musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
a winter roadtrip with my muse, part one
I knew I needed a break. I knew I needed to unplug. I knew I wanted to remove myself from the familiar, and just paint, just read, just write.
Just think. Just not think.
Just be.
Without chatter. Without pinging and lights and alerts and the mind-numbing busy-ness of constant connection.
Without news. Without media.
Without appointments — except with my dog, and perhaps a meal or two with a warm and wise elder.
Basically I needed to breathe, to connect again with my muse — my deeper spirit — who’d been hibernating a bit this winter, waiting patiently for some solitude and fresh air.
So I took her — my deeper spirit — away, to let her bloom again.
A couple weeks ago.
We went on a road trip, my muse and I, in the company of my sweet pup. And stayed in a tiny little place in the shadow of ancients.
No computer. No internet. No cell coverage.
Just imagine.
Here is a bit of what one can accomplish at a small kitchen table with no distractions, and nothing to listen to but a single superb classical music LP on an old record player, and your pup’s contented snores from her warm bed beside you…
I painted all of these over the course of three evenings and three early mornings, in the pages of my journal — a “Super Deluxe Mixed Media: sketchbook by Bee Paper, a new notebook brand that I discovered almost by accident last year and has now become my new favorite.
And the paints… I used a completely new array of colors, inspired by the palette of artist Gennine Zlatkis (a cool gal who also lives in Santa Fe and with whom I’ve become delightfully acquainted via Instagram).
These are colors I likely never would have considered trying before. I mean why change, when you’ve been getting decent results, with what you’ve been doing?
Umm…. Because you learn new things when you try new things?
Because changing things up is when you make new discoveries?
(Like I did just yesterday when I decided to take a different route to the post office, and discovered a beautiful new path.)
And Oh! the EXCITEMENT of new colors, the playful discovery in seeing what they do, how they mix and melt into each other!
FUN!
Here’s the palette.
In addition to the Gennine’s Holbein colors, I added four from Winsor Newton
Clockwise from the hot pink tube:
Holbein Opera
Holbein Antique Magenta
Holbein Antique Violet
Winsor Newton Payne’s Grey
Winsor Newton Burnt Sienna
Winsor Newton Indigo
Holbein Marine Blue
Holbein Antique Bronze Blue
Holbein Antique Sky Blue
Holbein Antique Bamboo
Holbein Antique Elm Green
Holbein Antique Dandelion
Holbein Antique Orange
Holbein Antique Magenta
Central: Winsor Newton Titanium White
None of these little sketches were painted en plein air. Rather — as I allude to above — I did these at the kitchen table of my little getaway. I actually did use my phone while there, but only for reference, so I could look at the many photos I’d taken during my drive. These sketches pretty much tell the tale of my trip — the views and weather I experienced as I made my way for several hours across northwestern New Mexico and up into the San Juan mountains of southwest Colorado.
These aren’t fancy paintings; the pages of my journal are sturdy, but they aren’t really made for sophisticated or polished watercolor paintings. And that’s just fine, for these are staying in my journal, as I did them for me and my own pleasure, my own delight — a record of a handful of perfect days of uninterrupted creative solitude. Just my pup, my muse, and I.
That’s a little slice of heaven, right there.
By the way, special thanks to everyone who followed along with my little painted heart project a few weeks back. Thanks to all who won a heat — your purchases helped fund my little roadtrip! And extra special thanks to those who bid but weren’t able to snag one. I’m sorry not everyone who wanted one was able to get one. 🙁 (Maybe next year?) Meanwhile, thank you! I appreciate you — ALL of you!
of painted hearts, painted joy, and…. a bit of billie
Thank you everyone who expressed concern and relief after reading my last blog post with the tale of my birthday/new year car accident. I’m blessed — and grateful — for not only the non-tragic outcome of that event, but for all of you. Thank you.
And thank you, too, those of you who were intrigued by my little watercolor heart project.
Your inquiries and interest in purchasing them (especially with an eye to Valentines Day) has led me on a bit of a delightful whirlwind for the past few days.
What I’ve decided is I’m just not quite ready to part with my little 2-1/2″ x 2-1/2″ painted hearts. There’s a few reasons for this, one being that I may eventually want to collage them them into a massive grid of hearts (one idea of many….) Another is that they feel a bit like journal or diary entries, and so I want to keep them close for now.
