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NEWSLETTER October/November 2011

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Our mountains have been changing from the deep blue-green of summe,r to the brilliant patchwork of October, to the somber colors of November. My life the past month has been a patchwork, too, so this will be a newsletter of bits and pieces.

One of the patchwork pieces was doing a commission for a local businessman. Another piece was limping around on crutches, giving my body the space to heal from a torn ligament in my foot. (This made everything go in slow motion, hence the combined October/November newsletter.)

Finishing the Canada lily work with a drawing of a mature seed pod was another piece of the patchwork. This is a colored pencil drawing, on heavy watercolor paper.

I have been reading more about growing Lilium canadense from seed. (A helpful article can be found at www.nativeplantnetwork.org.) It is considered an easy plant to propagate, but this is not a quick process. If you sow the seed directly outdoors in the fall, the seeds remain dormant until the first growing season. The first year they produce a small bulb. The second year the plant grows a single leaf. The third year a whorl of leaves appears. Those magnificent blooms in my back yard have been a long time in the making!

Another piece of the patchwork was continuing to work on the bloodroot painting that I am planning. I have become entranced with Renoir’s color handling and brushwork style, and spent many hours reading all I could find on his working technique. What attracts me to his work is the brilliant purity of color and the transparency of his paint layers. I am thinking that this is the direction I want to take in order to actually be able to paint the images I can see inside me.

And another piece of the patchwork was adding new products to my online “Maine Mountain Art” store (http://www.printfection.com/mainemountainart). The Printfection company has come out with some new items, like baseball caps, ceramic ornaments, and laptop and iPad sleeves. So I spent some time dreaming up ways to use them.

And lastly, I have opened a second Printfection store, “Nature’s Mandalas,” to showcase products using the round format work in the Exploration of Natural Design and Moments of Transcendence collections (http://www.printfection.com/naturesmandalas). Here is where the cucumber slices and cosmic zucchinis come together in practical everyday items like sweatshirts, travel mugs and cutting boards.

The basic idea of my art bears repeating: I would rather get my work out where a hundred people can enjoy it than have one painting hanging above someone’s couch. The whole concept of what I am doing is based on sharing. It’s about me finding beauty in some everyday bit of nature and saying, “Look at this! Isn’t it lovely? What exquisite design!” I hope that it not only enriches your life, but that the next time you cut up a carrot you will pause and look closely at it and appreciate it all the more.

My gift to you this month is simply to offer you the chance to design any custom items you wish, in either store. If you have an idea for a product, please share it, with no obligation on your part to buy one. I just like the cross-pollination of getting other people’s input about what to put in the store. If you want to order a custom item, I will create and post it at no extra charge, from now until the end of the year. Custom designs will retail for the same price as similar items already on the site. You can find the images at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com.

If you take the number of images that I have, and multiply that by the number of products that Printfection offers, the possibilities are virtually endless. Personally, I find the whole process addictive, kind of like eating potato chips. How would this bloodroot flower look on a round ceramic ornament? What if I put a row of three veggies on a tote bag? (That one was my sister’s idea.) How can this row of multiple cucumbers slices be formatted to go on a laptop sleeve? The inspiration goes on and on! So dream it up and email me your ideas. Please.

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.

If you want to look at the Moments of Transcendence book, here is the link to it on the Blurb.com booksite: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2034640 . And my online stores for shirts, mugs, and housewares can be found at http://www.printfection.com/mainemountainart (the Swift River Treasures art) and http://www.printfection.com/naturesmandalas (the Explorations and Moments of Transcendence art).

All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travelers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken.... (from the short story “No Door” by Thomas Wolfe)

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 December 2011

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Short days, cold nights, soup simmering on the woodstove—December is a season for sticking close to hearth and home here. Our summer residents are long gone, leaving only a few hardy friends behind.

I always wonder where they have all gone, and what adventures they are having. The robins, vultures, myrtle warbler, and some of the sparrows are wintering down the east coast, in warmer parts of the U.S. The wood thrush and veery have gone to Central America. So has the chestnut-sided warbler. Some of the smallest ones journey the farthest. The yellowthroat may travel as far as the West Indies, and the brilliantly colored redstart even as far as Brazil. The tiny ruby-throated hummingbird spends its winters in Mexico or Central America.

The groundhog is deep in the winter sleep of hibernation, its body processes slowed to a faint shadow of life. The chipmunk sleeps deeply but does not truly hibernate. Occasionally he wakes and eats some of the food stored in his underground storeroom. The raccoons and skunks also sleep, but will be up and about from time to time, foraging for food. The snow will soon be full of tracks from the deer, foxes, and coyotes, who carry on business regardless of the season, and are ranging far in their search for provisions.

Different species of butterfly handle the winter months in different ways. The mourning cloak butterfly winters over as an adult. It is the first large butterfly to appear in the spring, usually looking ragged and worn. The tiger swallowtail hibernates in its chrysalis, and enters the butterfly procession in June, just in time for the lilacs. The admirals and viceroys spend the winter as caterpillars, so they appear later in the summer.

And our amazing monarch butterflies journey 2000 miles or more, some even traveling as far as central Mexico. In the spring the migrants begin the flight home, but they stop in the southern U.S. to mate and lay eggs. It is their descendents who continue the trip north to leave their brightly striped progeny on our milkweed plants.

The studio work has been of the invisible kind this past month, as befits the season. My biggest project has been to start building a website for myself. It will pull together all my print-on-demand sites and provide one landing page for my image gallery and blog. This has been in the planning stages for a long time, so it is really satisfying to get it underway now.

I have been starting from scratch, learning about the WordPress software and working through all the design and construction issues. What color background will show off the images best? How big a header do I want? And what goes on it? And what pages will I need? I want to do the best job I can to showcase what I am doing in my studio on a day to day basis. And hey, if you have any suggestions or requests, let me know. After all, this is for you. Needless to say, I am having a blast doing this. I love the challenge, and I love the desiign work. It will be fun to watch it unfold. Stay tuned for new developments.

My gift to you this month is a breath of summer, a file of the canada lily drawing attached to this email. You may do with it as you wish.

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.

If you want to look at the Moments of Transcendence book, here is the link to it on the Blurb.com booksite: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2034640 . And my online stores for shirts, mugs, and housewares can be found at http://www.printfection.com/mainemountainart (the Swift River Treasures art) and http://www.printfection.com/naturesmandalas (the Explorations and Moments of Transcendence art).

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.” (Edith Sitwell)

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

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) has a special place in my heart because it is the first wildflower I see every spring. It flourishes in a shady corner of our backyard near the bend in the stream. In late April or early May I find it covering last year’s dry brown leaf litter with a carpet of pure white stars.

A member of the poppy family, bloodroot is well named. The sap in the roots and leaves is a startling scarlet color. I accidentally broke the bud off of a small stem with my clumsy boots when I was photographing the flowers, and was aghast at the gory results. The stem immediately began to ooze brilliant drops of red. I understand that native Americans used it as a dye and also mixed it with animal fat for body paint. Dry, the juice looks exactly like a bloodstain.

Native Americans also used this plant for its medicinal properties. In the hands of a good medical practitioner, bloodroot can be a potent medicine, but it is not one for amateurs. It contains opium-like alkaloids and can be deadly if taken internally or leave scarring if used externally. For this reason it is considered toxic.

Bloodroot is a very simple and economical plant. Each consists of one leaf and one flower stalk. They only open their blooms on warm, sunny days. The plants work their way out of the ground well-protected from the harsh spring weather they face. The flower bud is covered by a pale green pair of sepals and completely wrapped in the large lobe-edged leaf. The sepals fall off as the flower opens. Even after the flower is open, the leaf still wraps shelteringly around the stem. On a cold cloudy day they look like a company of star-people with blankets wrapped snugly around their shoulders.

Bloodroot is an ephemeral spring star. The blossoms last only about a week. Insects to pollinate the flowers can be scarce in the early spring, but that does not matter. For the first two days after the flower opens, the stamens are close to the petals and do not contact the stigma, even at night when the flower is closed. But on the third day, the anthers are positioned upright and the filaments bend inward, so that the plant will self-pollinate if it has not already been pollinated by an insect.

After the petals fall, the leaf continues to grow, and can be as large as eight inches across at full size. The veins of the leaf show clearly in a complex network pattern. The top side of the leaf is bright green and the underside a dull grayish green.

The seed pod develops at the top of the stem that held the flower. The plants spread by seed and also from the roots. Bloodroot plants have a fascinating relationship with the ants that live among their roots. The seeds carry an appendage called an elaiosome that is a very nutritious food source for the ants. The ants collect seeds, carry them home, and eat the elaiosomes. Then they discard the rest of the seed, still intact, in their refuse tunnels, where the seeds eventually sprout and grow. This mutually beneficial relationship between the ants and the plants is called “myrmecochory;” the ants get the food and the bloodroot seeds are preserved and given an ideal environment for germination, which produces more food for the ants.

Bloodroot thrives in semi-shaded conditions, in moist woods with acidic soil. Most of the bloodroot currently used for medicinal or landscaping purposes is “wild-crafted,” that is, grown in the wild and harvested by herb collectors. Since the demand is greater than the supply, some are experimenting with growing it commercially on a small scale.

NEWSLETTER September 2011

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Fall is coming in softly this year, in gentle nudges. We have already had one frost, but many of the days since then have been warm and summer-like. A flock of flickers stopped off for breakfast in our yard this morning, on their way south. It will not be long until the color is behind us and the landscape is all black and white again.

I spent a lot of my studio time in September revisiting an old friend, the bloodroot plant, Sanguinaria canadensis. Working from photos that I took this year, I have been reworking my bloodroot drawings into the format I have chosen for the Swift River Treasures drawings, colored pencil on heavy Arches watercolor paper. Here is the mixed media drawing I did in 2009, and the drawing that I just finished, so you can compare them.

The old drawing is on the left, and the new one on the right. I will be going back and redoing the other subjects from my first year of botanical studies, too, like the pine tree and the Canada lily. Then the work will present a cohesive image that I can turn into a fine book.

I have also gone deeper in my research of the bloodroot plant and found out some marvelous things about it. For example, bloodroot plants have a fascinating relationship with the ants that live among their roots. Their seeds carry an appendage called an elaiosome that is a very nutritious food source for the ants. The ants collect the seeds, carry them home, and eat the elaiosomes. Then they discard the rest of the seed, still intact, in their refuse tunnels. This provides ideal conditions for the seeds to germinate and grow, safe from being eaten by other predators. This mutually beneficial relationship between the ants and the plants is called “myrmecochory.” The ants get the food. The bloodroot seeds are preserved, moved away from the parent plants, and given an ideal environment for germination. And this produces more food for the ants. A number of wildflowers are myrmecochorous (for example, trilliums and some violets).

Bloodroot is an ephemeral spring star. The blossoms last only about a week. Insects to pollinate the flowers can be scarce in the early spring, but I have found out that this does not matter. For the first two days after the flower opens, the stamens are close to the petals and do not contact the stigma, even at night when the flower is closed. But on the third day, the anthers are positioned upright and the filaments bend inward, so that the plant will self-pollinate if it has not already been pollinated by an insect. I had no idea that the bloodroot was such a marvel of natural design.

I have also started work on a large (three feet by five feet) painting about the bloodroot. I am in the composition stage with it right now, pushing the design elements around on my computer screen. I will keep you up to date on my progress with it over the next few months.

My gift to you this month is a file of the drawing of the bloodroot bloom with the leaf behind it, attached to this newsletter. You may do what you will with it; I give you my permission.

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 art, 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.

If you want to look at the Moments of Transcendence book, here is the link to it on the Blurb.com booksite: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2034640. And my online store for shirts, mugs, and housewares can be found at http://www.printfection.com/mainemountainart.
All the big people are simple, as simple as the unexplored wilderness. They love the universal things that are free to everybody. Light and air and food and love and some work are enough. In the varying phases of these cheap and common things, the great lives have found their joy. (Carl Sandburg, in a letter to his wife, as quoted in My Connemara by his granddaughter, Paula Steichen)

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/August 2011

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

On the downhill side of summer now, you’re getting a combined July/August newsletter this time.

Our star this month is the showiest wildflower we have, the stately Canada Lily, Lilium canadense. With its golden crown of graceful nodding blossoms, it is enough to make me gasp when I come across one unexpectedly. Once it was a common flower from Canada to Alabama in the eastern half of the United States. Now it has become more rare across parts of its range, and is even considered threatened in Indiana, Rhode Island, New York, and Tennessee.

