Last November we moved across the country to Port Townsend, Washington, where Michael had lived before coming to live with me in Brooklyn. We live in a beautiful co-housing community, with fruit trees and a big community garden. It's the smallest town I've lived in for 40+ years. I'm looking forward to finding the arts community here, a task made harder by the pandemic, but not impossible.. I'm getting settled in my new home studio, and enjoying the lovely plein air possibilities.

Michael and I thought our apartment would be our world for the foreseeable future. Then, he got word that some marinas were re-opening. That we might be able to get our sailboat launched and live safely on it, even go as far as Maine if we quarantine on the boat when we get there. 
​And, here we are. Not normal life, much more solitary than we would usually be, but we're immersed in the beauty of the northeast.  And I'm painting from the boat, in acrylics and watercolor.

After a summer of painting outdoors, both in the city and on the sea, I decided on a new project:  why not paint the people in my own life? It was hard to leave the guidance of my wonderful teacher Mary Beth McKenzie, and to lose the stimulation of colleagues I greatly enjoy and learn from.  But I felt ready, or at least game, to push myself well outside my comfort zone.
So, I started to ask people, and some people started to ask me. We set dates. We negotiate what feels comfortable, how much to talk (and what about), how long does each "set" last, how do I see them and how that meshes with how they see themselves.  Some are able to be very still. Others move more than any professional model, and that's OK. It feels formal, and yet very intimate.  I'm sad when each portrait ends, yet looking forward to the hours I'll spend with the folks now on my calendar.

In January/February, Michael and I spent 3 weeks in Hopetown, on Elbow Cay in the Bahamas. In addition to soaking up sun, sea and serious relaxation, I was determined to paint a little every day. I shared some of these on Instagram as it happened. Belatedly, I'm updating my own site with my own news. (You can pick through these as you like, or hit the "slide show" button up to the left.)

Whenever possible I prefer to paint from life.. Part of the pleasure is translating 3 dimensions to 2, and dealing with all the inevitable changes in light, perspective and so forth. But this fall I've found myself rushing through still lifes because I'm dealing with fruits, veggies and flowers that are never really still-- they are ripening, stretching to the light, getting bruised, dropping seeds. So I dug through the seldom-used kitchen stuff and came up with this arrangement of old aluminum gizmos. Unlike with most organic shapes, it is painfully obvious when the drawing is cockeyed, but I'm wiling to live with that.  I had time to do a couple of pencil studies and play with the composition. So many ovals and curves, great fun.
For the most part I've been posting new work on Instagram-- some of you have found me there, but if not, come see me -- @madilounelson.

Painting on New York City's steamy summer waterfronts, oil oozing out of the paint on the sun-struck palette. Barge workers yell profanities as they churn up the still stinking, soup-like Gowanus Canal, as landscape workers prune the shrubs outside the new luxury apartment building overlooking it. Is that really a rowboat, does the Dredgers Canoe Club really paddle these waters? Dumbo now teems with tourists, its once-gritty waterfront re-sculpted and beautifully dressed in native plants. On the Manhattan side, the Fulton Fish Market got evicted to the Bronx; a bike path now overlooks the few remaining barges. Everywhere, new towers defining the skyline. And over and through it all, enormous iconic bridges, stacked and intersecting highway and pedestrian bridges, even a city street that's a drawbridge.

Oil paint: rich, sensual, subtle. My great love in the studio. And one hot mess to pack around outdoors. It's a learning curve summer, with a seemingly unending string of technical challenges. The medium demands a level of precision I don't usually bring to quick plein air work. I'm painfully aware that I don't draw straight lines, and my buildings dance all over the place. Humbling, and too much fun.
It is my good fortune to be studying with urban landscape painter and superb teacher Nicholas Evans-Cato.

This is my third winter of painting at the Art Students League, and for the third time I've had the good fortune to paint Laetitia.  Although I need to take into account my usual lack perspective on my latest effort, I think I've captured something richer this time. It's not as simple as improved brush handling, paint mixing, underlying anatomy or any other technical skill. I think it's a difference in what I'm observing these days. Fun for me to see these 3 paintings together as a series.

