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Two threads have been woven through human experience since the dawn of civilization: the human race’s search for meaning that transcends the physical, and the attempt to express that meaning in visual form. No contemporary dialogue about art and culture can be complete without the voices of those whose art is fueled by their passion for what is eternal, transcendent, and uniquely divine.

I enter that contemporary dialogue as a deeply committed Christian, and one whose entire life has been the story of a great romance with a holy and beautiful God. In this I am firmly planted in a rich heritage of artistic endeavors. To the dialogue I would humbly offer my paintings as a statement that God is not distant, nor silent. In a world focused on the physical, on the emotional, on consumerism, politics, and social issues, I am hoping to provide a gentle dissenting voice that brings our attention back to those issues that are truly eternal.

Do you ever have moments when the beauty of an everyday object stops you in your tracks? Each one of these paintings is a record of an experience I have had, an encounter with the mundane, that transcended the ordinary in some way for me. They are a form of ongoing visual journaling in my personal life, and I am glad to have an opportunity to share them with you.

For the viewer they are about beauty, most of all. Their subject matter is drawn from simple natural objects, and their geometry reflects the exquisite design of the physical world. Their size speaks of small, intimate moments, and it is my desire that as paintings they be intimate, accessible, easily transferable and affordable. Their obsession with detail reflects that painting with concentrated attention to detail is a form of meditation for me. I am offering this opportunity for meditating on beauty to you, also. I do this with the intent of drawing your attention to the treasures that are all around us, and with the hope that this will enrich your life.

These paintings also present a deeper layer of meaning to me as the artist. For me, these paintings are records of intimate conversations I have had with my God, born out of affection and romance, full of joy and mutual delight. They are tiny capturings of those moments when his life intersects my own mundane existence, when even familiar objects are transformed with his beauty. I see myself as an illustrator and an interpreter, shedding light on God’s nature and translating spiritual realities into a visible language.

This collection has been shown in its entirety at the Art Gallery of the University of Maine at Farmington, at Pennacook Art Center fine art gallery in Rumford, Maine, and at the Stadler Gallery in Kingfield, Maine. It has also been shown in part at many other venues in western and southern Maine. The entire collection numbers 133 works, ranging from two to three inches in diameter.

The image above is of the original installation at the Art Gallery of the University of Maine at Farmington in May 2007. A selection of the works shown here are now in the permanent collection of the University.

Sept. 16, 2010

Fall is arriving reluctantly this year. We have been having autumn weather patterns on and off for almost a month—cool, windy, rainy weather. But it has still been interspersed with hot hazy sunny days. We have started the woodstove up again. It feels good on a chilly morning. The only tree that is showing any signs of color is the red maple by the front of the house. It is always the first to turn.

As of last week, the hummingbirds were still around. They are always the last ones to arrive in the spring and the first ones to depart in the fall. I have not seen one for a couple of days, so maybe they have headed south now. I am thinking that our first frost will be late this year, since I think they usually leave sooner than this.

I was looking out the kitchen window one morning and saw our friend the great blue heron doing his flyover. He comes up the valley, flap…flap…flap…just above the level of the trees in the meadow, headed straight for the house like a B1B bomber. Then he always sails over the roof and lands in the pond on the other side of our property. When we lived in Wichita, our home was off the end of an Air Force base runway, and I used to watch the bombers go over just like that.

But this time he got as far as the great pine tree at the edge of the meadow and stopped there. He landed on a branch and stood for quite a while, surveying the yard. He looked so strange up there. I am not used to seeing a heron in a tree like that. Usually when I see them they are up to their knees in the pond, looking for lunch.

He stayed in the pine tree long enough for me to go get my binoculars and have a good look at him. And then he waited while I got my camera and took a photo of him. It was a long shot, zoomed in as far as I could get with my little Canon, but you can see him in the branches in my photo. Then he took off and continued on his way overhead.

This summer was an exceedingly hot, dry summer. The last two summers had been wet and cool, so it was a nice change. We had more butterflies, fewer ticks, a lot less slugs, and not as many dragonflies as usual. Last year we had snow peas in the garden all summer, but lost our tomatoes to the blight. This year the snow peas shriveled up in the heat, but the tomatoes are coming on like gangbusters. We have dried many trays of them in our dehydrator already, and there is no end in sight. Those dried tomatoes will be really welcome in January salads.

