Clearly A Post is Overdue

I may have been looked down most of 2020 beginning in March but I was not locked up. I did get out with my camera but to familiar places I knew would be people free or close to it. And within the range of a half tank of gas in the Explorer. But some of the photos were also taken from a really safe space like my deck or my studio.

Or my yard once the snow had melted. And whether it was I was more intent upon things within my range zone or because of lack of people disturbing their space there just seemed to be more visitors to my yard like the bumble bee below.

 

Or this Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly.

And it was an incredible fall. But about that time my computer failed and maybe my hope because all the venues for artists to peddle their wares were cancelled. Even our Studio Tour. Depression became the pandemic that needed to be defeated. I forced myself to get out and take photos but the complexity of Windows 10 on the new computer presented me with challenges I did not seem to be able to defeat. And my paintings stopped.

Yesterday with a photography contest to enter I finally devoted hours to unpuzzle where my photos landed and how to access them. And developed a strategy to be able to utilize them.

And I realized there was an unfinished painting on my easel.

On a Smokey Day Walk About

We had fires to the north of us in Colorado and in every state to the west of us. And a fire in the middle of our state in Santa Fe forest. Our blue skies were whitish and our green hills shades of gray. As a landscape photographer I was saddened for the lack of color but still in the early hours of the day there was an amazing light.

I leave you and this post with a photo of what colors everything was cloaked in smoke.

 

Sunset from the Studio Deck

As the begins to set behind me

No words. If a photo is worth a thousand words than a series of photos could be a mini feature or novel. My deck faces east and so I get awesome photos of dawn. But my house blocks sunsets. The majority of these photos are looking east or south and the clouds have been colored by the sunset behind me.

Looking south

East

Explosion of light

And at last looking northwest

Art During Covid-19?

Rose Moon Rising
20 x 30 watercolor on Artists Canvas $1350
Completed March 25, 2020

 If an artist is locked up in her studio does she still paint? Yes. But probably not with the necessity of when you are preparing for a show or exhibit or tour. Which gives you space for self-expression; painting what is in your heart and troubling your soul.

A friend reminded me today of where I was last year with my painting and photography as represented by my Angel Fire Studio Tour page. I was getting a lot of attention and sales for my photography. Painting was taking a back stage in my life. But beginning March 11, 2020 and the Covid lock down painting moved forward. I had the time. And I quickly bought up on line any materials I thought I might need in the coming months. Yes, consciously I thought it would be months. But in my subconscious I saw it as an end of things. Something which my mind had been projecting forward with my On the Edge Series which began with the painting below.

On the Edge
30 x 18 Watercolor on Artists Canvas $1350
Completed April 3, 2016

In spite of the bright colors my art for some has always had a dark side. And they will point out the crows or ravens which are in all most all day time paintings. When I was in Alaska decades ago I was told it was illegal to kill ravens because a lot of the Inuits believed they were carriers for the souls of the dead so they could rest before returning to an earth bound existence. On the Edge above was noteworthy because it had no flight of ravens.

End of Day
18 x 26 Watercolor on Artists Canvas $1050
Completed June 4, 2020

When you are not turning out just another view of another mission art goes slower. It spends more easel time while I wait for the spirits to give me direction. Glorious Dawn below began as one of those redo's of a much smaller painting which was just a study. The study sold and I was going to do the full sized one soon. Never seemed to be the time. Too busy out taking photographs but winter as well as Covid keeps me in. And there were rumors of covid in February and it was a dull winter with no photo challenges to I pulled out the drawing for that study of Mesa Arch in Canyonlands and it took over. It may have a positive title but I see it as an earth after the end of time.

Glorious Dawn
16 x 30 Mixed Media on Artists Canvas $1090
Completed February 3, 2020

Artists do not often put in completion dates these days. Photographers do, but some article in an artists' publication said not to do that. It has never been on front. Usually on the back right corner where once framed it was never noticed. I have dates for these works because my camera records the date I took their official portrait. And for this time or end of time it seems important so I have noted it here.

I have a wandering mind and as I was working on the sketch for the painting below I thought maybe all the old dwellings of the ancient ones were not vacated due to rampaging hoards or drought but a pandemic. The western United States has a few like Hantavirus and Bubonic plague. The working title for the painting below was Home of the Lost People. A friend told me that was too dark if I ever wanted it to sell.

Cliff Pueblo: Home of the Lost People
28 x 14 Mixed Media on Artists Canvas $875
Completed April 5, 2020

Sell? Now that is a lost art in this pandemic. And as I prepared to write this blog I came across so much else lost in the time of this pandemic. Like my inventory sheet. And this blog. Last post was in December 2019. Was I waiting and holding my breath for it to go away. No. But I was trying to figure out what the new post covid world would look like.

And I have been working on a new painting. It has been sitting patiently on my easel while I try to ignore it. Working title is Return of the Yei which were spiritual guides for the Dine'. I promise to be better at posting my wanderings here.

Art Markets?

Rio Grande Fair 2010

At what I considered the height of my art business I was doing eight big fairs in New Mexico and other cities in the west. One even in San Francisco with masks before transitioning to paintings. It wasn't easy getting in those touted markets. There was a jury process which in the age before transition to digital required slides which had to be prepared and mailed.

