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 real time these shows:

The Vermont Wine and Cheese Festival

2012 Putney Craft Tour

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Working intensely between the mediums of paint, clay and glaze, a convertion into a fluid connection occured While the two dimensional and three dimensional surfaces are different, colors bending and pushing against the clay or canvas have become surprizingly similiar. I wasn't thinking about it. Maybe that's good: some intuitive process. The web site shows more samples of this connection here http://www.lizhawkesdeniord.com/

First Light, painted in copper and greys, was started as our very delayed spring arrived. The light changed quickly with the vernal equinox and so did the painting. By turning it and painting into it from different sides the palette loosened and brought it closure in a way I could not have anticipated. Spring was beautuful. Tomorrow it is off to a show in Newfane, Vermont.

Dissolution

36"x36", acrylic, gold leaf

Dissolution was painted in my imagination as I painted Resolution, or rather the idea of it pressed steadily while I worked on the first painting. Two canvasses are often created as diptychs where a balance is extended between two fields. This time the tension evolved mentally on the unpainted canvas and while the two are apparently different, they carry much of the same process of putting on and taking off paint. For details of the work see the web site where the process can be seen in more detail.

Resolution

36"x36", acrylic, gold leaf

This is one of two paintings painted almost simultaneously. By that I mean the 2nd painting was in my mind as a counterpoint to this one and was begun almost the day that this one, Resolution, was finished. The title has little to do with literal resolving or ending. Rather it is what the painting speaks to: disparate elements that co mingle, stretch and relax with each other. Resolution. Dissolution. Like many of the other works that you can see on my web site, this one had perhaps two thirds of it taken out and scraped down to a more spare, essential work.

The edge of a fourteen inch bowl. Lichen, frost, melt, decay, burn, rust, observations of organic processes, influence the painting into these large curved forms.The pot can be seen in full here.

Interior surfaces of pots, textured and layered with glazes, inform new paintings on canvas. Heat melts the glaze which responds to the curves or grooves, pooling or sliding on the form. The process is intuitive but also requires a leap, not knowing how the final result will emerge from the kiln. This same intuitive leap occurs particularly when I am confounded by a painting. Rotating the canvas, changing the light that I physically paint in, using a different knife to apply paint, all allow for the unexpected.

The Practice

48"x36"
acrylic, diptych

Red dominated this painting through out the winter of 2010. Then one day in late February as the light was shifting and days were getting a little longer, 3/4 of the color particles were eliminated, a copper rectangle was embedded and red was absorbed into a metalic warm glaze. Now in May with sun and apple blossoms and birds and warmer days, this painting emanates its own light.

When this pot emerged from the kiln, it seemed as if I had seen it's surface before in a deep, water carved pool or under water with small pebbles scattered on the sand. Before the kiln, there is no precise way of knowing what the result will be so the expression begins before the fire, without really seeing but sensing. There are more like this here.

Chop wood

Carry water

Many bowl carvings are meditative or favorite inspirational lojongs. Others are culled from poems by myriad poets such as Sappho to Herbert to Whitman, Frost, Ruth Stone, our Vermont State poet (almost 95!), and many others. Some are commissioned by friends.

This line, taken from Chard deNiord's poem "Sleeping Lessons", is one of several that are carved or scrafittoed onto rims or into the inner curves of bowls.

(Did I mention commissions welcome?)

Kanji for "Nothingness" or "No-thingness" grounds this piece and, although a kind of text, it parallels the often suggested calligraphic line found in many of the paintings. More information about the piece is found here.

Painting on clay or wood or canvas, each presents their own challenge and pleasure. With clay, the addition of heat, and expansion and contraction after the image/design is painted, often leads to surprizing shifts.

Right Intention, 30"x30", acrylic

The rough surface of Right Intention was built up over two seasons, through fall into winter. The first pentimento was overwhelmingly autumnal; the vivid colors and patterns over rode the subltler qualities I was attempting to develop. This final piece, probably the fourth layer, was completed during the coldest stretch of winter that I can remember. Despite the physical cold that surrounded me in the studio, there is a paradoxical cool warmth in the final version. You can find more information here.

May You Be, acrylic, 36"x 36"