There are two reworked charcoal pieces since my last post, the black cockatoo above and the vulterine below. Both are now denser, darker, perhaps gloomier reflections of the wary mood that is so common in America these days, including my own. Yes, yes I have a very nice, safe place to live and I’m out of the financial hole I was in before the craft fair began. And yes, I have a studio with plenty of art supplies, and I’ll soon have the time to create. I’m also healthy and have a fiancé who loves me unconditionally. There are a couple more craft fairs coming up plus a few group shows I plan to be in, and I’m waiting for dates of my solo exhibition this spring at The Commons. I’ve also noticed an uptick in my social media numbers and there are some new subscribers and followers here on Substack. I’m happily out of greeting cards plus most of the small giclees, and although none of the originals have sold yet, I know they will at the upcoming indoor fairs. There is plenty to do to continue my momentum but I intend to spend today on my sofa recuperating from being in a shack on the beach in the brutal ocean cold of a Cape Cod winter by doing a bit of online shopping. I need new snow boots, but one can never have too many black sweaters. I suppose I could always dive into writing grant proposals or research potential galleries, but I feel a new cashmere turtleneck is calling me. So short and sweet this week, and Happy New Year - Onward.

Still in the craft fair vortex, but I reworked #12, the Emu above, which is now denser and darker than before. I am also off the wait list and get to keep the booth I’ve been using until the fair is over at the end of the month. This means I can leave everything there in the big plastic bin my next booth neighbor has loaned me instead of schlepping it home on Sundays. I’m completely out of bird cards and several of the limited edition giclees, so I took in some collage pieces and smaller originals on paper, including a few charcoal studies, last weekend. We were quite busy Saturday but it snowed enough overnight to make Sunday a treacherous mess and for The Canteen to cancel the fair for the day. They did offer to let some of us set up in the tent behind the restaurant that they use for additional space, and I went in because it’s only a ten minute walk there and it didn’t look too bad from my window. The snow, which continued all day, and the wind however were relentless, and the tent wasn’t much warmer than being outside. I left at three and a hot shower thawed me out, although I had to take a nap afterwards because being that cold for that long is exhausting. Experiencing the gerry-rigged tent reminded me how from the time I graduated from college until I moved into my first official Provincetown apartment almost forty years later, none of the places I lived had proper bathrooms. Generally it was toilets in water closets and a shower or tub in the kitchen, but I did spend two years in an Ozark shack with an outhouse and a half mile walk to a well for water. Which meant plenty of opportunities to practice my MacGyver skills with a staple gun, duct tape and plastic tarps or bedsheets. All this along with the terrible news out of LA has me thinking of my friend Marsha from my Ozark times who was murdered by her schizophrenic son. I wrote about her in my May 16th post but it’s the son, fresh out of the psych ward and later also murdered once he was in prison, who is in my thoughts today. He was a beautiful child, a happy baby. Such a waste, so much tragedy. The human animal is truly confounding.

No new birds this week because I’ve fallen into the craft fair vortex, and I’m happy to report all my bills are paid now. I’m waitlisted for this weekend although we are expecting snow. So I might get in and maybe not do any business. We’ll see. I opted for this artist life - the be broke and in debt until you sell something big and pay it all off only to be broke again life - when I decided not to take a tourist season job after the gallery where I worked for ten years closed last fall. Getting that grant in March was enough to cover the lost salary, however gallivanting back and forth to the UK several times this year, plus copays on three eye surgeries didn’t help. But I have no regrets, except for the being broke part, the rest feels like freedom. And a true sense of self.

In the meantime, my craft fair inventory has shrunk considerably, which was the plan, and I’ve been figuring out what to add to the line to fill it out. I’ve already packed some of the charcoal studies and smaller paintings on paper from my 2024 show at The Commons, but that doesn’t cover the lack of cards that used to be my bread and butter. So I’ll introduce a number of my collages since I have a dozen or so cards of Communion, the piece above, to add to the mix. I do however have linocut tools and plates on hand as well as appropriate paper and envelopes, so who knows, I may be printing birds, albeit little ones, sooner than I thought. Ah the dilemma of being an artist with too many balls in the air. PS - Santa says Hello. Onward.

Missed a week - I actually had a post ready which got quickly outdated, so I’m starting fresh today. First of all, there are three birds - #32, the new Cardinal above, and two of the charcoal studies from September that I’ve reworked - #20, the Rooster and #17, the Falcon with the wonky head from the Storks And Such post. There are a couple more early studies I intend to do rather drastic things to, think silver painted backgrounds or cutting the bird out and adhering it to something else. But that’s what studies are for, to experiment with, to play with, since that’s also important in making art. I am still going to go as large as the limitations of my little studio allow, but the printing press at Funk and Schuster, which I’ve mentioned before and where I first thought about creating prints, can accommodate much bigger paper and may be the way to go.

One of the reasons this post is late is I had a booth at The Canteen’s Holiday Craft Fair in Provincetown for the three days after Thanksgiving. It’s outdoors, in fact it’s on the beach, and although I was in a semi-contained booth, I was actually standing on sand. It was fun, although wicked cold and we had to close early Sunday because of rain. I swapped the last two of my mugs for a quart of local honey from the beekeeper in the booth next to mine, made a few interesting connections that are promising, and sold enough to pay off my outstanding bills including the eye doctor and still have a little pocket money. And then The Canteen treated the vendors to a delicious dinner so we could get to know each other better. I’m at the top of the waiting list for a booth this weekend - fingers crossed. Onward.

