Painting in the Style of Mary Pratt, an Inspiring Weekend

At the age of 80, Newfoundland painter Mary Pratt is still painting. It takes months to create a piece such as her "Red Current Jelly". I am a huge admirer of the light and colour in her work. I also love her use of the colour red.

So I jumped at the chance to take a two-day painting class in the style of Mary Pratt, with instructor Andrea Mossop, this past weekend at the Shenkman campus of the Ottawa School of Art. The class was about learning to paint with colour capsules, achieving luminosity, glow, sparkle and shine.

We had to bring an inspiration photo. I chose this photo of a fountain, taken at Ville Lante in Italy in 2012.

Our first task was to sketch out the basic shapes and lay down a colour map using a very light wash of paint, and then the work of painting all the colour shapes began.

After two days, this is where the class ended. I probably have months of work ahead of me to finish this, but I am pleased with my weekend as I learned a great deal that I hope will make its way into future art quilts. The whole subject of refracted light has me facinated.

I am heading back into the studio this week. Still playing with some sketches and ideas before I haul out some fabric.

The Hilltop Village of Goult

Have you seen enough blue doors and windows yet? I photographed these in the charming little hill-top village of Goult.

Look at these beautiful triangle-shaped delicate lace curtains in this window.

Twelfth century castle

The lush and green village park with a fountain.

Tuesday morning market with a lovely array of vendors, including these two young entrepreneurs.

The usual lavender products.

A darling array of children's clothing. Polka dots are everywhere right now!

 

I have one more blog post to share about Provence. In the background I am dyeing, washing, ironing, cutting and folding fabric for my teaching trip to New Brunswick. I leave on Thanksgiving day. This week will be busy organizing all my workshop materials, copying notes, boxing up patterns and fabric, packing quilts, and all the personal items I'll need for my two weeks there.

 

The Village of Ansouis

Ah, Ansouis, a sleepy little village, and one of the "plus beaux villages de France". With a population of about 1,000 you can enjoy walks through the narrow streets without battling any crowds at all. Ansouis is reminiscent of the villages that you see in Peter Mayle's film "A Year in Provence". Quiet and quite real without the throngs of tourists.

The town is built on top of a rocky knoll, where a chateau (castle) looks out over the Luberon.

The streets are narrow and winding, and did I mention quiet?

We saw more cats in Ansouis than any other village, probably due to the quietness!

Blue doors and windows.

Green ones too. 

The beautiful Eglise Saint Martin.

Across from the church, we found a local art show taking place. Guess what? I came home with two small paintings.

The lavender fields painting is by Laurence Eli, Could I possibly leave it behind?

Port of Cassis was painted by Pierre Bonnefoy . We did not drive as far as the Port of Cassis, but this painting reminded me so much of many places I have visited in the Mediterranean, most particularly, the Island of Crete in Greece.

Canopies of plane trees line the street on the way in and out of the village.

The Art of Mary Pratt

Yesterday we spent the afternoon at the National Gallery of Canada, viewing the Alex Colville, Chagall, and Mary Pratt exhibits. Until a few months ago, I had never heard of Mary Pratt, a Canadian artist living in Newfoundland. I learned of her when the Ottawa Citizen published an article this past April, called "The Erotic Jellies of Mary Pratt". Oh, the transparency, the light and shadow, the colour red, the joy of "Red Current Jelly", below. Pratt is the only living female artist ever to have a show of her work at the National Gallery while still alive (she is now 80). 

Red Current Jelly, 1972

I was especially taken by her comments about how photography informed her work and how it elevated her painting ability. I am quoting here from the Citizen article by Peter Simpson:
“This Little Painting,” as it is referred to by Pratt and in the exhibition title, is 45 by 45 centimetres (18 inches or so), but it was made just as she began to use photography as a reference for her painting. That moment was the big bang in her development as a painter." 

