Inspired by the blue and white girls

You've read here before about my favourite blog:-- you know the one and it's getting better every week. I read it for a regular injection of my childhood friend's wit, creativity and down-to-earth take on life, as much as for the fascinations of her magic kitchen realm, which I travel via her experiences. She began a memorable post with the words, "My mother-in-law was a blue and white girl. I am, too." Accompanying the text was a photo of enchanting blue and white baking dishes and such (some inherited from her mother-in-law) against the blue and white tiles of her kitchen wall. To my ears only, it called out "Paint me!"

I'm a blue and white girl, too, and over the years my eye has been captured by all kinds of blue and white objects that might work in a still life. So why not now? I rummaged in my stash and found way too many bits and pieces for just one painting. Okay. Following my favourite painter/writer's advice to "constantly set yourself challenges," I decided I'd do a triptych -- an integrated work comprised of three parts, the "Blue and White Series." What's more, I'd work as large as I could with each of the three separate paintings the size of my art paper -- about 20" x 26" in finished format -- for a triptych total width of five feet.

After much fiddling, I arranged my set-up for "Fishing with the Blue and White Girls." A day later, the bowl would acquire some hard-necked garlic.   And those are beautiful weathered seedpods of Chinese Lanterns, which will stand in for their previous orange incarnations in the painting.

Uh-oh. With this set-up in the corner of my six-foot worktable (the main scene of action in my small 10x10 foot studio), there wasn't room for my easel -- !! A big year-end overhaul was obviously required to select and reposition the tabletop essentials. And lucky me! Coming along at precisely the right moment to see me through this project was a far-off friend's lovely gift of two hand-thrown pottery jugs, along with the potter's recommendation that they'd make great brush holders.

Here's the new worktable set-up (and the easel at an angle at which it would never be used!):

And in a starring role, at right stage centre back (?), are the two charming jugs -- one labelled STUFF  and the other TIME  -- "Just what you need," my gift-giving friend said.

Okay. We're ready for lift-off. This is the painting I described in my previous post, in which I began to work consciously on the idea of "painterly" vs. "linear."  Despite the fact that the composition is filled with anchoring lines, you can see from its evolution  how I tried to work with a broader brush. Here's the final outcome:

It's interesting -- to me, at least -- to compare this first painting of 2014 with one I finished in February 2007 -- exactly seven years ago, featuring that same irresistible cat-and-fish teapot and a similar colour inspiration. It's called "White Cats and Rumi Blue" -- gathering all the little gift cats (white ones, at least) I've ever been given and a particular shade of blue that led to my bonding with a cherished work-buddy as we discovered we both loved cats and a particular shade of not-quite-navy blue.

Whether my latest painting is painterly or linear, can we agree that I've made some progress? And who knows where the three-part series and the challenges I've set myself will take me?

As for the Blue and White Girls at the top of this post, they're no one in particular (except some magazine models). I was working on some colour studies with "chips" of colour cut from magazines and couldn't resist seeing what I could do with patterns clipped from the past year's LL Bean catalogs. Some Blue and White Girls just never grow up.