Time Travel through client's portraits

I have painted portraits for a long time now and in doing so, I watch my clients and their children grow up in front of me! I am always honored when they come back for new portraits of new family members and second and third generations!

One such example is  "Will" age 3. A 24" x 36" oil.  

The fun part? 
Scroll down and see the new 30" x 40" oil of Will at age 16 that I will be delivering later this week! I love my job!

Oil of Will. 24 x 36 by M Theresa Brown 1999

"Will" 30 x 40 oil by M Theresa Brown 2015

Renovation Cabin and the Creative process

Evening Painting classes that I am teaching at the local community college (Vance Granville) started Jan 12. Four newcomers came with no supplies but I managed to put oil pastels and paper to good use in an Op Art exercise that always inspires participants :-) So they were happy campers. With a break for MLK day, classes will resume Jan 27 with the everyone bringing paint and canvases!




Below is my Jan 14 post Renovation Cabin and the Creative process that got lost in the shuffle of slow Internet and things to do :-)

Renovation cabin and the creative process!

The recent extreme cold has really slowed  down the cabin renovations! It's hard to put up sheetrock when you can't feel your nose..BUT we managed to get the ceiling done with help from our son who was visiting (haha no one is coming by all of a sudden!) and the longest wall (the other side has cabinets)

The other side was just hubby and I with a little hep from our four egged friends who are always delighted to find their humans down at their level!

And today? Outside lights are going up before the rain and sleet come back in a day or so!

sheetrock the longest wall-done!

Getting some help

Making my Studio Cabin happen!

Happy New Year!

Wow-the deadline of Christmas is past and I can breathe again...just for awhile as not everyone had a Dec 25 deadline :-) I am always delighted to hear responses our clients heard when they gave a gift of a painting or portrait!

If you've been following my "Small Studio Cabin" odyssey then below is an update from my "artsyJourneys" blog   which is the same post but here :-) Next post will be some of the Christmas paintings I created that I can now share. 

Making my "Cabin in the Woods" happen!

In less than 3 short weeks, my "cabin in the woods"project-the smaller art studio-has seen a some changes. Once I committed to the idea and stopped waffling, things began to happen!

First, because the only convenient place originally to set the 12 x 20 shed down was at the 

renovations in progress!

.

edge of our dirt/gravel driveway, I knew I had to make another entrance opening.

I also needed more light-a door at the north end or bigger windows!

Bringing in a re-modeler friend who happened to have a spare 6 ft. sliding door, he and his crew made short work of the 10 x 16' deck and door installation!

I hired the neighbor's son to dig the "trench" to lay electrical wire. Our big studio is on a separate meter so it seemed logical to pull power from that. Brent had a lot of help from one of our chickens the afternoon he dug it!

Chickens are fascinated by any "scratching" in the earth.

Digging the trench from the big studio

Our remodeler came out the next day and he and hubby hooked up the power to the small studio and I was in business so to speak! Even the simple ability to turn on lights was inspiring :-)

The changes have been fabulous! Below is from just the day after Christmas when my youngest son and hubby (artist Stephen Filarsky) installed the sheetrock on the ceiling (the hardest part of sheetrocking!) as part of my Christmas present! It's already looking bigger and brighter!

Sheetrocking the ceiling

I'll add a small stoop to the door side-I might just close it off but in the summer I know an amazing crossbreeze can come through there so...still thinking!
In the meantime, my "Cabin in the Woods" is coming to life!

Creating my Cabin in the Woods

Creating My cabin in the Woods

Finding a spot to create. It seems to be a quest of writers, artists and musicians. Often it's a quest.  Maybe that's a good word for it.
I spend more and more time thinking about it-a cabin in the woods. 
I'm not sure why that dreaded "If only...." phrase has kept popping up in my mind but it has me daydreaming of a place to relax, unwind, meditate, recharge-every adjective that an artist needs in order to justify her creativity! Silly. I have a studio that is the envy of most artists. We built it 18 years ago from parts of a 1910 home being torn down in the area. It's 24 x 30 feet in size with 10 foot ceilings, beautiful reclaimed pine flooring, the old windows-it is stunning!                                                            

 And I know this! But in reality it is crowded! Oh it started off with SO much space but with 2 working artists that changed quickly
Even the shed we added behind it turned into a storage area. Oh and we have a woodworking shop..the downstairs filled  with tools and the upstairs filled with things we are storing but do not need. (easy with 4 grown kids who move around)

(

At the beginning.......:-)

And we have grown rose clippings from abandoned homesteads and they have grown and matured into a profusion of cascading color enjoyed by painters every spring...so WHY was I searching?

