January at last. New Year, new thoughts, new work. December often feels like a month of looking back and summing up but…January is a whole different deal. Of course it also means rain…
and our year/month began at the beach watching the bay…
reading by the fire…
appreciating the sunny days of that first week…
gathering steam. Work spaces reorganized, ideas forming but…it’s still pretty dark by 5:00…
R has three writing/curatorial projects in the works and to that end we did a little detective work…searching for images. He’s writing a monograph and curating a retrospective of the work of Portland painter Lucinda Parker (opening at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art next year, January of 2019), a shorter essay on the late painter/print-maker John Stahl for a memorial book on Stahl’s work, and a large writing project on the Seattle painter Alden Mason. A Portland collector has a Parker painting and a Stahl work on paper in his downtown offices so we went to take a look…
A Lucinda Parker painting from the 1980’s
and a John Stahl watercolor from the late 1970’s/early 1980’s
BUT, guess what else we found (the office manager nicely let us wander freely)…an Alden Mason painting:
we then headed across the river to a state owned office building where R had discovered there was a Lucinda Parker painting in the cafeteria
and it’s a lucky thing for the employees as this vibrant painting is the ONLY art work in the whole room…
coffee break
On the home front I’ve been looking at my brown & white dishes for inspiration…
watching the amaryllis grow and bloom
Looking out my windows…
trying to make a couple of bedspreads for a friend inserting quilted V of G squares into beautiful and heavy woven Guatemalan fabric
more coffee breaks and a few meetings…a visit to Gaiety Hollow…
I guess its the same stuff of 2017, but with new 2018 eyes…
On The Way 
Bonnie, I love your blogs. Thank you very much for bringing art and beauty and fun into our lives. LVG
Thanks Larry Von…always nice to hear your voice…xo
wonderful wonderful!!
Excited to be entering into Nancy Lindburg season next week! xo
Happy New Year, Bonnie! Love seeing your images and reading your thoughts, as always.
Happy New Year to you Leslie…thanks for the comment as I like knowing you’rre out there. xo
You inspire me always. Thank you for the winter blog. We need to enjoy our winter weather in contrast to what is going on in the east and Santa Barbara County.
I know Irene…I just couldn’t do the snow and freeze stuff again…(unless somebody drove me around all the time…) winter garden visit in the offing. xo
Even the same stuff is never the same stuff when viewed through your eyes, dear Bonnie. I loved every frame of this posting. Happy New Year.
Oh Sue-Del…xxoo…thinking about you a lot.
Your dish set is beautiful! That Guatemala fabric is heavy , and beautifully woven. I have some of it myself.
Thanks Deb…have been enjoying your quilts scrolling out…xxoo
Great post, Bon. I remember, decades ago, going for a museum visit with you and Rog. I saw him in exactly that pose, close to the painting, hand on chin. Since that time, I’ve learned to get up close, take my time and discover things I never would have noticed any other way. My life has been immeasurably more joyful in those moments. Thank you both.
He’s a slow study for sure…once I left him in the 1st room of the Uffizzi and when I came back two hours later he was in the second room…you are a nuanced looker as I remember…xxoo
you have introduced me to a new world. Names I’d never heard. Thank you for letting me into your world. I don’t like winter–it is 18 degrees and we had rain sleet and snow since yesterday, ugh! Seeing winter through your eyes gives a new perspective. Thank you. Love MEM
Memsie I could not go back to snow and cold…beautiful though falling snow is. Our winters are much milder and greener than yours…(thankfully) though do usually involve some scary
“black ice” to keep us on our toes. Stay warm as you go through these waves of storms. love to you…
Me too, what “Memsie” said, all the new names and views and thoughts and textures. Thank you for these introductions. I love that Alden Mason painting!