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DUMBARTON_OAKS_HEDGES A
This painting above is acrylic on paper, created after my last show at Montpelier Cultural Arts Gallery in 1996 -has been taken out the frame but is still in my collection.
FARM_SAVANAH
The piece shown ABOVE is a smaller work on paper- done by 2005, it was not in the 2004 show at the New Deal. And also not presently framed but available in my collection. It’s source is a photo I took from a place in the farm (neighboring Beltsville Agricultural Research Center BARC) This photo is also the source for the Golden Farm Savannah Folding Screen.-which can be seen in the Amsterdam series post which includes some Maryland Green work that was finished in 2009.
I have placed these two paintings in this position together because they were used in a paper about Creative Process * They was also in Creative Process Exhibit in Greenbelt Community ART Gallery .For the Creative Process paper SEE:-the Post: Re:Barbara Stevens :Resume and On Going New Mexico Murals.
To See any of the other parts of this Barbara Stevens Art site. please scroll down past the comment posting area to Recent Posts . Thankyou.
.The painting below, acrylic on canvas, contrasts the formal Gardens with this linear precision, and wild nature in the trees above. This was shown and sold in the New Deal Show 2004 called “Green Paintings: Formal Gardens and The Farm”.
PERSPECTIVE_AT_LONGWOOD S
The human precision imposed on nature in the Topiary’s contrasted with natural woods behind kept me visiting these formal gardens during this time period. I think it was Dumbarton Oaks garden that I found Topiary first. Then Longwood, and La Doux. But actually this interest started with the subtly shaped box woods at the Monpelier Mansion Gardens and park.
This next one below was drawn from the cedars at the Arboretum.. This was a moment when I was not actually dragging the designs through the whole green part but was trying out using folded quilts as a source for the sky. Though not framed this is still in my collection. Then below that there is a more recent version of a row of cedars Gardens at La Doux.
When, I was doing a lot of topiary – entranced by the dramatic way the dark and light could be so definite. The next ones were shown and sold in the 2 shows at The New Deal Cafe in 2003 and 2004. The last small painting shown here, “Farm Corn Field” was shown and sold in this 2004 show at the New Deal Cafe. There were several Farm Paintings in this show that seem to be slides only , so will be digitalized later and included.
cedars with folded feather star sky
CEDARS_AT_LA DOUX A
LONGWOOD_TOPIARY S
CEDARS_AT_LONGWOOD S
Longwood Topiary, Starlight S
DUMBARTON_OAKS_TOPIARY S
And this other version of Longwood topiary as well which was sold as well.
An Exhibit winter 2004/2005 at Marietta Mansion showed mostly ancient box woods from the 1800′s there at Marietta .A set f three of four small ancient Boxwoods from Marrietta Mansion are still in my collection.
Ancient Boxwoods # 1 A
Ancient Boxwoods # 2 A
Marietta Mansion Boxwoods from 1800 #3 A
Next are as many of the Paintings shown at the New Deal Cafe Exhibit in 2003 that I can get without getting into the many slides that will still have to be digitalized.There was a triptych from Dumbarton Oaks that was intended to be a folding screen that will have to be entered later. And then this painting below now in Barbara Jacobs collection that was sold just before the Amsterdam Series show of 2010.
MONTPELIER_GARDENS_WILD_GOOSE_CHASE S
The next work is a Folding Screen ( not available) with the bird topiary at Longwood Gardens. This one is smaller and lighter weight than the one that is finally getting finished now from the place at BARC that I call a Golden Farm Savannah.
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This NorthWay #1, below, I was using gold sky and path which doesn’t show very well but the Screen above and the #3 in Montpelier Oaks and Boxwood also used lots of gold which didn’t show very in the Photos. I hope to find how to get these that I have access to be photographed Better.
NORTHWAY_ROAD_NUMBER_ONE S
The Painting below is the third in a series that was close to the first of my awareness of the images that appear in the banks of green like we find in clouds. I think of these as a series .Montpelier Oaks and Boxwoods ZigZag is the first. The quilt design in it is predominate , it is in Kris White’s collection. Montpelier Oaks and Boxwoods 2,Greenman ,is also known for the quilt pattern Eisenhower Star and is still in my collection. The third in the series directly below recently sold, in Jim and Marjory Gray’s collection is called Montpelier Oak and Boxwood, Little Bear.
