2017 - Progress on Becoming an Artist

On Facebook, the art supply company, Grumbacher tossed out a question about the year’s accomplishments in art.

I decided not to respond and closed my laptop… except the question nagged me. I showered and went about my day, with this nudge inside, asking myself, what have I accomplished not just in art, but in becoming an artist. 

The process began in earnest in July of 2014. By then, I had a vision of what I wanted, simply to stand at an easel and to paint outside. I’d learned that act was called, “plein air” and that plein air was a real thing with a long history. I bought an easel, paints, brushes, paper and a vat of sunscreen. I took a weekend workshop at Lill Street and a week-long workshop at Madeline Island and learned I needed to learn how to draw, let alone distribute paint so that it was recognizable. Classes, sketching, and painting, as much painting as possible, ensued.

 A fifteen-inch pile of water color paintings, a couple filled drawing pads, several sketch books and bins, shelves and wires hung with canvas boards filled with oil paintings are evidence of a continued pursuit of art since then. Yet, I still need to draw better and I still need to distribute the paint better. My inspiration to find some success is my former neighbor (by a mile or so,) Michael Jordan, "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." 

Fast forward to 2017. My drawing has improved, but I don’t trust myself with the game winning line. My painting has improved but I’m still missing shots, but at this point, a lyric from Hamilton comes to mind, “I’m not throwing away my shot.” I continue to learn, ask for criticism and paint some more. In 2017, I completed (life changing) Painting Fundamentals 101 and 102 with Popovich and Krajecki through the Palette and Chisel, a 7-week perspective class with Krajecki thete too, a class taught br phenomenal artist, Steve Puttrich at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and a figure painting class with Ken Menami at the Evanston Art Center, and managed to have critiques by five other respected artists through the Plein Air Painters of Chicago. (Fred Polito, Don Yang, Errol Jacobdon, William Schneider, Nancy King Mertz.)

My easel accompanied me to paint plein air nearly every week April thru Oct and, I never went a week not "arting." I painted in two countries, three States, many states of mind and in two mediums. I painted over earlier paintings because they stopped being precious and I needed the canvas. I spent more money on paint and supplies than clothes, and found paint smears in more places than dust.

Firsts included: a plein air competition, a large format painting, a sale to stranger and one (almost two) off my easel, and, a paid commission (won't do that again.)

I bought a studio easel, took over a bedroom as a studio and stopped saying studio, as if it had quotes around it.

I participated in four shows; one juried. Two paintings were selected as year-long public works, two others are hanging in another town’s historical museum. An art critic reviewing one of the shows mentioned one of my paintings in a kind way. This year my Christmas list pretty much listed colors of paint. Gratefully, I received some. I continue to miss the majority of shots, but, I've hit a couple, for a change.  And, this year, the thought of painting as a hobby, never entered my mind. It's become my way of life. 

The Challenge of Painting a Tree

Painting a tree is hard. I say hard as part whiner and part pirate. It’s haarrd.

Children make drawing a tree look easy. I watch them as they fill a page of the sketchbook I offer when they seem curious about the painting underway on my easel. The encounter starts when I feel a presence at my side, a head near my elbow.  Sometimes I ignore it, but usually, I’m ready to take a step back. As painters, teachers encourage us to step back, to compare our painting with the scene in front of us. The masters wore carpets to threads in their studios and ruts in the grass outside. “What do you like to paint?” I ask the child beside me. 

If they respond, I ask the parent if it’s okay, and offer the child my black, spiral-bound book, with the instruction to make a picture, and the provision that I get to keep it. Invited to draw what they see, they draw trees. Clouds and sun are the usual embellishments, though a cat and dinosaur have appeared. I sometimes continue painting the scene in front of me, and, sometimes I just marvel. When they are done, I request a signature, and the parent requests a photo of the child with the picture, and, sometimes with me, the artist.    

In painting outside, John Carlson, a famous author on plein air painting, says, one should stand two and a half times the subject’s height, away from it. Me? I like to be up close. I like to see the curl of the bark, the overlap and shadows of leaf upon leaf, and the way branches mimic the human body. Starting at the trunk, at the shoulder, that big bone of the upper arm, the humerus, each branch grows like the split to the two bones that create the forearm, to the twenty-seven bones that make the hand.

As painters we’re taught to get the shapes in first, to paint background to foreground and dark to light. Today, I chose a location that I’d painted previously in the summer. Then, the trees were three-leaf clovers with strokes of greens made of cadmium yellow medium and cobalt blue. It was lush, and easily meshed with a titanium white and cobalt sky.

