May 16, 2012

Portable Chlorine, 86” x 70” oil on canvas

There isn't much to say except that I have a thing about pools since I was raised near the ocean.

This painting is in the world.

PROJECT: My history of painting
Decade old slides sit in a box on my desk. My task is to scan them and remember them.

April 12, 2012

Stench, 46” x 35” oil on canvas

This painting depicts what can't be seen, the stink of a dead fish. The work is more about water than fish. It was painted about the time that I started to learn about oil spills and other pollutants like mercury in our water.

This painting is in the world.

PROJECT: My history of painting
Scanning one slide at a time from years gone by.

April 4, 2012

Upstream, 60” x 60” oil on canvas

I was learning about the beautiful spawning routine of salmon. I thought it was strange that dams were built, perhaps solving one problem while creating more. We have to wonder how many fish are prevented from traveling their watery roads and confined to a shortened stretch.

This painting is in the world.

PROJECT: My history of painting
I am scanning and sharing a box of very old slides.

March 20, 2012

Hydraulic, 47.5” x 32” oil on canvas

I was reading about our desire to control nature. The number of dams built on the earth, stopping our rivers and slowing the rotation of the earth, are like a tiny tap on the breaks.

This painting is in the world.

PROJECT: My history of painting
I am going through earlier work to share the paintings created in my 20s and 30s.

March 7, 2012

Underground, 80” x 80” oil on canvas

I read about areas designated for the burial of toxic material, a true cover up. I thought about coffins and mummies and how bodies are tucked away to become soil or rulers or plunder. I thought about soil and seeds and how things hidden below the surface have the tendency to reach for light.

This painting belongs to me and hangs on the wall next to my desk.

PROJECT: My history of painting
I am going through an old box of slides and recalling my early paintings. The journey is shared here.

See how reproductions of this painting were used in a collage, The Ragdale Series, in 1999.

March 5, 2012

Canal, 70” x 80” oil on canvas

On an overnight train from Aswan back to Cairo, I slept with a skirt wrapped around my head because the lights in the train would not go off. In the early morning, with the sun coming up brightly over the sandy dunes, our train ran along a canal for about two hours as we neared Cairo. With my head leaning against the glass, I was soon counting the domestic animals dumped in the water to decay.

This painting is "in the world."

PROJECT: My history of painting
A box of slides sits on my desk. I am going through my painting history and will share the journey here. For years, I have been meaning to do this. Now is the time because I am in my studio working on a new series that I will share in the spring! Please enjoy these paintings created while I was in my 20s and 30s.

February 28, 2012

Imbaba, 95” x 84” oil on canvas

"Imbaba," a camel market outside the city of Cairo, is the first painting I created from an actual experience. Traveling through Egypt, I went to the market where hundreds of camels are sold, many trucked up from Sudan, and all with one legged tied up so they could not run. After the auction, people started clearing out so I was able to walk around the grounds quite freely. In the distance, along the enclosure of the grounds, I saw a purple mound. As I walked closer to get a better look, men who were enjoying a hooka and tea, jumped up from their chairs waving their arms telling me, "No. This is not for woman." "No see." But I did see. A dead camel, so old that its skin had turned to a deep purple leather, lay shimmering in the sun. The men motioned for me to turn away. As I turned and followed them, another group of men held a goat and a knife slit its throat open. The blood pooled out onto the sand. That was my first weekend in Egypt and, through many more weekends of travel, I held this image in my mind.

This painting belongs to me.

PROJECT: My history of painting
I am going through a box of old slides, scanning them, and archiving them here.

February 24, 2012

Universes, 70” x 80” oil on canvas

Three people in the universe. Three people close together but so far apart. Notice how they are in the center of their own world?

This painting is "in the world."

PROJECT: My history of painting
A box of slides sits on my desk. I am going through my painting history and will share the journey here. For years, I have been meaning to do this. Now is the time because I am in my studio working on a new series that I will share in the spring! Please enjoy these paintings created while I was in my 20s and 30s.

February 21, 2012

Circus Act, 97” x 101” oil on canvas

I painted this because each year, no matter where you live, the circus comes to town. I have only been to a circus twice in my life and I will never go again. Each time I cried because the captured animals were trained performers with no where to turn.

