RMW Ramblings

    Prancing Heron Finished yesterday,  Prancing Heron  has art nouveau and art deco references.    

 Stations of the Flag   Today is Flag Day, to be followed by Flag Week.  It is the 249th anniversary of the Continental Congress adopting the flag.  From 1775 till 1776 the  Continental Union\n flag was the unofficial flag at sea for the American colonies.  The "Union" refers to both the canton Union Jack of England and Scotland, with the added stripes for the associated 13 colonies.  While at first it represented the American colonies as part of the United Kingdom, It became the banner of American rebellion.

Paintings With Glyphs 1 Often in my paintings I incorporate glyphs, small line-work elements.  Here are two paintings with glyphs based on actual American Indian petroglyphs spanning the continent. Girl of the Susquehanna  is a painting that occasional hangs over the fireplace at our summer cottage near the top of the Chesapeake Bay.  the Susquehanna enters the Chesapeake just a few miles away.   The scattered glyphs are modeled on petroglyphs from two locations on the Susquehanna River, Bald Friar, in Harford County, MD, and Safe Harbor, in Lancaster County, PA.  The Bald Friar petroglyphs were removed from the river when the Conowingo Dam was built in 1928 and are now in a museum.  The Safe Harbor petroglyphs remain in place and can be accessed by boat.  In my painting I have added color; the originals are cut into rock, not painted.   Canyon Greeting  is set across the country overlooking the Grand Canyon.    The glyphs here are ...

  Floral Set I did this set of floral paintings in 2006, but apparently modified them in 2009 as indicated by the hyphenated dates.  I don't remember, but that might be when I added the flower names and glyphs.  

Fenestral Portraits In My Library In My Thoughts In My Library , my self-portrait on the left, shows me in front of the window of one of our library doors. The colors in the Queen Anne stained glass border are true to the actual window.  For  In My Thoughts , my portrait of Mary on the right, I've converted the glass to soft pastel colors which I used throughout the painting. I replaced the triangular glass corners with bluebirds. While each gallery-wrap painting is signed on the edge, as usual I have incorporated monograph signatures in the paintings. The book cover in my hands ...   And the trim on Mary's right sleeve...          

Painting Monograms: 2   Some older painting monograms, clockwise from upper left: Poe Meets Dickens,  influenced by 19th century book covers; Equus,  echoing classical Greco/Roman art; my generic monogram, stamped with a hand carved rubber eraser; Fortuna,  on a Venetian architectural view.    

 Painting Monograms Most of my paintings are signed with only initials or a monogram.   In my most recent paintings this summer I have incorporated a signature monogram as an element of the painting. In  Sydney's Service  the monogram is her logo on her laptop. In  In My Library  a book themed monogram is on the cover of the book I am holding. The nameplate "RoMiWa" on the sailboat in Bowsprit   is my signature.      

  Bacchant Now hanging next to Papageno is a companion piece, Bacchant.   The two paintings have different subject matter, but I painted them with the same color palette, on the same size canvas, and in the same style.      A bacchant is a server or priestess of the Bacchus, the god of wine and revelry. Our bacchant here holds part of the grape harvest.   A golden statue of Bacchus himself is in the background under the domed pavilion.My signature monogram on the lower left  echos the Greek triskelion on the lower right.

  Rockford Tower Christmas An Aerial View Rockford Tower has been in my view from our library for 55 years, so it's not surprising that the Tower has shown up in our Christmas cards over the years.  Here's an aerial winter view on a card I did about a quarter century ago.      

  Cathartis Watching the birds, up close it's easier to spot and identify the smaller song birds.  In the sky the larger raptors and scavengers are easier to spot and identify.   Over the water we follow the ospreys and eagles.  But looking back landward we more often see circling turkey vultures ( cathartis mura) , usually several at a time.  Here is one of mine, with a heraldic glyph.   The bald eagle is not really bald, but has a head with white feathers.  The turkey vulture is truly bald, devoid of feathers, the better to bury his head in messy carrion, hence its red fleshy head.  

The Black Cat     As a family gift, I painted this spectrum septet of identical black cats to share, seven separate paintings with the same cat but with different color auras. There are several cat owners among them, but in addition there is a family connection to the name. Around 1939-40, our Dad worked at the Black Cat, a well known nightclub/roadhouse south of Wilmington. We then lived in a cottage on the grounds. The name was probably inspired by the famous fin de siècle cabaret in Paris, Le Chat Noir. I was motivated to do this group of paintings in a graphics style by this 1896 poster for Le Chat Noir by Théophile Steinlen that I saw at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond on a visit with my brother Michael and sister-in-law Barbara. Two other influences were the early 20 th century graphics of Will Bradley and the late 20 th century serigraphs of Berkeley, CA based David Lance Goines.  

Kalmar Children's Party Flyer Our last posting was of the imagined arrival of Wilmington's replica Kalmar Nyckel   arriving by the Kalmar Castle.  Cleaning out a file drawer I found an earlier Kalmar Castle image I did years earlier that I had forgotten.   For the 350th commemoration of the Swedes' landing in what is now Wilmington, I was asked to design a flier for an associated children's event.  Before Photoshop, before downloaded type fonts, before personal computers, in 1988, hand drawn and Xerox reproduced...

  A Havre de Grace Icon 2 A polychrome image of the turreted building in yesterday's posting is the logo for the Havre de Grace Arts & Entertainment District.  Here it is on the sidewalk...

  Canyon Greeting An adventurous girl on the edge of the Grand Canyon.  Displayed across the bottom are petroglyphs found in the Canyon region. Kokopelli, the trickster flute player is prominent.  I signed the painting with an RMW monogram in petroglyph style in the lower left. Canyon Greeting was a study in color composition.  Through the magic of digital manipulation, I formed a version simulating a paint-by-the-numbers painting.

  Bugs & Such 2 The Rest of Alaina's Bugs You saw the ant, bee, and butterfly from Alaina's Bugs & Such , a collection of my rhymes and illustrations I did for her first birthday several years back.  Here are the others from the book.   Here a dragonfly lands on Alaina's finger...  And on a facing page they fly about a cone-flower...   Then comes the fireflies... And the ladybugs...       The mantis... And finally, a spider... The entire book with all of my verses and  drawings.is posted as a pdf at https://docdro.id/gIoj19O

  Bugs & Such Butterflies For our great-granddaughter's first birthday four plus years ago, I did a book, Bugs and Such , of insects and like, with rhymes and painting/drawings.  I've been posting some of these critters on Facebook.  I'm now up to butterflies.    Here is Alaina's butterfly...    This image is based on an earlier painting I did, Buckeye and Rudbeckia. ...     This in turn was referenced to photos I took of butterflies and bees on the rudbeckia near our cottage kitchen door.   If you missed them, here is the ant...   And here is the bee...