Back To the Tallulah

"Tallulah, Late September"      16" x 20"    Oil on Canvas
$230   SOLD

Here's the second in my new series of paintings, "In Praise of Mountain Streams."  My subject here is a small section of the Tallulah River, one of the few areas in our mountains that hasn't been invaded by real estate developers.  This river is the one place where Howard and I would go when we needed to recharge our creative muses--miles of roaring waters and huge boulders along side a narrow dirt road.

But it's not nostalgia that bring me back here, rather a trust that this is one place where nature is still in charge.  I need to know that.

Mountain Waters Revisited

York Study      8" x 10"    Oil on Board

The Georgia mountain streams played a large role in my making these hills my home.  Nothing soothes my soul more than soaking in the sounds and smells of a mountain stream whether a tiny trickle or a roaring river and here we have multitudes of both.  The irony of our mountain waters is in the neutrality to human welfare:  they can be the source of life or death, of health or injury, destruction or creation.

Sometimes how they effect our lives depends upon how we approach these waters; at other times, the forces of nature make their own determination.  

Once again this powerful metaphor has caught my attention and is becoming the theme for another spate of paintings.  This small study is the first in this series.

Enjoy this day.  

Dianne

A Look Back

"A Look Back"    8" x 10"    Oil on Canvas
SOLD

From my earliest memory, the metaphor of the sheep has been embedded in my brain.  There's no escaping a metaphor that reaches that far back.  There's no redefining it or rationalizing it:  it continues to live in one's psyche in its original form.  

Perhaps it was the unconscious influence of that metaphor that deepened my experience visiting a local sheep farm back April.  Even though I went to watch the shearing, that's not what made the deepest impression on me.  What impressed me was how after the shearing, each sheep made its way back to the pasture without any supervision.  And second to that, the flock's need to identify the newly sheared sheep before becoming comfortable with its re-entering their company.

The first image catching my attention was one of these sheep.  As I was shooting pictures of his returning to the pasture, he turns his head and looks at me.  That's the image that stuck with me.  That's the image that made the deepest impression, that became a new version of an old metaphor.

During the longest summer I remember, I have kept a brush moving by doing therapy paintings, many little paintings I have no intention of signing or showing.  This little piece is the transition between those therapy paintings and getting back to the painting process.  It's a metaphor all unto itself.

Enjoy your day.

Dianne

Sheep or Baseball

Easing back toward getting my paws ready for functioning at the easel, I've been doing a few gesture drawings in my sketchbook.  Two things getting my attention these days are the sheep shearing I watched in the early spring and baseball.  (If you've not already seen it, you can get a glimpse into the sheep adventure HERE.)

And baseball is one of the few competitive sports I enjoy.  Being a Braves fan, I follow their games religiously.  I decided to try gesture drawing the players while watching the game to discover what a challenge that turned out to be.  The cameras switch from one view to another in a matter of seconds, making it virtually impossible to capture more than a few squiggles at a time, but after my first session I was surprised at how much a few squiggles can reveal about what is going on.

 I have no idea whether these images will later get translated into paintings, nor does it matter.  What matters is that, at last, my hand is able to take a step towards getting back to painting.

Enjoy your Saturday.
Dianne

Paws Update

By mid-summer, I should be able to paint again, and I can't wait!

Dr. Raab repaired my right hand on April 21.  The surgery was totally successful and recovery is coming along beautifully.  I confess that the left hand has suffered a bit of trauma, having to take full duty for both before it was quite strong enough, but it too is regaining momentum.  The most difficult part of this five-month ordeal is holding onto patience.  Experiences like this can teach us a lot about ourselves.

Fortunately, I have been able to continue with my Compose blog, missing only one weekend post.  But I look forward to once again putting brush to canvas and continuing this artistic journey.  Meanwhile, Spring abounds.

Stay tuned.
Dianne

My Paws (pun intended)

I'm a bit inhibited about broadcasting physical slow-downs, but considering this is after all a blog, and taking into consideration that this blog is growing cobwebs, you should probably know that my paws aren't working well these days, so my painting is slow at best and on hold at worst.  For a bit more than a year, I've been fighting carpal tunnel syndrome, a common but limiting and irritating condition, and it's in both hands.

During the past several months, my doctor and I have done every therapy and non-intrusive method we could find, but the injury to both hands is substantial, so once considerable nerve damage was confirmed by a neurologist, my hand surgeon concluded that surgical repair to both hands is absolutely necessary.  (A side note here:  I have the best hand surgeon anywhere, hands down--Dr. Michael Raab.)