Seven Sisters roses cascading down the tobacco stick fence

Red Seven Sisters brought by mother as a cutting from her family homestead in Mississippi.

What am I looking for?

I lean towards mountain properties- a throwback I am sure of my New England upbringing where we lived in an 18th century farmhouse on 50 acre farm in upstate New York (next to MA and VT) and had unfettered run, on foot, skis and horses, of the mature forests and surrounding streams, farmland and towns. Our freedom included the glorious huge beamed barn with its many outbuildings and the secret hideaways within them all. Ah, such memories!

In my mind, my cabin retreat  has to have a stream, mature trees...and of course-a small cabin.  Again, I recognize this from childhood memories of running through abandoned farm fields and discovering, in the dark recesses of hemlocks and maples that bordered all the forgotten fields, streams that cascaded down rocks into small pools of cold, pristine water.  It was all very magical to a child of ten and I clearly recall the details of discovering Jack in the Pulpits, ripples in the water pools, crawdads under the stones, floating maple leaves and the cool tang of the hemlocks. And other than the delighted sounds of discovery by my twin sister and younger brother, the only other sounds were that of the waterfall.  The sound of gurgling water can quickly transport me to that spot anytime I hear it.

And on a bittersweet, yet telling note, the last family vacation I had with my twin sister was in the  NC mountains. Eileen and I were 28 and I had 3 children, the youngest just 4 months old and a too busy life and business when our parents rented a little summer house for us to have a vacation in for our upcoming 29th birthdays :-).  It sat in a valley with a little stream in front of the house. My 6 and 3 year old played for hours on end at the edge of the shallow gurgling water, building and rebuilding little stone houses. There had been no TV, no phone and we had sat on the front porch at night counting stars and waiting for the shooting ones. I had purposely left my guitar at home and brought my new hammered dulcimer. So our evening musical entertainment was the singular sounds of the dulcimer chords.

With my youngest in a backpack (or my mother staying and watching him) we explored caves, pastures, mountains, abandoned farms. We had bought Audubon books and learned the names of the wildflowers we were  discovering. The children were at that age where everything held wonder and my parents and sister enjoyed sharing all the wonders with them.  Something as simple as watermelon seed spitting contests and watching frogs hop held them in rapture. It was a good summer and even better memories. A year later my twin was gone and all that was left us were the memories.

So I sort of know WHY I am looking....maybe it's that I am searching for a bit of those memories I have just described. The point was I had a sort of an epiphany the other day.

After spending inordinate amounts of time on Craigslist, looking at properties that I could not afford, or cheap ones simply too far away (there IS a practical side to me!) and .....daydreaming, wasting an awful lot of time.... I shook myself clear of it. 

I already have a small "cabin". I am on a couple of acres of land. I have mature trees. I have deer and wildlife. I have a stone fountain I bought used 3 years ago and never used....hey, I can MAKE my own cabin in the woods and do it right here!

Bought from a friend whose mother had used it first as a pottery studio, then as storage (of course!) it was simply too good an opportunity to pass up!

So $250.00 moving fee later, the 12 x 20 building is finally deposited between our house, studio and pasture. It isn't very lovely but it was insulated, wired and covered inside with many grungy shelves and a linoleum floor. 

We are on 2.5 acres but the back is heavily wooded and alas...there was no way to get the whole shebang  to the back area.

At first the changes I did were cosmetic: cleaning the sides, painting the door and trim, replacing the screen door with a vintage door......then I cleaned and painted the grungy insides shelves, thinking of paneling or sheetrock but not getting beyond that.  Amazing what a little paint can do. 
But within a few months we were storing frames and paintings in it, stymied by the cost of running electric to the inside panel.

