I'm giving a talk at Dixon is this Wednesday (April 26) from 12-1 as part of their Munch and Learn program. You're welcome to bring a lunch to eat or just hang out. I know it's not built for working folks, but I'll be happy to see anyone who can make it. I'll be talking about formative artists for me and what I've learned along the way about making an art centered life.

I love a handout (from my student nerd-dom days), so I decided to put together a bibliography of my own creative life. These are the main creative books that have stuck with me over years, whispered to me, called me back to read them again. I won't get around to talking about them in the lecture by the time I've talked about all my favorite artists, so I put in a small synopsis of each one. I'll have them all with me on Wednesday for anyone to look at and see if they look right to order, but I thought it would be fun to go ahead and send out the list for all of you. (see below)

It was a great thought experiment to come up with this list. It might be fun to make your own, or at least think in passing about what might go on it. Send along any books you think I'd love, and it would be cool to hear if any of you share some of mine. Add a comment here if you'd like to recommend or respond to my list.

Creative Life Bibliography:

Without Reservations Alice Steinbach – the middle-aged Eat Pray Love written ten years before Liz Gilbert's hit book, by and about a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the Baltimore Sun rediscovering herself through travel. It was hugely helpful in learning to listen to my own voice and curiosity after a hard early marriage. It also reminded me of the enormous benefits of travel. Alice is a great companion for a journey.
Memoirs of John Constable C.R. Leslie – written by a friend of his and heavy on quotes from Constable's own letters.
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage Ann Patchett – my number one inspirational book for ideas about the creative process and writing life, scattered in amongst other fantastic essays. The Getaway Car essay is most formative for me.
House: A Memoir Michael Ruhlman – one writer buying and renovating an old home in Cleveland. A meditation on a rooted sense of place and the way the spaces around us shape our lives and creativity. I reread this pretty regularly.
The Artist on the Road: Impressions of Greece Richard Sheppard – the journal in both text and watercolors of Richard's trip to Greece with his dad. His sketches made me want to figure out watercolors and the book was a big influence on the travel journals I keep for myself.
Edvard Munch: The Master Prints from the Epstein Family Collection – the catalog from the Dixon Munch show in 1991 that was hugely influential on my work. One of the first art books I bought for myself.
Direct Watercolor Marc Taro Holmes – a beautiful step by step guide to one approach to watercolor that has helped me greatly in learning the medium.
Mending Life: A Handbook for Repairing Clothes and Hearts Nina and Sonya Montenegro – a hand drawn book about mending instead of throwing away. It helped me mend one small corner of a large, crazy, out-of-control world mid-pandemic and is both philosophically beautiful and practically helpful. The most recent book here, but a turning point for me.
#AmWriting podcast – a wonderful, warm conversation between friends about writing – the inspiration, the practicalities, how to balance a small creative business with the rest of your life, and how to set goals and achieve the things you want to. Massively inspirational, and it has also helped me organize the details of my own small business so much better. Start with the earlier ones that appeal to you from the list.
Linocut Friends – group on facebook full of printmakers who are supportive and helpful
Urban Sketchers – FB group, IG hashtag, blog – sketchers around the world drawing and showing the world “one sketch at a time”. I also find my favorites and follow them individually. Hugely inspirational and great information on drawing materials to try.
Please order books from Burke's, Novel, or other local stores. Buying art supplies from The Art Center, staffed by helpful artists, is also a key credo and source of life happiness for me.

Henry and I went to the farm over the weekend to join my folks for a visit and pick the last of the spring bulbs. A friend calls these "twin sister" narcissi, which I just love. We have a beautiful ton of them, so I picked enough to scatter around in several vases, and last night I was watching a little British tv and decided to sketch them at the same time. I did the green background first, and then the light changed to really pick up a lovely purple on the window glass behind. I had some free standing paper I wanted to test for an upcoming project, so I did a second version. Both a just free painting with watercolor, no drawing first. I don't often work that way, but I was really interested in the shape of the flowers as a mass and just started drawing around them with the brush. It's good to get out of my comfort zone and play with new ways to work.

It's the last week for the lovely American paintings show at Dixon, and the director Kevin Sharp was giving a lecture yesterday as well, so I treated myself to another museum day. I'm getting out less than I used to with my separation anxiety dog (as well as a natural tendency to stay home a lot anyway), but I'm finding that when I do get good opportunities, I make them count more. Instead of saying, maybe I'll go to Dixon tomorrow or next week, if a friend wants to take Henry to the office for today, I jump right on that chance to do something really worthwhile. So Henry got to be an office dog yesterday, and I got a museum day.

I had one more painting I really wanted to sketch, this William Trost Richards painting of Maine. Once again, it's a bit darker and more vivid (especially in the water) than the original since I was working in low light with limited media. But overall I'm pleased, and it will also just help me remember better.

Then I had lunch outside (I'm still masking indoors) and started the tulip sketch but rushed back in to hear Kevin talk about the artist Walt Kuhn. I also worked a little bit on this Inness copy, toning it down some. It's not right, but I'm happier with it than I was. And I finished off the day sitting outside and finishing the tulip sketch at the top. I hadn't used my green ink lately, and the spring greens have had me itching to get it back out.

