“Let me accompany you for as long as it suits. Let us be frozen in time.” 8″ x 10″, acrylic on canvas, October 2007. A painting based on Maira Kalman’s The Principles of Uncertainty.

A spectacular evening of great books, profound thoughts, amazing music, and to top it off, a marble hallway filled with mocha cream cakes for us to eat. I felt like we were living out one of the pages in Maira Kalman’s stories. She’s at the top of my list of favorite illustrators/writers/absolutely-inspiring human beings.

Maira Kalman’s The Principles of Uncertainty is the must-own book of the year, in my opinion. The book is filled from cover to cover with her incredible full-color illustrations (most of them are paintings, each in itself a masterpiece), and the writings are her musings (from her year-long column in the New York Times), with personalities like Nabokov, Freud, Lincoln making appearances, in addition to the many ordinary people like the old lady walking down the street and the little girl in the park, who are each special in their own way. It’s the perfect mix of humor and some really touching thoughts on old age and departed loved ones. You can read the pages over and over, there’s just so much to look at and think about.

I’ll leave you with that, it’s a rainy day in Brooklyn and I’m going back to my book.

The Cabin Restaurant, 8″ x 10″, acrylic on canvas, October 2007.

A little dose of U.S. history: During the 1930’s, under President Frankin D. Roosevelt, the Federal Art Project (a division of the WPA) commissioned the artistic community to paint murals in cities and towns throughout the country, “providing 5,000 jobs for artists and producing over 225,000 works of art for the American people.”

Many of the murals have long since been torn down or painted over, which I’m told is the fate of most in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Quite a few have survived, many of them in the historic towns along the Hudson River. When we went on our road trip upstate, I wanted to go on a walking tour to see seventeen of the WPA murals in the town of Poughkeepsie, but as luck would have it the tour guide was away that weekend. We were able to see a few murals at the Poughkeepsie post office and that’s where I saw this small but stately painting adorning the wall above the rows of p.o. boxes, Georgina Klitgaard’s View of Poughkeepsie in 1840. 

We spent a significant part of the afternoon leaping over giant water puddles on our way to and from the Bushwick Open Studios and arts festival. The little neighborhood kids, decked out in their swimsuits, were too busy dunking each other with pails of water from the fire hydrants to notice us visitors wandering around.

A few of my favorites: the English Kills art gallery, paintings by Chris Hagerty, and linoleum prints and handmade books by Bonnie Kaye Whitfield, who showed us her drawings in the fabulous little sketchbook she uses ~ I want one too!

Another place worth visiting, the Whitney Museum of American Art, where I stared and stared at the two Hoppers on the fifth floor (I have to visit again when the rest of them return from the big exhibit in Boston), and I was amazed by how Gordon Matta-Clark sawed houses in half and chopped off the corners of attics (and I don’t mean that sarcastically).

Coastal Drive, oil on birch panel, 36″ x 48″ ©Nicole Strasburg.

Nicole Strasburg’s beautiful landscape paintings are a careful, alluring balance of nature’s quiet and sound. I am always really moved and inspired by her paintings, so I’m really grateful that she’s taken the time from her busy schedule to share a view of her workspace, her materials, and what she’s currently working on:

“I have just finished producing a solo exhibition titled “Tidal Change” which is now showing at my primary dealer here in Santa Barbara, California. My images are contemporary, tonalist landscape paintings in oil on birch plywood.”

(Above: “my paint table - my other appendage - the brushes ON the table are the ones in current use the ones in the bucket are either unsalvageable after years of abuse or a sampling of my father’s college brushes that are old painting companions, trophies perhaps.”)

“My materials consist mainly of Schminke Mussini Oil Colors from Dick Blick and my favorite brushes, the Manet series, from ASW in North Carolina. I work on birch plywood that I get at the local hardware store and my fabulous, woodworking husband cuts them into any shape I want. He then adheres bracer bars, so that I can avoid framing, with his manly pneumatic nail gun. I love having the stretcher/bracer bars on the plywood because it allows the painting to breathe, no boundaries of a frame keeping the viewer’s imagination from an endless horizon. I wouldn’t want to do without my husband as I remember the days of hammering the nails in with my girlie hammer. It took twenty times longer to accomplish twenty times less. He (Bill) keeps my supply of panels pretty well stocked without even being coaxed into submission. Invaluable support!”

“Other than a stock-pile of my favorite tools and materials, I have two black and white border collies that are my constant studio mates. They are raring and ready to go at any moment, so we installed a double swinging screen door allowing them the freedom to come and go at will. My other vice in the studio are audio books -can’t live without ‘em and don’t want to. They are a girl’s best friend. A fabulous book, read by talented narrator can keep you focused for hours and hours.”

(Above, “my paint table, easel, print press, flat files, movie chairs, surfboard with my painting design plus two furry beasties - home”)

“Aside from re-using and recycling EVERYTHING possible I am a member of One Percent for the Planet, businesses donating 1% of their sales annually to environmental groups. In addition, I have made my studio and home carbon neutral by purchasing Green Tags. “Green Tags are created when wind power or other renewable energy is substituted for traditional power. The result is a shift away from our dependence on burning fossil fuel to produce electricity. Using clean renewable energy is friendly to the environment and reduces emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Green Tags represent the real savings in carbon dioxide and other pollutants that occur when green power replaces burning fossil fuel.” You can find out all the details at www.greentagsusa.org VERY COOL.”

Path to the Sea, oil on birch panel, 30″ x 30″  and Sentinel 02, oil on birch panel, 60″ x 60″ ©2007 Nicole Strasburg.

“[If I could work with any materials in the world for my dream project, perhaps I’d use] recycled woods to paint on from around the world and a year-long trip to document, in images, the lands that they came from!”

{If you would like to know more about Nicole Strasburg, you can see her portfolio on her website and read about her thoughts on painting at Pentimento.}

March. Acrylic on canvas, 16″ x 24″ 2007.

I dabbled with this painting much longer than I needed to so I’m glad it’s finished. I’m ready to start anew on a fresh canvas. It’s a cloudy, rainy spring day here in Brooklyn so the light shining through the windows casts a light blue hue on everything.

On the right, a preview of the new spring/summer line of Five and a Half journals. I won’t say any more about them for now ~ they’ll be in the store on Monday!

This is my first easel. It’s so tall that it wouldn’t fit in the cab and part of it was sticking out the window (while my husband and I were clutching onto it precariously as our cabbie sped across the Manhattan bridge) when we brought it back. I’ve been drawing and painting for over ten years and never owned one before so I’m still beaming with delight over it.

So this is what I’ve been doing a few hours each days, a peaceful interlude to making stacks of books, packing up orders, and answering e-mails.

Recommended: the Masterson Sta-wet palette (goodbye to tupperware containers and saran wrap), the Virginia Ham and Cheese (I have to remove the cheese since I’m allergic but it’s just as delicious without) Mini-sandwich at Whole Foods, and Edward B. Gordon’s “A Painting A Day.”

February. Acrylic on Canvas, 20″x28″ 2007. 

In memory of my little Pepper (August 12, 1994- February 22, 2007).