Getting Brave

I don’t make New Year resolutions but I do try to set annual goals that sometimes take on an aspirational tone. This year’s theme leaned towards being brave and to be vulnerable. I certainly bit off a huge chunk to chew early on. You see, I took the plunge and mounted a solo exhibition.

Believe it or not I’m a quasi-government official, on a strictly volunteer basis…I’m an advocate for the arts here in my little town. I sit on a council whose charge is to distribute state money earmarked for arts and culture via a grant process. We also solicit shows that run in our local library.

When there was a rather large gap in our exhibition calendar I offered to put my paintings up for a month or two. The trick was that I had to pull it all together in a week. YIKES! This was my first time around this block and knew it would all be on me…the hanging, the labels, the whole enchilada. Double YIKES!

Solo show - Norfolk Library 2018

Lucky for me most of my pieces were framed and was able to expedite frames for the ones that weren’t. And I had a son nearby who was willing to help me schlep and hang the show. I pounded out an artist statement and tried to create a rationale for the pieces I selected. It was hard, but an excellent exercise.

Solo show - Norfolk Library 2018

An enthusiastic visitor

I wanted the whole thing to be cohesive but interesting and accessible. I didn’t try to impress anybody because, quite frankly, I didn’t want to come off sounding stupid or highfalutin.  I wouldn’t know for sure how many people wandered through to see my work, I just prayed that someone came to the reception!  Between the flu and the weather the turnout was small but hearty. My biggest fan by far was also my smallest.

When I first started showing my work I was a wreck having avoided it like the plague for so long prior. I’d rationalized that my work was for my own pleasure and not others which allowed me to avoid criticism. So when I finally did show, to my everlasting surprise and pleasure, I found people to be kind at the very worst and encouraging, even enthusiastic, at best. 

I have found a wonderful community of artists who each have sat in an empty space hoping for others to join them for a glass of wine, a bit of comradery and appreciation of the work. 

And I have found great reward in opening up myself, being vulnerable and being brave.

I invite you to visit my website where you can now sign up to receive very infrequent emails that will keep you up to date with where I’m showing, when I post these musings, and when I am offering special sales and promotions! My site is secure and I PROMISE never to sell your information.

  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original. You can purchase prints for sale at  FineArtAmerica.com.

Local Summer

The perennial beds are planted, mulched and are starting to embarrass themselves with effusive blossoms. The deck has been painted and pots planted as well. With the house and grounds set for the season it's time for me to return to the studio after a small domestic hiatus.

What inspires me at this time of year? Those flowers I planted. The horses next door. The flowering dogwoods. The chartreuse lawns and tender sprouts on too long dormant bushes.

Norfolk Spring © Lissa Banks 2014

Last year it was this brilliant lawn and home on North Street in Norfolk. I loved the dense dark wall of evergreens against the pale sky, the light illuminating the house behind them and the rocker beckoning from the porch.

New Roses © Lissa Banks 2014

Later in the season I was smitten by these flame throwing roses hugging a picket fence in my yard. Unfortunately, they did not survive New England's winter of 2015 but at least I have this image as a remembrance. Every time I drive by that house and every time I pass the picket fence I remember those moments that drove my creativity.

Walsh's Greenhouse © Lissa Banks 2014

And though I cannot claim the inspiration for a painting I began last August (it was a commission that got it started), it was certainly the beauty of the location that suggested its success.

What will this summer bring? Not sure quite yet. Maybe your house. Maybe my own. But it's likely to be local.


  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original, a print or to commission a painting...or find me on Pinterest (I'm new there so watch me as I grow!)

Reflections

I'd only been living here a short time. My neighbors had mentioned that the town's Community Day might be a fun outing for my grandson.

There were musicians, dancers, hot dogs, a bouncy house, 4-H animals, and a small-gauge train ride. But the best thing of all was seeing the stunned look in the eyes of my not quite two-year-old grandson as he gazed up at the massive trucks on display by the town's Department of Public Works. Did he want to get up into the cab? Oh yeah.

James and the Big Truck © Lissa Banks 2014

The carnival noise faded away. Voices softened as the wind breezed through the open windows a good seven feet off the ground. James's feet barely made it to the end of the seat, let alone the floor. He sat back and looked off to the distance, immobilized by his dreams. His face a reflection of his thoughts. We gave him a good long time to get his fill. And to blow the horn.

