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

Below Burnt Rollway Dam and Wordsworth

This painting was done en plein air in Eagle River, Wisconsin, where we have a cabin in the woods, and finished in my studio later. At Burnt Rollway Dam there is a lock and a lift for boats and pontoons going up and down the Eagle River Chain of Lakes. I painted this at the canoe landing (left foreground). My husband is an avid Musky fisherman. Somehow we are going to combine plein-air painting and fishing this summer, most probably with an arrangement like this, where he leaves me on shore for a while.

Here is an excerpt from Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey”:

…For I have learned
To look on nature…
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods….

I too am a “lover of the meadows and the woods”, an inveterate hiker in the North Woods and in the hilly, pastoral landscape of Southwestern Wisconsin. I’ve been to Tintern Abbey too. Wales is gorgeous! The above lines will remind readers of the Bible, I think and hope, of Romans 1:20.
Burnt Rollway Dam, 9×12 on untempered masonite panel, Private Collection

Vincent in Progress

This is a painting I’m currently working on, to be titled “Vincent and the Chocolate Brownie,” after Edna St. Vincent Millay — she went by Vincent, for short. Of all love poets, she is the one who resonates most with me because of her gallant and self-mocking spirit. The following sonnet well illustrates her pluck:

Let you not say of me when I am old,
In pretty worship of my withered hands
Forgetting who I am, and how the sands
Of such a life as mine run red and gold
Even to the ultimate sifting dust, “Behold,
Here walketh passionless age!” — for there expands
A curious superstition in these lands,
And by its leave some weightless tales are told.
In me no lenten wicks watch out the night;
I am the booth where Folly holds her fair;
Impious no less in ruin than in strength,
When I lie crumbled to the earth at length,
Let you not say, “Upon this reverend site
The righteous groaned and beat their breasts in prayer.”

I decided to post this painting at this point to show how I am employing Sgraffito (from Italian “graffiare”, to scratch) in order inscribe a sonnet on the cover of the journal lying beneath the biography, and the gold filigree design on the blue book to the right of the plate. I over-painted a pale pink ground on the journal, then scratched the lines of a sonnet into it. The yellow on the cover of the blue book will be over-painted with blue, then scratched through to the gold. At this point I have not done much work on the porcelain plate or the table cloth beneath the books. When I post the completed painting, I will also post the sonnet that is inscribed on the journal.

Highland Cow

Had I been able to go for a hike around a loch instead of our local arboretum (See April 14 Post), I may have run across some Highland Cattle. These beasts are far shaggier than the mostly Holsteins and Brown Swiss of Southern Wisconsin. This Highland Hybrid is in fact owned by a family of Wisconsin friends though, and is pastured near a private lake. I gave her a ruined castle to look at, as her heritage befits. 5×7, Oil on Canvas Board,, Sold

My Scottish Teacup with Coffee

Here is a Daily Painting I did to refresh my eye. I am having difficulties with a larger painting of one of my favorite models reading, so to refocus on a different project for a while does me good, especially when I’m painting from life instead of a photograph. Again, the pleasant associations of china and tea lift my spirits. Afterward I go out to walk around the Pendarvis Arboretum here in Mineral Point, taking our dogs, Saxon (Yellow Lab) and Pippin (Pug) for a romp. Mineral Point is a lovely old town originally settled by Cornish Miners and built of the local limestone. It seams perfect to come back for hot, Yorkshire Tea and a tea biscuit from the local grocer’s. 5×7 on canvas, Sold

Lemon Cake

“Lemon Cake” is one of my daily paintings. Looking at desserts and china give me instant pleasure and I plan to do more. They remind me of British tea shops with white tablecloths and the company of good friends. 5×7 on canvas, Sold

In life, the worst disasters come from passion. Euripides

My original idea for a painting of Medea was to have Bethany’s (see April 5 post) face reflected in the mirror as she sees the reflection of her husband, Jason, and his lover, Glauke, reflected in the glass of wine. I found, however, that the reflection in the mirror was so much smaller than the back of the model standing in front of it, that I decided I must have my model turn around and look backward in order to paint her face. I used the rather lurid lamp light to give it True Crime Story feel.

Medea is one of the strongest and most fearful women in Greek mythology. She is the betrayed wife of Greek hero, Jason. In the opening scene of Euripides play, the nurse to Medea’s and Jason’s children warns: “In truth the man that incurs her hate will have no easy task singing a song of triumph over her.”

In Medea’s own words, “Let no one think of me that I am humble or weak or passive; let them understand that I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. To such a life, glory belongs.”

9×12 oil on untempered masonite panel, $300.00 USD