quickie

This is what you can do if you are in a hurry and have some failed prints. like the printer is not working properly. don't throw the paper away. would be a shame. paint in oil over the failure. doesn't matter what,but you could use what was on the print=the successful part. in this case the Christmas tree. leave that and fill in the rest. my left eye is also a light on the Christmas tree. enjoy painting. that is what it is about. and a Merry Christmas!

The Golden Road

Put what might be the finishing touches on this painting in a series of works done on this road in Cummington. This series will not end soon I hope.

a Pendant

It must be around 25 years ago that I painted these two portraits. They look like a couple-a pendant, But they are not related. only in the time I painted them. I have forgotten their names and did not have the wisdom then to record the names and dates on the back of the linen. Maybe someone looking at Facebook could help me? thank you.

House in Noorden, S,. Holland

The busdriver changed his stop in Noorden to: "the house with the Heart". That was many years ago and Herman remains true to his tradition of mounting the heart every November onto the carefully trimmed Atlas Cedar tree his father planted 75 years ago. It is actually a welcoming sign for all year round.

sculture by Craig

Today is blustery but this ship has a steady course. Craig made it when he was in an active metal sculpting period here in Holland. I enjoy looking at it every day as I come and go from this little island.

Meditation

While a friend of mine was meditating, I painted her serenity. It worked for her and for me, too. Afterwards I thought to add the tissue paper panels on the sides which give it so much more life and light.

meditation

This image has nothing to do with my personal art work. It is a photo of a photo taken in a museum in Amsterdam. We seem to all be doing such things now which might be considered plagerism in older days. It is an art work made from an art work.
It does sum up my feeling about what is happening over here.

Last Rose of Summer in Holland

Roses are still holding out here in The Netherlands. The Heart of the Hilltowns show has been dismantled and waiting for me to round up getting portraits to their owners. That will happen around Thanksgiving when I will be back in Cummington. Meanwhile I am painting portraits and flowers here and wishing you all well.

last few days

I know it is not straight. too lazy tonight. This will be the last post about "The Heart of the Hilltowns" exhibit at the Cummington Community House. open all the time! I am still very happy with this show.
I want to thank all the 49 participants again and I am looking forward to starting the next group around Thanksgiving in the Hilltowns.

Cummington Show

This portrait is very small, 6" X 6", oil on paper over carton mounted on a wooden block. It is not in "The Heart of the Hilltowns" show entering its last week at the Cummington Community House, Cummington, Ma. Neither is it a "conversation portrait". It is the only portrait I could download this evening.  So here it is. I made this series of "block images" in 2013.
None the less, I am asking those of you who have not been to please come and look at the 49 portraits I totally enjoyed making this past year in the Hilltowns of Massachusetts. Again I want to thank the participants. I will continue the series the last week of November.

back from America

One of the four panels which Herman made and hung for "The Heart of the Hilltowns" exhibit presently going on -until October 31- in the Cummington Community House, Cummington, Ma.
We are just back in the Netherlands after 16 wonderfully exceptional fall-color days with our kids. This show was a high point for me. along with seeing Cooper, of course.

cummington artist

I picked up this series of Hilltown portraits again. This time I have to work from a photo I took of this very engaging Hilltown aquarelist in her garden. Through a number of conversations I have had from her and a few lessons to boot, I hope I am able to get her youthful exuberance translated in oil paint strokes. Again, so much fun to paint these small vignettes, this time in Holland.
Herman and I are building up to coming to the Hilltowns and organizing, framing and hanging the exhibit for the grand opening, 9 October. Everyone is invited. 7 p.m., Cummington, Community House.

Life can be exciting. My life can be exciting. Technology makes it even more exciting.
In 1990 I made this portrait of an engaging 2 1/2 year old. The parents have it hanging in their bedroom.
This past summer in Cummington, Ma, I was emailed from the father of this charmer asking me if I could make a pastel of her now, 25 years later. She is 27 and our conversation gave me the needed inspiration. I am now working hard to give them a pendant.
This is satisfying work to be sure.

Back in the waterlilies.

Yes, I am back in Holland, sitting at the water's edge and already noodling at paintings  I thought were finished. Like this one, which has gotten greater depth. Sorry you can't see the last version because figuring out what to with a painting is easier than figuring out how to get the new version on this Blog!

Hmmmm.

