the still life lifestyle

Home Renovations

2007-07-23T06:52:00.000-07:00

It's summer, the rain has been pouring down for a month or more, and we're in the midst of home renovations. I'm itching to make more ACEOs or tiny still lifes, but there's just no time or place.

Speaking of homes, I'm posting some pictures of homes and animal homes (barns, that is), a series I was working on just before we moved into our new house and found ourselves in a pile of bricks and rubble.

Peonies

2007-05-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

"Pink Peonies"

8.5 x 13 cm

Watercolour & gouache

US$ 30.00

On our way back from a walk in nearby castle gardens we happened upon a field where peonies were being harvested. A man at a stand was selling them fresh from the field.

They opened up almost instantly once at home. The little carving of the Indonesian woman in kabaya I bought at a local esoterics shop one day. Normally I avoid shops reeking that heavily of incense, but the four little figurines in the shop window were so charming I went in, and this little woman jumped out, so I bought her.

In colonial Indonesia many Dutch men had children - some illegitimately, others legitimately - with local women. The Indonesian roots of the subsequently rather dark-skinned children were fervently denied in later generations. This mix was not acceptable, particularly to the Dutch back in Holland, who called the mixed children coming back from the colonies "Indos".

The stigma has gone, and it's almost like being part of a secret society when others recognize your colonial "tint". Was my own great, great, great (etc.) grandfather so charmed by a lovely little woman with her black hair in a knot that he took her as a wife?

Full Bloom

2007-05-24T06:15:00.000-07:00

"Pink Rose"
ca. 11 x 14 cm
Watercolour
US$ 30.00

Sailing into the Wild Blue Yonder

2007-05-24T06:12:00.001-07:00

"Sailboat & Shells"
ca. 13 x 25 cm
Watercolour & gouache
US$ 45.00

The Phases of a Rose

2007-05-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

"The Phases of a Rose"
10.5 x 13.5 cm
Watercolour
US$ 30.00

Shades of Blue

2007-05-07T03:55:00.000-07:00

"Shades of Blue"

2.5 x 3.5 inches

Watercolour

US$ 15.00

The Flower of the Colonies

2007-05-07T02:00:00.000-07:00

"Tulip & Wayang"

c. 10 x 18 cm

Watercolour

US$ 30.00

A wayang is a wooden puppet used in Indonesian puppet plays. So many Dutch people have a wayang puppet in their home: a reminder of the colonial ties between the Netherlands and Indonesia, or perhaps just a colourful souvenir of a trip to the archipelago. In my case, the wayang came from the local Terre des Hommes, a benefit organization for the poor. It's a dusty, faded old wayang with chips in its paint. With an orange tulip, symbol of the Netherlands, beside it, the scene becomes gains meaning.

Tulips for Chikanobu

2007-05-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

"Tulips for Chikanobu"

11 x 16.3 cm

Watercolour

US$ 30.00

“Chikanobu?” you’re probably thinking. “What is that?” I like including bits of my own modest art collection in my still life. Last year I bought a Japanese woodcut by Chikanobu at a local gallery. It is incredibly delicate. Chikanobu made a series of “beautiful women” portraits, and this young Japanese girl marvelling at a goldfish in a bowl she’s holding reminded me of my student days and my beautiful goldfish.

The spring tulips are quickly disappearing. When you buy tulips now, they last only a few days. The last fields of tulips are disappearing from the Dutch landscape. Tulip season is short and exuberant, and I miss them when they’re gone. However, tulip season flows seamlessly into peony season. What a wonderful flower that is!

I’m painting some slightly larger still lifes as well, though I fully intend to keep painting ACEOs. Sometimes, in trying to describe the beauty before you, it’s hard to limit yourself to a paragraph.

I’ve included the same image twice. One is a scan, the other a photograph. Neither seems to do justice to the original. However, the photograph shows the detail and colour variation the scanner can’t seem to reproduce.