I first found a Canada Lily blooming in our back yard two years ago. Last year we had none; this year we have five! The plants are two to five feet tall, the flowers three or four inches across, with one or more flowers on each plant. The petal color varies from yellow to orange, spotted inside with the color called “Tuscan Red” in my pencil box. The flowers have no fragrance that I can discern. The leaves grow in whorls of three to twelve in each group. I have read that native Americans used this plant medicinally to treat stomach disorders, rheumatism, irregular menstruation, and snake bites.

Canada lilies are perennials. They bloom in mid-July, and the seed pods are formed by mid-August. Once ripe, the seeds need a month or two of warm, moist weather followed by a good long spell of winter weather in order to germinate. It can take them a year or two to produce blooms, but the wait is well worth it. They love the wet soil in old fields near streambeds, moist wood margins, or damp meadows, which is a good description of our backyard.

Like many plants in the lily family, the Canada Lily appears to have 6 petals. But to be botanically accurate, because of the flower’s structure the inner three are considered to be petals, and the outer three are sepals. Collectively they can be called “tepals,” which as far as I can see signifies, “they all look the same to me.”

The drawings were done in colored pencil on Arches hot-pressed (smooth) watercolor paper, from photographs that I took this summer.

Canada Lilies reproduce either by seeds or from offshoots of the corms, the large scaly roots. Only one of the plants in my backyard has produced a good big seed pod. I have marked it, and am watching it as it matures and ripens. When it is fully ripe, dry, and splitting open, I plan to collect the seeds and see if I can start some more Canada Lily plants.

My gift to you this month is this: if you would like to try starting some Canada Lilies, too, send me a reply to this email, along with your street address, and I will send you a few seeds (with planting instructions) when they are ready. I would like to do all I can to keep this graceful beauty in our woods and fields. They like sun or partial shade, and moist soil conditions, if you have a place like that.

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.

If you want to look at the Moments of Transcendence book, here is the link to it on the Blurb.com booksite: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2034640 . And my online store for shirts, mugs, and housewares with Swift River Treasures art on them can be found at http://www.printfection.com/mainemountainart .

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. (Claude Monet)

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 June 2011

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Warblers as a family of birds have always baffled me. Most of them are tiny, secretive, and spend their time flitting either in the very tops of the trees or in dense underbrush. The fact that they change their plumage before the fall migration only adds to the confusion. I have two coats to remember for every bird, as well as differences between male and female.

But this summer I am finding that watching for them and learning to identify them is very rewarding. They are among the most beautiful and colorful birds in my yard here, and their songs fill the air every June day. I have been patiently stalking each of these little songsters until I could catch a glimpse of them, and then running for the bird books to identify them. They are my friends, too, because they consume great quantities of the insects that would trouble my garden.

Sadly, I found a dead male parula warbler on my doorstep in early June. I do not know what happened to him; I am guessing that he must have tried to fly through the window beside the door. I took photos of him from all angles before giving him a decent burial, so I have been able to immortalize him in drawings.

The warblers that have been around the house this summer include the redstart, the yellowthroat, the yellow warbler, the parula warbler, and the chestnut-sided warbler. I have also seen a myrtle (yellow-rumped) warbler and a blackburnian warbler, but they were apparently just passing through.

Their larger relative, the ovenbird, is a frequent nester here as well, and his loud “te-CHER te-CHER te-CHER” call is a familiar sound out by our treeline. I have never heard one say “TEA-cher TEA-cher” like the books describe. Ours always says, “te-CHER.” I have always wanted to find an ovenbird’s nest, which is a tiny dome-shaped nest with a roof and door, hidden in the leaf litter on the ground, but I haven’t yet.

One of the most familiar of the warblers is the little masked bandit, the yellowthroat. His “witchety witchety witchety” song is the easiest to recognize. We had a yellowthroat with a speech impediment nesting in our front yard for a couple of years that sang “witchitchitchittittittitty” over and over, but he is not back again this year. The variation in songs from bird to bird sure keeps us bird-watchers on our toes.

All of the warblers I know sing a simple phrase that they repeat over and over. Putting their songs into the traditional words helps me to recognize and remember them. The chestnut-sided warbler is a handsome fellow. He is always in the treetops declaring, “Pleased, pleased, pleased to MEET you!” (I can hear him singing outside the window as I write this.) And the yellow warbler, who looks like a tiny bright yellow canary, says, “Sweet, sweet, I’m so sweet!” The parula warbler sings a less musical but still distinctive “zzzzzzzzeeeeee-UP!”

I have added some more mugs and shirts to my store this month. The new designs include a single tiger swallowtail, a cluster of ripe blueberries, and a botanical drawing study of the white pine. So far, the reviews from people who have bought products have been great.

And just at the right time, Printfection has a holiday sale in process! Here are the coupon codes and the instructions, good for any item in my store:
Coupon Code: StarSavings
Discount: $5 off any order!
Coupon Code: BrightSavings
Discount: $10 off subtotal of $50+
Coupon Code: SpangledSavings
Discount: $30 off subtotal of $100+
Please enter coupon code StarSavings, BrightSavings, or SpangledSavings before completing checkout. Discount is applied to the base price and does not include shipping, taxes, or additional charges. Email us if you have questions. This offer may not be combined with other offers. Coupons valid from 6/29/2011 to 7/5/201111:59 pm Mountain Time.

My gift to you this month is to extend my offer to do a custom item at no extra charge above the stock items. All you have to do is to go to my art website:
http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/, pick an image, and tell me what you want it printed on (if it's a shirt, what color you want it, too). I will do the formatting of the image and upload the product to the store just for you, at no extra charge above the regular retail price. I have attached to this newsletter a full list of the merchandise from which you can choose.

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.

If you want to look at the Moments of Transcendence book, here is the link to it on the Blurb.com booksite: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2034640 .

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 May 2011

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Here it is, folks, because you asked for it: a new online store, Maine Mountain Art, featuring my Swift River Treasures art on mugs, shirts, tote bags, and other useful items!

Here is where you find it: http://www.printfection.com/mainemountainart

The store is on a website run by Printfection, a company in Colorado that offers print-on-demand apparel and household items. You pick the mug and they print one just for you. I did a lot of research, and chose them because of their good reputation and the quality of their merchandise. Their customer service is stellar, too. I know that personally, because the US Post office lost my first purchase, and Printfection replaced it cheerfully for free. (Note: if you order something, you might want to pay extra for trackable shipping.) They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on all that they sell, and a well-secured shopping cart.

Why mugs and t-shirts? For one thing, I like to be surrounded by beautiful things. Drinking tea out of a mug with my own painting of a bloodroot blossom on it makes me really happy. For another thing, the whole concept of Swift River Treasures is sharing. I am surrounded by beauties of nature every day, and I want to share them with you. That is at the core of why I am doing this.

I have always said that I would rather have my work printed and out where a hundred different people could see it instead of hanging on just one living room wall for one person to enjoy. And being able to sell inexpensive, good quality mugs and shirts just makes it that much more accessible to people. This is not esoteric, difficult-to-understand art. Just like a kid with a dandelion, I’m saying, “Here, look at this! Isn’t it beautiful?”

I have one request for you all: send me feedback. Look at the site. Tell me what you think of it. Tell me if you encounter any hitches, glitches, typos, or uh-oh’s. Please. And if you ever decide to buy something, tell me how it went. Remember you can get your money back if you are not happy with your purchase.

In return for being my guinea pigs, I have two offers for you. One is that just for the month of June I will let you design your own mug or shirt or whatever. Simply go to my art website:
http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/, pick an image, and tell me what you want it printed on (if it's a shirt, what color you want it, too). I will do the formatting of the image and upload the product to the store just for you, at no extra charge above the regular retail price. I have attached to this newsletter a full list of the merchandise from which you can choose. They offer a LOT of choices that I haven't even explored yet. (If you want an image printed on a dark-colored shirt, it may take me a while, because the image must be digitally reworked first. That is why as of right now most of the garments are on white or light colors only.)

My other offer for you is a coupon that you can use if you order something that is in the store already. Printfection has frequent sales, and this morning I got an email from them offering $5 or more off every purchase made from today, June 3rd through Saturday, June 11. Here are the coupon codes and the information from Printfection about how it works:
Coupon Code: DogDays Discount: $5 off any order!
Coupon Code: Summertime Discount: $10 off subtotal of $50+
Coupon Code: HotSeason Discount: $35 off subtotal of $100+
Please enter coupon code DogDays or Summertime or HotSeason before completing checkout. Discount is applied to the base price subtotal and does not include shipping, taxes, or additional charges. Email us if you have questions. This offer may not be combined with other offers. Coupons valid from 6/3/2011 to 6/11/2011 11:59 pm Mountain Time.

I have been having so much fun with this! I am planning a separate store for my Exploration of Natural Design work, called “Nature’s Mandalas.” The stephanograms will go in there, too. But for now, back to the art-making….

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.
If you want to look at the Moments of Transcendence book, here is the link to it on the Blurb.com booksite: http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2034640 .

It is is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility. (Rachel Carson)

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 April 2011

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Last year spring came on like a freight train. This year it’s in slow motion, one step forward and one step back into winter, three steps forward and two steps back. The daytime temperatures have been running ten degrees or more below average, and we have had twice as much rain as we usually get in the spring. All of my spring markers are two to three weeks later (for example, when the bloodroot started blooming). I do have a couple of stories for you, anyway.

Saturday night, April 9th, I went out onto the porch after supper to get a book. I heard a strange noise in the dark, a rhythmic sort of scraping, chirping sound, at about five second intervals. Not quite like a cricket, not quite like the call of a nighthawk. I was so puzzled over it that I went back out a few moments later. This time I heard a clear jubilant twittering in the night sky over my head. There was only a thin crescent of a new moon; it was too dark to see anything. But the twittering went on and on, rising and falling. I went back in the house even more puzzled, and grabbed a couple of the bird books.

I looked at the nighthawk entries---nothing. They make a strange booming sound with their wings during courtship flights, which I have heard once, but there was no mention in the book of chirping or twittering. And then I remembered the woodcock that I had seen just last week, rising up from almost under my feet when I was out walking. Sure enough, what I heard was perfectly described in the books: the courtship flight of the male woodcock. Wow!

I went back out one more time, but this time the sky and woods were silent. Apparently a woodcock pair has decided to nest here, for the first time as far as I know. This is a perfect habitat for them: brushy meadow, moist woods. They apparently have found it to their liking.

Here is a study of a woodcock that I did in colored pencil a few years ago, from a bird that a friend of mine shot when he was out hunting with his dogs. A woodcock is a very strange little bird, but exquisitely marked. I am not in the habit of finding dead birds to draw, but if the opportunity presents itself, I will do it.

Actually I spent a lot of the month studying tree twigs and buds, and drawing them, since the spring flowers were nowhere to be seen. I learned a lot about recognizing trees as they appear in the winter.

I learned to recognize the difference between the gray birches and the white birches. I did not know that we even had gray birches on our property. But I was reading about birches in my tree book, and realized that a lot of the trees that I thought were white paper birches here are actually gray birches. Then I walked the woods, looking more carefully, and saying to myself, “white…gray…white…gray” as I spotted them.

They both have chalk-white bark, but the white birch bark peels in wide strips, revealing the orange inner bark, and the gray birch has close-fitting bark that does not peel except in tiny narrow strips. The black scars on the trunk where the branches come out are eye-shaped on the white birches and more sharply triangular on the gray birches. As they grow older, the gray birches take on a more decidedly gray color at the base of the tree. The twigs are very similar.

Thankfully, as I am finishing this newsletter (even my April newsletter was late this spring!) the leaves are beginning to emerge and the whole landscape has that soft green film over it that it gets just this week of the year. I appreciate it all the more for its having been so long in coming. And the new developments in websites and online stores? Stay tuned, because they are still in the works….

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.

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 .

SLOW SPRING
O year, grow slowly. Exquisite, holy,
The days go on
With almonds showing the pink stars blowing
And birds in the dawn.
Grow slowly, year, like a child that is dear,
Or a lamb that is mild,
By little steps, and by little skips,
Like a lamb or a child.
(by Katharine Tynan)

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

April 7, 2011

I walked the whole loop today, for the first time this spring. The snow is not all gone yet, but what is left is crusty enough that I could walk on it without sinking in much. The chickadees were singing their spring song as I set out today to collect more twigs for my spring twig drawings.

