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Are you in a hurry?

Published by admin June 19th, 2009 in Blog, art teacher and fine art. 0 Comments

I don’t have to guess if my students are in a hurry. They tell me one way or another, every week.

Every week of every class I have ever taught a student at some level has expressed their urgent needs. Yes they are all in a rush, to what I wonder?

To paint well? The best they can?

To finish every start as quickly as possible?

To sell their paintings? Yes especially this one.

Hey the truth is we all want our art to sell. But if you are rushing the process it’s going to end up in your own collection.

I preach about taking your time with each stage, building slowly. Problem solving.

We are talking about the finish here. Finishing up our work strong. The right way.

And the right way for me is to live with my work. Put it on the wall. Bring it in the kitchen while I cook. Put it in a new frame or two and see how it looks. Turn your canvas upside down and check for false notes. You must look for trouble here. Be your own best critic. Be tougher on your art than anyone else.

Because your client is going to hang your piece in their home or business and live with it, for many years. I want to keep getting the feedback that my work looks great in different times of the day. That my work shows well with the lights off too.

I don’t want to just sell my work. I want to have it collected.

So I study these strong paintings in my studio, living with them for the last few days before delivery… or not.

Taking my time here.

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Fenway Game Day

Published by admin May 17th, 2009 in Bleacher bar, Boston, Fenway Park, FenwayArt, Orleans gallery and Trees Place. 0 Comments

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These images are of a new painting in progress, inspired from last Saturdays game. I drew it in and let it set up- to dry, for a few days before working back into it.

I like to try and treat the painting loosely adding a lot of color right away to get the feel of the “Fenway Game Day Vibe.” Later on I will be painting in the signs of new Bleacher Bar, and The House of Blues under their big red heart which seems appropriately hanging over Lansdowne Street.

I laid this whole painting in on Ustream.tv yesterday morning by the way.

This painting is now complete and available at the Rowley Gallery.

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Fenway

Published by admin May 10th, 2009 in Fenway Park, FenwayArt, art teacher and fine art. 1 Comment

I have gotten used to looking like an idiot while taking my photos a long time ago. So when I go to Fenway and stand in the street framing my reference shots for my paintings, if I am stopping traffic, well…then I am stopping traffic.

I do this alone. Whoever I go with I just say, catch you in a little bit; meet you inside. While I go off and try and frame up the best compositions of the most festive of Boston neighborhoods.

Fenway was beautiful yesterday with the threat of rain that never came. Everyone outside Fenway Park looks so familiar to me. Like it’s the same crowd at every game I have ever gone to. The same crowd that I paint in all my Fenway paintings. These are my peeps and I am here among ” The Nation.”

I listen as Dad after Dad bring there little ones over to the condiments where I am pausing and say “look, this is the mustard, this is the best part.” The air is thick with the smells of hot dogs, sausage and peppers and people are drinking in the streets which I still cannot get used to. I really like what they have done outside here. It was just a few years ago, we were dodging cars on Yawkey Way. Now it’s all festive galore with red everywhere. With as many t-shirts professing their love of the Red Sox as their distaste for the pinstripes.

I move away from the mustard and look for some smokers to stand by and smell the forbidden aroma. Cigarettes, sausage and the announcer’s voice starts from within the hallowed walls, that sound calling me into the game, where the views just improve.

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Small Windows of Opportunity

Published by admin May 7th, 2009 in art teacher and fine art. 1 Comment

It feels like Edinburgh here in Massachusetts. It’s been raining and raining. This is what people mean when they say the Cape has no spring. Because we have weather like this and then it just turns hot for three months.

Yesterday my studio was warm with a fire in the wood-stove, and a new painting on the easel. And I was content to stay in and paint but then something amazing happened. The sun came out, and I really wanted to stay right there and paint. Actually it was out for three hours.

But I could not relax and work because I feared this would be my one chance to get some shots of a superb subject in the sunlight.

I made myself stop working inside and get in the jeep with three camera and go out and get the reference of right now, one of the prettiest weeks of this season. And this was a good move because I had a beautiful Japanese Garden to capture. I began this series last week, in oils and it is going to go on all year Painting reflections and spring, heavy with design but subtle with the color harmonies. That’s the plan.

The new painting is still on the easel and the fog has rolled back in.