NEWSLETTER August 2010

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

August has been all about butterflies. I have heard other people around here say, too, that they have never seen so many butterflies in a summer. I have been capturing and releasing, photographing, and drawing butterflies all month long. I even found a mysterious, one-of-a-kind butterfly, which I will tell you about.

I did colored pencil drawings that I did of two familiar favorites, the viceroy (the orange one) and the white admiral (black with a white stripe). On this site, they are posted with the artwork.

One thing that really puzzled me about my photographs was how many legs I was seeing. I thought that insects have six legs, and a butterfly is an insect, so a butterfly should have six legs, right? But I could not find more than four legs on these creatures in any of my photos.

The explanation? There is a whole family of butterflies called the brush-footed butterflies (Nymphalidae) that have only four walking legs. The pair of legs closest to the head is so small as to be unnoticeable, and is used for jobs like cleaning the eyes. The brush-footed butterflies include many of our showiest and most familiar butterflies, such as the monarch, viceroy, admiral, painted lady, and fritillaries. So my photos were accurate and my drawings are also—four-footed butterflies.

The viceroy (Limenitis archippus) is very similar to the monarch butterfly, but it is a bit smaller and has a slightly simpler pattern on its wings. Like the monarch, it is highly distasteful to predators. This is called “Mûllerian mimicry,” meaning that both species are harmful.

The white admiral, Limenitis arthemis, also exists in a very different coloration called the red-spotted purple. These were once thought to be two distinct species. But in terms of shape, behavior, and natural history, they are identical, so they are now classified as the same species. They are both widespread in the United States, with the admiral occupying the northern area and the red-spotted purple the southern. But there is an overlap zone between about 40° and 46° N., from southern Minnesota east to New England, where butterflies that look like a cross between the two are found. And thereby hangs a tale.

I was walking out of the house last Friday, after spending the morning drawing a white admiral butterfly, and I saw two butterflies on an apple that had fallen from the tree by the front walk. One was a white admiral. The other was slightly smaller and richly colored, but unfamiliar. The strange thing was that I recognized the pattern on the edge of its wing. It was the one that I had just been drawing. This obliging butterfly was so interested in its meal that I was able to go back in the house, get my camera, and snap a few close-up shots of it before it took off. It apparently has had a rough life; a large chunk was missing out of its left hind wing.

I tried to identify this mysterious beauty, but it was not anywhere in my field guide or in the internet resources I could find. But I did find a link on the Butterflies and Moths of North America site for help in identification. I fired off my questions and the photos to them and had a reply in short order. And sure enough, what I was seeing was what is called an “intergrade” between the admiral and the purple. In other words, a one-of-a-kind butterfly, neither admiral nor purple, but a stunning cross between the two. What a wonderful end to my butterfly summer!

I have attached a file of a montage of some of my butterfly photos for you. In it you will see (clockwise around the edge, from the upper left) a comma, a white admiral, the white admiral from the top, the mystery butterfly, a tiger swallowtail, the white admiral from the underside, the mystery butterfly again, a fritillary (possibly a great spangled fritillary, but I am not sure), and the comma from the topside. The butterfly in the circle is a viceroy. I give you permission to print or reproduce this image as you choose. I am using it as my desktop wallpaper, myself.

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. I also offer greeting cards, either single or in packages.

Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men. (Giorgio de Chirico, from “On Metaphysical Art,” 1919)

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 July 2010

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!


“You ought to have seen what I saw on my way
To the village, through Mortenson’s pasture to-day:
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!
And all ripe together, not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!”

(From “Blueberries,” by Robert Frost)

This month has been all about butterflies and blueberries, so that is what I have to share with you. The low-bush blueberries grow wild in our meadow, and they are ripe now. I have been picking blueberries, and eating blueberries, and drawing blueberries. I brought a berry-laden bush into my studio in a flowerpot, photographed it and drew it, and then returned it to the meadow. (I always like to have a specimen at hand to draw from if it’s at all possible.) Here is one of the drawings I did, a blueberry branch carefully rendered in colored pencil.

There are many different varieties of blueberries, and many species of berry-producing bushes in the genus vaccinium. All of the berries are edible, and many of them grow in North America. Blueberries have been a staple food in this part of the world for centuries. They are easy to preserve by drying them, and make a great addition to many dishes either raw or cooked.

The flowers are a small, delicate, and bell-shaped. They hang under the leaves, so you can walk right by them and never notice them. Here is a drawing of blueberry flowers that I did from a photograph that I took this past spring.