Thursday was the first anniversary of the first of my three eye surgeries. I’m learning to live with the results and have stopped complaining about them, but that and the ever escalating chaos coming out of DC occupied my attention last week and made me late with the post. But I have three new birds. I’m happy with the two small pieces, #30, the Magpie inspired by the ones in our garden in Newcastle, and #29, the Vulterine below, but it’s #31, the Condor above, which is much larger, that is what I’ve been striving for. Paul says it’s the most Maureen McCarron of all the Maureen McCarrons he’s witnessed me create. It may not be as dramatic or expressive as some of the others, but it has a maturity that made me judge the previous work and eliminate half a dozen or so from my website. It has also inspired me to rethink only numbering them and to add their species to their titles. I now see the ones that got cut as studies, the work I did as I sussed out how to use the charcoal and to make the marks I wanted to achieve. I plan to do new versions of a couple of them - definitely the rooster, and maybe the frigate, which was the first drawing in the series. Adding white paint and mummy colored pastel to the mix was part of my learning process, but the Condor has neither of these. It’s just the charcoal, buffed, blended and aggressively erased.

I also plan to do a much larger white cockatoo with its crown feathers fully unfurled, but I’m not sure the paper I have is big enough for what I envision. Because that’s my goal. Much bigger birds, enormous birds, birds that truly grasp their godlike quality - but for that I need a lot more space than I currently have in Provincetown. Not to mention a place to store them and how to transport them once I move to the UK. This would require another grant or winning the lottery. So it remains a dream for the time being. Which reminds me of the dream Paul had when we first hooked up. In it, he was helping me hang a show because the work was huge and in ornate gilded frames, and way too heavy for me to handle. Back then, the birds were on tiny wood panels and I was adamant about not framing them. But I am always open to suggestions and within a couple months, I had switched to paper, which demands to be framed, and the work had doubled in size. Soon enough, it tripled. When I returned to wood panels, my minis were a thing of the past as I began the paintings that made up the show I had this summer. All of which were framed. Now I’m back to paper. Arches, my preferred brand, makes wide rolls, but maybe I should consider canvas although I don’t care for a surface with that much texture. Either way, gilded frames or not, I still need that big fat grant or to win the lottery. Best get cracking on that then, onward.

I haven’t had time to get any artwork done since I arrived home in Provincetown late Monday night, but I did do an owl, #28 above, on Saturday before I left. However, I took a lot of snapshots out the airplane windows I sat next to on the flights back. One is of the remnants from Hurricane Melissa as we flew through it on the way to Dublin from Newcastle, as well as the rain-lashed window of the Dublin to Boston plane as it was waiting to take off. Again, like the flights to the UK, I sat in window seats but this time I was next to emergency exits on both planes so I had lots of legroom and nobody smashing into me with the back of their seat. I shared the space with a young man named Trace who bore a startling resemblance to an old college friend of mine named Barry when he was young, and who had died while I was in the UK. Same long black curly hair, same glasses, and boho hippie clothes. When I showed Trace pictures of Barry from 50 years ago, it freaked him out, but it made me happy. It was as if Barry was sitting with me, not his young doppelganger.

Anyway, I’m back and have been very busy plowing through the bills and paperwork I had dreaded coming home to. I got a little refund from Expedia because I prepaid more for my tickets than what the trip finally cost, and a check arrived for my cut of the sale of the collage I did this summer for the PAAM 12x12 Benefit Auction, so that plus the Substack subscription I mentioned last week were enough to pay everything except the balance of what I owe my eye surgeon. So, if I eat frugally this month, I’ll be ok until December. Especially if I do well at the Holiday Craft Fair at the Canteen Thanksgiving weekend. I heard about another craft fair in town next month that I’ve applied to since the one I did last year has been cancelled.

Have I told you my favorite Buddhist parable about the woman and the tigers? Being chased by tigers, she climbs over the side of a cliff and is hanging from a vine only to see there are tigers down below her too. She also sees that a rat is chewing on her vine and that she will eventually fall. Then she notices a cluster of berries growing out of the cliff next to her. She plucks the berries and eats them. They are delicious. End of story - in other words, stay in the moment. Eat the berries. Onward.

Yesterday, one of the pair of beautiful magpies who visit our back garden sat on the window ledge and peered inside as I watched. Generally they announce themselves before patrolling the garden, which is an English jungle of sorts full of enormous ferns and spiky palms that catch on your clothes as you pass. Once they arrive, the magpies inspect the plants, the various things jutting out from the brick wall of the building next door, and Paul’s bike. We dare not feed them so as not to attract rats from the back lane, but one morning there was a tidy pile of mysterious droppings on the step outside the glass doors where I work as if, a magpie perhaps, had been sitting there peering in. Or admiring its reflection - years ago, in Provincetown, a goldfinch visited me several times a day and did the same thing. She got so used to me I was able to take photos without her flitting away. That’s a goal, my goal, to take pictures of our magpies before I leave on Monday.

There was a bit of a panic when we realized on Tuesday that I’m leaving this coming Monday and not the next. Suddenly our list of things to do got more urgent. After repeated but failed calls to an immigration lawyer’s helpline, which is only available on Wednesdays for two hours, we decided I should email my list of questions from home. Although Newcastle feels like home too, now that I have a great work station, some new-to-me clothes from local charity shops and we’re entertaining guests like a settled couple. However, I can’t help being anxious about flying and what’s happening in the US, or the hurricane which appears to be headed right for Ireland on the day of my flight even if it will probably only be a bad storm by then. Anyway, I managed to get a good shot of #25 above, the owl from last week that refused to be photographed properly, and there are two new birds this week, #26, the eagle in the middle and #27, the finch below. I’ve been confirmed for the Canteen Craft Fair in Provincetown for Thanksgiving weekend, and even though I don’t push readers to be paid subscribers because I’m more interested in building my audience than the money, one of you has switched to a paid subscription after last week’s post. Thanks so much Susan, I really appreciate it. Every little bit helps. Onward.

