Seeing Red

Colors represent many things: emotions, organizations, and ideas.

Perhaps, most passionate of these colors may be the color red. In western culture the idiomatic expression, “seeing red” is an expression of anger and rage. Whereas in other countries, the expression could hold an entirely different meaning.

Seeing Red
watercolor
16” x 24”

Consider these cultural and often political dissections. How can we begin to comprehend, let alone see them all?

Are we currently only capable of understanding a fragmented spectrum?

Technical Notes:

I began with a limited palette: perylene red, hansa yellow and a violet.

Eventually, after several layers, the limited palette became more inclusive. I added a few more hues in addition to the original three colors. Having at least one staining color, I learned, was needed.

Then, summer humidity became a major issue. I wanted to address the waves it was causing in the paper. And the significant pulling off the board.

Midway through the painting process, the paper was re-stretched. This meant, taking the paper off the gator board and carefully painting water across the back of the watercolor sheet, soaking it. Then adhering it to the gator board again. I use a staple gun.

Thankfully, it dried flat without any water falling upon or touching the previously painted portion. I considered videoing the process but I was already holding my breath. I didn’t want to add anything else which might distract my focus.

For those of you who are watercolor paper enthusiasts, this piece is painted on 140 lb cold, which means it has a slight texture.pressed Arches watercolor paper.

Why Dead Birds?

Five years ago, a yellow shafted northern flicker flew against the reflection of a building. I studied its markings and painted the macabre.

Most people know the check in one’s spirit that occurs upon finding a bird bereft of life. It isn’t quite right to see something which should be inflight asleep.

In a time before cameras, Audubon shot and killed the birds he painted and studied. And now those deaths on paper are coveted collections. Audubon himself took no pleasure in these killings and said, "The moment a bird was dead, no matter how beautiful it had been in life, the pleasure of possession became blunted for me." (Ornithological Biography, Volume 1)

Death is not foreign to me. I have known it as a reality. Life holds sorrows that sometimes come too early. And they shape us. Truly each encounter is significant and holds meaning. These experiences have taught me that death and grief are not an end but rather a tender step forward.

Through these fallen wings, I observe, learn and am able to speak.

P.S. Bird strikes are a very real issue impacting our planet’s bird population.

birdcollage.jpg

Keeping up with the Joneses

I love an idiom. And the culture it can capture.

"Keeping Up With the Joneses" is spot on American. To me it describes what happens when the American Dream becomes grotesque. When the pursuit of happiness and freedom leads to a warped and twisted captivity.

Keeping Up With the Joneses, Watercolor, 22" x 30"

Keeping Up With the Joneses, Watercolor, 22" x 30"

The idiom finds its origins in a 1913 comic strip by the same title. Arthur R. Momand was the creator and the term made its way into a few silent animations.

Keeping Up With the Joneses, Watercolor, 22" x 30"

Keeping Up With the Joneses, Watercolor, 22" x 30"

Ranging from the accumulation of stuff that quickly loses its luster, sick social graces, self-glorifying chatter, and debt beyond measure - it is a pattern of behavior to appear on equal social-economic footing or ground.

Appearances were significant in my childhood home. I wonder if it was simply my mother's German perfectionism or her attempt to never appear "less than" our fully American counterparts?

Most recently I saw this pull within myself as my children wrestled with their college choices. Was I (or my family)  "less than" because they made one choice over another?  Did my children feel that way?

“But these were essentially the accoutrements that appeal to all people who are not actually rich but who want to look rich, though all they manage to do is look like each other: damasks, ebony, plants, rugs and bronzes, anything dark and gleaming-everything that all people of a certain class affect so as to be like all other people of a certain class. And his arrangements looked so much like everyone else’s that they were unremarkable, though he saw them as something truly distinctive.”
— Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

Finished watercolor, full sheet, 30" x 22"

What Happens to Birds During Hurricanes?

“He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace”
― Mikhail Lermontov

The photo of this bird was shared in a bird group I followed on Facebook. It was captured by someone after a recent hurricane hit the East Coast. And it immediately struck me. What does happen to birds in these storms? Where DO they go? How do they find shelter if caught in the midst of one? Why did this one not escape it?

I asked the photographer if I might use her image as a reference for a painting. She granted permission and since then, I have been immersed in the intricacies of this one's composition.

It captures so much to me.

That there is grace and beauty in dying. And yet confusion as to how a death can look so peaceful with a ballerina like pose. It doesn't seem polite.

It swells in me the grief cycle. Pirouettes and all.

*A sincere and special thank you to Marylee Newmann for permission to use her photograph that captured such a striking and moving moment as a reference image.