Sunflowers in Hand-Built Vase with Sculpture

Oil on canvas, 36"x 24"

I started this canvas when I was in need of consolation.  The sunflowers were so lovely, they lifted my spirit.  They were in a vase I purchased from a former painter turned ceramicist, Caroline Blackburn.  The sculpture has been in the family for many years, by Adolf Odorfer, called "Socrates Mistress" and stands next to a ceramic cup I like to balance on top of a smooth rock I picked up somewhere.  The two "fossils" are from the island of Cozumel, a piece of coral and a calcified sea shell.  These items are arranged on a table that belonged to my mother, with it's green leather top and painted wood rim that I "distressed" years ago by sanding away the painted surface.  All of the objects, therefore, hold particular meaning for me and provided the comfort I was searching for while I painted them.  I dedicated the painting to my brother-in-law, Rollin Pickford, a much more accomplished painter than am I--a watercolorist of national stature but of extreme humility and poetic spirit.  He died a day before this painting was finished, at the ripe old age of 98, and when I heard the news I couldn't add another stroke or even sign it--for reasons that still elude me.

Man in Red Sweater

Man in Red Sweater, oil on canvas--24 x30

This was a fellow I saw and photographed at our local Starbucks.  Quite handsome I thought and a worthy subject for a painting.  I liked his color coordination of sweater with eyeglasses.  The painting took me only several days.

Rollin's Clay Figures 22" x 28" Oil on canvas

On Hands Holding Pear Slices

The painting came to me while I was in motion at the kitchen sink, the pristine juxtaposition of the manmade, machined sink and its appointments with the ominous drain--the dispos-all...and the foreground of the human hands, representative of the human spirit, life as we know it!  I was looking up close at this tangible reality, this opposition of kind, and wanting desperately to make the point--the knowing of it, the difference between humanity and the material world created by it.  In its midst, that gorgeous fruit, that gift from god, that sustains us!  Do we stop to admire the beauty of the pear?  The freckled yellow skin, the textured flesh so sweet on our tongues?  Do we see the elegant clasp our fingers make to hold this fruit, to section it along the spine, and gaze on it in wonder?

Notes on Self-Portrait with Broken China

These were my wedding cups, from my first marriage.  They were recently accidentally broken by two wonderful men in my life bumping into each other, one of whom is my current best friend, lover and husband.  My initial reaction was a bit angry, that these cups had been broken, as I treasured the memory they embodied--of selecting my first China pattern, a cheerful yellow geranium!   Now I had to consider them as only the broken fragments of my past.  The picture includes me (in the mirror, a mere reflection)  in the act of self-examination.  Why did I get so upset at these cups being broken? Was it now symbolic of the lost past, the broken trust, the failed marriage?   Maybe those cups needed to be broken in order for me to understand their true significance?   The clock, poised at 3/4 of the way to twelve--3/4 of my life already over?  The vase, another frequent representation of the self  (I am but a vessel), an artifact in my household, was selected because of the rarity of it's dissimilar handles, with contrasting finishes, one smooth, the other textured, and their asymmetry of placement on the form, as analogous to the way I view myself.  I could go on, but I'll stop with this amount of information.  Some mystery should remain, and others should be able to make their own interpretation.

Recent Self-Portrait

Looking Up Close...and even closer.