I tend to keep politics off Substack but Wednesday night, I had the first bout of my usual insomnia since I left for the UK a little over two weeks ago. I sleep great here, which I rarely do at home. I’m also online a lot less when I’m here but I do keep informed, and the East Wing demolition was the proverbial last straw in a series of escalating last straws, so I am now officially afraid to go home. My Buddhist practice teaches me to stay in the moment and I will until it is time to go back in November, but what waits for me there besides the DC chaos are things I don’t want to deal with. Most of them are financial - a stack of medical bills, a rent increase, a significant drop in sales and opportunities. I didn’t fill a prescription right before I left because it went from $8 to $95 last month. I won’t die without it, but I’ll definitely be uncomfortable soon enough. That said, I know everybody is going through the same thing and some have it much worse. I don’t have kids or ailing parents and I don’t have student loan debt or credit cards. So yeah, stay in the moment and enjoy this UK reprieve. Last weekend, we went to Cullercoats again and I photographed the cliffs and caves along the beach. I also set up a workstation with the new drawing board and an easel next to the glass doors that lead to the back garden and get the morning light. I finished #24, the small piece above and then #25, a much larger one which is proving to be impossible to get a good shot of. Perhaps I can get a better one for next week. We hung the three little pieces of other people’s art that I brought in my suitcase and my sitting room now looks like I live here. We saw some work in Sunderland and an exhibition by Uta Kögelsberger in the Hatton Gallery at Newcastle University. That’s a picture of me below, a very rare thing, taken by my fiancé Paul Brewster, as I contemplate a photo in the show which is primarily video presentations. I love my life here. It’s the simple things. Onward.

I made it to Newcastle in one piece. The trip over was smooth except for a screaming baby and the woman in front of me who had too much white wine and threw up on herself. The wait at Logan and the layover at Dublin were long and exhausting, but I had window seats in rows by myself on both flights. I arrived on Wednesday afternoon and promptly went to bed after devouring a delicious steak pie from the Grainger’s Market’s Hunter’s Deli, and it has been non-stop ever since I got up the next morning. Saturday was all about a big teatime meal with friends that included quizzes which I held my own in. Friday we installed a washing machine and that was a bit stressful. Yesterday we explored the riverside across the Tyne in Gateshead and on Thursday we went to the local lumber yard to price wood for a work table Paul, my fiancé, wants to build and something suitable for a large drawing board for me. We wound up in the back looking at off cuts that were destined to be destroyed. One of the men back there offered to saw down a piece to 30”x36” for me at no charge. Paul joked later that it was because I was a right flirt, while I thought I was just being nice. Either way, I now have a huge, free, drawing board on an extra easel in the studio. Then on Friday we went to the Details art supply store after installing the washing machine and got several big sheets of paper for me to play with. In the meantime, I finished #23, above, but it is on the 12x12” watercolor block I brought with me. It has a new element I have been thinking about using - white acrylic paint. It was only a matter of time before I picked up a brush again although the charcoal and drawing are still the predominant components. The paint added a different texture and blending ability as well as a great base for more charcoal once it had dried. I’ll do a few more 12x12” pieces before going bigger but the white paint will come in handy whatever size I choose. I’ve also got a rich gold paint for backgrounds, could that be next? Stay tuned.

Two birds this week, #22 above, a mystery bird I finished this morning and #21, the macaw below. I’ve mentioned before how the charcoal pieces I like best aren’t always the most popular ones on social media. For instance, I love the macaw, but so far it hasn’t taken off like last week’s rooster or the stork from a few weeks ago. Baffling really, it used to happen with the painted birds, but with them I knew who would get the most hits. These two are a return to the smaller size the series started out with. I plan to do more in this size while I’m in the UK this month, partly because the paper, a smooth 12x12” Arches watercolor block, fits in my carry-on, and partly because I really like how the charcoal grabs the surface. In an effort to become a part of the Newcastle Upon Tyne art community, I have joined the Newbridge Project (https://thenewbridgeproject.com/) and am in touch with the Vane Gallery (https://www.vane.org.uk/home) which is having an opening the evening I arrive. And since I plan to also do much larger work while I’m there, I will buy some paper at The Newcastle Arts Centre (https://newcastle-arts-centre.co.uk/) shop where they have an excellent selection - although I’ll have to leave those pieces behind since they will be way too big for my suitcase. I’m taking a different route this trip since I loath Heathrow with a passion and got stuck in Amsterdam overnight after missing my connection on the last visit, I’m going through Dublin this time. The layovers will be longer but I won’t be tearing through an airport with minutes to spare because this or that airplane taxied around for an hour. I hate how these trips start with an hour and a half drive to the airport shuttle that may take two hours to get to Logan. And don’t get me started on being stuck on a plane although Logan can be easy or a total nightmare depending on things that are annoying and unavoidable. Given the US government shutdown and whatever may be happening with TSA searches and Customs, there are plenty of things that are out of my control. Fingers crossed I can get back in the country when I return in November. Onward.

