Art, Meaning, Green Living & Health

How to Host a Potluck

1/28/2020 7:15:51 PM

Hosting a regular potluck group is not only fun and rewarding (people come to you bearing wonderful friendship and food!), but easier than you might think. Sharing food with our fellow humans is a  wonderful and natural way to build the kind of community feeling many of us miss in the anonymity and isolation built into modern ways of living, so replete with devices and garages that we all disappear into.

And doing it on a regular basis makes it even better. We have hosted a potluck of 12-30 people at a time for over 5 years now, as well as put on many parties for groups of professionals attending our seminars for decades. and it has been incredibly rewarding. It has also helped members build a larger network of connections

So, think about it. It can be as simple as inviting 4-6 friends over to share conversation or a favorite film or an interest you have in common, like books or gardens or a plant-based lifestyle. Keep it small to start, unless you a veteran at hosting events. A smaller group also allows people to share in one conversation, which is often a really great way to find common ground and establish group bonds. You could even make in-depth conversations on topics of the day the theme of your group.

Ours started with permaculture and environmental films and discussions. After watching "Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Solution," we morphed overbite into a = potluck. For several years we focussed primarily on videos on how to eat plant-based, but also included topics like reducing plastic, simple living, EMF safety and more. Increasingly, our focus is on discussion.

Here are some tips to help you physically set it up in a sustainable way.

Reusable Partyware

First, unless you already have these things, get yourself a set of thin glass plates or China, and enough drinking glasses and wine glasses  from your local thrift store  to accommodate the group as it grows and as your space allows. Custard cups make great soup bowls. Reusable party ware saves plastic and other waste, and buying it used eliminates packing and shipping impacts, saves money and reuses resources. I keep ours on handy trays in a bookcase. When it's time for the party, I can readily set them out on the counter where the serving line begins:

A few years ago I also found a batch of 20 or so cloth napkins for a pittance online and have used them now at least 50 times at these events, saving on paper waste and making it all more elegant as well. We wash and line dry them the next day.

The evening or morning before the potluck begins, you will want to clean house, make a list of who has RSVPd, bring out extra tables and chairs (plastic stacking chairs are great), arrange your living room as needed to accommodate your numbers, set your party ware (above)  and chill some filtered water, perhaps with cucumber or lemon slices in glass dispensers or pitchers in the fridge. If you are serving tea, wine or other drinks, get that ready too.

For your own food contribution, make a casserole or salad in advance, depending on what others bring and be prepared to provide a simple appetizer if none shows up. (For smaller groups, I suggest clarifying what each one brings in advance, taking the luck part out of the potluck!). Soups are easy to make but can be more complicated to serve and require bowls and spoons not otherwise needed.

Ask people to arrive on time and let them know where to park and where to leave coats, purses and containers when they arrive. We make a space out of the way in the bedroom. Provide name tags if it's a big group and welcome them and their food into the serving area. If you want to allow time to socialize and enjoy appetizers first, try to keep food chilled or warm as much as possible, or at least covered. These days, many people have  thermal casserole carriers they use to bring dishes in, or boxes with towels.

Tables can be a challenge. In our case we have two drop-leaf English oak dining tables that, together at maximum extension, can accommodate 14 people. Other potluck hosts use folding plastic tables, or people just find a spot to sit with plates on their laps, at patio tables or what not. Just make sure it's hospitable and that there are enough places for all guests to sit comfortably. Some of my favorite occasions have been when we hold the potluck after a meeting and it's small enough to continue our conversation as one group as we sit around the table. (8-14 people).

Living Room Setup

And that brings us to the living room, where the gathering usually begins and ends. It helps to ring a bell or strike a drum or crystal bowl to get peoples' attention and draw them from the meal and cleanup. If we are showing a film, I have arranged the furniture so that all seats face the TV screen or can easily be swiveled to do so. I provide throw pillows behind each sofa seat, which usually works better for shorter people, and have a stack of plastic chairs on hand to bring out when the film begins. Or sometimes we have just had people bring wooden dining chairs into the viewing space. I always leave a small chair near the TV to introduce the film and then seat myself elsewhere if need be.

