A quiet morning

Its hard to believe that in only the half-hour my daughter has been at school that I've already had a chance to settle down and prepare for another week. Sipping my coffee and quietly revisiting our trip to Italy through my new paintings is a simple pleasure. What I love about making paintings is that the physical act, particularly in the beginning, throws out so much potential. Through this act energy and excitement is stimulated, and all the while the subject in its complete focus of my eyes, hand and mind, I am transported away. What an amazing opportunity to transport myself to a place where I can record visually, build memories, and see things in a new way. The paintings shared here are inspired by our first five days in Italy in the Lake Como region, where I was particularly engaged with the geometric shapes of the landscape and the building or stacking of varied forms of trees, vegetation and architecture. In a few weeks, I will be sharing more works as WE travel to Venice, Verona, and the Dolomites... enjoy an please let me know your responses. Enjoy the trip.

Snapshot Italy

"Snapshot Italy" and other Commissioned Artworks

"Snapshot Italy" is a simple commission opportunity for current and prospective clients to have a view of the Italian landscape of their own - particularly of the Lake Como Region and Venice. Here is how it works 1) contact me via email helene@helenefarrar.com or 207 485 5691 and let me know you'd like to commission a "Snapshot Italy" artwork. 2) choose between a 12 X 12 Oil Painting on canvas at $500., a 10 X 10 Oil Painting on canvas at 300., or a 8 X 8 acrylic painting on panel at $100. 3) I will deliver the painting to you by November 1st. In the meantime, enjoy seeing places I visited and observations on my blog in August, September, and October. Last commissions will be taken on September 30th. Seen here is a 5 X 5 acrylic painting on paper with a view looking back at Spannocchia in Tuscany. So, if you have fear about commissioning a work, then this might be a great start and some inspiration. Find out more below about some recent commission work.... I leave for Italy on Wednesday, August 3rd so the boat will be leaving soon!

When a client approaches me about creating an artwork with a particular image or concept in mind, as an artist it can be another way to push my creativity. The commission becomes like an assignment and gives me an excuse to possibly visit a specific place I've never been (and maybe make new discoveries along the way) plus give me the opportunity to examine how I might meet their needs and make an artwork uniquely its own in its approach to subject and idea. The two images here are works I did in June for a local woman who gave one to her husband on their wedding day featuring a favorite place in Portland (near Portland Lobster Co.) and the other painting for a friend as a wedding present and whom was married in this location, the Brunswick Inn. Although the works were created in a short amount of time, their quality and charm came through. Enjoy!

Finding Balance

One of the benefits of being an artist as an occupation, is that the physical and intellectual work can be a source of healing, contemplation and meditation (among many other "things"). This Winter and early Spring, I found that doing this "work" just wanted enough to kickstart me to a healthy balance. Although I am not sure what the path was from that place to now, but I do know I am back in a good place of productivity and good balanced health. Back on track, I created the following 6 + pieces. They are partially inspired by vintage and quite feminine fabrics from my collections but also some imagery gently borrowed from a copy of "Little Women". Drawing from the simpleness of their familial conflicts, with the desired carefree-ness wanted of summer and vacation, plus some thoughts by Artist Lois Dodd perculating in my mind, and even an unresolved summer poem I am yet to share, grew these quite textural encaustic numbers. You can find these at the Three Graces Gallery in Portsmouth, NY early next week. Enjoy!

Momentum

As I have become more mature in my use of encaustics, it is fought for time in my studio. Oil painting has always been "home" in my work but with more understanding of encaustics as a painting medium (center stage not the supporting actor)the two mediums have often divided my time without resolve. One can not do both exactly at the same time, unlike other mediums, because there are considerations of fire danger, waiting time, and working modes. Although I did create a full series of works "Unusual Conversations With the Landscapes" of acrylic paintings on paper plus encaustic works based on the abundance of water over varied landscapes, I did not feel an organic push in the studio in the winter months. However, momentum is kicking in. I am staying with my landscape works based on my trip to England last spring plus I plan to revisit my ongoing obsession with Blueberry barrens. I have attached a variety of pictures for you to see including: a painting in its first stages (wait and see what happens in later posts), a series of encaustic works I am completing for Three Graces Gallery based on a poem I wrote about summer, plus two finished works from my England series.

