Marcia LaBelle

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Untitled

This is actually the first piece from the same afternoon in which I painted the study below (wooded). Here I was facing the north east and in the previous post I was looking down immediately to my left on an embankment beside the road on a farm off Mineral Springs Rd.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

wooded

This past week has still been wintery, but not as - I'm looking forward to the approaching weeks of longer days to take myself outside to sketch in nearby areas. The piece below was from end of March a year ago.

off of Mineral Springs Road oil on masonite 18"x12"

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

some from last couple of months

Reclining figures - 'not sleeping' as it were: chalk pastel charcoal pencil etc

Sunday, February 3, 2013

the patient visitor

I don't suppose he has infinite patience nor will I say he'll be back soon - come spring... I hope

pastel and charcoal on prepared water colour paper 18x22

Friday, February 1, 2013

Time flies

I had the opportunity to paint in this factory, now closed, one mid afternoon nearly two years ago -

Siemens factory, cat walk, oil on panel 10"x14" 2011

The figure below is from the same time period.

Standing figure, charcoal and pastel on Strathmore

Friday, January 4, 2013

The heart section

There’s a wonderful passage in Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth (perhaps autobiographical) that describes an encounter between the young librarian, Neil Klugman with a young boy who tiptoes up to him and asks to see the heart section:

“Hey, he said, where’s the heart section – a perplexed Neil, confused by the “ thickest sort of southern negro dialect” asks him how to spell it.

The kid repeats – “The heart section. Ain’t you got no heart section? Heart. Man, pictures. Drawing books. Where you got them?

Then Neil understands that he means ‘Art’ and directs him to the appropriate section of the stacks.

On reading this an association between heart, artist and library has clicked in my mind, totally pre digital.
Interestingly, Roth dedicated this novel to his parents with an inscription - The heart is half a prophet - Yiddish proverb.

I hope that libraries will take it easy in 2013 and slow down in selling off - (decimating) their invaluable pre digital collections. I recently discovered that a reference book by Kurt Wehlte, The Materials and Techniques of Painting, student of Max Doerner is no longer available on the shelf at our public library. In which case I just ordered a used library copy, not cheap, from alibris. How funny is that?!

But then the internet itself has become like a vast library and contact with other bloggers continues to be extremely inspiring and nurturing!

Some recent drawings from December 2012 and older:

Monday, October 29, 2012

The weather

The streets are drenched – rain and falling leaves.

Midweek will be hallowe’en, then an American Thanksgiving to the south soon to be followed by an American election. If I have my druthers I unabashedly hope Obama is reelected – a highly intelligent man of African/American descent – who would have thought… in spite of racism and all that – like a miracle to see something like that happen in our lifetime.

I do hope also that every one who can vote gets to vote – not good if people of uncertain economic means are disenfranchised. I suppose I am sounding somewhat political which is ironic because for the most part I’m not.

A thinking man on manilla 18"x24" chalk