For discussions, place the bigger upholstered furniture in a circle with an opening, and if more seats are needed, arrange an outer ring of dining chairs or stackable chairs. I have found that compact plastic stacking chairs, perhaps with pads, deliver a lot of comfort for their size. (We store a stack of 14 in our guest closet). When facilitating discussions, try to find ways to keep a handful of talkers from dominating the discussion, unless it is of wide interest or you have a guest speaker. If this becomes an issue, try passing a timer around the circle like a "talking stick" or just express that now let's hear from someone else, etc. 

How Many to Invite?

If your potluck gels, and most likely it will, it will naturally want to grow as people ask if they can invite other friends. Some homes can only accommodate 4-6 and that is your bottom line. Others can take 60 or more. Ours is more like 25.  I have often vowed to cap it at a more comfortable, intimate size, like 14-20 but have said OK anyway up to maybe 26. Beyond that, I find it's just too many and it begins to discourage more introverted participants from returning, who are often some of the most interesting people. As it turns out, when it has swelled a bit too high, the universe often trims it back down to 22 or so as people call or email with last minute cancellations.

You will have to feel your way through this one. Perhaps you or another member of your circle needs to start an additional potluck or else do it more often!

Meanwhile, enjoy the process. The more you do it , the easier it gets as you establish your routine. Don't sweat it too much and enjoy how much people appreciate you for creating the community that is often lacking in our lives! It is a real service, and it is also very fun!

AND tasty!!

What Is Creativity?

10/27/2017 11:52:41 AM

(a talk I gave at my 60 year retrospective at the Sedona Arts Center, Oct. 27, 2017) Here is a video based on this same material.

Life is a creative journey. Every day, each moment, each act, each though is an opportunity for creative expression. And, like actors in a vast cosmic play, together we all co-create this infinitely complex thing we call human life on Earth. 

I once read that in every species there are two currents: the conservatives, who maintain what has been working so far, and the innovators, the creative explorers who try new things and who become the cutting edge of evolution. And though these forces often clash, we need both and it is a dance between them. Both have a place.

I would add to this observation, however. It’s not us versus them. I think we each have both of these forces within us: the ability to keep on keeping on, to plug away with the known, and also, the spark of the creative that drives us to try new things.

Keeping things going in the standard way has obvious benefits and limits. As for innovation, trying new things often seems to have no higher purpose other than play, perhaps play itself being how we best learn. And sometimes our most treasured innovations and ventures may not succeed as we hoped. Sometimes they create problems, as creative chemistry and industry have done.

But sometimes they can and do change the world. When Steve Jobs hired the people at Apple who created the many devices that have interconnected the greater mind of humanity, wisely, he chose those who also excelled in humanities and arts over the technocrats.

My ancestor John Adams, a founding president and a farmer, also spoke of this, pointing to the natural order of stability and security first, then innovation and play. He said that he studied politics and war and government, so that his children could study science and math and navigation and business, so that their children could explore painting and poetry and ceramics and architecture.  And that is exactly what happened. I am one of the lucky descendants who got to explore the creative arts, which I did. Though we have always lived to some extenet under the shadows of the nuclear age and a time of environmental threat,  most of us here are the lucky children who have been able to live creative lives in a time of abundance, liberty and opportunity.

For me, that has meant a lot of exploration of the visual arts, as well as writing. As you can see from the small fraction of my work on display here, I explored a diversity of media. I used crayons and acrylics, oils and pastels and whatever I could find.  I glued spaghetti and eucalyptus buttons, sand, plaster, jewels and beans alongside pencil and paint. I explored portraits of Native Americans that seemed to draw out unhealed issues from other lives.  I printed up little books and inspired sayings and sold them at craft fairs.All along, I create abstracts that  remind me of the formless and infinitely creative space behind all form.

As Adams invited, I have also been at least a wannabe architect and city planner. In 1994 I designed our passive solar home in Eugene, where we lived and made a living for twenty years. To decorate our homes I tried my hand at stained glass, floral wreaths, hand painted clocks and ceramics, homemade futons and sofas, and more than I can remember. It was lovely and comforting to nest in. Home is my refuge. It is safety, comfort and that stable conservative thread that keeps life going.

As I said, I also wrote, and have done a lot of critical thinking and research about many matters. Creativity is widely curious and I think you will find this trait in many artists. With my husband Richard, a veterinarian, I co-authored a best selling Rodale book with innovative recipes that led the way to feeding home prepared diets for companion animals. As of March 2017, it is now in its 4^th edition, to which I made major contributions and also illustrated.