Artistic Meanderings

The following is short part of a poem written by Mother, Janice Scott, When I review later how I looked and sounded, what I said and did, and how I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting. I can discard that which is unfitting, and keep that which proved fitting, and invent something new for that which I discarded. This poem titled "My Declaration of Self-Esteem" was recently found in an old box of nostalgia from my childhood, and for many reasons I keep reading it. The fascination a daughter has for learning about her mother from her voice and through the daughter's eyes has been a part of it, but also its language as use for the process of painting. Perhaps my mother was writing it as if she was working on a painting herself, or perhaps that painting IS her, or you, or me. Maybe we are all moving all of the parts of our own character around to make things fit.

A few weeks ago on a Thursday afternoon, I had my opening reception for "Reveal / Conceal: Unusual Conversations with the Landscape" at the Blue Gallery at Bowdoin College. My almost 70-year-old Dad was finishing up his harpsichord lesson in the building next door and joined me for a large part of the reception, which I was grateful for since I was sort of misplaced among the campus. I was pleased that some new friends joined me to ask about the paintings. I was especially pleased to join an old friend of mine to one of the Biology Buildings to view the Bird and Bug Collections. As you can imagine, this was an amazing gift to me, for I have been painting birds for a couple of years now - here I got to see them up close, and witness an amazing variety. I do plan a return trip to draw and paint from observation.

In the studio right now, I have started 8 paintings divided between encaustics and oil mediums, narrating my trip to England last Spring. Pictures to come.

Time Off

It seems that time off from the actual physicality of painting will result in stronger work. I hope so. I started painting today after a three week hiatus. Although I have been putting in a lot of time into thinking about what my next project is, whether it is a continuation or a break from the previous, I still haven't completely decided. Time will tell.

Aren't we all happy old man winter is starting to take a nap? I know I am. This winter brought some setbacks but I am looking forward. I am starting to fall in love with my new view at the studio and its generous light.

On Thursday, March 31st from the 3 - 5 PM I am having a casual reception with coffee and sweet refreshments for my new show Reveal / Conceal: Unusual Conversations with the Landscape. The show is held at the Smith Union on the Bowdoin Campus in the Blue Gallery. I hope you can join me for this event or come to see the show soon.

No Separations

It would be impossible to separate art from life, wouldn't it? Sometimes my inspiration comes in the smallest of packages, some little fingers proudly displaying the infamous clay snowman smoking a pipe. I think the pipe was added after remembering my response to my daughter's recent addition to the dress up stash. Why do children inherently make snowman when given a lump of clay? They really do. It was put to the test today at the local school I teach at part-time. I gave 115 kids clay today and probably when I was given the option to make ANYTHING, probably 10% made the snowman.

If you've spent any time with me, you'll know that I am a passionate person. One of my passions is having a good cup of coffee and the other is paint and everything about it. When one of my students commented that my art studio smelled like paint and coffee, I kept trying to create a equation for myself from that. Maybe you have an idea.

When my daughter was first born, I floated through those first few months feeling like my body was somehow disconnected from my mind, my daily activity. The tiredness of late nights, breast feeding, constant everything and then no constant "nothing". Quiet and stillness vanished and I kept trying to find ways to reconnect with my life, my new life. At that time I created a series of artworks I titled the "Landscape Diaries". The works juxtaposed my personal journal writings including letters to my mother who had recently passed, small chapters on beginning motherhood, and ramblings with landscape images of a familiar place, a "home" to me, the areas of Frankfort & Prospect, Maine. These images sought to create connections, much of the idea I am exploring in a different way in my studio today.

Last summer I was drawn to an image in a magazine of a river. The river was moving through the landscape with great gentle force but at the same time with a willingness to go "off route". Maybe I was holding a paper mirror to myself of how I wanted to be. With the intense demands of the gallery over the summer, I yearned to meander. I even read the "Art of Nothing" and found that I needed to give myself a little permission to explore in my artistic pursuits in some new ways. I started working large on paper, and started to play with images that spoke to me metaphorically about the lack of connection we can all feel at times. Using images that originally were intended to exploit either the abundance or lack thereof water in their usual "places", I have abandoned this content to use the photographs to rather speak about the lack of the human connection with the earth. Perhaps we are all floating above it, ignoring its natural curvature and building perfectly geometric homes on quiet desert... so there you are. The original images are not places I have been or known and now my eyes move to Australia where the abundance of waters have created strange paradigms for our connections with the earth. These works will be in a show in the Blue Gallery at Bowdoin College in March.

Doors Are Opening

One quiet winter morning last year, I went for a leisurely walk to drop some packages off at the post office. On my way back and en route to pick up a cup of coffee at Slates and my studio, I came upon this door. I have looked at this photograph a lot since, not knowing why I was connecting with it.

