Piece of My Heart

Piece of My Heart

Oil on canvas, 16x20, $300

It's hard to tell from this photograph, but this painting has a luminous quality that I can't seem to transmit on the computer, no matter how many times I photoshop it. Ah, well. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't!

I've been painting dogs and cats and dogs like crazy these past few days. Painting so much that the absurd, Maine-like cold has barely touched me. Tomorrow I frame, and attach wires and do my best to catalog my paintings for the all-animal show at the Lighthouse Gallery in Groton. Tomorrow, too, I will get out and put up posters!

Last night, the full moon rose, yellow and clear and brilliant in the icy air. That moon shone on the snow and cast shadows, and seemed lighted from inside.  It was such a winter moon, it warmed and chilled me at the same time.

Labradoodle I

Labradoodle

Oil on canvas, 12x12. Commission

It feels like a lifetime since I've stood in a field, listened to the wind and painted the world before my eyes. And that's OK - but  the longing is building in me.

I've been painting dogs since before Christmas. I've been painting cows and dogs and cats since Christmas. I've been enjoying the absolute luxury of painting inside my beautiful studio. And I've been working, taking care of an older couple in West Hartford.

That job is down to a few days a week, as the couple's health improves. It is a lovely job, really. They are dear people, they need and appreciate me, and we have fun. I read somewhere that everyone should spend more time with people who are older than 70 and younger than 7, and I agree.

I've spent the past few days painting this labradoodle, my most recent commission. It's heading to DC when it dries!

And I am heading back out into the world, as soon as I can. I'm still painting for the "Pets & Places" show at the Lighthouse Gallery - but I will have to stop myself soon! The opening reception is Friday, Feb. 5, from 5-7 p.m. The gallery is on Long Hill Road in Groton, right next to Arrow Party & Paper - and you're all invited. Click here for information and directions.

One great thing about this little gallery is that commissions on anything I sell go to the Lighthouse Voc-Ed program.

Thanks for reading!

Puffy

Puffy

Oil on canvas, 24x36, $250

Puffy doesn't hold anything back.

When she's mad, she's mad, and she hauls off and pops whatever dog or cat happens to be nearby. 

When she likes you - which she does in rollicking, exuberant stretches, which last for weeks or months and then end, abruptly - she climbs on you, purring and rubbing and touching you with her paw. Then she forgets that you exist.

Puffy was born in the closet of the bathroom of our house in Maine. Her mother, Samantha, is a semi-wild adoptee who escaped before we could get her spayed. Puffy's dad is a scruffy Maine tomcat who lived for years on the streets and in the barns of Bolster's Mills.

Frank, our late chow, thought Puffy was about the most wonderful thing ever, and it was mutual. At first, we were convinced that Frank was going to eat Puffy, but instead, he nurtured her, snuggled with her, wagged his little chow tail with vigor and in the end, pretty much raised her.

So this is Puffy, looking mad about something.

Range Rovers

Range Rovers

Oil on canvas, 36x60
sold

It was more than two years ago, in July, and I'd put myself on parole only weeks before.

I was driving home from Wisdom, Montana. I was as free as any human could be, alone in a car, with time and paint and canvases, and money in my pocket. The sky was huge and blue and endless, the prairie green and gold in the afternoon heat, and I felt like an explorer.

In Wyoming, I got off the highway at every exit, just to see what was there. And why not? Never had I had such freedom in a place that drew me so strongly.

On one exit, I turned up a dirt road and had to stop while this group of cows and steers crossed. Clearly, the road belonged to them. 

They were pretty mean-looking, so I did not get out, but took photographs through the windshield. I've painted them already, on a teeny canvas that sold way back. They continue to intrigue me, and so I've painted them again - and there are more paintings of these creatures coming.

Thanks for reading!

Giles

Giles

Oil on canvas, 24x24, $300

It was a wet May day, and Jill Blanchette (a wonderful painter and old friend; see her work here) took me up on my invitation to go painting in the Kinney Azalea Garden in West Kingston, R.I.

Off we went, and painted the gorgeous garden, color-splashed and saturated to an even brighter pitch by the drizzly day. Afterwards, we drove through backwoods Rhode Island, and in time, came upon a farm where goats were stomping around in a field.

We stopped, and I took photos, and in time, a woman came out and introduced us to some of the goats. They are odd creatures! I've always liked them, with their soft noses and strange eyes. I had fun painting this guy.

On another note, Robert Parker has died, the television news said this morning. A prolific mystery writer, Parker was a teacher at Northeastern University when I was there. I took a creative writing class from him. It consisted of us going in on the first day and meeting the already famous writer. He told us to write at least 40 pages, and show up at the end of the semester with it. If we wanted help, we could check with him during office hours, though he probably wouldn't be there.

He smoked the whole time. We all did.