At times I blamed this book, along with the overcast skies of Oregon, for taking over the artist in me, drawing out my left brain and opening up many business and teaching opportunities we worked on together for many years. But it has also given us both a powerful chance to impact a lot of people with messages about healthy food, about sustainability, ecology, right relationship and holistic thinking.

And that leads to another thread woven throughout this life story, not unlike the one that called to Adams. Ever since college years at Berkeley I have longed to change the world for the better. I think that has called many or most of us as well. HOW to do that has always been the biggest challenge.

Though I started as an art major, fine art seemed incapable of changing the world to really meet the social and environmental challenges of our day.  Thinking it held the answers, I entered a PhD program in social psychology in 1971: change society, change the world. But soon this was clearly too stalwart and limited to silly predictable experiments you’d have to “prove” with abstruse statistics.

And so, like many of our generation,  I explored social change through personal transformation and spirituality. For a while, during our 20 years in Oregon I was a licensed counselor, but that too, soon seemed too narrow and too self absorbed, leading more into the ego than beyond it.

I wasn’t sure what to do next. Meanwhile,  I kept busy and helped secure our retirement years renovating real estate.

Yet inside I still longed to serve the higher good, to do what most needs doing at this point in history, AND at the same time, to follow my natural inclination and gifts to express beauty.

It is often hard to see how the threads of your life weave together when you are in the midst of it. All I knew was that about 2006 I really wanted to come to Sedona and paint and become part of the wonderful art community that is here, whose heart is the Sedona Arts Center, which will now receive 25% of sales in this show.

So we moved here. I studied at SAC and I taught at SAC. I’ve won a number of fine awards and have been in the Plein Air Festival seven times. Drawing on my experience creating events and workshops with Richard for veterinarians, I’ve created group shows with poetry readings, have had my own gallery for a while.

Mostly, I painted landscapes, thinking I would spend the rest of my life perfecting that gift as much as I could.  I did focus, more than I ever have, and I feel good about the many beautiful landscape paintings and pastels that resulted.  

At the same time, I soon began to integrate my interests and wrote a lot of heart felt poetry to accompany many of my paintings. I am very pleased with how these two, as well as spirituality, came together in my 2013 book, “Spirit of the Earth.” The threads of the tapestry began to join, and I hope you will take a look at it. Many people have found it inspiring, including me. It comes through me more than from me.

So, as in the 1980s in California, I again began a serious study of painting landscapes, and soon, to grow them. In the tradition of countless ancestors, I have always kept a garden, and here on the rocky dry soils of Sedona with an abundance of hungry wildlife, necessity has been the mother of invention, as it has always been in all species. This time the Muse of Creativity led to designing and building a variety of screenhouses and container gardens to grow and defend lovely greens, tomatoes, potatoes, garlic and more.

About 2012 I began offer green living, garden tours and presentations to interested people, including on YouTube. In 2014 it morphed into a monthly potluck group. This time the creative act was less about stuff and more about relationships. It became a community of people sharing an interest in creating a better world, together. Many of you, as you know, are here.

We often watch films and in October 2014 many of us saw the life changing film,“Cowspiracy.” Overnight, after learning the profound truth that a simple, healthy change of diet was truly probably the most important thing any of us can do to change the world for the better, most of us made the switch to a whole food plant based diet.

Now, each day we eat this way we each save about 1100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 sf of rain forest and one innocent animal’s precious life. And that matters, because, unless more of us make this change, and soon, in ten years we could lose the Amazon to grazing and to growing livestock feed. Animals agriculture is the #1 human contributor to greenhouse gases and in the coming decades we will lose much of our fresh water supplies to its inefficiencies. If we continue eating seafood as we are, by 2050 we could fish out the entire ocean. This is not a good legacy to leave our grandchildren, nor all the life forms of this blue green jewel of a planet spinning in space.

And so now, much of my life is now dedicated to spreading the word about making this shift, through blogs, working with others, offering presentations, and creating significant changes to the 2017 edition of our Rodale book, after learning that dogs in particular, can not only adapt to but live longer and healthier on a plant based diet as well. And their dietary footprint on the earth is quite significant, especially due to the trend to feed them lots and lots of fresh raw meat. I also hope you will take a look at this latest edition, which I got to illustrate (the originals are for sale here) or at least take one of the free postcards available here. It includes a recipe that has helped one dog live to age 26, and others to advanced years as well. Also, please take a copy of my plant based diet suggestions for humans. They are simple, healthy and tasty.

