An Unexpected Chihuahua

This is Rosie, the beloved pet of my neighbor and friend Christine Rodin who passed away just before Christmas. I took Rosie in temporarily because I have known her all my life. After 3 months however, she has become part of our household. My roommate Cajsa and I have fallen in love with her. Initially I was afraid to keep her because she is 15 and I couldn't face losing another dog especially when my dog Bingo is already 10 and I'll have to be facing that with him in the next few years. But she has just warmed our hearts and just when we were accepting that she is ours we found out that she has kidney disease and so is spending her last few weeks with us getting tons of love and treats. Her Aunt Linda (Christine's sister) comes to visit her regularly so she gets that extra special attention. It just goes to show you how life sometimes takes charge and leads us to our destinies. I truly believe Rosie was meant to come here for her final months even though it wasn't planned that way. Bingo has accepted here being here and I actually think they have been good company for one another. Anyway she is a special little dog and I'm glad we got to know her.

Here is one of Bingo just so he doesn't feel left out....

Mr. Peanut Portrait Finished

I have just finished the first Mr. Peanut portrait and I can't wait to begin the second. I decided to do it in color (as opposed to just sepia tones which I was considering) but I kept it on the dark side to give it an aged look. I think it captures the essence of the Mr. Peanut man I remember as a child when I didn't realize that it was actually a human in a costume.

Mr Peanut portrait 1
Mr Peanut portrait 1

Etsy Photo Shoot for Inc. Magazine

Yesterday I headed up to Gary's Loft for the Inc. Magazine photo shoot. They had invited NY based Etsians to participate in an article they are writing about Etsy and I thought it would be fun. The  penthouse space was beautiful and they let me take a few photos of all the yummy vintage items they had there. I'll let you know when the article comes out!

Some Still Lives

I am taking a little break from the Mr. Peanut paintings and working on something new. I have lots of vintage knickknacks around my apartment that I've collected over the years and I thought it would be nice to have some of them in a series of paintings. One of my favorite collections is my wind up alarm clocks from the 40's & 50's. I began with my first Westclox Big Ben that I bought on Ebay because it was just like the one my Parents had in the bedroom of our house in Wildwood, NJ where we spent our summers. I just love falling asleep to the rhythmic, tinny ticking of that clock that brings me straight back to a very happy time in my childhood. After that I added a gorgeous cream and tan Baby Ben and a beautiful Moonbeam which doesn't tick but glows when the alarm goes off.  These are the subject of the first painting that I just finished.

I also have several General Electric clock radios from the 50's and 60's that I love, 2 of which belonged to my Parents as well. These are the subject of 2 more paintings (sketches below) both shown with a little scottie dog pull toy I found in a flea market. I even threw in a few of the vintage desk accessories that I have; a beautiful old inkwell with a dip pen that was in a cabinet in our basement, a little silver desk calendar that you flip every day to show the date and another of my alarm clocks.  I decided to put all these on a vintage red tablecloth against the pistachio green wall of my kitchen. I think they look very cheery and I can't wait to turn these sketches into paintings!


Mr. Peanut

Due to a series of unfortunate events this is the first post for the new year. 2011 began for me with an abscess tooth which ultimately had to be pulled. Surprisingly this was NOT the tooth that broke the week before Christmas so I had 2 to take care of on opposite sides of my mouth. For this reason I ended up taking a break from my artwork for a few weeks but now that I'm feeling better my creativity is returning. I am beginning the year with a pair of portraits that may be the most curious I've done so far. They are portraits of one of my favorite subjects: Mr. Peanut. My long fascination with him began when I was a little girl and my Father took my Sister and Me to Atlantic City for the day. It was a big event for us and a sort of family tradition as he had also taken my Brother when he was a kid. This was back in the early 1960's when Atlantic City was a real amusement park like Coney Island. I remember that  at Steel Pier we went down under the water in the Diving Bell, posed for old fashioned photos as old west sheriffs with my Father behind bars as the prisoner and watched a woman dive off the pier on a horse. It was a magical day but the most memorable part was meeting Mr. Peanut for the first time. I admit to being a bit terrified of him back then. You have to imaging being a 5 or 6 year old child seeing this gigantic peanut with dark, un-seeing eyes lumbering toward you on spindly black legs. He was silently menacing with a sort of black screen over the monacle and eye hole. In those days the Mr. Peanut people didn't talk to you, they just bobbed their giant peanut bodies up and down in a gesture of greeting. Since then I have have not only come to terms with my fear but actually embraced Mr. Peanut as a nostalgic representative of my childhood. I have a Mr. Peanut mechanical pencil that I love drawing with (except that I cannot find lead to fit it any more), I have a set of Mr. Peanut salt and pepper shakers and even bought a silver ashtray in a curio shop in Amsterdam. The shop owner had originally purchased it in Brooklyn and brought it back to Amsterdam where I bought it and brought it right back to New York!

