NY (1)

When I eat outdoors, as has been the case for both breakfast and lunch thus far today, I eat al fresco. 

When I paint outdoors, as has also been the case today, I paint en plein air.

When I put my iPhone down on a picnic table outdoors, as has further been the case today, I end up with a phone covered with a big glob of pine pitch—¡qué desastre!

I am away from home, staying at a small secluded rustic cabin on 45 acres of otherwise undeveloped land. My cleaning-supply resources are limited.

Dawn is the bird cleaner of choice in oil spills but pine pitch just thumbs its nose at Dawn Ultra brand dishwashing liquid.

Refuses to yield to 719 Walnut Avenue brand Ocean Mist liquid hand soap.

Laughs at Simple Green brand all-purpose spray cleaner.

Scoffs at Fantastik brand Scrubbing Bubbles heavy-duty all-purpose spray cleaner.

But Walnut Creeek brand 100% vegetable oil cleans my phone up easy peasy and has it like new in no time! Vegetable oil! Who knew?

I've brought with me on this getaway some 6x6" paintings done years ago on gessobord. I plan to paint over them this week, making new starts of some sort. That's it. Cover 'em up in one way or another and see what I do with them once I return home. 

First gessobord, in progress:

Wildflower IDs

I remember my dad's taking my younger sisters and me on a walk around our Old Kelsey Point summer-rental neighborhood in Connecticut one summer evening when I was maybe 8 or 9 years old.

He carried a small book.

Not just any book, but what turned out to be a field guide to area wildflowers.

What excitement!

We'd spy a flower, find it in the book!

Discover its name!

Today, I've created a scrappy patch of summer lawn.

activating a new patch

I've spied some wildflowers!

work in progress within a work in progress

Arthur's Weed Patch

I was living in the Netherlands when I first connected with Miss Peach comic strips. The reason I remember the character named Arthur and, more particularly, his weed patch* is that my youngest sister was born while we lived in the Netherlands and had hair that stood straight up from her head as an infant, hair that my parents referred to—with great affection—as Arthur's weed patch.

It was during those same two years of living in the Netherlands that a school friend and I, sixth graders at the time, spent a bunch of happy hours playing across the street from her house at a construction site after hours. As I've played with my current Core Values patch yesterday and today, memories have surfaced of the engaging pleasure of making something out of 'nothing' at that building site—arranging and rearranging cinder blocks, scraps of wood, bits of metal, and other stuff lying around in the gravel and weeds.

Here I am doing the same thing all these many years later.

added white shapes, scratched through layers

pasted tissue collage, extended color, added veiling

new patch, with final tweaks

detail

new patch in the bigger picture;
working title: core values

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* I kinda shrugged off my homework yesterday, not persisting in searching for online evidence of Arthur's weed patch, but look what my friend Carolyn found:

Miss Peach is a really sweet and kind teacher but, still, I hope she doesn't find out Carolyn did my homework for me.