Pink Chair: Exciting News for the Pink Chair Project!

Pink Chair: Exciting News for the Pink Chair Project!: ________________________________________________________________ I am delighted to share this news with all my followers: "Dear Lynne: ...

Exciting News for the Pink Chair Project!

________________________________________________________________

I am delighted to share this news with all my followers:

"Dear Lynne:

The review committee of Illuminations is pleased to inform you that your work has been chosen for display in the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center.  We would like to accept all of paintings that you submitted for review.

As you know, the mission of Illuminations is to create a visually healing environment, offering enlightenment, inspiration, and encouragement to patients, family members, friends and staff through the visual arts.  We believe your work reflects that ideal and will bring joy to many men, women and children whose lives have been touched by cancer.  We thank you for submitting your work for consideration.

Your work will be displayed in the February 2012-June 2012 exhibit.  A formal letter will be mailed to you with more details."

Little did I realize how far this would be going when I painted this first piece in public on top of Mt. Battie in Maine. At that time I thought I would do 3 to 5 pieces. Now there are 18 in the exhibit (still on display at tthe Topsfield Library) and I have completed two since the exhibit opened. And I am still painting. 

Pink Chair: Sharing your Thoughts

Pink Chair: Sharing your Thoughts: A beautiful ship that sailed by when I was painting at Marshall Point, Maine One of the items that I have at the exhibit in the Topsfield ...

Sharing your Thoughts

A beautiful ship that sailed by when I was painting at Marshall Point, Maine

One of the items that I have at the exhibit in the Topsfield library is a Remembrance journal. People sit in the pink chair, think of their own loved ones and write a message in the journal. It is my hope that this sharing can go on as the blog does, which will be for a while....


My friend Val, lost her mother recently She has posted some lovely thoughts about her but I was really taken with the quote she found and shared. She has approved my sharing it with you.


the quote:

"I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."

"

Gone where?"



Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, "There, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming, and there are other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!" And that is dying.

"

- Henry van Dyke (1852 – 1933) American author, educator, and clergyman

Pink Chair: On site (plein air) or studio?

Pink Chair: On site (plein air) or studio?: painting at Popham Beach in Maine Studio door at 28 West Main St. In Georgetown, MA A follower has le...

On site (plein air) or studio?

          

                painting at Popham Beach in Maine       Studio door at 28 West Main St. In Georgetown, MA




A follower has left a wonderful question on my blog, and because it addresses something I have struggled with so long, I thought everyone might like to hear the answer.


"I'm from New England and read your comment with nostalgia! I find, however, when I take fotos and then paint in my studio from the fotos, that I tend to copy the photos carefully. Is that "as truthful" as paintings done in "pleine aire"? I was always told not to copy fotos. How do you get inspired art that way? Maybe I have to try to develop more immagination?"


I have spent most of my painting life feeling like you do. However, I have had an awakening this year. Because I needed to make larger paintings for my "Coastal Sunrise" series, I have had to paint from photos in the studio. Surprise to me, I loved it. And with the time available to stop and go back to a work, they have become stronger every time. This pink chair show is my strongest one ever and about 3/4 of them are studio pieces.

I take a photo because I sense something about the scene when I take it, or I take it for reference. I take many. I decide which one to use by which one hits me in the gut, a little bit. For each one hundred or more I take, I may choose one to paint. There is almost always a physical reaction in making that decision, again in the gut. It just feels right. Then I think the key is that I use the photos only when needed, to get proportions, anatomy, structure, composition right and go off from there. I am looking at the photo more in the beginning and almost never near the end. Sometimes I combine several because something is needed or I want to change the composition. For "Barrier Beach" I started with a plein-aire painting I was not happy with, then adjusted it until I was satisfied. I made the rocks bigger. I added more rocks from another photo, and finally it worked, to help show you what I wanted you to see (and feel): the feeling of the beautiful day, the warmth of sun shining on the barrier islands in the distance and the chair standing triumphant among rock after rock after rock.

