Lines and Connections

Anyone who comes here regularly knows that I love birds, rocks and hearts, and that I really love detail. So maybe this painting was meant to be. First I created a composition. I assembled one of my favourite heart-shaped rocks, a lovely ball of twine and...oh oh...I don't have a real bird nest.  So instead, I made my composition using a not-so-natural-looking decorative bird nest (that dark brown thing in the upper right hand corner of the photo). Then I looked up photos of what a real song sparrow's nest and eggs look like. I chose a song sparrow because they are among our backyard birds. In fact, there's one fellow who often sits in the birch tree just behind our yard and sings his little heart out to me.

My painting was done referring to my composition photo, several reference photos of song sparrow nests and my actual rock and twine. Do you know how many little lines and tiny squiggles there are in a ball of twine or a bird's nest? Let's just say several days' worth.

In my painting, a piece of the bird's nest touches the rock. There are bits of twine woven into the nest and there is a lovely spiral piece of twine that winds its way through the painting. I wanted to convey a sense of connection.  I've titled the painting "This is where my heart lives".

Pictured below is the print that I did of my painting. That took me days as well! After several unsuccessful scans (angled this way and that way), I finally worked from a photo of my painting and have ended up with a print that I am proud of.  I hope you like it too.

Rocks and Hearts

Some days I think it would be very useful to have a crane, the mechanical sort or the bird.  Either would do but, come to think of it, the bird sounds like more fun. Anyway, I imagine it plucking me from wherever I am and whatever I am doing and placing me gently but decidedly at my work table in my studio.  Oh, how I get caught up in doing other things.  I don't know why it is so hard to climb those stairs some days, as I am always happier once I am up there painting.

This morning I decided to work on a painting that I started when we were in Ogunquit, Maine a couple of summers ago.

I love rocks. I love hearts.  I guess it should be no surprise then that I love heart-shaped rocks.  I originally had two rocks in my painting but found a third small one this morning in my rock collection and so added it to the composition.  They look like they belong together--a family of rocks, a family of hearts. I like the symbolism.

The painting is on paper that I don't often use.  It was in a old, small Canson Montval sketchpad that seemed the right size to pack for our trip.  I quite like the texture of it and the way it handles the paint.  I definitely will use it again.

As I was working today, I was feeling the echoes of another painting I did a long time ago.  I dug it out so that you can see it. It's actually half a painting. I did it from some photos that my brother took many years ago when he worked for a week or so in Pond Inlet, a remote Inuit community on the northern shore of Baffin Island in Nunavut. (He was there as part of his medical residency. He's a psychiatrist.) I was very unhappy with the top part of the painting, the water, so I cut the painting in two.  I don't remember ever having done that before but it worked:  I was happy with the rocks, spent a good deal of time painting them and there was enough interest in them for them to be the focal point.

To give credit where credit is due, my daughter Emma took the photo of me working in my studio.

(I have retaken some of the photos I took yesterday.  I may post them in yesterday's post--a before and after--or in a new one. I'm making some progress working with my new camera.)