Sprouted Sweet Corn 3

Sprouted Sweet Corn 3

7 9/16 x 3 9/16 x 11/16"

Oil on gessoed wood

Finally a new painting! Time has been limited in my studio due to the change from the freedom filled days of summer to the regimented schedule of three different school times and locations. We're starting to get it all figured out and settled in, and now I feel like I can settle back into my own work. There are still tomatoes sitting on my counter waiting to be dealt with, but I'll get to them eventually.

(Photo by T. Collins 2006)

After my first son was born, I was working part time as an Objects Conservator at the Field Museum in Chicago and I LOVED my job. I felt like I had a perfect balance between work and family. I spent more than half the week caring for my son, but I would practically skip to work where I also felt challenged and fulfilled working on exciting projects that used the skill set I spent years learning and refining in grad school and beyond. Chicago however, proved difficult to navigate with a baby on a very limited income and it didn't fit the lifestyle that we wanted for our family. It soon became clear that we would likely move back to Iowa where nearly all of my family and my husband's family was located. The thought of walking away from such an incredible job to become a full time mom was often scary and sad. I comforted myself with the idea that I would have time to paint. The first subject that I was going to explore was corn. We would be moving back into the heart of farming country where the primary crop was corn. I would have ample subject matter to observe for several months of the year. I envisioned rich paintings of volumptuous golden kernels nestled in colorful, textured leaves. When I was designing compositions and thinking about how to manipulate the texture of the paintings, I referred to my future creations as my corn paintings.

Then came baby number 2 in 2008 and sleep was something that filled in the gaps between feedings, diaper changes, playtime, three square meals for number 1 and all the other household tasks. Painting? No. 

And then came baby number 3 in 2010. Everything outside of our door stopped for a little while and in between all the chaos I tried to savor the good moments and give a little time to each child. 

Now I have one in kindergarten everyday, one in preschool four afternoons a week and one little snuggle bug in a mom's morning out program one morning a week. Life has changed so dramatically and so quickly that when I take a moment to think about it my head begins to spin. 

In the past six years I did not have much time for the paintings that I daydreamed about when we were leaving Chicago. It was a lot of time however, to ruminate on the subjects of gardening, agriculture and nutrition. In the beginning the paintings that I was imagining were just something that I thought would look nice. They didn't hold much meaning for me beyond acknowledging our change in location. The paintings that I'm working on now come from my passion for gardening. They are wrapped up in the anticipation I feel every spring when I stick the seeds in the ground and the hope that I will be able to feed my family safe, healthy food straight out of our yard. I really like how my subject matter changed over the years, and yet it didn't. I'm still doing my corn paintings, it's just the angle and the composition that have changed.

Trying to cultivate art from my garden

Sungold Cherry Tomato Blossom

I have been focused mostly on painting and drawing from my sprouted seeds for the last couple of years, but lately I have been exploring the idea of using some photographs in tandem with my paintings. I like the idea of the using the two different mediums to depict what is unseen in the garden - the sprouting seeds, and what is seen and consumed - the flowers and fruits. I like the potential of having the two different textures and the opportunity to bring different colors into the display.  

I didn't expect it to be easy, but it has been a struggle to get a good composition, good focus and good lighting. I am often lying on my stomach or trying to fold myself in half in the humid, summer heat to try and get the shot that I want, only to end up being significantly disappointed with a lack of sharp focus where I want it and the depth of field. I've been blaming it on my factory issue lens lately, but I'm not sure if that's appropriate or not. It'd be great to be able to get a new lens though. In the meantime, I will just keep experimenting and trying to better educate myself.

Here are a few shots that I like a lot, despite some of the camera issues that I am trying to work out. I like the above shot of the tomato blossom. I have tried so many times to capture the blossom in a way that shows the beauty of the flower itself, but also the promise of the fruit to come. It has been a challenge.

I love looking at squash blossoms in the garden from the time they first appear closed up tight on the stem through the time they open in an explosion of gold. 

I love looking at them from the sides when the sun shines in just right and lights them up like lanterns. I love the patterns of veins in the blossoms and the texture of all those tiny little hairs. Being so close to them brings up a lot of problems with focus and this is where a different lens would really come in handy. 

