Blue Hydrangeas

Blue Hydrangeas: Homage to Margaret, oils on canvas panel, 12" x 9." Contact artist for price.

Last Sunday was the Fourth of July, and much too hot to be outside for any length of time. I wanted to paint a still life with a red-white-and-blue theme, but all I had on hand were the last of these blue hydrangeas from my garden: a lace-cap variety with deep blue flowers surrounding the foamy centers and an ever-blooming type with the classic light blue clusters.

Blue hydrangeas always bring to mind my mother-in-law Margaret--she used to have many bushes of this variety growing all around the shady yard of her house in DC. These hydrangea flowers vary in color from pink, deep purple to light-blue depending on the PH of the soil--the more acid the soil the bluer. Hers, growing under a blanket of leaves from the huge oak trees, were a lovely shade of sky-blue. She liked to cut the flowers to display in this graceful robin's-egg blue vase, where they made one feel cool in the wilting summer heat.

The yellow tablecloth, brought back from one of my trips in Provence, made a great backdrop for the flowers and vase--the colors just sizzle!

Summer Heat

Summer Heat, oils on canvas panel, 11" x 14." Contact artist for price.

We got a short break from the heat last week--all of a sudden the air cleared, and the temperatures and humidity dropped to more pleasant levels. On Saturday morning when I went out, the temperature was beginning to rise again. I decided on Brookside Gardens once more--there in the shady path behind the pond I could paint the same gazebo on the island from a different angle.

At this time of the year, the crape-myrtle with its rose-pink blossoms contrasts nicely with a purple beech and the vegetation in a wide range of greens. I started painting at eleven in the morning and finished around two-- you can almost feel the heat of high noon in this piece.

Fay's Bloomers

Fay's Bloomers, oils on canvas panel, 14" x 11." Contact artist for price.

MAPAPA had announced an invitation to paint during an open house at a private garden in Davidsonville. As a garden lover, this seemed like a wonderful opportunity to me, but the day promised to be another scorcher--better get an early start. There were a few people set up in the driveway when I got there and buckets of tagged plants lined up. I gathered they were volunteers to help with plant sales, and  introduced myself as a MAPAPA member coming to paint.

Fay's Bloomers is designated as a display garden for the American Hemerocallis Society. The garden covers about 1.4 acres and is beautifully landscaped with hundreds of day-lilies of every imaginable variety and color, as well as many other unusual ornamental perennials. Well-placed statues of maidens made nice focal points for the flower beds, with whimsical ornaments like elves, iridescent birdbaths, and garden balls tucked in here and there for fun.

With so much beauty all around it was hard to choose what to paint. Eventually I found a shady spot on one side of the lot where the woods behind made a good backdrop for the riot of color in the flower beds. I wanted to give a sense of the expanse of the garden, so I exaggerated the rise of the slope a bit to make it more dramatic. The painting was finished around noon; I took it back to the car and got my lunch and another bottle of water out. It must have been over a hundred degrees inside the car parked in the sun--both were very warm.

I ate my lunch under an unusual Japanese maple shading the patio--was it "Palmatum Beni Kawa"?-- I forget. Fay and two other volunteers were sitting there and we chatted in between their attentions to the customers.

The heat and humidity were increasing but I wanted to make the most of this lovely garden, so I opted to stay for a second painting in the afternoon. I wanted to focus on just a few flowers, to treat them as a still life. I walked around looking for a variety that appealed to me the most and settled on 'Tom Wise'--one of the gentlemen there told me this was a relatively old variety hybridized in the 1980's.

'Tom Wise' Close Up, oils on canvas panel, 9" x 12." Contact artist for price.

Its deep scarlet red overlaid with orange-yellow offered a wonderful opportunity to use my cadmium colors almost straight from the tube--but the plant was in a spot in the merciless sun. I worked as fast as I could, taking frequent breaks in the shade to cool off--the heat was unbearable--and managed to last long enough to come up with this. I left the garden around five, completely exhausted but happy with my day's work.

Old Crownsville Farm

Old Crownsville Farm, oils on canvas panel, 9" x 12." Contact artist for price.