Someone mentioned the other day that September is National Chicken Month. Is it true? I have no idea but it spurred me on to finally do one. I’ve never been interested in using chickens as subjects because the fleshy stuff on their faces bothered me even though I found their combs intriguing. I know people who have them as indoor pets or keep them outside for their eggs. These people often ask if I’ve painted one before or send me pictures of their birds. Occasionally I’m asked about doing this or that breed of parrot, but chickens have gotten the most inquiries. In fact, I received a request for more roosters after posting #20, above, on Facebook today. There have been multiple hawks and crows and owls over the years, so perhaps that will happen. After spending afternoon scrolling through chicken photos online, I found that as fascinating as the exotic breeds are, the basic white rooster with a grand red comb was what attracted me most. I did save a couple of images of fancier ones, but #20 is based on several haughty tough guys that caught my eye. With this piece, I wanted to get back to the lines and negative space that the Charcoal series started with and I’m happy with the result. Another result I’m sort of happy with is the outcome of the laser surgery I had Friday. I do see better in that eye - there’s still a bit of a yellow rim on contrasting edges like trees against the sky, but it’s not nearly as annoying as the obvious yellow halo that was there before. The yellow is only visible now in bright sunlight, and it may lessen even more as the calcium deposits that got zapped the other day continue to dissolve. Fingers crossed, it’s already a relief, and if not, I can learn to live with this thin yellow rim. They wanted me to come back for a follow-up in October but I had to postpone it until November since I’ll be in the UK next month. Unless of course the powers-that-be, who are rushing us towards the proverbial cliff, shut the airports down. Will they? Can they? Am I over-reacting? Maybe, maybe not. I’ll be pinching pennies this trip but am grateful to be going.

Only one bird this week, I’ve found having time and space between them helps the process. I also had the latest CoVid vaccine, almost as a political statement, and it knocked me out. These days, I feel like I’m living in an alternative universe and that what’s going on out there can’t really be happening. Then I remember this is why I started the bird series to begin with in 2017. They are, after all, at least to me, pint-size guardians and observers of us foolish humans. I did spend a few hours revamping my website (www.maureenmccarron.com) and dropped a page, moved another, then gave the charcoal pieces their own category. Also, since I noticed Archetypal Angels (archetypalangels.blogspot.com), my old Manhattan blog where I revise and repost these Substacks, has taken off again, so I put it on Linktree where more people can find it. Since then, my website stats took a big jump so all the SEO lessons a few years ago seems to be working. In the meantime, as I’m all about social media today, an interesting memory from 2023 popped up on Facebook this morning. It was from a post Kevin Sessums tagged me in about his visit with me at the gallery where I had a show. One of the paintings, Professor below, had a big spider meandering across the front. Here’s what Kevin had to say about it. "Her bird paintings have an eerie beauty, both otherworldly and of this world all at once. One even convinced a spider. I told her that was the definition of art: Convincing the spider.” Thanks Kev, onward!

Only one bird this week, #18, the raven above, because I’ve had a lot going on. For one thing, I was dismayed to read that Trump wants to take over the 9/11 Memorial the way he did the Kennedy Center and will soon do to the Smithsonian. I have already mentioned that the bird series started in reaction to his first inauguration. What I haven’t talked about is how I lived downtown and spent the Thursday following 9/11 at the police barricades on Houston Street handing out water and sandwiches to the first responders headed down the West Side HWY to Ground Zero. Mr Trump showed up in the afternoon because our crew was on the local news. When he tried to shake our hands, I turned my back on him. Then he pitched a fit when the cops wouldn't let him, in his long black coat and suit, through the barricades. I will not be showing you any photos from the 11th but here is one of the collages I did following the event when I was too upset to paint. There were a dozen in the series and ultimately I created a handmade book of them. This one is titled Femme Fatale, for I believe, obvious reasons. Onward.

Once again, there are three new charcoal pieces since my last post and because I can’t decide which one to leave out, I’m going to present all three. I have noticed how the ones I like most are not the ones that get the strongest reaction on social media. #16, the stork above, is hands down the most popular of the charcoal series and it has only been online for a few days. Not that I don’t like it, but I have to admit I’m surprised. These three in particular have shown me there is often a wonkiness - the oddly shaped head, eyes that don’t match, fantasy feathers - that keeps the birds from being anatomically correct. As I’ve said before, I’m not interested in imitating nature. A resemblance, of course, but my birds are about something more ethereal. In the meantime, I saw my cataract surgeon and I do in fact have calcium developing on the right replacement lens. He said it is not an uncommon reaction and I am now scheduled for laser surgery at the end of the month. It is supposed to be a much easier procedure with only a few days of drops instead of the month-long schedule I had to deal with before. It was a relief to find out I wasn’t over-reacting or being a difficult patient. And in other news, I’m happy to report that I was accepted as an associate member of The Newbridge Project, an artist organization in Newcastle Upon Tyne, where I plan to live once I get to the UK. My artist page isn’t up yet, but I have access to their events and programs, and hopefully will become part of the art community there. So, some okay news with potentially good results, and some good news for my UK future. Onward.

There are four new charcoal pieces since my last post, but today I’m presenting #14 to keep it simple. The others can be seen on my website at www.maureenmccarron.com but I think you’ll agree that #14 is more compelling, if not riveting. It’s the mark making, and my growing familiarity with my materials. I’d introduced a creamy pale pastel called Mummy to the mix last week and have been working to keep it distinct by not blending it into the charcoal. I also like to go into a section of black with aggressive erasing, which leaves interesting textures. The Mummy pastel is more for highlights and finicky details. I apply those marks much the way I painted the little wooden panel pieces I did when my 15 year old Facebook friendship with my now fiancé turned into a relationship two and a half years ago. Early into our romance, he told me about a dream he’d had in which he helped me hang a show. The pieces were much too big for me manage by myself and had ornate gilded frames. I was sure I would not be doing large work any time soon, but within several months I’d given up working on the little wooden panels to begin painting works on paper. They were still birds only bigger, not enormous mind you, but definitely not small. As I now unframe those works on paper so I can reuse the frames for the charcoal pieces, I am struck by how lush and intricate they are. They have a sense of wonder and exploration that’s not in the wooden panel paintings which I returned to last fall. This is probably because of my being accustomed to that process, but I’d also had the cataract surgeries and could no longer see the way I used to. They are good paintings, they just didn’t move me like before. However, I am moved now by the charcoal series, especially this new owl. I can see, like in my fiancé’s dream, there may someday be enormous birds in elaborate gold frames. I am currently limited by the size of paper available to me, 18x18” or 22x22," I prefer to work on squares, but I know bigger paper is out there. So, yes, onward.