But there were more trucks to climb into, a firetruck to see, goats to pet. All good stuff whether you're  not quite two years old, or not.


  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original, a print or to commission a painting...or find me on Pinterest. Or you can find this and other this and other prints for sale at FineArtAmerica.com.

Out of Darkness

Sunbathing Clementine © 2014 Lissa Banks

I had been feeling a lack in the inspiration department. My drawings looked flat. My paintings seemed dull. None of my inspiration photos were inspiring. And the garden had been singing its siren song.

I wondered when my muse would return. Could I drag it back by force? What was this place I inhabited these days? Was this my bardo, the transition between death and rebirth,  or as Sogyal Rinpoche writes "the oscillation between clarity and confusion, bewilderment and insight"?

I was floundering and desperately looking for some insight.

Then last Wednesday I delivered a painting I'd submitted to a juried show. A painting that had once kicked off a flurry of inspiration (my clementine series) to a show I really didn't know much about when I'd sent in my entries. I realize I do this a lot. Enter first, ask questions last.

When I drove up to the Danforth I realized this wasn't a little suburban gallery, this was a MUSEUM! With a permanent collection and donors and everything! I signed their papers and handed my painting off to a woman wearing white cotton gloves. My painting was going to hang in a museum exhibit! It was amazing.

Something changed after that. My work took on a new life. I took on a new life. I'd been reborn into my studio. I want all of my work to be worthy of a place like the Danforth Museum. What a powerful motivator such a simple act of walking up some steps and walking through a door has proved itself to be.

The garden will still beckon and I'll continue to stumble through bardo after bardo but I've tasted this moment and I like it. I'll have another, please.


  For more about my work follow me on Facebook or visit my website Lissa Banks Paintings to learn how to purchase an original, a print or to commission a painting...or find me on Pinterest. Or you can find this and other this and other prints for sale at FineArtAmerica.com.

Unfinished Business

I’ve spent the better part of the past couple of weeks or so out in my garden. There were raised boxes to fill and flower beds to turn, and amend and turn again. I dug up turf, lovingly relocating clumps of it to bare spots and divots in my lawn. And since there were more bare spots than there were bits of sod, there was seed to sow.

I scratched at that soil and harvested a barrel’s worth of stones then laid little kernels of hope into slim rows. I stood in the breezy April chill as the spray from the hose drifted back onto my face and watered more than the soil and its promise.

Nothing has sprung to life just yet. 

Eventually comes the point when I’m pretty sure nothing will come of my efforts. I’ve wasted time I could have spent in the studio, or writing to a friend, baking cookies or laughing with a sister. And even if something does live, it will surely be devoured by insects, or chipmunks or the deer that linger at the edges of my lawn.

Before I began on this horticultural tear I had begun yet one more clementine portrait. I’d come upon an image I’d forgotten and I did so love that series. I got just to the point where there is form but little substance. There is promise but also the promise of failure, of disappointment.

It wasn’t hard to turn away and to turn towards the earth.

With the hard evidence of the intractable soil under my fingernails, I recall the pleasure I get from plunging my hands into the dirt. Of prying out a big old rock that’s in my way. Of the smell of the earth. Of the wriggly worms. Of my knees bending on the damp soil. Of the act of hope that the marvel of creation can happen once again and that I could have some small part in it.

So while I wait for that moment to come, for that little miracle, I will return to that clementine that came to sit on my table and look so luscious that I just had to open it up and find it beautiful and want to paint it. And with paint on and in my hands I will once again hope for another kind of miracle and a different kind of creation.

The Best Husband

Christmas in June

When we were finalizing the new front yard landscaping plans he surprised me by asking if I ever did commissions. I said I did. He had an idea.

His wife was extraordinarily proud of the entrance to their nursery and greenhouses, and proud she should be...zinnias, catmint, marigolds, salvia, black-eyed Susans and more burst from the ground in an amazing array. People stop their cars on the side of the road to take pictures. I suspect Mr. Walsh was proud of the display as well. He asked me to capture it in a painting to surprise his wife with for Christmas. I think it was June.

Walsh's Greenhouse ©  Lissa Banks 2014

I have but limited experience with husbands of my own but my impression is that they seldom start shopping for the holidays in the summer!

Now that Christmas 2014 is beginning to fade into our memories (though probably still present around our waists), I'm happy to be able to share Jerry's gift to his wife with you. What a pleasure it was to be able to be a part of his thoughtfulness and devotion.