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Newsletter March 2011

April 1st, 2011

Newsletter March 2011

NEWSLETTER March 2011

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Winter is so reluctant to let go of us this year. One day I am sitting on a tree stump in the woods, watching the bugs going about their business in the half-frozen leaf litter beside the melting snow. And the next day it is snowing again.

But the color and texture of the landscape has begun to change imperceptibly. The dry brown branches look a little less dead. Some buds are visibly swelling. The subtle shift in the color of the woods from brown towards purple signals that spring really is on its way. In Maine the warmth of spring lags so far behind the sun’s crossing of the celestial equator that I am thankful for every small reassuring sign.

Sitting under a pine tree on one of the warm days, I found a red velvet mite on a small scrap of wood at my feet. Red velvet mites are the tiny bright red arachnids that live in gardens and on forest floors. Close up, you can see that they are covered with thick scarlet fur and have spider-like mouth parts.

They are Good Guys in my book. Unlike their cousins, the chiggers and ticks, they do not feed on us, but rather act as predators on some of the insects that eat our garden produce. Apparently not very much is known about them. They are clearly important in the forest ecosystem, but their actual role still remains a mystery. Their impossibly bright color is eye-catching and appealing. I did not try to keep this one in order to draw it, however, but let it go.

My studio time has been limited this month, but I did go back and put another piece in my butterfly project from last summer. You may remember that in my August newsletter I told you about finding a stunning one-of-a-kind butterfly that was an “intergrade” between a white admiral and a red-spotted purple. (If you did not read that newsletter, here is the link to it in my blog: http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/blogs/newsletter-august-2010.html.) The image here is one of the finished drawings of the mystery butterfly.

As you can see, it looks more like the red-spotted purple side of its family than the white admiral. But it does have a little of the admiral’s white, and the row of orange spots on the top side of the hind wing. It took many layers of colored pencil to get that purple-brown velvet color on the wings. Prismacolor pencils have a slight transparency and a soft waxy texture that is perfect for this kind of work.

Spring is definitely a season for new beginnings. In this time-honored tradition, I have started two art-sharing projects that will keep me busy for a while. For one thing, I am overhauling my website, posting new work and changing how the galleries are arranged. I would like it to be more narrative, to tell the story of the art I have been doing and how it has developed.

And the other thing is that I am seriously looking into the idea of putting some of my work on household items like mugs and t-shirts. Enough people have told me, “That would look great on a t-shirt!” (or a mug or a plate or a drawer pull) that it has finally gotten my attention. Besides, I would really enjoy drinking my morning tea out of a white china mug with one of my butterfly drawings on the side of it.

The way I see it, I am foraging for beauty here in the Swift River Valley and sharing it with you all. If that is the form you want it in, that is fine with me. Times being what they are, few people have the luxury of adding new art to their walls. I have always said that I would rather sell a hundred prints of a painting to a hundred people than sell only the original to hang on just one wall where one person sees it. So stay tuned for new developments in the next month!

My gift to you this month is a file of the mystery butterfly drawing. You may do with it what you choose. I have printed a row of butterfly drawings on cardstock and cut them into strips for bookmarks, one butterfly per bookmark. As my sister says, you can never have too many bookmarks.

For more information on “Swift River Treasures,” my artmaking process, or to check out my blog, see my website at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/. Here you can order prints of my work, and have them matted and framed if you choose, courtesy of Fine Art America’s great print-on-demand service. They also offer posters, and greeting cards, either single or in packages.

If you want to look at the Moments of Transcendence book, here is the new link to it on the Blurb.com booksite (a different link than last month):
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2034640 .

This month’s quote is especially meaningful for those of us who grew up in northeastern Ohio: You can't see Canada across lake Erie, but you know it's there. It's the same with spring. You have to have faith, especially in Cleveland. (Paul Fleischman)

Thanks for joining me in the journey. I hope that you enjoy looking at the art as much as I have enjoyed making it! I would love to hear from you, too, so please do reply with comments.