The animals are starting to be out and about. I saw the first chipmunk yesterday, hightailing it from the garage to the stone wall by the porch. And I saw raccoon tracks in the snow at the far end of the meadow.

I watched a nuthatch investigating a tree, and heard a fragment of wht sounded like a cardinal song in the distance once. I saw a small brown bird on the ground near the house, but it flew before I got a good look at it. It was sparrow sized, but without characteristic sparrow markings. I am not sure what it was. The turkey vultures have continued to be in evidence, soaring about the valley. Yesterday when I was out, a woodcock flew up from almost beneath my feet.

I am starting to recognize the difference between the gray birches and the white birches. I did not know that we even had gray birches on our property. But I was reading about birches in my tree book this week, and realized that a lot of the trees that I thought were white paper birches are actually gray birches. I walked the woods today, looking carefully and saying to myself, “white…gray…white…gray” as I spotted them.

They both have chalk-white bark, but the white birch bark peels in wide strips, revealing the orange inner bark, and the gray birch has close-fitting bark that does not peel except in tiny narrow strips. The black scars on the trunk where the branches come out are eye-shaped on the white birches and more sharply triangular on the gray birches. As they grow older, the gray birches take on a more decidedly gray color at the base of the tree. The image shown with this entry is of a white birch and a gray birch side by side. (Can you tell from my description which is which?)

April 5, 2011

Last year spring came on like a freight train. This year it’s in slow motion, one step forward and one step back into winter, three steps forward and two steps back. Today is a step-forward day; it is raining instead of snowing. This time last year I was planting seeds in my sunbox. This year it is still frozen and snow-covered.

The birds are beginning to stir. I saw two turkey vultures overhead yesterday, headed north. I startled a woodcock up from under my feet when I was out for a walk. Today when I went out for the mail I heard a red-winged blackbird singing up the valley somewhere, and blue jays calling in the pines. I saw the a pair of nuthatches this week, too. They have not been around all winter. And of course the chickadees are everywhere, and now they are singing their spring song in earnest.

The greatest news of all is that the pussy willows are blooming. That really makes it feel like spring. Here is a photo of pussy willows and some forsythia on my work desk. The forsythia is not blooming in the yard yet. This was a branch that I brought in and put in water for a few days, and it finally bloomed.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

NEWSLETTER April 2010

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Spring is coming on like a freight train this year, ahead of its usual schedule. In the past week, the new blooms in the woods include the shadbush, trillium, trout lily, and Dutchman’s breeches, and in the yard we have narcissus, bleeding heart, forget-me-nots, purple azalea (the first of all the azaleas), and plum tree. The summer residents have been returning, one after another. In the mornings the woods are so full of bird songs that the very air seems charged with life.

One annual spring treat here is having fiddleheads for supper. We have a patch of ostrich fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris, growing by the stone wall near the shop. This is the classic “fiddlehead” fern, producing the tightly curled sprouts that rapidly unfurl into great graceful ostrich plumes. The image you see here is a drawing of ostrich fern fiddleheads from my study book.

Did you ever get one of those party favors when you were a kid, the kind that you blow on and it unrolls with a loud BRAAAAPPP sound? The ferns seem to uncoil the same way, from a tight Archimedean spiral, as if spring itself were blowing on its roots. They grow so quickly you can almost see them uncurling as you watch.

The taste of fiddleheads is similar to asparagus. Thorough cooking (ten minutes if you boil them, twenty if you steam them) reduces the bitterness and some of the components of them that are said to not be good for us. If you are going to pick fiddleheads, pick only three per plant and leave the rest, so the plant will continue to thrive.

Spring has its mysteries, too. Last week my husband Steve was cleaning up the chips and sawdust left from a winter of cutting and splitting firewood. When he was getting to the bottom of the pile, I heard him calling, “Betsy, come look! I just broke something!” He had found a huge, fresh-looking, white-shelled egg buried in the sawdust. His rake had clipped it and the shell was cracked, showing the clear white and the yolk inside. It apparently had never been brooded; it looked as fresh as a chicken egg from the grocery store. But it was almost four inches long!

Now this is a real mystery. Whose egg was it? And how did it get buried in our sawdust pile? The two biggest birds we see are the turkeys and the vultures. Both of them have eggs that are speckled with brown, as far as I know. This egg was white. We do have neighbors half a mile up the valley who keep geese. The only thing I can figure is that maybe someone stole that egg from them, carried it down here, and hid it. If you have a better idea, let me know.

We do have red foxes. I saw one just recently, heading from our property back to its den on the other side of the road. And I found a story online, complete with photos, about a fox stealing goose eggs and hiding one for herself after she had fed her family. (You can go see it at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-466429/Daring-raid-vixen-swims-river-times-steal-eggs-gooses-nest.html.) So the evidence would possibly suggest that a fox put that egg there. But this valley is certainly full of secret lives and doings that we know nothing about.

Right now I am dividing my time between making art about fiddleheads in my study book and finishing a large oil composition about the white pines. I am painting this on a panel, using painting knives, and trying to apply what I have been learning about light and color. I will show it to you in the next newsletter, when it is finished.

In my original newsletter I have attached a file of a fiddlehead art card for you to print. The original is a miniature oil painting. Art cards (or ACEO’s) are a collectible form of miniature art the same size as a baseball trading card. Print this one on good stiff photo paper, cut it out, and start your own collection, if you wish. I give you permission to print or reproduce this image as you choose. If you would like to receive my emailed newsletter, send me a message at bgbell@gmail.com.

For more information on “Swift River Treasures,” my art-making 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.

Always be looking for the unexpected in nature—you can have no formulas for anything; search constantly…. I don’t know of a better definition of an artist than one who is eternally curious. (Charles Hawthorne, from the introduction to Hawthorne on Painting)

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

4-21-2010

Mysteries

This week my husband Steve was cleaning up the wood waste left from a winter of cutting and splitting firewood. The pile of rough “sawdust” from the chainsaw and chips from the splinter stood about three feet deep at the peak and covered an area about four by eight feet. When he was getting to the end of the pile, I heard him calling, “Betsy, come look! I just broke something!” I went to look.

It was an egg, a huge, fresh-looking, white-shelled egg that was buried in the sawdust. His rake had clipped it and the shell was cracked, showing the clear white and the yolk inside. It apparently had never been brooded; it looked as fresh as a chicken egg from the grocery store. But it was almost four inches long!

Now this is a real mystery. Whose egg was it? And how did it get buried in our sawdust pile? The two biggest birds we see are the turkeys and the vultures. Both of them have eggs that are speckled with brown, as far as I know. This egg was white, although it had sawdust stuck all over it. We do have neighbors half a mile up the valley who keep geese. The only thing I can figure is that maybe someone stole that egg from them, carried it down here, and hid it. If you have a better idea, let me know.

We do have foxes, and I saw one a few days ago, heading from our property back to its den on the other side of the road. And I found a story online, complete with photos, about a fox stealing goose eggs and hiding one for herself after she had fed her family. You can go see it at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-466429/Daring-raid-vixen-swims-river-times-steal-eggs-gooses-nest.html. So the evidence would possibly suggest that it was a fox who put that egg there. But this valley is certainly full of secret lives and doings that we know nothing about.

Very early this morning, well before dawn, I heard hooves clop-clopping southward down the road we live on. Now who was that, and where were they going? I doubt that it was a local equestrian out for a little starlight spin with their horse. I expect it was a moose, maybe more than one from the sound of it. I know that somebody saw it, because a while later I heard it clopping northward again, and it was met by a southbound truck. The clopping stopped as the truck came down the valley. The truck stopped, with a loud squeal of brakes. Silence. A few more cautious clops. And finally the truck started southbound again, very slowly.

In the winter, the fresh snow has stories to tell, if I could only read the tracks I find. But I am like a preschooler perusing a copy of Moby Dick. I can recognize a few letters here and there—“A, B, X”—but I sure can’t read the story. I heard a great bass voice hoo-hoo-h-hooing out in the woods a couple of nights ago, but who was it? (I believe it was the male great horned owl.) The longer I live here, the more I learn. And the more I realize I don’t know. I am okay with that. I never get bored. And what is life without a bit of mystery, anyway?

Winter Reprise (Fickle April)

My husband just came into my studio and threw a snowball at me. This is so wrong for April!

April is fickle, and winter is not done with us yet. We woke up two mornings ago to a wintry white world again. Four inches of snow had fallen overnight, and it kept falling all morning. It is almost all melted now, but Steve did manage to scrape together enough for a good-size snowball.

I heard a great horned owl out in the deep woods across the road again last night. This time it was a great bass voice, lower than the ones I have heard up until now. Apparently the big daddy has checked in. This may reduce our groundhog population some more.

Here is a continuation of the spring log:

April 13
White-throated sparrow back
Mountainsides changing color
(trees blooming)
Dutchman’s breeches emerging
Greens in cold frame emerging
Garden plants sprouting in pots in the kitchen
Bloodroot still blooming
Chinodoxa blooming in flower bed
Saw a red fox
Lawn green (grass and weeds)

April 16
First fiddleheads up (small ones, near porch)

April 17
SNOW!!

Spring Progress (4-7-2010)

I went out for a long ramble this afternoon, looking for signs of spring. The sun is out, the sky is blue with puffy white clouds, the temperature is 75 degrees, and all is right with the world. Winter seems to have retreated far behind, just in the past week, and spring is in full voice a couple of weeks ahead of when I would expect it around here.

The photo is the bloodroot patch by the creek in full bloom. What could be more beautiful?

I have been keeping a log of spring progress, and it is amazing to me how much has changed just since April began. Here it is:

April 1
Primrose leaves growing
Song sparrows
Groundhog out
Chipmunk out
Silver maple blooming
Daffodils up 2-6”
Onions growing in garden
Egyptian onions sprouting
Last small patches of snow melting on the slopes
Vultures are back

April 2
Bloodroot emerging
Bleeding heart emerging
Cardinal
Robin
Nuthatch
Birches and aspen blooming
Wood frogs croaking
Spring peeper chorus started
Mourning cloak butterfly
Wasp
Slug
Turkeys (at a neighbor’s house), male displaying grandly
Lots of bugs and beetles showing up

April 3
Phoebes are back
Chives up 2”
Mourning doves singing
Somebody screaming hoarsely in the front yard at 3:00 a.m. (who? Later in the day I heard 2 great horned owls hoo-hooing at each other out behind June’s place.)
First bloodroot blooming
First daffodils blooming (under the mulberry trees)
Violet leaves emerging
Woodpecker calling
Forsythia beginning to bloom
Leaves beginning to emerge on shrubs and brambles
Meadow rue emerging

April 7
Bloodroot in full bloom
Trout lily leaves up
Rhubarb emerging
Red trillium emerging
Lady’s mantle unfolding
Wild onions up
Willows greening
Pussywillows already gone by
Daffodils in full bloom
Forsythia in full bloom

4-1-2010

I have woken up to the sound of bird song the past two mornings. Our winter residents are tuning up and our summer residents are beginning to arrive. Yesterday I heard two song sparrows duking it out in melody. This morning I heard chickadees, the song sparrow again, and a cardinal, and another bird that I think might have been an oriole. The turkey vultures are back, too.

A local chipmunk was scurrying around the garage yesterday. That is the first I have seen a chipmunk this spring. Today while I ate lunch I watched the first groundhog nosing around the back yard. He wasn’t eating the green shoots that are just starting to come up in the lawn; he was just walking around looking at things. He was a brown groundhog, unlike the blonde race we usually see in our yard, so I am not sure where he spent the winter. But he seemed to think that the shed out back might make good summer lodgings, and was giving it a careful look-see.

The snow on the mountains is almost a memory now. Only a few dirty white patches remain. We had three days of rain this week, so the Swift River is up about as high as we ever see it. The Androscoggin River is high too, drowning the trees at the edge of the banks. I have not gone to see it yet, but I imagine that the Rumford falls are really roaring now. This time of year it sends up great plumes of mist and really looks like it lives up to its reputation of being the highest falls east of Niagara.

Newsletter March 2010

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

March has been all about seeing. You know those big signs they put on the driver’s ed. cars, the ones that say, “student driver”? I should be wearing one on my hat. I have been learning to see, and I feel like I am back in kindergarten, and I am enjoying it immensely. This month has not been “productive” in terms of shareable, saleable art output. But it has been a very important one in laying foundations for the work I will be doing next. The “seeing” has been going on in two arenas, in how I see the earth around me and in how I see the light that illumines it.

