. Go ahead, try it out – this little 9″ x 12″ drawing can be seen almost full size, with all it’s marks and faults in evidence.  Yikes.

Still life painting is a wonderful way to interact with objects. The fruit, or flowers, or dead birds and whatnot are certainly vital – a way of demonstrating the passage of time and fleeting nature of existence. The vase, the plate and the Mason jar represent the inert – rocks and earth – and provide contrast to petals and feathers.  I use old things; dishes with chips and huge antique sugar bowls with brown spots and worn handles, slumped glass and pewter. The willoware plate in this drawing is so old the decals have flowed together to mute the edges of the pattern. It has endured a century of casual use and outlived all its set-mates to end up in a painting – fragile yet enduring.

Hansa Roses, 18 x 24, pastel on board.