Classic rosette wreath around sound hole

The above photo is from a previous instrument painted in 2007 (made by H.van Gelder). The ‘rose’ is not yet added, the rose is a metal, usually gold-leafed, emblem of the particular instrument builder.

Because of the labour intensive nature of painting the harpsichord, I’ve not had the time/energy to blog. But I’ve got everything set up and am painting now, so there is a moment to touch in.

The above photo shows a fairly classical treatment of the rosette wreath around the sound- hole of these 17th century Flemish harpsichords.

Johan, my client (and new friend), wanted a slightly different take on it. Indeed, the whole harpsichord is shaping up to be firmly rooted in the best tradition, yet entirely of this age as well.

As I mentioned before, there are at least 3 of us directly involved with the hands-on birthing this instrument (plus there are many more supporters of this project behiind the scenes): Matthias Griewisch, the master builder/creator: Johan Hofmann, accomplished harpsichord player, musician, and teacher; and me, Sarah, the sound board decorator/flower factory.  And each one has their craft and input. The collaboration is fun and inspiring.  (Johan on left, Matthias on right).

Johan and Matthias in Matthias's workshop

Where this is all leading to is that the rosette wreath is done. On this instrument it is flowerless. Johan chose for bay leaf and ivy. Here it is,  Compare it to the one above, it has a whole different feel.

Rosette wreath around the Hanzeclavecimbel

Photos of harpsichords by Rende Zoutewelle. Photo in workshop, Bert Kiewiet

One of the ladies from decoartuk asked me about my working methods, here is a reply:

1. I coat the whole board very quickly with various acrylic colours thinned out with matte medium so they go on transparent.
2. Working fast, I scratch in a trial layout (with a wooden saté stick-  like a long toothpick) of the bottles, then to not get too attached to it and to provide some scratchy background I turn the canvas board 90 degrees and scratch in another design perpendicular to the first one.
3. Then I start wiping teh paint out of the areas that will be highights with tissue paper or a rag. Sometimes I use a damp brush. The acrylic is partly dry by now so it is interesting which parts come away, creating weird highlights and unexpected textures.
4. At this point I usually start working in very thin layers of oil paints.  But with the latest painting I added a bit of opaque white acrylic and colour and started putting on glazes because it doesn’t take long to dry and I can keep that crispness I like from the underpainting.

By the way, you’d mentioned that one thing holding you back from trying oils was the drying time. I thought about that as well, but once you start to work with them, you realize that it isn’t about putting on one layer and then waiting a couple of months for it to dry before you can paint further . Rather you keep working into areas and building them up. And the way I am working, with thin layers (using Zest lemon oil medium to thin with) I can paint over things in a day or two.

Check out this video of Liam who visits here once in awhile. You can see how far you can come in a couple of sittings.

Underpainting in acrylic glazes

Looking at the feedback for my new oil painting series, friends have been consistent in liking the underpaintings best. And a recent comment here concerning acrylics and oils made me think again. The only reason I’ve been working in oils over these paintings is because that is what I set out to do. But I notice that these underpaintings have opened a new way of working with acrylics for me. And actually I like adding transparent glazes layer by layer without covering up the scratchy, irregular first layer. This one has two layers so far. I’m going to continue in acrylics for awhile and see what happens.

thanks folks.

Here's one on the easel

I’ve been working on some oil paintings. I start with a thin acrylic underpainting and my intention has been to try to keep the scratchy spontaneity of the underpainting as I work in thin layers of oils over it.

Jars and bottles recur as a theme in my work, but one particular inspiration has been a fellow awgrad member’s photo’s of her bottle collection. She took some especially for my reference (see easel above). So this series is called ‘sandi’s bottles’.

Below is the first one done.

sandi's bottles 1

Here is the underpainting for the second in the series:

Acrylic underpainting

And here is the almost finished painting I did over it:

Sandi's bottles 2

I was less satisfied with this one as far as keeping the nonchalant quality of the underpainting. It is getting a bit too concerned with copying the photos, and I wanted to avoid that.

One place it does succeed for me, though, is the lovely warm highlights against the cool glass.

Ex-shop and oil painting studio ready for harpsichord

In December 2010, Johan Hofmann a respected Dutch harpsichordist and teacher, contacted me about an exciting project. He was having a new instrument made by Matthias Griewisch. Griewisch is considered by some to be one of the best period instrument builders working today.  My part in this would be to paint the songboard full of flowers as is traditionally done with Flemish keyboard instruments from around the mid-1600′s. The image below is of an instrument made by Herwil van Gelder for Jan Dirk Immelman. I painted it in 2007.

harpsichord decoration

I am deeply honoured to be involved in this project. In August last year I went to Edinburgh’s Museum of old instruments, St Cecilia’s and studied the original, unrestored version of this rare double manual harpsichord.

Ruckers double manual harpsichord circa 1638 photo St Cecilia's-

Johan and I (and Matthias via Johan) have been brainstorming about this instrument for a year now- how it would look, what we wanted to keep from the tradition, what we could change to reflect the times we live in as well as Johan and Matthias’ aesthetic preferences. And of course my sense of how this would all influence the sound board decoration.

It has been a fun and exciting collaboration so far, punctuated by dinner out on the terrace here, a pastry-filled birthday meeting, and climaxing in Johan and friend Bert’s return from Germany yesterday and the delivery of the ‘case’. (The case is the upper body of the harpsichord containing the songboard- the strings and keyboard will be added later).

It is so beautiful. It is just so beautiful. (I’ve been listening a lot to Aerial by Kate Bush, these words should be heard as music, they are about 45 seconds into the video).