Betsy

Newsletter February 2011

February 28th, 2011

Newsletter February 2011

NEWSLETTER February 2011

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Okay, folks---a drum roll (rrrrrrrrrRRRRRR!) and a fanfare (ta-DAH!)---I have finished the Moments of Transcendence book! You can see it on the internet at http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2004449. Click on the orange “Preview Book” tag to see the book in its entirety, page by page. Use their shopping cart if you want to buy a copy of it.

My original goal for the book was to chronicle the project and archive the paintings. I also wanted to approximate for the reader (as well as I could) the experience of seeing the whole collection in a gallery, because that will never happen again. I still have a few of these little paintings here in my studio, but most of them are scattered all over the globe now, from Alaska to France.

I am satisfied with the way the book accomplishes these goals, and delighted by the unanticipated ways in which it exceeded my expectations. I found out that I really enjoy book designing. The book became a work of art in itself. Every page has all the design elements of a good painting. I had the challenges that an artist faces when learning how to make a new medium do what is asked of it, and at the same time the challenges of learning the ins and outs of a new software package.

I enjoy writing, so this was a chance to use my skills in that arena. Much of the writing was already done in the process of the school project. But I had to mold that into a readable, cohesive whole, and then compose it for its visual effect on the page, too.

I wanted to test the book-publishing waters for another reason as well. The Swift River Treasures collection that I am working on now was conceived as a book right from the beginning. Archiving the Moments collection in book form has helped me get a better idea of how I want to proceed with that project, and helped me get a better vision of the finished work. The skills that I have learned, from page layout to final editing, will all be put to good use there.

So, after spending the better part of four months on the book, what next? Back to Swift River Treasures, of course! I am really looking forward to making something with my hands after having spent so many hours looking at a computer monitor. Winter is beginning to lose its grip on us, spring is approaching, and I am itching to get out and explore my valley and learn more about its secrets in the coming year.

My gift to you this month is a file of the book cover photo, for you to do with as you choose.

For more information on “Swift River Treasures,” my artmaking process, or to check out my blog, see my website at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/. Here you can order prints of my work, and have them matted and framed if you choose, courtesy of Fine Art America’s great print-on-demand service. They also offer posters, and greeting cards, either single or in packages.

If a man could mount to heaven and survey the mighty universe, his admiration of its beauties would be much diminished unless he had someone to share in his pleasure. (Cervantes)

Thanks for joining me in the journey. I hope that you enjoy looking at the book as much as I have enjoyed making it! I would love to hear from you, too, so please do reply with comments.


Betsy


Yo-yo Weather

February 17th, 2011

Yo-yo Weather

The weather is a yo-yo now. Two days ago the thermometer didn’t climb above ten degrees, and the north wind was screaming around the back of the house. Today the thermometer stands at fifty, with a balmy breeze and hazy sun. Just last week the temperatures were still fifteen to twenty degrees below zero at night. And they may well be again tomorrow. But today the chickadees were singing to each other in the woods, and the intermittent crashes of snow and ice sliding off of the roof were startling me all morning long.

It’s a comfort to see the days getting so much visibly longer, and feel the warmth of the sun getting so much stronger. In Maine, Groundhog Day is the traditional “middle” of winter, when you should still have half of your jams and jellies and firewood left. I guess maybe we have gone through about half of our dried tomatoes (and enjoyed every bite, too).

Last week I saw a flock of thirty or more birds fly right over my head as I walked across the driveway one afternoon. They were unfamiliar, and went so fast that I could not identify them at all. They were of medium size, light colored, closely bunched, and twittering to each other as they went. Snow buntings, perhaps? I have not seen them for years, but they do show up here occasionally.

Yesterday when I walked out in the woods, I heard one large bird keeping up a rhythmic, low-pitched croaking sound off toward the river. It sounded dismal enough, but maybe that could still be considered a sign of spring, too.

I am not fooled by a spring-like day today. We still have more snow to come, I am sure. And they will mostly be the heavy, wet snows of March. But now it will not seem so final. I know that winter’s days are numbered. Somehow even just one warm day in February helps me to believe in spring again.