Getting ready for the Flatbush Artists Open Studio event, which kicks off at noon today. I've never seen so many of my paintings and drawings splashed about all at one time. It's a tough call, deciding what makes the cut and what doesn't. I'm sure I'm not the first to waffle between "I want everyone to see everything!" and "who the hell am I to ask people to look at so much of my work?".
Although I'm finally installed in my home studio, bathed in light and able to work without (too much) distraction, I'm showing with my friend, neighbor and fellow Art Students League colleague Douglas Graham, in the community room of our apartment building. Easier for visitors to get to, and nice to have the camaraderie.

There is a glut of Venice images, from masterpieces to pizza placemats to Facebook selfies. After reviewing my sketches and paintings from Venice I checked out a lovely book, Whistler and his Circle in Venice. I think I've adequately chided myself about not having anything new to add.
Near the Rialto bridge I ran into a teacher, happily drawing while his architecture students were elsewhere. The teacher said that their trip was about learning to see. We are so bombarded with electronic images and tied to electronic design techniques, he said, that staying in one place and drawing what you really see is a rare experience for his students.
And for most of us, I think. In Venice I overheard "did you capture that?" so many times, saw people glued to their phones and pads through this ancient watery marvel , making sure that they themselves are the main subject of their snaps, jockeying for the "best" background for their selfies. Do you really have to wait until you get home to see what you saw? Can you imagine yourself there, without the selfie?
I had some fantastic meals, a few wonderful conversations, spent a fair amount of time in museums and churches (same thing, and aren't museums redundant in Venice?) and even braved some of the major tourist attractions. But the time I spent drawing and painting was the highlight of my four days there. I wished I had more time and would happily go to Venice to paint again, seeking out the quieter neighborhoods and smaller subjects. Just seeing, with my eyes and hands. 

In May I did a landscape workshop taught by Art Students League's virtuoso abstract painter Frank O'Cain. The ideas that work for me: taking notes on the light and colors, looking at composition rather than detail, not looking to create finished paintings as much as capturing a moment. Arezzo was perfect for such a workshop-- all the light, color, architecture, trees (and food!) that make Tuscany special, with minimal Disneyfication.
I also experimented with watercolor (last 3 pictures of this set), much more portable and discreet than acrylics, although more difficult to control.

Piles of cool new stuff on every page. Look around, and let me know what you think!

If anyone had asked me a year ago, was I interested in making portraits, I would have said definitely not. Yet it's hard for me to resist focusing on a model's face. The general plan is, with few exceptions, always the same. What's engrossing: the subtle shades of difference in bone, skin, light, and expression, the deviations from symmetry dictated by the pose and the person's own face. Not to mention the luxurious responsibility of gazing intently at one person for hours on end. I drew Tsering four times (here are the 2 profiles) before I started to paint the oil (center).

I've been back nearly a week from our winter getaway in Guadeloupe, and promise I'll post some of the lush colors from that beautiful place in a few more days. Meanwhile, news from a dear friend of my youth (say it isn't so that another friend is dying, dying of AIDS, no that still isn't over...) sent me on a search in my graphic archives. There, I found some of my own younger faces, as seen by my younger selves. Growth rings of a tree, nesting Russian dolls, memories and emotions jam packed in simple images.

 Whether we know it or like it, we (the artists) are often drawing (out) our own desires, dreams, fears and memories. Maya  is a fantastic model, with graceful gestures and cherubic vulnerability, but also for me a muse. Looking at her, and later looking at these drawings, I remember being eight years old, reading over and over the story of Saint Agnes. Because at the age of twelve Agnes wouldn't agree to an arranged marriage, she was paraded naked through the streets of Rome. A man dared to look at her with something less than the reverence she deserved, and was struck dead, presumably by the hand of God. The sublime personified, seen through the eyes of a pre-pubescent 60-year-old.

This week I struggled with "accuracy" when painting that most traditional of subjects, naked white ladies. Where's their navels, what color are their inner arms, do their heads really tilt that way? Have I managed any illusions of depth, roundness, softness of skin? No wonder the faces of both these ladies look stressed out; that's what I was feeling, and projected onto them. As a break and a relief, I painted just the face of the blond lady, Monica (center and then right). Monica has the delightful quirk of not holding her face in a neutral mask. She periodically breaks out in giggles, makes eye contact with those of us struggling to depict her well, even does an occasional fish-face, much to my delight. It's hardly an accurate portrait but I think my pleasure in painting it was much purer than the absorbing but almost impossible task of depicting an entire, detailed, accurate human.