I haven't figured out yet how to get photos of work from my iPad onto the Blog while traveling. They are on my Facebook page. This morning Ron Scott and I had a "Breakfast at Nancy's" painting session here at the old Streeter farmhouse.  Ron is a real Hilltown artist. He fashioned the bird house for tree swallows I couldn't resist buying.  Jack of All Trades as one has to be to survive here. It feels good to get going again on this portrait series here in America. There are so many people who have contributed to the cultural community and are so worthy of a conversation-painting session.

Beginning of Summer

I still love this spirited painting painted on our island Paradise some years ago when the beached pram had not yet sunken into the reeds. It says everything about my feelings for Noorden!

Back in America until the beginning of August.
 

Next week end

This is a pretty shoddy way to advertise our Open House next weekend- 23,24 and 25 May.
Because I am not so handy with moving files about, I had to take a picture from the screen of the website page. I hope those reading DuTch will go to the website for the information or to www.Noordenaren.nl . Those thankfully following this Blog in America will have to book a flight and will certainly enjoy being in Holland at this time of the year. Forty sites in the region will be open for viewing art. You can bike over the dikes between them.We will have live music Sunday and Monday afternoons from the Brothers Kuyken. Everyone is welcome.

Paintings and flowers

 Herman is doing his best to get the gardens ready for the Art Open House happening the last weekend in May. The Wysteria is especially full, scented and nuanced with soft lilac and blue colors. Also the Camasia is at its peak. A few waterlelies have reached the surface of the bassins. It is all one very colorful blast of life here. Paintings are hanging inside and outside. Everyone is welcome to visit us on this little island.

Card Players

This series of paintings of the Card Players has a long history. On the back of one of the six canvases is the date 1989! and I keep changing them as the fellows get older. The style gets looser and I loose the intention of making a likeness. Instead I want the light flooding over the "player's field" (our kitchen table) and the intensity of the game to be the subject. Who is bluffing whom? They are character studies in van Gogh colors. The Potato Eaters painted by van Gogh in the 1880's in the south of Holland was my initial inspiration although those colors are muted. That light pouring over a table where something very Dutch is happening. Here it is also about winning money.
I have put the canvases away for the summer and will get them out in October when these outdoor hard- working men take their places here again on Friday evenings. They have been doing this for 40 years. No one would think of missing the gathering.

The House I live in in Holland

This morning, a beautiful spring May Saturday, I was taking my breakfast out to the greenhouse to eat with Herman and I saw that shots of the house might be nice to put on the Blog. So, I started in the serra (entry way going from the workshop to the interior of the house), the bathroom (I love looking at art in the bathroom!), a corner of the kitchen and then a corner of the living room (somehow the black TV screen helps the composition.
I hope you enjoy being in Holland.

Double Joy

These are for you, Barb. thank you so much for your support.

Late last summer when I returned from America, these Fabiola waterlilies were still blooming and defying the end of long light and warmth. Rusts, oranges, ochres were a bit foreign to me. I saw how very beautiful they are and how tiny gold fish give sparkle to the water.
I am still adding and deleting here in my living room studio. flecks of light and then some deep shadows. Monet is always my master.

Old Roses

The Luxor Roses have a long life here in our house. Most people would have long thrown them in the bin. They have gone from that heavenly uplifting fragrance to a musty earthy scent.
When I am painting, I get into the revolving forms, the salty olives and ochres, and the lingering deep reds going to black. I put a black turpentine "glaze" over the right side. Why disobey the rules? seems like I love doing that. In this case, I suspect it will cracklelei - the effect being dried creasing of paint. Who knows how it will go? like these beautiful flowers, they evolve their very own way which is unpredictable and fragile. like life to me.

Progression

Around Easter I posted the first version of these anemones. I looked at the painting for some days and decided to go on. Meanwhile the flowers had made their own decisions= those long sensuous stems and green ruffs were falling down.  I wanted that effect of change and no definite still life.

This version is more the ballet of life I like.

Easter 2015

.

These Anemones are drooping and going dead just as I am painting them. Fitting for Good Friday. 

I will let it dry now as there are impasto places and over-painting. actually the original canvas was a Man in Blue.

