Saving My Work

It’s been a while. I used to blog regularly.

I totally enjoyed it and would like to get back to it. However, I’ve grown away from the habit of saving my work. So you’re getting a low level rant instead of the pearls of wisdom I planned to present to you and lost somehow.

I forgot to hit the save button.

Simple. Duh.

Maybe I could reconstruct my little poem. 

But it wouldn’t be the same.

I’ll just tell you that it felt good to describe my creative process. That the snowy beach pictures I’ve been painting speak quietly to me in a soothing voice. And I hope they speak to you too. BTW thanks Michele B for the fabulous photo that inspired this pic.

Well wow hello! I had no idea that this blog was live. I know now that there are still some settings in place and that there are still a few subscribers because I heard from you that you got the pictures. 

I’ll be in touch once I sort it out.

Calendar pics 2021

 

The cost of impatience

To graduate from cooking school I was required to do a three month internship. My friend was the chef at an executive dining room of an international bank on Wall Street. She arranged for me to work with her and her top-notch staff.
The sous chef had demonstrated how to assemble a tower of grilled veggies and present them beautifully on a plate. Practicing on my own, I had gotten as far as cutting, assembling and cooking, but the plating had not gone well. When asked to prepare the dish for customers waiting in the dining room, I held my breath and I may have closed my eyes during the delicate grill-to-plate transfer operation.
The tower came undone and zuchini went flying in all directions. To make it worse, I shrieked so loudly that some waiters rushed into the kitchen looking for casualties. I was mortified. My lack of experience coupled with impatience and anxiety prevented me from going slowly, focusing and seeing it through.
What has all this got to do with my painting of a bald cyprus? While I have painted this tree a number of times, I haven’t given it the time and practice needed in order to get the desired outcome. Seems like sometimes I’m just too impatient.

Leaf me alone

I was out of sorts, being a grump puss and not productive at all.  So when Carol, a new friend in the watercolor club, showed me a bag full of leaves that she collected, I was happy and interested in having a closer look. I loved them! Seagrape leaves. I’d only ever seen them shiny and vibrant green; never dried and brittle like these. She generously gave me one and we traded ideas on how we might make use of them. After a few false starts, I packed up my stuff and headed home.

Sitting at my easel, soft jazz playing, I turned over my new leaf, started to paint, and this is what emerged.

Been here

I’ve become fascinated with cypress trees. I think they have a lot of character. I’ve made a number of attempts to paint them in their natural environment which is always water. It’s usually all dark and dripping with vines and forest litter. Very dense and steamy.

So I was on my, I dunno, 88th attempt when I decided to swap out the water for land. Soon I was painting a path and flowers. Here’s the funny part; I have painted this same picture before. Actually I’ve painted it a few times, but with different trees. Birches, oak, maple, pine. Yes, those are all in the northeast.
And I’ve followed this path before, too.

Where did it lead to? Good question.  🎶🎵🎵. I’ve been so many places in my life and time....🎵

Let it in, let it out

Yes, there is a whole lot going on in my head. Yes I did wake up in the night and not be able to go back to sleep. Yes, I tried to transform some of that heady energy by using a painting process that has worked many times before; painting a path to lead me to a more quiet, peaceful place. I guess before I could reach such a state, I had to clear away a bunch of stuff. There’s still lots more that has to go.

Of course, someone else might look at this piece and think that the artist didn’t know when to stop.

They would also be right.

Can’t see the forest for the trees.....

“The Berkshires has mountains, tall evergreens and birches!” I was pining again🤪 Florida has big beautiful sky, endless ocean and sand. I have produced over 30 pictures of beach since before the move. No complaints. When I needed to cleanse my pallette 🤪, I did a few abstracts. Fine. The truth is, after that,  I was feeling stuck. Would start a picture and wreck it. I was uninspired. “Florida is flat. Everything is landscaped and looks the same, I complained.”

Well, you never know when and where you will find inspiration. Thank you dear friend, Edith Dankowitz, for your beautiful pictures of Morikami Park, not 10 minutes from here. Your photos energized me enough to create a landscape of my own. For today, I’m back on track.

No words

All I can say about this picture is that it felt good to create something so freeing.

Here spot

To keep from losing balance and getting dizzy, a dancer will focus on one ‘spot’. With each rotation, she returns her gaze to her spot. 

When feeling overwhelmed, it can feel like I’m spinning. Finding the one thing to focus on can help to restore some balance. It can be difficult to choose the one spot as so many are calling out for attention and they all seem equal in importance. But I can only do one thing at a time, really. If I don’t pick one thing, one little thing, I got no thing. So any spot will do in a storm.

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That’s how life has  been feeling.

Painting has not been joyful either. It feels like I forgot why and how. After several attempts at yet another beach scene, I put all those images aside and allowed myself to just apply paint to paper willy-nilly. Then I went in with smaller brushes and added some texture, etc.
Now, this felt good! I didn’t have to stay within the lines!

