…By which I mean my new studio easel! I left my old studio easels behind — I think I’ve had 3 or 4 over the years, and none of them were worth bringing to France. The wooden ones always got wonky, where I had to use clamps to keep tight the stops and ledges that hold the canvases in place.
I decided I was going to buy my last easel here, meaning I wanted one that would last me the rest of my life. I am certain this one will actually outlive me! It’s very sturdy wood, and extremely well-built. And it was on sale. 🙂
To be assembled…
It took me maybe 1-1.5 hrs. to assemble it. Not too hard! Made by Mabef, a German company, and the quality of the build is excellent! It’s made of oiled beech, which I’m hear to tell you, is very heavy and very solid. It will hold a canvas up to 2.25 meters (over 88.5 inches). And it can be used horizontally as well, which would be awesome if I were to work on pastels again. It has wheels (yay!) and a clever arrangement of stops (cool!). And it comes with a lifetime guarantee. Sweet!
My Last Studio Easel!
Next, I need to obtain some more painting mediums, and then — finally! — I can start painting in oils again.
If you’re interested in the various types of easels, Jackson’s Art blog has a great post on that, here.
It’s been almost a year and a half since we moved to France, and I have finally finished unpacking and organizing all the stuff we had shipped over from the U.S. My studio/office was filled for far too long with boxes of art, tools, and supplies until I could design, buy and assemble sufficient furniture to contain all my art and office stuff in some sort of an organized manner. Seems like this took forever!
Boxes of drawings, paintings, tools, and supplies shortly after delivery
I lived with boxes in my studio/office space for the past half-year, unpacking as much as possible almost every day, and trying to find some space to put everything somewhere in our apartment, which is not much smaller than the interior portion of the small house we had in Austin, but without the large storage room, garage, attic, deck, etc. Here I have portfolios in a utility closet, paintings in a hall closet, a large drawing behind some bookshelves, and other supplies shoved into whatever space I can find.
More boxes of tools and supplies, plus some furniture from home (and some bought here)
Although we sold or left behind maybe 70-80% of all the stuff we had accumulated during our lives separately and together, we had whittled our belongings down to just over 250 boxes to be shipped by sea: clothes, kitchen and dining stuff, some other household goods, a portion of our favorite and most precious books, a tiny bit of media, and our small media center. Plus almost all my drawings, many of my favorite paintings, and as much of my art materials as I thought would make it through customs without a hitch (which it all did, but that meant leaving behind all of my painting mediums, which was a very expensive loss!).
The next step was designing the furniture for my studio/office. Here is my intial sketch:
Initial idea for “Wall of Storage” (quick sketch on rough paper)
I refined this, taking careful consideration of the measurements of my space and the furniture I was considering, and then drew up a perspective sketch:
Perspective drawing of design for wall of storage, rolling art carts, and rolling table
The next step was ordering furniture, in batches, mostly from Ikea (because they’re not expensive and they deliver), and finally, assembling it all. This also tooks a couple of months overall.
Here is the more or less final result for my wall of storage, and I have to say, it’s working out very well for me:
Wall of Storage
I can pull out the rolling table and/or the art carts, as needed. I have drawers for supplies, and shelves and cubbies for notebooks, photos, and more tools and supplies. The lower cabinets have some great deep storage, and the accessible counter area is great for small standing work, like preparing small paintings for hanging.
I haven’t blogged here for a very, very long time. The reason is that my husband and I have been in the process of moving to France for a long while now. After years of planning and making many trips to France to explore various cities and towns, we finally arrived last fall and found a great apartment in the heart of our choice of cities – Aix-en-Provence. But it took two more trips back to our house in Austin to finish packing what stuff we wanted to bring with us and what stuff to have shipped, and then to get our house ready to sell.
In the meantime, I haven’t had much bandwidth to paint, nor have I had much in the way of art equipment and supplies. I’ve bought a few things here, but wow! – the cost of replacing a lot of the brushes, paints, and tools that I have been accumulating over the past approximately 4-5 decades seems astronomical compared to what I originally paid for things. I don’t know if that’s more related to time or to place.
On top of that, except for a couple of cameras, all the equipment I usually use for photographing my paintings is in our shipment, which is due to arrive – oh, maybe next month. Most of my office equipment isn’t here yet, either. And I need to buy a new easel for painting on canvas.
I have a good-sized room with a great balcony for my studio/office, and I did get a worktable, a desktop, some drawers, and a really nice chair – all from Ikea, which luckily delivers. I still need some shelves and storage equipment, but I’m planning on waiting until my art and photo stuff arrives so that I can try to make sure I get just the right configuration of furniture in which to organize my art stuff.
I left behind many of my paintings, drawings, and prints in Austin. A lot of them got re-homed during our estate sale, some are at Top Drawer Thrift in Austin (sales benefit Top Drawer, not me), and I do believe quite a few got thrown away. I packed most of my favorites, most of my smaller drawings, and my sketchbooks. I do hope French Customs doesn’t have a problem with that, as we have a lot of blank wall space waiting to be filled.
As I chose to come here on a retirement visa, I am not allowed to sell or give away any of my things for at least the first year after our things arrive. At present, I do not plan to change my visa to a Talent visa, which would allow me to practice my art professionally, but I do plan on continuing to paint, because…how could I not?
In the meantime, I have done some sketches and small works on paper, my favorite of which is this small painting inspired by Lee Bontecou’s sculptural ideas.
“Batterie Extraterrestre” – Watercolor pencils and watercolor on watercolor paper – 7.9″ x 7″
It’s been a while since I did any new Organics paintings, but I cranked out a few new ones this past week. I started with an old one I hadn’t finished. Here it is completed:
I then did another painting per day for the next few days, continuing to explore similar themes as those that originally motivated this series from quite a few years ago. And here they are:
I am happy to announce that I have just completed a redesign of my main art site. I am glad that it only took 3 days to redo the art site, while redesigning/revamping my blog (this one right here) took about 3 weeks! For the first time in my 20+ years of making and designing websites, I’ve used themes NOT designed by me (which was another challenge in itself), but the days of making my own pixel-perfect themes is over.
I am uncertain at this point whether I will keep (and try to redesign) my art shop, however. It is currently not working, and it could be easy or hard to get it back online. We shall see.
Anyway, I’m happy with the new designs of both my blog and art site. I hope you like them, too.
It has been quite a while since I last blogged here. At some point around five years ago, I came to realize that the whole cycle of painting and posting on social media had gotten out of hand — posting for a virtual reaction too soon to properly evaluate my paintings. I wanted to begin creating again without the pressure of responding to other people’s opinions, so I decided to quit posting my work online for a while. That while just happened to last a few years longer than I planned.
I’m back now! I have just redesigned and rebuilt my original blog which already contained 10 years’ worth of posts and pictures, plus I added quite a few new galleries of photos from various art exhibits from Austin, the US, and Europe (with more still to be added as I edit the files). I’m truly glad to have my blog back. There’s a lot of good stuff here! (YMMV). I do hope you find something of value.
Next, I must get my fine art site and my art shop working…bear with me; it could take a while!
I do love this painting, and I have enjoyed creating this series. After these first four, however, my interests took a turn, which you will see in the coming days (if you stay tuned).
Here is one of my first paintings of this year. Doing a lot of experimenting–trying different things. Some are working out great; some not so much. I am happy with this painting, though I’ve since started heading in another direction (or 10). I’ve done about four paintings like this so far. More to come tomorrow.