As you can see he has been on my mind for a number of years but I was never sure how I wanted to portray him. For this pair of portraits I felt it was important to portray the Mr. Peanut that I best remember which is as the actual costume.  There have been several versions over the years but after much research I've found the type that I believe was used in the early 1960's.  I thought it would also be interesting to put a skyline of Atlantic City in it's hey day in the background and some striped bunting to lighten it up and make him seem less frightening. I've only gotten the sepia underpainting on the first portrait finished so far and I like it so much I am considering not putting in color at all. We'll see..

Ho Ho Ho

I had been having such a lousy week: cracking a tooth, getting bitten by a squirrel (I'm not kidding) and last but not least having my wallet stolen yesterday. So after canceling my credit cards and going down to the DMV today I decided I needed a little darned Christmas. I packed up Bingo and headed down to Chambers St. to Unleashed (a division of Petco) to have his photo taken with Santa. They could not have been nicer. Anthony suited up and they took this adorable photo. Then to top it off they told me it was FREE! It made my day and restored my Christmas spirit. I thought I'd share my experience with you in case you too are feeling a little rough around the edges! Merry Christmas!

Squeaky Santa

Just to follow up on my  Christmas Inspiration post of a few weeks ago where I showed some of the vintage rubber and plastic christmas figures that I had collected. The most important one was Squeaky Santa which is a squeaky rubber Santa that my Mother always put out as a decoration. A few years ago my Sister re-discovered it and upon seeing it for the first time in so long I was filled with such nostalgia. I just had to do a portrait of him and show all his old fashioned, simple charm.  

Red Velvet Cake

It was my friend Kristina's birthday on Friday and I wanted to make her favorite cake for the occasion. Now being italian-american Red Velvet Cake was not in my recipe box of traditional cakes so this was an adventure for me. I ended up using Martha Stewart's recipe from her website as I figured I could trust her.

It is an unusual recipe and I admit to being skeptical when it called for mixing baking soda with vinegar  not to mention all that red food coloring!

But in the end it was so light and delicious, was great fun to make and got me into the holiday spirit of baking!

Did I mention how yummy the cream cheese icing was??

Christmas Parrots

Well I took the sketches I did on the table cloth last weekend and worked them up into proper drawings for a pair of paintings. I got the idea from looking through my sketchbook where I had found this old sketch of 2 parrots together. I thought green parrots with red fezs would be beautiful and strangely Christmas themed so I am adding them to my Christmas portraits queue.

Creative Brunch in Tribeca

Yesterday I had to go down to Tribeca to my favorite fabric/yarn store and met up with my friend Stephen Spera (artist extraordinaire) for brunch at Walkers. Aside from the delicious food and creative conversation the best part was the paper tablecloth and jar of crayons on the table. I was able to sketch out for Stephen in a very primitive way the new parrot portraits I want to do. It was great fun!

Preparing for the Holidays

I've been busy this week transforming my portraits into notecards to sell in my Etsy shop. It takes a surprising amount of work to size everything up, lay them up in an attractive listing, write descriptions, lay out the images onto the cards with the type not to mention listing them on Etsy... Phew! Here are the ones I've finished so far. I love how they look on the colored backgrounds. I've already sold a set of the Steiff cards so I am feeling encouraged.

 

A Fresh Blog

As much as I loved my old blog Studio Bingo with my dog as the header I've been feeling that since I now have an Etsy shop called Curious Portraits I ought to coordinate the two just to keep it all simple. Farewell loyal Studio Bingo....

Christmas Inspiration

Now that Halloween is over I am trying to psyche myself up for Christmas. Halloween is just so inspiring for me with all the dark, macabre images it brings to mind. But Christmas is supposed to be merry and bright. My work  just doesn't naturally go in that direction. So I turned to nostalgia which is always a big inspiration for me. I decided to try photographing an old squeaky Santa that my Mother used to put out for the holidays. Seeing his smiling, rubber face brings me right back to my childhood and I thought that might make an interesting portrait.  That got me looking on Ebay for more vintage squeaky Christmas items and it all went downhill from there. I am now the proud owner of a group of wierdly jolly, smiling rubber Christmas toys that are all waiting to be immortalized. I know they are a little creepy but I can't help myself, that is what makes them so appealing to me. Here is a sample of what might become a curious portrait in the next few weeks...

Acorn Man Portrait

I have always been interested in anthropomorphic fruit and veggies. I love giving them faces, arms & legs. Essentially giving them personalities. When I was a kid I used to collect acorns and make little people with them using pipe cleaners and painting faces on them. Well last week I was out jogging by the Hudson and saw the acorns were ready and falling from the trees so I collected a bunch to give to my squirrels. (The ones I feed from my fire escape). I kept looking at the bowl full of them, admiring their smooth brown surfaces and remembering how I used to love them. That was what inspired me to immortalize one in a painting. To honor the humble acorn, a true symbol of autumn.