I wrote him a novella. He gave me an A+, said I was the best writer he'd ever had, and eventually introduced me (briefly) to Stephen King. I'd bet money that that A+ and the accolade were not rare gifts from him.

He was a tough, gruff, likable man. I've loved reading his novels and his nonfiction. It's a poorer world without him.

Thanks for reading.

Waiting

Waiting

Oil on canvas, 36x42
Call me at 860-442-0246 or email me

if you are interested in buying this painting

Niobe was a good cat. No, she was a great cat.

I was about to start college at Northeastern University in Boston, and I was living in a city for the first time, and living alone for the first time. I was lonely and I was scared, and I went to the local animal shelter to get a cat, but came away with a dog.

Her name was October, and she was a beautiful cross of a German shepherd and maybe an Australian shepherd. That first day, we walked around the city for the whole day. Eight or nine hours, we walked, and at the end of it, she wanted to walk more. We walked the entire day the next day, and still, I hadn't dented her energy level.

What had started as a well-founded doubt now became a clear and unavoidable problem: I would not be able to take my day-school courses, and my night-school courses (I was going to cooking school at night), and have this dog.

So in tears, I brought her back to the shelter.

I left, and walked home. I made it as far as the lawn of the Museum of Fine Arts, which was next to my apartment building, and I sat down and I wept. I wept for October, I wept for myself, I wept for all the dogs in shelters, and all the dogs abandoned and unloved, and then I heard someone say my name.

It was one of my neighbors in the apartment building. He wanted to know where the dog was. I told him my story, crying the whole time.

"You brought her back to the shelter?" he asked.

"Yes," I wailed, feeling like the worst person on the face of the earth.

"Angell Memorial?" he asked.

I nodded.

"I'm going to get her," he said. "Right now. I'm moving to the country tomorrow, to a farm, with, like, 20 acres. I love that dog. I'm going to go get her."

And off he went.

The next day, he and October moved, and I went back to the shelter. There was another wrinkle in this story, for another time, but in the end, I came home with Niobe, a pure white cat, who was probably a year old.

She was an amazing cat, and a funny one, too. Her fur was so thick, and her body so round, she always looked a little like a stuffed cat. Throughout her life, she spent good amounts of time staring at nothing. Staring into corners, staring into space, just watching the air. Also, she was a klutz. She misjudged distances,  and would fall off things she was clearly hoping to jump onto.

She was a food hound, and for years, I fought with her over my food. If I had muffins, she would find them and eat them, including jumping up onto the refrigerator, one day, and tearing open a bag and eating nearly an entire corn muffin.

I'd end up using cereal boxes to make walls around my breakfast, because I couldn't keep her off the table or away from my bowl. When I moved in with Peter, he set out to keep Niobe on the floor. He'd find her on the dining room table, and she'd stick her head under a newspaper or magazine, figuring that if she couldn't see him, he couldn't see her.

If I went away for any length of time, I'd leave Niobe with Mom. Always, when I retrieved her, she'd be mad, and sit with her back to me for days.

But she slept on top of the covers, between my knees, nearly every night for all those years. She greeted me at the dog, dog-like, every day. She put up with other cats, other dogs, boyfriends and eventually a husband, though the first time she met Peter, she bit him.

I had her for 21 years, longer than half my life. She died while we were living in Maryland, and I buried her beneath a forsythia bush on a sunny hillside in our backyard. 

This painting is from a picture of Niobe, staring off into nothingness at my mother's house.

Rain Coming

 Rain Coming

Oil on canvas, 30x48,
sold

I woke today feeling like a kid on Christmas morning. I had the whole day to paint - and the whole day tomorrow, too. No work, no errands, no demands on my time - just painting, to get ready for the all-animal show (February) and even to begin pieces for my show with Shawn Dell Joyce in March.

Of course, the day didn't work out precisely as planned, but close enough - there were a couple of errands, and a few demands on my time - but I had the extra added bonus of a day warm enough to melt some of the snow, and keep me toasty in my attic studio.

So here's the big cow painting I've been working on recently. I like it very much. I like the cows themselves, their arrangement, their colors, and I like their flower-strewn field. I had fun with this one!

Throughout this day, this happy day in safe, sunny Connecticut, my thoughts turned to Haiti and the horrors there. I have had trouble watching the news stories, at least watching them in their entirety. I've had to turn away after a while. It is too heartbreaking. I am too powerless.

The one thing I can do is donate money. For anyone else who might want to donate, here are links to some of the organizations that Peter and I trust. All of them already have people on the ground in Haiti, with the possible exception of the Clinton-Bush fund. 

http://www.redcross.org/

http://doctorswithoutborders.org/

http://www.oxfamamerica.org/

http://crs.org/
(This is the Catholic Relief Fund)

http://clintonbushhaitifund.org/

Thank you for reading.