There are three new charcoal pieces since last week’s post.They are bigger than the previous drawings, and are still being numbered instead of having titles because they’re part of the original series. All three are harpy eagles. I thought about naming them after the harpy bird-sisters in Greek mythology but those names are almost unpronounceable. The image above is #10. I am no longer drawing in preparation for printmaking - I have found my perfect inky black. This a painting, full stop. I framed it immediately as I had older works on paper I could swap out of frames, and it now sit in a place of honor in my apartment. The three new pieces are very different from each other and it would be hard to say which I prefer, but they are some of my best work in a long time. So what will I do next? Another crow perhaps, or a vulture? There are always owls, one can never paint too many owls. Onward.

Monday, I called my cataract surgeon’s office about issues I’ve been coping with lately. Basically, being the good little soldier, I had surrendered to wearing the new glasses I was prescribed there after the second surgery for my double vision in hopes of getting used to them, but it’s not happening. I won’t bore you with my complaints other than to say that while they do more or less correct the double vision I have had for fifteen years, I now have a double vision type halo in my right eye whether I’m wearing the glasses or not. After several phone calls with various people there, I finally spoke to someone who thought they knew what the problem was. Now I have an appointment at the end of the month to see the surgeon again and will probably have to have some laser work done to correct it. In the meantime, I’m still doing the charcoal drawings I mentioned last week. They have taken a step up from being experimental sketches. Not relying on the use of color, the challenge of black on white negative space has been exciting. The trick has been to go bigger. I can’t get the sharp-edged clarity I got in the past with bushes, but the softer lines work well in a large format, and frankly are easier to see. Yes, I wear readers when I’m in the studio, as well as other pairs for books and the computer, all different strengths, but none of them are good for going outside where the double vision is more pronounced or watching TV. That’s what the new glasses are for, but you know, the pesky halo, et cetera. Georgia O’Keeffe took up working with clay when her sight deteriorated, I also keep reminding myself I don’t live in Gaza or Ukraine. And there aren’t bombs going off outside my house. Yet. So yeah, onward.

Interesting, how many views last week’s post has gotten so far. The last time I got this many was in February when I was posting from the UK about our visit to Sunderland where Paul, my fiancé, was born. We also went to London for a few days that trip but I reported on that the following week, and both of those posts had time to accumulate reads while last week’s did it in a matter of days. Yes, yes, I do compete with myself, I believe I mentioned my obsession with my social media following recently, but since last week’s post was about older artwork of mine, I thought I would show you some more, albeit from the early 90’s and very different. Above is an untitled pen and ink piece from a series of drawings based on yods. Yods appear in the Pre-Celtic Breton language as well as the Hebrew alphabet, but my interest came from astrology where it represents an aspect between planets or signs that create a Y shape in one’s chart. They are a rare phenomena called the Finger of God, indicating a karmic mission or fated life purpose, and I have one. I did not know what the pattern meant when I first started doing them, and once I did, I made lots of them. What my karmic mission or fated life purpose is, was, has yet to reveal itself, but I do feel I’ve always been on a path. Or a rollercoaster, frankly, especially when I was younger, but I just try to say Yes when doors open and so far, things work themselves out. So, given that, I’m doing some charcoal drawings these days in preparation for the printmaking I mentioned wanting to do last week. I like them, I’m relearning about working with black and the negative space of the paper surface. I’ll do a few more of them and then switch to pen, or more likely brush, and ink since that’s what the prints I plan to do will involve. Baby steps, it’s all a process, maybe I’ll show you some of these charcoal pieces next week.

I’ve been thinking the last week or two about what to work on next now that the show is over. This is a common reaction by artists after a big push to get ready for the event. In March, I posted about dropping by the Funk and Schuster Printmaking studio and being excited about the prospect of doing some mono-prints. I had just seen a show of small black on white woodcuts in London I found interesting, but the process was too foreign to me. It was only recently that I realized that what I needed to do was some drawing. Drawing was my primary process in college. I did massive ones mounted on canvas and presented them as paintings. There were several professors who indulged and others who dismissed me as a frivolous female. I did take Printmaking as part of my BFA but, really all I wanted to do was draw, which I continued to do throughout my twenties before I finally picked up a brush. Even now while painting the birds, that first drawing stage is often almost too good to cover up, but I do. Saturday, I pulled out an old portfolio from storage. I’ve got more professional pieces from the 80s tucked away in my studio but this was work I hadn’t looked at since I left NYC fifteen years ago. Expecting trash, I was surprised. Most of it is falling apart if not badly faded, but some of it is very strong. The drawing above is part of a panoramic series I did from the roof of the tenement building where I lived in Soho. It led to the brush because I also did sketches of clouds from the roof that became a series which also resembled maps and ribbon agates, and I spent years deep into the theory that agates, maps and clouds, were all the same thing.

My show's up.