Last fall when I was in Cleveland I picked up a book called Seeing Nature at a used book sale for twenty-five cents, and it was a quarter well spent. Reading this book is changing the way I look at the world around me. It was written by Paul Krafel, a naturalist, educator, and former park ranger. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend that you find a copy of it and take a thoughtful look. You will find Krafel on the internet at http://www.chrysalischarterschool.com/Paul/index.html.

Seeing Nature is about how nature works as a unified system, and the implications this has for us humans. (The subtitle is “Deliberate encounters with the visible world.”) In the chapter “Seeing Further into the Fourth Dimension” I found a fascinating concept that I have been able to apply to the land we live on here in the Swift River valley.

This property was a working farm when the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth. But over the past few generations it has been left to grow back into what it was and still wants to be, a northern hardwood forest. It was not abandoned all at once, though, so each piece shows the evidence of its stage in the succession of regrowth.

Around the house we still have lawn, which is shorn regularly all summer, just like when it was farmland. Then there is abandoned lawn, which is turning back to meadow, and beginning to grow wildflowers and brambles and small shrubbery. Then we have the abandoned meadow, which is now growing small pines and aspen trees, the sun-loving species. And where the pines and aspens have grown to maturity, there is an understory of beech, oak, and sugar maple coming along, ready to take their places.

You can see the different parts of the property as a continuum in space—farm, meadow, softwoods, hardwoods. Or you can move your eyes through space and see into time. The areas that are now growing hardwood were once stands of small pine and aspen saplings, which were once meadow, which were once plowed fields. I can “see” backward in time to what my woods once looked like, and forward in time to what my lawn will look like in 100 years if we don’t mow it! This “time travel” seeing helps me to understand better how to take care of this place and how to cooperate with its innate patterns.

And about seeing light: Years ago I saw a light-filled painting by a current-day American impressionist and I thought, “I have GOT to learn to paint like that.” Finally the resources have caught up with me and I have been applying myself to really learn to see light and color. And I am producing some paintings—simple studies of colored blocks in the sunshine—that I am happier with than any oil paintings I have done so far.

Since this newsletter is already getting long enough, I am not going to go into more detail about this today. If you want more, you can see the blog titled “Boogie Chillen” which is available at the following link: http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/blogs/boogie-chillen.html. There are photos there, too. And I am sure that you will be hearing more about this in newsletters to come.

I have attached a file of an art card here for you. This one is a miniature oil painting of the view across the road from the end of our driveway in the winter. I call it “Fox Den Hill” because the local foxes have their den someplace just on the other side. Art cards (or ACEO’s) are a collectible form of miniature art the same size as a baseball trading card. Print this one on good stiff photo paper, cut it out, and start your own collection, if you wish. I give you permission to print or reproduce this image as you choose.

For more information on “Swift River Treasures,” my artmaking process, or recent work, or to check out my blog, see my new website at http://betsy-bell.artistwebsites.com/index.html. Fine Art America has started formatting their artists’ pages into individual websites in addition to their FAA page. It has my own header on it, but through this site you can still access FAA’s great print-on-demand service with optional matting and framing. They also sell greeting cards with my work on them.

Begin the work even though you cannot see the path by which this work can lead to your goal. (Paul Krafel, in Seeing Nature)

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

3-12-2010

“Boogie Chillen”

Do you know the old blues song “Boogie Chillen” sung by John Lee Hooker? “Let that boy boogie woogie, ´cause it’s in him and it got to come out!” Well, the rainbow is in me and it got to come out. The images you see here are some simple studies of colored blocks that I have painted in the past couple of weeks, done for practice in seeing light and color.

Years ago I saw a painting by a current-day American impressionist and I thought, “I have GOT to learn to paint like that.” I don’t mean just painting with an “impressionistic” technique. I am talking about really seeing light and color accurately and being able to express it with paint. Finally the resources have caught up with me and I have been applying myself to really learn to see. And I am producing some paintings—simple block studies—that I am happier with than any oil paintings I have done so far.

Some writers write prose. Some write poetry. And some write both. My nature study drawings are my prose. These light and color paintings are sheer poetry. They are not literal, like the prose. They don’t give you information about every surface detail and every nuance of form. But they give you a picture of what happens when the light hits an object. And it is, like a figure of speech, somehow truer than the literal truth about the object, a direct and spontaneous interpretation of how it hits me at that moment.

The real subject of the painting is the light, not the object you see. And that is something that I have been reaching for ever since I first picked up a paintbrush. When I was in my early teens, going to classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art, I took an outdoor watercolor painting class. I remember one painting in particular that I did, a simple sketch of a path with patterns of sunlight and tree shadows on it. And as I remember it was that painting that got the attention of my instructor and moved him to suggest that I be accepted into the special invitation-only classes that the museum had for teens. I’m still on the same track, looking at patterns of light and shadow.

To be able to express the weather and the time of day by the quality of the light in a painting, to show what the light is doing, to somehow convey to you the singing that happens in my heart when I look at something beautiful—that is what I am after.

You know what a red block looks like. You know the color we call “red.” Some artists paint light and shadow using a formula: add white to the red for the sunlit plane and add black to the red for the shadow plane, or something like that. The impressionist way of painting a red block says, ‘What color is that warm plane in the sun really? Orange? Pink? What color can I use to really convey the warmth of the sunlight and the truth of what my eyes are seeing?” The actual color of an object in the light is influenced by so many factors: the kind of light, the angle at which the light hits it, the colors of objects around it, how much moisture is in the air. No formula will encompass all these parameters. It becomes a matter of learning to really see what is in front of you, without preconceptions. And I should be wearing a big sign that says, “Caution—student painter,” like they put on the driver’s ed. cars.

The other issue I am dealing with is my penchant for surface detail and my facility with a brush. I have purposely switched to using a painting knife for these paintings so that I have to paint simply and directly. I want to focus on the light, not the objects, and in this case the surface detail would only get in my way. I can leave the painstaking description for when I am drawing, and be free to respond to the light and color when I am painting. I honestly enjoy painting with a knife; I like how uncomplicated and un-fussy it is.

I am not going to stop doing the naturalist thing, being the illustrator and making pages in my study book about the treasures I find in our valley. But I am going to occasionally cut loose to interpret what I find for you in terms of light and color, painting the poetry of it as well as the prose, as I get better at seeing it. Boogie!

BIOGRAPHY
My artist grandfather gave me a sketchbook for my first birthday. I sold my first painting when I was in my early teens. Art has always been a part of my life.
I have spent most of the last thirty-five years as a homemaker and mother, raising my family and homeschooling my children. Even so, I always found time and resources for art: fiber arts, drawing, painting, calligraphy, printmaking, and graphic design.
I have a B.A. in studio art from the University of Maine at Augusta. I have been an art gallery manager and a business consultant. My work has been shown in galleries and public buildings in Ohio, Maryland and Maine, and I have work in private collections in many parts of the country.
I live in a 180-year-old farmhouse in the woods of western Maine.

I went for a walk down by the stream today, right behind the house. It was the quintessential spring day: sunny, balmy, and pleasant. The snow here in the valley is almost all melted now, except for the shady spots. The mountain slopes have snow on them yet, but it is getting visibly thin. Early this winter we had intense cold, but little snow. And we finished the winter with unusually warm sunny days, and still little snow. We already look like April, when it is only the middle of March.

I found some fresh new crinkly primrose leaves just beginning to poke up above the old dead leaves out on our “Primrose Path.” My mother-in-law planted them many years ago. The catkins on the shrubbery right by the stream were beginning to enlarge and extend and show bright yellow green in between the dark spots. I hit one with my hand and a cloud of yellow pollen drifted away on the breeze.

I sat for a while and just watched the water ripple by. A chickadee came up behind me so close that I thought he was going to land on me. I heard his wings fluttering right behind my head and turned to look at him. He took his time looking me over, too, giving a quiet little “cheep” from time to time. I also heard a nuthatch, but I didn’t see him.

The wildlife has been out and about early, too. In the past couple of weeks we have seen a fox, a deer, a skunk, a squirrel, a pair of mourning doves, and a turkey vulture. The chipmunks have not roused themselves out of their burrows yet. I don’t know how many more tick-less days we will have, but I am going to enjoy it while it lasts.

I am thinking about gardening, and putting some lettuce in my cold frame….

NEWSLETTER February 2010

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

First, the unfinished business: I am done with the painting that I was working on last fall when I had to leave for Cleveland. I painted it in several successive layers. You can see the progression here, from the first underpainting to its current state.

This is a 20” diameter oil painting on canvas. The image is taken from the watercolor that I did of the asters and butterfly, but it zeroes in on the butterfly and one flower. I started out with bright colors and simple shapes in the underpainting, and gradually refined them until I was satisfied that I had said what I wanted to say. I like the profusion of petals and the way the light hits them. I am fascinated with light and what it does to color, so I am planning some concentrated study in that area next.

The remainder of February was spent studying the white pine, the gentle giant of the northeastern conifers. Its needles are long and soft instead of aggressively sharp or stiff like other pines, and it can grow one hundred feet tall or more. The white pine is the Maine state tree, and the pine cone and tassel is our state flower. You can see my study book page about white pines here on my Fine Art America site.

White pines are inextricably bound with Maine’s history. They have formed a major part in many industries here over the years. Because its soft, light wood does not warp or crack as easily as other trees, it has found its way into buildings, cabinets, furniture, boxes, and patterns as well as the masts of ships.

The living room in our 180-year-old farmhouse is paneled with the original “pumpkin pine” boards taken from the loft floor when the house was remodeled. Pumpkin pine is the deep orange heartwood of old growth pine trees. The boards over our fireplace mantel are slightly less than twenty-four inches wide.

In American colonial days, all good trees two feet or more in diameter on land not previously granted to a private individual were reserved for masts for His Majesty’s Royal Navy. A fine of £100 was levied against anyone who cut a tree marked with the King’s “broad arrow.” So boards in Mainer’s homes were never, ever more than twenty-four inches wide, even if they came from a larger tree. They were carefully trimmed to remove any possibility of incriminating evidence!

If you would like to receive an email of my newsletter with the free art card file attached, send me a message and I would be delighted to oblige you.
This time the art card image is one of “pine candles,” the pale green shoots on the pine tree branch tips in the spring. It was digitally reworked from a 3” diameter round miniature. Art cards (or ACEO’s) are a collectible form of miniature art the same size as a baseball trading card. Print this one on good stiff photo paper, cut it out, and start your own collection, if you wish. I give you permission to print or reproduce this image as you choose.

For more information on “Swift River Treasures,” my art-making process, or recent work, or to check out my blog, see my website at http://betsy-bell.fineartamerica.com. Fine Art America offers a great print-on-demand service with optional matting and framing. They also sell greeting cards with my work on them.

This month’s collector’s tip is from my friend Pat Chandler, a career professional artist in Norway, Maine. You can see her work at http://www.chandlerfineart.com. She asked me to stress how important it is to an artist to get feedback from collectors, and how the relationship between artist and art-lover develops. “Many clients have repeatedly told me how important the artworks they've bought from me are to them. So I have taken opportunities, like holidays, to write notes and say in some way how meaningful it is to me to know that. I find some way to acknowledge that we have become part of each others' lives.”

I would like to paint the way a bird sings. (Claude Monet)

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

(to recieve a monthly newsletter from me, just sent me an email and I will add you to my list.)

White Pine (Pinus strobus)

The white pines are the gentle giants of the northeastern conifers. Their needles are long and soft instead of aggressively sharp or stiff like other pines, and they can grow one hundred feet tall or more. The white pine is the Maine state tree, and the pine cone and tassel is our state flower.

The living room in our 180-year-old farmhouse is paneled with the original “pumpkin pine” boards taken from the loft floor when the house was remodeled. Pumpkin pine is the deep orange heartwood of old growth pine trees. The boards over our fireplace mantel are just under twenty-four inches wide.

In American colonial days, all good trees two feet or more in diameter on land not previously granted to a private individual were reserved for masts for His Majesty’s Royal Navy. A fine of £100 was levied against anyone who cut a tree marked with the King’s “broad arrow.” So boards in Mainer’s homes were never, ever more than twenty-four inches wide, even if they came from a larger tree. They were carefully trimmed to remove any possibility of incriminating evidence!