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Fenway Art

Published by admin April 26th, 2009 in Art, Boston, Fenway Park, FenwayArt and fine art. 1 Comment

2009 0il 12″x 20″ Center Field Fenway Park, by Loretta Feeney

On the warmest day of the year, as I write at my kitchen table, the Red Sox have won nine games in a row.

My life is revolving around their schedule. I don’t have to watch them on television, but I love to listen to them. Our third baseman has the made the transition to first in more ways than one. Cleaning up the batting order and leading this edgy team onward and upward. And it’s only April.

This oil is on Exhibit at the Cape Cod Art Association, West Barnstable, Ma. and then will be available at Trees Place, Orleans Ma. along with other new Fenways.

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Blogging Through Time

Published by admin April 18th, 2009 in printmaking. 1 Comment

Have you ever watched an old movie on TV, a western maybe where a dog barks in the movie? The sound of the TV dog barking wakes up your dog who starts looking around confused. And you think wow, she’s looking for this dog that’s been dead for fifty years but the voice sounds strong and the bark sounds clear and you think about how fleeting our lives are.

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″

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Cape Cod Canal

Published by admin April 1st, 2009 in Art, art teacher, fine art and murals. 0 Comments

The Cape Cod Canal and it’s bridges are sneaking into my paintings. This is an area that I love to go and to capture with the paint. It is the gateway to Cape Cod, your introduction. This is the area that defines the region whether you are coming to the Cape or leaving it.

When coming to the Cape on a hot summer day, this is the spot where the temperature drops to a tolerable level with the sea breezes blowing, and you can feel your vacation begin.

This canal is busy with commerce, where the fishing is rich and the deep current a danger. So while working on my Cape Cod mural I was puzzling myself with my avoidance to lay in these sections of my walls. I put it off for weeks till I woke one morning realizing I had drawn it in wrong initially. My subconscious strikes again. A mistake easily rectified…demonstrated below.

The re-draw correction.

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Tools of the Trade

Published by admin March 19th, 2009 in Blog, Mono Prints, art teacher and printmaking. 0 Comments

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.

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Friday March 13th 2009, “Off the Wall” Fundraiser

Published by admin March 12th, 2009 in Blog and art auctions. 0 Comments

Tomorrow Friday the 13th The Cape Cod Art Association holds its annual fundraiser called “Off the Wall, ” from 4pm-6pm.

This is an opportunity for collectors and connoisseurs to show their stuff. Because the paintings are only signed on the back. And you won’t know who’s work you are buying till you buy it. The good news is the paintings are quite inexpensive but there is a lot of them to look through.

So without much risk, you can buy a small painting by an artist and support one of the long standing solid Cape Cod Art organizations. I have done one new oil for this fundraiser and am happy to support the Cape Cod Art Association in this imaginative successful format.

See you there.

Cape Cod Art Association

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If Art Were Sports

Published by admin March 9th, 2009 in Blog, Mono Prints and painting on location. 1 Comment

If creating art were sports, than printmaking is golf.

Because there are so many ways to go wrong, and look foolish. It’s like standing on the first tee trying to keep your shot in the fairway with a crowd watching.

As I set my press the other day, lining up my sheet of paper to press into a mono print, I noticed my heart pounding and a slight shake to my hands and it felt like I was teeing up… thinking to myself, talking to myself, now don’t pick your head up Loretta, don’t try and kill it. Just nice and easy like Freddy Couples, right down the fairway. Only I was not on the fairway. I was hovering over a sheet of paper and plate. Taking my time, lining everything up as well as I could, guessing on the press setting, guessing on everything…like picking the right club and the yardage to the green.

Only I am an awful golfer.

To three-putt the green is not unusual to me. To lose a few balls to a neighbors yard along the fairway is par for the course so to speak. So this printmaking to golf analogy makes me uncomfortable, it makes me edgy. For a painter, so comfortable in the studio or on location, confident and self assured, it’s been a long time since my heart pounded with fear as I readied myself for creating. Maybe this is why I love printmaking so.

Someone told me recently that in China they use the same symbol for success and failure, because that line is so thin most of time. If you are creating art and you are not sure of how it will come out, than that is an exciting and dangerous way to work. That is the arena I want to create in. Let the paint drip. Let the paper slip. Turn the music up and take a chance.