Often, when I finish a series of paintings, I do analog collages. I usually don’t show the two together but I did once when the space was big enough to accommodate both at my first show at The Commons. It was an interesting experiment. The general public responded to the Birds, which sold really well, but the artists and thinkers I knew personally would engage me in serious conversation about the collages. Those pieces were done primarily during the CoVid lockdown but I also did an extended series while I still lived in NYC that were about 9/11 and were shown in Europe and Asia as well as the US. You would probably recognize the two collections as having been done by the same person, although the 9/11 ones were mounted on black backgrounds while the CoVid ones incorporated birds in the imagery. They all have a human figure of some sort, and I try to keep it down to three or four elements. For example, Rendezvous, which I did this week, has three elements if you don’t count the painted wood panel it’s mounted on. The crows are from a Japanese woodcut, the greenery is from a photo I took of a friend’s garden, and I assume the woman is from a European painting, probably 19th century but I can’t identify it. I’ve had her in my stash of images for years now, and I may use her again, who knows? Way back, long before the 9/11 series, there was a group I did with Renaissance madonnas and angels juxtaposed with images from a box of antique postcards I found in, of all places, an abandoned house in Arkansas before I moved to NYC in 1975. That’s a whole other story, but those postcards were all sent to one woman by her son and siblings who all travelled extensively although she apparently didn’t. Some were postmarked as far back as the First World War. I’ve since sold the cards to a collector for a tidy sum after photocopying some of them, but I wish I’d copied more. I love old, obscure images and they were perfect. Writing about this, as I prepare to hang my upcoming show next week, reminds me of a review from The Provincetown Independent newspaper for my exhibition at The Commons where I combined the work. They wrote - “McCarron paints birds in all their decorative, evolutionary splendor, using joyous colors and gilded backgrounds. They’re full of pluck and pomp — the artist’s quietly defiant response to the strain of our pandemic era. McCarron also does collages — a startling adjunct that feels a little Victorian and Alice in Wonderland-ish.” They got it. I loved it. Onward.

After a few weeks of reworking pieces I wasn’t happy with, I did two new paintings in the last eight days. They are very different from each other, and I am really happy with the results. In fact, Cyrus, the bluejay above, ranks at the top of my list of what I consider perfectly executed without being overly realistic or fussy. I have to be in The Zone for that to happen. Relaxed, in total silence, and almost always right after rolling out of bed. Often it’s the middle of the night. No coffee first, no checking the internet, just me in my pjs with a brush in my hand. These two new paintings were done like that, and both of them came with a plan. Not an agenda, just a concept that grew out of a simple drawing of my source material and a palette range I didn’t fiddle around with. Okay, I did a tiny bit of experimenting with the background behind Cyrus but it was always yellow. Not only did he need to sing, I wanted it to pop. The second of the new pieces is Circe, another vulture. I’ve done three of them now with the goal of making them identifiable as the loathsome scavengers that they are, but beautiful if not pretty. The palette changes when I repeat a bird, this time with Circe, named for the sorceress goddess who enchanted Ulysses and turned some of his crew into swine, I wanted it soft and sweet. She sings too, a lullaby of sorts since in some cultures, vultures are sacred. Tibetans practice sky burials where the deceased are offered to them, symbolizing the cyclical nature of life and death. A grizzly affair, yes, but they consider the corpse an empty vessel the soul no longer needs and should be free of. And the birds get to eat. In other news, other than bombs in Iran and Gaza and Ukraine, the heat wave has broken and I am wearing my new glasses. They are not perfect, and they’re as good as they’ll get, which is not as good as what I had before the surgery with my old glasses. Especially close up. But I will adapt. The birds are already bigger than a year ago and will get bigger still. And a year from now, they could be monumental. Godlike. Hanging in a UK gallery. Fingers crossed. Onward.

I’ve been crazy busy this last week and a half getting paintings ready for the show in July. Other than not being able to find my favorite spray varnish, the work has been coming along nicely. Which is good, because on a personal level, I’ve been struggling with my old 9/11 PTSD the whole time. Need I remind you the Birds series began when Trump was inaugurated in 2017? Although painting helps, my sleep is mixed up because of dystopian nightmares, and I don’t want to leave the house. One positive thing that has come out of this is I’ve repainted three pieces I wasn’t happy with. They weren’t bad, they just didn’t sing. One of them, the American Bald Eagle ABE, has been repainted twice. When I posted him on Facebook the other day, someone who I respect said it was devastating. I loved that. Another of the do overs is Gideon, the first painting I did from scratch after the initial cataract surgery. When I wrote about him in December, I mentioned how surprised I was that he wasn’t as angry as I was feeling. Wary, yes, alert, but not nearly as upset as one might expect, given the chaos in my life at the time - my WIFI dying, finding out all the family history I grew up believing was a boatload of blarney, having my eye cut open etc, and of course, the election. What changed this week was his background. He previously had my coppery golden signature color. Coppery gold has a lovely surface. It compliments everything and most importantly, it is safe. Gideon’s’s new pale peachy color might be regarded as even safer, except now he really pops. In fact, ABE also had that coppery background the first time around, and he certainly pops more now on his baby blue, too. The third bird that has been done over bothered me so much, I never even posted about him. I’m still not certain if I’m finished with him yet, so maybe I won’t show you him until I am sure. He plays nicely with a piece I started before my UK trip and completed today, so maybe next time. I do need to report that the post cataract surgery saga continues. As you may recall, I finally got a new prescription for lenses to correct my double vision and seeing close up issues. I had high hopes the new glasses would be ready in time for the UK trip, but of course, they were not. Instead, I went with my old prescription sunglasses that deal with the double vision but interfere with my new distance vision, and several pairs of reading glasses in different strengths - which is what I’ve been doing since November and am still doing today. Because, surprise surprise, when I picked up the new glasses upon my return, they weren’t right. Partly because of a lab error and partly because the prescription was wrong. So back to the lab they went. Fingers crossed, hopefully they will be ready by the end of next week. Or the week after that. Onward.

