the end of March

I have been thinking about art for many years. Recently, it has seemed to me to be an expression of wordless feelings, an exercise in freely using colors and images to convey feelings that I may not have reached otherwise. The act of making art helps me think through feelings or ideas just as writers use words to make them think through ideas. I just finished a small book called "But is it art?" by Cynthia Freeland. I am interested in theory and what is expressed by thinkers about art. I was delighted by this quote from Susan Langer "Sometimes our comprehension of a total experience is mediated by a metaphorical symbol because the experience is new, and language has words and phrases only for familiar notions.....But the symbolic presentation of subjective reality for contemplation is not only tentatively beyond the words we have;it is impossible in the essential frame of language." I am sure I would not go that far, but language often stops short of some experience or need for expression that comes only with the manipulation of paint. It is to arrive more distinctly formed once a painting is finished. So I have here the painting I mentioned of the woman in her garden.



This view of Concord was just this past week.
Painting outside is slightly different from the thoughts expressed above, although I do allow myself freedom with color, there is still a representation of light and dark and a city.




Dinah and I were out with a Plein air group a couple Sundays ago. The ice was still on the pond but it was great to be in the sun standing on it.
I have Dinah's painting of children on the ice and mine of a tree by the side.

March light

Crazy March weather in NH means a snow storm one day and fifty degrees the next. I plan to be out in the sun this afternoon with a larger group of plein-air friends. The conversation in life drawing added to our group.
I did another painting from the drawings I made but this time I decided to start with the body in green. I wasn't sure where I was going with that start until I was at a Lucinda Williams concert the other night. The vision coalesced and I now see I did not photograph the result but will add it later today. It started with the drawing in the last blog.
I finished a small painting I did from a cross country ski tour I love to make through White Farm area in Concord. Coming back, the view is across a field to a few trees. One afternoon. the late light hit the snow to create a lavender light.
I finished another small painting based on the drawings from a model. I thought her pose suggested vulnerability so I emphasized it with the color of her body. I think the painting stands on its own and uses a pose to create a poem.

stretched thin

The winter, as beautiful as it can be, tries me with the cold, slipping as I walk, having to paint indoors, another gray day. I took one drawing from life drawing and worked it into a small, very small painting. It is 5"x8" on clayboard which sucks up the paint as fast as I put it down. I was experimenting with making the woman pink. The background came along with it.
I think there is more to say about women from the drawings I have made so I will explore making paintings from them.
This one was finished in the studio after starting it from the model. It was interesting to do. How fast time flies by. The sessions with the model are gone in a flash. The time spent later in the studio evaporates in the color of the paint.