 

iPad visione

This may seem as a very strange image "painted" by me. yes, an attempt on the iPad. I love exploring what can happen and this came from an experience someone told me about-a vision of someone not taken from reality. so, it became my iPad vision. I can always go further with it using other effects and colors. My Dutch girl friend, Annet,  and I may be giving a workshop here in Holland at the end of the summer to teach people how to be creative with their Tablets.

Old Roses

The roses, after a week of glorious blooming, have gone old with lovely soft ochres, shades of ruby red, purples. Not sure if this one is finished. It is ripening on the kitchen wall.

last evening

A bit of the living room after a session painting the card players last evening. The easel is turned around and I peek through the arched doorway into the kitchen, pick up the painting I need to work on (actually all of them get a turn) according to who is sitting where. Every 15 minutes or so the sitters change places except for Herman who always sits in the left under position. That is the chair and place he has sat for meals and card-playing his whole life (67 years). Card playing is for the last 40 years with these 3 friends.
Why do I keep painting since 1994 on these six paintings (two are elsewhere)? I love to paint this subject and I am not satisfied.  I want  psychological intensity as well as  good painting.
thank you for looking. The photo is a bit bleeched out.

van der Harsten- Way Back When

Yesterday's Blog was about the portraits of the van der Harst family which was and still is part of my history, Hylke van der Harst being my second husband and the reason I came to the Netherlands 39 years ago.
My son Craig Johns came to join the family group for 7 years and is still part of it even though now living in the Hilltowns of Massachusetts with his own family.

I painted anyone who came over the bridge then.

van der Harsten

Last evening we had a mini- van der Harst reunion here. a new baby, Zoe, was introduced to us. She hopefully will be added to the many portraits I made of this family. The photo is of course a Johns=Cooper. The earliest portrait here was painted in 1991. Sjoerd is in Switzerland, Thijs in Brabant, Fridtjof in Mongolia, Dick in Belgium and Sophia in San Francisco. Floran, on top is the closest by in Utrecht.

Spring!

Not that the winter here in Holland was anything compared to that in the Hilltowns of Massachusetts! but we still express a lot of joy when the winds get softer and the sun gives us warm smiles. the waters around us get this incredible deep ultra-marine blue-magenta color.
Herman's sister Wil brought me this bunch of flowers whose name I do not know. The buds start out white-cinnabaar green and unfold into such diverse shades of pink, mauve, lilac and even red.

I couldn't help think of Claude Monet's burst of apple blossoms and Vincent van Gogh's birthday present to his new-born nephew Vincent= almond tree blossoms on a rich blue sky painted while he was in the Saint- Rémy hospital. These two are my heros and they must have been totally involved in the spaces between the throbbing flowers as well as the blooms.

 It's all about the movement of growth and joy of spring.

Yesterday's Roses

Still can't get enough of these Luxor roses!

Lisbon night life

Those were nice days in Lisbon, the capitol of Portugal. Here is the alley-way going up to the hotel. The Electro Tram is one of the most romantic ways to get around, especially #28. The Portuguese need these old trams to get up and down the steep hills. If you go there, don't forget that the Metros open at 10 a.m. This was not mentioned in the guide books we had with us. The people are very friendly and price of food and wine cheap. we ate in typical small restuarants visited by the locals. Simple food with lots of fresh herbs and garlic.

Flower profusion

Tulip Painting Marathon

Lynn Golden from Cornwall, England, and I are spending this week in our greenhouse painting tulips and other spring flowers. It is our third year doing this. Herman gets out there around 8 a.m. as the light is coming on and gets a good fire burning in the stove. The flowers have stayed good for us the whole week because of the cold nights and cloudy days. We have been toasty warm. sorry, over there in America. I feel grateful to be living in two worlds.

portrait

still have one leg on each side of the Atlantic. This is one of the series made of Cummingtonians. hopefully I will shortly be posting Blogs from paintings I am now doing here. meanwhile everyone in America has been shoveling again. and again. Fortitude!

Happy Guy!

Please look on Facebook until I get back to The Netherlands, first week of February. Furiously painting portraits of Hilltown people.

Pipeline/ Fracking in the Hilltowns

Please go to Facebook to see a Cummington portrait and meeting about a great concern for The Hilltowns= Pipeline/ Fracking and The Converter

Cummington Portrait

To view this please go to Facebook. I can't get the way to Get i Pad photos on the Blog. This awkward Jeanne- system will last until I am back on my MAC in the Netherlands in te beginning of February. Thank you for your patience. Happy New Year.