As many of you know, the left hand was repaired mid-February.  It is healing nicely, responding well to physical therapy and should be in good shape in a few weeks.  Meanwhile, with the right hand having to take double duty, its condition has degenerated.  So, providing the lefty is able to take over, the right hand will be repaired mid-April, mid-May at the latest.

I'm looking forward to getting both these paws going again and re-energizing my painting life and this blog.  Do stay tuned.

Meanwhile, enjoy your Spring!
Dianne

Paying Attention

Do you ever wonder why it is that you pay attention to some things and ignore others?

I notice I'm drawn to windows, that I'm proned to unconsciously walking to a window and staring at the world outside it.  And during our recent snows, I spent hours watching the squirrels and birds as they scurried to find a morsel.  And almost obscessively I took pictures.  Every formation, every gesture was intriguing. 

I remember from my childhood, my grandmother who we called Mama Cole, used the phrase "make haste" whenever she wanted one of us to get something done in a hurry.  Never "hurry", always "make haste."  It seemed to me as I noticed the speed with which the squirrels were searching for and relishing each sunflower seed, an inner voice was telling them:  make haste.  Was that why I couldn't stop watching?

And so what does an artist do but paint whatever she is paying attention to.  Here's my interpretation of watching those squirrels.

"Making Haste"    Oil on Canvas  16" x 20"

Enjoy your Tuesday.
Dianne

One More Winter Day

I wish I had kept a step-by-step record of this painting.  It began as three birds searching for seeds in the snow.  At the end of the first session, the other two birds had to go:  their presence made the painting seem trite, but taking them away left the remaining bird sitting almost in the middle of the painting.  In fact, the right edge of the bird splits the composition in half--sorta. 

Yet I liked how I'd done the bird, so I set out to find a way to make the composition work by guiding the viewer's eye by using accents of warm light within areas of cool.

We use isolation to bring attention to a subject or to lead the eye to a place we want it to go.  The bird image in this painting is about as isolated as you can get:  its size, its contrast, its gesture all give emphasis to the isolation and by doing so, make the eye cling to the image itself.  I needed to make the eye roam around so that the viewer could register the cold of the snow and the subtle colors in it even though we call it white.

For two days the bird's surroundings morphed.  What began as a snow-covered field became woods in the background that went through many adjustments and deletes until finally there was nothing left to do and that's how you know when a painting is finished.

In this picture, I photoshopped a frame around it to help isolate the painting itself.  This painting needs the frame to be complete.  So what does that tell me?   I'll answer that:  it tells me there's still so much to learn...

Enjoy your Saturday.
Dianne

Why Not Celebrate

Yesterday, for the first time since just before Thanksgiving, I woke up ready to paint.  And just as I had done every day before Howard became ill, I got my coffee, went straight to the studio and touched brush to canvas.  It didn't make any difference what the subject would be, I just wanted to paint.  And so I opened my file of photos I shot from my kitchen window during our last snowstorm and found this male cardinal at the foot of the bird feeder.  

"Why Not Celebrate"    Oil on Canvas   11" x 14"

  

This morning listening to Krista Tippett's "On Being,"  I heard a quote but didn't catch its author:  "Wherever you go, there you are."  Today, with the title of this painting, I add this:  Why not celebrate.

Enjoy your Sunday.
Dianne
(Later:  The "Wherever you go..." quote is from the title of a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn available from Amazon HERE)

Reflections

Today is January 28, the date that my Howard took flight from this earth one year ago.  Folks around here have been watching me like a hawk, so let's put all fears and reluctancies to rest:

Today I am thinking how blessed I am to have been given nearly thirty years with such a brilliant, vibrant and loving human being, so my focus today is not on the parting; rather, the wholeness of being.  How many people on this earth can say that their chosen mate made them more of who they are!

Together, we defied the odds right and left.  We ignored the "common wisdom" of a culture that wagged its finger in our faces and we replaced the "common" with the uniqueness of living our own reality, being convinced that our reality is all we have, that if we humans fake our way through life by trying to be what is acceptable, by sculpting our attitudes and choices to fit into somebody else's idea of how it should be, we become less than who we are, we become small and unhappy.

Our applause was spontaneous.  We each became so certain of our inner selves that we could respond without checking to see if that response was acceptable, whether within our bond or with the outer world.  This inner certainty was our gift to each other, resulting from a mutual, abiding and unqualified love and acceptance one to the other.

And so on this day, the first anniversary of Howard's physical departure which we call death, I am grateful for the creation of this especial human, a most extraordinary being, whose was given the name Howard Gordon Hanson and I am filled with thankful appreciation to have shared that life.

Make this a special day.
Dianne