Newsletter January 2011

February 2nd, 2011

Newsletter January 2011

NEWSLETTER January 2011

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Like old Janus, I will do some looking back and some looking forward with you here.

Looking forward, the Moments of Transcendence book is in the final proofing stage now, almost ready for publishing. Hopefully by the time you hear from me in February, it will be in print. It has been a thoroughly satisfying project. My aim was to create a book that approximated the experience of seeing the collection in a gallery, just as close as I could get it, and I think that I have succeeded.

Looking back, I had a wonderful time with my family in Ohio in December. We baked paintbrush cookies, played games, and talked for hours. And we dug into the archives where my grandfather's art is stored, so here is some family history for you, with a glimpse into the art that shaped mine.

My grandfather, Arthur S. Gray, was an artist, photographer, poet, and philosopher, and my mentor. During our visit in Ohio we had an incredible time looking at boxfuls of his photos, letters, and drawings. Here on my blog I have posted an article written by one of his friends about him many years ago, entitled "Photographer Extraordinary."

Part of his art has made its way into my own art in the word stephanogram, the name I gave the little round paintings in my Moments of Transcendence collection. I can remember watching him make what he called an episodagram, using a soft black lithograph crayon and a large white sheet of paper. As far as I know he coined the word himself. I have never heard anyone else use it.

Gramp took the crayon and laid it on its side at the bottom of the page of paper. He stood there for a moment absolutely still, and suddenly he began to move the crayon decisively up the page, leaving a black trail of curving, swooping black shapes that were the width of the crayon's length. Without lifting the crayon from the paper he took it all the way to the top and back down in just a few seconds. And just like magic there was a graceful, fascinating abstract image on the paper. The photo shown here is an example, done on yellow-toned paper. You will see that it is signed with his trademark "Gee Whiz" figure, a lower case "g" for Gray, with legs on it.

What was he thinking about when he was standing there motionless, or when he was making the magic? I did not know then and I do not know now. All I know is that it enthralled me to watch him do it. He called them episodagrams because they were brief episodes of time, never to be repeated. No two episodagrams were ever alike. I have tried my hand at making episodagrams, too, and they seem to come out as individual as handwriting.

Stephanos is the New Testament Greek word for "crown." So when I was searching for a name for my miniature paintings, I called them stephanograms because of my grandfather's episodagrams. Since the paintings are circular like a crown, it seemed appropriate. Just like the episodagrams, they are about small episodes of time, individual moments of beauty captured in art, never to be repeated.

The family is talking about putting some of Gramp's work into print, on the internet and in book form. He was a prolifically creative man, so that would be a huge undertaking. His sonnets alone would fill a large book. I am thankful for my family heritage, and for my grandfather's encouragement, so it seems the least we can do.

For those of you who are local, I will be teaching classes on drawing, painting, and open studio (your choice of projects) this spring. The River Valley Healthy Communities Coalition and the Maine Community Foundation have teamed up with Pennacook Art Center to offer scholarships to art students in our area, so if you or anyone you know would like art classes, let me know.

The Pennacook Art Center artists will open a new show Friday, February 4th at our gallery in the River Valley Technology Center in Rumford (60 Lowell St,. on the Island). The opening reception is from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. You are all welcome to come and look at the art, meet the artists, and share some good conversation and good food.

For more information on Swift River Treasures, my artmaking process, or recent work, or to check out my blog, see my website at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/. Here you can order prints of my work, and have them matted and framed if you choose, courtesy of Fine Art America's great print-on-demand service. They also offer greeting cards, either single or in packages.

My gift to you this month is one of Gramp's episodagrams. You are welcome to print it or do whatever you would like to with it. And maybe you would like to try making one yourself. You can do it with a peeled piece of crayon if you don't have a lithograph crayon.

There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you ..... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself. (Ruth Stout)

Thanks for joining me in the journey. I hope that you enjoy looking at the art as much as I have enjoyed making it! I would love to hear from you, too, so please do reply with comments.

Betsy

Photographer Extraordinary

January 31st, 2011

Photographer Extraordinary

The following article is one written about my grandfather by one of his friends.