Picking blueberries is one of my favorite summer chores. I like to eat them right off the bush, still warm from the sunshine. The wild ones are tiny compared to the commercial or high-bush garden varieties, but I think they have more flavor packed into them. They are better in muffins and cakes, too, since they hold up better when you cook them.

Blueberry-picking has other rewards as well. I was picking wild blueberries down the meadow last week when I was startled by the noise of something large moving in the woods to my left. I looked, but could not see who it was. Then I looked right, and standing just about fifteen feet away from me was a very small fawn, still wearing his baby spots. He was standing quietly, swiveling his big ears at me. We looked at each other for a few moments before he turned and bounded off down the meadow. At that point his mother, who was obviously the one I had heard, also took off toward the south. I guess I must have disturbed their afternoon nap.

Most of my art has a story like that behind it. Here is a tip for art collectors: get the story. When you buy a work of art, if you get a chance to find out what inspired it, do. And also share your story with the artist, why you bought the work and what it means to you. Art is communication, and the stories we tell each other matter.

This month instead of including a free image I have attached an old Maine family recipe for blueberry cake to my newsletter. It comes from some folks I know who live on the coast and have a lobster boat. When they have a feast, the blueberry cake goes on the table right along with the lobster and the corn on the cob. If you want the recipe, email me and I will send it to you.

My work will be hanging with that of the other Pennacook Art Center artists during Andover Old Home Days this year in Andover, Maine. The show is open from 11:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, August 7th. I will also be putting work into the new Pennacook show at the River Valley Technology Center gallery in Rumford. This one opens with a reception from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. on Friday, August 13th and runs until October.

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, with Fine Art America’s great print-on-demand service. I also offer greeting cards, either single or in packages.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. (Pablo Picasso)

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

If you want to discontinue getting this newsletter, just send me a reply with the word “unsubscribe’ in it.

--
Betsy Gray Bell
Swift River Studio
Fine art, classes and workshops
917 Roxbury Road, Mexico, Maine 04257
(207) 364-7243
bgbell@gmail.com
http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com




--
Betsy Gray Bell
Swift River Studio
Fine art, classes and workshops
917 Roxbury Road, Mexico, Maine 04257
(207) 364-7243
bgbell@gmail.com
http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com

Here we are at the midpoint of the summer. Every day brings its adventures, comedies, and trials. It has been a warm, dry summer, and great for the garden. In my summer photo collage here you can see (top row, left to right) a black-eyed susan, a viceroy, an unidentified caterpillar, and a comma anglewing. The bottom row has a northern pearly eye satyr, a rainbow over my trees, and the same anglewing from the top. Insets are a ripe wild blueberry and an unidentified moth asleep in an evening primrose blossom.

The phoebes have raised a second crop in the nest under the porch eaves. The wren family grew and flew, and now we have another wren brood in the old birdhouse on the garage. One day I watched an oriole chase a crow all the way from the back of our property to the woods across the road. I also saw the robin family harrying a broad-winged hawk out of the yard. They had quite a shouting match in the silver maple before the hawk finally took off.

The midsummer flowers are everywhere: evening primrose, all the cinquefoils and hawkweeds, St. Johnswort, red, white and yellow clover, black-eyed susans, daisies and pearly everlastings. The blueberries and raspberries are ripe. First the wild ones are ready to pick, and after that the “tame” varieties. We are edging toward August, too, with the very first goldenrod and white asters beginning to bloom.

We have had crowds of cedar waxwings around the yard quite a bit recently. They always show up when the mulberries are ripe. This year they came around for the shadbush berries, too. Cedar waxwings are such sleek, elegant birds. They always seem like they are on vacation. They don’t nest around here, so I never see them doing the hard work of raising a family. They show up in large numbers and spend all their time flitting around eating fruit and conversing with each other in soft, whispery voices.

A skunk got past my electric fence one night this week and went on a grub-raid in the garden by the house. It looked like someone had rototilled a large section of what I had just planted the week before. I saw him in the backyard a couple of days later and gave him what for. I do appreciate his efforts at grub control but I don’t appreciate his overturning my basil and cabbage plants to do it. He just looked at me and then hustled off into the underbrush. A black and white skunk in an all-green landscape is a startling sight, really. I guess he feels no need of camouflage.

