Solstice, Birthdays and Flowers

I don't think it's my imagination that spring has been memorably rainy this year. It is raining now as I type, a downpour actually. Since our summer is short here in New England the natives are restless for their time in the sun: beaches, cookouts, and general frolicking about. We yearn for it come January. March brings glimmers of hope. April routinely disappoints. But May and June are glorious. Just not this year.

As a result my garden is flourishing, though with an even ratio of weeds to flowers. Inside it's been a different story, here the flowers have bloomed.

Solstice © Lissa Banks 2019

I love birthdays. Seven years ago I celebrated a belated, but significant, one with family and friends in my backyard. It was pretty special. Everyone was there. Music played, festive lights hung from treetops and  twinkled in the bushes, and little vases filled with every sort of red flower lined the long, long table where we ate and toasted and laughed. The next morning I found all those little vases crammed on a small table on my deck. It was spectacular. I ran to get my camera and tripod and snapped as many photos as I could. I wish I had gotten more. Those photos were the beginning of what has become my obsession with painting flowers.

The first three works, Red Party Flower I, Red Party Flowers II and Red Party Flowers III, commemorated the party and opened the gates into a deep exploration into flowers, and particularly tulips. Nineteen paintings in total.

It's fitting that I finished this, the 19th floral, today as it marks the summer solstice, pouring rain notwithstanding. A time when not just New Englanders celebrate the moment when the sun traverses the northernmost arc in the heavens. The demarcation from one season to the next, a celebration of light and driving out of demons it marks a day of transition for me this year as well. This will be my last tulip portrait for a while.

It will be interesting to see how long I can stay away. They are the demons I have a hard time driving out of my studio.

I invite you to visit my website where you can sign up to receive now and again 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.

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Pas de Deux

He wondered out loud, what is love now that we are in the last (two, dare I say three) decades of our lives? I said that I wasn't sure, but what I did know was that it was different from the deep crushes of middle school and beyond that, the urgent, hormone-fueled passion of the reproductive years.

Pas de Deux © Lissa Banks 2019

Deeper into our lives we accumulate scars of disappointment and betrayal. These cast a shadow of suspect on others' intentions and cultivate cynicism. Small accomplishments build strength and independence over the years. Eventually we learn who we really are and, with that, what we want and what we won't accept. In short, we narrow our parameters as we broaden as human beings. It's both the gift and the curse of getting older; as we long for connection it becomes easier being apart.

I remember junior high dances: the crepe paper and fruit punch, teachers clustered on the perimeter and mobs of girls and mobs of boys eyeing each other with longing and fear. Cheap cologne and perspiration filled the air as damp hands touched and couples stepped tentatively into the center of the room. Awkward gyrations were met by giggles and taunts offstage. The music stopped and if you didn't like your partner you'd run back to your gang and recover from the humiliation. If you did, you stayed and danced again and again. A date at the movies might be planned. St. Christopher medals exchanged. Such was budding love... for a week or two.

When we pair off into marital bliss we learn about a new, deeper kind of love. The kind that allows for compromise and sleepless nights and changes in plans. There's sickness and health and not everyone emerges unscathed. I'm not sure who are the lucky ones, those who celebrate anniversaries of nuptials longer than a life well-lived or those who switch gears and go solo.

We dance the dance throughout life. With suitors and blind dates and girlfriends and boyfriends and spouses we dance the graceful, inspired, painful, disappointing, sensual, desperate, heartbreaking, dutiful, chaotic, blind, uplifting, affirming and transcendent dance. A pas de deux for our lives.

I invite you to visit my website where you can sign up to receive now and again 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.

Glory

As I finished up this painting I was taken back to high school English (my tattered, 1,398 page textbook still takes up real estate on my bookshelf). Thinking about what I might want to express about this painting Wordsworth's poem came to mind; Intimations of Immortality, and the famous lines:

What though the radiance which was once so bright 

Be now for ever taken from my sight, 

Though nothing can bring back the hour 

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; 

We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind

Glory © Lissa Banks 2019

Indeed, what does remain? I'd say quite a lot.

