I think about time a lot, and how short the window is for youth, good health, love, and the open window for being a creative artist.

This week it’s been especially in my minds forefront as I watched an old video of  a trip across Ireland  made with some old friends in 1993.  It was a painting trip from Dublin to Donegal. I was watching the film researching a long lost conversation about a cheeky farmer, but that is another story. In my living room I came across another segment shot in a  tiny peet warmed pub in Donegal where my friend let me have-at the camera and film the goings on that night, as they shot darts with the locals.

I filmed the  interior  musicians, pub men and then slowly spanned into a nice composition where the painting was just right and I held the lens there, editing out , zooming into my final chosen frame. So I was on the edge of my seat at home, the other day, realizing how well I had set myself up for this weeks work, sixteen years ago, watching the work of the younger me saying here it is Loretta. The perfect pub shot on a nice festive night far out on the western coast of Ireland. Here it is, your motif from your past, a gift from another time to paint now. I know what I was thinking back then, I was thinking just be the gatherer. Just gather all the reference for  work  now and later. The filtering and the decision making process comes later.

My  film starts along the bar with the young Irish men watching me, waving for the camera, saying  “Good Morning Vietnam”, I scan right past them, past the shy barmaid to  the composition of  quiet older men sipping the Guinness at the bars end. To the warm light and the soft glow of muted figures of old men long gone now I am sure. To silhouettes along the back mirror and the Guinness foreground long drunk.  Hearing the sisters trying to get past each other in darts behind me and the session music’s perfect sound track from the  pub corner and  I thank God I do what I do for a living.

“Donegal Pub” 2009  Oil Monotype 15×19″

I talk a lot about palettes and supplies.

My studio palette as noted in a previous post is a big slab of marble that I love to work on. Years ago when I was just starting to paint I bought a folding black medal palette for my watercolors. Eventually it turned into my travel palette because it folds closed to protect the paint, and it’s medal and sturdy. It would take a lot to break it. After using it successfully on location in Ireland several times, Italy a couple times and France, I have grown sentimental about it. The paint boxes come and go and there are a few artists using old paint boxes of mine (it’s good karma to pass things on). But the black palette, I just show it off and explain that it is hard to find them so well made these days.

My students show me the palettes they have bought recently and it’s so sad the supplies the major art companies are putting out these days. It is hard to find goods so well made that you can keep using it for years.

Recently after teaching a class at the Cape Cod Art Association, I put away the last of the easels said goodbye to everyone and began to load up my jeep with my gear. But it was cold and rainy outside so I decided to move the jeep closer to the door to speed things up. I didn’t think twice about that bump I rolled over backing up to the door…

Till I saw that it was just MY PAINT BAG!  With my life in it.

I carried the flattened bag back into the studio to to see how much that smooth move cost me. The cell phone was unharmed, the digital camera was unharmed only the large tube of white squished out all over everything. The paint box was crushed, unusable. The medal palette got the worst of it. It was dented flat and would never be the same. I am still using it, but it is kind of limping along now, not sitting flat, not closing tight,  the one piece that will never be replaced , I will try to use a little longer.

So I like to tell this story though, because You know it was a good class and “I have it so together”, and then I run my jeep right over the tools of my trade…so smooth. Kind of brings you back down to say hey…watch what you are doing, look where you are going. Open your eyes Loretta.

So telling this story the other day in my printmaking group, my teacher Bev Edwards gleefully said that she had an old paintbox filled with tubes that she has not touched in years, and that I could have it. Music to my ears. You know why? Because they made things better then.

Before I ever saw her old paint box I knew it would be better than anything I could buy new. And it was and it is and i love it. It’s a big boy. Just the other night painting at home I had a tube of paint, squeezed it out on the marble and flipped back across the studio hitting the paintbox across the room easily. It is big. Sturdy. It will hold several paintings, a large palette and I think my small transistor for the spring on-location work. But the big surprise was that half the paint tubes are still good. I am using them and I can tell the quality is superior, the pigment stronger. As an artist it is often the little things that turn out to be important. The little things that will give you an edge, or hold you back.

Grumbacher and Windsor Newton are dropping the ball. Somewhere along the line they have compromised the materials they manufacture and decided to cater to the amateur market. I can’t control that.

All I can control is my product, my art. And I take pride in using the bast canvas, the best frames, proper techniques that will keep my paintings’ colors  strong and true,  long after you and I are gone.