The article goes on to say that, "She took a photograph, and discovered that “photography is a great teacher.” Though she downplays her photographic skills — “I don’t know what an F-stop is” — she recognized how “photography stills everything, so you can look at things, and see how they work.” She describes how a photograph showed her how on the oval lip of a jelly jar, “every quarter inch, the colour changes. The colour is transient and beautiful, and just breath-taking.”

The discussion about photography as inspiration for artworks happens with regularity in some of the on-line art quilt groups I belong to. There is a significant contingent in those groups that looks down at the use of photography, and realistic art along with it.

Seeing the exhibits of Colville and Pratt brings me joy because of their success as artists using realism. While I am not overly fond of Colville's statue-like figures, I was moved by his story of success, which at the same time often brought harsh criticism. I think what the careers of Colville and Pratt highlight, for me, is that there will always be praise and criticism at the same time and we just have to keep trucking, making the art we need to and want to make.

Mary Pratt's work seems, to me, a celebration of the joy in the everyday. It captures ordinary moments in an ordinary life and elevates them to the extraordinary.

Jelly Shelf, 1999.

Smears of Jam, Lights of Jelly, 2007

All Things Vincent

One of the biggest highlights of Provence was the visit to St. Remy de Provence for a visit to St. Paul de Mausole, the hospital where Vincent Van Gogh lived for the last year of his life. While being treated for mental illness he painted more than 150 paintings in the gardens of the hospital and around the town, sometimes accompanied by a nurse (a very humane hospital for the time!). The hospital is now a museum dedicated to Van Gogh, where you can visit his former room and walk the very peaceful gardens where he painted. The drive there under the canopies of plane trees is exquisite. 

Arm in arm with Vincent. This sculpture, by Gabriel Sterk, is named "The Sunflower Thief".

Van Gogh was actually born in the Netherlands. He came to Paris, France to live with his brother, who was an art dealer. He eventually settled in Arles, Provence, and then was hospitalized for the last year of his life in St. Remy.

As you walk throughout the site, there are copies of Van Gogh's artworks on display.

The hospital courtyard.

The door at the back of the hospital that leads to the garden.

The beautiful garden of lavender that greets you when you walk through the door.

View of the hospital from the back of the garden. 

We sat to enjoy the sound of cicadas.

Inside you can visit the actual room that Van Gogh stayed in.

This is the view through his window. Sadly Vincent died at 37 having only sold one painting.

The hospital is surrounded by olive groves. In the landscapes of Provence I saw what Van Gogh saw.

On our drive back from St. Remy we enjoyed passing under the canopies of plane trees once more.

Nature Meets Art in Haliburton

Last week I had the pleasure of a week just for me! After my father's 90th birthday party in Waterloo, I headed up to Haliburton to take a week-long class at the Haliburton School of the Arts. Yes, this is the same college I teach at. This year I was thrilled to find a small and inexpensive cabin in the woods for a little solitude. It had all the features I was looking for, and while it was only 15 minutes away from the village of Haliburton, it felt very. very remote.

 

The last few kilometers to the cottage involved gravel roads, and then a trip down a long lane way through the forest to get to my cabin and the home of the people who own it. I personally love long lanes through the woods like this one!

The cabin was peaceful except for the sound of the torrential rains and crashing thunderstorms we experienced last week. Nevertheless, I was cozy there, and when I woke in the morning this is the sight I saw out my window. My wee cabin faced the lake! This photo was taken on one of the few sunnier days.

This tree near the water facinated me because of its shibori-like horizontal marks, reminding me of a discharged fabric I created several years ago.

Nothing seems as peaceful and calming to me as sun glinted yellow-green leaves and blue skies and water. 

Several times I spotted deer on the drive up the lane.

Boats at dusk, on calm waters, at the cottage next door.

From the cabin guestbook, I learned that many students of  Haliburton School of the Arts have stayed in this cabin, including a couple that have visited each year for the past 17 years. One student even left behind an artwork of the little blue cabin.