2007-05-02T00:27:00.000-07:00

"Spring Pattern"
Watercolour
app. 24 x 32 cm
US$ 100

I love patterns, and there's something fascinating about painting them. You start on it like a climber starts his journey up Mount Everest, without knowing if it will be a success. Halfway through, you know that it could be a success, if all goes right and continues the way it's been going - a precarious balance. When you're filling in that last pattern piece, it's an enormous rush of victory and elation.

This patterned cloth looked so lovely with my trusty model Josephine and a vase of purple tulips that I just had to try. Going round the corner to do the pattern in perspective on top of the table was the biggest gamble I had to take. Painting is an activity that resides somewhere between joy and fear.

Tea Tins

2007-05-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

"Tea Tins"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
Watercolour
US$ 15.00

I like buying tea. I like it almost more than drinking tea, and I have more leaf tea than I know what to do with. But that gives me an excuse to buy lots of interesting tea tins, doesn't it!

The prize would be a silver tea tin with a lock; that's what I want for my "collection". Tea used to be such a precious commodity that the owners of a grand house locked the tea in the tin so that the maid wouldn't steal it. That and their tulip bulbs, which at one time were worth more than the entire house and a year's wages for the maid.

What would you, modern twenty-first-century man or woman, lock in a box so the maid couldn't steal it? Your laptop? Your mobile phone?

Beach Finds

2007-05-01T01:25:00.000-07:00

"Beach Finds"
app. 25 x 40 cm
Watercolour
US$ 100

They go into the water as broken bottles and rubble, and the sea transforms them into semi-precious bits of translucent shoreline treasure.

I've tried to express this translucence with paint; the bit of reflected coloured light under each bit of beach glass.

Beach weather in April

2007-04-29T23:19:00.000-07:00

Shell & Shards
2.5 x 3.5 inches
Watercolour
US$ 15.00

It has been ridiculously warm in Holland in April - full-on beach weather for more than a week. The shards of beach glass are "nostalgia items"I took with me from PEI.

New Format

2007-04-03T03:38:00.000-07:00

The Three Primaries
16.5 x 18.5 cm
watercolour
Sold

An ACEO is like a poem: tiny and elliptical. A full-sized watercolour is like a novel: it tells the whole story. This little painting is is short story. These flamboyant tulips with their expansive gestures were too large to be restricted to a tiny card-sized painting.

Yellow, red and blue: the three primaries at their springtime best.

Lemon Yellow

2007-03-26T05:41:00.000-07:00

Lemon Yellow
2.5 x 3.5 inches
Watercolour
Sold

Daffodils are like little bits of the sun in the spring grass. They're cheeky flowers without any reserve, bold and bright like all yellow-coloured things from nature.

I've written it before, I think: watercolours just don't scan well, and the lemons are showing up a little redder than they really are.

Free Ranunculus

2007-03-26T05:33:00.000-07:00

Ranunculus
2.5 x 3.5 inches
Watercolour
Sold

Bought a lovely bunch of bright pink tulips at my local supermarket the other day, and got a bunch of somewhat bedraggled-looking ranunculus for free. They perked right up in the vase, and even the buds decided to start blooming.

Tea & Tulips

2007-03-26T05:29:00.000-07:00

Tea & Tulips
2.5 x 3.5 inches
Watercolour & coloured pencil
Sold

Winter flower

2007-03-11T08:47:00.000-07:00

"Winter Tulip"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
Watercolour
For sale

Last month I went home to Canada for ten days. An unusually early spring had already begun in Holland. Not so on Prince Edward Island. It was so cold outside that one morning, it was only 6 degrees in the house before there was a roaring fire going in the big wood furnace downstairs.

And yet, the light was starting to change, the sun making blue shadows on the snow. The ice flowers on the window weren’t the only flowers looking out over the snowy landscape.

Signs of Spring?

