Getting older is all the fun it is cracked up to be. Add to the mix a little pigment /solvent toxicity, and it is quite a ride. I have not been able to paint without pain in my upper arm since March, and often wake in pain in the night. I have tendonitis from overwork, but as you can see from previous texts, I suck at resting. Excel at sulking, however. Playing at Pinterest at the moment, and selling work at great discounts on Facebook.

"ACHIEVEMENT, n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust". -Ambrose Bierce, the Devil's Dictionary, 1911

Our amazing local shelter for cats, Animalkind, lost everything including their home yesterday, displacing the 150 cats that awaited adoption there. There was a minor fire put out by sprinklers which did their own damage, and all floors are flooded, all food and bedding gone, all office supplies, etc.

Hudson NY residents are trying to find temporary homes for the cats while the possibility of recovering the use of the building on Warren Street is explored. Adoptions would be a blessing at this point, but donations are essential to replace the lost supplies, at least.

If you have any food, beds, room, funds to donate please contact them: http://www.animalkind.info

These folks are all volunteers, and this shelter gets no government funds. It is a true labor of love and they are heroes who should be admired, supported and emulated. Please help if you can.

Women of Steel (and Titanium, etc.): Unbreakable

Two women with broken backs; a woman showing off a four inch bolt just removed from her hip, one riding while wearing a knee cage, several with artificial joints, and on and on. In Florida this season it was driven home to me that women who ride horses lie to their doctors, have astonishing pain thresholds, and shrug off injuries that normal folk would allow to change their lives. Can it be a coincidence that therapeutic riding programs have for years demonstrated an inexplicable ability not only to aid in healing the injured, but also to cause the disabled and autistic to blossom? I recently read of an autistic child who had never spoken a word, when put up in front of his father in the saddle, began to spontaneously chatter away as if he had no issues at all, and would always hold conversations only while riding. Eventually that talking carried over to his earthbound life.

There is an old saying that the best thing for the inside of a (wo)man is the outside of a horse.

How to Name a Painting While Laughing

Sometimes people ask me where I came up with the odd names for my paintings. Allow me to share with you one of my favorite things: The names given to racehorses in the 1700 and early 1800s. Here's a list I've gleaned from old records. You will find some of my titles therein.
Have At You All, Hydrophobia, Oh Fie, Tantarium, Sulky-Milky-Tawdry, Toothdrawer, I am Not Aware, She’s Not Worth A Name, Birdlime, I’m Sure He Sha’n’t, Run Like A Lamp Post, Jack I’ll Tickle Thee, Rattlecash, Ditto, Willing But Weak, Let’s Stay Awhile Says Slow, Popjoy, Wry Nose, Old Crab, Anything You Like, Billy Go Rarely, Golumpus, Who’d Have Thought It, .303, Who Dare Say Boo, Over Fork Over, Celibacy, Pot-8-os, Waxy, Whalebone, Galopin, Chickeypokey, Sally Go Fastly, Lout, Tatharangtangtang, Looby, Bloody Buttocks, Flatcatcher, Such a Getting Upstairs, Tom Touch Me Not, Radish, N Minus I, Whizgig, Look Not on Ball, Brown Farewell, Dr. Syntax, Skim, Rataplan, Here-I-Go-With-My-Eye-Out, Brainworm, Bedlamite, Lunacy, Bee in a Bonnet, Neckersgat, Lozenge, Young Maniac, Heigh-Ho!, Lottery, Windhound, Isonomy, Kill ‘em and eat ‘em, Dunover, Brisk, Skypeeper, Zut, Drug, I’ll Gang Nae Mair To Yon Town, Miss Whip, Shoestring, Hag, Young Hag, All Round My Hat, Lady Stumps, Old Bald Peg, Can Run But Will Not, Run Now or Hunt Forever, Clumsey, Black and All Black, Awful, Humbug, Cream Cheeks, Old Careless, Chaunter, Rigdum Funnidos, Fidget, Woful, Error, Mop, First Time Of Asking, Lusty Thornton, Limblifter, Creepmouse, Goldfinder, Splitvote, Ambidexter, Ringbone, Cwrw, Small Arms, Straitlace, The Task, Mayonaise, Monstrosity, Puce, I told you So, Slamerkin, The Ill-Used, Fornicator, Oh-megan-ee!, King William's Barb-Without-A-Tongue, Young Gouty, Pipator, Tipple Cyder, Soreheels, Hunt the Slipper, Blank, Grey White Neck, Don’t, Shan’t, Never, Little-Thought-Of, Sister to Old Country Wench, Don’t Use Me ill, Blue-Green, Miss Cheese, Rib, The Little Known, Lady Thigh, Longwaist, Whiteshirt, Look at Me Lads, Dismal, Gnat-Catcher, Slapbang, Thwat, Mol-in-the-Wad, Done on Purpose, Trip-It, Pencil, Rasamagnoddy, Dainty Davy, Dux, I wish You May Get It, Broad Bottom, The Screw, Coughing Polly, Whynot, Have Patience and You’ll See,Trumpator, Sweetest When Naked, Greasy Heel, Dyer's Dimple, Trounc'em, Match'em, Have-At’em, Lady Cow, Migraine, Smirking Nan, Ticklepitcher, Greyleg, Let's-Be-Jogging, Willy Frizzle, Rantaway, Long Megg, Tosspot, Jenny Come Tye Me, Miss-In-Her-Teens, Hoity-Toity, Fungus, Tippetywitchet, All-Fours, Bad-Bargain, Jenny Bare Bones, Bag-ho!, Bumtrap, Caleb Quot’em, Cheesecutter, Chicken Butcheress, Equuleus, Few-such, Grim Woman, Harry-Behind, The Inconsistant, Knee-Buckle, Lad-a-wax, Lemon-Peel, Nancy Grieves Him, Miss Hap, Miss Hot-upon-‘t, Miss Rupture, Monymusk, Nobody, Odd-Fish, Stiff-Dick, Sock, Work-Box, XYZ, Slipby, The Other Eye, Blink Bonny, Shotover, Pennycomequick, Windhound, Piping Peg, Love In Idleness, His Wife’s Fancy, Stand By And Clear The Way, I always Thought It, Remember What I Told You, Kiss Me Quick, Kiss Me Faster, Dart While You’re Young, Despise Me Not, Why Do You Slight Me, Titanokeratophyton, Shiver O, Walmgate bar without, Carry Me Gently, Sally Go Steady, Little Thought On, Well Of All The Infernal Impudence That’s It