Photographer Extraordinary

The man you see walking down the street just ahead of you… he looks innocent enough. He’s dressed like any other 20th century gentleman – the conventional business suit… neat fedora… conservative tie. And he appears to be going sedately about his own business—bound for his office or home or some such prosaic place. Nothing extraordinary about him at all.

Ah, but he is far from innocent, he is most extraordinary! That gentleman is on a secret mission. He is, as a matter of fact, a spy in the pay of no one… a sleuth engaged at this very instant on a private project that is as vast as life. Yes, he is out for something, out to catch something. His conventional dress is a mere camouflage. He doesn’t want you to see him, he doesn’t want you to notice him; it is his precise intention to disappear into the anonymity of the city crowd. The better to fool you, the better to go about his own private business undisturbed! Oh, he is a sly fellow!

Come now, catch up with him... do a bit of sleuthing on your own. Walk alongside him for a moment, and observe him closely. You will see that under the brim of his brown felt hat, his eyes are very shrewd, very busy. They are perhaps, the busiest eyes on the street. They are searching the faces of passers-by, they are appraising buildings to left and right, they are darting swiftly skyward, and just as quickly down again to the cracks in the sidewalk; they are taking in everything. Ah, there now—you’d better fall behind quickly and resume your walk in back of the gentleman. He saw you, yes he took you in from head to toe-just when you least expected it. You can be quite sure he noticed even the mole under your right eye. That gentleman doesn’t miss anything!

Who is he? He is Arthur S. Gray, free-lance photographer extraordinary of Cleveland, Ohio—out to catch life in an unguarded moment.

One time commercial photographer for Standard Oil, instructor at the Cleveland Photography Society, author of magazine and text-book articles on picture-making, Arthur Gray has a unique working method which he has pursued resolutely and successfully over the last forty years. It is a method which produces pictures that give you the same feeling you get from looking at great paintings by the old masters. Yet Mr. Gray works within the most stoically defined limitations of the camera. He does not set the stage for his subject-matter. He does not alter his photographs by one iota in the developing process. He works directly from and with life, life in the raw. How is it then, that his photographs achieve an artistic synthesis of light, composition, mood… all the balance, unity and symbolism of a great painting, yet still maintain their candid, factual, unvarnished reality? Let us see if we can ferret out his secret.

If you had trailed Arthur Gray a little longer, you would have seen him come to an abrupt standstill before an old alley stretching between two towering office buildings. You would have seen him squinting at the light, scanning the length, breadth, and height of the alley, evaluating all the photographic possibilities, making all the necessary calculations. Next, you would have seen him reaching deftly under his coat for the camera which he always carries with him, slung in a black leather case over his shoulder. You would have observed him quickly making speed and shutter adjustments, fixing his eye to the view-finder, taking one step forward, two backward, then suddenly freezing his position and pressing the cable release.

Thus the photograph is accomplished… sane models, tripod, lens cloth or light-meter… in less than a minute, in the midst of a busy city street. A striking, unusual city scene—perfect in lighting and composition—symbolic of any city anywhere.

This is how Arthur Gray works. Minutes, seconds, fractions of seconds are the essence of his art. All his photographs are products of just such emergencies. Each picture bears the un-mistakable Arthur Gray hallmark—a simple, honest naturalness together with the high symbolism and technical perfection of a fine painting.

Honesty is perhaps the key-word in Mr. Gray’s philosophy—the motif you will find in all his pictures. His is indeed an uncompromising honesty that begins with the tireless, exacting search for pictures—in city streets, parks, alleys and industrial centers… down country paths, in woods, meadows and over broad stretches of farmland… besides streams and waterfalls. His is an honesty relentlessly pushed to its conclusion in his unique, completely original process of developing the negatives.

Arthur Gray does not follow the universally accepted process which is based upon the premise that the exposure determines the density, and the developing the contrast. On the contrary. In his process, it is the exposure that determines the contrast, and the developing that determines the density. Mr. Gray has invented his own chemical formula to reproduce the original lighting as determined by the exposure time at the moment the picture was snapped. No tampering with lighting effects for him.