When I started to write this post, I was at the Newcastle airport for the first leg of my trip home after another two weeks in the UK. It had been a busy visit. We worked on the images for my 'The Birds' book, and got a sweet vintage dresser for my room. We also both got sick with the same bad cough, just like any other couple, and spent much of the time simply hanging out and living together. I baked a few ginger cakes and a loaf of bread, and made pasta puttanesca twice. Speaking of food, we went to South Shields which is across the river from my beloved Tynemouth to check out the dunes and carnival fairground and had lunch at The Marine (https://the-marine.co.uk/) which I highly recommend if you happen to find yourself there. All of this was in the original draft of this post I was writing in the airport, along with how I finished Oskar the owl painting I brought with me to work on and bought the paint I needed once I arrived. Anyway, there I was, sitting in the Newcastle airport writing in my notebook and waiting for the departure board to post my gate. I had a really tight window between arriving in Amsterdam and catching my Boston flight and too much time was passing. Eventually I headed downstairs to wait at the general gate area. By the time the flight details were posted, it was an hour and a half late. The reason being that as my plane’s incoming flight landed in Newcastle, a passenger on it suffered a heart attack and an ambulance needed to be called. The other passengers were not allowed to disembark until the paramedics worked their magic and took the patient away. Once the plane was empty, it had to be cleaned, hence the delay. And then, since almost all of my fellow passengers were going to Amsterdam to catch other flights that we had now missed, the service desk was a mob scene. Luckily, Expedia, who I book flights with, had already lined me up with a new Boston flight, but alas, it was for the following morning. I was given a room and meal vouchers at a hotel nearby and then spent an hour I’ll never get back in Passport Control with several hundred anxious Chinese travelers just to get out of the building. By the time I checked into the hotel, the buffet they provided was slim pickings. I did have a nice shower and slept ok however, and was up at the crack of dawn for a decent breakfast and was on the shuttle back to the airport soon enough. Have you been to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport? It is HUGE and very confusing. But as I was already checked in, all I had to do was get in an enormous line to be scanned by security and then use my remaining meal voucher at Starbucks. So to make a long and tedious story a little bit shorter, 36 hours after I’d left for the Newcastle airport, my Provincetown friend picked me up from the Logan shuttle drop-off in Barnstable, a two hour bus ride, and then after another hour’s drive, delivered me home. These trips seem to be getting harder, although this was still not as bad as that fiasco in Heathrow in February. Perhaps I’ll go less often from now on and stay longer until I move there for good. Onward.

According to Facebook, I posted this as a new painting seven years ago. At the time I was I still deciding on a title when I found out a dear friend from my Ozark hippie days who went by the name Morningstar, had died. We’d lost touch ages ago after she came to visit me in New York. I had taken her to the top of the Empire State building one night under a full moon. It, along with all the Times Square and high-rise lights, blew her mind. I then heard that she had moved to Texas shortly after she returned home. Doing a quick Google search into her death, I learned she had been murdered by her schizophrenic son. He had just been released from the hospital a few days earlier and beat her with a hammer, among other things. In spite of his obvious mental condition, he was discovered cowering naked in the kitchen and covered in her blood, he was tried, convicted and died in prison under suspicious circumstances. A horrible story all around. I felt the need then to name the new crow Morningstar in her memory. Once the original painting sold, it became the image on my best selling giclees and cards. So here’s to Morningstar, the woman, the crow, and her son. Onward.

When I started the bird series, it was in response to the 2016 election. At the time, I’d stopped painting to work on a writing project, so it wasn’t until the inauguration in 2017 that I actually picked up a brush again. The first birds were small and for the most part angry because I thought what is happening now was going to happen then. One would think that the paintings would be even angrier now, and a couple of them are - Abraham, the American Bald Eagle from a few weeks ago, is one. He was a repaint, so was the recent Loon, which also got much darker, but the two newest pieces that were started from scratch, are friendly and light. They even have hopeful names that refer to renewal and the arrival of spring. This surprises me. It’s been a difficult few months, given my on-going post-cataract surgery problems, et cetera. But there they are, Persephone, the Heron who was supposed to be blue but turned out purple, and now the pink Cockatoo, titled Peony, above. I thought about calling her Primavera or Primadonna, and even Peaseblossom, all names I might use later, but Peony won out for reasons that may only be obvious to me. Both of these paintings, besides their heat and palette, are much bigger than what I’m accustomed to, which means bigger brushes and bolder mark-making, so perhaps having to adapt to not being able to see close-up very well now, is a blessing, as they say, in disguise. I did, however, get a new prescription for lenses that should correct all the vision issues at my surgical followup with the eye doctor yesterday. Hopefully I like the new frames I’ve picked out and will finally be able to see what I’m doing again. I’ll prime new panels to paint on today, it would be logical to do another colorful piece, but I feel a Snowy Owl or a pale Egyptian Vulture coming on. Fingers crossed that the new glasses are ready in time for my upcoming visit to the UK. I won’t be taking the laptop this time because of my not so irrational fear of US Customs, but I’ll pass on getting a burner phone and just shut my regular one down when I get on the plane heading home instead. So as my friend Kevin likes to say - Onward.