My teachers regularly remind me to blur the edges.  We don’t see sharp lines through the atmosphere, they say. I made a scraper tool from an old credit card and dragged it once from tree to sky and once again from sky to tree. It blurred and blended till the trees appeared taller and further away. It became for me, my mother’s dressing gown; a chartreuse satin, with threads of yellow embroidery against a peek at a blue lace slip beneath. I heard my father’s keys jangling, muffled in his pocket, and watched as he pressed the crease in his fedora. She said, as she dried her hands on a kitchen towel and surveyed the balance of dishes in the drainer, “I’m almost ready, John, I’m dressed underneath.”

One teacher told me that when I paint trees I should paint the roots, but I can’t paint the roots. I don’t see them. In the scene today, I do see a sidewalk heaved and cracked by a Hulk from the underworld in search of water and nourishment. The broken sidewalk is dark, as if an artist had blended the color of the grass, the dirt beneath and dried leaves upon it. It’s clearly marked 1938. I can’t paint the roots, but I can paint their power. I only wish, that I could paint the hubris of homeowners who’ve recently planted saplings next to concrete slabs stamped with 2002, 2009, 2012, because, I know the Hulk will return.  Painting a tree is hard, I say to myself again.

The children paint the trunks brown. Tree trunks aren’t brown. They are made of colors that sometimes make brown and those same colors sometimes make purple and shades of grey.  I stare at the line of trees and I see brown trunks too. I squint and colors separate. My mind separates. I see her there among the other trees. A breeze blows. Her dressing gown disintegrates. I see a trunk with limbs of grace and strength, curves at life’s grand junctures. Seasons took a turnm nourishment in some years overflowing and in other year’s light. Her limbs flow from branches to fingers where the last of the leaves become her bravest bit of bling.

I stand back with my brush in hand, and, I miss my mother.

Painting a tree is hard.

The Trail to the Cedarburg Plein Air Event

Full Circle. In 2014 my friend Nancy and I left the Interurban Bike Trail to find facilities and coffee and rode into Cedarburg, WI. There were people at easels everywhere, painting the town, so to speak. I remember being fascinated by a guy painting a Vienna Beef umbrella, someone else doing a door of an iconic mill, and people along the river. I turned to Nancy and said, “I want to do that.”  Reading a banner over the main street, it was the first time, I learned the words, plein air, as in Plein Air Festival.

Retirement looming and the hours it brings, might have been the biggest catalyst, but I think the brightest sparks offered the opportunity to be outside, as long as I wanted,  doing something creative, alone with people.  I knew nothing about paints, painting or perspectivehat, but that didn’t deter me. I’d watched my friend Lynn go from knowing her sign to digging in and not only learning astrology, but becoming the Astrologer to Oprah’s astrologer.  My friend Veronica took a pastel class and within a couple years exhibited work. I knew I needed to buy a lot of paper, a few good brushes, some paint, and get humble. The learning curve would be steep.

Within a week or two, I found a one day class at Lill Street Art Center in Chicago, registered for a week-long class with watercolorist Tom Schaller at Madeline Island School of Art in the Apostle Islands. That's where I met Steve Puttich and learned that there was a group called the Plein Air Painters of Chicago. The first Saturday I could, I went to one of their paint outs to see the equipment used. It just happened to be at Montrose Harbor and Carl Judson, The Guerilla Painter was visiting with his truck of wares. Stephanie Wiedner introduced herself and encouraged me to meet people. I did and I was hooked.

Since then I’ve taken loads of other workshops at the Palette and Chisel and elsewhere. I've learned from Errol Jacobson and Stuart Fullerton. I've painted and painted and painted. I have more than 30 paintings and sketches of one single scene, in every season, at Fort Sheridan… none are good.  After a couple years of interminable humbleness and frustration with watercolors, a well respected artist, Tim Clark told me I needed basics. I didn't understand exactly what he meant, but I started back at the beginning.  Figure drawing to understand what I’m seeing, fundamentals to understand pigments and washes and lines. I switched to oils and a 7-week perspective class. Who knew there were algorithms to shadows? It's all helped.

I registered for the plein air event in Cedarburg as soon as the 2017 event was open. Two months prior, I called the event-runner to understand the consequences of quitting. At that time, I could’ve gotten my $60 entry fee back. I didn’t quit then. Twice, in the last month, in spite of losing my fee,  I made plans to do something instead of going to Cedarburg, but I rescheduled. A week or two back, I put in a sizable order for paint supplies but left the box unopened in the kitchen. Yesterday, I unwrapped them and added them to my working kit.

My car is packed to leave for Cedarburg Plein Air Event and I will leave in a little while. I wanted to take a couple minutes to reflect on getting to this point. I’m doing a lot of self talk and internal wheelin and dealin… you don’t have to submit anything, go have fun, no one has a masterpiece every time, meet people, there will be artists of all skill levels, the weather is going to be beautiful. Mostly, I’m eager to be there. I know someone will walk by me and say, “I wish I could do that” and I will assure them they can. 

