Blog

POEMS COME TO LIFE!

Open Sky Studio and Gallery is our magical place where we are inspired to paint, write poetry, and find ways to help keep our doors open between sales of our paintings and prints. As with everyone, Covid-19 has made things difficult.

But with our collective talents, including our virtual creative assistant, Robyn, our productivity continues to be amazing.  We have moved our creativity online at Handwords and are pleased to announce our newest addition to Messages from the Heart. Audio Poem Cards! Read by poet, Percy Kleinops and studio partner, Suzanne Murphy, these Audio Cards are designed with beautiful visuals, music and sound effects.

We have 6 Cards for you to enjoy now and will be adding to our Audio Poem Library weekly as we finish production of more audio cards.  So please check back often.  We plan to have at least 50 Audio Poem Cards by the end of October, and over a 100 before Valentines Day. Some of the Audio Poem Cards are also available in printed Poem Cards for mailing.

Simply select and purchase your favorite Audio Poem Cards for $4.95 each. After checkout, they are available for you to download once to your computer and then send via your email to anyone you wish whenever you wish. 

Treat yourself and visit our creative Shop at Handwords.com/Audio-Poem-Cards. Watch these Poems come to life. Celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, special occasions or relationships with our new Audio Poem Cards. Give someone, or yourself, a little magic.  

https://handwords.com/audio-poem-cards/

Percy Kleinops and Suzanne Elizabeth Murphy approve this Message. LOL

We welcome your comments and suggestions.

MISSING PIECES

As I begin to write today, I find myself without words. I seem to be in the middle of something. Images and thoughts swirl inside my head and heart. If I give them enough time and space, they settle to the bottom and collect like sediment in the river where I can gather them up and put them in a safe place. But where is that safe place? I used to know. The sediment in my riverbed is shifting. I wonder if it is the same for you?

I am an artist. I am a teacher. But I have not taught since mid March. I miss my students, each one so different in what they love to paint and even why they paint. Each one has brought into my classes wisdom, inspiration and patience with the learning process. In teaching them, each one has reminded me of lessons I had forgotten.

"To teach is to learn twice over." Joseph Joubert - French moralist and essayist

Harry Borno

When we all agreed to stay safer by not holding class, my students suggested that I might teach online. Zoom meetings were becoming popular. I thought long and hard about reaching out to them in this way. But my teaching style is so personal to each one. I am not a paint- along teacher. My students create independent work from their own photographs and experiences. I love that. 

"The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist." 

Maria Montessori - Italian physician and educator

Left to Right: Diane Wardlaw, Peggy McCardle, Julia Schoenstadt

I miss them. So I am making this week's Blog about them. I know they are painting without me. I can't wait to see what they are doing. I want you to know them. I want to show you their work. I want you to see why I miss them.  My studio partner, Percy, once wrote ..."you come to know an artist by looking at their art." I am upset that I can't find all of my photos today to represent my many beloved students. But here are the few I could find.

Lori Stamm

Ira Crowe

Left to Right: Eleanor Parker and Carol Van Osdol

Left to Right: Anita Ugalde and Natalie Turner

Left to Right: Janet Tilley, Walter Klingman, Evangelia Klonaris

Margaret DePetro

Teachers and students around the world have been separated by distance. But we are connected by the love of learning and the memory of companionship in the classroom. My students are the missing pieces. I welcome the day when they come back into my life and we can be together again.

"I like a teacher who gives you something to think about besides homework." Lily Tomlin

Stay safe. Be kind. Teach someone something today.

Suzanne

HELP!!!

That's what Percy and I needed two months ago when we were heaped in Ideas and Content.

I've never had an assistant. Wait! That's not true. I did have a shop foreman and two seamstresses when I was costuming in summer stock theater back in the 1980s. But I had long forgotten what it can be like to have an idea, design it and then have someone run with it.

We needed someone who knew Social Media, website e-commerce, and if she didn't know, she knew how to find out. 

My step-daughter, Robyn, came to mind.

Robyn Fountain Sy, Creative Assistant

Two years ago, Robyn went adventuring in Europe, fell in love in Bulgaria and has since been living in Dakar, Senegal with her Senegalese husband, Baba Sy (pronounced 'see'). She has integrated into another culture, even another family, while remaining very much herself. She amazed me one day with pictures of her handcrafted jewelry made from plastic bottles and bold African fabrics. And one of Baba's cousins, a tailor by trade, taught her how to sew by hand so that she could make herself new clothes.

Robyn's handcrafted jewelry made from plastic bottles and fabric

Baba is a contractor and auto body technician, but there is not much work to be found in Dakar. So he sets out on his motorbike six days a week, delivering fabric, sheet sets and other things in demand there. Robyn is happy and has never felt so comfortable in her life. But she needed work and found it online, working remotely as an Executive Assistant for a New York-based company that charters private planes. She learned to navigate and solve problems online. Distance was not a barrier. She became essential to that business.