MONTPELIER_BOXWOODS_NUMBER_THREE 2005
“Montpelier Oaks and Boxwoods, Little Bear”
Montpelier Greenman
Montpelier Oaks and Boxwood, Greenman #2 A
This is from a Artist Statement for the show I had at the New Deal Cafe in 2003. “After coming back to Maryland after 20 years painting the deserts and designs of New Mexico, I saw these giant Green Entities and fused them with the Colonial quilt designs. I only want to record the organic mass, the gestalt of trees, these hedge row entities.No sign of human lines drawn, no paint brush marks. I want to see from a distance, trees becoming like inkblots, all those random faces of dogs and monsters and Gods and Goddesses, hags and clowns and actors, monkeys and pigs, aligators,bears, and horses, great apes, angry men and old crones, mainstream people in their prime may not so often appear, but there may be strange gods with colossal features. All of these are personal morphing gestalts.Some folks may think its cause for alarm if they see such things in the water stain on the ceiling or their linoleum tiles, but then what about seeing the ever changing angels and cows in the clouds or the man in the moon. Trees are like clouds. The Loas of Africa – gods and goddess residing in trees, personalized tree gods.” 2003
MONTPELIER_BOXWOODS_NUMBER_ONE
#1 of this Montpelier Boxwood series –Zig-Zag in Kris White’s collection:
The next several works were done from the Dumbarton Oaks Ariel Hedge -This one below is in a sense a detail of the Ariel Hedge and was sold and is in Andy and Carol Levin’s collection. The Aerial Hedge Diptych and this one were exhibited in the Hedges and Hedgerow show at the Montpelier Cultural Arts Center in 1996. I left Montpelier and moved back for awhile to New Mexico a little later in 1997.
Aerial Hedge Dumbarton Oaks Gardens S
The Next two are Part1 and 2 of a Diptych. These were sold and are in Jahoda / Keuhn collection. These are framed as two separate images that form the continuous, curved Aerial Hedge… trimmed full sized trees. At this period of time I had used a double matted work – two vertical images matted side to side to make horizontal formats works. I have a hard time ever finding a horizontal compositon that I don’t throw away or paint out! It is the customary composition for Landscapes. and I just never like anything but vertical landscapes.
Dumbarton Oaks Aerial Hedge: Diptych
The Gardens at Dumbarton Oaks was the earliest Formal Gardens that I visited and took photos that I wanted to work into paintings… and this one was very surprising with its carved trees instead of trimmed hedges and i knew about the Arboretum but was soon to find huge gardens of Topiary at Longwood and La Doux.
The painting below was done while I was still working at Montpelier 1997, and uses the Montpelier Landscape sources and explores a new style and was long after that, about 2005, discovered in my unframed works and bought by Steve and Sara Benrheisel.
This the time after my last show there when I started using gold in the paintings -must have done the third of the Montpelier Oaks and Boxwood and the first Northway piece on canvas. It was just before going out to New Mexico where I worked on the three seven foot mural circles.
There are two more from this series that I have found in my old and unframed works that I am planing to frame after a very long time unseen in my studio. These paintings, like the one above I am calling these Last of the Montpelier Park series – the beginning of the use of gold paint with the green paintings – which times them 1997 after my last show there before we went back for a couple of years to New Mexico and the 7 foot circle murals.
OLD_LAUREL_HIGHWAY_EXIT
This can be called Exit – it was in fact a great tree that they took down to make the new exit off the Balt/Wash. Parkway – it was a special time when I had found some transparent or perhaps translucent acrylic blue green and it was so soft and I used it until I found two brighter greener green that were also transparent – or translucent an olive green and a Hookers green which i have used every since… now I can’t seem to find that blue green again. Our Grandson when he was really young did really appreciate the fact that he could see a car in this painting.