The fine blue-green needles of the white pine are grouped in bundles of five. The cones are four to eight inches long and take two years to mature. The tips of the woody cone-scales are often crusted with sticky, aromatic resin. When I was drawing the pinecones in my study book, my hands were sticky and pine-fragrant from handling them.

A white pine grows taller as the main leader at the top of the tree grows. The branches are arranged below that in whorls of five to nine branches each. A couple of weeks ago, a medium-size pine near the back of our yard broke off in a windstorm. The breaking place, about fifteen feet above the ground, was at the point where the leader had been killed and one of the lateral branches below it had become the new trunk. This made a slight kink in the trunk and a weak place in the tree.

Forks in white pine trunks are usually caused by the white pine weevil. Unfortunately for the lumber industry, this reduces the value of the timber considerably. Since this little critter likes pine trees in warm, dry, sunny places best, pines in open fields are particularly susceptible. The weevil lives on the terminal leader of the tree, and lays its eggs there. The grubs that hatch feed on the inner bark of the leader. This effectively girdles the topmost shoot of the tree and kills it. The great old white pine at the edge of our meadow shows the mark of its battle with this tiny marauder, for the trunk forks about halfway up its height.

White pines are inextricably bound with Maine’s history. They have formed a major part in many industries here over the years. Because its soft, light wood does not warp or crack as easily as other trees, it has found its way into buildings, cabinets, furniture, boxes, and patterns as well as the masts of royal ships.

Why are there trees I never walk under
But large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
(Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass)

March is usually still winter around here, but we have had so little snow and so much warm sunny weather that it looks like April already. There are bare patches of ground showing in the old tired snow on the mountains, and the driveway is clean and dry instead of all ice like it was this time last year.
It smells like spring, because the skunks are out. Steve saw a local one nosing around our house the day before yesterday.
And it sounds like spring, too. I heard turkeys gobbling at dawn this morning, and I think that I heard a mourning dove in the distance.
Two winters ago we had about 150 inches of snow. Last winter we had about 90 inches. And this winter so far we have had not quite 60 inches. All of the major snowstorms of the winter have gone south of us, it seems. I will be interested to see if it advances the tide of the season when the trees and plants begin to stir, too.

“Aster” is Latin for “star,” and great constellations of them bloom in our meadow in the late summer and fall. The New England is the last and showiest of them all. Its great ragged purple and gold heads are summer’s last hurrah around here, lingering long after many of the other flowers have faded. They are also called Michaelmas daisies, because they bloom around the time of the ancient holiday of Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael the Archangel.

I have a page in my study book devoted to the New England aster, Symphotrichum novae-angliae. It has a cluster of handsome composite flowers with a stem as tall as I am. The disk flowers show a beautiful double spiral pattern. After the blooms are spent, the seed heads are soft and fluffy with dense pappi that help waft the seeds aloft in late fall breezes.

I had one spectacular photoshoot with the asters that last week of September. I caught them in the late afternoon when the sun was slanting through the meadow, and they were abuzz with bees of all sizes. I also captured a small yellow butterfly with my camera. He ignored me and went about his business with the asters, so I was able to get several good shots of him. I believe he was a pink-edged sulphur, or some variant thereof. From the photos I did a watercolor of the butterfly, bees, and asters.

The end of 2009 was interrupted by family needs and an unexpected and lengthy stay out-of-state. But I am back in Maine and back in my studio now, and am happily putting on the harness again. Look for more blogs and work posted in the near future.

Winter seems to be sliding in early this year. We had our first snow on Oct. 13, a wet slushy snow that muted all the fall color for a few hours. It didn't last long before it melted, but it gave us a preview of things to come. The nights have been unusually cold, too, with lows in the teens. I am glad for our old woodstove now.

The peak of the color here generally comes around Columbus Day weekend, and this year was no exception in that department. But now the brilliant scarlet of the sugar maples is behind us, giving way to the deep russet and gold of the oaks and beeches. The brilliance of early fall is breathtaking, but the subtler colors of late October have their charm, too. I had occasion to ride through the Notch from Mexico to Andover yesterday. We were exclaiming, "Oh, look!" all the way there. That is one of my favorite drives, almost any time of year.

The garden is down to just a few hardy plants in my cold frame: lettuce, chard, New Zealand spinach, and parsley. The soil temperature in the box has been hovering around 45 degrees, warm enough to keep it all from freezing. On the nights when the temperature went down into the low teens, I draped an old sleeping bag over the box. That was enough to protect it until morning. This is the best lettuce I have gotten from the garden all year. No slugs, no bugs, no groundhogs, no deer. I may start growing more of my food under glass.

I have watched the flocks of migrating birds moving through. Some late robins visited us this past week. The warblers have been flitting silently through the bushes. The local birds who spend the winter with us are settling in now. This includes the ever-present chickadees, the blue jays, hairy woodpeckers, nuthatches, and our lone ruffed grouse. That grouse (or partridge, as they are called locally) often spends the early winter around the end of our driveway, in the windbreak near the trees with berries that she favors so much. I also saw a female cardinal in the quince bush the other day; I don't know if she will stay around or not. Cardinals are rare in our yard, unlike in Ohio where I grew up. We are at the far northern edge of their range here.

NEWSLETTER Fall 2009 No. 4

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Most of September was devoted to framing my art to put in this month’s exhibit at Frost Farm Gallery, so this newsletter will have to be all about framing. For me the art-sharing is all one piece with the art-making, anyway. A large part of the retail price of any work of art is the frame, too. Hopefully you will come away from this with a little better appreciation of what is involved in the process from the artist’s point of view.

My husband Steve and I worked together on this project. This is the first time we have made our own frames. Steve did most of it: sawing and gluing the molding, cutting the glass and mats, and putting the hardware on the back. I did the design part, and helped with the assembly. It was a happy collaboration, and the results are stunning if I do say so myself.
I will start by saying that none of this would have happened without the help of our friend Dirk MacKnight. He is not only a superb photographer, but an able teacher. He gave us some good instruction on how to make frames, and then loaned us a lot of the equipment we needed. (You can see examples of his fine landscape photography by looking for him at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dirkphoto.)

The first consideration is the style of the frame. This body of artwork needed to be presented with great simplicity. I picked a plain ¾” wide wood molding in three different colors, natural oak, walnut brown, and black. I chose two colors of matboard, giving the works on watercolor paper a cool white mat to match the paper color, and the works on Stonehenge drawing paper a warmer white. We gave a few of the pieces a double mat, with a colored mat for the inner one.

It amazes me how much the colors of the mat and molding affect the appearance of the work. Adjacent colors “talk” to each other. Whatever color you pick for the frame will make that same color stand out more in the painting, so you have to choose carefully. You can’t take a weak painting and make it a great one just with the framing, but you sure can take a plain one and make it sing.

For example, here is the “Spruce Twig” watercolor framed in three different ways. The first frame is made from the black molding. The black looks dull and doesn’t do anything for the painting. The second is the walnut brown, which is better but still looks thin to me. The third is the way we ended up framing it, with a larger frame and mat and an inner second mat of a rich rusty brown color to bring out the colors in the spruce cones.

A second example is this watercolor of a crow feather. It is a wing feather that a crow dropped just for me last winter, and I keep it on my work desk to brush eraser crumbs off my drawings (art supplies form the sky!). You can see the way we framed it at the right, with a double mat, and you can see it with the black mat covered at the left. It is a very simple painting, but the narrow line of black from the inner mat is really what lifts it above the ordinary.


I really enjoyed the process of framing the paintings, even more than I thought I would. There is a real thrill to seeing a work framed and hung for the first time. I am looking forward very much to going back to my studio work now, and glad to know that whenever I need a frame we can produce one that will set the art off to its best advantage.

For those of you who are in Maine, my work will be at Frost Farm Gallery in Norway, Maine from now until the end of October. For more information, check out their website at www.FrostFarmGallery.com. It is a beautiful venue, and one that really complements this particular collection of paintings.

I have attached a file of the spruce twig here for you in the form of an art card. Art cards (or ACEO’s) are a collectible form of miniature art the same size as a baseball trading card. Print this one on good stiff photo paper, cut it out, and start your own collection, if you wish. I give you permission to print or reproduce this image as you choose.

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.fineartamerica.com. You can also search for me on fineartamerica.com as Betsy Gray Bell under the “Artists” button in the top menu bar. (The drop-down box under it has a search feature.) Fine Art America offers a print-on-demand service, matting, framing, and shipping, and fine art greeting cards as well.

There is time for making art, once you understand that it’s about making choices. (Ricë Freeman-Zachery, author of Creative Time and Space: Making Room for Making Art)

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. And next month I will be back to doing the naturalist thing again.

Betsy

This time of year, everyone who grows tomatoes in their garden around here has green ones sitting around in the kitchen. Here is my favorite green tomato recipe, which I collected more than 35 years ago after a memorable meal with friends.

"MACHUNKHA"
From Margie (I went to college with her)

INGREDIENTS:
¼ cup chopped Spanish onion (or enough to cover the bottom of your pan)
1/8 cup butter
a tiny bit of chopped green pepper (This is optional. Use more if you like peppers.)
1 or 2 green tomatoes, cut into ½ inch cubes
2 or 3 red tomatoes (generally use 3 red to 1 green), peeled and cut into ½ inch cubes
¼ cup milk
¼ cup flour
salt and pepper to taste
small amount of finely chopped garlic, if you like garlic

METHOD:
Melt butter in frying pan over moderate heat.
Add onions and green pepper. Sauté to transparency. Add garlic.
Put unpeeled cubes of green tomato in your pan. Cook until they lose their hardness. Add red tomato cubes. Cook another 5 to 10 minutes. Mix the tomatoes together to confuse them and cause identity crisis yielding unusual flavor. [Yes, that is the way the original recipe read.]
While this simmers at a low temperature, mix your milk, water (to thin), and flour together, beating into a paste with a pastry whip or fork. Pour it into the tomato mixture while stirring tomatoes. Now add salt and pepper to taste (recommended very small amount of salt, more pepper.)
Cook on low temperature until it reaches gravy consistency.
Serve from pan with whole loaf of fresh white bread—Italian or other tearable bread—dunking bread into the machunkha to eat.

If you should happen to have any left over (not likely), thin it with milk when you reheat it, stirring it back to gravy consistency.

2 large green tomatoes and 3 large red ones make about 6 servings.

According to informed sources, fall arrives today at 5:18 PM EDT. The dance of the stars never ceases to amaze me, how every one knows its place.
I always approach the fall equinox with mixed feelings. Summer is all too short in my neck of the woods, but I do so enjoy the pleasures of a cozy place by the woodstove and the crisp air of September. I love apples, too, and having a teapot full of hot tea on the table.
We had our first frost a couple of nights ago. It was a light one. The squash and cucumber plants in the main garden had their leaves frozen, but the zucchini here in the kitchen garden next to the porch was hardly touched. The basil is bronzed on top, but not gone. I had to take out my tomato plants already. At the end of the summer they started showing signs of late blight. (That is the nasty fungal disease that caused the Irish potato famine of the mid-nineteenth century.) I took them out rather than let the disease develop and spread spores all around my garden. Our kitchen is full of bowls of green and red tomatoes, and fried green tomatoes are a regular menu item at the moment. I understand that this has been a bad year for the blight in some quarters, since it thrives in the weather conditions we had for most of the summer. This is the first time we have had to deal with it.
I found a dead dragonfly by the back door after the frost. I had no idea that these biggest dragonflies were painted with such amazing colors, blue and orange and black. They moved so fast, I thought they were just dark gray. I never saw a big one like this up so close before. He will find his way into the paintings, I am sure.
The photo is of the red maple just to the northeast of the house. It is always the first tree to turn red in the fall, and it is in full color now.

Here is the official promotional blurb about my solo exhibit at Frost Farm Gallery, which is coming up soon:


Frost Farm Gallery will hold a “First Friday” reception, meet and greet the artist, on Friday, October 2, 2009, from 5-8pm at the gallery located in the historic David W. Frost farm, 272 Pikes Hill in Norway. The exhibit will feature "Swift River Treaures: Original Naturalist Works by Betsy Bell." Live acoustic music will be performed by Brad Hooper.

