The New Blog & upcoming show!

I'm going to be ending this (neglected, sorry!) blog, and will be posting in a new blog!  The new link is https://pourchewgal.blogspot.com 

The reason for the new blog is that I'm headed to Portugal for 2 months to paint studies in the Algarve, Lisbon and Porto and I'll be reporting on that adventure as Pour Chew Gal (a pun on Portugal and a poke at Eat Pray Love).  I will post the images, both works in paint and photos, as the time there unfolds.

When I return,  the plan is that I'll be working madly to turn the studies into full sized paintings and will have a show opening May 4 at Gallery B in Bethesda MD.  It'll be open for the month of May.  What will really happen is anyone's guess!

Please check out the new blog and also you can visit my website (which will also be getting some TLC and maintenance soon) at judygilbertart.com.

Narrative Painting

 

I've been working on this narrative painting for several months.  It's big -- 5 feet wide -- and it is being painted a "start with a part" strategy where I've been making it up as I go along.  The elements in the painting combine painting from life, painting from photo references, and painting from imagination.  The story the painting tells is of a young family and shows places they've lived, experiences they've had and things they are passionate about.  

My next step with the painting is to get it into the room where it's going to be hanging, to see how the colors and elements look in the light of the space.  It's got a lot of natural light, many more windows than my studio, so I want to be sure it works as I intend.  Just getting it out of my studio and onto a wall in my house I can see some things I want to tweak.

It's too wet to travel, so stay tuned.

Mason Jars

 I took oil paint and gouache paint to Maine with me this summer.  My usual practice is to start with oil paint and then switch to gouache to allow the oils to dry before traveling home.  This year, I spent the weeks leading up to my trip to Maine working in gouache to really settle in with it. 

I'm using Turner Acryl Gouache, which is an opaque water-based paint.  It doesn't reactivate like regular gouache, so when it's dry, it's done.  It's a challenge, especially outside where the sun and breeze can harden a glob of paint in minutes, but the result is a matte finish paint.

The bouquets of flowers I'd been painting on the porch were arranged in mason jars and every day we had to pull out the flowers past their prime.  I reached a moment when I thought, if I had any courage, I'd paint the jar without the flowers.  Well, I have courage.  And I also loved to look at the way a striped landscape (table, railing, grass, rocks, ocean) seen through a jar became a mishmash of colors and forms.  So the jar series began.  

Now that I'm home and heading back to my studio, I'm planning on continuing the series in interiors seen through jars.  Maybe back into oil paints for larger canvases.  Stay tuned.

Website Updated!

 I have finally updated my website after neglecting it for way too long!  

Judygilbertart.com now has a painting gallery under landscapes for the work of Summer 2021.  I have been in Maine and painting landscapes and flowers and my new passion, mason jars, this summer.  I still have a lot of work to do to update the site -- and iPhone camera images are not the best way to view work! -- but it's a start.

The pandemic year upside has been my immersion in online classes with painters I admire, whose classes always were out of reach, too hard to get to, too expensive and unapproachable. No more!  Online art instruction is oddly more wonderful than being in a classroom in person.  The artists are generous with their expertise and the process of critique is so much better with online uploading and Procreate software used as a tool to teach.  All of which has led me to new ideas, new approaches and, as Peggi Kroll Roberts so aptly puts it, "expanding the universe."

More to come and happy painting.

New Exhibit at Gallery B Nov 6 - Dec 19

 "Ending 2020," an exhibit of my work and artist Sara Liebman, will be on display at Gallery B from November 6 - December 19 at 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda MD.  The gallery will be open to mask-wearing art lovers on Fridays and Saturdays from 12-4 pm.  Come join us and cheer for the end of 2020 with some new artwork for your home or office!

Lobsters, Again???

The top 5 ft x 3 ft oil painting of lobsters is still on my easel, not done yet.  But I am loving painting lobsters again.  The image below is a 9" x 12" gouache painting I did from my live model in Maine, done on slippery yupo paper.  