Equally uncompromising is his attitude toward the dark-room devices of painting in with a pen or brush, or of using chemicals to remove an undesirable telephone pole, billboard, or otherwise obtrusive object. To him this is trickery, chicanery, a base violation of the true function of the camera. For him the photographic moment is over with the clicking of the shutter. The function of the developing process is but to confirm—never to alter, the original inspiration.

Honesty: a straight-forward, unalterable rendition of reality. Artistry: the selection of scenes with esthetic significance, emotional appeal. Craftsmanship: a back-log of 40 years of experience which has given Mr. Gray his uncanny lighting skill. These are all clues to the Arthur Gray technique; but perhaps the most important clue is this – he is never without his camera. He puts it on with his clothes in the morning. Wherever he goes, on long journey or simple errand, that vest-pocket camera loaded with 127 pan film goes with him. “It is essential,” says Arthur Gray “That I be prepared at all times. I cannot make pictures happen… but I can be there with my camera when they do happen.”

This is, after all, the inevitable corollary of Mr. Gray’s philosophy. Since he refuses, on principle, to set the stage for his pictures, he must not be caught unprepared when life sets the stage for him. Wherever he goes, his eyes must be constantly searching for the perfect photographic moment. His camera must be ready when it comes… that miraculous moment when lighting composition and mood merge spontaneously… out of the chaos of life… into an art form.

When this happens (and it does not happen often), life seems to enter into a compact with art… a sort of divine conspiracy. The compact is swiftly made, as swiftly broken. Another instant and the light shifts, the human figures move out of the camera’s range, the clouds float away.

But if a man is as cunning, watchful and spry as Arthur Gray, he will have clicked his shutter in the interim. He will have recorded the conspiracy forever on the silver emulsion. And that is why Mr. Gray’s pictures have all of life’s direct freshness and truthfulness together with that miraculous artistic completeness that is the envy of all studio photographers.

Some day you may see Arthur Gray on the street yourself. He’ll be dressed in his usual conventional business suit… neat fedora… conservative tie.

But this time, you won’t be fooled. You’ll know that under his coat, that man carries a vest-pocket camera filled with 127 film, as ready for action as a loaded Luger pistol.

You’ll know that he is a vigilant, well-armed sleuth, eternally on the trail of some divine conspiracy.



A Winter Walk in the Woods

January 7th, 2011

A Winter Walk in the Woods

I went for a walk around the loop today, through our woods. It was about five below zero last night, and the crust on the snow was hard enough to support me in most places. The snow is not very deep yet. We have had only one significant snowfall, and even that has melted down to just a few inches. Not much of the wildlife is out and about. I saw a red squirrel playing around on the log pile this morning, and some small dark animal scurrying for cover across the snow under the bushes.

I saw the tracks of a very large deer on one side of the loop, and a couple of sets of coyote tracks on the other. Both followed the path for quite a distance. The coyote walked on the frozen stream bed for a while, too. Where the ice was smooth and glassy it had a thin covering of snow, just enough to show the coyote’s tracks. I could see where his feet had slipped and slid on the ice. I have nothing in particular against coyotes, but I wish I could have seen him slithering around like that. It must have been quite a sight.

The sun was out, and low in the afternoon sky, as it always is at this time of year. When I looked toward the sun, the snow glistened and glinted with a thousand little glitters of rainbow color. I tried to get a photo of it, but the camera didn’t see what I saw. We are supposed to get some more snow tonight, but the forecasters seem to be uncertain about how much.

I am enjoying loading the woodstove and working on my book. January has its comforts, and roasting in my armchair near the hearth is definitely at the top of my list.

Newsletter November 2010

December 1st, 2010

Newsletter November 2010

NEWSLETTER November 2010

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

The day after Thanksgiving brought our first snowfall of the season. Steve got the toboggan out of the garage and used it to take the trash out to the road. Then he pulled me around on it, with both of us laughing like little kids. Our total snowfall was only about two inches, but it was enough to make everything look white and wintry.