The real master of camouflage is the white-tailed deer. I was picking wild blueberries down the meadow last week when I was startled by the noise of someone large moving around in the woods to my left. I looked, but could not see who it was. Then I looked right, and standing just about fifteen feet away from me was a very small fawn, still wearing his spots. He was standing quietly, swiveling his big ears at me. We looked at each other for several minutes before he turned and bounded off down the meadow. At that point his mother, who was the one I had first heard, also took off toward the south. I guess I must have disturbed their afternoon nap.

This year’s groundhog family has one particularly adventurous young soul who is finding his groundhogly fulfillment in climbing trees. I have seen him ten or fifteen feet off the ground in the mulberry tree on several occasions, eating the mulberry leaves. I actually got one quick photo of him on a fast descent from the tree (he saw me approaching with camera in hand). I wish I had gotten a snapshot of him the time I saw him dangling by his front paws from a branch, kicking the air wildly with his back paws as he struggled to get back up, but I wasn’t quick enough.

I have been on the trail of a number of butterflies this summer, and have managed to capture some of them on my camera, too. The early summer butterflies, like the tiger swallowtail, have disappeared now. They have been replace by viceroys, angle-wings (one sat on my toe for a while the other day), tortoise-shells, pearly eye satyrs, mourning cloaks, admirals, and others whose names I do not know yet. I found a beautiful pink and yellow moth snoozing quietly in an evening primrose blossom by my front door. He was there for several hours. He was so still, I wondered if he was alive. When I poked him, he stirred slightly but did not fly off.

Sometimes I see the grimmer side of summer when I am out, like a pile of feathers and a beak marking the place where someone snacked on a songbird, or the telltale shepherd’s crook that marks another white pine tree succumbing to the pine weevil. I found a dead mole on the driveway, and took some careful photos of him before I relegated him to the bushes. If I ever want to draw a mole, I will have a good set of reference photos to work from. But I love summer. I never get tired of going for walks and appreciating its beauties, and when I see the first goldenrod blooming I want to say, “No! No! Go back! Let it be midsummer for more than just this one brief moment.”

NEWSLETTER June 2010

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

How is it that I can expect to work all morning in my studio and then find myself rambling through the meadow hunting for the first ripe wild blueberry? It’s seductive summertime, and sometimes it is hard to tend to business indoors. That’s the great side of being a part-time naturalist. I can ramble in the woods and tell myself I am doing what I need to be doing.

Yesterday I stopped for a while to watch a baby groundhog climb the mulberry tree to eat the leaves. Yes, it was a precarious stunt, better than a circus act, complete with the slapstick comedy of the clowns and the hair-raising tension of a high-wire act. I would rather he were eating mulberry leaves than the pole beans and lettuce! But it is certainly a strange thing to see a fat furry groundhog fifteen feet up in a tree.

I have finished the decision-making process for the study book now. Shown here is a final version of the page on ostrich ferns.

Any body of artwork requires a decision process, whether the artist does it consciously or by the seat of their pants. Art is a form of communication. The choices of size, medium, and presentation are endless, but I must carefully choose what will best communicate what I want to say in the work.

It’s like climbing a tree. As I go, I gradually narrow the choices: 2D or 3D? Painting or drawing? Drawing with pencil or pen and ink? Colored pencil or graphite? What brand of colored pencil? (They all look different.) What size format? What color paper? If it’s white, do I want a warm white or a cool white? Smooth hot pressed paper or rougher cold pressed? And finally, how will I present the work? Framed, in a gallery? What kind of frames? Or online? Or in a published book? Hopefully when I arrive at my final decision, the medium serves the work and the work is the best it can be.

For this study book I have finally settled on black pen and ink, and I will be tinting some of the drawings with colored pencil. Here is the technical end of it: the paper is Arches hot pressed 140 lb. (a fairly heavy, soft, smooth paper). The ink is Pigma Micron pen, size 005 for the drawing and 02 for the notes and captions. I am doing the title on the page in uncial calligraphy with a Schaeffer fountain pen, medium calligraphy nib, and Pelikan fount India ink. The colored pencil is Prismacolor, which is my favorite because of its soft, waxy feel and good color.

My brand choices were dictated to a large extent by wanting high quality materials and also by what was available to me. I use acid-free, lightfast materials whenever I can, so that the work will last. I wanted a dark, crisp black for the ink, and pencils with a clean, clear color, a good “feel” in my hand and a professional look to the finished product. Generally speaking, you get what you pay for when you buy art supplies. Cheap materials make cheap-looking work. Professional quality materials not only look better but last longer, so I buy the best I can afford at the time.