2007-02-11T12:57:00.000-08:00

"Tulips in February"

2.5 x 3.5 inches

watercolour

Sold

Spring comes much earlier here than in much of North America. This year, it wasn't really even winter until last week, when it snowed one day. All the snow that fell cleared up the same evening, and we can tentatively start speaking of spring.

Whether or not spring will actually come, tulips have appeared at the market. Only 2 euros a bunch. It's my favourite season, tulip season. Here they are on my windowsill, bringing colour to my living room.

Red Box

2006-12-04T06:58:00.000-08:00

"The Red Box"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
Watercolour
Sold

Another accidental still life with my Moroccan bowl on my dresser.

Apple Green

2006-11-30T00:57:00.000-08:00

"Apple Green"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
Watercolour
Sold

A glass as green as Granny Smith apples.

Dwindling Daylight

2006-11-27T01:51:00.000-08:00

Bowl of Fruit
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
Sold

With the days getting shorter and shorter, I find I have to make more and more of my still lifes in the evening light. My fruit bowl is filled with the autumn's harvest.

Sculpting

2006-11-26T06:30:00.000-08:00

I've been away from The Still Life Lifestyle for almost...well...a month, but I haven't been sitting still. Here are some pictures of a new project I've embarked on : papier mache sculpture. My head is full of plans for the next one! So many plans, so little time to execute them all.

Rosehips

2006-10-24T00:53:00.000-07:00

"Rosehips"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
Watercolour
SOLD

Sometimes you can philosophize about inspiration, and sometimes it just comes because the colours are pretty....

A Philosophical Excursion into Artistic Materialism

2006-10-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

"Artefacts"
Watercolour

Intimate still lifes. I like that as a term for the little paintings I make. It got me thinking, why do I paint things? Things are just things, and they don’t appear to have any special meaning.

I was pondering this as I went for a lengthy walk in the dreary autumn weather today. I had a bag in hand, and it was full of “things”, natural “things” like a stack of different-coloured autumn leaves, a bunch of rosehips, a few pretty feathers. Why this love for things? Am I a materialist? I recalled what Anne Classen Knutson wrote in her article “Andrew Wyeth’s Language of Things” (Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic, by Anne Classen Knutson [ed.]. Atlanta: High Museum of Art, p. 47): “Objects stimulate and nourish his associative imagination: in the studio, Wyeth scatters leaves, shells, and things from his childhood to trigger memories and initiate the creative process.” Now I’m a great admirer of Wyeth, but I do not claim any influence or likeness to him in my paintings, but he too shows traits of a materialist, though Knutson, I think, perceptively pinpoints a reason for materialism in art.

About a hundred years ago, it seems (though it’s really only six), I finished my Masters degree with a thesis on two materialist poets, Eugène Guillevic and Francis Ponge. “La surface du pain est merveilleuse d'abord à cause de cette impression quasi panoramique qu'elle donne…” (The surface of a loaf of bread is marvellous first because of that almost panoramic impression that it makes…) writes Ponge. There it is in front of him, a warm baguette from the local bakery, its crusty exterior slashed and baked to form a golden landscape. It’s just a thing, material, a surface. Ponge contemplates the bread, examines it mentally, opens it verbally and prods at its interior, explores the valleys and crests of its physiognomy like he’s in a strange land. The hinterland of a baguette reminds him of a sponge, and then Ponge ends his walk through the soft and undulating landscape of the loaf abruptly: “Mais brisons-la : car le pain doit être dans notre bouche moins objet de respect que de consommation” (But let’s break it: because bread, in our mouths, should not so much be an object of respect, but one of consumption). The baguette returns to simply being a baguette, a thing, but it has led to the most marvellous associative excursion through a foreign landscape, through Christian symbolism, even. “Objects stimulate and nourish his associative imagination”. Ponge is nourished artistically and literally by the material that is bread.

I can’t say all my still lifes have this depth, but making still lifes is a matter of association. Certain things in my home have meaning, and some have greater meaning than others. I find I can write more about the things that have greater meaning for me.