The owners of the cabin lived just up the road, and I could go there to pet their cats whenever I wanted. The felines seemed to accept me and felt they could "talk" to me ;-)  Harriet had a few complaints. Apparently she was found frozen to the road one winter. She is missing part of her tail.

Sylvester guards the place, and is a force to be reckoned with, just because of his sheer size. I don't think I have ever tried to lift a heavier cat. He is really big-boned and solid. 

The class I registered in was called "Passionate Colour" with artist Al van Mil. I was really pleased that when I emailed Al to ask if I could work in fabric, I got a really open-minded and encouraging response. I am far too used to people responding with stories of their grandmother's patchwork when I use the word "quilt". Not Al ... he saw the possibilities.  And so I embarked on the course with a full palette of my hand-dyed fabric, to which I had adhered fusible web.

I took a design wall made of foam core board covered with quilt batting. Except for a few colour mixing exercises, I spent most of the week working with fabric.

Al and his wife Anette Blady, who was teaching in the classroom next door, often work on each other's paintings. That seemed to facinate students in our class. Al picked up on that and one day invited us to create a group painting. The only stipulation was that we had to somehow make it about the colour magenta. For that, he purchased a top quality jar of magenta paint for us to use. This is our finished painting.

Once the painting was dry, Al decided the composition was better in the opposite direction, and then glazed parts of it, to reveal an abstract female shape. He plans to contribute it to the Haliburton School of the Arts faculty art auction.

This is a photo of our class, with Al being the only guy. He is a successful Canadian artist who has had work in the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario. It was a joy to spend time with Al and Anette. One night both classes were invited to a potluck at their cottage, where we also saw lots of art! this is a couple who successfully makes a living by selling their art. While their main residence is in Toronto, they also have a cottage outside Haliburton.

I didn't create anything earth shattering during the week, but succeeded in my goal of not being too attached to the outcome. I didn't want to worry about wasting my time or stress about making a masterpiece. I basically worked cutting fused fabric free-hand with a scissors. 

We received instruction about simultaneous contrast, and looked at samples of how it can make our work sing. So my first quick composition involved using a neutral orange next to a saturated orange, and next to the complement of turquoise.

My second composition, an abstract landscape, also uses simultaneous contrast. The very bright yellow-green pops next to the very neutral green. Same with the light orange against the earthy orange.This piece was inspired by a photograph I brought of orange-coloured leaves that had settled on a log in a stream.

This was an experiment, inspired by a seashell I brought. I don't think the composition works that well, but I'm showing it anyway.

We had an assignment to create something in the style of Klimt. Originally my background for this piece was a rusty orange. I didn't find it exciting, so I switched to something more typical of me ... chartreuse! Lots of fun working with neutral yellows and golds, as well as bright ones.

A very simple abstracted version of stairs in a garden in Italy. All cut free-hand. If I were to remake this I would take the green stairs up behind the top red step on the right-hand side. I am not fond of the straight horizontal line created across the green and red top step.

On the last day, this composition started to form. I just started playing with wave-type shapes. It is inspired by autumn reflections on a pond. It is only partly finished. What was I thinking? How would I quilt all those little circles?

So what do I take away from the week? An increased understanding and appreciation for subtle tones and shades of hues and their potential effects in my work. It also occurred to me that I might more often create art if I had a ready supply of fused fabrics. I could be doing this in short spurts of time. No it won't be the complex kind of work I normally do, but it is still worth doing.

My trip to Haliburton ended with a visit with my friend Carol, and her husband, who have have purchased a cottage about 45 minutes from Haliburton. It happens to be right along my route back to Ottawa. So I had a nice visit with them and their two lively dogs on my way home. Lucca at top and Khio at bottom. What fun characters they are!

This week it is back to reality! I've just taken my first Northcott pattern to the printer, and on Thursday I will begin stuffing 1,000 pattern packages. Then prep for the class I am teaching in Haliburton.