musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
03.08.2013 ~ ou tend ce chemin ~ where does that road lead?
 |
| ou tend ce chemin (where does that road lead?) ~ by dawn chandler ~ 16″ x 8″ ~ mixed media ~ copyright dawn chandler 2013 |
Snow. Been hoping for more of it. Maybe posting this painting will tease some out of the sky.
This is my winter card painting for 2012/13. Each winter around the holidays I create a winter-themed mixed media painting. Creating the painting motivates me to focus on the beauty of winter, a season I often find hard to get enthused about. But making my annual winter painting makes me smile a bit about winter.
When the painting is completed, I put it on a card, which I mail to my circle of family and friends and patrons. Call it a Christmas card; call it a New Year card; call it a Merry Winter card. Regardless, making the card provides an annual opportunity to reach out and connect with my tribe in a special way, particularly since scant few of us send or receive real mail anymore. (I pride myself on still being an old-fashioned letter-writer.)
This year’s card began to evolve shortly after Thanksgiving. It grew out of a black and white photo of a path through snowy winter woods that my father or mother took back in the 1950s; I found it in an album from the first few years of their marriage.
With a copier, I enlarged the photo and then glued it down on the panel.
Near the top I added pieces of old crumbling wallpaper to form a sort of archway.
With a paper doily and white paint I stenciled the “snowflakes.”
An English postage stamp is the source of the red bird, with a couple of random brush-strokes of red here and there suggesting his companions.
The hand-written text in the upper right is a scribbling of words I’d jotted down at some point and has since been kicking around my studio.
The printed words on the lower right are excerpted from a memoir or sorts of my parents.
The writing at the threshold of the path lends the title of the painting: “ou tend ce chemin?” — where does that road lead? It‘s my father’s handwriting, from one of his hundreds of French flashcards that he used to carry around.
It may be hard to see, but in the center of the trees is a ghosted figure of an angel — a Renaissance sculpture that I photographed in Rome.
Eventually I added the tall dark tree trunks to the foreground, emphasizing the feeling of emerging onto the path.
I thought the painting nearly complete the morning of December 15.
…and then came the news of the horror in Newtown, Connecticut.
What can you say about that. Words and paint seem so feeble.
I abandoned the painting for a while
came back to it some days or weeks later.
If you look along the long edges, you’ll find leaves.
Silver leaves.
Twenty-eight of them.
02.21.13 ~ there, in the forest…. a sister’s memory
 |
||
| there in the forest, ii ~ by dawn chandler ~ mixed media on panel~ 8″ x 16″ ~ copyright dawn chandler 2013 |
The message came over two years ago:
As you know my sister died on Friday morning. I feel like I know you through her and her husband’s conversations. I know it is a great comfort for him seeing your painting hanging on the wall. She loved that painting!
I was hoping that at some point you might paint something for me to hang on my wall. She loved the out doors and she loved trees. If you are not up to it, no problem. I just thought it would be one more way to keep her with me
Over two years went by before I was ready to do the painting. During that time I had lost loved ones of my own, my father among them. Maybe that’s why I hesitated for so long to begin work on this piece; I just didn’t have the emotional energy to focus my thoughts so intensely on the loss of yet another friend.
But then…. this past autumn, I was ready. And the work just flowed. I created a “copy” of the original painting, but I worked in some text — phrases — that I knew had inspired these sisters.
Here, the original painting:
01.29.2013 ~ snow falling on cedar… and scrub oak
 |
| snow falling on cedar… and scrub oak ~ by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel en plein air ~ 6 x 6 inches ~ copyright dawn chandler |
I know all of Santa Fe (and perhaps all of Northern New Mexico?) is joining me in a sigh of relief today as we watch the snow come down — especially after Saturday’s RAIN(?!?) and yesterday’s 50+ degrees(?!?). And they call this winter?
Well yes, at least today they do.
We’ll see if the sun pops out later this afternoon like it did one day a few weeks ago when we had another lovely snow; I pulled out my plein air kit and, in a few fleeting minutes, attempted to catch the light outside my studio window….
01.27.2013 ~ of winter light and lost souls
 |
| wiinter sunset light across the stowe mountains and treetops ~ by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel ~ 6 x 6 inches ~ copyright 2013 dawn chandler |
Memories of lost loved ones seem to resound most strongly at the end of a winter’s day. I don’t know why that is. But this January evening finds me taking long breaks from my easel to look out of my west-facing window, to the hills silhouetted against the late-day sky… Reflecting on the many good, good souls I’ve known and now miss, wondering about the whys and what-fors….
Pictured here, another winter’s eve approaching, this one in Stowe, Vermont — the view from my friend, Heather’s house.
01.22.2013 ~ snow on the santa fe rail trail
 |
| snow light on the santa fe railtrail ~ by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel ~ 6 x 6 inches ~ copyright dawn chandler |
Two years.
That’s how long I’d lived here in Santa Fe before stepping foot onto the Rail Trail.
Chalk it up to ignorance. Though I drove passed the paved pathway wending through town nearly daily, it never occurred to me that the trail might stretch unpaved beyond the urban sprawl. But it does just that, for some 12 miles or more, south toward Lamy, across the sage and pinon pocked mesas.
Now I’m grateful to find myself out there at least once a week with my running partner — the other half of Team Tortoise — stretching our legs with the coyotes. It’s glorious.
Here, two recent paintings of two different views of the Rail Trail in December snow.
 |
| dropping down on the santa fe railtrail ~ by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel ~ 6 x 6 inches ~ copyright dawn chandler |
For more information about the Santa Fe Rail Trail, click here and here.