"Lay, Lady, Lay" or The Chicken Dilemma

Mystery Chicken - Henry? Henrietta?

For some reason, a Bob Dylan song has been running through my head all day; the one that begins,  “Lay, lady, Lay”. Maybe it has something to do with the chicken that has adopted our getaway home in the woods and the dilemma that this poses for us.

You see, a week ago yesterday we drove over to mow the lawn and found this chicken hanging around the yard. He/she was afraid of us but clearly was used to humans. Where did “it” come from? Why had it adopted this particular house that is so far from the road and on the edge of a vast woods? How long had it been there, and how had it managed to survive all the predators in the woods?

As we left, we checked the neighbor’s yards along the road but didn’t see any evidence of chickens or chicken coops and fully expected that the chicken would be gone when we returned for the weekend on Friday. Wrong! He/she greeted us not long after we pulled in and unloaded the car. Over the next two days it gradually became less wary and let us get closer and closer. In fact, it was very curious about our car and kept checking it out. That makes us wonder. Did someone dump it off “out in the country” like so many morons do with cats and dogs? And was it hoping our car would take it home?

I managed to snap some decent pictures of him/her (there is disagreement among my chicken raising friends as to what sex it is) and hope to do a painting in the near future. But, now we’re wondering what to do about this chicken who has adopted us. Should we feed it? Provide some sort of shelter for it? Capture it and rehome it?

I’m not too keen on the latter since neither of us has any experience with chickens. Perhaps I’ll consult our vets to see what they suggest. Or, we could call Animal Control, if there is such a thing in that oh so remote county. 

I had planned to do some plein air artwork over the weekend, but the weather was so abysmal that I stayed inside and went through old art magazines instead. It was cold, rainy and very dreary, but I enjoyed the luxury of having the time to read articles and cut them out to save. I’m only about five years behind in reading my magazines, you see.

flower bed, June 2011

Much of my time lately has been spent in gardening, and the yard is really looking nice this year, thanks to all the rain and cool weather we’ve been having. The new plants that were put in last year are really filling up the new flower beds, and some have already begun to bloom.  It makes all the hard work of the past few years finally seem worth it.

I will share more in future posts as the summer progresses. But, that’s all for now.

Treasures In The Attic

"Beach Run" circa 1983

This Spring has proven to be very busy. There is always lots of yardwork to do, cleaning out of flower beds and planting new flowers and moving a few which didn’t fit where they were. But last weekend, I took a break from that to do a project which has needed doing for years now.

My kids (both in their thirties) were home for the weekend for Memorial Day, and I took advantage of the opportunity to draft some help with the job. While my son ran the Bayshore Marathon in Traverse City, my daughter, Tina, helped me clear out, clean and rearrange the attic. It’s a small space and had become so full that you could barely get through the door!

The studio full of attic discards

The door to the attic is in the studio supply closet which meant that a lot of what we took out ended up stacked in the studio and the adjacent room. Here is the studio with only a narrow path from the attic to the door. The library was equally crammed with attic rejects: mostly baby furniture, toys, children’s books and odds and ends.

Among the  treasures we unearthed from the far reaches of the attic was the painting above. It was done in 1983 when I was still in art school. I don’t remember having any help with it, but the influence of my painting courses is obvious in the  thick brushwork and unblended color. I did not have a photo to copy but made up the horse and background from memory and possibly a few reference photos to get the pose of the horse right. Well, sort of right, that is.

I’d been wondering what became of this painting, and there it was, covered with 20 years of dust in an entirely unsuitable environment for storing a work of art. Sadly, this is where many works of art end up when they are no longer treasured by their owners - or artists. Aside from the dust, it’s in remarkably good condition. It  is an oil painting on canvas board, which just goes to show that cheap canvas board is still capable of standing up to the extremes of heat, cold and unregulated humidity.

"Almost Home, Hunter Pace" circa 2007

The other thing it shows is how far my art has advanced since 1983,  and that is where its value lies. Compare it to another galloping horse painting, “Almost Home, Hunter Pace” (above) which was completed around 2007. By comparison, “Beach Run” is an embarrassment! The best part of the painting is the piece of driftwood in the foreground. For years I meant to repaint that awful sky but never got around to it. It’s just as well because it’s one of those paintings we artists call a “learning experience” which no amount of reworking will improve.

Another treasure I found in the attic was a shoebox of toy horses from my childhood. They’re smaller than I remember them; only about  two inches high; and there aren’t as many as I wish there were, but I’m happy to be able to hold them in my hands again and find them a better place to  live out their  “retirement”. Dusty and Cigarette and Blaze are now  resting on my dresser until I find a suitable spot for them. I don’t remember what I named the metal mare and her foal. Niagara, perhaps? That’s where they were purchased; at a gift shop at Niagara Falls.

After Tina and I had swept out the attic and moved things around, she and son Dan went through the toys and books and picked out what they wanted to keep for themselves. After they had left with their childhood memories, I spent portions of this past week cleaning the items to be rehomed. The Barbie dreamhouse and some doll furniture went to my husband’s hygienist’s two little girls who were thrilled with them. The baby furniture and other stuff went to Goodwill in Traverse City. They do so much good for the homeless that I’m only too glad to donate to them and be rid of what we no longer want.