This door is now the entryway to my new studio and for our home for Cerulean. The door looks quite a bit different now. The paint chips have been sanded off and a red door has emerged from this blue layer.

We never know at the time when we are being pointed a certain direction but we just have to be open to it.

Life As Usual

Someone once told me that it is believed that Americans are proud of how busy we are. Interesting thought. I never reflect on my busy-ness with a feeling of proudness but rather one of "have I again stretched myself a bit too thin?" Perhaps we all do this, but I do know that I fall victim of myself - I create activities when maybe I should just do simply...nothing. I like feeling accomplished, of crossing things off the list, and of contributing to the world - my community, my family.. This summer I picked up the book "The Art of Nothing" and what I pulled from it was to allow myself to meander (in my art practice). This new permission came to me while teaching a "Back To Basics" painting course this summer at Cerulean, among a delightful group of adults. They too were inspiration and I have found myself since creating a body of works that take a different view to landscape. I collected a large handful of magazine photographs of views from way above and have been way up there ever since. Images to come...
In the next ten days, I'll be preparing for and teaching an encaustics 2 day workshop at Cerulean and preparing for Cerulean's Annual Holiday Sale featuring all of our gallery artists opening on Wednesday, December 8th. Opening ceremonies with the artists on Friday, December 10th from 5 - 7 and Saturday, December 11th from 10-2...

1st Annual Studio Sale at Cerulean

Coming this Friday, October 29th from 5 - 8 PM 

is Cerulean's 1st Studio Sale featuring Artist-In-Residence Janna Civittolo & myself, come on by for hot cider and doughnuts ! Wear your costume and enter a drawing for a free artwork piece by Janna & Helene! We are also having our sale on Saturday from 11-3!

Showing Soon

For the past six years the fall has brought my work consistently to two different different events. Both of these events are great opportunities for different ranges of art collectors to view and select works at a very affordable price.

The "Teenie Tiny Art Show" at Three Graces Gallery in Portsmouth, NH has a wide selection of works both two and three dimensional works. Here is one of my six little acrylic works on paper, 5 X 5, mounted on panel for the sale price of 225. These works have similar titles within "Memories of Italy"...


At Merrill Auditorium on Friday, October 8, there will be a one evening art event called the "Black Frame Sale" . All works are sold for $200. and the show is a benefit for the Bayside Neighborhood Association. If many of you can remember, one of my first public studios was at Running With Scissors when it was located on Portland Street - across from Preble Street Resource Center. Its a great opportunity for me to encourage you to support an inner city neighborhood that has prospered as a result of this organization's efforts. Here is one of my three pieces from my BIRDWORKS series, "Looking Within" encaustic on panel, 10 X 10 inches and selling price of $200.

"From The Cotton Mill" Preparatory Drawing for Old Hallowell Day Painting

I came to Hallowell for the first time in the winter of 1979 from the suburbs of NYC with my parents and older brother in a yellow VW squareback. We were all a bit shocked by living in this small town and a rural state, but made a home for ourselves here quite quickly. The few years spent in Hallowell were marked by many "firsts" in a small child's life including a solitary walk to Boynton's for our family's milk and swedish fish. Hallowell has been my home at three different chapter's in my life, and the feeling of this special place, its charm, and a place to call "home" stays with me. You can learn more about my visual impressions of Hallowell if you come for a visit to my studio where you'll see some of the work I have been doing.

I am completely honored to be this years "Old Hallowell Day" Artist, and hope you are enjoying the image. It's quite funny to be in my shoes now, for when my little artist feet came to this town I remember fondly eating Ham Italian's from Boynton's on the back porch of the Harlow Gallery, where my Mom would gallery sit.

This drawing was done from a variety of photographs I took from the roof of the Cotton Mill in early Spring. And this is where I began....

Stop to Smell the Roses

Life never seems to slow down for me, my work as an artist, and the life shared with my little daughter & husband, but I still attempt to slow myself down. I think life does get too busy but we have to make a conscious choice to walk in the sunshine, to taste a cup of coffee and to look eye-to-eye with a loved one. Although I have had some extraordinary experiences in the last month, I am still happy to return and be home. I am fortunate - to have traveled to England with my dearest friend and to reunite with my English family warms my heart, and to close myself to purely focus on my professional development as an artist at a recent conference on Encaustics - and I will continue to count my blessings and stop to smell the roses. That is where the inspiration begins.

Artist Talk this Saturday at 3 PM!

Come on over to Cerulean this Saturday at 3 PM for an artist talk with me and Bill Duffy! Sweets and coffee included.....