But…
I’m touched by those of you who expressed a desire for a painted heart… by you who wanted a special gift for a friend who’s been going through a tough patch…. Or you who wanted a unique handmade Valentine for your dear spouse… you who has a creative child who 
would just swoon and be inspired by a heart painted by a “real” artist…. and you who’d just like to put a bright splash of color on your wall to remind you that all is not dark in the world… In view of these inquiries, it seemed wrong to keep my hearts to myself.
I don’t know if these will be of interest to anyone, but for the past few days I’ve been painting little watercolor hearts for you. They aren’t as tiny as my paper hearts — these are painted on small 4″ x 4″ Ampersand aquabord panels, a beautiful, versatile substrate ideal for watermedia. I decided to paint them on panels because they’ll be more durable that way and — best of all — because I’m able to varnish them, they won’t need to be framed behind glass. I might have made them smaller, but 4″ x 4″ is the smallest sized aquabord I could find.
Perhaps you’re wondering, are these painted hearts as soulful as the ones she painted for herself?
How is such a question answered?
All I know is that I feel like my soul guides my hand and eye any time I take time to touch brush to paint.
Certainly, these aren’t sophisticated, elegant or “high” art. They haven’t been slaved over.
They are cute, and colorful and about as cliché a symbol and image as one can image. They are quite simply sweet “nothings” — simple and imperfect, sentimental expressions — as are my other hearts.
And, like my other hearts, they just make me smile.
And honestly anything that makes me smile these days is worth it to me.
These, like the others, are painted in the same spot — in my little chair (“that knew my father in his youth and me in mine”), beside my window in my tiny bedroom loft.
They’re painted at the same time of day when I usually paint the others — in the early to mid-morning, either before or just after my walk/run/hike with the pup, as I’m sipping tea and settling into my morning; like the others, these are morning meditations on color to set the day right.
If anything, these hearts are painted with a bit more intention than the others.
All, though, are painted to bring a bit of light and joy and color into a darkened world.
There’ll be 14 of these available, And really, I haven’t a clue how to price them… So I’ve decided to let you who may be interested in them decide — which is why I’ve decided to put them on eBay rather than Etsy. There will be 2 per day for 7 days, with a starting bit of $14.14 each, to cover a bit toward my materials & tea (a critical ingredient for any painting endeavor, especially morning ones…).
Note that shipping is $10, to cover the cost of USPS Priority Mail + my packaging materials. Because these are original paintings, I pack them especially carefully.
Here’s the links for the current auctions (I’ll try to remember to update these here daily for the next 7 days):
Winter Watercolor auction #5
Winter Watercolor auction #6
Anyhow, the first two auctions started last night (Thursday, 1 February 2018) at 7pm and will conclude tonight (Friday, 2 February 2018) at 7pm, when the next 2 auctions will kick off. Look for new painted hearts each evening through February 7th; the final two auctions will conclude Thursday evening, February 8th at 7:00pm. All will ship out via Priority Mail and will arrive in time for V-Day, if that’s important to you.
Any that sell will be packaged like a little gift…
Who knows? If there’s any interest in these, maybe I’ll make this an annual winter project. I can think of worse ways to spend a few winter hours each season than painting small colorful expressions of love and joy…
And if there’s no interest in my little hearts? Well… I’ll just keep painting them anyway… because… they make me smile… and that, in my book, is pretty priceless…
of car crashes and thwarted resolutions
I’ve always loved the turn of the new year. I know some who people eye it with dread or sadness with the reminder of the passage of time. Their sad focus is on aging, and regrets.
But for me the turn of the new year is a time of excitement and cheerful anticipation. Maybe having a birthday in the last days of December has something to do with it, but for me the New Year is a time of welcome renewal and recharging, of setting goals and making plans. A good organizer, I love laying out my calendar and color-coding projects and trips and resolutions. I love cleaning up my studio in the last days of December and taking inventory of materials and prepping for new paintings.
Because I’m an artist and make my living selling my art, and because there are some extra-special art lovers out there who enjoy giving art as Christmas gifts*, November and December are especially busy times for me. Because I’m so busy filling and shipping orders (a most welcome busy-ness, indeed!), it’s challenging trying to get any real painting done. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, my studio is transformed into Art Packing & Shipping Central more than a painting studio.
