Category: Red Barn

  • Breakthrough: Nov. 19, 2009

    My day off  from the Red Barn and the  Big Honking Painting worked wonders. The middle three panels, 3, 4 & 5, were the least defined — in my head as well as by my hand. A couple of people dropped by today, which was quite pleasant. While John and his dog Dream sat and…

  • Raising the levels: Day 16, Nov.16, 2009

    It’s no wonder painters are thought to be a bit mad. This is an up-and-down business. Last night, after looking at the masonite panel photos on the web, I went into despair. I had done them under a window on a white table. They were without glare, but definitely garish. I woke up thinking dark…

  • The Masonite Studies: Day 15, Nov 15, 2009

    from Mary Shelley’s comments in Part II of her Rambles in Germany and Italy: Were I exiled, perforce, I might repine, for the heart naturally yearns for home. But to adorn that home with recollections, to fly abroad from the hive, like a bee, and return laden with the sweets of travel-scene, which haunt the…

  • Desert Tour and the Long Slope: Day 14, Nov 14, 2009

    At 1 PM today, three hours before Jer was scheduled to pick me up, I decided I had chosen the wrong vocation. I would make a much better house painter than fine arts oil painter wannabee. I started the day OK. I hung the little masonite panels, which aren’t finished but which needed to be…

  • Trauma du jour, averted. Day 13, Nov 13, 2009

    Friday the 13th. Which I’ve always, contrariwise, maintained was a good luck day for me. And it was, as my lost Fed Ex package, for which I paid 4 times the actual cost to have two-day shipping and which I desperately needed to get on with painting, was found at the Beatty Merc, having been…

  • It’s Raining!: Day 12, Nov.12, 2009

    I didn’t know what the sound was, except that it was extremely strange. The Red Barn, with its tin roof and its kangaroo rat and its tarantula and occasional bird often harbors strange sounds. But this, well, this, this sounded like rain. Pitter patter rain, on a tin roof. And so it was. Earlier in…

  • Back to Work: Day 11, Nov. 11, 2009

    A friend suggested I might be a tad too obsessed with my painting project and not adequately admiring the desert as I did last time I was at the Amargosa. While I allowed that this couldn’t possibly be the case, I did take a longer walk in my territory today and found one of the…

  • Pigments, Placements and Papa Cezanne, Day 8, Nov. 8, 2009

    Last evening in a comment on Art and Perception, Birgit spoke about “pure” and “mixed” oil pigments. I was shocked! I know about “pure” dye powders and mixtures, and although when I was dyeing fabric I sometimes succumbed to the temptations of the mixtures, I was well aware that I was doing so. The problem…

  • Visitors: Day 7, Nov. 7, 2009

    More visitors today, all welcome. First I went for a long walk north of the Barn, delighting in the scenery, the foliage, the rocks, and the human artifacts. Then, after returning, and working a bit,  John Donahoe and his grayhound (whose name I keep forgetting) showed up for more advice about painting his screen door…

  • With a Little Help from my Friends: Day 6, Nov. 6,2009

    What a pleasure it is to return to a place where people know you and your habits and your needs. Suzie and Riley McCoy, caretakers at the Museum a half mile up the road, dropped by to check on me and to see if I had the other end of their walkie-talkie. Until we find…