Enough

Whenever I haven't been into my studio enough, I start feeling an artistic withdrawal. This hasn't been the case lately. I can't believe it but as I said to the family today, "I'm a little painted out." Yep, my need for a break from moving this wooden stick around with hair on the end, gobs of paint, finger nails filthy and stained, couldn't come at a better time. In one week from tomorrow I'll be getting onto the bus here in Augusta and heading to London. This trip will be part reunion, part artistic rejuvination, part vacation, part contact making but most importantly reconnecting and sharing time with one of my best friends in the world! I'll share more about this trip here when I return.

Anyhow, in the past month I have been juggling many creative endeavors including the painting to be featured for Old Hallowell Day, submitting my work to juried shows (and I will be in one at the Fairfield Art Council - near NYC) as part of the group I am in called New England Wax, finishing my encaustic and oil paintings for the show opening at Cerulean on Friday with photographer friend Bill Duffy called "Revisiting Old Haunts: From Dogtown to Frankfort" and painting a BIG mural for a neighbor. Now I have taken video of all of these projects and if I can get over my computer fears I will get these on shortly.

Even in the midst of complete chaos, I do find some time to locate some quiet. We walk a fair amount together in my little family here. Most recently on the ocean near a family home in Northport and in the trails behind our house which sweep along some beautiful and neglected apple orchards. Walking gets me to slow down and look a little more closely at the world. I have a bit more time to think, and not do. I look forward to doing this on my trip to England when I walk the banks of Cornwall, a really beautiful place....

Enjoy.

Moving Towards Abstraction

It may be said that you can find the abstract in my artworks, but forms are dually readable as tree, rock, etc. My interests as a painter rely heavily on basic ideas of rich surface and color, engaging composition, and tangible idea or source. Sometimes my hand moves away from the subject to make playful and gestural marks but I do come back to the form. When preparing to create my works for the Cerulean's current show "Unpinned: The Abstract Response", I found myself continuously making works that felt too contrived... and I had to leave a couple of paintings out on the way. Even with the deadline quickly approaching I found myself willing to start over, and so I did. In one manic evening I ripped apart some silkscreen prints I did a number of years ago out at Haystack and used them as a beginning to create these four little paintings on paper. Using gouache, watercolor, caran dache crayons and india ink I set to work and had a marvelous time. Here are the four images that resumed.

What are they? Mental landscape, physical landscape, kandiskism? Until this evening I did not
know. Now I am playing with the idea that they represent layers - possibly the complex and busy-ness I live on a day-to-day. Perhaps if I create some more at the end of May, they'll feel a little quieter.

Anyhow, I encourage you to come on down to Cerulean to see this show. Its really lovely and I am very pleased with all of the work we have done to improve and jazzy up our spaces. Show runs until May 8.

This Friday at Cerulean!!!!

Come on out this Friday for some lovely eye candy at Cerulean from 5 - 8 PM for "Unpinned: the Abstract Response"!

Response to "Cycles"

This week I focused most of my energies to finishing four works for a collaborative project titled "Paper Exchange" with the group New England Wax, which I have been a member of for two years now. The title/subject we were to toy with as each encaustic artist created four panels each 10 X 10 on 300 lb. paper was "Cycles". My response to this playful "assignment" brought me to new understandings of this luscious medium and time to bring back together my creative writing musings and my artworks. Enjoy the following works and creative writings still in progress. Artwork titles are: "Daily Burden" "Freeing the Lost Sock" "Fruits of Labor" "Freeing All Of The Lost Socks".

Some folks have asked me "Why do you write?" and quite simply it has always been a way of channeling my artistic thoughts to some coherence and even direction, my writing much informs or relates to my narrative artworks. Neither do I have desire to get published, nor am I searching for others to applaud it for its elegance or wit. I think my writing is really for - me, to feed, heal and another way to play.

Writings to come... they are giving me some trouble getting here...

Momentum

Its a well-known understanding that once you establish some momentum in anything you do, its easier to keep going. My studio work has a lot of energy now but its spread among many projects, maybe even too many. I have shared with you a collection of photographs that demonstrate what I have been doing lately including researching ideas and "places" for the upcoming Old Hallowell Day - which I am honored to be doing this year's painting for promotional activities, a small series of encaustic paintings on heavy paper titled "If I Only Knew What I Knew Now" for a project with the group New England Wax, more birds, and a series of paintings in both oil and encaustic featuring one of my favorite areas to paint - the blueberry barrens and glacial landscape of Frankfort / Prospect, Maine Show for a show at Cerulean with photographer Bill Duffy. Enjoy. And more to come soon!