November is when we are settling down to indoor projects and getting ready for the long haul of winter in Maine. The work in the yard and garden is replaced by feeding the woodstove with the wood that Steve has cut and split, and spending time sitting in my favorite chair in the kitchen near its warmth. This is an in-your-face climate, where life changes radically as the seasons change. One of the joys of winter is slowing down a little.

The month of November has been very different for me. I decided that I want to archive my Moments of Transcendence collection in a real life hard copy book in addition to using digital files. I did some research, chose an online print-on-demand company that allowed me to do the design myself, and started laying it out page by page. In this book I want to share the motives behind the work as well as document the individual paintings, so I have been doing a lot of writing, too.

I am absolutely having a ball with this project! When I started it, I thought that I would be impatient to get it over with so I could go back to more drawing and painting. I had no idea that making a book could be so much fun. I am starting from scratch, learning how to use the software and figuring out what makes the pages look good to me. It’s just like learning to use a new medium, really. I am finding that a lot of the same design elements that make a good painting apply to a good page layout, too.

There is something very satisfying about the process. I love books anyway, so the lure of making one myself is irresistible. And just like an individual painting from the collection preserves a single encounter with beauty, the book preserves the experience as a whole. I can’t reproduce for the readers the experience of seeing the work hanging in a gallery, but I can at least give them a good description of how it tastes.

I don’t know how long it will take me to complete this project, but I will keep you posted on my progress. I will be away from home for a couple of weeks in December, spending time with family, so I may combine the December and January newsletter into one.

In the meantime, I am continuing my epic studio cleaning sale and posting more work on my website. This month I added a series of still life paintings and more of the Exploration of Natural Design work from 2006-7. I also posted a calligraphy that I did as a gift and fundraiser for some friends of ours, which you can see at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/featured/romans-12-be-transformed-betsy-gray-bell.html. For every print of Romans 12:2 Be Transformed calligraphy that I sell, I am going to send $10 to Church Without Walls International.

My gift to you this month is a postcard size print of this Romans 12:2 calligraphy. If you print it at 200 dpi it will come out as a 4” by 6” print.

For more information on “Swift River Treasures,” my artmaking process, or recent work, or to check out my blog, see my website at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/. Here you can order prints of my work, and have them matted and framed if you choose, courtesy of Fine Art America’s great print-on-demand service. They also offer greeting cards, either single or in packages.

For those of you who are local, Pennacook Art Center will be opening its December show at the River Valley Technology Center gallery in Rumford, ME with a reception on Friday, Dec. 3 from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m. Stop by to meet the artists, enjoy the refreshments and the art, and sign up for the door prize drawing. We are putting out two more print racks, so our selection of unframed prints will be growing. We also have prints available on our new website at http://pennacook-art-center.artistwebsites.com/. I have some art posted there that is not on my own site.

No animal, according to the rules of animal-etiquette, is ever expected to do anything strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during the off-season of winter. (from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame)

Thanks for joining me in the journey. I hope that you enjoy looking at the art as much as I have enjoyed making it! I would love to hear from you, too, so please do reply with comments.

Betsy

Newsletter October 2010

November 2nd, 2010

Newsletter October 2010

NEWSLETTER October 2010

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

October is falling behind us, and November is coming up on us now, with its shortening days and promises of snow. This morning the light of the rising sun on the mountains was a fiery, smoky, purplish-orange color. There is something special about autumn sunrises. It seems like that as the landscape grows duller and duller, the skies become more and more colorful. Maybe it’s just the lack of competition from the foliage, and the fact that I can see more of the sky when the leaves are down.

The Saga of the Mystery Flower

One day this past September when I was out walking the loop trail around our property, I spotted a charming flower that I had never seen before. It was only about six inches high, and the petals on its two blooms were like tiny white ribbons curling down from deep magenta florets. I headed home to find it in my wildflower field guides only to come up empty.