PROJECT: My history of painting
My current postings are paintings created while I was in my 20s and 30s as I go through an old box of slides.

February 15, 2012

Property Line, 80” x 70” oil on canvas

A painting about divisions, fences, and how land is carved up and owned. Here, a cow is kept in the boundaries that are not found in nature.

This painting is in the world.

PROJECT: My history of painting
I am going back to rediscover my paintings created while I was in my 20s and 30s by scanning a box of old slides.

February 7, 2012

Detonator, 108” x 73” oil on canvas

It was the late 20th century and I was startled at how much land was blown up to get to what was underneath. The practice did not cease.

This painting is in the world.

PROJECT: My history of painting
I am going back to rediscover my paintings created while I was in my 20s and 30s by scanning a box of old slides.

February 2, 2012

Caught, 47.5” x 47.5” oil on canvas

A painting that shows the flight and plight of birds.
This painting is in the world.

PROJECT: My history of painting
I am scanning slides of my early paintings, works created while I was in my 20s and 30s.

January 31, 2012

Extinction 73” x 122”, oil on canvas

A painting that took shape as I read about The Great Auk. It is disturbing how careless man can be. Many of the stories are about unnecessary brutality, rather than survival. Even today I can't seem to shake the end of the story. "The last pair, found incubating an egg, was killed there on 3 July 1844, with Jón Brandsson and Sigurður Ísleifsson strangling the adults and Ketill Ketilsson smashing the egg with his boot."

This painting is in the world.

PROJECT: My history of painting
I am going through a box of slides, containing my early paintings, to scan and share them.

January 23, 2012

Hybrid, 70” x 80” oil on canvas

This painting captures the time when there was wind of new scientific roads. Cloning, gene engineering, DNA modification, and all the technology used to transfer and combine different sources of cells, plant or animal, to create something new. I painted a horse being held immobile in a sling. He seems to have three heads either resulting from an experiment, or denoting terrified movement.

This painting is in the world.

PROJECT: My history of painting
There is a box slides of my early paintings, works created while I was in my 20s and 30s, that I am scanning and sharing now.

January 17, 2012

Hunters, 90” x 101” oil on canvas

I first learned of hunters when we moved to Maine. We lived on the backside of a small mountain, down a dirt drive that hunters with guns slung on their backs would use to access the woods. We heard stories of accidents and people being shot. Not everyone wore orange.

At the time, I was reading Rape of the Wild by Andree Collard with Joyce Contrucci.
This is my first huge painting even though there are several underneath this one. Today, the painting is in storage.

PROJECT: My history of painting
I am scanning slides of my early paintings, works created while I was in my 20s and 30s.

January 13, 2012

Pothole, 74” x 61” oil on canvas

One might think that this painting has to do with urban streets and life. To some extend it does, but there is also a Pothole region in the North American prairies. Pothole Ponds are tiny natural nicks in the earth, caused by moving glaciers, that fill with water and pepper the Midwest grasslands. These "wetlands" are the breeding grounds of a millions of migrational fowl. As big farming and housing developments sprout these shallow wet spots are filled in and planted. The lost potholes disturb bird migration. The "remedy" is a chain of manmade puddles placed along our highways.

This is why I am "into" birds. They saw the land becoming less hospitable way before we did.

This painting hung in my home for some time and is now in my studio.

PROJECT: My history of painting
I am scanning slides of my early paintings, works created while I was in my 20s and 30s.

January 11, 2012

Mechanism, 70" x 70" oil on canvas

This was my first painting where I stepped back and said "Did I do that?" and "Can I do that?" I can't say that I really knew what it was about, but I do recall thinking about engines and motors. The painting captured my feelings about innovations and how we make marvelous things, yet in some cases we have invented silly things.
This painting is "in the world."

PROJECT: My history of painting
A box of slides sits on my desk. I am going through my painting history and will share the journey here. For years, I have been meaning to do this. Now is the time because I am in my studio working on a new series that I will share in the spring!
Please enjoy these paintings created while I was in my 20s and 30s.