Baba Sy, sisters, nieces and friends

She is now essential to us, as well. Everyday, she juggles online executive meetings in New York with translating and posting our creative ideas and content to our new website, Facebook pages and Instagram. Our Handwords website is specifically designed to show and sell our Poem Cards, Greeting Cards, WaterBaby Note Card and masks, all printed with our original artwork. With Robyn's online skills and creative thinking, we have been able to add fun features like Poem Readings, videos, voice overs and twirling Note Cards, i.e.,

Click this Link to Hear our Poem Card Readings and see our new Art Masks.

https://handwords.com/poem-cards

 www.handwords.com/face-masks 

I knew that Robyn was efficient. As an entrepreneur, she founded a business that helped people organize their offices, homes, lives. The first thing she did for us was to set us up on a communication-based platform called Slack. We put Slack up on our computer screens in the morning and leave it there to share what needs to be done, to upload images or poems or Blogs or whatever. It is the most wonderful way to share. It allows us to talk quickly back and forth in spontaneously. And everything we upload and talk about is saved in one place. Email would have killed the process. We love Slack. 

 Robyn has become the third creative member of our studio. We could not have gone farther without her.  We are still not organized. (Percy says he works better in chaos.) But Robyn has been able to practically finish our sentences. She has learned our process and intuited what we are trying to convey with our words and paintings. Sometimes she even "ghost" writes for us. We tell her we have an Idea. She says OK. Go! She gets it. She says, "What about this."  We hash it out, and then she begins to put it in place. At this moment, she is designing a website page on Handwords for our masks, printed with our original art.

Baba's beautiful sisters, Robyn and a new friend at the fabric market

I thought you should know Robyn and what she does for Open Sky Studio and Gallery, Handwords, Suzanne and Percy. We love working with her. We love her. We never quite know what her hair fashion will be for the week. But we know we can't do without her. So, the next time you look at something that has come from us, you will know about our "silent partner" who keeps us going and growing. I thought you should know.

Our Creative Assistant at her work station in Dakar

https://www.handwords.com

https://www.suzanneelizabethmurphy.com/blog

https://www.suzanneelizabethmurphy.com/email-newsletter

https://www.suzanneelizabethmurphy.com

https://www.Facebook.com/OpenSkyStudioandGallery

Be safe. Be kind. Help somebody.

Suzanne

BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE!

Detail from Confluence at the Morean Art Center July 11

Did you know that in his 1852  novel, Bleak House, Charles Dickens was the first to coin the phrase, "Butterflies are free"?

And then, of course, there was the 1972 stage play and movie. I've been thinking about butterflies for awhile now. When the dangers of the Corona virus first began to inhibit our freedom to come and go and be with each other in ways that we took for granted, I had already begun a painting about butterflies inspired by two interviews on National Public Radio.

The first was about the Doomsday Clock on which atomic scientists measure time by how close we are to extinction at Midnight. They look at climate change, nuclear weapons, cyber-based disinformation and AI (artificial intelligence). The second NPR story was about the recent murders of activists in Mexico working to protect the Monarch butterfly.

Detail from Butterflies are Free

These two stories stoked my interest in butterflies and how they make me feel when I watch them flutter across my garden. I sighted a big yellow one just before Mother's Day. My Mother is 98 and recently house bound. Physically fragile but with a strong mind, her memories are long, so I wrote this poem for her:

YELLOW BUTTERFLY

A yellow butterfly

on high

reminded me of you,

your heart flittering

from flower to flower

face to face

alighting on memories

of kisses and laughter.

I saw a yellow butterfly today,

a moment of utter joy,

as when I see your face

and feel your heart 

smile on mine.

 Suzanne Elizabeth Murphy(c) 2020

  But the real  beginning of this painting was a long ago photo I took of a child's hand outstretched, as if reaching for something. The beauty of it and what she might be reaching for has stayed in my mind and was the first thing I sketched on the canvas.

Detail from Butterflies Are Free

I now had a child and butterflies.  I painted them against a yellow sky and a field of flowers stretching back as far as the eye could see. But my eye could not settle into the yellow sky. The butterflies looked 3D, but there wasn't enough mystery. I tried my favorite blues in different values. They looked ordinary. Finally, last Saturday, I mixed a shade of blue violet. I kept adding yellow to gray it, more and more. The yellow background was still coming through, and that grayed it even more. Violet became the color of air that lifted up my butterflies and set them free.

Detail from Butterflies are Free

We all feel the need to be free and breathe. Breath is Life, the Chi that fills our bodies with vitality and energy. Breathe deeper. Find the color that lifts you up and hold it in your mind. A mask cannot steal away your freedom. That's inside you as long as you keep breathing. Me? I'm going to keep painting butterflies to fill my violet sky.