The Rio Grande Fair in 2010 was one of my last. I was seldom turned down for any fair I applied for.  I had all the professional equipment at no small investment. But when my Astro van, the required conveyance for all that equipment and inventory, blew a connecting rod I sat down to an agonizing reappraisal of costs versus profits and quit.

Fairs at the time were going through a downturn. The middle class was vanishing with their disposable income. They went to fairs with their smart phones and took photos and ate at the food booths and more and more bought from the vendors selling Chinese products pretending to be originals. And digital technology made the ink jet (Giclee in French) ridiculously cheep. The first year after I quit I received calls from those running fairs I had tried so hard to get into at one time. "We have eleven booths open. Say yes and I will halve the booth fee."

Now I do only one little local fair. No travel costs. No hotels. No Chinese with their smart phones. No vendors from everywhere but here. And I have my studio. And our arts group does the studio tour every fall. Art does not have to be packed up and moved until it is sold or displayed at a local venue.

One Studio wall 2019

The Angel Fire Holiday Market December 7 and 8 this year is the one fair I do. I no longer have all that fancy professional booth furniture in the top photo. I have to be very creative on displaying my wares. And this year I have decided to concentrate on little arts. The big paintings stay in the studio which is open three afternoons a week.

Little Original Watercolors in Small Frames and on note cards

The walls of my studio are full but as a painter I must paint. So I went back to the basics; tiny watercolors on note cards and in frames for gift giving.

Shelf Paintings and Little Gem Ornaments waiting to be packed.

And since I was printing out photographs for note cards I produced some Giclee prints, matted and put them in frames of various sizes. My big Giclee's on canvas are hanging on the walls of Enchanted Circle Brewing Company in Angel Fire.  Or my studio. The great thing about photography is its versatility.  Want it a different size? Or on canvas? Just order it.

Thicke holding space open in the bin of matted and framed photographs

This holiday season stop by the Brewery, the Market at the Community Center, or my studio. Or Binford-Bell Studio here or on Facebook.

Where Are All the Flowers?

Red Rose

Last blog was about winter scenes and this is about flowers. When I used to do a photo a day and a weekly post here I had my photographic efforts organized by those blogs. I stopped that in 2018 and so 2019 is a jumble of dated uploads on my hard drive.

Not a problem for me until the time comes around for garden club photographic entries or a friend asks for three flower photographs as a Christmas gift for a mutual friend. Easy, huh? Just go to the summer months. It snowed the 23 of May and nothing bloomed in June because it was too cool. And the lead photo is from a green house, and the last one from my studio in February.

Yellow Banded Bumble Bees in a sunflower

Fall redeemed the season which seemed all too in a rush to bloom and seed and go away before winter returned. Summer 2018 had been a great year for flower photography but all my best flower photos of 2019 seemed to be in chasing the insects in a frenzy to get all the pollen they could while it lasted.

Fly in a Hollyhock

The star of the summer

And oh, the Painted Ladies. They were just everywhere. One of the largest migrations going of these butterflies this summer.  And I never seemed to have passed up an opportunity to attempt a photographic capture from their first appearance on milk thistle through yellow cone flowers.

Danse Pour Deux

Solo Performance

As a gardener disappointed by my hollyhocks, poppies, and sunflowers I found solace in the wonderful return blooms of my orchids in the studio. They are preparing to do it yet again.

Return Performance 

Georgia O'Keeffe is quoted as saying she didn't much like flowers but painted them because they were cheap models. I hardly ever paint time but I love to photograph them.

Winter Scenes

Through the Woods

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village thought;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of Easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And Miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

My father used to hold forth reciting poetry. And he encouraged us to read and memorize poems. Stopping in the Woods on a Snowy Evening was one of the first I learned. Mom had poetry books and this one was short. Because of how the book opened itself to this page I assumed it was a favorite. I first recited it for her on a Christmas Eve, which is otherwise lost in my memory.

Yes, these photographs are not of taken on a dark evening but usually in early hours of morning so the snow isn't messed up with car tracks other than mine. Yes, no little horse either.  But I seldom stop and focus my camera on the snowy scene before me without lines of Mr. Frost's poem repeating in my head.

And these days, since my mother's death on a distant, but not forgotten, Thanksgiving not without tears.

The Fence Line

Through the Woods

Mother was a big believer in written correspondence. And picking out Hallmark cards to send for every occasion. I was expected by my Uncle Ray to take up that mantle of family communicator. And by fits and starts I tried. But I was definitely a disappointment to my mother's brothers.

And when holidays appear on the calendar I am disappointed too. Mother never let one pass without the appropriate Hallmark sentiment and handwritten note. I think of such things as I return, at the gentle urging of a friend, to not just email or personal message on a social platform but write a note with pen and paper and United States Postal Service stamp. And now, as preparations for the holiday market quicken, to make my own note cards.

Some are hand painted with watercolors, and some like those featured here, utilize my photography. I see the labor involved almost as my poor equivalent of a Navajo sand painting, or Tibetan mandala: a prayer or meditation as an apology for the past or wish for the future.

But they are just note cards. These are just a few of my favorite winter scenes.

Fresh Tracks

Picnic Cancelled 

Freezing Pond

May you have treasured memories which withstand the test of time and events.