And flowers to you! Not yet in my garden, but always in my work area indoors.
If these pics look similar, they are! Although cropped a bit on the bottom in the editing page, the top one is actually a print of the original watercolor/goauche painting. The next three are called, “Fun with the I-phone editing function.”
The phone IS fun! Whereas I used to have to scan the art into the computer, and could scan no more than computer paper-sized work, now I can photograph anything, any size—and just email it to myself, and voila! Into the computer art file.
Wisconsin—February 2021. A scenic old-fashioned winter. Outside, white/white/white everywhere. Beautiful, but most of us in my circle of family and friends are saying “Enough!” Even my Louie (pussycat) is saying “Enough”. (I tend to be anthropomorphic about my cat; we talk to each other a lot.)
Both Louie and I spend a lot of time gazing out through the patio door to the garden and snowy landscape beyond. We watch the bird feeders, for different reasons. (Louie never gets out to fulfill his fantasies.) We wait eagerly for that first sign of life as March approaches, the moment when the returning morning sun blasts into my east-facing patio door, and our resident chipmunks emerge from their dens.
Meanwhile indoors, flowers! Green things, many colored things shooting up from the ground. Life is happening in my art corner. Lots of life emerging on Arches 140lb paper, and on YUPO paper as well.
The above flowers are blooming on a 20″ x 24″ sheet of YUPO—that mysterious poly-something, a kind of shiny non-porous plastic that artists either love or HATE! The “lovers” are those who enjoy throwing paint around (shades of Jackson Pollack) and then standing back to see what will happen.
The “haters” of YUPO are those artists who favor control over their paints, and strive for detailed and accurate representation—illusive and nearly impossible on YUPO.
The above rendering is a mutation. My mind was so entrenched in flowers that I just kept adding, layering, slathering, throwing paint like crazy on the poor sheet of YUPO. Suddenly I realized that I had a huge, gunked-up MESS! It was horrible, even disgusting!
Enter: one of the charms of YUPO. You can wash, even scour the paint off many times and get back to the original with just a twinge of tint. Had the above been painted on actual paper, it would probably have been destined for the bin—although I may have tried to redeem it with gesso.
Anyway, this mess got marched to the sink where it was washed and washed—drenched in running water. I did not scour—but rather just rinsed until the ugly stuff had disappeared down the drain, and what remained—my very first layer—was something I could live with. Then, realizing my tendency to overwork I quit without another stroke.
Flowers in February—blooming from a one-track mind.
An inventory of what I have done in my studio over the last year has proved a bit surprising—or maybe not! For 8 months out of the 12, I have been gimped with ortho issues. A shoulder replacement in late 2017 had only just begun to heal when a hip kicked in saying, “Hey, it’s not fair. I want some of this attention.”
Two major hip surgeries later (the 1st, a total hip replacement and the 2nd, to repair a severely fractured femur with screws, metal hooks, and wires that make me think of civil engineered bridge construction) I am still hobbling and spending much of the time off my feet.
For several weeks it was 1 leg only, to navigate this “kid in an old body” to and from a cozy living room couch (my 24/7 hangout) to a bathroom (about 5 yards away), my piano right behind my couch, and an extra art studio which my wonderful husband set up for me at the nearby end of our dining room table.
Books, limited piano practice which—although done sitting down—wore me out, my French tutorial apps and a Public Television app on my I-pad (I re-watched the entire DOWNTON ABBEY), serial-shopping on Amazon (FUN/FUN/FUN!), Van Cliburn and other geniuses streaming through my devices into our fine speakers day and night (1 of which speakers was conveniently located beside my ear on my 24/7 couch), my knitting (how many cowls does anyone need?), and ART made up my life for much of 2018.
Who needs to cook, scrub floors, vacuum, and dust anyway?
I normally avoid medical discussions except with those professionals to whom Medicare is paying me to complain, but the above diatribe is to demonstrate how life can be a lot of fun under rather strange circumstances! And how art can thrive, when pain and disability prevail. One’s pain can literally be “drowned” in paint, especially the wet into wet method of working which I prefer.
Anyway, my inventory yielded a surprising 35 paintings that I actually like. (There are always the “duds” which get stashed on a shelf for possible reworking or salvaging parts; or sometimes they are so outrageous that I trash them.)
The keepers range from (3) 20″ x 24″ biggies, a 16″ x 20″, a handful of 11″ x 14″ renderings, and a preponderance of 12″ x 16″ paintings—obviously my favorite size. The paintings are predominately woodland scenes and funky individual trees—with a smattering of flowers, a sailboat in trouble, some landscapes with distant castles, a still life (my least favorite), and a huge, totally abstract on Yupo Paper which I LOVE most of all.
Although my inventory preferences are not exactly written in the proverbial stone, they are indicative—and it was fun reviewing a year of art making, body disability notwithstanding.
The year’s earnings amounted to $700.00 which constituted a donation to, and sale at, our local art group’s annual fundraiser. My dislike of office type stuff is such that I can find no record of which paintings I donated. I believe they were “masterpieces” from former years.
Also, I give paintings to interested friends and family members. As with club donations, my right hand (very happily) does not know what my left hand is doing.
