Category Archives: creativity

America’s favorite color

Now that I’m almost done packing the main floors of our Rochester house, I’ve started to look at paint chips. The walls are in great shape; they just need updating. Since my New Jersey friend is thinking of painting her studio, we went to a paint store together. First, she showed me some samples of […]

Renaissance men

The last few decades have led to a significant decline in visual arts and music being taught in public schools. That’s a pity, because historically the visual arts and music were considered an integral part of educating the well-rounded man. Many people have pointed that out, but anecdote cuts no ice in the Common Core […]

Living sculpture

Back in the day, I was a pretty serious gardener. I led a garden group at a large suburban church and cared for my own plants. My schedule during the past few years has nixed that. In many ways gardening is exactly like painting. All the same skills, just different materials. My favorite garden task is […]

A crack in the façade

This summer, I’ve found myself saying, “I’m more tired than I’ve ever been,” and then moving on to discover new frontiers of exhaustion. Last night I hit the limit. While profoundly thankful that my daughter is on a (rapid) road to recovery, I’ve also used burned through energy resources to emergency resources to scrape-the-bottom-of-the-barrel resources. […]

The meaning of love

I have written before on how having children has historically been an impediment to women artists. Although we live in a world where child-rearing is less gender-specific than ever before, this is still true. Chrissy Spoor Pahucki is an exception, and someone I really admire. She takes her three kids in turns to plein air events with […]

Death of an artist

Laura Miner is an art historian at New York University. We were lamenting the death of painter Nelson Shanks this week. Shanks taught at the Art Students League and the National Academy. Although I never studied with him, I was certainly familiar with his work. Nobody can question his ability, his discipline, his drafting or […]

Photographic promiscuity

There was a time when I was very interested in photography. I learned how to shoot pictures when one used an external meter and instructions on the box. My dad was a photographer during WWII. He had a darkroom in the basement, and I loved messing around in it. My husband was as keenly interested […]

Up, Up and Away

This morning we head up to Corea, ME, perhaps the most perfect fishing village on the Maine coast. On Wednesday a local told me how to find the house in which Marsden Hartley stayed while painting in Corea. It’s a grey shingle house past the post office. That’s easy enough, except that much of Corea […]

Doctor’s Orders

One of the problems with having a common name is that people are always confusing me with someone else. For example, I regularly get calls from bill collectors about a Carol Douglas born in Buffalo in 1967. Then there’s the disco star Carol Douglas. She recorded the disco hit “Doctor’s Orders” in 1974 (not to […]