My recent trip to Bergamo and Venice, Italy was a lovely painting experience. In keeping with my policy of a new environment requires trying something new, I carried with me a watercolor journal of a material new to me, a 10×8” bound journal of Khadi Papers, HB4 WR 210gsm Rough and my ink pen. While I usually use my rigger brush for calligraphy lines I wanted to try the ink pen this time. The size of the journal is also smaller than the scale I usually paint. The journal, pen and small traveling paint set, filled with my own fine paints and supplemented with 7 brushes was light and fit nicely into my tote bag.

I completed 22 paintings on 18 pages in 4 short painting sessions. It is easy to turn the journal lengthwise and paint on two pages. The only problem for me was the habit of the wet paint to sit on top of the paper and take its own good time about drying. I frequently changed painting locations with the book held open to keep from smearing the painting.

I had carried the indelible mechanical pen with which I usually sketch and wished for an ink that would run with the water color–next time. With the pen I had I was unable to easily vary the width of the line I was making.

I feel that my results please me so much that I intend to exhibit the sketch book at members’ show in the Longyear Gallery. By web search I have uncovered a picture of a plexiglass box, or riser with a hole for a hand turning pages in the side. I am investing in having a single one made so I can show off my sketches and watercolor journals.

The summer painting season has been a whirl. Our weather here in the Catskills has been beautiful. Lots of rain but our plein air sessions have somehow dodged each storm. We have not had to cancel once! That leaves me worn out. I am teaching six students in two weekly classes plus participating in one East Branch Delaware River Plein Air Painters’s paintout each week.

In between those activities I have prepared for my exhibition: Kitchen Paintings, watercolors by Alix Hallman Travis. I feel very valued and gratified by the support I am receiving from two other local organizations. Writers in the Mountains accepted my invitation to hold a reading of some of their pieces revolving around food and the kitchen in the gallery space among my paintings. Homegoods of Margaretville, the fabulous kitchen store that handles my “kitchen” cards, is hosting a book signing. I will be very busy and having a good time.

I’ve been busy–very busy preparing an exhibition catalog for my upcoming show at the Longyear Gallery, Margaretville, NY. The Longyear is a cooperative gallery and the opportunity to feature each artist’s work comes around every two years. My second opportunity in the rotation was to be in 2010 but I was too busy with other shows to give the Longyear the attention it deserved. After all, this is the exhibition that will be most accessible to my neighbors and local friends; I thought long and hard before I chose to exhibit my “kitchen paintings”. I had exhibited these paintings in 2010 at The Futon Company, Worcester, MA and the viewers enjoyed them.

Then I had to choose which of the many to exhibit. A few of the paintings still in my possession had been exhibited individually at the gallery before, some never. The decision was difficult. I felt that the grouping required that I include some few previously seen. I feel those previously exhibited will appear in a different light when seen as part of a larger collection of similar still lifes.

Then I have produced a book of my paintings, an exhibition catalog of sorts and a promotional item for me. I used the free software program Blurb, and the process was easy, though not necessarily painless. One still must choose a few paintings from many to include. A writer friend and one of my first students, wrote the foreword; an art historian friend contributed an essay on still life painting, and I added a family recipe and a painting of the product to the mix. A selection from the book can be seen above–just turn the pages. The book is available for purchase. Just click the shopping basket.

I am most gratified to be able to offer our lovely gallery space during my show to the Writers In The Mountains for a reading of their pieces of food. The wonderful The Home Goods of Margaretville, which already carries my “kitchen” cards has offered to host a book signing! Such fun!

Nesting Cormorants, Audubon Park, New Orleans, Ink on paper, 6×10 in., originally uploaded by ahtravis.

I arrived back home yesterday and today have been pleasurably working in my studio. During my absence I had thought of so many pieces of work I wanted to be doing that I started three today!  This way of working will be new to me.  Until now I have maintained a rigorous discipline of finishing one piece before I have allowed myself to begin another.  The three pieces I have begun today are each important in a different way, each is at a different stage of development and in one case a canvas must arrive before I can actually begin painting.  Today I have assembled materials, begun a paper papier-mâché and worked on a preliminary drawing.

I will have to decide later just how to use the many ink sketches I made on our trip.  It may take years for any one them to appear in my painted work, but I keep them in my memory and know they are there to draw on.  In the meantime, with this particular group I enjoyed developing each sketch to a degree I do not usually attempt.

“Parade“, oil on canvas, 48×36 in., originally uploaded by ahtravis.

Just before we left for our trip out of the mountains I completed  the last actually painted canvas in my series of mountain life, “Parade”.  (Several others are in the planning stage).

An  important aspect of our life in the mountains is the role played by the volunteer fire department.  Each community has its own and the organization wears many hats:  it assists residents in time of calamities such as fire, flood, crowd control, accidents, you name it and the volunteers give tirelessly of their time.

In addition the firefighters donate their time and equipment to community efforts such as parades!  Not only do our own local volunteer firemen drive the fire fighting and emergency response equipment in our own parade, but each community’s group participates in every other community’s parades.  It is an enormous commitment of time and energy but one that brings the members of a community together to celebrate and enjoy each other.

In my painting the red fire trucks wind over the mountains and through the vallevs to the encouragement and applause of the waiting villagers. There is always candy for the children.

Sunday Morning, oil on canvas, 50×36 in., originally uploaded by ahtravis.