I shared the painting of the lobster below with a friend of mine, whose reaction "Lobsters again?" made me laugh.  Did anyone say to Monet, "waterlilies again?" and suggest he find a new subject?  Well, lobsters are my waterlilies.  I still have more lobster paintings in me.

Seawall, Maine

When I was in Maine a week ago, I went out to Seawall, a natural rock formation on Mount Desert Island along the coast.  I intended to paint there, but the weather was getting stormy, so I sketched in a notebook, took reference photos and worked on a oil painting when I got back in the studio.    

I've been painting in gouache so much lately that the oil paint felt like great.  I loved playing with it and having it move around and mix.  And the soft edges!  What a lot of fun.

Digital Painting

I have had Procreate software on my iPad for at least a year and I have been playing with it, but never really understanding all its features and how it works.  I finally was nudged by my friend Marie to take a class in digital painting.  I love it!  What an amazing tool and so much fun to play with.

The process we were urged to use followed classic drawing techniques, building a face by drawing the skull, the muscles, and layering on up.  The layer feature in the software makes this really work.

We were given the assignment of a profile face with dramatic lighting.  I uploaded a photo of a famous actress, and drew with that as my reference.  You can see the results in time-lapse video.

Finding Creativity

I'm like everyone else struggling to make sense of the world today and imagining what the future will be like.  One thing I love about painting is that it gets me out of the wordy world -- so much talk, so much writing, so much sound -- and into a place where paint is the expression.

I've been trying out online workshops and open studios and much to my surprise, I've been loving them.  And in spite of being largely isolated in my home, I'm in these online sessions with people in Madrid, in Dublin, in Texas, Seattle and you get the idea.  Connecting through paint isn't like connecting through words, it's almost like the paint bypasses the brain and goes straight to the heart.  Thank you to the Seattle Artist League, Atelier Dojo in Texas, Peggi Kroll Roberts in California and the Art Digger Lab in Madrid for a lot of inspiration.'

I'm working on on a new painting that I've got in my studio, where I'm.using a wire figure and a wooden person  (studio models used for exploring ways the body moves).  I'm. hoping to express in paint thoughts that completely are failed by any words I can say.

here's the original painting

 I've also been challenged to take a successful past painting and repaint it, thinking of new ways to approach the composition and expression of the paint.  Years ago, I painted metro escalators and here's the original painting and the new ideas I'm working out based on that work.

and my new approach

Brooklyn Row Houses

Here's two works in progress -- both 36 x 48" in oil.   I'm working on them simultaneously!  I have a show at Gallery B in Bethesda in April with my studio mate Sara Liebman and I plan to have these two plus a few other cityscapes to show.

this was the early stage of the above painting

Cityscapes

I'm now working on cityscapes in preparation for a show coming up in April.  I've been doing some sketches and have just started on a series of larger works.  More to come!

This is a small oil study of a street in Crown Heights, I'm planning to make a larger painting of it

Work in progress on another cityscape -- this is a 36 x 48" painting

Wedding Dresses - Updated!

This is the final wedding dress painting, I ditched the hangers and added flowers and wine glasses to the scene

Happy to be back in the studio after my latest bump in the road (4th knee replacement!).  I saw a friend's daughters' wedding dresses hanging in her house not long ago and I thought how much fun it would be to paint them.  The dresses are so different in style -- apropos of each daughter's personality -- and I added a flower girl dress and my own old wedding dress to the mix to hang in my studio.

I sketched in gouache today to try to get down some ideas about how to approach a possible painting of the dresses.  I tried a few different backdrops, including an old quilt, but went with plain gray panels.  Under strict orders to avoid getting paint on the dresses, I'm going to take them home after studio time today and work from my sketches and some reference photos I took.

Work in Progress -- Horseback Riding in Montana

In late August I was hiking in Montana on a trail at Spanish Creek, which is also a trail used by those on horseback.  Spanish Creek has a public hiking trail, but to reach it, you drive through the beautiful ranch Ted Turner owns where he has bison.

We came on these riders while hiking.  I decided to paint them in a large gouache painting.  It's not easy to paint a large painting in gouache (well, not easy for me, anyway).  This is 20 x 24 inches and I've just blocked in the large areas. Much more work to do.

