Three views of Elephant Mountain (drawings)

Two colored pencil drawings, Elephant Mountain, Mt. St. Helena

My Maureen Hurley Art blog is now live

I've been developing a blog collection of my art work. I’ve still got a long way to go, with only 135 posts (some revert back to this writing blog—meaning I haven’t moved them over yet—mostly because I don’t have accessible jpgs). Blogger jpgs are tiny and you can’t directly lift them from an iPad. But you can lift low resolution jpgs from a laptop, by dragging them to the desktop.

Some posts host as many as ten art pieces, depending upon the medium. I tend to work in a series, or medium format: for example, a wet pastel jag, or an aquarelle jag, etc. I will eventually need to replace some poor jpgs—provided that I still have the work. In some cases, a bad jpg was all that survived. But it's a start.

Art is listed by media type, and by category. Most of my early work was destroyed, so in many cases, it comes down to bad jpgs (digital camera was in its infancy ca. 2000), or nothing at all. Work may seem uneven, but it really boiled down to what had survived the onslaught of technology, time and floods. Pretty much everything from my College of Marin and Sonoma State days was destroyed. Not to mention all my ceramics. Who knew that those daily Facebook Memories posts would yield so many salvageable jpgs, a snap to save to my iPad, then upload to the blog. It makes me positively giddy with joy.

At the bottom of the Blogger page there's a link to access the older posts, it goes in about 5 pages worth. Or you can navigate by month, which is much less useful as I don't know what month I made some  pieces, let alone, the year. Onward, as they say.

Next up is to create a photo blog. Any recommendations? I’ve been looking at many blogs for ideas. I really like Morrie Camhis (sp) photo blog. If only Blogger would develop some new templates. But as I write this, Blogger has finally updated the long in tooth app format. Meaning it’s a little easier to use it on the iPad. It was a nightmare, and there were no decent Blogger apps in the App Store.

Maureen Hurley Art blog 

https://mohurleyart.blogspot.com

Two pastels, Elephant Mountain

Two pastels, Nicasio oak & rock

Chalk pastel. I usually work wet, so this is a learning curve.

Oil pastel, same place, same day, different mediums.

Wee Celtic beasties for silk scarf design 8//15

I was drawing some wee Celtic beasties for silk scarf design. Neil wanted me to design a T-shirt logo with a Celtic tiger but none of my ideas seemed to go anywhere. He also didn't seem very interested in any of my drawings. Wouldn't even look at them. Then wondered why I balked and yowled when he wanted a T-shirt design pronto just days before the Games. No lead time at all. I can't work like that.

July-Aug. 11/2015

Celtic knotwork drawings for silk scarf designs 8/15

Nicasio Reservoir drawing & watercolor for Art from the Heart (art)

Nicasio Reservoir, 8x11", colored pencil & pastel

Nicasio Reservoir, 8x11", practice piece, watercolor

My drawing album on Facebook

Few people know my training is in the visual arts. I love bold contour line and sculptural light. A car accident in 1997 put me in front of a lot of flowers and since I couldn't do much else but sit around for about a year (and heal), I drew a lot of flowers. I used to think that cutting edge artists didn't draw flowers or landscapes, only Sunday painters, and here I was a SMTWThFS flower painter. The only edges I was cutting were my nails as everything hurt. So I drew, and drew and drew until I got it. I also work in the schools teaching art to kids, so many of the drawings are quickies I've done in class. There are a few landscapes as well. I try to imbue them with energy because that's how I see landscape—alive, like a tawny beast. But I prefer to work from real life as the human eye can see far more than the camera lens. The only exceptions are the Scottish landscapes. They’re from calendar images. The fish and butterflies that have crept into this album are, for the most part, on the spot 2-minute teaching drawings I did in class. They all serve to inform me.

From a Facebook post. See all the drawing folder here. They’re also scattered throughout this blog, click on the tags below. Drawings dredges up a different collection than the tag drawing, etc.

Drawings of students late 1990s mid-2000s

Three drawings, Scotland, ca 2006

Loch Tummel

 

Loch reflection

Argyle Butte

I have no idea when these drawings were done, they were from old calendar photos, I've a vague memory of drawing them after I had returned from Scotland. But I could've drawn them much earlier. The scan date is 6/2006. I was teaching at Cleveland Elementary School in Oakland, and had to come up with lot of drawing ideas. This morphed into a pastel, and a painting exercise based on layers.

Scratchboard drawings, India ink, 1995-97

Wim Hoffman's garden, Vlissingen, Nederlands 1995?

Road Not Taken 1995 (Michael Carey sent me a woodcut by Carl Homestad)

Orchard, Forestville 1995

Celli's Cabins & Redwoods, Forestville 1995

Mucky the Cat Bathing After the Storm, 1995

Plant detail, Building an Ark, prose-poem, 1995

Mt. St. Helena, Sun & Sumi Hills 1995

Mt. St. Helena, Sun & Sumi Hills II, 1995

Oat Grasses, Forestville, 1995

Suicide Rock, Idlewild 1995

Lily (Tahquitz) Rock, Idlewild, II 1995

Russian River Basin, Ukiah Pass 1995

Pine & Russian River, Monte Rio, 1995

Driveway & Michael Celli's Italian Pine, 1995

Cypress & Field, Mayacamas Range 1996 (after a woodcut by B. Bramant)

Mark West Creek meets the Russian River I 1996?

Mt. St. Helena, Flowers 1996 (after Teresa MacLean's April Wind)

Drowned Vineyards, Wholer Bridge 1996?

Submerged Trees in the Russian River, near Monte Rio, 1996

Forestville, after a painting by Fred Meyer, 1996

Mark West Creek & Russian River II, 1996

Oak & Boulder, II, Alexander Valley School, 1996

Oak & Boulder, Alexander Valley School, 1996

Russian River Mouth, After 40 Days of Rain, 1996 (after Tony King's Estero)

Drowned vineyards

Mt. St. Helena

Redwood Reflections, Forestville, 1996

Wohler, & River Road's New Shore, Russian River, 1997

India ink scratchboard painting/drawings from 1995-1997, The first drawing was from the Netherlands, ca. 1995? when Wim Hoffman stuck a blank white scratchboard in my hands and I drew his garden. I was enchanted. The last piece was of Wohler Road during the floods of 1996-1997.

Almost all the drawings were done in situ in Sonoma and Mendocino counties, a few were drawn at Idylwild. Some were modeled after other artists' work. We had a couple of record flood winters. I was housebound and stir-crazy and couldn't get out of Forestville, marooned due to the severity of the floods. It rained for 40 days!

During that time I was also working on a long prose poem, Building an Arc (1995), that kept on growing, so some of these pieces were used to illustrate it. I later had a show at the California Museum of Art at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, Santa Rosa, and another show and reading at The French Quarter, in Rohnert Park, where we used lines from the long poem under the artwork.