“Shards” is one of those paintings that stimulates my associative thinking. Blue and white porcelain is of such significance in Dutch society, in my life. I associate it with Indonesia, Chinese pottery, wealth, grandeur, colonialism, the VOC and foreign travels; I also associate it with kitsch, homeliness, small-mindedness, out-dated thinking and kitchen tiles with hackneyed proverbs.

Not an ACEO this time, but a square, tile-sized watercolour.

When You Frame an ACEO...

2006-10-22T07:40:00.000-07:00

When you frame an ACEO it becomes a real little work of art. It's no longer just a trading card; it's a work of art to be enjoyed and admired for its minuteness, for the simple statement it makes.

Autumn Palette

2006-10-19T00:41:00.000-07:00

"Autumn Palette"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
SOLD

I was biking back home from horseback riding last week. It was a beautiful day and the leaves were falling from the trees. I stopped under a tree that had shed a few yellow and red leaves, and I liked their colour so much that I took them home. Together with the chestnuts I picked up a while ago and on my warm-coloured hardwood table they make a lovely autumn palette.

Accidental Still Life

2006-10-16T03:06:00.000-07:00

"Moroccan Bowl"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
Sold

Sometimes I arrange things so that they form a suitable composition for a still life, and sometimes I just find one. When my husband and I married and moved our stuff into one apartment, we suddenly had three fruit bowls, but they were all nice enough to keep.
Even with three bowls, we sometimes have more fruit and things in the house than they can hold. My Moroccan bowl was filled to the brim with plums, tomatoes, apples, pears and a lemon. Walnuts are drying in the shell in another bowl, and the third holds a pile of papers that we just can't seem to find a suitable place for.

Montreal Breakfast

2006-10-15T04:35:00.000-07:00

"Montreal Breakfast"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
FOR SALE

A few years ago I took a three-week trip through the east of Canada with my husband, sister, and her husband. Our destination was Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, and we started in Montreal. We stayed in a hostel in Old Montreal; it was a bit shabby and had a congenial hippy atmosphere, though we were clearly getting a little bit too old to be staying in a youth hostel, because the extremely laid-back atmosphere and anything-goes organisation caused us some irritation. For breakfast we went to a most charming café nearby. It was in a New World French style, lovely cheerful colours, home-made croissants, lots of people reading the newspaper on Sunday morning, and everyone with a typical Montreal bowl of café au lait.

Chestnuts

2006-10-10T03:07:00.000-07:00

"Chestnuts"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
SOLD

It really is fall. The chestnuts have fallen off the trees and the leaves will soon follow. Fall in Holland comes gently and it never reaches the screaming exhuberance of a Canadian Indian summer.

The trees turn shades of light green, orange and brown, and the light becomes muted. Fall is hardly distinguishable from winter here; the seasons flow gently into one another without any excesses in cold or heat.

I painted the last of the chestnuts in the "womb". There aren't even that many fallen chestnuts left: many were crushed in traffic and the rest have been collected. It's funny how everyone collects chestnuts. They really have no use, and there's such an abundance of them and nonetheless, people love to gather them.

Lamp Post

2006-10-09T03:16:00.000-07:00

"Lamp Post"
2.5 x 2.5 inches
watercolour
SOLD

Ever get bored at your work? Don't tell my boss, but I sometimes do. I made this little sketch of a lamp post outside my office window in the summertime. Those leaves on the trees are now turning yellow and are about to fall off.

Shards

2006-10-08T01:09:00.000-07:00

"Shards"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
SOLD

I'm always looking at the ground when I walk, and I find lots of things that way. I find pennies, four-leafed clovers, and once I even found a raw amethyst by the shore. What a day that was!

From time to time I find little bits of pottery and dishware, and I collect the blue and white ones. I have a piece of tile with a tulip pattern and intriguing bits of bowls and plates. To me these little bits of household refuse are like a treasure.