With this reality, I decided in in mid-November that come January, I would spend the month in my studio immersed in painting. Earlier in 2017 I had stretched and prepped several large canvases, and had been dying to tackle these. My goal for January therefore was to begin these large canvases and by February have at least half a dozen new large scale paintings well on their way to completion. Further, I had about a dozen half-finished crane-inspired paintings that were begging for attention and completion. These, too, I would work on in January, and have completed by the end of the month. Rather bold goals, for sure, but with a month of scheduled creative solitude I knew I could pull it off.
And then on the last day of my 52nd year, with the late afternoon sun blinding all the southbound travelers on I-25 and my vehicle at a near stop behind an endless line of traffic—
BAAAAAM!!!
I screamed as my rear right window exploded and my car lunged, sending everything on the dashboard flying backward..
A car had slammed into me
and then another.
Remarkably I am fine.
Really — and thank God — I am fine.
Though three cars were ultimately totaled, by some miracle no one was injured.
What happened was that 80+ mile-per-hour traffic was slowed to a near stop, likely from the blinding late-winter-afternoon sunlight — or possibly another accident up ahead — and some poor guy who clearly wasn’t paying attention slammed into the back of my car, careened off my rear bumper and slammed into another car.
Though I was able, eventually, to drive away, my insurance company deemed my beloved 2006 Honda-CRV+with+160K-miles-on-it a total loss.
UGH.
Happy Birthday to me and Happy New Year! Yes, indeed, Happy New Year where most of the first month of 2018 has been buried in insurance claim paperwork and phone calls, estimates and statements and rental cars and new car searches and ConsumerReports ratings and CarMax research and a whole lot of hurrying-up-and-waiting. Not to mention living with a really annoying pile of dusty car stuff — travel dog beds and hiking gear and roadside emergency equipment — that’s usually kept in the back of my car but is now front and center in my living room because there’s just no place else to put it…
GRRRRRR.
On top of all this was the kind-of-last-minute decision by My Man & me to make a trip east in the second week of January to visit some of his elders. It had been a while since we’d made that trip together, and there were reasons why we needed to go now. And as lovely as that was — for it truly was a delightful trip in so many ways — the darker, selfish artist angel in me silently whispered complaints of frustration with yet another BIG interruption to my intended month of blissful studio solitude and determined productivity.
UGH, again.
What’s a frustrated artist to do?
First of all, she needs to get over it. She needs to accept that this is just L I F E. Messy, constantly changing, frustrating, beautiful, gorgeous LIFE.
And then she needs to
JUST PAINT ANYWAY.
Literally ANY WAY.
That she can.
Let go of the baggage — and big goals — for now.
Count your blessings, which are infinite.
and just do what you can. Even if it’s tiny.
This is what I began to do — in November, actually, when each of those 30 days of the eleventh month were consumed with being on the computer, posting and promoting daily eBay auctions.** What crazy, exhausting fun that was! But it left me utterly drained of energy for painting in any serious way..
So I painted in a non-serious way
In a playful way.
In a teeny, tiny way.
Not in my studio-turned-mail-room. Not outside en plein air.
Rather, it started one morning in my bedroom, beside the window, in a little wooden chair that knew my father in his youth, and me in mine.
It started with a little heart.
And then another little heart…..
And another. And another…..
Just because I had to paint something.
Because the world has gone dark and I needed light and color.
Because they make me smile.
Maybe for some people they’re “too sweet.” Or too naive. Or too simplistic. Or cliche. Or…. too what-EVER.
I love them, these tiny little deep breaths of color in a shadowy world… these little prayers of paint and paper…..,
In the weeks since that first tiny painted heart, when the paperwork keeps piling up, when the To Do Lists are lengthening like a scroll, when appointments and obligations keep chipping away at my precious focus, when having to plan errands is a headache, and I’m on foot even more than usual, when the latest news cycle brings me to my knees, and mother nature’s ferocity is relentless…
I take a deep breath and
paint a little
heart.
And that’s enough — for now.
(Hmmm….. maybe I’ll start those large paintings in February …. just as soon as I have a new car……)
————————————————————————
By the way…..
About this time last year I wrote another blog post having to do with hearts (click here for THAT post): I’m happy to report that the “heart shelf” lives on! Here’s a couple of pics from yesterday:
*I’m absolutely certain there’s a special place in heaven for you good people)
** thanks again to all of you who followed along, and especially those of you who placed bids!
Pictured at the top of this blog post: A section of the Maryland Appalachian Trail. All pics by yours truly.
some of what I noticed this year . . . .
