Slow Boat to China

After spending a couple of years in the Orient, I returned with a love for all things Asian -- Asian films, books, woodcuts, pottery and art. Here is a drawing portraying one of those elegant Chinese women.  She's dressed beautifully and has an air of sizzling sophistication about her.

This YouTube video of Gary Cooper features the song from which the title of this print is taken.  He was dashingly handsome and I can see him falling desperately in love with this woman.

Girl in the Blue Turban

As I was gessoing the paper for this painting my husband said, "What are you going to paint?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," I said.

"How can you get ready to paint and not know what you are going to do," he asked.

"Well, that's just the way it is," I told him.


There is something both frustrating and magical in those moments before the pencil sketch is created and the paint is mixed. For me there is no recipe -- no tried and true habits. Each work, as so many artists know, has a life of its own. And in the doing, each painting I complete could have been several paintings if I had stopped at certain junctures. I had an art professor tell me to "stop now or the painting will become something different." He was right.

I don't stop until I have exhausted every possibility and the work itself says you're done. I'm not sure it will always be this way. When I figure out how everything works maybe it will be different.

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