Chapter Two

2006-10-05T03:12:00.000-07:00

"Chapter Two"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
SOLD

Fall has arrived, the days are shorter, and there's nothing better in the weekend than a good book and a lovely vase of fall flowers.

Flower Still Life

2006-10-04T01:06:00.000-07:00

"Blue Hydrangeas"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
SOLD

The rain showers of autumn have come and the temperature has cooled in Holland. The hydrangeas I bought at the market last month have dried to a lavender-blue.

Lusitano for Sale on eBay

2006-10-02T22:05:00.000-07:00

For sale on eBay:
SOLD

The Living Ocean

2006-09-27T07:24:00.000-07:00

"Carp"
4.6 x 7.1 inches
etching
FOR SALE

I’ve always been fascinated by the thought that there are worlds out there that we humans don’t participate in. There’s the air, the domain of the birds, the deep woods, where all sorts of animals privately live out their lives, there’s the microscopic world and the world of radio waves, but the one that I find most intriguing is water. It is the shroud of the medium makes that world so evasive.

When you go to the shore and you look out at that vast body of water before you, you speak of it in its collective term, “ocean” because that’s all you see, that large reflective surface that goes on seemingly forever. “Ocean” is a collective term, because there is so much below it. On the shore the refuse of shells, crab carcasses, starfish and seaweed spewed out by the surf; slivers, remnants and signs of what hides beneath.

A parasitology lecturer at university once made the invisible world concrete. “The eelworm, a tiny nematode”, she explained, “is so numerous, ubiquitous, in fact, that if we were to remove all physical objects from the world except the eelworms, their shapes would remain visible”. Writhing, squirming eelworm ghosts. That’s how I try to imagine the ocean, drained of all its water, its inhabitants in place.

Picture the whales hovering like zeppelins kilometers above the sludgy ocean floor, where sickly, light-deprived monsters and living dust prey and are preyed on. Tuna flash like race-car drivers between schools of silver herring. Reefs form humps and bumps nearer shorelines. Stingrays like kites overhead and jellyfish like Mary Poppins’ umbrella; jungles of seaweed coming from the ocean floor. It would be a teeming, moving scene full of life, life that is reflected and hidden by the surface of the water.

Maybe it’s because of this fascination that I had a goldfish in my first university year. It taught me how foreign the world of water is to me. The goldfish did not live long; after a week in my care it turned upside-down, paddled around a bit, and in trying to get it right-side-up again, I changed its water once, then twice and even three times a day, thinking perhaps I had gotten a bowl too small and that its own waste water was making it ill. The fish died after a few short weeks.

How could I have known that the secret to its life lay not in the water but in the air? The mouth of the bowl was too small, the fish drowned in the very thing it needed most and through the absence the one thing it could not live in. I still feel guilty to this day thinking that I had caused it to suffer.

That was the end of my goldfish-keeping days.

At lunchtime I sometimes go to the nearest body of water to think about the life in it. There’s a pond in the nearby botanical gardens with a school of over-sized and lazy Koi carp in it. They drift to the sides of the pond when they notice a human presence, and especially when the shadow of a bird overhead passes over their water, I am aware of their world and ours.

A quick sketch turned into an etching.

The First Paintings

2006-09-26T02:09:00.000-07:00

"Sunflowers"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
SOLD

"Bowl & Chopsticks"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
SOLD

Live Lusitanos

2006-09-18T02:58:00.000-07:00

"Musical Ride"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
Watercolour, collage &
imitation gold leaf
For sale

"Levade"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
Watercolour & imitation gold leaf
For sale

"Backlit"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
Watercolour &
imitation gold leaf

For sale

It promised to be a beautiful and warm day, the day of the Lusitano show. I had been planning to go there for months; it’s so rare to see Lusitanos in Holland, let alone a lot of them.