Below are works from the Montpelier 1995 show called ” Maryland Greens”
Magic Squares, 1995 S
These two photos of the same painting was named Montpelier Oaks and Boxwoods with Tallahassee quilt Block – I have changed it recently and renamed it to Montpelier Oak and Boxwood Gestalts because it was a place where I was more fully understanding the interest I have in the chance organic configurations like in clouds that I am calling Gestalts. Look and see if you see a rather changing possible array of animals especially in the Boxwood layer. It was shown in the 1995 in next to last show at Montpelier Arts Center but is still in my studio. Here is a new version.. but the color is not good in this photo. The more accurate color is somewhere between these two versions-this must be photographed again to show the new gold in the sky design.
Next is another from the “Maryland Greens” show in 1995. But this show was where the “Folded,Feathered Star Sky Cedars” from the Arboretum was shown, The Eisenhower Star, Wild Goose Chase and Blazing Star (seen in the Amsterdam Series Post because it was changed and shown at a Montpelier Resident Artist 3oth Reunion Union in 2009.
Green Painting : baby blocks
There was a series of watercolor green paintings shown in this Maryland Greens show in 1995. Here is one again ABOVE which is unframed in my collection. The is just before my technique developed of using a thin glaze to preserve transparency over only some hard edges of darks that eventually replaced my use all hard edge shapes of watercolor for these “green paintings”.
BearNeck Creek
Drunkards Path:Green Fragment
telephone pole hedgerow A
2004 AntiChrist
This political collage – utilizing a copy from an old manuscript illustration “collaging” in the contenders in 2004 – Bush was the AntiChrist- the subject of the ancient illustration -for a Political art exhibit at the New Deal fall of 2004. It is essentially a poster …. it was a marvelous find the old manuscript, all about an antichrist…it was funny I thought.
These three small Green paintings were done certainly after 1995. The Drunkards Path Green Fragment was cropped and framed during the time I was painting the 2010 Amsterdam Series and was sold before that show.
Pieceworks-Gottesgrun series 1993 A
The Pieceworks-Gottesgrun Show’s title is from the quilt piece design elements and the word Gottesgrun which sounds a little like God is Green or maybe Goddess Green – all of which appealed to me. My husband Ray Stevens German family they had lost touch with since after the war..were in Gottesgrun. In 2008 while we living in Amsterdam for the summer we found the town of Gottesgrun and the lost family -by traveling by several buses and several trains we found them.
1993 bird series S
There were quite a few of this Bird series and they were almost all sold , some of these were sold at a Co-op Gallery in Baltimore and some though the Co-op Gallery at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria.
This last one in this set of painting ready for publishing at this time is a large one of a kind Horizontal Landscape… from my numerous Maryland “hedge row” photos – along side the highways near Greenbelt. that so moved me when we first got back here after 20 years in New Mexico.. This one is named for the quilt pattern threaded through most of it..it is a large canvas and is in my studio.
Grandmothers Garden A
AND this was one of the blue green ones but I still had not yet hit on the more successful way of allowing the leaves to be more organic by hardedging only the darks and then allowing transparencies and luminosity by using the acrylic like a watercolor glaze -using sponges to lift off the excess paint allowing random splotching and dappling effects – removing all sense of the human hand like brush strokes. This one looks like it was very close to the transition.
Finally, I add here the works from WESTERN CHANTS. a December 1994 SOUTHWEST EXHIBIT at Montpelier Cultural Arts Resident Artist Gallery. During the summer before Barbara Stevens and Susan Howland, both resident artists at Montpelier taught a Watercolor Workshop in New Mexico, centered in Chimayo and Abique – Ghost Ranch and surroundings -hence a return to Southwest art .
Black Mesa Rain Prayer
Done mostly on site..and is in the collection of Jahoda/K.uehn
Coaticue, earth goddess of the Americas in a dream visit to North America Hedges Colletion
February Cactus............... available
Near Abique highway -done during workshop
Landscape -High Road to Taos. done on site
The Water Color Workshop we taught was all outside everything done out in the open air. New Mexico weather actually permits this – sometimes we had to be in the shade of course.. and certain places had tables with shade. We had moved back east so it was a wonderful way to go home again. The work with borders or something in the sky that were done on site, included some work in the studio.
Pinon Hills Chants/Santa Fe Skyline
Pueblo Constellations -western chants
Stone Facing Clouds-western chants S
Desert Jewel/Lake Reflection
western chant-border chants s