In a recent conversation at the gallery, Betsy shared how art came to be such a large part of her life. “My artist grandfather gave me a sketchbook for my first birthday. I sold my first painting when I was in my early teens. Art has always been a part of my life. I have spent most of the last thirty-five years as a homemaker, mother and caregiver; even so, I always found time and resources for art."

When asked about her process of creating art, she replied, “I live in a 180-year-old farmhouse in the mountains of western Maine. Swift River Treasures combines my passion for making art with my enjoyment of being an amateur naturalist. I take so much delight in living here in the Swift River valley and learning about the treasures I find around me. For me, the art-making process is a way of capturing and sharing the beauty I see.” Betsy has a B.A. in Studio Art from the University of Maine at Augusta. Her work is in public and private collections in many parts of the country.

In addition to the exhibit, gallery-goers will experience the live acoustic music of Brad Hooper from Midnight at the Hilltop Hotel, a compilation of original songs that have been around for as long as twenty years. Reviewers are comparing his work to artists such as John Prine, Arlo Guthrie and Steve Earl. Brad will be selling and signing CDs after the show.

The event is free and open to the public. The exhibit and sale will continue at Frost Farm Gallery through Saturday, October 31. First Friday art openings at Frost Farm Gallery are in conjunction with the Commons Art Collective, McLaughlin Garden, and Painted Mermaid Gallery. For more information call 743-8041.

NEWSLETTER Summer 2009 No. 3

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

Waves of wildflowers have been going over our meadow all summer long. Now the white and yellow of midsummer has given way to the gold and purple of almost-fall. Summer in Maine is so ephemeral—blink and it’s gone!

August’s painting was quite a departure from my botanical work, but I just couldn’t resist it. When I caught the tiger swallowtail butterfly last June, I got one last photo of him with the sunlight shining through his wings. He looked like a stained glass window, with brilliant color all outlined in black. So I took my photo of the underside of the butterfly’s hind wing, played with it in Adobe Photoshop, and used it to develop a kaleidoscopic composition for an oil painting that is reminiscent of a Gothic rose window.

The circle has been a universal human symbol for the spiritual in art since the beginning of recorded history. It can be seen everywhere from Tibetan mandalas to French Gothic cathedrals. (Mandala is a Sanskrit word that means “circle,” and signifies a circular, symbolic art form.) I have been experimenting with the mandala as an art form for more than thirty-five years now, revisiting it from time to time in different formats. I never get tired of exploring its possibilities.

This one was painted on a shaped 20” diameter canvas with water-mixable oils. I developed a paper template from the digital file of my photograph and used it to produce the pattern. Painting it was very soothing, almost like meditation. I worked from the center out, repeating the patterns as I moved around the circle. The edges of the canvas are painted black to match the background, so it needs no frame.

My goal was to present the beauty of the butterfly’s wing in a manner that entices you to stop and look at it in a new way. Sometimes a fresh, different presentation gets your attention in a way that a straightforward image never could. This is my final homage to the tiger, and summer’s last hurrah.

From there my attention turned back to the botanical illustration. I have just started a page in my study book about evening primroses. They have been blooming in our back yard now for several weeks. A common biennial wildflower, Oenothera biennis has lemon-colored flowers that open in the evening. Oil made from the seeds contains an omega-6 essential fatty acid, the active ingredient that makes it useful in a number of medicinal applications. The ripening seedpods form a beautiful pattern clustered on the growing stems.

This month’s Collector’s tip comes from photographer Dirk MacKnight, of Andover, Maine: If you buy a digital photograph or art print, be sure that you know what you are getting. For best quality and longevity, get prints that were made on acid-free paper with pigment-based inks. Color photocopies on standard paper are not lightfast, and an artist should not be charging the same price for them as for a print on archival materials that will last 75 to 100 years or more. (You can see Dirk’s work online at his flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dirkphoto/ )

The free art card this month is a single tiger swallowtail, a straightforward bit of naturalist work. I have attached the file here for you to print. Art cards (or ACEO’s) are a collectible form of miniature art the same size as a baseball trading card. Print this one on good stiff photo paper, cut it out, and start your own collection, if you wish. I give you permission to print or reproduce this image as you choose.

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.fineartamerica.com. You can also search for me on fineartamerica.com as Betsy Gray Bell under the “Artists” button in the top menu bar. (The drop-down box under it has a search feature.) Fine Art America offers a print-on-demand service, matting, framing, and shipping.

For those of you who live in Maine, my recent work will be on display at Bruce and Adrienne Little’s Frost Farm Gallery in Norway, Maine, from October 2 to 31. The title of the exhibit is “Swift River Treasures: Original Naturalist Works,” and the opening reception is Friday, October 2 from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. Brad Hooper will be providing live acoustic music that evening. For more information about the exhibit or the gallery, you can check out their website at www.FrostFarmGallery.com. I have begun posting the Swift River Treasures collection online on Fine Art America, but this will be the first time that the originals will be offered for sale.

Picasso says that an artist paints not to ask a question, but because he has found something, and he wants to share—he cannot help it—what he has found. (from Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle)

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

Yes, I know that it has been several weeks since I posted a blog entry. But, hey, who wants to be indoors in front of a computer monitor when you could be out in the summer breezes hunting for new treasures?
Here is a collage of recent photos. I have been gathering enough material to work from all winter in my studio. I will tell you the stories behind them some rainy day. Right now, I want to go back outside and enjoy the last dregs of summer....

NEWSLETTER Summer 2009 No. 2

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

I just got back from some time spent with my daughter and granddaughters, so I am happily back in my studio again. Midsummer is in full swing here. The meadow is full of black-eyed Susans, evening primrose, and ripe blueberries. I have been making regular visits to the pond next door with a drawing student of mine, where we have been watching and drawing the wood ducks and a young green heron.

Tiger swallowtails still continued to hold my interest for most of July. I spent most of the month on a larger watercolor of a swallowtail on the lilacs. If you would like to see photos of it in progress, the saga of its painting is told in my blog on the Fine Art America website (at http://betsy-bell.fineartamerica.com). It is a larger and more complex painting than I have done yet in watercolor.

I am pleased with how well the overall composition worked out. My goal was to make the butterfly appear to float in a three-dimensional space, and what I did worked the way I had hoped it would. I also designed it with a lot of strong diagonal lines so that the whole painting would have a fine feeling of motion.

I purposely broke rules doing this one, and my gamble paid off. For one thing, you should never, ever put the focal point of a painting like a bull’s-eye in the center of a painting. In this painting the area of highest contrast is at the butterfly’s head, where it is silhouetted against the sky. And that is dead center in the middle of the square. But it works, because the butterfly itself is so clearly the subject of the painting, and it is all on the left side of the composition, moving toward the right.

The other thing to NOT do is to keep the foreground so separate from the background that you use totally different colors to paint each. Generally speaking, you need to mix background colors into the foreground, and vice versa, so that the whole painting will hang together. But I didn’t want the painting to hang together. I wanted the butterfly to really be suspended above the background. And it worked, because the butterfly is purposely painted with warm colors, sharp edges, and high contrast, while the background is painted with cooler colors, soft edges and mid-range values.

I have one more tiger swallowtail painting that is still in progress. You will have to wait until it is finished before I unveil it. I will only say that it is a 20” diameter round oil painting on canvas, and leave it at that.

I spent a little time on wild strawberries this month, too. Around here they ripen in late June or early July. They are so tiny, but so tasty! I put a strawberry plant in a pot in early June and have watched it and drawn it and photographed it as it bloomed and grew. Right now it is here on my work desk, and has put out many runners with tiny plants on them. When I put it back outside, it will be a whole patch of strawberries. I have a page in my study book on strawberries now for future reference, and have also completed one graphite botanical drawing of a plant in bloom.

My hardback study book is an essential part of the art-making process for me. That’s where I really look closely at something and work out how to draw it accurately. Sometimes that even involves using a magnifying glass or microscope. After that I use the drawings and notes in it for reference material for finished drawings and paintings.

This month’s free art card is a miniature version of the swallowtail painting. Art cards (or ACEO’s) are a collectible form of miniature art the same size as baseball trading cards. Print this one on good stiff photo paper, cut it out, and start your own collection, if you wish. I give you permission to print or reproduce this image as you choose. (If you are reading this in my FAA blog, and want a free copy of this ACEO, email me and I will send it to you.)

For more information on “Swift River Treasures,” my art-making process, or recent work, see my Fine Art America site at http://betsy-bell.fineartamerica.com. You can also search for me on www.fineartamerica.com as Betsy Gray Bell under the “Artists” button in the top menu bar. (The drop-down box under it has a search feature.) Fine Art America offers a print-on-demand service, including matting, framing, and shipping. They sell greeting cards, too, and several of my works posted there are available in that format.

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go and do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive. (Gil Bailie)

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

My study book is an essential part of my art-making process. It’s not a sketchbook; “sketch” implies a quick glance and a fast drawing. My study book is where I go slow and deep with each treasure I find, learning about its structure and studying the forms that compose it. I draw it carefully from several angles. Sometimes I get out a magnifying glass to get a closer look, or even the microscope.

I use it as a reference work for my finished drawings and paintings, and occasionally extract drawings from it to use in digital work. The book itself is hardbound, 8.5 by 11.5 inches, with acid-free drawing paper in it. The drawings are primarily pen and ink with colored pencil. I have been using a calligraphy pen for the titles recently, in a medieval uncial hand (Shaeffer medium nib). Sometimes I add written notes or observations to the pages.

Shown here is the page I have been working on about wild strawberries. You can see the flower, buds, developing strawberries, and careful drawings of the leaves and plants. The drawing of the whole plant at the bottom of the page was my preliminary study for the graphite drawing I just finished.

I will be having a solo exhibition at Frost Farm Gallery in Norway, Maine in October 2009.
The exhibit is titled "Swift River Treasures: Original Naturalist Works." The subject matter is drawn from the Swift River valley where I live, combining my passion for making art with my enjoyment of being an amateur naturalist. This will be the debut of the Treasures collection. None of the originals from this series (viewable here in my Swift River Treasures gallery) have been shown in public yet. I have posted the artist statement about this collection here in my Fine Art America blog, if you are interested.
The opening reception will be Friday, October 2, from 5 to 8 pm. The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served, and live music will be provided by Squintwood. (Squintwood is Brad Hooper, and you can learn more about him at www.squintwood.com.) The exhibit and sale will continue through October 31.
Frost Farm Gallery is owned by Bruce and Adrienne Little. They offer a wonderfully diverse collection of matted and framed vintage and antique prints. Their gallery space is intimate and friendly. They also do custom framing and digital restoration on the premises. They specialize in photogravure, letterpress, and contemporary and stone lithography.
They are open year-round, Monday - Friday, 8 am to 8 pm, Saturday & Sunday, Noon to 8 pm, and always open by appointment. They are located at 272 Pikes Hill Road in Norway. For more information about Frost Farm, you can see their page here on the Fine Art America site or their website at www.frostfarmgallery.com.

What follows here is the text from my first summer 2009 newsletter. The image is the free art card that came with the newsletter. If you would like to be on my mailing list (I send the newsletter out about once a month) or receive the free art card pictured here, send me a message at bgbell@gmail.com.


NEWSLETTER Summer 2009 No. 1

Greetings from the mountains of western Maine!

I have the deep joy of living in one of the most beautiful places on earth. For me, the art-making process is a way of capturing the beauty here and sharing it with you. You can’t go for a walk with me in the early morning, hearing the bird songs and collecting the treasures that you find. But I can make art about the treasures that I find, and let you share in the delight.

This summer marks the beginning of a new body of work that I am calling “Swift River Treasures,” combining my passion for art with my love of being an amateur naturalist. I started it in May with the bloodroot flowering in our backyard.

Bloodroot has a special place in my heart because it is the first wildflower I see every spring. It is not only beautiful, but a potent medicinal herb in the right hands. Bloodroot is well named. When I accidentally knocked the bud off of one of the plants with my clumsy boot, I was aghast at the gory results. The sap is brilliant red-orange. If you are into war paint, this is your plant.

My bloodroot offerings to you are a round miniature oil painting of a single flower, a botanical illustration style watercolor of the whole plant, and some mixed media works.
You can see them by going to my page on the Fine Art America website. The link is http://betsy-bell.fineartamerica.com.

And for June, what else but tiger swallowtail butterflies? They hang out around the lilacs all month long. They are our largest butterflies here, with striking black and yellow tiger stripes. (For my story about catching a tiger, see the entry “Captive Tiger” in my Fine Art America blog.) I am still making art about the swallowtails, and just starting an ambitious watercolor composition of one on the lilacs. I will post entries in my blog from time to time about how it is going.