So that’s my story, for now.

What can we learn about creativity from from this particular life of diverse wanderings and focused production, as well as musings upon your own?

First, we need to understand who we are. We are all highly creative beings whose every thought impacts the world. It is our very nature, because we are inseparable from the creative Source of all life, the great orchestrator of it all, which often orchestrates in ways we cannot presently understand from our little corner of the world.  I think in our afterlife “life review” it will all be clear.

Second, I think we each come in with a mission. Changing the world is important to many of us, and so are many other things that we come here to learn. How to love, how to forgive, how to be patient, how to trust, how to create.

Third, every act we perform is a creative one. We don’t always seem be able to create or have choice over much of what happens in life, but we always get to choose how we react to it and what we make of it. Therein lies our happiness, and our power to transform life.

Fourth, let us honor both sides of us: the creative innovator and the tried and true conservative that keeps the food growing and the houses built and the bills paid.

Finally, let us trust the course of events and to be patient. It can be confusing to tie together diverse interests that seem to call in different directions or to find out which doors will open and which will close, and why.

To do that I have found it best to trust my heart and to respond to the doors that open and walk away from those that close. Without questioning my impulses, I have usually just followed them with confidence. 

Proceeding in this way, with I know now that I have made a difference in this world, not necessarily in a way that I could ever have predicted, but I know that I have contributed to a chain of events that is helping to awaken this world.  And where that leads next in terms of creative projects, I have no idea, but I will trust where my heart and life leads me.

Despite all the bad news in the world, I have also come to believe that a very positive future awaits humanity and our planet. In the still of the night, just before dawn, sometimes I awaken and I know that the best is yet to come. Many others report this sense as well, including some who have had deep experiences with the Light in Near Death Experiences. There will be hard times, for sure, but I believe we will get through it. It is the grand power of nature, of life itself, that is expressing through each of us in zillions of ways that no single one of us can truly comprehend.

Life is creative and innovative and so are we. Let us trust that.

Thank you so much for coming and for the creative acts that each of you do to make a better and more beautiful world.

An Art Workshop in Spain!

6/21/2017 2:27:06 PM

Recently I impulsively signed up last minute to join my friend Gretchen Lopez at her art workshop in Altea, Spain. We haven't been abroad for ten years (the long flights and travel arrangements aren't quite the same as "Beam Me Up, Scotty," my preferred future way to travel).

People have been asking for a report, so here it is!

I had a terrific time at the art workshop, held at different spots in and around Altea, Spain, a Renaissance town  on the southeast coast, just a forty minute taxi from the airport at Alicante. Our hostess picked us up, a friendly British ex-pat who ushered us into a delightful four story townhouse for little over $100 a day, overlooking the sea. Loved the terraces with their ventilating yet secure wrought iron out shutters. The stairs were a challenge for my bum knee, but that has much improved since the trip. 

I loved the street and the street life. Narrow, walkable (few were driveable) with intricate designs of black, white and grey cobblestones, cats perched behind the beautiful wrought iron guards over all windows (great combo for security and ventilation). Lots more stairs, and all this no doubt contributes to the health of the locals, who meet, along with visitors  galore (mostly UK and German) in the abundant outdoor cafes, which come alive about dusk.

The first day of class we met Gretchen at the top of the hill at the Iglesia de Altea, a marvelous blue tile topped structure rebuilt in the early 1900s.

This plaza was the heart of the town, surrounded by cafes and openings to the sea. Everyone was in a jovial mood and eager to get painting. Most worked in water soluble oils. I opted for a combo of pastels and acrylics, not wanting to contend with the drying process and extra space that requires in luggage, already heavy with art gear and a few food staples like our morning oats, instant beans, hummus: we brought them to save $ and also because we had read there weren't many veg friendly places in Altea (true).

Gretchen gave excellent demos each day (see this 25 minute video I created of her demo the last day at the Mercado). Most days we did reviews of our work and our intrepid group of 6 or 7 at various levels did amazingly well, each with their unique styles, some more tight and realistic, some loose as a goose.

 Lanie Widmar was our local contact, a watercolorist who moved there from Sedona with her husband Russ only seven months prior. They love it and seem to be in Spain for good.  She helped translate when necessary (not usually) and I also found the long-unused memories of college Spanish class surface enough to make it look like I knew something of the language (a good accent goes a long way).  