I often think about those days. We wore uniforms: plaid jumpers, saddle shoes, peter pan collars. Any individuality was tucked underneath in the form of ruffled bloomers, leopard print bras and snazzy underpants. We were offered an excellent education if we were willing to pick it up. I think we did, for the most part. We graduated, scattered. Some of us married, some are now grandmothers, too many are gone.

But back then we were rebels under those plaid jumpers. We chaffed under the constraints of the school's rules, of the world's rules. The year we graduated students marched in the street to protest the war and one was shot and killed by a National Guard soldier in Ohio. We expressed our shock by wearing black armbands over those white short-sleeved blouses. We lost our innocence; we found our voices. Despite evidence of the world on fire all around us we believed the world was changing, slowly, for the better.

Wordsworth laments the losses of childhood but comes to recognize the richness of the world that he knows now as an adult. It's a powerful image and one reason I think I'm so drawn to paint these beautiful flowers. It takes me back to my childhood home and the tulips my father refrigerated all winter so they'd bloom in our California spring. It takes me back to my "flower child" adolescence and the idealism we held so dear.

Yes, time passes. We lose some things and people we love, but we gain some things also. And we have all those memories that we can gather up like a bouquet of our life. And we have tulips.

Tulip Field Fantasy

Before all things went to hell in a hand basket there was this moment when I managed to get one of the boys to stand still long enough for a quick snapshot before he ran off with his brother to wreck destruction on a good number of tulips. I'm certain, given the number of children at the tulip picking field, the farmers factor this into their overhead but their mother wasn't too happy with their behavior.  Being a grandmother I get to shine these kinds of things on somewhat, though I helped with the roundup and parceled out my share of hairy eyeballs to the miscreants.

Tulip Field Fantasy © Lissa Banks 2018

William loves all things nature. He will caress a newfound earthworm friend, gorges on kale straight from my vegetable garden and giggles with delight at kittens and puppies, newborn lambs and strutting chickens. And of course, there was that night we were all eating lobster that created for him his first existential crisis. So although he hardly stood still long enough to have noticed a single monarch that day, I imagined him surrounded by them in that moment of innocence...before the downfall.

I invite you to visit my website where you can sign up to receive now and again 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.

Two-fer

It's been a crazy month or so. Rushing around to get myself off for a much anticipated two-week plus vacation left me leaning on my son to pick up and deliver some artwork from and to exhibitions (thank you sweetie). Suffering from a terrible case of jet lag on the return trip I managed to drag myself to a reception at Hopkinton Center for the Arts' Arts in Bloom show, one of my favorites.

Still in something of a brain fog I arrived late only barely registering that my two entries hung near the front door, one of which (Redemption) had a compact yet evocative arrangement in front of it. After four years of participating in the show, I knew that my work had been acknowledged but since I won first place the year before, I assumed lightening simply couldn't strike twice. I headed to the bar for a glass of wine.

Redemption © Lissa Banks 2017

Since I'd arrived late I moseyed around the place to see if I knew anyone or any of the artists whose work hung on the walls. There were beautiful pieces, one of which, had a fabulous arrangement in front of it. After noting the use of tree bark, I turned and complimented the artist on her win. She had no idea the arrangement meant she'd won a prize so was thrilled. I moved on and ran into a friend who congratulated me on my sale. Sale?!? I hadn't even looked at my work. Hooray!

Grace © Lissa Banks 2017

At about halfway around the room the director hit the mic and began announcing the winners. The woman I congratulated earlier received an honorable mention, then a second was announced and a third. I was surprised, for some reason I thought my humble offering would have been in that group. Must be a third place. Nope, not me. Nor second. I was astonished to hear my name called as having won first prize for the second year in a row! I was totally blown away. Having received my prize and some congrats from friends and fellow artists I took a look at my paintings, the winner and the arrangement that complimented it and the other (Grace), complimented by the little red dot meaning it had been sold.