I have attached a file of a tiger swallowtail art card here for you to print. Art cards (or ACEO’s) are a collectible form of miniature art the same size as a baseball trading card. Print this one on good stiff photo paper, cut it out, and start your own collection, if you wish. I give you permission to print or reproduce this image as you choose.

For more information on “Swift River Treasures,” my artmaking process, or recent work, see my Fine Art America site. Either follow the link above, or search for me on www.fineartamerica.com as Betsy Gray Bell under the “Artists” button in the top menu bar. (The drop-down box under it has a search feature.)

Fine Art America offers a print-on-demand service, matting, framing, and shipping. They have just recently introduced a line of greeting cards, too, so now you can buy paintings as individual 5” by 7” cards or packs of cards. Some artists wouldn’t stoop to such lowly forms of reproduction, but personally I really enjoy seeing my work in print! For me it’s all about sharing the art, so the more people I can share it with, the happier I am.

This month’s Collector’s Tip is from Bruce and Adrienne Little, owners of Frost Farm Gallery in Norway, Maine. Caution: just because your artwork is framed with conservation glass, that does not give you the liberty to hang it in direct sunlight. The sun’s ultraviolet rays will cause irreversible damage to your artwork. Also harmful are the ultraviolet rays emitted by traditional and new fluorescent lightbulbs.

In each newsletter I will be summarizing for you what I have doing in my studio, and including some images and links to my art and blog sites, as well as stories, tips for art collectors, and miscellaneous information about art and nature. At the desk in my studio is where my life all comes together, where I touch eternity most deeply. 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.
Remember, Souls who follow their hearts thrive. (Proverbs 13:19 in The Message, Peterson)

Betsy

I couldn’t look at this painting for a few days. I had to just set it aside and ignore it. Now I am looking at it and thinking that it is done. All that remains is to add my signature to it, and that always happens last, when I “sign off” on a work.
I purposely broke rules doing this one, and I think it came out all right. For one thing, never, never put the focal point of a painting bullseye in the center. One of the main ways to draw attention to a focal point is to make it the area of highest contrast, where the darkest tones meet the lightest tones, with the sharpest edges. In this painting, that is at the butterfly’s head, where it is silhouetted against the sky. And that is dead center in the middle of the square. But it works, because the butterfly itself is so clearly the subject of the painting, and it is all on the left side of the composition.
The other thing to NOT do is to keep the foreground so separate from the background that you use totally different colors to paint each. Generally speaking, you need to mix background colors into the foreground, and vice versa, so that the whole painting will hang together. But I didn’t want the painting to hang together. I wanted the butterfly to really be suspended above the background. And it worked, because the butterfly is purposely painted with warm colors, sharp edges, and high contrast, while the background is painted with cooler colors, soft edges and mid-range values.
What I don’t like about the painting is that some parts of the background are really overworked. The ultramarine blue pigment tends to look a little grainy instead of smooth. And I really did labor over some parts of the background, painting them in and then washing out what I had done and redoing it. My Arches paper is fairly forgiving, but the washes could be much smoother and less muddy if I had painted them once and left them alone. I am getting better at the watercolors as I go, anyway.
What I really like best about this painting is the feeling of movement, and the impression that the butterfly is really flying in a 3-dimensional space. I like that I painted it by mixing the colors in layers on the paper, too. It gives the color a fine luminous quality.
All in all, I am pleased with it, and I think that I am ready to sign it.

Now I have the ultramarine blue over the burnt sienna, so my tiger’s stripes are black. The burnt sienna shows a little at the edges in spots, which I like. It makes the black more interesting. I used a dry brush for the butterfly’s fur. (Did you know that butterflies are furry?) I still see a couple of small places that I want to tweak on the tiger, but basically he is finished.
The next stage will be to put the final touches on the tiger, and finish the lilac leaves in the foreground. Then I will step back and take a looooooong look at it, and decide if I need to adjust values or colors in any area. We are getting close to the home stretch now.

This photo shows the next stage in the painting. I have scrubbed out the lilacs a little with a dilute Winsor violet wash and a stencil brush. I want the flowers to be just a little out of focus, so they stay in the background.

And I have started the butterfly’s black tiger stripes. I don’t like using a black pigment straight out of the tube when I need black. Black pigment is black because it reflects almost no light back to your eyes. It looks dead next to the other colors. A mixed black still has the particles of the individual colors on the paper, so it looks more lively, even if it appears black.

I am mixing my black in this painting by putting down a layer of burnt sienna followed by a layer of ultramarine blue. That makes a very satisfactory black that you can push toward warm or cool very easily. You can see here that I have put the first layer of burnt sienna on the wings. At the upper left corner I have tried a small patch of ultramarine blue on top to see how the color is. I think it will do just fine. The next step will be to put the finishing touches on the burnt sienna layer, and then start laying down the blue on top of it.

I really wanted the butterfly to appear to float above the flowers and leaves in the background, and it looks like I am succeeding. Keeping the background cooler in color, lighter in value, and slightly blurred will do the trick. I also am pleased with how the composition is working out so far. I included a lot of strong diagonal lines so that the whole painting would have a feeling of motion.

I have begun a watercolor painting of the tiger swallowtail on the lilacs. It is 12’ by 12’ in size. I am working from a photo that I took last summer. In the two-part image here you can see the painting on my desk on the left, with the first layer of paint on it. In the image on the right you can see it with the second round of glazes applied. The colors are deepened and more details added. You can see my reference photo on the wall behind the painting. What you can’t see is that I also have my computer on the desk to the right with the original photo up on the screen.

I am trying something new here. One of the characteristics of watercolor paint is the transparency of the paint. It is almost like working with stained glass, where the white paper provides the white in the painting and also reflects the light back through the paint to your eye. I have two options when it comes to mixing the colors. I can mix them on my palette, which is the most common approach. Or I can use pure color straight from the tubes and mix the colors by layering washes of transparent paint, one color over another.

In this painting I have chosen the latter approach. The colors will hopefully be more brilliant, if I am careful. I must choose paint colors whose pigments are transparent (some pigments are more opaque than others). And it helps if they are colors that stain the paper well too, so that applying succeeding layers of color does not lift the layers underneath.

The leaves, for example, have layers of sap green, phthalo blue (a very greenish blue), and lemon yellow. The lilac flowers are mostly Winsor violet, with touches of permanent rose. The first layer on the wings was lemon yellow. I followed this up with some Winsor yellow deep in the darker areas and a touch of Winsor violet to shade it.

I will keep posting photos of my progress as I go, so you can check back once in a while and see how I am doing with it. Watercolor painting is always a risky business. I am hoping to be able to get the color I want without overworking the paper. Let’s see if I can do it….

SCRIBE FOR HIRE

Custom calligraphy, scripture and verse,
I can print anything, lengthy or terse.
Posters, diplomas, certificates, too---
My fee is quite modest, especially for you.
Make your walls talk to you, help you to smile.
Ink on fine parchment is always in style.


I can do custom calligraphy for you. I have done diplomas, certificates, quotes and poetry of all kinds, scriptures, family trees, marriage vows, shadow box titles, wedding certificates, and many other similar items over the past thirty years.
My favorite scripts are humanist bookhand (my own version, seen here in the detail from lettering a wedding vow) and medieval uncial (see my post of Philippians 4:8 on this site). I also have done insular majuscule, which is lovely but not as legible.
I can work in India ink (very black and waterproof) or fount India (a slightly lighter tone and not waterproof).
I charge a base fee plus extra for versals (large capital letters) or embellishments. Contact me for pricing and more information.

6-23-09
We have a family of groundhogs that has inhabited our neighborhood for many generations. They are a light-colored variety, almost strawberry blonde. We have had baby groundhogs under our porch, in our shed, and in our garden. They are cute and charming until they start eating all the produce. Our groundhogs, squirrels, and their kin seem to ebb and flow, depending on the predator population. Recently we have had a lot of foxes, coyotes, and large raptors and owls around, so the rodents are scarce. But we still have a groundhog family in the back yard hole, where the old barn originally was.
I was out hanging clothes on the line one afternoon not too long ago, and I heard a lot of noise coming from the shed, rummagings, scufflings, and shufflings that gradually became louder and louder. I looked up just in time to see the table by the shed door falling over and a groundhog barreling out of the shed. He disappeared around the corner in a flash. Then he peeked back around it as if to say, "What just happened?"
The encounter that really takes the cake was the come-to-Jesus meeting I had with a baby groundhog the first week of June this year. I was sitting on the front steps eating my lunch and saw a very small blonde furry rump in the grass beside my garden. It was a baby groundhog the size of a guinea pig, probably on his first foray away from the nest. I gave it some thought and decided that I had better give him an experience he wouldn't forget so that he would steer clear of my garden.
So I got up and ran straight at him across the driveway, yelling at the top of my lungs and waving my arms. He just sat there and looked at me in a puzzled sort of way. I got up to within six feet of him and he just stared at me. I gave him a good loud lecture about groundhogs, gardens, and what I would do to him if I ever found my lettuce eaten. I advanced on him fiercely, and he still just stared. He didn't seem to be frozen in fear, just curious.
He finally turned around and disappeared back toward the shed as if he had just remembered something else he had to go do. I imagine that he had some interesting things to tell mama groundhog when he got home. I will say this for him, we haven't put the electric fence up around the garden yet, but no one has eaten my lettuce.

I finished my series of drawings and paintings of the bloodroot, and have been cogitating on what subject to choose next. Wild strawberries for June, maybe? But the tiger swallowtail butterflies have been flitting all over the place recently, and to me they say "June" better than anything. Every time I see one go by, my heart follows it.
They love the lilacs along our driveway. Last year I got some good photos of the swallowtails on the lilacs. And someone gave me a dead one they found, so I put it in the museum collection. But I was thinking that I really needed to see a live one up close in order to be able to paint them. I finally got my chance a couple of days ago.
I was sitting outside on the porch steps, and a gorgeous male tiger landed just a few feet away from me. I don't have a butterfly net. I didn't want to hurt him. So I went in the house and got a large glass bowl from the kitchen. I had to stalk him for a while, and stand very still, leaning over with the bowl upside down in my hands for what seemed like ages. But finally he cooperated and landed right at my feet. I eased the bowl over him before he knew what was happening, slid a piece of masonite under him, and had a captive tiger to study!
I spent about 45 minutes admiring him, photographing him, and watching him. Then I released him to go about his business. He sat for a few minutes more while I took a few more photos, and then was on his way, with my effusive thanks.
Now I am happily drawing tiger swallowtails in my study book. My museum specimen is a female, so I can include both sexes. Today I started a watercolor of a single swallowtail. I am also working on the layout for a painting of the swallowtail on the lilacs, from one of my photos. You can look forward to more about tigers as I progress.
The image here is of my captive tiger on the table on the porch.

I walked out of the house this morning just in time to see a V of geese fly over, headed north. There is something wild and wonderful about hearing them call to each other as they fly. We don’t have any geese that are permanent residents here on our property, but neighbors of ours down the road keep a flock and we sometimes hear them in the distance.
We had a huge spruce tree come down in the windstorm this weekend. "How the mighty are fallen!" It took out two good-sized maples when it fell, and some of the high bush blueberries. It was part of the windbreak between our house and the road, near where Steve’s dad kept his beehives. It leaves a good size hole in our skyline to the north. We will miss its shelter next winter, I am sure. As is the way of the woods, though, it will soon be replaced and the hole filled in.
Yesterday after I went to inspect the storm damage, I walked back through that patch of woods beside the road. That little nook of our land grows the deep-woods wildflowers, Canada mayflower, starflowers, and Jack-in-the-pulpit, too. Right now it is covered with a delicate carpet of blooms, so thick that it’s hard to walk without stepping on them. I caught a brief glimpse of a reddish-brown thrush as it hustled away from me in the underbrush. I am guessing from the color of its back that it was a veery. I have been hearing one singing in the evenings this past week.
One of my happiest memories from childhood is that magical time of the evening when the sun would slant through the trees, lighting them all in gold, and the wood thrushes would begin to sing. We have had a thrush singing here in the evenings for years, from the tangle of woods on the other side of the road. Somehow it didn’t sound like the wood thrush of my childhood. Its song is reedier, and higher pitched, without the low introductory notes. But last summer I was listening to the bird call record and realized when it came to the thrushes that what I have been hearing is a hermit thrush, not a wood thrush at all. It is an elusive singer; I have never seen it. But its song haunts my evenings now like the wood thrush did back in Ohio many years ago.