What is a Lusitano? A Lusitano is a Portuguese breed of horse. It’s a very old breed, and if you’ve ever seen copper engravings of horses from the 17th and 18th centuries, or even old paintings from that era, it’s very likely you’re seeing a Lusitano or the related breed, the Andalusian. Think of a painting by Titian. Flowing manes, a short, rounded body, a cresty neck, a roman nose: these characterize the Lusitano. They are strikingly baroque, all curves and flowing lines, like gold ornamentation, gilded chairs, velvet wall “paper”, mountainous periwigs and the Brandenburg concerti by Bach.

A train trip of around an hour brought me to Houten, a town near the centre of Holland. A bit of biking, a wrong turn and then a right one, and I saw a small sign in the grass with on it “Lusitanos” and an arrow pointing the way.

Five or six mares and their riders were circling around the main ring. Grey, bay, and a striking golden-dun coat; slender, arched noses and necks and a springy stride that does little to hide their fiery nature; one by one the mares passed by the judges. The Lusitanos proved to be remarkably quick and agile. A sudden move from someone in the audience could cause them to raise their forelegs in a brief levade and wheel round away from the frightening movement. Where an Arabian horse is all forward movement and long, low, flowing strides, the Lusitano is up and down and coiled like a spring.

Nothing was more beautiful and breathtaking than two young stallions that were obviously quite new to the show ring. They darted about their handlers, rearing, plunging, calling out, snorting, their heads raised and necks crested with impetuous and youthful maleness. I think the most glorious moment is perhaps when a young and nervous stallion stands still, raises its head almost horizontally and with distended nostrils looks out from below a voluminous tuft of manes just before it recommences its dance around the handler.

Later these stallions become the very model of civilization and education. In their youth their coats are a dark and steely grey and they bleach out to a silvery white, learning meanwhile to dance to the aids of their rider. In the far ring on that sunny day in Houten such a model of equine learning danced with its baroque-costumed rider to flute concerti of several centuries past.

I spent the afternoon in Houten sketching and turned these sketches into ACEOs. Since gold leaf combines so beautifully with these baroque horses I applied it to these ACEOs. Unfortunately the scanner doesn’t pick up the gold colour well and turns it brownish. It’s unfortunate, because in real life the gold-covered portions of the images are light, and not darker as they appear here.

Bowl & Lemon

2006-09-13T00:50:00.000-07:00

"Bowl & Lemon"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
SOLD

Red Rooftop

2006-09-03T02:53:00.000-07:00

"Rooftop"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
For sale
I work in the city of Leiden in one of the university buildings. The building I work in is a standard grey '70s brick building, but I look out at a building that's popularly known as the "Arsenal", from the days when arsenal for the military was stored there. These days the department of Sinology and Asian Studies is housed in this brown brick building.

Older brick buildings in Holland usually have a tiled roof. If you look out over the city of Leiden, which has an old city centre, from a high point, you see a lovely quilt of red-tiled roofs and green trees.

I love looking out at this rooftop. It changes with the weather, and it makes a lovely frame for the sky. On brilliant sunny days it's a stark and scorching red. Under rolling clouds its red becomes a more muted ochre colour. Seagulls use it as a place to perch.

It reminds me of paintings by 19th-century Dutch paintings by painters like Weissenbruch.

The Humbling Seagull

2006-08-31T01:04:00.000-07:00

"Seagull on Rooftop"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
SOLD

Seagulls don't rank high on people's list of favourite birds; in fact they're right up there with the 'flying rats', pigeons, which are so numerous in city where I live. However, I have a weak spot for them (and all animals, including the 'flying rats'), and appreciate their strong, clean beauty.

I live in an apartment building on the fifth floor. It's not all that high, but it's high enough that you participate in the lives of birds more than you do in what goes on on the street at pedestrian level. I look out over the treetops and rooftops, and sometimes birds, especially gulls, come flying right past our windows in a white flash, which is always an impressive site.

A peculiar characteristic of gulls is that they always seek out the highest point possible to sit and observe what's going on below. It's the curse of many a statue. Often you'll see some grand figure in bronze with his head totally besmirched by irreverent gulls who seem to take a delight in posthumously belittling a Man of Great Importance.