Hand Surgery and the ADD Artist

A couple of months ago I found out that not all the pain in my hands was from the paint poisoning: I also had severe carpal tunnel syndrome. So bad, in fact, that the nerve in my good hand is dying, and ASAP surgery arranged. The recovery from the first operation taught me that I am incapable of doing nothing, and I managed to split open the (open palm) incision twice, to the irritation of my surgeon. When we did the right hand earlier this week, I found this message on my splint when I woke up. (Does typing count?)

Missing Painting "Gifted I" Stolen, Hidden or Forgotten?

This painting is 8 x 10 feet. How could it be missing? Easy, if the circumstances are right. I did this painting in the mid nineties of an Olympic medal winning horse I really admired for his talent and sheer presence . It was exhibited quite widely throughout the US, and shipped from gallery to gallery rolled in a tube. The last gallery that showed it, in Half Moon Bay CA south of San Francisco, asked for an extended "run". When I tried to contact the owner after a couple of months, she had closed up shop and vanished. Unable to hire a detective to try to find her, it took me ten years to track her down.
When I confronted her, the woman claimed that she had "left the painting out for the shippers" to return to me. Since then the shipping company had gone out of business, so there were no records to examine to disprove this claim.
I continue to hope that someone, somewhere, has seen the painting on a wall, and that it is not in a tube hidden somewhere, or moldering in a landfill. A few magazine articles about this produced no leads... but if all my fans and readers help spread the word, maybe we'll solve the mystery.

"Gifted I" in progress, 8 x 10'

Why Murals Should Be Done On Canvas

This is a mural that I painted for Regina Trapp and Tarek Kettanah in Millbrook, NY. I tried to convince her to have it done on canvas applied to the plaster walls, but she declined, and later said it was one of her great regrets. A few years later she divorced Mr. K and sold the house to Liam Neesan and Natasha Richardson. She tried to find some way of taking at least one wall with her, but it was impossible. While the sale was in progress I got several frantic calls from people in the area who heard that Mary Gilliatt was to redecorate the house, and planned to paint the room white. I was gratified that so many people were outraged by that idea. Regina felt horrible about it, and helped try to convince her to have a paper barrier put over the mural before painting, but I honestly have no idea if it was done or not. I heard they took out one door and made it a wall, so it's mangled at least. If it was covered, it will doubtless be forgotten that the mural was there and it will become an archeological find in a few hundred years.

Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts

Do you have a copyright violation? A gallery dispute? A lawsuit? For the artist in need, and on a sliding scale, most states have a branch of the fabulous organization Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. These generous folks are there to help and do a lot of valuable pro bono work. Do a google search for VLA and the various state sites will come up. In NY it is http://vlany.org

The "String" Series: Polo

This is one of the String series of paintings of polo ponies I started a few years ago, "String 7", 3 x 6 feet. I started taking pictures of the matches at Palm Beach and fell in love with the unexpected angles and compositions, but I still have reservations about the way these mares are ridden. Isn't it possible to ride without the tie-downs and gag bits? Anyway, I love the images, and I hope someday to paint them in life size scale; that would be amazing to see. (And that's what we paint for, so we can see the idea made real.)
Imagine renaissance tapestries of battle scenes, remove everything but the horse as I have done, and place them side by side next to these...