I still have a bunch of toys to wash and books to vacuum before they are donated, but the studio is now almost cleared out. Before I can do any artwork, it will need a good cleaning. And once the Spring yardwork is completed, I will be free to get back to some artwork!  I have new references to work from and I will share some of those in my next post.

Art Show Online and Spring Activities

Things have been hopping around here since I last posted, but that’s nothing new. My daughter came up for Easter, and we went out for brunch to a restaurant we haven’t been to before, the Blue Pelican in Central Lake. We highly recommend it. In fact, we went back there for Mother’s Day.

I got all dolled up for Mother’s Day and had my husband take the above photo of me out on our deck.  The photo I”ve been using for publicity/promo is now over ten years old, so it was time for something more current. It turned out pretty well, if I do say so. 

If you’d like to take a look at the invitational art show where my work is in Wisconsin, the show is now online. The title is “The Horse In Art”, and it’s a pretty impressive show! I am very honored to be among such talented company and very grateful to have been invited. Do take a look. 

Two weeks ago we opened up our getaway “cottage/cabin” in the woods, and I dug up a bunch of daffodils which were hiding in an old flower bed where no one would see them. Two poppies were also rescued from obscurity, and in the following week, I planted all in various places in the home flower beds. It’s the wrong time of year to be planting bulbs, but if I had waited until Fall to dig them up, I probably wouldn’t be able to find them, so it was now or never more or less. Hopefully we will enjoy their blooms next Spring since they seem to be settling in well in their new homes.

Meanwhile back at the barn, we have resumed our weekly trail rides. So far Scottie has been doing very well and is obviously very happy to be going out again. On our last ride Thursday night, I took some photos and will share a few with you here. The leaves had barely begun to open up, but the air was fragrant in some areas with what we think were wild honeysuckle and at others we could smell wild leeks. Trillium carpeted the forest floor as well as other Spring flowers.

It was a very nice ride.

Day Two; Ancient Egyptian Chariot Horse Sketch

Just a short post today to give proof that I actually did a little art yesterday.

Having wasted most of the day on Facebook, I didn’t get to any art until evening. I wanted to sketch an Egyptian chariot horse since I’ve long been fascinated by that ancient culture. I spent about half an hour looking through a thick book on ancient Egypt that I picked up from the bargain table at Borders, but only found one picture of chariot horses, and it was too small to see many details. So, I just went with memory of other pictures I’ve seen.

The sketch took another half hour or more with lots of erasing to get proportions right. I didn’t worry about being accurate with tack and just enjoyed the process of sketching like I used to do as a kid. Obviously, I’m a little rusty so a lot more sketching is in order. But, it was fun, and that’s the important thing; learning to just enjoy the process again instead of enduring the drudgery of getting the image “just so”.

For now that’s enough.

Cat Painting Update and Ice Bergs

ice remnants on the lake

 Isn’t it marvelous that Spring is finally here?! The ice went out of our lake yesterday morning when there was a stiff breeze, so now we have open water again. Actually, the ice is usually broken up on a windy day or two in the Spring and just blows east down the lake from us. The marina to the west helps the process by going out in boats to make waves. This year they posted a short video on their Facebook page showing them using a boat as an ice breaker in the marina area. The ice was pretty thin by then so no danger to the boat.

The first photo is of an “ice berg” out in the lake in front of our house. I took the photo early this morning while the lake was still. It won’t last long with the warm temperatures as the lake waters warm up.

I feel so lucky to live on a lovely lake with all of its wildlife!

Now that gardening season is back, I decided that it’s time to get back to exercising; something I’ve managed to neglect all winter. After walking on the treadmill, I did my “legs and back” exercise routine, and later in the day went for a short spin on Scottie. This morning I had a hard time getting out of bed! Ack! But, if I keep it up, the stiffness will go away.

In addition to exercising daily, I’ve set a goal for myself of doing some artwork every day this week, even if only for an hour. This is in hopes that both goals will become established habits if I keep them up long enough.

"Annie", 6x6 gallery wrapped canvas oil painting

I managed just an hour yesterday on the little cat painting I started a while back of our kitty, Annie, when she was young. Most of the time was spent setting up and deciding what colors to use and then mixing paint. So, I was limited to working on just one ear and the forehead markings before it came time to clean up and leave for the barn. Otherwise, I would have painted longer.

Please note my painting setup here. I came up with this brilliant idea a while back when I noticed some scraps of pegboard out in the garage. Even though I’ve looked at those scraps for years, THAT day the thought struck me that they would be perfect to use on the easel to hold small paintings and paintings whose edges need to be painted. I’d been trying to figure out a solution to this problem for a while now since I’ve been working on smaller canvases lately. How DOES one paint the edges of those gallery wrapped canvases without getting your fingers in the paint?