One thing I do is say: What do I want you to see that I saw? And it is not just "this shape is green and irregular". It is more like: "This green shape feels like the damp moss in the northern woods near Haystack Mountain School of Crafts because it is glowing so bright, rich, and deep, and I can almost smell it" Then I'll make it even richer by adjusting the colors around it to spotlight the color.  My friend Mia Lane, the Canadian artist I traveled with, helped me see this fall that the challenge of the plein air work is a good training ground. How do you choose from all around you? Millions of decisions. Yet, each decision makes you stronger for when you go into the studio, and like soup on the back burner, you are nourished from it all winter. So, as much as I am enjoying studio work, I will be out again next spring. It is a way to "fill the well" of my spirit and keep my abilities sharp.

Pink Chair: "Barrier Beach""

Pink Chair: "Barrier Beach"": Barrier Beach When my friend Mia and I went to Cape Cod to paint, we both found it very difficult to get started at our first stop to pain...

"Barrier Beach""

Barrier Beach

When my friend Mia and I went to Cape Cod to paint, we both found it very difficult to get started at our first stop to paint at Gray's Beach. It was too sunny and hot; I couldn’t set up the easel with the umbrella because the wind would blow it away. I set up the chair and then realized that the tide was coming in too fast to do the painting that way. Then I moved the chair and tried again, but the rocks kept getting covered with too much water. And my feet hurt, and I felt all discombobulated. So I did the best I could and when we quit, was delighted to find a lunch place with air conditioning. Later in the studio, I reworked the painting and combined three different images. What made it work was more rocks, bigger rocks, and water coming right under the chair.

Each time I start a painting series, I have incredible barriers to overcome. This trip was no exception. There’s that lesson from Mom again – where there’s a will there’s a way……..and my own translations: just keep on keeping on, and put one foot in front of the other…….eventually you will make it. Thanks Mom, again, for this lesson.

                       

                       

                 

Pink Chair: Shelter

Pink Chair: Shelter: Location: The Poet's Garden, in Highland Park, Rochester, NY "Shelter" 24x30 oil on canvas I live too far from my home town to have been ...

Shelter

Location: The Poet's Garden, in Highland Park, Rochester, NY

"Shelter" 24x30 oil on canvas

I live too far from my home town to have been much help during my mother and father’s aging issues and final illnesses. My sister Georgie has been the rock and center of the family, the guard dog if something threatens, the news gatherer and communicator, and the warm home we gather in when we are together to celebrate. She has put in countless hours and more energy than anyone has in order to be there for our parents. This piece honors her work on behalf of Mom. It depicts The Poet’s Garden, part of Highland Park in Rochester, NY. Mom and I both loved the Poet’s Garden. It is a wonderful woodland setting with poems carved in the benches and tall trees and lush green. When my husband and I took our summer trip to Rochester, we went to the garden to take photographs. It was raining, a soft misty summer rain. I was taken with this scene, where my sister held Mom’s pink umbrella under the wrought iron archway at the exit. Shelter here is represented at three levels: The shelter of the massive trees and the ironwork; the shelter of the umbrella, but mostly, the security that Mom had because she was sheltered by Georgie against anything that would harm her.

Mom and I in Highland Park in the spring of 2008. This area is known for magnolias and is just outside the poet’s garden.

Pink Chair: Blog preview treat!

Pink Chair: Blog preview treat!: Here's a treat for you: Visit my homepage on my website for a peek at a special painting - It is the largest in the show! http://www.ly...

Blog preview treat!

Here's a treat for you: Visit my homepage on my website for a peek at a special painting - It is the largest in the show!




http://www.lynneschulte.com/

Pink Chair: A Viewer Favorite

Pink Chair: A Viewer Favorite: The show is up and looking great! I will continue showing you pieces you haven't seen. This one has been a favorite of all who visited my st...

A Viewer Favorite

The show is up and looking great! I will continue showing you pieces you haven't seen. This one has been a favorite of all who visited my studio.  It's called "Conversation"

Conversation 20x20 oil on canvas

In May, I exhibited my series of Coastal Sunrises at the Marblehead Art Association. Twenty five paintings grew out of a week at Goose Rocks Beach in Kennebunkport, Maine. I had this canvas started but not completed in time for that show. So I took the sky I had started, and added the foreground from two resources: a photo of the grass and rocks, and directly from the chair in my studio which I posed one way and then another. Then I gave each chair a coffee cup. This has two chairs – one for me and one for Mom – so I can show her the show she missed because she was not able to come.