From Teachers

My faculty at the San Francisco Art Institute would be happy to know that some of their teachings have stuck firmly in my mind, and some of these ideas I have passed along to my own students. Like Hassel Smith talking about Clifford Still's huge canvases, observing the tiny area of joyous color nearly hidden by the large fields of color surrounding it, the importance of that tiny area cannot exist without the large areas everywhere else. Like not being more concerned with the cost of a tube of paint than you are for the need your piece has for using that paint generously. Like if you don't entertain yourself, you won't entertain anyone else. Letting go of your own ideas and letting the piece tell you what to do. Using unequal amounts of color so the piece is not too balanced and static. Celebrating the happy accident. Learning how to mix any color imaginable with the fewest possible mixtures. More later....

"Conquest" and the Bayeux Tapestry

People ask me all the time about this inspiration behind this painting, 3 x 4' oil on canvas, in the collection of Shanon and Doug Rawlinson. If you have any art history you have probably seen images from the Bayeux Tapestry, a long scroll of needlework depicting the Norman Conquest. It's a fabulous creation with one superb image after another, and bordered by bizarre, whimsical animals. I've reproduced several sections of the scroll in the course of my art historical mural painting business, and noted several scenes of the knights horses crossing the Channel in boats. That started me thinking about how horses were moved across water in the days before bridges...and I concluded that the sight of a horse in a boat or an a barge would have been a commonplace sight until recently in our long history together.

This is a floorcloth/wall hanging I painted years ago and have in my studio, reproducing a section of the tapestry showing William the Conqueror. The nuns who created the scroll were brave and brilliant!

"Ben"

"Ben" is 5 x 4 feet, and was painted in the 80s while I was at SFAI. It is based on an illustration in a manual on riding that was written by my father's best friend, Ben Lewis, in the 1940s. I grew up with this book, and as I grew older I began to appreciate it for the surreal quality of the photos, many of which used ground-breaking techniques and views. This painting is a favorite among my fans. Don't you love his tie?

Paint Poisoning: Handle With Care

It was not until I was in grad school and had been painting for 25 years, that the hazards of art materials began to be discussed in school, in the wake of the publication of "Artist Beware". I will never forget the shock wave that ran through the audience in the lecture hall when we heard this: if you use turpentine or any solvent (like gasoline, paint thinner, etc.) to take paint off your hands, you are pushing the pigments through the skin barrier and into your body. Pigments like cadmium, chromium, barium, lead, cobalt... not to mention that turps is generally adulterated with lots of nasty chemicals, and is in itself a central nervous system depressant and generally a villain. Does this explain a great deal about the mental state of painters through the ages?

There are really incredible soaps available for hand and brush cleanup, and it is crucial to make such simple changes in our work habits, as well as having ventilation, not pointing brushes with our lips, etc., and to avoid inhalation of powdered pigments.

The reason I discuss this whenever I do a gallery talk or lecture is that I developed a connective tissue disorder about five years after grad school which halted my career in its tracks, and still have lots of physical problems 20 years later. Artist beware, indeed.

"Paint", Painted in a Trance?

I don't remember painting "Paint", 7 by 5 feet, but it is one of my recent favorites. I had been unable to paint for nearly four months, and I was so excited to get back to work that I just flew into it, and painted far too many hours a day, completing it in four days. I barely noticed the pain in my hands and arms, and not long after completion I realized that I could not recall actually making decisions, nor the act of painting. This has hardly ever happened in 40 years of painting, and never on a large piece like this.

There are layers and layers of background colors, each obscuring more and more of the one beneath, but very thin paint on the horse. I had an ecstatic call from the collector after he got it up on his wall, so the level of excitement stuck with the painting. I think this is a great example of the notion that a really good painting takes over and is a dialog, not solely what the artist intends.

Sudden Artistic Output

I recently learned of a post brain injury "impairment" labeled by the psychiatric community as Sudden Artistic Output, where a person not previously particularly creative will become obsessed with making art. Not only does this make me wonder if I had been dropped on my head as a baby, but offers up an interesting new idea for jumpstarting painter's block....

Horses and Turnout

It's no secret to people who know me that animal welfare is terribly important to me, and the ethical dilemma of keeping horses existing on the planet by using them for sport is on my mind and in my work. I am so happy to see the issue of turnout for dressage horses being discussed more and more, and a cover story of Dressage Today magazine. It makes me crazy that so many people refuse to let their horses just be allowed to be horses for even the smallest moments, because they have so much money invested in them...ignoring the price the horse pays in ulcers and neuroses and overall health, if not the fairness of the thing. I am adamant that there should be an agreement by those who make use of horses for sport, or for work, that they, who give so selflessly to us, be allowed some relief in return. If I hear one more person tell me that their horse came from Holland and has never been turned out and it would freak out, you may hear the screaming....

Returning to blogging

Yes, I've been guilty of neglect. I'm resolved to be reformed. It's been a really tough year, which I may touch on in coming posts, but only a bit. Lots of new paintings, though.

Florizel

1982 "Florizel", 3 x 4 feet oil on canvas, in a private collection. Still one of my favorites.

My Studio

This is the studio that Peter built for me on our property outside of Hudson NY. After so many years of industrial spaces and ruthless landlords, it is mine all mine....my favorite place to be. A local CSA uses it every Friday for a local organic veg share pickup point for about 25 members, and we've had yoga classes and art classes and more, plus great parties in the space. Only positive activities allowed.