For our last class of the session we met at the same farm in Crownsville as the week before. It was a gorgeous June day: not too hot nor humid. We walked around for a bit, once again discussing the finer points of site selection for composition.

Sometimes as artists we can re-arrange the landscape a bit to improve a composition, such as moving a tree from one side to another, raising or lowering the horizon line, or re-arranging the line of a road or hill. But there are views and angles, no matter how interesting, that present problems too difficult for the painter to solve. These are best left alone--the artist can only invent so much, but when we get too far away from what our eyes can verify, our inventions fail to convince.

We picked this particular view because it has all of the elements for a great composition: a nice curving road to lead the eye into the painting, old ramshackle outbuildings in the foreground for a focal point, trees in the middle ground and a bit of distance in the background. We emphasized the distance by exaggerating the color differences between the rear plane and the middle ground, pushing the colors to the violet-blue spectrum.

Fun with Cuban Zombies

Cuban Zombies (Clockwise from upper left): Zombie Raul, Zombie Che SOLD, Zombie Fidel, Zombie Dalia, Zombie Mariela. Five 3" x 2" oil paintings for sale at The Soundry, $75 each, or $250 for all five.

I signed up to create five tiny 3" x 2" oil paintings for the "Baby Canvases II" show at The Soundry because the idea seemed like a lot of fun (I'd done a similar project for Art House last year, the Canvas Project. and everyone loved my Zombie--it was selected for an exhibit at the Atlanta Airport).

That is how I came across The Soundry. It's a really cool new concept in independent artist spaces--a combination coffee shop/internet cafe/performance/artist studios/co-op gallery space that promises to start a new trend and put Vienna, VA on the DC art map.

Cuba has been in the news recently because of the death of one of the political prisoners on a hunger strike and the subsequent escalation of repression against their relatives, the Ladies in White, so it seemed timely to make a little fun of the old dictator and his entourage. If there's one thing evil can't stand it's being laughed at.

I turned each of these characters into movie-style zombies: a senile Fidel Castro maniacally poking his finger in the air--his brother Raul mimicking him; a woozy Che Guevara pointing his gun at you. The female contingent was represented by Fidel's current wife Dalia, an elderly fashion maven trying to look still beautiful, and Raul's daughter Mariela, who has been assigned the role of advocate for tolerance towards homosexuals (in a traditionally homophobic machista Revolution!) holding something that might be a bloody microphone, or is it a penis?

If you live in the DC area, go out to the Soundry, enjoy the show, and scoop these great original miniature paintings at a bargain price. The opening is next Saturday night June 26 from 7 to 10 PM. If the five little pieces don't sell there, they will auctioned off here on this blog at the end of the show in July. If they do sell but you'd like to have some Cuban zombies of your very own, I will be happy to produce a similar version of any or all of the zombies for you--just Email your request and contact information.

Chapmans Paint Out

The Potomac from Chapman's Forest, oils on canvas panel, 11" x 14." Contact artist for price.

Last Sunday there was a MAPAPA-organized paint out at Chapman's Forest. Naturally, I wanted to be part of it, so I arranged to spend the weekend with my friend Patrise in Acokeek. I wanted to paint in Piscataway Park on Saturday afternoon, but it was so hot, I put it off until late afternoon, when the shadows started lengthening. I knew just the view I wanted: the small inlet at the mouth of the creek with a strip of trees framing the distant banks on the other side of the Potomac. The short walk to the bridge across the creek, dragging my equipment in that heat exhausted me, but the light was inspiring.

A small group of fishermen appeared up just as I was setting up. The clouds in front of me were a light peach color in the late afternoon as I was laying down the sky in my painting, while behind me, deep gray clouds were moving in. I had the hazy banks blocked in and started on the water. One fisherman leaving passed me, but the rest stayed put. I was beginning to hear the low rumble of distant thunder in the clouds... perhaps the storm would pass us by? I held off packing, but soon, the other fishermen started to pack up and I had to admit the deluge was about to overtake us. I knocked down my gear as fast as I could, barely cleaning my brushes in my rush to leave. I picked up my stuff and took off running; it started to pour as I ran down the path. The trees there are so thick they protected me from the downpour until I reached my car, where I got drenched getting my gear back in the trunk.