Hopkinton Center for the Arts - Arts in Bloom 2018

I've on cloud nine ever since, my jet lag banished and my energy high to get back into the studio and paint away.

May 20, 2018 UPDATE: A couple of days ago I received more excellent news. Seems that Redemption also sold! So really, this post should be named "Three-Fer"!

I invite you to visit my website where you can sign up to receive now and again 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.

Mocking

The fourth in my most recent series of tulip portraits is a departure from the up close and personal nature of its predecessors. It's both simpler and more complex.

I was drawn to the photo for the sinuous nature of the leaves and stem and to the strength of the blossom...so perfect, so proud. And I loved the messy cacophony of the shadows cast by the five-arm chandelier that lit the subject. The flower came together quickly, the shadows less so. As I wrestled with the layers of tint and shade I came to wonder if it would ever fall together. And I wondered if it would ever speak to me beyond the difficulty it was presenting.

Mocking - Chandelier Jealousy © Lissa Banks 2018

It wasn't until it was complete that I saw it for what it was. Those shadows were jealous of the bloom. Hard as they may try to compete, they were but a reflection of the curious perfection that nature always manages to achieve in her infinite variety. They mock the flower but they mock themselves in the process.

I can't help but think about the current state of our humanity. We seem to have forgotten that we are all imperfectly created out of the same oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. We love our children and breathe the same air. We all eat, sleep, yearn, cry, fear, want, laugh and triumph in the same way. And yet, whether it's scrawled on city buildings or plastered on billboards or shared on Twitter, we berate each other and treat each other as if they are not us. We seem oblivious to the fact that as we mock others we, in turn, mock ourselves. How silly, really, it is. Silly if we were only shadows on a wall.

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.

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Jan Theodora

My sister Jan died a little over a month ago.

She was, as all of us are, a complicated human being. In her obituary her son captured the best and the worst of her life when he wrote "Wonderfully eloquent in writing and conversation, Jan expressed herself beautifully and was known for her sharp wit and fabulous laugh. After a severe stroke tragically impaired her ability to communicate over her final 12 years, Jan’s physical limitations never diminished her fierce approach to life."

Jan Theodora © Lissa Banks 2017

That brilliant mind became closed off to us when her stroke left her with aphasia, an impairment of language, affecting the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write. She could get out a few words, sometimes a surprising sentence  or two but then the sands swallowed up her following thoughts, leaving her silenced.

 When I was a little girl she made me the most exquisite paper dolls. I must have been about five, so she would have been about 15 or 16. They were drawn in the style of the most elegant newspaper advertisements of the day and the dresses were all ballgowns mimicking the fabulous gowns worn by Deborah Kerr in The King and I. I was thrilled and played with them until they were pulp.

The dresses she drew shimmer like satin in my memory. With a keen sense of design she went on to become an accomplished seamstress, a tailor really, whose "handmade" coats and frocks rivaled those bought in stores. Never inclined to do anything halfway, her cooking was legend, her home perfection, her dinner parties always memorable. And she did it all because excellence was of the utmost importance to her.  Woe to the unwarned butcher trying to sell her an inferior cut of meat. I was there once to witness her wrath, as many others did.

So when she recovered as far as she could from the damage done to her, the thought of her, of all people, unable to communicate except in spurts and with gestures, her bright eyes or that disapproving scowl, we all understood how much she had really lost.

She left us with wonderful memories of who she was to us all. To me, a second mother I always said. She was the epitome of style and pride with a large dose of humor and sass. I honor her by naming my most recent painting after her.



  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  prints for sale at FineArtAmerica.com.

Grace

As anyone who has seen my paintings or read this blog knows, it appears that I have something of an obsession with tulips. They are at once elegant, simple, playful, serious, honest and mysterious. Their colors are infinite and their curves both seductive and innocent.

Mirroring cultural biases I tend to select pristine subjects, their frills plump and their brightly colored arches robust and compelling. This time I selected a slightly different subject.

