911 apple original art

This is a gourd- if you shake it you will feel and hear the seeds rattle.
Painted with acrylics it is 7 inches tall and 6 inches wide.

Bomb scare this Christmas eve has the TSA and our shocked memories up in arms.
I am putting this on eBay starting at $5.
My heart goes out to all the souls lost that September and ever since in the "war on terror"

Evolution of a portrait

I did a brave and appalling thing yesterday by trying to paint myself half undressed, at my age! Lately I have been reviewing my work and coincidentally mounting a mini-retrospective at a local venue. Surprising myself,it seems as though I have been painting nests in various media and with various symbolism for YEARS, decades... So it is time to really look, to really see what I am trying to say. Is there a way to say it clearly enough so that I can move beyond the repetitive nest? How raw is the experience? I feel as though there is a spiritual message I have constantly failed to properly convey. I feel humbled. I feel I have to get back to the studio...

Here are some stages and details to yesterday's experience.

I admire Alice Neel for being able, at age 84, to look starkly, and artistically at herself and celebrate the inner soul. Her painting is at the National Portrait gallery in Washington DC.

This is 18 x 12 inches, acrylic paint and map collage on birch luan panel

studio wall

Strange days. Where does the time go? Yesterday was a snow day... but after 7 hours painting today I realize that I am barely getting enough done in the studio. What should I be working on? There is the idea of GIFTS. Do I make things for Christmas? What value does the work have as a gift in these times?

What else can I afford to do? 

Started a store in the back of my studio in hopes to pay rent, bring more people in....and a few small items of my friends Rosemary and Michael have been selling. That is encouraging. 

Today I painted five paintings- three as gifts for neighbors and two that are larger and not finished and most likely unsell-able. They are figurative, symbolic, and intuitive. That just might not cut it on the commercial market. I haven't painted the figure so regularly in a long time- since this studio shot back in 2002.

 Strange days.

Trail of the nightgown

There are days I shouldn't get out of bed. My mind jumps to fantasies...dreamy mornings roll into steamy afternoons, and musical evenings.
5 x 7 inches, acrylic paint on nice thick arches paper

Swimming upstream

Found this in the archives yesterday and I am amazed at the language. It is a portrait of my husband bones and all. What is even more scary than the sweat rolling off his forehead and the lies emanating from his mouth, are the words: HOPE. Jeeze! They freak me out all hairy in the green sky!

16 x 12 inches acrylic on canvas board. Painted in 2002

Kylies' dad

The nest as an idea and a place to be.

Acrylic on canvas- 12 x 6 x 2 inches

OPEN STUDIO TOUR COMING UP

Here is a choice we can make every morning...
or even at any moment during the day.


I will be raffling off this small 6 x 9 inch print mounted on canvas. If you can't stop by the studio, but are interested- please email me your contact information and I will throw your name into the suitcase of contenders. I made the print through FineartAmerica.com and it is pretty nice- with pads and sawtooth hangar on the back side. No need to frame!
tillystudio@aol.com

Nest with chair, nest with suitcase

The nest painting is just painted over an older image done last fall of shoes, maps and suitcase.

The earlier one was about movement- I was actually trying to pack for a trip to Miami Basel.
This new painting more about being still- though there is the hint, with the vehicle in background, of movement. (I think that is my family exiting)

Empty nest in studio

It's time to get back to the studio, empty nest and all.

THE EARLY YEARS

In one we had the whole world in front of us... and 5 years later we had our homestead.

Waiting

Watercolor.
Is this the way to love?

House of Lies

This is living with an addict.

Smell the Roses

I made this wood and paint construction while the babysitter held my son. I was desparate to understand what I was going through and needed to make art to get there. This forest features a giant rose and an exhausted mother in her house shaped space. She needs to turn towards the flower and breath deeply. 

Though I loved being a mother it really stripped me down to my skeletal soul. Does falling in love make your vision narrow and yet open your body?

Nests in the past

I love these two paintings... even though they were painted in times of struggle. I felt very alone building the nest... even though my husband worked the farm and was managing the addition onto the house, I was often alone. It felt as though I had really gone out on a limb being a wife and mother.  The long narrow painting was about Time and the midnight care of my son that probably connected me to other mothers across the globe. I consoled myself with the thought that while I was up nursing, rocking, and living without sleep, other women were in their own houses doing it too. I collaged individual panels of house shaped wood panels so that we would really be connected.

nest within barbed wire

I did this in the late 1980's. It is three panels hinged together in the back with copper tabs. I was trying to convince my husband that having a child would be good for us. i remember wandering across the farm past the edges of the fields and finding nests in the crooks of old tires, in barbed wire, thorned hedges and junk piles. I knew you could build a thing out of beauty even if it were a trash site. I think that is what I am best at- Making something beautiful out of something ugly. In fact, I have rarely seen anything ugly...
Angry is ugly. It is hard to look anger in the face and keep my strength.