Here she is with Richard at a delightful day we spent painting by the paseo that goes along the sea. Not the best beach for a swim (rocky) but I loved the architecture, once again, and did several pieces based on it.

Time went fast, as we captured street and cafe scenes and met for several meals as a class, at the top of the Crown of India (5 star and views), a Dutch run place by the sea, and the Restaurante de Artistes for our final meal.

Our class photo, taken at the Tuesday Mercado the last day:

Gretchen, next to me, is not that short, but it's so like her humble self to come down to our level!

On Wednesday morning our hostess drove us back to the airport, where we took a short flight to Barcelona, opting not to take a long drive or train ride, a choice we are glad we made. We were glad we'd chosen a nice old hotel overlooking La Ramblas, right next to the charming Gothic Quarter. That's what we travel for, not to see another sameo sameo chain hotel or another MacDonalds, right? Fortunately the hotel had excellent sound proofing. We ran the AC and slept well despite young people partying down there all night. The next morning we walked across the way to a plaza and met Marcos, who took us on a delightful E bike tour of the city, which is utterly the best way to see a bikeable city, especially when it's small (just the 3 of us). In the evening we went on a scrumptious vegan restaurant tour, also intimate, with a Norwegian brother and sister and our charming young Spanish guide, a woman.

Old Barcelona is a fascinating place, full of walkable streets that frequently open to plazas. Many buildings still have foundation stones from Roman times, as well as medieval. Definitely a party town for young people these days in many ways, which is an improvement, I'm sure, over some of the challenges of its history... the Inquistion, the Reconquista wars, Franco, etc. Many windows displayed "Si" signs, meaning, yes, I'm for Catalonian independence. Barcelona is the center of Catalonia, with a distinct language with French influence, a true crossroad between northern/western Europe and the Moorish influence from the south.This region of Spain has also fostered some very creative artists and architects, including Picasso, Gaudi and Dali. 

On Friday we took a bus tour to the ancient medieval town of Girona, featured in many period films and complete with a Jewish museum and the Office of the Inquistion. No doubt a place full of ghosts, it was fascinating, this was clearly a better time to visit it in modern times, and once again, it was full of hills, stairs and narrow passages. Afterwards we visited Figueres, a village where Salvadori Dali created a monumental museum of his works, in itself a piece of surrealism. 

On Saturday, our last full day in Spain, we rented bikes and headed for the large city park, where we hung out, Richard reading and resting and me doing pastels sitting on the grass. Nearby were some local Spanish ladies who meet regularly to crochet together and give away their wares to passerby, in this case crocheted flowers. The park was also full of African immigrants attempting to sell colorful tablecloths from India, as well as local families gathering and socializing. One of my favorite days on the whole trip.

The next day we took the long flight home, a day that never seemed to end, but aided by tons of free movies and decent airplane food, until at last we landed in Phoenix at 7:30 pm. Wisely, we chose to spend a night at the luxurious Embassy Suites in Paradise Valley, took a swim and bought some new spinner carryons for our next trip. Who knows? This one may be much sooner than another ten years!

In fact, Lanie and I are talking about co-teaching pastel and watercolor workshop: Altea? Provence? Italy? Hmmm.

To see the works I produced on this trip, check out the collection of Recent Works.

Green Living: A Passion to Care for the Earth

9/26/2014 6:53:34 PM

Sedona artist Susan Pitcairn increasingly finds herself exploring the art of “green living” these days, which will be featured at her home from 11 am to 2 pm at this year’s National Solar Tour in Sedona Saturday October 4^th as well as a “Greening Harmony” educational garden tour October 11^th.

 

“My husband Richard calls me ‘Farmer Sue’ lately,” she jokes. A neighbor even asked if she was selling produce, as she can be seen daily puttering around several versions of “garden houses” she has built in the past year, her name for screened structures that can be covered with plastic and made into  greenhouses in the winter.

Making Peace with the Rain: "Hilarious Squall"

2/26/2012 6:49:26 PM

After twenty years of slogging through the rainy Northwest, I was quite happy to return to the sunny Southwest in 2006. Not only did I grow up in Arizona, but Sedona has been a great place to revive the art career that somehow washed away when we moved north in 1985 from California so that we could afford a decent home.