Slow Fade Lissa Banks 2017

There were age spots on this beauty. In a few days the petals would thin and crinkle becoming almost translucent, curling in on themselves before falling to the mantle and ushered into the dustbin.

Maybe it's a response to what I see in the mirror most mornings but I am increasingly reluctant to replace these flowers as they fade. There was a time when I could feel a man's eyes upon me as I entered a room. I'm not sure exactly when it happened but unless I'm walking into a talk about Social Security filing strategies it just isn't the same these days.

I have more compassion for these blossoms which become more and more difficult to call blossoms. What should we call them then? I don't know. I do know that they are still worthy of our admiration. They are still beautiful. They are unique and sometimes tenacious refusing to give up their stem. I love them all the more.



  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.

A Tulip By Any Other Name...

I've embarked on a journey. An experiment to see if I will ever tire of painting tulips, sort of. I just might because despite having spent now more than 30 hours facing this lady's backside I find that I'm at a loss as to what to name her. I really don't like the convention that some artists use of simply naming them nothing but I'm coming up empty. Help!

Unnamed © 2017 Lissa Banks

It all started innocently late spring of last year. My daughter-in-law and I took the grandkids to a tulip farm in Rhode Island. Our excitement and awe of the row upon row of tulips gradually succumbed to frustration as the 5 and 3-year-old ran up and down the aisles, tromped blossoms, decapitating quite a few. Realizing the excursion might be over before it began, I took as many photos as I could and grabbed as many samples of my favorites as possible before we all piled back into the car for an angry mommy return trip.

At home I found myself with a rather rag-tag looking bouquet so decided to attempt to shoot a series of portraits of each individual. There might be as many as nine in all in the end hence my flip remark about getting sick of painting them. Yesterday I thought that might be true, until I started sketches for my next tulip portrait!

So, my dear readers, I wasn't kidding. I need your help naming this painting. What does it evoke for you? Let me know in the comment section or drop me an email or visit my Facebook page. I'm desperate!

  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.

All Mixed Up

When last I wrote I was in the throes of an artist's block. Yes, that damn petal was driving me to blog. And in the end the blog turned out to be about letting go of expectations.

I'm not sure how I did it, but I nailed the hurdle (you'll tell me if I didn't) and finally finished the tetraptych or quadriptych, which according to Wikipedia are interchangeably used for a four-panel piece such as this. I vacillate between the two depending on which word I can remember to spell at the moment...but I digress.

Family ©  Lissa Banks

Many years ago I moved from east to west to live close to my parents after a marriage, a divorce, numerous jobs, cats, dogs, and three children away. I was there to say goodbye to my father and to meet my mother as a whole human being for the first time in my life. She turned out to be an amalgam of strength and fear, hilarity and timidity, love and bitterness. And she had the softest hands I've ever been graced to have held. She was a difficult woman to be sure: insecure, needy and demanding but loving and devoted. She blesses and tortures me still. Even last night she came to me in a nightmare of sorts!

My first post about this four-in-one painting was how they had come to represent my three sisters and me. Each unique and yet cut from the same cloth. I had expected that's how I'd end up thinking about them in the end. But as usual, I didn't. Not exactly, that is. Expectations dashed once again.

In the end I couldn't put them back into place, I preferred to see them all mixed up. They shine in this way, I think. It causes me, at least, to look at them in a different way.

So maybe they do tell the tale of my sisters and me after all. Maybe I'm looking at us all in new ways now as we are all now solidly in the autumn of our lives... in the same way I had the privilege of looking at my mother in the years before she died. She's in there among the petals, you know, especially the difficult ones, the ones I needed to perfect, most likely just for her.



  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.

Blocked

The other night someone asked me if I was ever plagued by the painter's version of writer's block. Oh yeah, I said. Definitely. As a matter of fact I was in the throes of it right now.

The offending flower.