It/she/he already has a soul. Here is a picture of him/her under wraps, awaiting adornment with garlands, flowers and arabesques. This will take about 6-8 weeks.

More will be revealed later.

Under wraps

I like practical, connected, and meaningful art. I am excited and inspired by the arts in healing and community art.  For the last years I’ve been committed to finding alternative paths for myself and other artists so that we have choices outside the traditional ways of exhibiting and exploiting art. I have done a lot of thinking about right livelihood in relation to art, so will be airing some of those ideas here.
Over the years my thinking has been inspired by other artists, writers and friends, and I look forward to sharing some of those sources.

Dear friends, with the above words in march 2007, I started this blog.
Looking through the past 5 years’ posts I’ve stuck pretty much to the original intent.  The main themes have stayed roughly the same.

Through airing ideas here and the dialogue that has followed, ideas have developed and gained clarity. Especially those concerning new ways to think about art and; the challenges of art and market.

I’ve shared my oil pastels, older oil paintings, and new craft work. Have shared my dreams and goals, my ups and downs, and generally let a little slice of my life show here.

I want to thank all of you who have been popping in here from time to time and especially those who’ve taken the time to comment. My life has been enriched by your thoughtful remarks and the contact with like minded-souls as well as those with other views.

Alpha, Michael monocle, Thea, Rachel and Phil have been the most active commentors.  Thanks so much folks.

13,037 people visited in 2011. Most of you are from the states, with the UK and Holland close behind.

The top referring sites in 2011 were:

• faso.com
• artwell.nl
• canvoo.com
• artheals.org
• kunstendementie.nl

Thank you.

Well folk, this is Sarah’s Styling page. (Tongue firmly planted in cheek).

These few touches in our house are about as close as I’m going to get to all the Christmas styling going on elsewhere. I am caught between finding a lot of the magazine and TV ideas for a ‘warm, country Christmas’ fussy and kitch, to envy at people’s inventiveness and willingness to spend time sewing Christmas patchwork placemats and such. The irritation comes from being overly influenced, I guess by the northern Dutch aversion to ‘cuteness’, which they call ‘tuttig’.

I did love making the hanging hearts though. They are from dottieangel. My own addition was to scan and print out some great wrapping papers I found. I used those as well as text from old magazines. And for Christmas, used hot pink thread!

The next batch I’m going to make will be from the envelopes that have brought  the Christmas cards from friends all over the world. The stamps, handwriting and postmarks will make it special.

Anyway, wishing everyone a late Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and inspired New Year.

photo by Rende

Still life by Giorgio Morandi

Another inspiration over the years has been Morandi. For my birthday, my sister-in-law bought me a book on his work.

As I said in my last post, being struck deeply by another artist’s work says more about recognising an internal energy or essence, than it does about the physical details of the painting.

It is natural and educational to start by studying and copying particulars, such as layout, colour and subject matter in order to understand them better. But at some point you have to let those go or give them an entirely new context in order to find your own way.

In Boehm’s essay about Morandi, he speaks about the profound influence Cézanne had on Morandi and others:

Morandi only found himself as an artist once he had seen Cézanne’s art and had advanced Cézanne’s thought in a productive manner.

did not seek to imitate him stylistically, but had recognised that his importance lay in something more fundamental. The signs that could be read in his art pointed in various different directions.

A hopeful aside here for people taking up painting in later life: Morandi didn’t start painting in oils until he was fifty. And I seem to remember that Cézanne did his most productive work in his 60′s!

Elizabeth Blackadder Blue Crab Still life

Krabbé’s work is dear to my heart because there is so much joy in it. I love his exuberant colours as well as his sense of decorative pattern. But most of all, like Blackadder, he starts out from a realistic departure point and ends up with something entirely his own.

So how does one translate these things into one’s own work?

First of all, I have to have some work in order to even understand where these elements might apply. But even at this early stage of finding my way with oils I’ve learned this important point:

Anything you copy from someone else’s work without having developed and grounded it out of your own experience will be a mere mannerism.

This is to say, that it will be only a superficial visual device. What is wrong with this?

Let me give you an example. My first attempts at integrating what I saw in Blackadder’s work into my own were based on the way she used objects on a table with a lot of space around them. My usual way of working fills up every nook and cranny with elements. What I ended up with were bad Elizabeth Blackadders because none of these decisions were built on a learning experience over years of developing a working discipline.

After lots of false starts, I gained insight into what it was I wanted to take from her work.

It had to do with the sense of commitment underlying it rather than the colours, objects or layout. I wanted to become like that person who had worked hard over the years and finally found her own authentic expression.

That is what I recognized, the yearning and perhaps willingness to make that kind of commitment.

Theme continued the next time I post.

I’ve been keeping it up fairly steadily since then, and have been debating how much if any of this process I was willing to share here.

The searching process produces a lot of missers, and I didn’t see what sharing these publically would achieve. (Especially since I do profile as a professional artist in other areas like oil pastel drawing).

But there have been insights during these past 3 months of work, and since I’ve personally missed having a teacher or advisor, I thought I’d share what I’ve been learning here. Perhaps there are others also trying to find their way with oils (or other media) in comparative isolation. (Robert Genn’s list, Painters Keys is a great help).

The first thing I want to talk about it what happens when someone else’s work blasts a hole in your soul. I mean that feeling of suddenly knowing what is is to be alive and why you are here and what you want to do. All those doors opening at once. How do you ground that? What does is mean to your own path?

Most recent influences on me have been Jeroen Krabbé and Elizabeth Blackadder.

But the main quest, of course, is how to find my own direction and create work that feels authentic to me.

More on how to translate inspiration from other people’s work into your own, scroll down.