What's on my travel easel?

I set up next to the American Falls on the Ontario side and had a 5 hour day working on a casual little underpainting. Here's my mini study of the icon.

Self as Thing

I've just started choking down my summer reading. Why oh why do I wait till August for nonfiction? But the first book, "The Tears of Things: Melancholy and Physical Objects" by Peter Schwenger suits me just fine. It seems a subtle treatise for someone like me who purports to paint still life, however bent...

Nitsrik.com Finally Updated and Up to Full Website Power!

Visit my web page, which my husband has kindly programmed simply and elegantly. I really appreciate it Jon! You are very good! I have paintings, CV, and a statement all coherently in one place. I will update this periodically with more work, as this will be my professional site. As you may or may not have already guessed, this is my messy thinking space here at chez FACOE. Love or hate my sloppy, solipsistic, and neurotic ramblings, at least I show up every now and then! Till sometime soon!

Painting in the Forest!!!

Yvonne, Clare, and I went to the woods in Waltham and painted. It was wonderful! There was a felled tree, pine needles everywhere, a whole bunch of people walking dogs, and a big PILE of tree limbs. I was enamored of the pile of tree limbs with stumps arrayed around it. I felt it implied narrative. I have been looking for a way to lay my characters and objects in a scene, this may be it. Plein air paintings as studies for far stranger compositions in studio? We will see. I will keep posting some of these breaks from the routine. Interestingly enough, my limited palette persists in odd form out of doors!

Self Portrait as a Young Pile

Cat Scans

I hope that sometimes my literalness is funny and not just grotesque or insipid. I strive to be humbly advancing guilt and fault with humor and repetition. Corporeality is but an offshoot of cartoon to me.
Also, I have very patient cats.

And

Sketchbook Blues and Losing my Head

On my reading list for the summer is a book called "Losing our Heads: Beheadings in Literature and Culture." Though I seem to be adding more shoulders in my sketchbooks and paintings, I don't know what that is about.. plaster casts or statuary maybe? I've been looking at painting/beheading for quite a while, as a form of self-portraiture. And then I just recently watched Simon Schama's Power of Art on PBS dealing with the masterworks of Caravaggio, and was reminded of the murderer artist seeking redemption by inserting self portraiture that was less than flattering into his depictions of martyrs and saints. I also just recently found this beheadings in art website through the Decapitation wiki (sigh, I know using wikipedia is dicey... so sue me). More to chew on. I keep pulling on the skin around my neck.

Ritual

Repetitive study seems my only entrance sometimes.

Mascots

Brutality with wit, an archive of food and absurd humor. What does it mean to redress a debunked hero with a recently and growingly uncelebrated holiday? (I found this collage in my files recently to my delight! The ham has been my mascot since my Aunt cooked it for a family gathering and I had the wherewithal to document its dribbling majesty.)

Against Nature or Against My Nature

I paint cliches and I know it is cliche to harp about not posting to your blog, so here it is, I have been mucking about and was unsure whether or not I wanted to post anything at all. But I have been reading fabulous blogs. Rose is my new favorite bookmark! I have also been reading Edward Winkleman's and Nicole Eisenman's blogs like an addict. More studio shots of paintings I'm not yet comfortable with coming right up!

Display

Masks from Venice

In honor of the start of the Venice Biennale and all of its coverage. Woot. FYI, these are someone else's travel photos, I've never been to Venice.. wanna go though. The mask on the right is Casanova..

Steak, Food Study

Aesthetic Relativism

I'm trying to explore how to be more expressively blunt. That one can trill with the brush in painting grapes and flourishes of marks but also scrawl aggressive and simple words and phrases next to them makes me satisfied with the range of what is available to me.