I started searching online databases and still came up empty. I found a wildflower identification forum at www.flowersforums.com and posted a photo of it, asking for help, and I emailed other experts. Nothing. I asked a friend who teaches biology at the local college. Still no leads. I searched on and off for a full month. Because of the shape of its leaves and its central florets, and the fact that it was blooming in September, I guessed that it was an aster of some sort. Finally one of my contacts connected me with the Maine Natural Areas Program, and their staff botanist identified it as a “whorled wood aster” (Oclemena acuminata).

This answers some questions, but not all. The whorled wood aster is in my field guides, but the pictures of it don’t show petals as curly as these, and the height is listed as one to three feet. Where my little wood aster got its perm, I don’t know, but I love it. I took a few of the seeds and buried them nearby, and saved a few more seeds in an envelope to start in the spring. I am eager to find out if its seeds produce a plant so diminutive or petals so graceful. In the meantime I have it well-documented in photos and drawing. Asters are perennials, so I am hoping to see it again next summer.

STUDIO SALE

The studio sale rolls on! I have posted photos of all the rest of the stephanograms, my little round paintings, on my website at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/. There are only a handful of them in the whole collection that got out of my hands before I had photographed them. This means that if you want to buy a print of one that is already sold, it is available now. (If you would like to know why I call them stephanograms, I have put an explanation in my blog at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/myblog.html.)

I have them posted as comprehensive collections so you can choose whichever ones you want to have printed. Email me with descriptions of them and I can post them singly for you for purchase. I have also posted some made-for-print themed collections—woodlands, veggies and fruits, seashore, geometric, and monochromatic—which could be printed and framed as a whole. The originals that I have left are still for sale at $25 each, or buy four and get one free while they last.

Between now and the end of the year I will be posting more work from recent years on my website. You can be watching for a variety of still lifes, landscapes, pencil drawings, paintings from the Exploration of Natural Design collection, and some printmaking excursions. The originals will be for sale as well as prints, and they will be priced to sell. I really want to get my studio cleared out to make room for new work!

For more information on my artmaking process, or recent work, or to check out my blog, see my website at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/. Here you can order prints of my work, and have them matted and framed if you choose, courtesy of Fine Art America’s great print-on-demand service. They also offer greeting cards, either single or in packages.

My gift to you this month is a postcard-size file of the whorled wood aster drawing. (It will be five inches wide if printed at 200 dpi).

For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad. (Edwin Way Teale, my favorite naturalist/writer)

Thanks for joining me in the journey. I hope that you enjoy looking at the art as much as I have enjoyed making it! I would love to hear from you, too, so please do reply with comments.


Betsy

Autumn Ramblings

October 20th, 2010

Autumn Ramblings

10-18-2010

Three times in the past week I have flushed a woodcock up from its hiding place in the underbrush. I do not ever remember seeing a woodcock here in our woods before, although I know that they do live in our area. I am wondering if these birds are on their way south for the winter.

The first one I saw puzzled me. What is slightly larger than a mourning dove, reddish brown, and takes off suddenly from under your feet like a grouse, scaring the daylights out of you? I had no idea. But the second time this happened, I caught a glimpse of the bird’s profile as he flew, with his long beak silhouetted against the fall foliage. Aha! A woodcock! The third time I saw one, he actually crossed the path in front of me before he took off, so I got an even better look at him.

No other bird has the woodcock’s distinctively pudgy form. His neck is so short that his head appears to be set directly on his round little body, and his shoe-button eye is almost at the top of his head. His feathers are painted in a subtle pattern of russet, brown, and fawn, which makes him blend in perfectly with the dry leaves on the woods floor where he hangs out. Since the woodcock is primarily nocturnal, the ones I have seen have been rudely awakened from their afternoon naps.

I had the opportunity to draw a woodcock several years ago. It was when I was still managing the gallery in downtown Rumford. My boss came through the gallery one day, fresh from a hunting expedition, with a dead bird in his hand. He had left it in his coat pocket and found it there after he got down out of the woods.

He showed the bird to me. When I marveled over the exquisite pattern of its feathers and told him that I wanted to draw it, he gave it to me. I took it home, stuck it in our freezer, and then made a composite drawing of it with colored pencil on paper. That drawing was later framed and hung in the gallery, and is now in a private collection.