The air vents and chimneys on the apartment building beside ours are one of these high spots gulls like to frequent. It was a grey and damp day last weekend when I looked out the window and saw this radiant white gull, perched on a chimney against a backdrop of blue-green trees, feeling grander than the grandest man immortalized in bronze.

Gulls do have a way of keeping one humble even in life. Around six years ago my sister and I were walking on the seaside boulevard in Scheveningen, which, on sunny days, is teeming with people. We were walking along enjoying the sun, when something that felt like a hot, wet bomb landed on my head. I grabbed at it, then looked at my fingers, which were covered in fresh, sticky bird poo. What a mess in my hair! Why me, when there were thousands of others he could have bombarded? Was it a message?

Time to read Johnathan Seagull, perhaps...

Unfortunately watercolour is a very tricky medium to scan well, especially lighter shades, which disappear altogether. In the scan of the little painting above the grey of the gulls wing is all washed out, as is the violet-blue shadow on his breast.

Hydrangeas

2006-08-30T02:08:00.000-07:00

"Hydrangeas"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
For sale

Last Saturday I went to the market to buy flowers. The market in is large and crowded, and after about 10:30 am, when the Saturday shopping crowd has made it out of their beds, I don't enjoy shopping there anymore.

I was at the market early last Saturday, and I wandered from stand to stand to see which was offering the best deal on flowers. Gladioluses, roses, gerberas, lilies, hydrangeas and all shapes and colours of flowers make it hard to choose. They all have their own beauty and they all call "take me home, take me home."

Hydrangeas are in season right now, and being the penny-pinching Dutchwoman I am, the fact that you can stop giving them water after a week and dry them, so that they last much longer than any other flower, convinced me to buy them. They've been giving me joy ever since, and they'll be the inspiration for many little paintings to come...

"Wine and flowers"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
SOLD

My Favorite Model

2006-08-29T01:29:00.000-07:00

"Artistic Muse"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
Sold

Meet my favorite model. She's able to hold long poses without moving at all. She never complains about being cold, she doesn't object to any setting, she never gets bored or hungry, and probably best of all, she's cheap.

I met Mary (that's what I'll call her today; I give her different names on different days, depending on my mood) one day while I was walking through my old neighbourhood in the Hague. I had been looking for some time for a plaster cast to use as a model for drawings. There didn't seem to be too many around, though a museum in Haarlem I'd been to did have them. Not one was less than 100 euros, and this was simply too much for me, since it was to be strictly a utilitarian purchase.

So there I was, walking down a messy street where my art supply shop stood next to an all-day sports cafe, a parking garage, and further on a wine store, a shady dealer in goods that were never the same from week to week, and a small tanning salon. At the very end of that street was a dingy dealer in secondhand goods and so-called antiques, with a lot of copper and heavy glass vases. In the middle of this dark shop, where in the background a group of short, fat, ageless cigar-smoking men sat in aimless togetherness she stood like a pristine virgin, radiating her whiteness to the passersby. You might say there was 'something about Mary' that drew me into the shop, where I haggled her down to 15 euros, and got her in a dirty secondhand shopping bag.

Since that day Mary has led a life of luxury in my home. She poses from time to time, sometimes in larger paintings in oil, and sometimes for these tiny ones in watercolour. Last weekend I set her up in front of my modest art collection, which includes works by the now extremely popular painting-a-day painters Duane Keiser and Julian Merrow-Smith, as well as a print by wood engraver Andy English.

Starting off

2006-08-28T03:00:00.000-07:00

This is my first post to my new blog. I'm going to start off quietly, modestly, and shyly - the way I am. And that's the way my little paintings are too. I'll be sharing them on this blog starting with the next posting. Tiny little paintings, modest, a little bit shy - they represent quiet corners in my home and surroundings, the unnoticed views. Shy and modest, and unaware of their humble beauty.