Painting the U.S.S. Hornet

My solo show, "Secret Alameda", at Vines Gallery in Alameda in June was a success on all fronts - I sold almost all of my paintings, and it was exciting to be enthusiastically supported by the gallery, the attendees, collectors, and friends.  Such a thrilling experience to be validated as an artist by so many people in these hard economic times...

One of the paintings displayed in the show was a large sunset view of the Ready Reserve Ships, docked out at the Navy Piers in Alameda. The gallery owner suggested that I contact the USS Hornet (a huge aircraft carrier,  now a museum, berthed next to the ships I had painted) to see if they would be interested in a portrait of the Hornet.  I contacted the museum store manager, and she decided that visitors to the Hornet would be very interested in a dramatic view of the aircraft carrier, similar to the one I had done of the Ready Reserves.  I then visited the ship many times at sunset to study the changing light as the sun went down. On the 4th of July the ship was bedecked with flags, so I added those after I had basically finished the painting to add some interest and color above the flight deck.  I thought at first the flag at the prow was the standard stars and stripes, but then noticed that this flag had only red and white stripes, not 50 stars on blue.  It is apparently a striped "Navy Jack" flag, flown first in 1775, and still flown on Navy ships on special occasions like Independence Day.  I painted it carefully with stripes only!

I have spent a lot of time creating the most powerful composition I could come up with, and finally have a painting that I think catches the looming majesty - and threat - of this enormous warship.

Here are some photos of the painting in progress:

First I cover the entire sheet of heavy rag paper with a tinted wash - in this case cadmium yellow.  I paint the sky, setting sun, and clouds first, then work on the foreground details.  I had already painted the ship when I decided to take these photos, so half of the painting is in effect done.

Here the water and reflections are being added, and the details on the ships on either side.

The final painting, still on the easel, with the rest of the Navy flags added last of all.

Here is the final scan of my gouache painting of the U.S.S. Hornet on the 4th of July.

SECRET ALAMEDA Artist Reception and Show

I live on a small island in San Francisco Bay, originally an oak-covered peninsula that now is separated from the Oakland shore by an estuary.  Alameda was settled in the mid 19th century, and has an astonishing number of old neighborhoods remaining in relatively pristine condition.  A man-made lagoon snakes its way through the island, and beyond that is the bay. We are surrounded by water, and can hear the container ships, and the fog horns out on the bay from our house, as well as the trains coming and going from the Jack London station just across the estuary. Old oaks from Ohlone times still grow in Victorian gardens, and the sun sets over the great bay with the skyscrapers of San Francisco silhouetted on the horizon.

It's an evocative place for a painter.  So many of my pictures are of quiet, mysterious corners of our island, often in twilight, that when Vines Gallery offered to host a one-woman show of my work,  my husband suggested a name for the collection: "Secret Alameda".  The artist reception and show will be on June 5, 2010, and the paintings will remain on display for a month.

Landscapes and Streetscapes

My media of choice is gouache, and my favorite subjects are landscapes and studies of animals and the natural world.

Gouache is water soluble like watercolor but can be worked as a pale aqueous wash or as a thick impasto like oil paint. Underpainting and working light on dark are also possible, as well as incredibly vivid color. For many years now I have been experimenting with gouache alone; and gouache with layers of aging varnishes, crackle varnishes, and tinted glazes. Each imparts a different patina and depth, and allows the creation of faux old masterpieces like the tongue-in-cheek "Gainsborough" portraits of pets, or the twilight landscapes inspired by the early California Tonalists.

Many of my paintings are evening scenes—old neighborhoods, quiet gardens and shorelines, painted at the time of day when edges blur, details become merely light and shadow, and when representational images verge on the abstract.

Line Art Illustration

I have been creating black and white line illustrations for many years for a wide variety of printed pieces and publications; working for the Sierra Club, Stanford University, the University of California, and for many science curriculum projects. I began drawing in pen and ink on paper in a pre-computer age, and now I also draw on a Wacom tablet in Adobe Illustrator. The art still feels very much mine, only the tools have changed...

Ecosystem Posters and Book Covers

The images above are a series paintings I created for a science and literacy curriculum for elementary school students: Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading, developed by the Lawrence Hall of Science at U.C. Berkeley and Berkeley's Graduate school of Education, and published by Delta Education. Each painting represents a different aquatic ecosystem: a Costa Rican rain forest, an Arizona desert, an Indian mangrove swamp, and an Alaskan river system. The paintings include fauna and flora native to each ecosystem, as well as a small "I Spy" detail in each showing some form of human impact, no matter how remote the location. All four were published as large posters within the Aquatic Ecosystem unit of the Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading series.


Below are three of the many book covers I have designed and painted for the Great Explorations in Math and Science Teacher's Guides, also created at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley.  GEMS produces preschool through early childhood activity guides and is a highly respected curriculum development and training program for teachers, parents, science centers, museums, and community groups.

    

Pet Portraits

Detailed Pet Portaits are one of my specialties. I place the subjects of my paintings in their own personal or symbolic environment: gardens, favorite hiking trails or parks, their special place at home, or in an idealized landscape, often inspired by 18th century English portrait painters like Gainsborough and Reynolds.

To see more examples of my pet portraits on the terrific Pupstar Sonoma webpage, please click  here.

Stanford University Libraries Bookplates

Bookplates are small gummed labels pasted inside books and book collections to identify the library and the donor. Visit the Stanford University Bookplate Exhibit to see their full collection of custom-designed library bookplates, including many that I have created for rare book funds and collections at the Stanford Libraries.  A new trend is beginning at some major libraries to create "digital bookplates" rather than printed pieces.  My designs are all easily adapted to be digital files for library websites, as well as traditionally printed bookplates.


Below is the first bookplate I designed for the Stanford Libraries.  This plate is for use in books purchased through a book fund at Hopkins Marine Station, created in honor of my parents.  The illustration is my pen-and-ink rendering of the marine research vessel Te Vega on which my father spent many months in the 1960s in the South Pacific.