I changed into some dry clothes back at the house. In the evening we made a lovely dinner with some baby back ribs I'd brought; several of Patrise's neighborhood friends joined us for a potluck dinner.

Next morning we got a late start--it was already too hot for Patrise to join the paint-out (as a Michigan native she's not well-adapted to our muggy summers) so she led me there, to take her dogs for a walk. I dressed in my coolest linen & cotton painting duds, but by the time we arrived at eleven AM, the heat was already oppressive. It took me two trips to bring all my things to the house (I included a chair so I could sit comfortably while painting). There was only one logical place to set up in that heat: the back porch of Mont Aventine, where the view is fabulous.

The organizer, Barbara, and three other ladies were there. Their paintings were already quite far along, so they must have been there for a couple of hours. I started mine, trying the composition devices I'd found useful for this particular view, but had not covered all of my panel yet when Barbara asked us to break for lunch and a critique. She and the others had finished their paintings, (in fact one lady working in pastels had done two) and she and one lady left after that. I struggled with my colors all afternoon, trying to convey the atmosphere of the hazy, humid day, and chatted with some of the volunteers. I finished around four and packed up. On the second trip walking back to my car I saw my teacher, Lee Boynton, coming down the drive with his kit. He had told me he was interested in painting here, but wouldn't be able to get there until late in the day. As it was, he seemed to be arriving just in time for another afternoon downpour--the skies were darkening. He was painting furiously when I left.

On the way back to Accokeek, I drove through a bit of light rain--the tail end of a shower that seemed to be centered over Fort Washington--it cleared up quickly. I showed Patrise my day's work, packed up and said my goodbyes to start back home for our usual Sunday dinner with David. I drove home in the most beautiful light, wishing I could have stayed to paint at Chapman's until then. I can't wait for our Friday morning class to see how Lee's painting turned out.

Funky Barns

Funky Barns, oils on canvas panel, 11" x 14."

Last Friday our plein air class met at a farm belonging to one of the students. There we found these wonderful old barns with sagging roofs and tumble-down pillars, old barrels and feed carts. The complex form of this group of buildings was the perfect challenge for the class at this point. It forced us to draw accurately in perspective and think of how to articulate the forms with color.

The weather couldn't have been better--a lovely June morning, not too hot nor humid. The space for us was a bit tight as the view was contained between other out buildings, but I managed to snag a corner where I was fairly certain the shade would last until around noon. We expect to return next week for the last class of the session.

Strange Flowers and Nocturnal Sightings

Photo by Herb Borkland

Yesterday afternoon, walking back to the house from the mailbox, I happened to see this strange organism in one of my flowerbeds. What on earth? It appeared to be the fruiting body of some fungus growing on the bark mulch, so I googled "orange-red fungus" and came up with the stinkhorn family. I'd never seen nor heard of these before, but evidently they are common in many parts of the globe and they are weird-looking, some might even say disgusting.

The most likely species I would say are either Clathrus columnatus or Mutinus caninus. According to the website, the brown slime that covers the tip of the fungus (and smells like rotting meat) attracts flies and insects which eat the slime and thus spread the plant's spores. This specimen was already disintegrating, so it's hard to tell what the original configuration might have been. The pine bark mulch must have carried the spores that grew with the recent rains. I'll have to keep an eye out for more, in hopes of a positive identification.

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A few nights ago, Herb and I were outside sniffing the night air (we like to do this before retiring for the night during the warm weather) and happened to see a red fox high-tailing it up the street on the opposite side. The fox was carrying something in his mouth--a small rodent, a rat perhaps? He heard us talking softly and hesitated a bit as he was crossing under the street light. Herb remarked that the poor creature looked nearly starved, yet here he was taking his prey somewhere... I figured he was taking it back to his brood; fox kits born earlier in the spring would be weaned by now but not old enough to hunt on their own. The fox continued at a pace close to a run and disappeared up the street--our encounter lasted perhaps all of ten seconds.