I’m a little late this week but I’ve reworked six more pieces. Here are four of them in reverse chronological order. Above is #21, the macaw with a bronzy brown background. Next is #34, below, a kite that was one of the earliest charcoal studies that I painted over and has the same bronzy background as the macaw. Further down is #18, the raven which is one of three with gilded backgrounds. And finally, at the bottom is Jasper, a small wood panel piece from four years ago that belongs with last week’s group. All of the reworked pieces involved a return to the brush, which was inevitable. I’m not giving up charcoal though, but every time I rework something, I want to rework another one.

Why so many? Because the news has been so mind-bogglingly bad and my reaction has been to disappear into the studio to paint. It gives me the illusion of being in control when, out there in the real world, it’s mayhem and chaos. May I just say that the videos and subsequent lies from the powers that be about the content of what I can see with my own eyes has brought me to tears on several occasions. Granted, there’s been the teensiest shift out of DC but not for the right reasons. It’s only more ass-covering and gaslighting. And please don’t get me started on blizzards and Davos.

Whatever. I do have some exciting good news though. You may recall that last year a historical building in Provincetown hung scrims of two of my birds in their front windows. The manager of the building came by my booth at the craft fair last month and then contacted The Commons, who had arranged the original project, to commission ten more. I’m not involved in the hanging of the work but they went with my suggested images. There’s still some tweaking to be done but the installation is impressive. I only have casual snapshots so far, but once they’re finished, I will go by and take better photographs. So, Yay. And onward.

Three new reworks this week, all wood panel paintings. One, Lune above, got a revised title. It was a commission piece, which the client got a hand-embellished giclee of, and which meant it was a gig instead of being done for the joy of it. Joy is not a word I would attribute to it now, but for me it really sings. So does Professor, the middle piece, although he is the first of the birds that I see as sad. He was part of a series of white birds with vivid undertones I did in 2021 and I purposely left him in his undertone state to separate him from the rest of the group. He remained an interesting oddball until I gave him his white coat and inky background two days ago. Now he is my sad little beauty.

One might ask about this palette change. Both Professor and ABE, the eagle below, have taken on a distinct Rembrandt moody density of black against delicate whites - working exclusively with charcoal for the last six months has something to do with this. But honestly, looking back, all the vibrant, defiant color my work was known for had gotten a bit too predictable and easy. Hence the charcoal, which, as I rework the wood panel pieces, are about to be taken to a new level. But the new palette. It’s no secret the bird series started with Trump’s first inauguration and continued through Biden’s term because Trump, lurking and threatening, never went away. I kept painting happy colors as I traipsed back and forth to the UK to visit dear Paul. I even did charcoal pieces while I was there last fall. Then I started reworking some of the charcoals while sliding into the craft fair vortex. Now, as I’m settling back into my studio routine, the world as we know it has plunged into insanity.

Seriously, do you feel safe? Really? That said, with Lune, I’ve crossed out of Rembrandt mode into a full-blown Goya during the Napoleonic War phase. I think about him daubing those sepia and black nightmares directly onto the walls of his house - that terror and rage. I’m not there yet but I feel it coming. However, I have dates for my solo show at The Commons this spring and the aroma of fresh coffee to cheer me up, so, you know, onward.

Now that the craft fair is over and I’ve recuperated physically and regrouped mentally, I’ve been adding a bit of metallic color with the charcoal pieces I’m reworking. #11, above is the first one I finished and I am much happier with it now. In the meantime, I am also reworking paintings from last summer’s solo show by using what I’ve learned about negative space and black while doing the charcoal pieces. Oskar, below, used to have a vivid purple background but now has one that is a mix of dark blues and browns that passes for black but isn’t. This is all part of the necessary growth and exploration of making art, each phase leads to and informs the next. Yes, they are still birds, my spirit animals, my talismans, but there is a definite advancement even though the earliest ones were quite, dare I say it, brilliant too. Brilliant is a word Paul, my fiancé, uses. Our relationship is based on our appreciation of each other’s artwork. We’ve been Facebook friends for at least fifteen years but it developed into a romance in 2023. At the time I was intimidated by him and his career even though I was more prolific and visible on social media. Almost a mentor, he guided me as I built both my website and craft fair business as well as a solid body of original paintings. He has brought a gravity and stature to my work, and he’s patient with me if he feels I’m headed in a wrong direction. He tells me, of course, but patiently, especially when I disagree with him. Although once I catch up with what he has been suggesting, I see it too. You’d have to ask him how I’ve influenced his work, but to my eye there’s a bounce and joy that wasn’t there before. It’s a win-win situation, he has given me confidence and I have brought light into the gloom and despair of what is currently our world. How will the Venezuela nightmare impact our plans? Will the UK have me with my American passport? Will whatever I ship there arrive or get blown out of the water? What about flying? I know I’m not getting on a plane or going through an airport again until things calm down. But will they calm down? I keep thinking about people who were separated during WWII and could only connect with letters that took months to arrive. At least we have Zoom and WhatsApp, for now. Onward.

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.