Do you detect a small note of resistance in this? Well, you are perceptive.

It's not that the Northwest is not full of beauty. Summers are great: all three days of it, as we used to say. And it's not that one can't be happy under just about any circumstances with the right attitude. Indeed, I loved much of my life in Oregon. It was a great place to garden, a wonderful place for biking and camping, and it has a progressive culture. Not to mention those delightful Farmer's Markets and summer's outdoor festivals. And housing is definitely more affordable than in beautiful coastal California where you can mortgage your soul for something your dog might decline.

But for all this ... You Pay.

You Pay with month after month of mostly cloudy weather. You learn to cope, mostly by adopting the lifestyle of native Oregonians, who can't wait for the winter months when they can finally put away the mower and  the weeding tools and simply curl up by the fireplace with a good book.

OK, enough grousing. This is all background for The Day I Came to Peace With Rain, October 26, 2011.

Here it was, nearing the end of the 2011 Sedona Plein Air Festival. Most of us festival artists had packed up and headed to Jerome early that morning at the invitation of the local Chamber of Commerce. And it's a great place to paint, with stunning vistas. Driving up the hill, I saw the writing in the sky: dark, dark clouds pouring over Mingus Mountain, ready to pounce on the tiny berg of Jerome, still bathed in glorious morning sun.

Quickly, I pulled off to the side of the road, hurled my pastel plein air gear in place and whipped out a 30 minute rendering of the scene before me.  I was about 95% done, thankfully, when at first a few small splats of rain hit the piece, creating small dark blotches in the sky of my landscape. No worries. Took about 10 seconds to get it under cover, and another 60 seconds (well, maybe a little more, but this is how Plein Air Festivals are, you understand) to dive into the car and head on up the hill to the town.

Arriving at the festival tent to check in, I found a handful of artists, staff and volunteers huddling around the coffee and doughnuts, stepping away from the edge of the shelter as a "hard rain began to fall". At least Arizona rains don't fool around for two to three months like those in Oregon. They know when to rain and when not to rain. And this was rain time, most definitely.

It was a cheery crowd, though. It's really good to see the rain in a desert land, after all, and the good people who put on the Sedona Plein Air Festival are a lot of fun. After a while it let up enough to set up a small shelter under my van's hood, overlooking the old Jerome High School and the distant vistas below. It's a good thing I use different artmedia, because pastels are no match for a rainy day. Nor are acrylics. OILS, on the other hand, definitely do not mix with water.  This is the day of my life that I really, really learned that simple axiom.

And so I painted two different vistas in the shelter of the van, as a few intrepid festival visitors stopped by in the occasional sun showers between torrents. One was such a favorite that my  husband claimed it for his office, "Here On This Mountain":

It was darn fun, actually. Here it was, 2 or 3 pm and I'd already gotten three pretty decent paintings for the day. I was on a roll.

AND, the festival was almost over and I still  a 24x24 stamped panel waiting THE Frame of the Century I'd had custom-made for the event by Mountain View Frames in Cottonwood, a carved copper beauty. So I packed up, buzzed down the mountain back to Sedona, saw an incredible sun spotlight against the dark sky again, this time against the lovely red rocks on the west side of town by Zaki Gordon Film Institute and, well, the old town dump. 

This time I jumped out of the car even faster, forgetting my hat and jacket. Dashing off to the prominence about 40 feet from the car where the view was ideal, I whipped my trusty Soltek easel into position, plopped the panel in place, and, using the largest brush I had, blocked in  the scene in about half an hour.  Whew. 

What a beautiful squall it was, as I brushed it in, coming over the red rocks... Coming... which way? Oh...

Soon the squall was no longer There, but Here, a pouring, drenching sheet of rain that left a half inch of water in my Soltek trays and turned me into the approximation of a drowned rat...

But I was nailing it, I thought. No matter the rain! Soon the sun was out again and the brush flew over the panel, leaving my hands hanging on for dear life. And then the rain would come again, ha, ha, ha! What a tease it was!

And so I continued painting another 20 minutes or more, laughing almost hysterically, the tension of twenty years of resentment about the reality and necessity and life-giving beauty of rain washing away into the damp red earth.  

Finally, it was time to stop. The painting was done enough, certainly fresh, and the day was coming to a close. But the laughter and the smiles continued all the way home and then some. It was a great laugh. 

And that is why I named this piece, "Hilarious Squall."