The summer residents are beginning to return to my neck of the woods. The neighborhood is getting noisy again, as the spring peepers tune up and the birds begin to sing their spring melodies. Here are some excerpts from my journal pages about the recent arrivals:
April 9 Phoebes are back.
April 10 I scared a pair of ducks up out of the stream behind the house. I think they are American Black Ducks.
April 15 We have a woodfrog chorus this evening, with one lone, cold spring peeper joining in. The sparrows are returning, and the first small fiddleheads are showing in the woods.
April 16 I got a glimpse of our groundhog tenant today, who was digging out the hole behind the shop in the early morning. It is a smallish blonde one (the groundhogs in this neighborhood seem to be strawberry blonde instead of brown). The diggings must be extensive; the dirt pile is getting bigger and bigger.
April 17 The mourning doves are back. The peeper chorus has started up in earnest.
April 19 The ticks are out, and the first daffodils are blooming. We didn't use to have ticks around here. They first started showing up around 5 years ago. I saw a pair of swallows, high above the meadow. I watched minnows in the stream for a while. They ranged from 1 1/2" to 3 1/2" in length. I guess that is what the kingfisher has been hanging around for. The ducks are definitely black ducks. I saw them this time before they saw me. The bloodroot is just beginning to bloom now. This is about a week earlier than it bloomed last year, and 2 to 3 weeks earlier than 10 years ago.
April 22 The white-throated sparrows are back, singing their sweet song in the front yard. The forsythia beside the silver maple is blooming. There are just a few small patches of tired old snow on the mountainside now. That's all that's left of winter.

“Swift River Treasures” opens the treasure-box of the Swift River valley where I live, combining my passion for making art with my enjoyment of being an amateur naturalist. When I step out my front door in the morning, I can’t take you along to enjoy the beauty with me. But I can capture bits of it to share with you.

Here is the process: I go for long rambling walks in the woods and fields near my home. Something catches my eye, some treasure of nature. I photograph it, and bring home a specimen for my museum if it is an abundant species. I take notes, writing about it in my journal. I learn all I can about it from my nature books and resources on the Internet. I put a photo page and an information page about it in my source book. I draw it carefully in my study book, investigating its structure and admiring its beauty. Then I make finished drawings, paintings, and prints of it to share. The finished artwork is really the tip of the iceberg, as far as the whole process goes.

I see myself more as providing a service than manufacturing a product. I am foraging for beauty here in the Swift River valley and sharing it with those of you who live in other parts of the world. I take so much delight in living here and learning about the treasures I find. My hope is that you will share in that delight with me.

The image shown here is a photo my mother took of the Swift River near our home.

CLASSES

BASIC DRAWING CLASS (FUN WITH A PENCIL)
Six-class series
Tues. 6:00-9:00 pm at Swift River Studio in Mexico or by appointment.
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.

INTRODUCTION TO CALLIGRAPHY
Three-class series
By appointment, at Swift River Studio in Mexico
This class covers basic calligraphy techniques using either Speedball pens and nibs or felt-tip pens. The following topics will be introduced: tools and materials, posture and hand position, line and letter spacing, basic letter strokes and formation, layout, simple Roman and italic alphabets, capitals, and decorated letters.

ARTIST’S STUDIO
Studio classes can be scheduled at any time for individualized study in a series or a one-time session. Choose to work on your own project, get help with a specific problem, or find answers to questions about your art. Let me know how I can help you.


WORKSHOPS

THE ARTIST’S EYE
June 6 9:00 am to 3:00 pm at Swift River Studio in Mexico, or by appointment
The most important part of drawing or painting realism is your ability to really SEE what is in front of you. In this workshop we explore a series of classic exercises for artists that train the eye and eye-hand coordination. Beginners and artists at any level of experience would benefit from this series. The exercises include both quick and sustained studies in contour drawing, value studies, gesture drawings, and weighted drawings.

ALL ABOUT COLOR
July 11 9:00 am to 3:00 pm at Swift River Studio in Mexico, or by appointment
Do you struggle to get the color you want when you are painting? This is a hands-on workshop for beginning, intermediate, or advanced artists who want to expand their understanding of color and how to use it. Topics will include: color theory; primary, secondary, and complementary colors; tints, shades, and saturation; color harmony, and color mixing.

PAINTS AND PIGMENTS
Aug. 8 9:00 am to 3:00 pm at Swift River Studio in Mexico, or by appointment
This workshop will take the mystery out of buying art supplies, giving you an overview of common drawing and painting materials and a chance to experiment with them. Topics will include: history of paint; pigments, binders, and fillers; pigment properties; lightfastness; Color Index numbers; why some paints cost more than others; and how to choose the right paint.

INTRODUCTION TO WATER-SOLUBLE OIL PAINTS
One-day workshop at Swift River Studio in Mexico, by appointment
Water-soluble or water-mixable oil paints have been gaining in popularity in recent years because they are nontoxic and easy to clean up with soap and water instead of harsh solvents. This one-day workshop gives you a chance to try them out and learn more about them. It is open to artists at all skill levels.
Topics covered will include: history of water-soluble oils, how water-soluble oils work,
sources and manufacturers, water-soluble mediums, color mixing, and tips for making the most of water-soluble oils.

All classes and workshops are “hands-on” learning experiences, not just demonstrations.
Private lessons can be scheduled at any time. Workshops require a minimum of three students.
Class sizes will be kept small in order to maximize individual attention.
All classes will be held at Swift River Studio, 917 Roxbury Road, Mexico, Maine 04257, unless class size requires a larger venue.
Tuition varies depending on the size of the class. The base fee is $20 per hour for individual instruction. For example, a 3-hour class for 3 students would be $20 per student, or $15 each for 4 students. I am open to the possibility of barter if you don't have cash.

Email me at bgbell@gmail.com or call me at (207) 364-7243 to make the arrangements.

Journal entry from 4-21-09
Bloodroot
The bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is blooming in a shady corner of our backyard today, near the bend in the stream. Down by the Swift River, about a ten-minute walk from here, the woods will soon be a carpet of white stars. But the plants here by the house bloom first. This is the earliest I have ever seen it blossoming.
A member of the poppy family, bloodroot is well named. The sap in the roots and leaves is a startling scarlet color. I accidentally broke the bud off of a small stem with my clumsy boots when I was photographing the flowers this week, and the stem immediately began to ooze brilliant drops of red. I understand that native Americans used it for body paint. Dry, the juice looks exactly like a bloodstain. In the hands of a good medical practitioner, bloodroot is a potent medicine.
The plants work their way out of the ground well-protected from the harsh weather they sometimes face. The flower bud is covered by a pale green pair of sepals and completely wrapped in the large lobe-edged leaf. The sepals fall off as the flower opens. Even after the flower is open, the leaf still wraps shelteringly around the stem. They look like a company of star-people with grayish-green blankets wrapped snugly around their shoulders, nestled in the dry brown leaves from last summer.
Bloodroot is a very simple and economical plant. Each one consists of one leaf and one flower stalk. They only open their blooms on warm, sunny days. At night and or on a cloudy day like today, they are shut up tight.
The image here is a photo of the bloodroot page I have been working on in my study book.

I spent a lot of time sitting in the bloodroot patch yesterday afternoon, happily drawing flowers in my studybook. The birds were singing around me and a chipmunk was scuffling in the leaves nearby. I thought I heard a loon once, which is odd, because we don’t usually see them here.
When I was done, I didn’t really want to go inside. The sun was still bright and warm, and the temperature all the way up to 72 degrees for the first time this spring. So I went on a walk around the loop to the far end of our property. I stopped off at the place where the stream enters the meadow beyond the fence row. It widens out there into a little pond. (That is where I saw the kingfisher last week.)
I sat at the edge of the pond for a long time, watching the tadpoles lurking in the underwater underbrush, and listening to the peepers. I don’t know how those tiny frogs can create such a volume of noise, but it is deafening when they are close at hand. It was so strange to hear such a racket and see no one. I have yet to catch a glimpse of one of these enthusiastic singers, no matter how hard I look. There was one in a clump of grass at my feet, I was sure of it, but he was either a ventriloquist or invisible. I never did see him.
After a while a muskrat slid out of the brush beside me and into the pond, and dived out of sight. He was almost close enough that I could have touched his wet fur as he went.

In 2006 I undertook a study of the geometry of nature, and began a body of art that explored the exquisite design inherent in the world around us. I used "A Beginner’s Guide to Constructing the Universe" (subtitled “The Mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art, And Science”) by Michael S. Schneider as my main sourcebook.
The whole project was actually born in a moment of fixing a salad for dinner one day. I paused for a moment to hold up a slice of cucumber and looked at it with the light behind it. The symmetry and beauty of that simple cuke slice, the pattern of the seeds, and the threefold geometry of its construction were irresistible. I was hooked.
I made a large book (see the photo here of pages 6-7) and started keeping notes in it about geometry, number, and nature. I also created a series of paintings of the natural mandalas in cross-sections of familiar vegetables, branching out from cucumbers to zucchinis, squashes, and carrots. Most of them were painted on shaped round canvases.
In order to better draw attention to the beauty of the forms, I played with the color. A cucumber-colored painting of a cucumber slice is nothing but a recognizable cucumber. But a brilliantly colored painting of a cucumber slice displays its internal geometry in a way that goes far beyond salad. The delicate calligraphy of the structural elements in a carrot cross-section has to be seen to be believed.
This exploration eventually grew into my Moments of Transcendence work, a collection of miniature panels that began with the vegetable mandalas and grew until it encompassed flowers, seashells, pinecones, and more. But that is another story.

Today was the first really sunny warm day we have had this spring. The thermometer went all the way up to 62 degrees. I celebrated by going for a long ramble around our 8-acre woods this afternoon. I walked out the path on the west side of the loop to the far end of the property, and then came back along the stream that forms our western border.
Here is a laundry list of what I saw: a pair of ducks on the stream (black ducks, I think), a chipmunk on a stump, a fresh-dug hole in the path about 8” deep (who was digging for what there?), a robin, a kingfisher, some false hellebore putting its bright green sprouts above the ground (see the photo here), fiddleheads just beginning to show, deer tracks, raccoon tracks, water-beetles in the stream, a water-strider, and lots of small green sprouts peeking out from under the leaves. I heard a song sparrow and some wood frogs, but I didn’t see them. Wood frogs sound quacky, like ducks.
I saw old signs of beavers, but no new work. They used to have several dams and extensive levees along the stream, and a house in our back yard. The largest dam is washed out. I think they must have departed sometime this past year.

Spring may have officially arrived at 7:44 a.m. EDT last March 20th, but it takes the news a while to reach my neck of the woods. We are early in losing our snow cover this year, though. The total snowfall at my house measured only about 88 inches this winter This is substantially less than last year.
My eyes are hungry for green at this point. I walked through the woods yesterday with my eyes on the ground, looking for green things growing. I saw a lot of woodfern, which is evergreen. The mosses are green now, too, having emerged from under the snow. The haircap moss is particularly bright. The daffodils near the house have started to poke their noses above the dried leaves, but I haven't seen any of my local wildflowers showing yet. At this rate, it won't be long.

Swift River Journal
I keep a journal of jottings about the comings and goings of my closest neighbors: the birds, wildlife, and plants here in the Swift River valley. I will be adding entries often, so come back and see what is new in my neck of the woods. I will also add information about art that I am working on and what I am thinking about it.
Here is today's news flash:
THE ROBINS HAVE ARRIVED! Today was the first day I heard a robin calling in the distance. Then later in the afternoon I saw a pair of them on a popple tree near our house. ("Popple" is the local name for poplar, or aspen.) According to Edwin Way Teale in his book North with the Spring, the robins follow the 35 degree isotherm north. It is hard to believe that our ground is thawed enough for a worm to make headway in it, but I guess these robins will find something else to eat until it gets a little warmer.
I also found the first pussywillows open today, so I can really believe that spring is here now. The mountainsides look piebald now, brown and white, with the snow halfway melted and bare ground showing.
To all of you who live farther south and have progressed to azaleas, green leaves, and gardens, enjoy it! And sniff a flower for me. It will be a while yet until we see anything blooming here.