Motherhood!!!

What is motherhood to me? 

It is everything good and complicated and worth it all at once.

It is often tangled and messy.

It is macaroni transformed.

 It is macaroni worth millions of dollars to one person.

 It is beautifully sloppy in form and feeling and practice, like an impromtu bouquet, yet nothing sweeter.

Happy Mother's day to all of the mommies young and old, and wishes for sweet memories of mamas departed.

A sick joke

What do dinosaurs, a prom date, my father, and shingles have in common?

They are all coming to my house on Saturday.

My baby girl is turning three and she wants a "Dinosaur party" so we are having one.

Also my father and other family will be visiting.

My seventeen year-old son is going to prom too.

So you can imagine my to do list is quite long.

Oh yeah, shingles....

They have already arrived. 

I am not talking about the sort you put on a roof, I am sick. Really sick. I am still waiting for bloodwork because the doc wasn't convinced. So I don't actually know if its shingles.
I need to motor through the week regardless of how gross I look and the pain.

So I am going to take the week off from blogging. I will be back next week, I hope. 

 That's my sick joke.

 At least I can laugh about it and I hope you did too.

Yes, please!

I love these chinoserie salad coupes. At $4.99 HERE I want a set in black and red.

 

Pair them with these plates at $5.99 and its party time!

 Also in black.

AAAGH!

Edvard Munch "The Scream"

Have you heard? 

via AP    NEW YORK — One of the art world’s most recognizable images — Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” — sold Wednesday for a record $119,922,500 at auction in New York City.

The only painting to sell near this record price was Picasso's "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" for $106.5 million.

 If you had to choose one, and only one iconic painting which would it be?

I'll give you my answer, but bear with me.

 While I truly love the post-modernists I will say that I would go with something from my childhood.

I have mentioned my grandmother, Meme, was an artist and art history teacher, many times before.

Painting by Lysie Iddings my grandmother

Well, my parents were still in college when I was born and we all lived with my mother's parents and my Meme took care of me mostly.  My grandmother began teaching art history at Northern Virginia Community College early in its history. 

painting by Lysie Iddings

When I was a tiny kid, 2  or 3 years old I went to class with her. I was given a "picture book" and asked to quietly look through it while she taught. I was a very quiet child, not the exhuberant and high spirited sort that I know, so I did sit quietly.

After class was over, I showed her my favorite, and believe it or not this is a very vivid memory for me but we sat and talked about Her....

Botticelli's Birth of Venus

I was explained the myth and symbolism. I adored the flowing hair and fabric and the shell was downright dreamy to a little girl like me.

I wanted it all. It was beautiful princess fantasy to me.

Fast forward to 1984. I was teenager on a school trip to Italy. Nothing prepared me for what I saw in the Uffizi gallery in Florence. 

I got off an elevator with  3 of my pals from the trip and saw...

Botticelli's "Primavera"

It was quite larger than life and I did not expect that it to be so huge. I never bothered to read silly details like size in inches, centimeters, or FEET!

They were enormous and encompassed much of one's visual field. That is is impact!

As I rounded the corner, I literally swooned and nearly fainted when I saw "Birth of Venus". It was so large and more beautiful than any photo in a book. I certainly was teary and embarrassed to let my friends see, but it was a "happening"!

And so, if I had a world of money and it were for sale I would buy Botticelli's " Birth of Venus" for the the warm fuzzy memory and the Wow! factor that I was not expecting.

Do tell, what would you buy? and why?

My a-Peale-ing ancestors

Self-portrait with Angelica and Portrait of Rachel

Well folks, yesterday I was going to do a post on laundry rooms in honor of our not-so-dear but departed clothes washer but it bored me.

Today I thought that the Peale family might be a bit more interesting than the utilitarian masquerading as decor.

As the title suggests, the famous American painting family, the Peale's are my ancestor's on my mother's side through his third wife, Hannah More.

Charles Willson Peale is perhaps the most famous of the clan and father of Rembrandt, Raphaelle, Rubens and Titian Peale and Angelica Kaufman, all famous in their own right as artists. He had 16 children in all.

George Washington at the battle of Princeton

The elder Peale studied under such noted artists as John Singelton Copley and Benjamin West but he was so much more than just a painter. He a renaissance man long after the the renaissance. Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, and was later renamed the Peale Museum and relocated to Baltimore.  He was an inventor, naturalist, scientist, soldier as well.

The artist in his museum

 Arguably his most famous painting, "The staircase group" is a visually arresting portrait of two of his sons, Raphaelle and Titian.

The giant door shaped canvas presents an rather, avant-garde (for the time) compostion and captures a mood and moment very unlike the conventional English painting that he studied.

George Washington

He is equally notable for his portraits of his contemporaries. He painted George Washington 14 times!

I mentioned earlier that his children were famous artists as well. I will go more in depth about their lives and art another time but I encourage you to read more about this extraordinary family. HERE and HERE

The Peale family

Portrait of Rubens Peale by Rembrandt Peale

Buffalo Hunt on the Platte by Titian Peale

One and a bit

"Royals furled" 32 x 36 on cotton by Kerry Steele

This is an abstract that I finished this weekend. It is on clear primed canvas and there is about a two inch margin on all sides where the fabric color and texture are visible. The muddy looking spot on the bottom left is a spot I readied and later signed.

Yesterday I started sketching out a figure on my raw silk canvas.

preliminary lines for painting

The raw silk is gray and it is a basket weave. I was not expecting such a loose weave when I ordered it and had to double it and use coat after coat of clear gesso. The result is somewhat like trying to paint on a sidewalk, there is a lot of  "tooth".

My intention is to paint a version of this style nude that my grandmother painted.

I hope this painting on raw silk works out. Other fabrics and tonal paintings are on my list to do soon.

Friday's field trip

My new pal, Nancy, from Powell-Brower Home and I had a fun outing last Friday. She posted about it today.

 I brought a camera but for some reason...

 never got a chance to snap a photo.

Luckily, Nancy got a few shots in.

We saw tons of great art and chatted with artists and lounged in their studios. FUN!

Head on over and check it out.