And then the epiphany happened and I made a decision-yep-just like that-
The frames and artwork can go where they belong-into the 8 x 16 ft cargo trailer used just for that purpose. I'll enlist the help of some friends who can make a few things happen....for starters, I want a sliding door off the other end...this one door opens into the driveway-and cannot be a major entrance easily. 
So I reasoned that if I bought property with a similar building on it, I would be facing the same economic and design challenges anyway so....what the heck!

So now I have my brain in gear...how to heat? Maybe a propane fireplace? Small woodstove?  Must think this through but  so many shelves are a bonus to help move my craft and silk work out of the main studio and into a smaller one.....let's see-add a small deck out the side where the sliding door would be, take that long unused stone waterfall..... are you feeling it now? :-)

What WILL the free range chickens think!?  Stay tuned for what starts to happen next!

No doubt about Christmas!

Nope. No doubt about Christmas and Thanksgiving! They are here and have been creeping up for several months. But for us, that's a good thing! When one area of our art becomes overwhelmed, other areas have to flounder for a bit....so we opted to make December the month for a few of our popular art classes and then in January we're back in the saddle in that department:-)

In the meantime both Steve and I found ourselves in the NC State Fair in the Village of Yesteryear showcasing areas of our art that are not as big as the paintings and portraits.  That was the silk work I do and the sign painting that he's done for many years. Amazing how awed people were watching him hand letter a beautiful sign!
So for 10 days we were demonstrating and displaying our art. Long hours but we enjoyed the crowds and loved demonstrating in front of them!

Yep we had to dress Colonial times :-)

Steve attracting lots of attention!

So I'll bring in more detail later but enjoy a few of the closeups from a different artistic perspective!

The Terrier scarf

The owl scarf

The incredibly lovely Coachman Sign!

Theresa's black silk scarf from her block carvings

Steve's Singing Pig hand painted and lettered

Inspirations and art!

So nothing like going to pick up paintings from a group show and find that one has been replaced with a nice check :-) Seems my "Tobacco Barn" sold at the month long regional art show at the Mims Gallery at Wesleyan College (NC). Very cool!

Tobacco Barn- A 16 x 20 pastel by M Theresa Brown 

So where do artists find inspiration? I took this photo frpm my photo after a huge thunderstorm had wreaked havoc on the area. I pulled by car over as to my right was the golden light of the sunset, and to my left was the dark, ominous gray of a storm loving east. But oh what it left behind! The bright arch of a half moon rainbow (which I could not capture with my phone camera) and the tops of these trees touched with gold. 

And finally, we returned from 2 weeks of shows in the NC mountains near the towns of  Blowing Rock and Boone. Who has not traveled the Blue Ridge Parkway and savored it's coolness and breathtaking views? Sometimes I think the mountains are in my DNA. I know they are in my ancestral past as well as my past (The Catskill,  Berkshire and Adirondack mountains of NY) The sea also calls to me but it is different. With the ocean it is the sounds and rhythms of waves and seagulls. Mesmerizing.  With the ancient Blue Ridge mountains, there is more-the winds, cool breezes, wildflowers and above all else, the stunning vistas where I stand and gaze at every detail of range after range of mountains. It is easy to get lost in them.  

I love being inspired!

Art Show Opening Tonight June 13!

              ART SHOW TONIGHT! June 13 from 6-9

Wake Forest Art & Frame Shop
Join us Friday for Art After Hours from 6-9 pm
Featuring artwork by M. Theresa Brown
About the Artist:
M. Theresa Brown is a long time professional portrait artist who specializes in realistic fine art portraits of people, animals and places in oils, pastels, watercolors and pencil. A multi-faceted artist she also has collectors for her abstract art pieces and fiber art. Together with her artist husband, Stephen Filarsky, they have worked together in the art field as Filarsky Brown Art Studio since 1994.
Theresa's portrait works as well as abstracts and a selection of her hand painted scarves will be on display through the month of June.