Home Again

"Shelter" 

24x30

oil on canvas

available for delayed sale

(Wrought Iron arch is at the entrance 

to the Poet's Garden in Highland Park in Rochester, NY.)

Illuminations is changing its art and my friend Barb and I picked up the show today, with the pink chair itself, the booklet with the stories, the board with the love notes and positive affirmations written by so many that the post-its are piled up high. I will share some of this in the next few posts. In the meantime, the entire show is wrapped safely and is in my studio. The next public viewing will be in August. I am taking the work to "Art in the Barn" in Cushing, Maine the weekend of August 10-12. The rest of the month I will have it on display in the Scala Art Center. In September it will go to another hospital, Hudson Valley Hospital in the Peeksvill area near New York City, with more to come after that. I will keep you updated on the shows progress.

If you have a local venue that would like an art show during June and/or July, please contact me. I am also available for presentations on the story.

"Wet Feet"

"Wet Feet" 24x18 Oil on Canvas

One of the most powerful pieces in the original exhibition, you can almost feel the water lapping around the feet of the pink chair. This painting took a lot of preparation in laying it out. The ratio of water to chair seemed incredibly important to me. I measured canvases until I found the perfectly proportioned one I used. Later, considering cropping it, I found that my care was wise. The piece lost all its power when the water to chair ratio was different.


The painting was done from a photo taken at the end of an awesome boat ride on a pontoon boat at Desert Lake Resort, the kind of dreamy, all the time in the world kind of day. My cousin Bill drove the boat, his wife Marnie made the lunch, and "Mom" held the towels. We looked for loons, picnicked and swam in a cove off the boat. It was a perfect day. The title of the piece came to me out of the blue and for a while I have wondered what it meant. I thought that perhaps it was because both Mom and I have suffered from painful feet, which would have loved having the cool water wash over them. But a gift of understanding came from Barb Bodengraven, a writer, who said that the chairs arms were "open to whatever treasures the incoming tide will bring". Yes. That's it! My mother had experienced the joys of the day with us and took that same openness to all of the events her life would offer. She just jumped right in at every stage of life.

"Grief Work"

Rockport, MA is a very special place for me and has always nourished my art. I used to say my car went there all by itself!  So it naturally came to pass that I had to take "Mom" there too. I set up right on the T wharf but instead of doing "Motif #1", the building that has inspired so many artists, I placed the chair on the pier high over the water, looking out to sea, through the jetties on either side. It was a gray day, cloudy, but comfortable. As often happens, many people stopped and enjoyed the work, and heard the story of the pink chair paintings. It was a 4 hour session, longer than usual because of the interruptions. I left the water empty until almost the last minute, when all of a sudden, a children's sailing school with small sailboats came tacking back home after their lesson. Without thinking, I quickly painted them into the piece, and it was almost done. The sky was pretty boring, all grey and kind of flat and I said kiddingly, "Mom, can you do something about that?" Within 15 minutes, the sky took on a interesting pattern of clouds with tiny bits of blue, which I gladly painted in......Later, after packing up the car, an extreme tiredness came over me. I could barely make it to the bench, where I laid down for a while. Ravenous, I finally got up, and still tired, barely made it to the restaurant. I ate quietly and again, barely made it back to the car. I have never been so tired after painting, and had felt none of it during the painting process. Later, showing the painting to my friend Teresa, a therapist, I told her the story. She said: Lynne, you are doing grief work. You need to plan a nap after every painting. I said I didn't actively feel sad or grief; I had just been painting. She said "Lynne, look at it! That is grief work if I ever saw it!" Then I saw the powerful message of that small (14x14) piece. I instantly knew the title.

"Lessons Learned, Sailing Home"

A Question for my Readers

I am perplexed about this piece. I absolutely love it as is. For me it says all that I went to Maine for. It has fabulous color and a I felt a strength that I didn't know I had on the day I finished it. Coincidently, I finished it the day before I had the awakening that I was going to be doing Pink Chair paintings. (see post for August 27) I had to leave because of a storm before it was finished and came back  to finish. I had an incredible feeling of intensity when I was painting, like I had to do it fast - strong - NOW!  It is part of what put the power in that tree.

Now, There are some lovely spots of pink here and there that go with the pink chair. I could easily paint a pink chair, maybe back there under the back tree, and make it part of the series. Somehow I feel it is already a part of the series. Maybe the strength I felt had come from Mom and was just waiting inside to be named on the next day when I would be doing the first transformative painting, the one in which I felt her presence.

What do you think? Should it be part of the series without the chair? Should I paint the pink chair in? Any thoughts?