Butternut Squash Seed

I like the how seed painting really looks more cool and earthy compared to the saturated and shiny quality of the photograph of the squash blossom. 

Why Seeds?

A little over three years ago my oldest child was wrapping up his year of a pre-preschool program called Mom's Morning Out. It was one morning a week for them to go and play, listen to a story, do an art project and have a little snack. For me it was one morning a week to devote some one-on-one attention to my baby girl. On one of the last days of class they talked about spring, blooming flowers and growing gardens. To add the visual help to the lesson, their teachers sent home a green bean seed in a small plastic bag wrapped in a wet paper towel. Over the next week we watched it sprout and push out an ever lengthening root. Before it got too big and out of control we ran out to the garden and buried it in the freshly turned soil.

At least a year later I found myself with an opportunity to have lunch alone at one of my favorite local restaurants, The Lincoln Cafe in Mt. Vernon, Ia. http://www.foodisimportant.com/ It was early in March, I had gardening on my mind and seeds sprouting in my basement, so I took advantage of this quiet time and packed a gardening book to read.

I was reading a chapter all about the basic botany of plants and there were two insets. One was called "Seeing a Flower Really" that described the anatomy of a flower and two forms of pollination. The second inset was called "Walking with The Metamorphosis of Plants" which was a very brief description of a journey Goethe made through the Italian Alps to observe plants. In the second inset I read ". . . a seed is the contracted or essential nature of a plant that expands with water and good soil to the vegetative growth of stem and leaf, contracting again in the calyx, or outer protective cup of the flower bud. Expansion occurs again when the petals of the corolla expand and the flower opens into bloom, and the pistil and stamen expand to the produce the fertilized ovary, or fruit, of the plant within which is the completion of the cycle, the contraction of the seed."

The seed is the contracted or essential nature of a plant. My mind immediately flashed back one year to my son's sprouted seed and it just hit me. Everything around me stopped for a moment as I contemplated that passage with the image of that sprouted seed. I paid my bill and rushed home to my stash of seeds. I selected several types and threw them into plastic bag with a damp paper towel and then sat at my bench impatiently, willing them to sprout immediately. I was going to paint the seed in it's first moments of awakening and growth.

I am still fascinated with the shapes and colors of the seeds as they grow and change. I like that a person can look at the image and in one moment it can be all about the abstract quality of the image, and in the next moment it can be a real thing.

Merging Schedules

I've probably mentioned this before, but my husband changed his schedule at the beginning of the summer from a 5 day work week to a 4 day work week. We weren't sure how we would really feel about it. The three day weekends were enticing, but instead of getting home shortly after 3:30pm (which we Loved), he would be starting at 6:30am and going until 5pm. The extra long days were a little intimidating. I sure this sounds normal to most people, but the 3:30 finish time allowed us to have a normal dinner and still spend some good, quality time with the kids before the bedtime crunch.

Fortunately this new schedule has been amazing! Our weekends are usually so full with kidtivities and household catch up that I rarely got to do any of my work during the daylight. Now we've arranged our schedule in a way that gives me a whole work day to paint in my studio and when things do get crazy busy we have an extra day to catch up without sacrificing much family time. Obviously I love the extra time in my studio. It provides the stimulation that I crave, but is often still peaceful and meditative.

The last couple of weeks I have sacrificed painting in order to keep things growing in my garden and put up tomatoes for winter enjoyment. Today I am going to dive back into painting. I was starting to get the shakes.

The windows of my studio overlook our backyard and so one of the great things about being able to work while the kids are awake is that I still get to watch from a distance and listen in on their games and hear their laughter. In this heat we sometimes let them play on their slip-and-slide which is always a crowd pleaser. With little relief from the drought however, we've had to shorten their playtime in order to conserve water. This is a concept that is really hard for them to understand and so I'm not going to tell them that we're not in an official water ban . . . yet.

I love that my youngest monkey is wearing nothing but a tutu as she sprays her siblings.

I love being able to get some work done, but still seeing my kids having a great time. I look up from my work and smile and really appreciate the life that we lead.