I share many of my favorites via prints glued to notecards, thus bragging about my art while facilitating my passion for writing actual letters as opposed to emails.
Above are the end of 2018 renderings, hardly even dry when I photographed them with my I-phone camera. They tend to make me think of Spring, and they are my HAPPY NEW YEAR to you!
Here is a bold venture: a painting which turned out to be too large for the ready-made frames at our local craft stores. I had grabbed an entire sheet of Yupo® and had a blast, painting and thinking I would crop the finished work to fit a 24″ x 20″ frame which I had on hand.  But I was pleased with the entire piece, and couldn’t figure out where, if any, I wanted to sacrifice part of it.
A brainy idea: custom framing. This is pricey indeed, and I will not do it very often.  But the result is satisfying. Below you can see The Big One on a living room wall:
Many layers of gouache were piled onto this painting, over washes of watercolor. Actually called “Waterfall”, this rendering evokes memories of a real waterfall we had on our 14 plus acres up north, where we lived full time for eight years.
Our land bordered on two roads, one up and one down a hill.  Our home was on the downhill road, next to a lake. In the spring, snow and ice melted from the above road and roared downhill to our back yard, over boulders and brush. The sound was stirring, and so loud that it resonated through closed windows. In the summer, the waterfall morphed into a trickling downhill creek—always refreshing to sit beside on one of the big boulders.
How beautiful to have mellow memories, and then to paint them (and have them framed)!
Margaret L. Been — April, 2017
NOTE: Obviously I couldn’t scan this painting on my home scanner, so I photographed it with my cell phone. Because the piece was framed with non-glare glass I could do that. But I failed to get the entire bit into the top photo. In the shot of the painting on the wall with its surrounding environment, you get a better idea of how the waterfall fans out at its base.
. . . is SPRING! That is enough to spring most anyone out of bed in the morning!!! When daylight saving starts in a few days, I’ll think I am home free—bounding into my favorite half of our Wisconsin year.Â
I have a goal in mind. I love to walk; my desire is to carry a sketch book, and sketch along the way. Also, I want to take more photos in my gardens—catching new spring buds, mature flowers, and later in the season those beautiful seedpods.
Suddenly flowers are dominating the art corner in our bedroom. I’m extra-inspired to do flowers thanks to Ann Blockley’s exciting book, EXPERIMENTAL FLOWERS IN WATERCOLOUR.  For breathtaking views of Ann Blockley’s art, you can GOOGLE “UK Artist Ann Blockley”.  Her blog can be accessed through the website, as well—and it’s delightful to read.Â
Along with a focus on flowers, Ann has inspired me to sketch and photograph subjects for painting—landscapes as well as close-ups. I’ve read the same protocol from other artists, but finally the idea is beginning to make sense to me. I’m also beginning to keep a log with each painting, listing the colors I use plus additional mediums such as acrylic ink, acrylic paints, water-soluble colored pencils, etc.  You can detect a desire for more discipline in my approach to painting. Access to galleries has motivated me to make more art more efficiently, while growing and learning.
As for the sketching, I know that I can’t get any worse than I am now at it—so some improvement is bound to follow. The strolling will be a joy in itself. And I already have a lot of garden shots to pore over for inspiration.
Below is a favorite one, and someday I hope to be able to paint this little fellow:
He must have been just out of the nest, with absolutely no fears in his head. I stroked his back; his fur was like silk. He sat docilely, as if he enjoyed the stroking. Then I ran indoors to fetch my camera. When I returned to the garden he was still there waiting to be stroked again.
Our neighborhood prairie preserve:
And a character who came calling one Sunday afternoon when we lived up north:
I didn’t try to pet that guy. I took his picture while sheltered by our living room window.
Anyway, if I choose to render any of the above on my Arches or Saunders Waterford paper, the subjects won’t look anything like they did to begin with! 🙂 So why not just dive in?!
It is no secret that our soul climate on any given day can be reflected in the expressions of our soul—be they in the form of a poem, a song, or a painting. For this reason, counsellors who work with children will pay considerable attention to the “climate” of a child’s art.
I normally spend from 20 to 30 hours a week at my palette. A few days ago I realized that my work was becoming “dark”—not in subject matter, but in actual hue and tone. Skies were murky. Water was muddy, and mountains were drab rather than sparkling. There has been a distinct absence of sunlight, moonlight, and fleecy clouds in recent renderings. I didn’t need to look far afield for the answer to this puzzle; in fact it really wasn’t a puzzle at all. Two weeks ago a family member was diagnosed with cancer. Hence my paintings have darkened.Â
So three days ago I decided, this will never do. I am not a “dark” person—although I love dark skin, and “work hard” to obtain it in the summer! I have passion for light, and so does my loved one who has cancer. There is no way I can help her (or myself) through the days and weeks ahead by “painting dark”!
Now things are looking up in every way. The cancer is Stage II, and it is believed that chemo will not be needed after surgery. And I’ve pivoted my palette, paper, and paints back to the light. The above print depicts a subject I love—a swamp, in this case a “March Swamp” with the sap of life rising above melting snow.
And below you will see another subject of love and light—one that may be wearing you viewers out because I feature it so often:
The Messy Palette . . . 