Marriage in retrospect: Juggling act

Moving through the storage I have flipped through stacks of paintings made over the years and found most of them to be reflecting aspects of my marriage. While my mind and heart seem to conflict on this one, and my spouse and I trade insanely different memories of the same moments, my artwork has definitely captured some truth to where I stand. I think I will post a few of them.

This one was called My Marriage is a Juggling Act... and yet... I wonder about the ominous fish in the waters and the ability of my man to catch me. With the way my hair is painted I feel as though I am actually being thrown up into the space rather than down into his hands.

Stormy weather

6 x 6 inches

There has been a bit of a storm going on as I figure out the relationship I now have with the man I married 22 years ago. He has moved away and yet wants me to be his wife. I am exhausted and my heart and head conflict. I can't place any text in this one. It's stormy, to say the least.

EMPTY Nest

Time pours on out

My son the afternoon he left for Military school. He is holding his grandma's hourglass. I love being his mother. I cannot believe how my baby can be so grown. His big toe is the size of his whole foot when he was born.
6 x 6 inches

Rest stop

So I haven't been able to paint. Too many family crisis to deal with... They just keep coming and coming. I know I can handle them all but I have to work hard not to freak out.
My son took this picture and I really love it.

SOLD my soul

This is heading to California! I have a good stable following of women from all over California!
Got accepted, after a submission process, to be part of the Infusion gallery in LA, and for a moment it was SO EXCITING. Then I read the fine print and realized I had to pay a fee and it was going to cost me money to exhibit there.... so BOO HOO.

This is called interior tropical Paradise... 6 x 6 paint and collage on panel, $150.

Love on wheels

8.5 x 8.5 inches.
Ah- memory of the year(s) between my first love Bobby and my husband Rick. I spent the time traveling up both coasts of the country...
First there was the pink Cadillac that responded to my thumb and brought me up the Californian coast. Then there was
Tedward. We rode his almost silent BMW from Boston to Montreal. Hmmm... where are those black leather pants?

Map eyes on road

9 x 9 collage and paint on panel.
A wintry year.
Snow, road, electric wires, eyes, maps, a lake...
hibernation, movement, connection, vision, sacrifice.

Home with baby

9 x 9 inches, paint and headline text collage. If the homecoming was not the way she imagined... can you imagine what she was thinking?

This was done for 1991, the fall I took my son to France to meet my grandmother, aunts and uncles, and stay at a castle with my sister. On the trip my son rolled over for the first time and I learned how to manuever his additional luggage along with mine. It was... idealistic to return home.

Fiscal surprise party

6 x 6 inches paint and headline text on wood panel

Girlfriends holding me up

5 x 7 inches paint and text on wood panel

Fortune cookies

paint on panel with text
6 x 6 inches

what feeds you?

Living in a Fog

9 x 9 inches
This was about my 19th year....
living in a fog.

A Bit wiser

9 x 9 inches paint and headline text
Some of the beautiful gifts of Time

Woman at End

TRY TO RUN
6 x 6 inches.
ever had one of these days? How about weeks? Then imagine a year.

Sisters in field

6 x 6 inches
My baby sister has always inspired me to be a better person...
Everyone should have a person who believes in them- Believes they are even better than they really are. It makes you strive for excellence. It gives the world hope.

Girl in suitcase

Suitcases seem to be a recurring theme in my years... I have several more to paint. This memory was one of my earliest- a fear of being left behind once my parents made plans to move on.

WINDOW WITH LAMP

"Wait"
Be still.
The voice of God is in the stillness. The path is still clouded, but soon I will trust the way to be shown.
9 x 9 inches

two canoes

9 x 9 inches
A scene from a marriage. Challenges- look at posting on www.tillystudio.blogspot.com

Playing Pool

Playing games. My teenage years were full of games- all different types. This is JW at Chantilly. It was a beautiful pool table... with a smooth green felt... perfect if you ignored the small vomit stain contributed by one of my girlfriends. So much of those times seems to be a roller coaster as well. Highs and lows. Could the 40's be a repeat of the adolescent years?!

Memories Under a Canon

9 x 9 inches
Me at the Citadel in Haiti. About 10 years old.