“Part of the painter’s discipline is day dreaming.”
—Gillian Pederson Krag, artist
photo credit: Katy Hunter
Summer is definitely over. We can feel the change in the air, the crisp, cold mornings, the subtle yellowing of the tree leaves. As I look back over the past few months, I reflect that it has been an alarming summer, to say the least. In our country, and in our world, there are plenty of dangers to fear, injustices to fight, and losses to grieve.
Me, painting in the morning with a four-year-old companion. Photo credit: Katy Hunter
In the midst of it all, what has helped me stay sane and grounded this summer have been my weekly painting sessions at Hunter Hill CSA. (Community Supported Agriculture) Hunter Hill is a small local farm that grows fruit, veggies, and herbs. My friend Katy is one of the farmers, and I’m so grateful for our morning chats while I paint. She has a little four-year-old child who often joins us and watches me paint.
photo credit: Katy Hunter
There has been such a wonderful abundance of flowers at the farm: sunflowers, tithonia, rudbeckia, and dozens more. When I take time to paint them, I feel that I have gotten to know them, and thus the flowers become my friends. Now the dahlias are having their moment of glory! I’m excited to try painting them soon.
Here are some of the paintings I have done so far, over the course of the summer:
“Morning Sunflowers” oil on primed paper, 5.25x8.25 inches
“Tithonia” oil on canvas, 10x7 inches SOLD
“Small Tithonia” oil on primed paper, 6x4 inches SOLD
“Early Misty Morning on the Farm” oil on board, 10x12 inches
Most of the mornings I painted at Hunter Hill, it happened to be cool, gray, and misty. I like this sort of weather since it makes the colors of the flowers glow even more intensely than usual. My process took on two parts. First, I would paint what I could at the farm in a two or three hour time period. Then I would take the paintings back to my studio and let them rest a week or two. When I returned to those paintings, I relied on memory and intuition.
In the preceding painting, “Sunflowers on an Overcast Morning,” I painted on top of an older painting. A bit of “blue sky” from the older landscape showed through as I worked, and this blue evolved into a sort of stream or river, an imagined river. I like to think of it as the River of Memory, which guides me as I paint.
photo credit: Katy Hunter
I’m so grateful for the precious mornings I have had with the flowers. This has been a time to for me to see. A time to be. I’m constantly coming back to this idea that being an artist is all about seeing and being, more than doing. In its purest form, painting is the act of paying attention at a soul-level. And at the same time, there is space for dreaming, for remembering, and for waiting.