Liz Hawkes deNiord ~ LHD Design~Eskar Studio

2011-04-17T17:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-05-01T17:13:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-04-18T07:10:00.000-07:00

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?)

2010-02-08T17:23:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-25T16:36:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-18T15:14:00.000-08:00

May You Be, acrylic, 36"x 36"

2010-01-07T10:21:00.000-08:00

Principle II, 36" x 36"

In late summer the days, both hot and then cool, left their imprint in shimmering joyful colors. The layers in this painting changed daily until it seemed to breathe on its own. How can that be?

2009-07-09T18:24:00.000-07:00

Principle I, acrylic, 40x40

Beginning on the spring equinox, this painting absorbed the new season through the layering and blocking of colors over many weeks. The upper right gold patch carried a strong presence and almost overtook the the painting by fragmenting, enlarging and shedding, resolving finally with a balanced call and response of muted golds on opposite sides of the canvas.

2009-07-09T18:06:00.000-07:00

Stickney Brook, water color, 18x24

Painting the illusive quality of water proved to be a meditation in light by being aware of the quality of substances: water, current, moss, rock, sky on water. The reading of all the elements changed over the afternoon of sun and shade with the final painting reading as perhaps all of those things.

2008-12-07T07:49:00.000-08:00

Spirit, 30"x40"

Spirit will be on view at Mocha Maya's, 43 Bridge Street, Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, along with a dozen other of my paintings from
January 8- February 22, 2009.

Their web site, www.mochamaya.com , has a complete list of shows, poetry readings and fantastic music events.

2008-08-02T14:39:00.000-07:00

The Middle Distance evolved soon after Postdeluvial (see image below). A new direction of layering and rotating the painting kept the image "unreadable" resisting identifiable imagery.

2008-08-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

POSTDILUVIAN

2008-08-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

There is a purple that I forgot I had laid in as an undercoat, before the painting came to this cool, still place. Most of what had been there, is no longer there, and although I was tempted to keep on with that process, one afternoon, I looked and it was "done" This one is called Break.

2007-09-01T06:35:00.000-07:00

September 2007 Show
A Candle In the Night
181 Main Street
Brattleboro, Vermont
opening: 9/7 5:30-8

"Aurora" , 42 x 78, first hung on the wall like a physical door for awhile until I turned it horozontally, which is it's present position and one that reads more specifically about inner doors. The process of painting a larger canvas involves the whole body: one can't sit down with it but rather one has to move, engage, shuffle, step widely and dance with it. Perhaps "Aurora" is too easy a title based on color but the layers and layers and scraping and painting again have something to do with our daily comings and goings, our questions and mostly our unknowing. "Aurora", dawn, beginning again, maybe is the right title, a second chance, every day.

2007-08-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

Two series have been threading their way onto canvas: the Janus paintings with the ubiquitous "door", the exit and entrance, and a second series called "Static In the Void". This painting, "Transmission", stradles the two and is another bridge painting, not leaving the previous series and not entirely embracing the next phase. What was curioius about the execution was that it was suddenly 'finished' and complete in a way that I put it up on the studio wall and have not taken it down since.

2007-03-24T13:11:00.000-07:00

While painting "Threshold" a series of puzzles appeared. The shape and not shape, what was there and then not there but still burned through the color, led to the horizontal divisions. It was perhaps one of the more unconscious pieces in the last year; even the calligraphic markings, put in as scribbles but which came to have their own necessary place burned back through the layers. I love this painting best in the morning light when it literally glows but also love to watch it change with the day.

2006-06-23T18:00:00.000-07:00

Rift 30"x30", acrylic

This painting from the end of spring, comes from watching the edge between light and dark, dawn and day and later, when I get back to the canvas, twilight and dusk; the colors grew from the weeks of chill and rain yet every plant was turning into its wakeful state despite the steady floods and scant sun. "Rift" seems to describe this sliding of seasons and the final break from the long winter.

New Morning
30"x30", acrylic and copper leaf on canvas

Summer brings a change of palette, a foreign one: green is seldom a color that I am drawn to- perhaps, here in this lush season with rains and sudden sun there is so much of the verdant shade that I inadvertantly rediscovered it.

2006-03-17T07:14:00.000-08:00

For every baby, family or friend, a "baby quilt painting" is made-
this one for the most recent family member, Fen Hawkes deNiord.

Zazen, triptych
acrylic and gold leaf on wood
45"x 30"

Middle Path

acrylic and gold leaf on canvas

40"x 40"

2006-02-17T09:06:00.000-08:00

Liz Hawkes deNiord

711 Bourbon Street: Blind Willy, Big Lips and Dancer
acrylic on paper, 12"x 14"

One of three images painted after a trip to New Orleans in 2003.

Dancing With Myself
acrylic on paper, 12"x14"

2005-10-06T09:37:00.000-07:00

Tantra
acrylic on wood with gold leaf
30"x30"

Painting on wood provides a resistance to the palette knife and brush. A different pictures comes from this as the paint slides and stops in a slicker way. Often the surface is built up in multiple layers; ridges and dents catch the paint and lead the light to fall more sharply on the surface. A recent discipline is to stop after the initial few layers and then "take out" what I like most, to strip down to more esserntial parts of the painting. The biggest challenge is knowing when to stop.

2005-09-18T06:52:00.000-07:00

Liz Hawkes deNiord

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