The woods have been full of migrating warblers. They flit silently through the bushes and I rarely get a good enough look at one to identify it. The only one that I saw this fall that I am absolutely sure about is the myrtle or yellow-rumped warbler.

When I was following our path through the woods last week, I heard someone scuffling around in the dry leaves ahead of me. I froze and waited to see who it was. It was a long wait. I had almost given up, when I heard a sudden wild fluttering right by my left ear. I turned and looked just in time to see a chickadee high-tailing it out of my reach. My, did he scold me! Apparently I had been standing still long enough to look like part of the landscape, so he had tried to land on my hat. I don’t know which one of us was more startled. The bird in the leaves for which I was waiting turned out to be a white-throated sparrow.

We have had a lot of rain recently. In one twenty-four-hour period last week we had almost three inches dumped on us. The mushrooms have been springing up all over the woods. I don’t know much at all about mushrooms. This may be a good chance to learn….

Many years ago my mother-in-law planted a little patch of Scottish heather in the meadow near the pine tree, significant of their Scottish heritage. Over the years the patch has become more and more shaded and overrun by brambles, so the heather has almost disappeared. But I was walking along the road this weekend, on the old railroad right-of-way, and found a heather plant growing in the grass near the end of our property. I am hoping that it will spread. It is a lovely flower, not at all showy, but beautiful in a quiet and unassuming way.

Newsletter September 2010

September 30th, 2010

Newsletter September 2010

NEWSLETTER September 2010

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!
(from "Autumn Fires" by Robert Louis Stevenson, out of A Child's Garden of Verses, 1885)

Our lives are in transition again, from summer to fall, from planting to harvest, from flowers in the meadow to fires in the woodstove. I am watching the leaves falling and finishing my collection of butterfly drawings from this past summer. We have had such a dry summer, we can’t even think about having an autumn bonfire, but I am glad to have the woodstove going again.

Here are two more butterfly beauties for you to look at, a northern pearly-eye and a great spangled fritillary. (Isn’t that a wonderful name?) They are both brush-footed butterflies, so they walk on four legs instead of six. The pearly–eye is a small butterfly, but the fritillary is almost as large as a monarch. I caught the fritillary on a meadowsweet flower in my reference photo, so you can see in the drawing here that it has its proboscis uncurled to sip the nectar. The drawings were both done with colored pencil on paper.

A butterfly gives us a wonderful image of transformation. The process of metamorphosis from caterpillar to winged adult is so complex, and the final result so different from the beginning. And the change all happens in secret, hidden away inside the chrysalis, in a time of quiet rest. Sometimes I could wish that the transitions in my own life were as quiet!

Our old farmhouse here is seeing a time of transformation, as we do some major weatherization on it. This process requires clearing the collections from past generations out of the attics and basements. That has reverberated into my studio, too. I have decided to have a grand STUDIO SALE between now and the end of the year, so you can be watching for bargains.

To begin with, I am closing out my Moments of Transcendence collection. I painted more than 130 of these round miniatures over a two-year period. I have 66 of them remaining now. The originals are for sale for $25 each. (If you buy four of them, I will give you one for free.) I have posted photos of the originals that I have left, on my website at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/.. You can also buy prints of them from the website. They can be framed as collections or cut apart and framed as individual 4”x 4” squares. If you want any, just email me and tell me which ones you want.

My gift to you this month is a file of a stephanogram from the collection, the single peony flower. I give you permission to print or reproduce this image as you choose. It will print actual size (3” diameter) at 200 dpi.

For more information on the Moments of Transcendence collection, my artmaking process, or recent work, or to check out my blog, see my website at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/.. Here you can order prints of my work, and have them matted and framed if you choose, courtesy of Fine Art America’s great print-on-demand service. They also offer greeting cards, either single or in packages.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…. (“Transformed” is the Greek word metamorphoômai, from which we get the English word metamorphosis.)
(The Bible, Romans 12:2)

Thanks for joining me in the journey. I hope that you enjoy looking at the art as much as I have enjoyed making it! I would love to hear from you, too, so please do reply with comments.

Betsy

 

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