I'd been blissfully moving right along with the fourth panel of a polytriptych that included, of course, tulips. I got this down, I thought when I started. But here I found myself slogging through the next to the last blossom. What was it about that damn flower that was challenging my patience? After a few days I gave up and painted it over to start again. The second try has shown improvement. It's not done by a long shot but I'm not walking away in disgust. At least at this point I can see the light at the end of the tunnel...I think.

However, the conversation with my friend wasn't so easily rectified. I'm sure that it's hard for non-creative types to imagine the process. And quite frankly, I'm also sure that each artist has their own way of doing things. It's one reason why there is such a variety in style and expression. There are lots of books that give folks the one, two three of painting. There are YouTube videos galore. But he said to me, "why don't you just look at something instead of just making it up." I do, I said. I have my sketch, I have a photo reference and my computer set up as well so I can isolate an area and do color checks. But even with all of that I find myself trying to paint what I think something looks like instead of what it really looks like.

My setup.

When we're in kindergarten we paint all our houses with a pitched roof and one door. No windows. Mom or Dad may or may not have arms and usually someone has inordinately long legs. No torso. I find myself doing it now, rounding edges instead of letting the edges subtly ungulate like they do in nature. Letting go of ones preconceived notions of the material world helps me move closer to it.

My friend and I talked past each other for a while before deciding to move on to other topics. I just couldn't explain to him that yes, I was looking. What he didn't understand was that looking and seeing are different things.

I've put down my brushes for the day. Hopefully I'll return tomorrow with a renewed vision. And hopefully, I'll let go of what I think things should be and accept them for what they are.



  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.

You Can't Win Them All

I've written before about how interesting it is to see and hear reactions to my paintings. I've reluctantly posted a photo of a newly finished painting, reluctant because I wasn't entirely sure it was very good, only to find out that people loved it. And conversely, a painting that I'm inordinately fond or proud of gets zero response. Go figure.

Moody Gaggle copyright Lissa Banks
On view through June 22, 2017 at Hopkinton Center for the Arts

A couple of weeks ago, a neighbor with whom I've been in conflict took it upon herself to text me in the middle of the night to tell me, among other things, that my art was "underwhelming." Maybe it is to her. Her response didn't bother me probably because of the diverse reactions I get from paintings I love and those I love a lot less.

One response I got for my latest painting surprised the hell out of me though. It won first prize in a juried show! I had only just finished it, the varnish barely dry as I dropped it off at the art center for consideration by the juror.

I usually like to live with a painting before forming an opinion, let alone submitting it to a juried show. I prop it up in my bedroom, or at the end of the hall, or hang it on a wall wanting some color; someplace that I'll walk by and give it a look or two. There are times I'll even tuck it away and revisit it after months before warming to it. So yes, I wasn't sure Moody Gaggle was good enough to submit so very surprised that it won!

I'm looking forward to getting to know that painting a lot better once it gets back home but for now I will leave it to bask in its own glory. As for my neighbor, maybe I'll begin a series of landscapes featuring a slightly deranged woman way off in the distance looking not particularly important.



  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.

Hibernation

I do things a little differently. I hibernate come spring and emerge again in the fall. To my studio, that is. I suppose I just can't resist the urge to create on earth's canvas while the sun shines and the birds sing. It's about this time of the year that I succumb to a different itch, to dig into my boxes full of tubes of paint and rummage around a year's worth of stashed photos of warmer days seeking inspiration.

Hibernation © Lissa Banks 2016

Motivated by guilt that I've long neglected this room, I rearrange the shelves and scrub the floor while mulling the next project.

I can't really say I've been completely useless the past few months. I've pursued my interest in tulips with, I believe, good result. Regardless, I am marked by the lack of new canvases to offer up to show. It's a bit humiliating. Where did the summer go? Did I sleep through it?

As always, I resolve to do better. To paint more quickly, to seek the muse over distraction. I lack discipline, I tell myself. I will do better, turning to self-affirmations to move me forward.

I do have an ambitious project in mind. It will be large and very pink. It will take me back to the summer spent in my garden. The light of the sun will shine through the canvas and warm me as the days grow cold and dark, drawing me out of my summer hibernation.



  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.