A Jet Lag Kind of Day

It was the perfect day for jet lag.  I did get a great night's sleep last night, but still, I do not feel like the time zone I'm in matches what my body expects (it's an 8 hour difference between Seattle and Portugal).  

I started a painting yesterday of the view from my patio of the cliffs and Lagos way in the distance.  I literally fell asleep while holding the brush, and it has brush marks that follow whatever I was seeing on the inside of my eyelids.  I tried to fix a few things today and the Strathmore sketchbook paper sure can take a lot of water, layering of color and fixing mistakes without buckling or getting fuzzy.  That's good to know!  I'm just getting used to the sketchbook and watercolors, it's pretty fun.

I took the sketchbook with me to lunch in Benagil.  I took the photo at the top of this page from a cliff-top overlooking the beach there.  I am wearing a sweater, but only because I knew I'd be eating lunch in the shade and the temp is really light sweater-weather if you aren't in the sun.  Lunch at O Pescador -- glad I made a reservation, they were turning people away! -- felt like summer.  I had white sangria, spaghetti with clams and lemon meringue pie.  All delicious, with a side of painting.  The terrace tables have a view through a slice of Benagil that looks like it will be blocked in the future by new construction (the concrete columns in the painting - an ominous sign) but was just beautiful today.  

In the late afternoon, I was watching the sunlight on the wall of the apartment again and gave a first try at this idea I have about painting the interesting shapes made by the light and furnishings.  I think I'll keep playing with this idea in my sketchbook.  I've been painting in watercolor because it's so easy to transport, and this may be a job for gouache. 

It's sketchy, but maybe you can see where this could be headed?

A side note about oranges in the Algarve.  I only got here yesterday and I've had four already.  I bought a few different varieties at the grocery store when I arrived, all of them locally grown.  One was overly pithy, which made eating it more difficult than I'd have liked (see my previous blogs for the millionth rant about dull knives in vacation rentals), but they've all been juicy and packed with flavor.  I will be going to a grove at the end of the week for a tour and tasting and I'm really looking forward to that.  

Greetings from the Algarve

 That's the sunset from my patio overlooking the ocean.  (It's the Atlantic, not the Mediterranean. Although I'm on the Southern coast of Portugal, it's Atlantic until you get to Gibraltar.). My travel to get here took a full 24 hours during which I took 3 flights, had 2 layovers that were long enough to change planes and get a lobster roll in Boston airport, but not so long that I didn't worry about having to change terminals and re-clear security in Boston and change terminals in Dublin.  If you think you don't get a lot of walking in on a day when you fly, just add a few terminal changes and leave your weighted vest at home since you've got that nice heavy carryon to lug around.  Faro Airport is smaller and a lot less busy than Lisbon, but they still manage to get several laps-worth of walking to get through passport control and then over to rental car pickup.  Anyway, when I arrived and picked up my rental car, I was glad that I could stay awake long enough to get to my apartment and collapse.  (This was in contrast to last time when I had a direct-to-Lisbon flight but then had to drive 2 1/2 hours while dead tired.  Hmmm)  

People hiking the Seven Hanging Valleys Trail, which goes past my patio, were out in sleeveless tops and shorts.  No small contrast to the cold driving rain I left behind at home!

The view is spectacular at midday, too!

I was last in this apartment 3 years ago, and the furniture has been updated, so there's going to be a new series of "sun-sails" photos.  The photos from 3 years ago, looking at the sunset as it lit up the apartment wall  in the shape of sailboat sails (it was the curtain opening) between 5:00 pm and 5:40, are hung at home and bring me great joy.  Being here and having a new configuration of furniture and light is fun!   I felt last time that photos said it all, but this year I'm looking at this wondering if paint is going to make an appearance.  The shape of the light and the shape of the decorative basket are pretty interesting to me.

All I have on the agenda tomorrow is getting over jet lag and going to lunch at O Pescador in Benagil.  I had an unforgettable lunch there 3 years ago and that's all the ambition I've got for now.  

Painting on Pause & what's next at the Steam Plant

It's can be hard to find the line between "done" and "overworked."  I have a couple of small fixes to make from the version you see here, and then the painting will be set aside.  There's a lot of reflected light in the image below, mostly due to the fresh oil in the paint, but there's also some things I want to refine.  I do need to give this a break (so I can travel!) but also so I can look at it with fresh eyes in a few weeks and make sure I've hit the mark for finishing it.

As for changes, in the past couple of days, I took out the flowers that were in the background on the left, no reason to be distracted by them.  I'm going to keep the large circular dial that's on the rear steam turbine, but I think I'll reduce its intensity so it doesn't appear quite so round and doesn't draw your attention quite so much.  You'd be surprised at how uneven the pipes really are in person, clearly made and bent into place by hand long ago, and although I'm not finding it distracting at the top, but I am not so sure that the lower pipes aren't too red, too visible at the bottom.  So that's another minor fix I need to make.  The painting is 36 x 48" in oil on a birch panel.

