A Girl's Primer

I have been working on this trio of drawings for 9 months and I'm finally ready to march these ghosts out of my studio. My triptych, A Girl's Primer, will be in a group show at Aucocisco Gallery in Portland for the month of December. I'm thrilled to be invited to show at Aucocisco with four other artists: Michele Caron, Rachael Eastman, Tanya Fletcher, and Judy O'Donnell. I'm just about finished, still doing a bit of fine tuning, and I need to make the hanging mechanisms. They will hang unframed, and I'm planning to string wire to three boards and attach each drawing to its respective board with velcro. They will then simply hang on picture hangers. Theyre not heavy, but they're big, at 4' x 8' each.

Here is my working artist statement which still needs a tweak or two. I don't want to say too much - just a sort of lead in...

My mother’s loss of memory due to the ravages of Alzheimer’s and her recent death prompted me to create this series of drawings, a triptych populated by three major spirits: my mother, my father, and my maternal grandmother. A Girl’s Primer speaks of love, loss, dreams, desire, memory and experience, and the early forces that shaped me.

Greta with Dark Self

Greta in front of her self-portrait.

Greta with Dark Self, in progress. Painting on the left by Greta...

My second sitter in the portrait project, Portland artist Greta Bank. These portraits feel more like my self-portraits, and probably because I am making them for me. What I mean by that is I'm not out to please or flatter or truly render my sitters. I'm looking for something else...

New Portrait Project

Rachael with a Hockney as The Hanged Man, 2011
mixed media on Stonehenge, 30" x 50"

After a three month break from blogging, I'm back. I needed time off from most things digital this summer, to tend my garden, tend my house, and tend & mend myself. Fall and winter bring introspection and more time spent indoors, so here I be.

I've started a new portrait project of Maine artists and people involved in the art community. My first sitter was painter Rachael Eastman. She is pictured here posing in my Portland studio. Stay tuned for sitter number two...