Where are the oars?

Lot’s of challenges lately. I knew I needed to change the energy so I joined a watercolor club. I’m still feeling sort of  “up the creek without a paddle”, but at least I started painting again. Painting helps me feel better, but sometimes I need to feel better in order to paint...

Continuing the water theme, thought I’d try something new. Here’s my first boat.
Watercolor and oil pastels
7 1/2” x 11”

Oops. Forgot to post this one.

I do not post everything I paint. I often go through quite a bit of paper, especially when I’m working with some new material or subject matter. That’s just part of the process.
This one I did a couple of weeks ago when I was playing with masking fluid. I didn’t knowwhat to say about so I put it aside....
Might as well post it.

Words and pictures, etc.

Blogging continues with experienting with masking fluid. Alternate layers of watercolor and the masking here with simple shapes to see how it works. The masking stuff is going to take some practice and imagination, but it interests me...

Words and pictures again

I belonged to a writing group for a number of years. The first time I attended, the leader started our session with a brief meditation. Eyes closed, I envisioned the path she described and followed it until I drifted off and went to la la land. When I opened my eyes I was surprised to see a large painting on the wall across the room and in it the path I just envisioned. Of course, you might not think this remarkable, but I began to lovingly paint paths as a result of that experience. And the end is never in sight.

Words and pictures continued

 I’ve been thinking so much about how to sell my pictures in Florida. Truth is, I know so little about the art world here. I know so little about selling art anywhere. I had a number of exhibits in Massachusetts. I sold a number of  pieces over the years; originals as well as prints. I still have stacks of artwork. But last night I made a decision. I’m just going to make paintings for now. This is a whole new world. New colors, new f eelings, new everything. I’m not going to worry it. I’m just going to enjoy making pictures.  So then, this idea popped into my head for using maskIng fluid and watercolor. Add oil pastel. Hmmmm

Words and pictures, too

Love this! Perfect for this week’s prompt. I don’t know who to give credit to, but thanks for the chuckle.

Words and Pictures

I’m a poetry lover wannabe. I have difficulty understanding poetry. My friend Christine Polk explained her poetry to me by saying that her poems were just thoughts that she’d written down.

Oh. That helped.

While I have been painting mainly sky, ocean and shore for months, she has taken walking trips to various coasts. She wrote her thoughts about her experiences and made this beautiful book of her words and my pictures.

Sound and music-how it affects my drawing, continued

I will often don earphones and listen to Pandora on my Ipad as I draw. I like rhythmic music. It feels energizing and expansive. For me, aligning with the music while painting can be transformative. It’s like the last part of the yoga class when the ethereal music comes on and we do deep relaxation. I know I’m being still but I really go way out there. The difference between the yoga experience and the art experience is that I’ll have an image I can look at over and over that can instantly bring me back, in mind and body, to that lovely place. If when others look at my work, they have some positive, visceral response, I’m thrilled. And so grateful for the positive feedback.

Blog prompt: Music and sound: how it affects my drawing

For now, we live in a furnished rental apartment. I’ve carved
out a piece of the living room to serve as a studio. My folding table fits perfectly under the window. Through the blinds and the bars of the breezewayg railing, I can see the canal and more condos lined up on the other side, their reflections in the water. I thought we would have tv noise from hard of hearing neighbors, but the buildings are solid concrete and it’s actually rather quiet here.

Fortunately, Millie is willing to watch sports with the sound off if I’m painting when we’re together in the living room. It’s new for us to be together 24/7 and I think we’re doing very well, but we Libras need quiet time and we can easily sit in companionable silence.

Music and sound

This week’s prompt is Music and sound; how it affects how I draw.
This is an interesting topic for me and rather timely, too. Relocating to Florida has been a radical change. For over 20 years I lived in the beautiful Berkshires of western Massachusetts. I had a whole room to myself for an art studio. Two large windows faced out onto the neighbors property. Their house and barn sat back from the road, on a hill. Their front yard was wooded and an outline of the mountains beyond showed through the trees. The only sounds were the birds calling out to each other, their squawks echoing in the tall pines. I painted that view many times, in every season. The quiet and peaceful scene helped to reduce the noise in my mind and allowed me to produce many serene images. Here are a couple from the archives.

Density and light

This week’s prompt is “density and light”. Living in the Berkshires for over 20 years, I grew accustomed to painting the view from my studio window; dense with trees, shrubs and mountains. If you’ve been following my posts, (you can subscribe at andreafeldmanstudio.blogspot.com), you know that for the past several months, I’ve been painting sky, water and sand. Those pictures, of Florida, are very light; simple, sunny and expansive. Today’s picture is also Florida, but it is rather dense. It has a different feeling. It felt different in my body to paint it. Tighter.