Matters of Scale

                                                       River Shore watermedia on Yupo 6x20


 Could you imagine this watercolor 10 feet long? Would that be interesting or too loud? The issue of how large my paintings should be has plagued me since I was young. I`ve tried hard to have a career with integrity yet this one issue has compromised my practice since early on. Practical concerns have mostly won out. Like many young people I moved more often than was desirable and the transportation and storage of big paintings was always a problem. I wanted to work large but they didn`t sell very well. The impulse to do them wasn`t pure either. Was I just clamoring for attention with their scale? Was that OK? There are so many logistical matters to think about in the life of a painter! Do they give the students any help with this in art school? Because I didn`t go, I`ve had to figure out most everything myself. In several periods of my career I just said to hell with it, I`m going to go big. Some of those 30 year old paintings are stacked fifteen feet away from where I`m sitting now writing this. The inability to find homes for the large canvases would then cause an over-correction. Nothing that isn`t comfortable to carry. Or later, nothing that won`t fit in my car. Then the pressure builds again and I have a new brood of bigguns. Now I have a bigger car too! One might think the answer is within me but it`s not! Not yet anyway. This isn`t a fatal dilemma, I`m not tortured by it. The primary thing is I`ve painted consistently for forty years.
Though my studio is large, the ceiling is low. There is a real limit to what I can get past my stairwell. And as I`ve gotten older, it`s certainly easier to manage the moderately scaled pieces. Sometimes I think I could be happy painting tiny botanical studies at a desk and at other times I want to do 20 foot long watercolor scrolls. So on it goes, round and round.
Maybe it`s mature to be practical, I greatly admire Thomas Nozkowski, and all of his stuff would fit on my back seat.

The painting above comes from a small patch of grasses and trees along the Tualatin River backed by a steep hill. It`s in a park in West Linn, close to the baseball diamond and is just spectacular to me. Somehow the light on this spot is always dramatic. The paintings below all derive from this same magical corner on the river;

                                                               Riverlight Study wm 12x9

                                                           Riverbank Study 2 wm 14x11

                                                                 Riverlight 1 oil 20x20

                                                                  Riverlight 2 oil 20x20

                                                             Riverbank Study wm 14x11

Hugh Hefner

 Allow me some words of gratitude for the life of Hugh Hefner.

I`m a feminist, I understand the arguments and controversies his life and business provoked. And I`ve always found him creepy. But he did the world a great favor in his effort to legitimize sexual desire. The Playboy 'sex friendly' attitude helped liberate a lot of compressed and suppressed feelings about sex. In doing this, I believe he helped women have more understanding and control of their choices and roles in life. He and the advice columnist Ann Landers were also among the first public figures to say the obvious; homosexual people are born and part of nature. I appreciate that.

 Now for some pure bragging. Watch my tremendously gifted cousin, Anya Cloud, in some contact improvisation here, with the great dancer Matan Levkowich. Exquisitely beautiful.

                                                                       Prince Harry

 I used to rail against the idea of monarchy. The notion of superiority by birthright was deeply offensive, undemocratic and racist! 

I hadn`t done my research. 

When I read of Queen Elizabeth`s active role in WW2, my beliefs began to shift. Now I understand the British monarchy at least, to be an example of moral courage, a model of service to the common good and boosters of the best Britain has to offer the world. Look through these pictures of Prince Harry at the Invictus Games. What a lovely humane young man! 

We used to have such a leader too.

 OK, my big Pinterest discovery is Heli Huotala, a Finn of great sensitivity to nature and of the properties of paint. I could live in one of her paintings.

                                                                  Heli Huotala

                                                                    Heli Huotala

                                                                  Heli Huotala

She is doing everything I hope to do.

                                                                High Summer-Sauvie Island

 My watercolor demo from two weeks ago on the coast turned into an oil painting. Things change!

 Last week to see my show at the White Bird Gallery in Cannon Beach OR!

Fanno Creek Fog - marriage equality in every state!