I’d lived in downtown Manhattan for 35 years by the time I finally left. There was a brief period in the East Village, and a month of sleeping on a rollaway bed in the stockroom of the boutique where I worked. Mind you, the year before I’d been living in a shack in the Ozarks that had no running water or electricity, so a lamp to read by and a toilet were luxuries. From there, I had a tiny two room walkup that measured 14’x14’ with a shower and kitchen appliances in one room and a sleeping loft in the other. I lived there for several years and finally moved into the building next door when I married my soon to be ex-husband. Once he was gone, I stayed in my rent-stabilized apartment for 30 years until my landlord paid me to move out. When my landlord made me his offer, I called a friend who lived on Cape Cod and she told me her friend who had a store there needed a salesgirl. I was on the Bolt bus two days later and was hired the following morning. I also looked at an apartment I’d seen on Craig’s List on the way back to my friend’s house. It was in a basement but had decent furniture, a big TV with cable, and free WiFi. I shook hands with the landlady and called my New York landlord to tell him I would take the deal. He gave me six weeks to vacate my apartment. I sold almost all of my furniture and gave away a ton of books and clothes. And tore up 30 plus years of journals, which was liberating. By the time I left, the UHaul wasn’t even half full. My parrot, a Senegal named Pacino, sat up front with me in his travel cage for the ride. I arrived in Yarmouth Port on Halloween and lived and worked there for six months. In the meantime, I met up with some artists from the gallery in Provincetown and they offered me the job. That was 14 years ago this month. There’ve been a few snags, I’ve had five addresses and six jobs since leaving New York, but doors kept opening. Now, as I contemplate how to move to the UK to be with my beau, I once again am faced with an apartment full of furniture. There will be no UHaul this time but I don’t need to deal with that today. I have a place to live both here and there, I’ll just have to wait for the next door to open. And while I wait, I’ll enjoy this little beach town before the tourists take over this summer. So yes, Onward.

Last Thursday, I set off for my followup with the optometrist at my cataract surgeon’s practice. I had anxiously anticipated this appointment because although the surgery had corrected my distance vision, it did nothing for my double vision, and it made my closeup vision worse. This means I can’t see my phone or laptop much less paint even with reading glasses since they don’t help with the double vision unless I shut one eye. And the glasses that do correct the double vision are my old myopic prescription that now makes everything blurry. So I had high hopes for this appointment. But half way there - it’s over an hour away - I got a call saying it was cancelled because the optometrist was sick, and once I was home again, I got another call saying the earliest they could fit me in was July. As the office would be closing on Friday for the Easter holiday, it was suggested I call back on Tuesday to see if anything sooner had become available. Up until then, I’d been reminding myself that new glasses would fix the problem, and I could deal with it until I got the revised prescription last Thursday. Needless to say, I did not have a pleasant weekend. I even called another optometrist closer to home but since I am technically under my surgeon’s care until I have my followup at his office, they were reluctant to see me without his permission. In the meantime, since it’s a struggle to paint but also a struggle not to paint, I decided to rework another piece I wasn’t happy with yet. I pulled out the Loon I did last fall as a favor for a friend who wanted it as a giclee. I had thought of it as a commission but my heart wasn’t in it. Not that there was anything wrong with the piece, it just didn’t sing to me and once the giclee was done, I put the original away. Luna’s singing now, in spite of my not being able to get a good shot of her since she’s so shiny. I finished her on Monday. And then on Tuesday when I called the surgeon’s office as suggested, they squeezed me in with a different optometrist in the practice for May 6th. Only another two weeks, I can handle that. There might even be another bird to repaint. Onward.

I don’t invest in the stock market but I am afraid of the chaos. And I can’t be the only one nervous about traveling with my laptop and phone. One of my mindless activities lately is cleaning out my techno storage and drives, which is more useful than playing Spider Solitaire ad nauseam. Today, I deleted dozens of individual chapters of two novels I wrote and rewrote several times in between the Angels series and the Birds. It was similar to ripping up thirty years worth of journals while I emptied out my Soho apartment when I left New York. I have no regrets about doing that, in fact it was incredibly freeing. I also, for the record, tore up four large garbage bags full of art I unearthed while cleaning out my studio. It was stuff I never bothered to photograph, because frankly, it was weak and had to go. As did those novels. I was in love with one of my characters, and friends who read the books liked them, but now I cringe at the idea of anybody else seeing them. So - bye bye, Kitty and Danny, off you go. I also felt like that about Abraham, the bald eagle I posted in February. My fiancé is a painter as well, and he often comments on how quickly I work. His paintings can take ages to finish but we’re still each other’s critique partner regardless of our different processes. So when I decided to rework Abraham, he was all for it. That’s the newest version above. He’s better, no? Finally, I’ve noticed a drop in my internet numbers. Website hits are down, likes on Instagram are too, and last week’s Substack reactions to Persephone were surprisingly low. I’m not taking this personally, I know it’s because shit has gotten too real. Hey, I just gave my phone 53 gigabytes of storage space and cut what’s saved on my Google Drive in half. I grew up military, I lived in Germany during the Berlin Wall crisis, it was terrifying. When my father came home and burned documents after memorizing them during the Bay of Pigs, our tornado cellar became an atomic bomb shelter. Later, I lived less than a mile from the World Trade Center. 9/11 was very personal to me. I get it. This is PTSD territory. If you think you are over-reacting, you are not. Be kind to yourself. Stay in the moment. Onwards.

Finally, the heron, titled Persephone, is finished. I see her as one of my breakthrough pieces since she is much bigger than usual and the hot greenish yellow background is shockingly new for me. In fact it was that background that slowed me down, she had copper as a backdrop until I changed it on a whim. Then I had to sit with her for a while and decide what to do next. I’m very happy with the results, I particularly like the beak, and the shadow under her eye sings to me. In other news, as I debate how to budget the grant money, I’m in discussion about a Pop Up show in July at a gallery here in Provincetown. I planned to use Persephone as the centerpiece, but I just had an inquiry from Europe about her as well as three other recent pieces, so I’d best get cracking on something new. Perhaps a turaco. Are you familiar with them? The first of my birds to get into a juried show was a green turaco I took artistic liberties with titled LeRoi. He’s also the only one of my juried show paintings that I still own. I’ve been toying with the idea of reworking him a bit, maybe give him some shading, but I know from experience that could ruin him and that I should start something fresh. Anyway, away from the studio I’m trying to ignore the news whenever possible but I did watch the last six hours of Cory Booker’s speech. He made me cry. Can’t say why. Onward.