Because sometimes it’s the little things that revive a dispirited heart . . . .
May each of us
remember to notice
the beauty
that surrounds us.
Blessings to you
& Happy New Year
…. and …
Thank You…
for reading my words here,
for appreciating my art,
for following along
with my quirky artsy outdoorsy life.
I am grateful
to count each of you
among my many blessings.
Namaste.
Noticed deep in a Vermont wood, where few people appear to have trodden…..
the unusual transformation of a landscape
It’s a few hours away from the first day of winter and I suppose I should be writing something solstice-y or festive-y or fa-la-la-la-la-lish
But as much as I love this time of year, with the relentless sunshine we’ve been having this month where the skies look more like summer, I’m going to take a few moments to share something I’ve been wanting to share since August:
It all started just a few miles away from my studio, over on Santa Fe’s RailTrail.
One of may favorite places in all of Santa Fe, the Rail Trail winds from the center of the city south toward the windswept hills and arroyos that spill outward toward Eldorado and Galisteo. My pup & I especially love morning runs on the trail, our goal always being to get out there early enough to have the path and the sky to ourselves — although there’s often a small coterie of early morning trail revelers with whom we sometimes share the path and greet the day.
Although there are houses within view of the trail, they are fairly scattered among the pinon, such that you get the sense of being alone out on the land. The pathway courses along the old railway line that extends from Santa Fe down to Lamy (our nearest Amtrak station, 13 miles south of the capitol). In recent years the rails have grown weeded since the tourist train that used to frequent this line was halted a few years ago. But the tracks and the tressels remain, and in the morning’s early light they become radiant against the dark purple mesa shadows. The views are gorgeous.
I don’t know how many photos I’ve taken of the light out there, but they number in the hundreds for sure and possibly in the thousands, many of them ridiculously redundant as I photograph again and again the same views, always with an eye 
toward painting them eventually. Finally, about a year ago I decided to actually DO something with one of those photos:
I started a painting — a fairly large one for me and my tiny studio: an oil on a stretched 24” x 36” canvas of one of my most favorite views out there on the Rail Trail.
If you’re like me then you love “before & after” and “makeover” and progression photography. With that in mind, I thought it would be cool to share the stages of this painting’s development, particularly since this painting takes a most extraordinary and unexpected turn.
Per usual I first stained the canvas a warm hue — in this case light orange mixed with sienna. I do this because — as you may recall me saying in previous posts — ideally flecks of that underlying color will appear in the final painting, adding a unifying visual effect — in this case an overall warmth. And the land — the earth — out here just exudes warmth, especially under the intense blue sky.
Next I blocked out the darkest areas with a flat dark color (ultramarine blue mixed with alizarin crimson and burnt sienna), and then started cutting in with areas of light, all the while slowly carving the large masses into to smaller shapes.
Then I really started looking into the grassy weedy area which was just a confusion of colors and textures.
I felt it was getting too distracted by the different colors in that area, and decided to simplify it again (with the intention of distinguishing more details and colors later). I also started moving in with more realistic colors. At this point the distant mountains and sky felt convincing, as did the the shaded hillside on the left. But overall I was frustrated by the whole thing, especially what to do with that foreground.
So I poured some Gamsol (solvent) on it, and let it dribble down the face of the painting, melting and melding the paint in its path. NOW it was starting to look interesting!
And that’s how I left it FOR MONTHS, hanging on a wall in my studio, wondering what the heck to do to it next.
For months and months it sat on my wall, frustrating me.
Until….
I climbed Wheeler.
Where I was enthralled once again by the beauty of the high mountain landscape.
Enthralled by the late summer afternoon light…. the drama of that descent and the jubilant feeling of having once again successfully summitted New Mexico’s highest peak!
And I JUST HAD TO PAINT IT!!
And what better canvas to use than that bane of my existence hanging on my studio wall…
LET THE TRANSFORMATION BEGIN!
Welcome to my world, where, if you don’t like something, you can just paint over it and start anew!
Descent from the Wheeler Peak Trail ~ by Dawn Chandler ~ 24″ x 36″ ~ oil on canvas
{ this painting is available.}
Okay…. I guess I’m ready now to get back to winter and the solstice and fa-la-la-ing….But first, Hmmm….. maybe I’ll start a new painting of the RailTrail…….
Have a beautiful, joyful, fa-la-la-filled merry everything, everyone!
🙂