I had my husband cut a couple of pieces to fit on the easel and cleaned off the garage grime. Yesterday, I used one of them to hold the Annie painting, and it worked great! As you can see, the painting is resting on pegboard hooks. It can be moved from side to side to get at the bottom of the canvas, and I can set the painting at a comfortable working height. In fact, I might just expand this for use with larger paintings, too!

Now, why didn’t I think of this sooner!?

I’ve just had a chat with my gallery owner (Adams Madams, Central Lake, Michigan) who has requested that all her artists replace their pieces which have been in the gallery for a long time with new artwork. She is readying the shop for the coming summer season when the summer residents and visitors will be returning. She tells me that she gets visitors from the Horse Shows By The Bay people each summer as they explore the area when they’re not showing. These people have money to burn, so that gives me incentive to get some horse show pieces done to put in the gallery during the four or five weeks of the show. A series of small paintings of horse show dogs would be perfect as well as some leadline class photos of toddlers on cute ponies.

Ah! I’m getting super inspired!

An Equine Art Show and Getting Framed

"The Green Team" Belgian horse painting, oil on canvas

The last few weeks have been kind of a blur what with getting artwork sent off to a show and finishing up income taxes and all the usual daily activities.

First of all, I took a break from  painting to complete the income tax information and deliver it to our accountant. That is always such a relief to get that out of the way, but I still had plenty to do before I could relax and get back to painting.

When the Belgian painting was dry enough I signed it and then proceeded to spend a couple of days trying to get a good photograph of it and not succeeding. That’s a major disappointment as I really was hoping to offer it as a new print image. I had trouble getting both the horses and the trailer to look right. One or the other would be close to the painting but not both in the same image. I finally gave up and varnished the painting vowing to spend some time learning more of Photoshop so that I can isolate areas of images and change them without changing the whole. That is one of the beautiful things that Photoshop can do.

Next I took the painting to McMillen’s Custom Framing in Traverse City to be framed. The owner, Todd McMillen, and I go way back. We were in art school together many years ago, and his friendship is the only one that has survived from those magical days. Todd went on to get a four year degree from Kendall School of Design in Grand Rapids while I made a failed attempt at being a freelance graphic designer. But that is ancient history.

At any rate, Todd helped me select what turned out to be just the right frame for  “The Green Team”. I can’t believe how much that frame has enhanced the painting! You can see it above. At the same time, I took the drawing, “Kentucky Dreamer” in to have the mats replaced. I framed it myself years ago, but the mats were never quite right. Again, Todd’s suggestions were right on the mark. The drawing looks SO much better in its new mats.

"Kentucky Dreamer" Thoroughbred colt drawing

Good framing makes a world of difference in how well any work of art looks, and the professionals like Todd know what they’re doing.

My next challenge was to set up a new Fedex account (which was an ordeal in itself) and box up the two pieces of art to ship to the show. My shipping boxes were in the back part of the attic, and to get to them I had to move a whole lot of stuff that was in the way. The result was a mini  reorganization of some of the “junk” up there to make a path.

It took me close to a day just to pack up the art and make sure it was sufficiently padded against any rough handling. I did battle with Fedex again  when attempting to fill out and then print the shipping label and the return label.  All was finally completed, and last Friday we delivered the box into the hands of Fedex. Now I’m hoping that it makes it to the show on time and in one piece - or two pieces in this case.

So now I can formally announce that  “The Green Team” and “Kentucky Dreamer” were accepted into the invitational art show, “The Horse In Art”  to be held at the Seippel Homestead and Center For the Arts in Beaver Dam Wisconsin. This invitational show runs from April 17 to June 5, 2011 and is sponsored by the Beaver Dam Area Arts Association.

From what I hear of the other artists who will be exhibiting, I am humbled to be hanging along side their art. And the bonus is that the woman who is interested in buying “Green Team” also lives in Wisconsin not far from the show. She may buy it there which will be a win win win all the way around for her, for me and for the show.

Finished Belgian Oil Painting

detail "Meet The Green Team" oil on canvas

 To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, I finished an oil painting today with the working title, “Meet The Green Team”. You may remember this painting from previous blog posts. It’s been around so long that it’s almost an oldey moldey.

I’m totally elated to finish this painting for several reasons. It’s been “under construction” for almost seven years! I needed to finish it to send to a show next month. And, someone is interested in buying it! She lives in the same state where the painting will be going to the show which should allow her to buy it at the show if she can make it there.

This painting also represents a milestone of sorts for me besides being the first major work of art that I’ve completed in several years. I really challenged myself with this painting by making some significant changes from the reference photograph. As you can see in the reference below, one of the horses is a bay and both horses are sweaty  having just finished participating in a horse pull. I wanted to paint a team of Belgians so decided to change the bay to a sorrel and elminate the sweat from the horses. I didn’t care for the rusty trailer so decided to change that, too. One of the reasons it took so long to finish this one is that I ran into problems because I didn’t have good references for what I wanted the horses and trailer to look like. It took a lot of revising to get it to its finished state.

reference for painting

Finished painting, 12x16 oil on canvas

Next on the schedule will be finishing the taxes so they can go to the accountant, and then it is back to painting again. “The girls” are waiting to be finished: “Glory” and “Girls Play”.