I am vacationing in New Orleans for three weeks.  I feel a bit ungracious to be complaining but my fingers have been itching to begin the painting I left planned on my easel in my studio at home. It is another for my series on mountain life and will join the three completed since the summer: “Swimming Hole”, “Sunday Morning”, and “Parade”.

I am feeling the influence of Thomas Hart Benton and Reginald Marsh very strongly.  Both were American Scene, Regionalist, figure painters about whom I have written before.  As far back as my student days at the Cleveland Institute of Art my lyrical line was noted as similar to Benton’s, however, no one at that time, not even I, was aware of my interest in the community life of an area.

In the last two years, since completing my series on “Music In the Mountains” I have been overwhelmed with visions of the life I see around me.  I interpret this visual phenomena to mean that it takes me a few years of being in a place to begin to see the habits of behavior typical to the area.  I have lived in the Catskill Mountains for seven years and I begin to see the traditions peculiar to my community.  I now view “Music” as the beginning of a series, “Mountain Life”.  Now I feel that in addition to Benton and Marsh, I have a kinship with Grandmother Moses and our own Nellie Bly Ballard, known as the “Catskill Grandmother Moses“.  I would love to see our paintings exhibited side-by-side.

The sun is shinning here in New Orleans and I cannot help but compare my physical surroundings to those of a Sunday morning at my home in the mountains.

Nativity Revised, oil on canvas, 31.5×24 in.,  originally uploaded by ahtravis.

Matthew 2:7+ “…magi from the east ..set out…And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place were the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on [trying to enter their way was blocked by artists with their easels set up painting] the child with his mother.”

I dreamed this painting.  No kidding!  I actually dreamed the wise men, of the Bible version, and the barn animals could not gather around the family as typically depicted because artists had gotten there first and were in the way!  The dream occurred several weeks after our December in Italy.  I can only imagine I had admired so many crèches, in so many churches, and looked at so many versions of the nativity in museums and churches that my brain rebelled and made this little joke.

I decided to render the dream in paint.

The painting was a challenge for me in several ways.  I have many sketches of artists painting.  However, the central figure I settled on here is actually from a painting I had painted in 2009 of an accomplished plein air painter friend painting in Fleishmanns, NY.  Those who know her may recognize her stance.  I also have sketches of cows, sheep, and chickens but I had none of camels.  For those I turned to photographs posted on Flickr.  I sketched appealing camels from my computer and later used elements of several in my camel.

The Madonna figure is from a sketch of my daughter and grandson that I have used in several paintings.

Woman Supporting Weight, Bas relief construction of cardboard, kraft

paper, acrylic, 18×24 in. originally uploaded by ahtravis.

For this month’s exhibition at Longyear Gallery I am exhibiting the last of my “cardboard paintings” completed during that fabulous month I spent painting in Paris.  Sometimes I am more attached to one painting than another. This cardboard and kraft paper bas relief painted construction has occupied a special place in my heart and I had been reluctant to part with it.

I envisioned the finished piece as a section of a column that carries the weight of the column and/or a whole building. In Italy one often sees architectural features that appear to be supported by fragile shapes wielding incredible strength, a cathedral column supported by an old man, all stooped and tired.  One of my favorite of such contrivances is in Florence where four small turtles, one on each corner bear the entire weight of a gigantic fountain.  I am sure that fountain supported by small turtles is the inspiration for the book and illustrations of “Yertle the Turtle”, by Dr. Seuss.

In my studio this piece has been hanging so that it appeared to support a beam.

The construction was based on a life drawing (see Flickr images to right) done early in my residency at the Paris American Academy.  The piece itself, was completed near the end when I was so filled with inspiration I could not keep my mind still.  I picked the materials, cardboard and kraft paper, out of the street trash on my way to the studio one morning.  The painting is acrylic.

The Artist In Bologna Hotel Room, selfportrait, Ink pen on paper, 6×9 in.  originally uploaded by ahtravis.

Just returned from a three week holiday in Italy, specifically Rome, Bologna and Milan.  Since I have family there and visit frequently, this trip was spent seeking out museums of modern (19-20th century) art where I had not previously been.  I was rewarded with work of artists who are familiar the world over and many Italian artists of the period who commanded a smaller audience and are not so well known.

I began the trip with a new sketchbook and filled every page.  As a mother I found nothing inspired my children to create more than a new box of crayons. I respond similarly to a new sketchbook and a new location.   While I tend to see figures in movement all around me, I also sketch the local land and cityscapes and especially enjoy sketching art work in the museums.

 Many of these figure sketches will reappear in my larger oil paintings sometime in the future.  My exhibition, The Figure, from start to finish, August to Sept. , 2010, Wilbur Gallery, Oneonta, NY, demonstrated this theme. I exhibited paintings of figures alongside the sketches from which they were drawn.  The sketches of landscapes usually inform my paintings rather than are in some way, recreated.

I invite you to accompany me on my tour by viewing the selection of sketches posted on Flickr to the right.

Squashes In a Row,  watercolor, 21×10 in., originally uploaded by ahtravis.

This fall after the last of my shows had been taken down and safely returned to my studio, I turned my attention to every artist’s priority, to locate venues to exhibit my work beyond my immediate area.  To that end I am pleased to announce that I have been juried onto the online gallery, Artful Home. 

Click  athttp://www.artfulhome.com/artist/8223.hlml to view my works.  A click on an image you like will enlarge the view and show all pertinent details of the painting, including where on the painting I have signed!  I have initially posted a selection of my “Kitchen Paintings.  A click on a particular painting will enable you to see a larger version and the details of the piece.