"Get Out", I Did, and Why: Horror Movies v. Today's Horrors

Yesterday, I walked out of the movie, "Get Out." I went intrigued from hearing the writer/director, Jordon Peele describe it. I'd heard that movie critics gave it the highest ratings and one friend recommended it after seeing it. I don't usually like horror films, but shoved those thoughts aside.

As the movie began, I leaned over and said, I may not stay. A little more than a third into it, something happened and I knew it was downhill from there. I leaned again and said goodbye.

I sloughed it off to not liking horror movies... ever since the House on Haunted Hill, that  I saw at the Woods Theater back in the day. Oddly, they held a raffle after that show that I won. Very apt, and more odd, the prize was an electric knife. As a twelve year old, I didn't have a lot of use for it, but our parents used it for years to carve the Thanksgiving turkey.

Today, I told a friend about leaving the theater and being renewed as I walked out into a 70° sunny afternoon. She offered a connection and insight into today's experiences of horror...  killings, hunger,  refugees in camps for years, persecution of Muslims, Jews, Native Americans, and African Americans, health care nearly taken away for 24 million, our planet under seige.

It was an aha! comment. I recognized I have little margin for things that make me feel more stress. She made another interesting comment that "screwball comedies" came out of the Great Depression... thet were the antidote to a very difficult time. For me, a horror movie, no matter how well made or a horror story, no matter how well told, does not lighten the heart.

Painting: Lighthouse 2 by Mary Longe, Watercolor, 11x14", 3/23/17 wwe.marylonge.com

Write and Send Ides of Trump Postcards - #Resist

Are you making #TheIdesOfTrump Postcards? Write 1 or 20 #resist notes to Trump. Post it and Mail it 3/15.
https://t.co/k6fmpSraWq

Finger Puppet, Mary Longe, 5x7" Oil

Create and Write Postcards - #Resist - Send on the Ides of Trump - March 15

Share this.

Are you feeling scattered and a bit out of it? Want a stress reliever? Make and Write postcards to be sent on March 15, the Ides of Trump.

MAKING POSTCARDS - no larger than 4x6" for postcard rate $.34, write a message and address them 

1) Pull out old greeting cards and cut them to size

2) Cut card stock and on one side...

use markers, crayons, paints and decorate

3) Buy prepaid postage cards 




Write

--a poem

--a limerick

--a favorite quote

--a list of things you want done

--a list of things you believe
--Prompt: Roses are red, violets are blue

Draw

--something or someone you love

--what you want to protect

--the outcome you want

Glue/Modge/Podge

--A ransom note

--A collage of things you want protected

--Symbols of things you treasure

WRITING A MESSAGE - Make sure you leave room to address the postcard

--Affirm

--Request

--Describe your vision

--Point out discrepancies

--Suggest changes

--Be succinct

--Be nice

--Be firm

Send several.

Address:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Creating a Personal Mission - Simple Tactics In Deed

The political stuff has me agitated. (Really? You say, I hadn't noticed.) After seeing the Requiem for The American Dream, I am more convinced I need to do something. The point I took away from is that one doesn't have to do anything huge. It's about convening people, caring for people, and not buying into consumerism and isolationism. So, that may become my mission. I have befriended a refugee family who I've committed to spend time talking with them. That's it. Talking with them to improve their ability to communicate, to work.

I'm having a blast making postcards on the heavier paper samples we received at last summer's Urban Sketchers Chicago confab. I've sent four to representatives, sent a couple as a swap and will save the rest to send on March 15 to Donald Trump.

The interesting thing is that because of befriending the Syrian family, I've tasted food I never heard of, made an unplanned visit to the Art Institute of Chicago, which also took me into parts of the Maggie Daley Park where I haven't been and played tag for the first time in years. One of the kids called me old, but what the hell? It was fun.

With the postcard making, I actually paid attention to the paper types and discovered how much I love the Faber Castell Pitt pens that were given away. The many tones of grey to black, that I likely would never have bought myself, are helping me with value studies. And, as a side note, I'm not just watching tv.

Seriously, watch this documentary either on Netflix or buy it on You Tube for $3.99. And, tell us what you think. I know I will still be thinking about it.

Thinking about making postcards? 

Keep in mind that cards have to meet certain requirements. To qualify for mailing at the First-Class Mail postcard price ($.34), it must be:

Rectangular

At least 3-1/2 inches high x 5 inches long x 0.007 inch thick

No more than 4-1/4 inches high x 6 inches long x 0.016 inches thick

Otherwise they are the same cost as a letter.

Need an address? Google your zipcode with the office, Address Senator 60015. There are other ways, but that's an easy path.

The above info has been fact checked. It took about 1 minute. Why the hell doesn't the whitehouse know how to do that? I think I'll write a postcard.