Now that I've actually brought my flower installation/paint idea close to done, what's next?  Well, first of all, Seattle Flower Works and I both loved doing this.  We are really excited about the idea of doing it again, using seasonal flowers/branches in a few months.  We'd like to invite people into the process more and maybe open the space while we are working so that the public can come in, take pictures and, I hope, help support the Georgetown Steam Plant --you can learn more about the plans at https://georgetownsteamplant.squarespace.com/.  We'll be coming up with the timing and a plan for that in the next couple of months.

For this painting, I'd like to see it raise funds for the Georgetown Steam Plant.  If there is an opportunity to sell it and donate the proceeds, I'll do that.  Or maybe I'll donate the painting.  Not sure, but my goal is to use this both to help an important cause and to springboard this into future opportunities for collaborations and paintings.

While the paint is drying, I'm packing up sketchbooks and gouache for travel in Portugal and Copenhagen!   My time in Portugal will be along the Algarve, not going north to Lisbon or Porto or Evora (for my last trip's blog of those places, see pourchewgal.blogspot.com)   I'm planning a mix of revising sites I've been to before and taking on some new adventures. Stay tuned.

Choosing the Color of the Light

You can see the problem (I hope!)  I had to choose a palette for the painting and the color of the light -- warm light bulbs or cooler natural light or many other configurations -- which would determine the entire mood of the painting. 

When I started sketching out the painting, before the flowers were installed, there was ample natural light flooding the space, which made the turbine and steam plant appear in cool blue-gray and green-gray tones.  Warm light came from the bulbs and was reflected around the fixtures and along the upper deck of the turbine.  My plan was to use this as the base painting, add the flowers when they were installed and then be able to finish the painting in a few days since the base was done.

The base painting I'd done before he installation of flowers

First pass once the flowers were installed, lights fixtures on

Two problems cropped up once the flowers were installed --one, the warm lights were so bright that they made the flowers look very dark and two, heavy rain reduced the light coming from outside.

All of which is to say that I had to make a choice today.  I brought in a new light to shine on the flowers, I turned off the bright fixtures on the turbine (and then painted them out of the painting!) and this is where the painting stands now. I changed the color of the turbine where it's closest to me from blue-gray to a warmer putty color, as the new light plan shifted its tone.  Feeling very good about the changes!

 Still a work in progress!

Plant, Flowers -- A collaboration, part one

 

Steam Turbine

Turbine with flower installation

The idea started with this steam turbine, whose copper pipes ascend like sapling tree trunks toward the upper levels of the machinery.  My thought was to bring in branches and flowers and install them on the copper pipes to juxtapose their industrial purpose with organic forms.   As much as I liked my purely industrial gouache sketches, I thought that this might elevate the painting I've been doing to another level.

I have the good fortune to have a friend and neighbor, @seattleflowerworks, who, when I asked what she thought of the idea, jumped onboard.

We went to the flower markets to get supplies -- although the selection was limited by the time of year, we found gorgeous flowers to make a hot color arrangement in the space.

We wrapped the pipes in chicken wire to provide a structure to hold the flowers. Then we cut and arranged the flowers.

Kathy Rautureau @seattleflowerworks and me -- we are feeling very happy to have the flower arranging done!

But my final goal for this project is a painting.  I'll give you an update on that in the next post.  Thanks to Beth Shepherd Photography @bethshepherdphotography for some of these images -- she came in to help document the experience with her fine camera and lenses.

PS -- I haven't used the blogger software in a while and I'm finding it a bit funky!  Apologies for that and I hope I'll get back in the swing of things soon. 

Steam Plant Painting

 I've had the amazing good fortune to have a "residency" at the Georgetown Steam Plant in December 2024.  The Georgetown Steam Plant was built in 1906 to draw water from the Duwamish River (which, at that time, flowed next to the plant) and through pipes, furnaces and a lot of huge heavy machinery, create electricity to power Seattle's street cars.  The plant was decomissioned in 1970 and there's a new and exciting effort to explore arts programming as a way to bring uses to the enormous and fabulous space.

I put "residency" in quotes because I generally think a residence would have heat and bathrooms.  But this is an abandoned steam plant, and it is very cold in December!  While the long term plan calls for all the amenities and ADA accessibility, in the short term, as funds are being raised and ideas floated for uses, painters and others (dancers, singers, a whole Science Fair!) have been granted time in the plant.  With heated gloves, toe warmers in. my shoes, and layers of long underwear and down jackets, I have been painting there.

My latest (and I hope not my last) painting idea came to me last week as I was contemplating the cold spaces and how some of the forms reminded me of plant stems or tree saplings.  I
proposed a collaboration with a floral designer friend to install flowers on a piece of machinery, which will then be the basis for a painting.  I've started the background work on the painting and have one week to get the flowers in, painted, and taken down before I leave for a month. 

And that's what I'll be blogging about, if you care to follow along.  First, the steam plant project.  Then a few weeks in Portugal and a few days in Copenhagen.   More on all that to come!