After almost a year of focusing on the contrast and balance of black and white, I felt compelled to return to color. Only now I’m working with the scale of the charcoals. It’s hard to tell from a photograph, but Cardinalis, above, is 18x18” and marks a return to canvas, which I haven’t painted on in decades. Luckily I had save all my large, soft brushes from way back then when I was doing complex oils that were often quite big. I still have slides of that work but not the technology to digitize them now, although I do have this shot Bold As Love, below, from that period. What it has in common with more current work is my use of gold paint as a base or background. It was inspired by a display of dinosaur eggs at The Natural History Museum I saw at the time. Wait. Dinosaur eggs, right, so birds may have been a passion of mine back then as well.

Also this week, I did another study for the kids workshop I’m doing later this summer that I mentioned last week. I have a few more ideas I’m excited about and I’m happy with how this Bluejay turned out. It’s rice paper, colored tissue paper and charcoal on cardboard, and perhaps too messy for a pristine gallery so I may need to streamline the process since my other ideas are even messier. In the meantime, I started a new painting this morning with a metallic gold background on a 12x12” wood panel of an Emu, which is clearly a dinosaur and could be thought of as a full circle moment.

The opening at the Ali Gray Gallery went well enough for the show to be extended an extra week, and I have some good news I can’t talk about yet, but Facebook keeps reminding me of my trips to Newcastle in May of both 2024 and 2025. The pictures from those trips make me a little sad since I was supposed to be moving there this week. At least that was the plan until current political and financial circumstances got in the way. I’m not starving and my bills are paid, but airplane tickets right now are out of the question. I do see Paul online everyday, and making art helps. It has always helped. Some of my best work was done under duress - those dinosaur eggs? I was miserable back then and they came out great. OK, on with the day.

I didn’t think I was going to have a new piece to show you this week, but I rolled out of bed at dawn this morning and did this Dove study. I have a couple projects coming up and the first one is a workshop I’ll be doing at the Ali Gray Gallery at the end of July. It’s geared for tweens and teenagers, so I thought tissue paper, collage and paint markers on sheets of cardboard keep it from getting too precious. Given that, I intend to create several examples of what one can do with one or all of those supplies. The Dove started with charcoal and gesso, followed by a black ink brush pen. I loved it so much, I jazzed up the cardboard with a metallic gold colored pencil background. I can’t wait to play with tissue paper and cut up magazine pages, I envision feathers galore. Maybe that will be next.

In the meantime, Facebook reminded me that it’s been 15 years since I washed ashore in Provincetown and spent that first summer living in this cabin. There’s a certain bird that starts to sing at 3am in the spring and summer and stops before the sun comes up. I believe that bird is a Robin, which so far, I haven’t painted yet. They have a rather syrupy chirrupy song of several notes, a brief pause and those same notes again, ad nauseam. I know, since not only did they wake me up every night in the cabin, but they’re doing it now as well even when the windows aren’t open. I prefer the complex, lyrical call of cardinals, or the chatter of a hoard of sparrows hidden in a hedge until something spooks them and they scatter en masse to the safety of a nearby tree.

And yesterday, I followed this magnificent blue-faced turkey on a main road in town. I’m not sure why he was alone, they’re usually in a mob scene gaggle, and he was so handsome. Ok, on with the day - until next week then.

Definitely late this week, sorry. The Commons show went very well - the opening was packed, as you can see from the photo above, and I held my own talking to strangers about my art. The show’s down now but while it was up, I began work on a complex grant proposal with eight essay sections that are similar but with slight variations. It’s project-oriented and yesterday I worked out the detailed budget for it so I’m almost done. This also stems from The Commons show as well, but let me backtrack a bit. The morning after the opening, I got a call that the Snow Owl had sold and they had cash for me to pick up. I assumed it had sold to one of the women I spoke to about it the night before, but it turned out it went to a woman who saw is image in the local press and drove forty miles to be there when The Commons opened to buy it. Her ATM only gave her enough cash for a deposit, so she drove the forty miles home empty handed but happy with her purchase. She then drove the same forty miles back and forth a few days later with the balance, but this time she left with the Snow Owl and I filled its space on the wall with the Harpy that had been on the Youtube show that I’d kept aside in case this happened. Very cool, very smooth, but while I was there that first morning collecting my cash, a man walked in hoping to find me. He was from the Provincetown Conservation Trust and had seen the windows project and wanted to talk to me about an event he was planning for next spring. I had already been thinking about the project I’m now doing the grant proposal for, and speaking to him pulled my ideas together. Also very cool, and this time serendipitous.

But wait, there’s more. Besides finishing Gatsby, the Starling above, while the show was in progress, and the SIDE Gallery online show that I have a photograph in going live, one of the women I spoke to at the opening was a curator and she contacted me a few days later about a show she was putting together. After some discussion, we settled on two large pieces that weren’t in The Commons show or part of what is going to the Ali Gray Gallery next week, and she came by yesterday with a contract and took the two pieces with her. They had been on my studio wall since my last Commons show in 2024. Luckily, I had the charcoals safely at home by then so my studio wall is not lonely. And if that’s not enough, I also went on a job interview last Thursday that reminded me of my internship at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Battery Park. I’ve written about it before at least a year ago, it was post-9/11 and part of a program I was in at Pace University, and I was very happy there. I spent most of my time greeting visitors at my reception desk, and on slow days, I read books about Native American art that I borrowed from their research library. I also was a hostess at their film festival, where I met all the Dances With Wolves Indian actors, and attended workshops for kids because they were stringing beads and making masks and corn husk dolls. It was profoundly inspiring and led to me making my own masks, like Feather below, and the papier-mâché sculptures that are some of my best NYC work. So yes, I’ve been busy, I still am, and time’s a wastin’ - on with the day.

Greetings from the lounge at the Provincetown Commons where I am hanging out for a few hours every day while the show is up. The opening is tonight, although I hung the work on Wednesday, and I am very happy with the results. Everything fit without being crowded, as you can see in these shots of some of the show. Harpy#2, which I kept in reserve, has gone to the set of the Wake Up In Provincetown YouTube hourly weekly show so it could be featured in this morning’s video. There’s a screen shot at the bottom of this post.

Besides the YouTube show, I also have nice blurbs with images in the Provincetown Magazine as well as the weekly arts section of the Provincetown Independent. This weekend is the first Friday evening Gallery Stroll in town, so there should be some good traffic tonight, especially since there is a huge collage show opening in another space at The Commons and it’s also getting a lot of attention.

The Commons, by the way, is not just gallery spaces. It is a multifunctional art community organization with studios and co-working areas for creative entrepreneurs plus a number of private meeting rooms of various sizes. It was built in 1935 to replace the 1892 schoolhouse that burned down, and remained a school for decades. Eventually, it was acquired by The Commons we know and love, which after extensive interior renovations, opened in 2017. They focus their solo shows on artists without gallery representation, which I was one of until a few weeks ago, and they let me slide because I am, gratefully, one of their success stories.

In the meantime, the art advisor I mentioned last week bought the two larger pieces of the collection of small works she had on hold for her project. She may come back for the rest of them for a different project, but the gallery is happy to take them since the summer season tourists like little paintings that will fit easily in their suitcases when they fly home. Speaking of which, have you seen the new limited edition US passport design? Luckily I can request the old format when I renew mine this fall. OK, enough about that, on with the day.