For this month’s coloring page, I have attached a tiger swallowtail file for you to print and color as you wish. It is based on the watercolor study of a single swallowtail that I did last year. Tiger swallowtails make great stained-glass window patterns, as we have seen. Personally, I would color it all the colors of the rainbow….

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. I also offer greeting cards, either single or in packages.

For those of you in western Maine, I will be doing an outdoor sketching class on five Saturday afternoons starting July 10th. It will be a good opportunity for artists at any skill level to get out, appreciate the beauty of our mountains, and enjoy drawing with some good company. The details are in my blog on my website (see link above).

If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint. (Edward Hopper)

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

OUTDOOR SKETCHING CLASS
Saturday afternoons 1:00 to 3:00
5 classes: July 10, 17, 24, 31, and August 7
$35.
Location will vary from class to class. Contact instructor for first class information. If it rains, class will be held at the Andover Public Library.
Enjoy the local landscape and learn basic sketching skills. Each class will feature a mini-lesson on one subject related to landscape drawing (e.g. line and form, perspective, composition, or focal point), and plenty of individual on-site instruction. We will meet at a different location each week. Come dressed to be outdoors (bug spray, hat, jacket if it’s cool, etc.)
Required materials will be a sketchbook (at least 9” x 12”) and drawing pencils (2B, 4B, and 6B preferred). If you have other drawing materials of your own or want to use an easel, you may bring them.


BASIC DRAWING CLASS (FUN WITH A PENCIL)
6 classes Scheduled by appointment
Individual instruction $20. per 1-hour class. Group rates less, depending on how many people are in the class (e.g. 2 people $10 each, 4 people $5 each)
Location: Swift River Studio in Mexico, 917 Roxbury Road
Learn to draw in this class that introduces you to basic drawing materials and beginning skills. Simple, enjoyable exercises and projects will develop your eye and hand. Topics covered will include: drawing tools and materials, line and contour, value (shading, hatching, and blending), texture, perspective, composition, and gesture.


OPEN STUDIO
Scheduled by appointment
Individual instruction $20. per 1-hour class Group rates less, depending on how many people are in the class (e.g. 2 people $10 each, 4 people $5 each)
Location: Swift River Studio in Mexico, 917 Roxbury Road
I will work with any artist at the beginner or intermediate level on projects of their own choosing. Media could include pencil, pen and ink, water-soluble oils, or oil pastels.

You can contact me at 207-364-7243 or bgbell@gmail.com to sign up or for further details concerning content of the class or required materials. These classes are appropriate for both beginners with no previous experience and for more advanced artists who want to improve their skills.

June 14, 2010

The phoebes have been raising their family inside the old red canoe in the garage rafters again this year. I get scolded if I go too close to the nest. The babies look so cute peeking out over the edge. They will be on their way soon, I am sure.

I had a surprise this morning while I was weeding the flower bed by the garage. I heard a sort of sklithering sound behind me and looked up just in time to watch a small bat slide down the metal roof of the shed and land with a plop on the beam that supports the door. I walked over and looked up at him. He was trembling all over but appeared to be unhurt. I went in the house to get my camera, but by the time I got back he had recovered enough to fly away when I approached him again.

I have no idea what he was doing that sent him on that precipitous slalom down the roof. I know that we have bats around, but we seldom see them in the daytime. One year we found one slumbering in the woodpile in the lean-to. This one was apparently tucked away under the ridgepole cap of the shed and lost his grip or something. I am always glad to see a bat. They eat the bugs that pester me, which makes me look on them with affection.

We are into full summer here now, with strawberries and blueberries growing and blackberry brambles in bloom. The early summer flowers are almost finished and the June beauties arriving. We have hawkweed and buttercups and daylilies now, irises and columbine in the flower beds and jack-in-the-pulpit in the woods. The clintonia is finished blooming for the year, and so is the Canada mayflower. I know now why Canada mayflower is also called wild lily of the valley. We had so many of them blooming this spring that I could smell their sweet fragrance when I walked under the spruce trees in the windbreak.

One thing that puzzles me is that we seem to have no thrushes this year. We usually have a hermit thrush singing from across the road, and veeries in the woods behind the house. But I have not heard them, and I miss their ethereal voices in the evening.