Later,  after the festival was over and it had not sold, despite the aura of joy beaming from its every pore, I confess I did spend a half an hour or so of considered time in the studio doing what artists do: adjusting the brightness here, the shadow there, the hue and detail at this place and that. Not too much I hope.

After all, I wouldn't want to paint over the lesson contained in this piece: to welcome whatever it is that life brings us!

:)

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"Hilarious Squall", still in the frame of the century, is available for purchase. To inquire, phone 928.203.1095.

New book: "Oneness: Art and the Spiritual Journey"

10/21/2011 12:19:11 AM

Why do we create art? I believe, from my own experience and observations of other artists, that art is an expression of the spiritual core of life. Ultimately, life is one vast, mysterious, interconnected whole. Just like a hologram, each of us is a microcosm of that wholeness, and something within us just simply wants to "have its way with us" and express the truth of that interconnectedness, especially through the arts.

Recently I organized a group art show, "Oneness: Art and the Spiritual Journey" at the Sedona Arts Center. I invited seven artists to submit artwork and statements or poetry  around that idea. Our opening is, fittingly, 11-11-11 at 11 am. (Is that enough "ones," you think?).

The show  contains some outstanding artwork, including pieces by the celebrated Southwest contemporary landscape artist Joella Jean Mahoney, rich painterly figures in the landscape by Vince Fazio, elegant glimpses of people in everyday life by Libby Caldwell and much more.

Finally, we published it through Blurb — and it turned out beautifully. Take a look!

Oneness by Susan Pitcairn With Contributions from Joella Jean Mahoney, Vince Fazio, Libby Caldwell, Peggy Doig, Mary Lois Brown, Suzy Allan and Kim Lewis | Make Your Own Book

Like it?   You can easily order here. Available in softcover, as well as hardcover and special paper upgrades. 

This would be a wonderful gift either for an artist, or someone who values spirituality, or both.

Let me know what you think!

The 2010 Sedona Plein Air Festival

11/11/2010 10:25:36 PM

An exceptionally talented group of 32 artists descended upon red rock country this October 23rd to 30th for a full week of paintouts, sales, lectures and demonstrations at the 2010 Sedona Plein Air Festival. I was honored to be among them and to become one of the top selling artists in this annual event.

The event's kickoff, the "Main Street Paintout," was a great success, with all of us painting at various spots along 89a in uptown Sedona, most clustered at the openings between buildings where we could catch views of the eastern and northern buttes and ranges surrounding Sedona:

The Sedona Arts Center, the event's sponsor, tried a new approach this year, having artists frame our pieces from two quick draw paintouts for immediate display and sale to the public, fresh off the easel. My 9x12 pastel, "Joyous," sold on the spot.

The weather was completely overcast for a day and a half of our three days of free (unscheduled ) painting time, leading some to paint unusual scenes, such as Steve Freeman's nightime view of the Red Planet Diner, which took the coveted "Artist's Choice" award.  During the cloudy time I painted a couple of closeups of flowers and when the skies clear at nightime I went out to paint the full harvest moon, "Clear Night,"a  6x8 pastel (available, framed, or $275):

On Thursday morning the hardworking staff and volunteers from SAC gathered at Los Abrigados Resort for the two hour final "Quick Draw" and sale. I chose a scene from a courtyard in nearby Tlaquepaque expressing the harmony between nature and the built world, "Tlaquepaque Morning" 9x12 pastels ($550, framed):

That afternoon we turned in our framed paintings and many of us took a break from a long and intense week of painting and framing.

The next day was the lovely Gala private preview at the Arts Center, with catered food and wine.

Collectors filled both upper and lower galleries to see what we had created:

There I was happy to sell I my major piece for the festival, "Journey," a 24x24 oil painted over two morning sessions near the Cultural Park in west Sedona. I was thrilled that the buyer was thrilled to get it and honored that several people told me they voted for it for the Collector's Choice award. 

"Open to Light" (an 8x10 pastel) also sold that night, an image I may re-visit for a larger oil painting...

The next day, Saturday, was the final public sale,  where I sold yet another piece, a tryptich, to a delightful buyer from my former stomping grounds, Santa Cruz, California:

Why Paint Outdoors? ( 'En Plein Air')

1/11/2010 12:01:40 AM

Have you ever tried painting outdoors from life, or as the French like to say, "en plein air" ?