Author Archives: CP

Turtle Cheesecake

There may be a poem about cheesecake somewhere, but unfortunately (….or perhaps fortunately!) I don’t know one. So, lacking a poem that relates to my painting, I have every excuse to post one by Shakespeare. (Did you know that Peter O’Toole knows every one of Shakespeare’s Sonnets by heart? Why don’t I have a brain like that?)

LVI

Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said
Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
Which but today by feeding is allay’d,
Tomorrow sharpen’d in his former might.
So, love, be thou; although today thou fill
Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,
Tomorrow see again, and do not kill
The spirit of love with a perpetual dulness.
Let this sad int’rim like the ocean be
Which parts the shore, where two contracted new
Come daily to the banks, that, when they see
Return of love, more blest may be the view;
Or call it winter, which being full of care,
Makes summer’s welcome thrice more wish’d, more rare.

Turtle Cheesecake, 6×8, Oil on Canvas Board, Sold

No Frigate Like a Book

I feel certain I will not be introducing a new poem to anyone; this poem by
Emily Dickinson is so famous to bibliophiles. I have decided to post it though, since it expresses this painting perfectly.

I completed this painting yesterday just in time for Gallery Night in Mineral Point (WI) this Saturday. I worked on making the receding edges soft and the illuminated ones sharp. I like particularly the sheen on the fabric of the chair arm and the blend of soft colors in the hands.

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears the human soul!

— Emily Dickinson

No Frigate Like a Book, Oil on Canvas, 20×24, Sold

Cheese Danish and Rose Petals

I finished this painting Saturday instead of last week due to some medical procedures I had to have done during my regular painting days. I’m painting from life, so I need natural daylight and can’t work in the evening.
This is one of my favorite plates and the rose petals come from my new Falstaff English Rose, right outside my studio door. How I do love china pieces and white linen for breakfast! They remind me of scenes from All Creatures Great and Small, the television series, where James, Siegfried and Tristan are clinking their tea-cups in their saucers, carving up a piece of good Yorkshire bacon and stuffing crumpets in their mouths before heading out into the brisk air (and a displaced calf bed), and Mrs. Hall bustling around making tart observations.

Cheese Danish and Rose Petals, Oil on Canvas,8×10

The Unlikeliest Hunting Dog

Despite the market wisdom of Daily Painter blog gurus, that one shouldn’t blog a painting on a Friday, and because this was the week that my daughter went to France and didn’t have a thing to wear (meaning that I had to spend two days shopping and doing laundry), I am blogging on Friday.

I couldn’t come up with a solitary line of poetry out of my overtaxed brain to describe this “unlikeliest hunting dog”, my Pug, Velvet, with pheasants. The humor is all in the picture and in Velvet’s overt response to the “take”. It was my husband, Matt’s, joke. He took the picture and surprised me with it. I think it makes a wonderful, counter-Field and Stream-culture painting.

Mighty Hunter, 5×7 on canvas board, Artist’s Collection

Bust of a Victorian Girl on a Red Chair

I pretty much finished this painting today with the scent of lilacs blooming around the house and wafting in through the screen doors. It’s darkish outside and the air is increasingly humid. Occasionally splatters of rain strike the windows. However, mentally I’ve been junketing with Amelia Peabody in brilliant, hot Egypt. I didn’t initially like Elizabeth Peter’s formidable, archaeologist heroine because I thought her unbearably conceited and her husband, Emerson, beyond endurance. I’ve become used to them now, as one does to good people one spends time with. Eventually one becomes immune to their more obnoxious idiosyncrasies. I would quite like to meet Amelia now, although I still can’t stomach her husband. (Amelia is blind though. I do so wish she’d dump him for Sethos.) Perhaps this bust is of the lovely, orphaned, rescued and adopted Nefret.

Bust of a Victorian Girl, oil on canvas, 12×16, Private Collection

The Old Trysting Tree I

It’s spring, the beginning of a long riding season!

I’ve been working again on the idea of an out-of-the-way trysting place, where lovers met on horseback or on foot and in secret. I was inspired by a print I bought in an antique store I was passing in Minnesota — it must have been on a calendar or the illustration for a literary magazine — and bought because I loved the idea.

This painting is my first effort, perhaps I should say “installment”. The model for the girl is my daughter’s friend, Katie, on her horse, Dillon. (For Portrait of Katie, see Polishing Her Boots in my Gallery at nonahyytinen.com.)

This past weekend I tried another pose, with my daughter, Iphigeneia, on her horse, Pelee. I imagine her finding the place and touching it’s barely discernible initials carved into the bark of an old oak. I’ll post it as soon as I’m finished. In the meantime, I’m still working on the Bust of the Girl on the Red Chair.

Here’s a lyric of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s:

The Betrothal

Oh, come, my lad, or go, my lad,
And love me if you like.
I shall not hear the door shut
Nor the knocker strike.

Oh, bring me gifts or beg me gifts,
And wed me if you will.
I’d make a man a good wife,
Sensible and still.

And why should I be cold, my lad,
And why should you repine,
Because I love a dark head
That never will be mine?

I might as well be easing you
As lie alone in bed
And waste the night in wanting
A cruel dark head.

You might as well be calling yours
What never will be his,
And one of us be happy.
There’s few enough as is.

The Old Trysting Tree I, 8×10 on canvas, $160.00 USD

The Contemplation of Antique Beauty

This photo doesn’t really do the painting justice, so I will try to redo it and hopefully achieve a wider nuance of colors. This photo looks quite fiercely turquoise. However, I wanted to blog today, so here goes: I began this painting as a study for a larger one, but realized that there really wasn’t enough room for the other element in the planned picture, my friend Stacy’s glamorous legs and shoes. So, I changed gears, painted out the background, drove downtown to a wonderful Antique Shop in Mineral Point, Gundry and Gray, looking for another subject. I found this Victorian (?) bust of a young woman. It was just the thing to go with the carpet, I thought. My other model is my pug, Pippin, who will no doubt figure prominently in future paintings.

Blue Pug and Bust, 6×8, Oil on Canvas, Sold

Vincent and the Chocolate Brownie

I completed this painting a few days ago, but couldn’t take a picture as my camera was on loan. The Brownie is from Panera Bread, and believe me, it was difficult not to pluck it off the plate and eat it, instead of painting it.

I’ve already written how much I love the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Originally I was going to paint one of her poems, written on parchment and laid over one of the books, but in the end I inscribed the sonnet onto the journal. I have many such journals. I keep them, writing down the details of each day, so that I will have a testimonial in future years to satisfy myself that I acted as the protagonist of my life. I think we all feel at times that the obligations and distractions of life are engulfing the self that matters most to us.

Here’s the Sonnet:

That Love at length should find me out and bring
This fierce and trivial brow unto the dust,
Is, after all, I must confess, but just;
There is a subtle beauty in this thing.
A wry perfection; wherefore now let sing
All voices how into my throat is thrust,
Unwelcome as Death’s own, Love’s bitter crust,
All criers proclaim it, and all steeples ring.
This being done, there let the matter rest.
What more remains is neither here nor there.
That you requite me not is plain to see;
Myself your slave herein have I confessed:
Thus far, indeed, the world may mock at me;
But if I suffer, it is my own affair.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay

Vincent and the Chocolate Brownie, Oil on Canvas, 10×10, Sold