I keep going back to sketch in the Dixon show of American paintings. I think (hope) it has one more week for me to get back and sketch a little more. It's frustrating in some ways. You have to use dry media in the gallery (European museums are much more forward thinking about copying with paint), so I can't mix colors and gray things down a bit as I would like to. Dry colors (pencils, watercolor crayons, etc.) tend to be a bit more candy colored overall, so these colors are off a good bit, most especially on the lovely, subtle Inness. He's one of my favorites. But it's still deeply profitable as an artist to spend time looking at a painting deeply enough to sketch it even if the sketch is never what I hope it would be.

The colors were reasonably right for the Sloan, though (above). Sloan mostly painted cityscapes and was instrumental in the Ashcan school. I was drawn to this landscape, a summer holiday with his wife, precisely because he brought that fuller bodied intensity to a pastoral landscape. His colors are almost shocking side by side with the oranges and greens and a deeper blue green sea than I managed to convey here. It's an arresting piece, and I love the brushwork in it as well.

I'm still working pretty hard on the graphic essay, but I did a few sketches while waiting for the copy edits to come back. One of my favorite treats is a chocolate croissant from Lucy J's, so I drew out the enjoyment by sketching it. I also took a little time with the wildflowers in the Old Forest. The watercolor crayons overall were a little too candy bright for them, but it was fun to sit and sketch in the woods.

 I put Henry in daycare today and did a twofer on local museums. I needed one really quiet day after getting in my final draft for the graphic essay, but then I was wanting to get out and see some great art, and we have wonderful shows up in Memphis right now.

The first was Harmonia Rosales at Brooks. Her show plays off of a lot of "Old Master" paintings and reimagines them to include heroines and mythologies rooted in West Africa. It is magic. I love painters with a strong sense of art history, and her cracking open those tropes to make room for the rest of the world is infectious and beautiful. She uses the gold of the Medieval icons and pairs it with the exuberant abundance of the Baroque, and she has a strong series of visual motifs that are meaningful and personal to her as a painter. It's a remarkable show.

I ran to the grocery and home for a sit down/have tea kind of lunch, and a bit after I went to Dixon. I love their show of American paintings. I've been three times now and have more pieces I want to go sketch, but today I worked from a huge landscape by Thomas Hill. I used watercolor crayons and inktense pencils since it's only dry media in the local museums. (I added paint to the Rosales copy when I got home while it was fresh -- I wanted that real golden feel to it.). That's limiting on colors and especially on skies, but it's so instructive to look at a painting long enough to replicate it and figure out how the artist made certain effects work.

The rain was holding off, and my favorite statue Ceres was surrounded by yellow daffodils and red tulips, so I did one more quick sketch before leaving. I love the graphic essay project, and it's wonderful to have someone want to publish you, but it's also fun to go make art purely for the joy of it on a day off. A perfect break.

Y'all, I'm so excited. I've been head down working on this for six weeks or so. And it was amazing to be asked to do this. I had sent them my Greensward essay a couple of years ago, which found a quick home at Memphis Magazine, bless them. Then in late January, one of their newer editors was going back through old submissions, said she loved my style, and asked if I had any more stories to tell.

I've done over 30 sketches since we got a general direction in mid-February, and it's just about to go off to the copy editor and layout folks for approval. The last step will be for me to hand letter all the text to fit into the correct spaces, but I'm ahead of a pretty tight deadline. It's so good to know I can work this quickly when I need to. I'm still struggling with long Covid fatigue, and this has been the just the right project for this spring. It's all small enough to do sitting down and even in my lap on the sofa, but it's new and exciting and something to look forward to. So perfect.

...But this one a good friend's. My friend Melissa Bridgman, potter extraordinaire, and I share a birthday week. Last year she came down to my WAMA opening and celebrated with me there. So perfect. This year she brought me a beautiful plate.  She has made urns for my two most recent dogs, which means so much. She lost a dog recently and has a new puppy, and after all her kindness when I lose dogs, I decided to do three small sketches of Ajax (now gone), Buddy, and the new puppy Sissy. It was such fun to go through her facebook dog photos and do these small, quick sketches.

and look at paintings I might otherwise have passed by, and I was so glad she could join me on the spur of the moment. I stayed behind to sketch a Grant Wood still life that I've fallen in love with. So unexpected from an artist I mostly know as the American Gothic dude. I love the curve and rich shadows behind the arrangement and the way the flowers reach right out of the frame. I could only use dry media (pencils and watercolor crayons without the water), but I had fun looking at it deeply enough to draw it even if I didn't quite match the lovely colors. (The photo also fails to do them justice.) I want to go back and sketch several more in this show as well.

Henry came home exhausted, as did I, so we snuggled into a fuzzy blanket and watched British tv and chatted with friends on the phone and knitted. A lovely birthday.

Memphis Urban Sketchers went to Overton Square this past Saturday. The sky was glorious, and a bunch of my favorite folks showed up. I love having community art making on my calendar on a regular basis.