Hood Canal Reflections

I was at a wedding on the Hood Canal in Washington State last weekend and had some time before the festivities to sketch  the reflections in the water.  Back in the studio this week, I took a look at my sketch and some reference photos I took to recreate the scene.  The tide was pretty far out, so the "beach" looks wide.  At high tide it's almost invisible.

gouache on paper, 11 x 14

Old Forge Summer 1962

At my grandparents "camp" in Old Forge, NY, summer of 1962, there was a water fountain built  into the dock.  An old family slide I have captured my sisters and me getting a drink.

My sisters have on matching bathing suits.  I sure hope I have something on!  You can see the beautiful wooden motor boat on the water behind us.

Painted in gouache.

New Gouache Work!

I'm so excited to share new work and maybe a new future for what I'll be working on!  After my long illness this summer, I was finally able to travel to Maine and Montana the last two weeks of August.  I took gouache paint with me.

Painting plein air in gouache is tricky -- it does dry quickly on the palette and even quicker on the painting.   The result is that its opacity has a feeling of a screen print, at least the way I've been working with it!  The colors are vivid and unmuddied.  And best of all, the paintings come home exactly as I painted them, no smearing in travel to be fixed later.

As works on paper, to go up in my studio,  I needed to get them framed.   Who knew a 9 x 12"is not a standard size?  Well, I do now.  Nonetheless, I wanted to get them up on the studio walls so I did get them professionally framed for a pretty reasonable price.  I have to build that into the sales prices for the work (presumably, in the future, I'll have some matted and sold from a bin in cellophane wrappers).

Gouache has none of the toxicity issue that oil paints and oil mediums share.  Being sick this summer (completely unrelated to painting) has made me a little sensitive about the issue of toxicity in painting, so I think oil painting will be a less frequent practice, confined to the studio,  and I'll be carrying gouache around with me in the future for Plein air.

The new work is up in the studio and it looks very fresh and different.  I can't wait for our Art Walk this Friday night to see the reaction from studio-goers.

 

Lobster Pier -- work in progress

Working on a commission that I started in the beginning of June with some onsite sketches and reference photos.

Right after I started on this, I got sick. And I don't mean just a little sick, I mean hospital, blood tests every 3 days, and six miserable weeks of being sick.  That was not the summer I'd planned on!

I feel grateful to be back in the studio and tackling this painting again.  It's a lobster pound in Kittery, Maine.  I feel like I have the essentials down, but need to work out how the many elements of the painting support (or fight) each other.

Paris, backlit museum-goers

I was in Paris, the trip was too short to sketch or paint more than one quickie on-site.  I came home with images to paint from and started this large oil sketch on illustration board this week.  I started with a blue underpainting and I'm very slowly building from there.

Mural Final

Installation will be May 21 in NYC!  Here's me and my partner-in-hardware, David Goldberg with the final work

Mural Project for NYC Education Center

Starry Night in Hardware by David Goldberg

conception of what the finished work will look like installed

I've been working for the past month on what will be a mural installed in an education center in NYC.  The mural will feature the Empire State Building, made out of door hardware!

The creator of the "Starry Night" mural in Bethesda, David
Goldberg, used hardware from his family's business to create Van Gogh's swirling painting.  He was commissioned to create this new work and asked me to work on it with him.  Unlike "Starry Night," this work will have a lot of paint showing!

I have been posting to my instagram (not surprisingly, its judygilbertlevey) in a story with every step of the way.

The project is being done on 2 panels which make up an 8' x 7' PVC surface.  PVC is not easy to paint on!

I've used a primer to set the work up for acrylic paint and it seems ok.  I wouldn't go as far as great, but it's working, just taking longer than I expected.

We've done many, many different layouts of the hardware, and adjusted the paint accordingly.

Today I think we may have settled on the finished hardware layout and tomorrow, if all goes well, the panels will be put back together so I can adjust.

This is what the hardware layout looks like

this panel is "done"