The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads. from The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore
My Christmas baking marathon has begun!
Here is the list of books featured above:
The London Ritz Book Of Christmas by Jennie Reekie
The New England Butt’ry Shelf Cookbook by Mary Mason Campbell
Real Sweet by Shauna Sever
Very Fond of Food by Sophie Dahl
How To Be A Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson
Martha Stewart’s Christmas by Martha Stewart
Christmas From The Heart Of The Home by Susan Branch
Holidays, from the best of Martha Stewart Living Magazine
The Canadian Living Christmas Book by the editors of Canadian Living Magazine
My favorite art books about women artists and a portrait painted by me to the right.
In art, what we want is the certainty that one spark of original genius shall not be extinguished. Mary Cassatt.
My favorite women artists are Emily Carr and Mary Cassatt: the former for her landscapes and the latter for her portraits. It was difficult to narrow it down to just two as Berthe Morisot, Cecilia Beaux, Frida Kahlo, Marlene Dumas, Joan Brown, and Cecily Brown are also contenders. What I love is the great volume of work these artists have produced and in many different mediums.
The books pictured above: Joan Eardley by Fiona Pearson (exhibition catalogue) Berthe Morisot by Jean-Dominique Rey Berthe Morisot Impressionist by Charles F. Stuckey and William P. Scott Helene Schjerfbeck by the Royal Academy of Arts (exhibition catalogue) Vanessa Bell edited by Sarah Milroy and Ian A. C. Dejardin The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum edited by Peter H. Hassrick Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman organized by Judith A. Barter, Art Institute of Chicago The Art of Emily Carr by Doris Shadbolt American Women Artists 1830-1930 by Eleanor Tufts, The National Museum of Women in the Arts Women Artists by Margaret Barlow (1999 edition cover shown below with painting by Mary Cassatt, The Loge)
It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment. John Constable
I decided to begin painting landscapes in earnest this past summer, and challenged myself to complete fifty landscape paintings by the end of 2021. To date, I have completed twenty-five, mostly in watercolor and acrylic, but two in oil. I have enjoyed the project so much that my 2022 New Year’s Resolution List will have to include another landscape challenge: twenty-five seascape and twenty-five cityscape paintings.
Six of my landscape paintings towards my fifty paintings goal.
The books pictured above and listed below have served as wonderful sources of inspiration. I found most of them in the library or online. I like buying used books, especially art books. New art books are beautiful, but very expensive, and if they are too precious, I tend not to open them. So my second personal challenge has been to find instructive art books in the various used-book sales that the surrounding libraries and bookstores have, and never to spend more than $10 on any book.
Masters of 17th Century Dutch Landscape Painting by Peter C. Sutton (Exhibition catalog)
Turner In The North by David Hill
Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth byBeth Venn and Adam D. Weinberg
American Watercolors From The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Forward by John K. Howat
Jean-François Millet by Alexandra R. Murphy
Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces at the Musée D’Orsay, Forward by Michel Laclotte
Joan Eardley by Fiona Pearson
The Age of American Impressionism, Masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago, ed. Judith A. Barter
Baltic Light, Early Open-Air Painting in Denmark and North Germany by Catherine Johnston, et. al
The Hudson River School, The landscape of Bierstadt, Cole, Church, Durand, Heade by Louise Minks
Satin & Sand 