                                                             oil on canvas 36x36

It is a familiar motif and I know the area well, but this did not come easy and I think I know why. Since I`ve been involved with plein air painting recently, I`ve been surprised how most oil painters keep their paint opaque out in the field. Even for water! They will render the underwater rocks in exactly the color they appear using buttery thick paint. And  they look realistic, like they are beneath the surface! I think because I`m a watercolorist at heart, I`m always using thin paint and thinking transparency. I try to make an equivalent of water or atmosphere or foliage out of the paint itself. Instead of painting what is there. This is fine but can lead to the dark and murky if it isn`t right early on. In oils, the paint dries darker if it`s thinned whereas in watercolor, a fading of intensity occurs as it dries. So in the grappling way I work, I`m often drowning in gooey runny paint that will solidify into sludge.
Maybe the progression below will make this clearer. The photos aren`t great but show how I got to this. The earliest is at the bottom.

Here is another recent piece that I also had to repaint entirely three times because it would lose the glow through overworking;

                                                 Winter River 2 oil on canvas 20x20


 My dynamic young cousin Anya Cloud is coming to town to dance. She will perform as part of the Conduit Dance Festival July 8 through the 11th at Reed College. We were talking at a family gathering recently about survival, jobs and money, what else? This is what artists are concerned about, how to keep going. Her piece was mentioned in the New York Times when she performed there a couple of months ago, so I`m pleased this is an advance in a meaningful career.You can be sure if someone is devoted to modern dance, they are true believers in the power of art. I`m curious to see what she has created!


Seeing all the tears of joy yesterday was certainly moving yet I felt like I was missing something. When the Supremes overturned the Defense of Marriage Act and agreed Proposition 8 was unconstitutional two years ago, it was like an Emancipation Proclamation! That sweeping and profound. The analysts speculated that the decisions were 'narrow' so the country could get used to this new idea. Everyone knew this would be revisited for a final judgement. Having read Anthony Kennedy`s opinion back then, I had no fear at all he would reverse himself. This is why the jubilation surprised me. It seemed like a foregone conclusion.
Hey, joy is joy! The massive shift in our culture is just stunning!
Marriage equality is so important, such a litmus test because gay people know we`re exactly as we should be. There is nothing wrong with us. Let this comfort and assure the odd child, the sensitive and the different, that this is for them. To be who you are.
As I`ve said, going from reviled to celebrated is confusing, the ground does not feel steady yet!
When the open hearted people of Washington State voted in marriage equality in 2012,  John and I started talking about a wedding. Soon we realized we were way too introverted for involving others. Yet Washington required two witnesses, so 'eloping' was not going to work. The timing turned on practicality; tax advantages and open enrollment with John`s health care benefit. Without any ideas of our own  whatsoever, we hired the minister who solicited us by mail, and asked my mother and John`s sister to be our witnesses. We had written no vows, sent no announcements, had no celebrations planned and we did not have permission to use the Fort Vancouver gazebo. Luckily my sisters in law Mary and Norma crashed the event and a young mother with a stroller stood on the sidewalk and watched as well. They made it more real. What is a gay wedding anyway? We had no idea. Because we did not write original vows, the minister used the traditional ones, the ones we all know...to have and to hold, in sickness and in health...
Oh my God, the minute he began speaking, the magnitude of what was happening rained down on me in a torrent. Each word he said seared me. This was serious business. The concepts in those words, as cliche as they might be, are vivid and comprehensive. I listened very carefully through my tears and felt transformed at the conclusion. As I should have. That is the point! The sublimation of two wills to create one new, better entity; a family! It is ennobling and dignifying just as Justice Kennedy said. Why would anyone want to deny this to us?
Well, for the religious opponents from any faith, the elephant in the room is the sanctity and veracity of scripture. On this subject, they all got it wrong. The Bible, Koran, Buddhist texts, the Torah, all of them.
If a believer accepts homosexuality as a normal part of nature, what else in the teachings are false? What to make of the evidence supporting evolution? The stakes are high, faith can fall like a house of cards.
I`m not too sympathetic.
I had to work through this at 14. Alone. To have any kind of health and happiness, I had to accept myself. I had to find my own way of believing. It can be done.

                                   me and my husband on a beautiful Oregon evening


work for sale in my studio