NEWSLETTER May 2010

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Spring came early this year, as much as two weeks ahead of schedule. I have been enjoying watching the annual parade of returning birds and spring flowers. By the end of May we looked like June, with the garden thriving and the blackflies at their most ferocious.

Most of May was spent on “invisible” artwork, the things that happen behind the scenes that you never see: going for long walks with my camera, collecting reference photos to work from, researching the things I find, chronicling the changing season in my journal, and combing through art supply catalogs for things like just the right color of ink. Here is a photo montage for you from my photo archives of the past two months.

You see (clockwise from the upper left corner) wild blueberry blossoms, jack-in-the-pulpit, bloodroot, trout lily (also called adder’s tongue or dog-toothed violet), ostrich fern fiddleheads, cinnamon fern fiddleheads, a single bloodroot bloom, and ostrich ferns again. All of these things will eventually appear in my study book and in my paintings.

For me, making paintings is more like growing pumpkins or apples than like building houses or cars. It has its seedtime and harvest, its fallow time and its growing time. Sometimes it is a long time before what you have planted shows above the ground, and even longer until it actually bears fruit.

Right now I am at the very beginning of the Swift River Treasures work, a project that I expect will take at least five to ten years. The final product will be a published book (culled from my study book and journal) and a collection of large oil paintings. What I am doing now is laying the foundation for the work. I want to take my time with this and lay it well. Reading my newsletter every month, you are getting a glimpse behind the scenes at the process as it happens.

For example, last month I showed you a small drawing from my study book, two ostrich fern fiddleheads. I have redrawn that same group of fiddleheads again and again this past month, each time with different media, until I was satisfied with the result. Black and white or color? Pencil or ink? Black ink or brown? Sienna brown or sepia? Hand-colored with colored pencils or watercolor? These are some of the questions I have been answering as I go. And when they are answered, the final and publishable version of the study book is ready to begin.

For example, I have done the drawings with black ink with colored pencil, sepia ink in a heavier line with colored pencil, and sepia ink with watercolor, left to right. Not all artists work this way. But I used to be a handweaver, remember, and the painstaking patience for thread-by-thread construction is part of my nature. We each have something to offer the world. Careful investigation and detailed presentation is my long suit, so I choose to make art that capitalizes on this strength. And if you like art that is grand, bold, and exuberant, this will not be your cup of tea!

Pennacook Art Center will be opening a new show this Friday, June 4th, at our gallery in the River Valley Technology Center in Rumford, with a reception from 5 to 7:00 p.m. My Swift River Treasures botanical collection is still hanging in the Mexico Public Library. And my work will be in the New England Christian Arts Council’s ninth annual “His Gifts and Presence” New England Arts Festival in Biddeford, Maine on June 26th. (This year’s conference headliners are Rita Springer and Margaret Becker.)

I must confess that one form of art that I have always enjoyed is coloring books. Now I can draw my own pictures to color! And I have attached a file in my original newsletter for you to color if you wish. It is the line drawing of the fiddleheads, just like I have colored in my study book. You can print it and color it, or do whatever you want with it.

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. I also offer greeting cards, either single or in packages.

I have now been writing this newsletter for a full year. Thanks for joining me in the journey. For this month’s quote, I am going to remind you of where we started: Souls who follow their hearts thrive. (Proverbs 13:19 in The Message, Peterson)

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

The catbird arrived back in town this week, and has been sending up his cheerful burbling song from the quince bush this afternoon. The wrens are back, too. The male is singing ferociously in the mugo pine beside the garage. If I get too close, he scolds me unmercifully. The phoebes are nesting in the old red canoe again.

I have also heard or seen a cardinal, a chestnut-sided warbler, a chipping sparrow, two ovenbirds, and the ever-present white-throated warbler this week. I have even heard the white-throat sing a few sleepy notes in the middle of the night.

The apple tree by the front door is blooming beautifully now, and all abuzz with bees. The jack-in-the-pulpits are up in the woods, the Canada mayflowers about to bloom, and the strawberries and blueberries are blooming all over. I found red baneberry in the woods at the far side of the back yard, and some other little 6-petalled flower that I have not been able to identify yet. This is certainly being an early spring. Normally I would not expect to see the woods and mountains this green until the end of May.

The dooryard is full of bleeding-heart, forget-me-nots, and narcissus. The grass is a carpet of violets, both white and purple, with a few yellow ones along the driveway. This is the week of the year that this place is the most like Eden, I do believe.