You can always find me at:

https://www.suzanneelizabethmurphy.com/blog

https://www.suzanneelizabethmurphy.com/newsletter

https://www.suxanneelizabethmurphy.com

https://www.handwords.com

Be safe. Be kind. Be a Butterfly!

Suzanne

 DREAMS TO SELL!

When I write a Blog and prepare to publish it, my art website asks me for permission to share it as a Fine Arts Newsletter. But first, they ask me what it’s about: my story; inspiration, my work, a particular painting, my struggle to be an Artist.

I have been thinking about that last one… Struggle to be an Artist. I never have. I am an Artist because that is what is inside of me. It is how I express myself. It is how I comment on what I see and feel in the world. When I don’t paint, I don’t feel as good as when I am painting. People close to me notice the difference.

“The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.” -Sherwood Anderson, American novelist   

The struggle for Artists is not in being Artists. It is in being seen. Being recognized. Being valued. And ultimately in being collected. Although, I believe…

“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” – Georgia O’Keeffe, artist

Framed prints of PRAYER ANGEL, JOURNEY and BY THE LIGHT OF THE DUNE

Since the beginning of my painting career, I have realized that of all the people who love my paintings, only a small percentage can afford to buy the original. I had one client in Colorado who loved one of my expensive landscapes of the San Luis Valley where her family had lived for generations. To her, that sweeping image of the place she loved was worth putting money aside each month so that her grandson could look at it every day and know that this place was important in their lives. Still today, that sale remains the most important one to me that I have ever made.

“If there were dreams to sell…what would you buy?” - Thomas Lovell Beddoes, poet

But most people who love an original work of art do not or cannot do that. But still, they love it. And so even from my mesa straw bale home in Colorado, I found a photographer/printer who could turn my work into beautiful prints on canvas or fine art paper. My sister, Dianna, in Kansas City worked with me to create small note cards of my Colorado landscapes and still life. This was the way that I could share my work with many people who wanted to own a piece of art that touched them in some way. And this is a tradition that I have carried into my studio and gallery in Tarpon Springs. Making those prints and note cards accessible to art lovers who might like to purchase them is then the challenge.

Framed WaterBaby print of SIDE BY SIDE

“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.” – James Whistler, artist

Art is not just visual, as poets and novelists and playwrights would attest. My studio partner, Percy Kleinops (artist and poet) and I have worked tirelessly to create the website Handwords.com, a source for sharing and selling his Poem Cards, our Note Cards and Greeting Cards. Our Handwords™ Facebook page is our posting and promotion site where we can share bits of poems and images to be found on our website. We call the Collection”Messages from the Heart™" Percy's Poem Cards are especially meaningful in these conflicted and confusing times. These lovely cards that are so easy and inexpensive to collect and send make you smile, laugh, cry with poems like Distance Separates Not and I Miss You My Friend. We have had an overwhelming response to what we are sharing on our Facebook page. Lots of Likes and Loves and Comments, all of which make us feel appreciated and let us know that we are touching your hearts from afar.

Selection of HANDWORDS™ Poem Cards and WaterBaby Note Cards

“The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.” – Auguste Rodin, sculptor

For those of you who love our work, our hope is that one day soon, you will explore our “Messages from the Heart™” on Handwords.com and discover those “just right for you” Poem Cards and Note Cards. We created them for YOU to make it easier for you to share "messages from your heart"!

Thank you for your loyalty in reading me. Thank you for expressing your appreciation for what I do. Stay safe. Be kind. And look for happy things.

Suzanne

LETTING GO!

We are all having to let go of something these days. Life is not the same. Change is hard unless we can see past it and envision something better. But still, I'm often surprised at the smallest things, almost inconsequential, that become the hardest to say goodbye to. Perhaps it is  because hanging on to them is possible. Those larger things that we must let go of are many times out of our control.

I have had only two palettes in my 24 years of painting. They were both a piece of glass, 16” x 22” with duct tape around the edges for easier handling. I bought my first one in 1996 when I began painting on canvas in my straw bale studio in Colorado. I gave up that palette when I moved to Florida. Kind of a starting over thing, I guess. Also, it was glass and breakable. But it wasn’t easy to let go of that small, smeary rectangle on which I mixed so many intuitive colors.

I bought my second glass palette when I started Open Sky Studio and Gallery. I was working with new Gulf Coast colors and leaving the sage grey greens behind. A new start seemed to be a good idea. That was 2008, 12 years ago.

Many painters prefer to mix colors on a neutral palette of gray, beige or even on a piece of slick, white palette paper. The theory of using the neutral tone as a medium value is that it helps you find your lighter and darker values. Somehow those underneath colors have never bothered me in mixing new colors and values. My way of mixing color has adjusted to the leftovers. A blank canvas can be daunting enough, but a colorless palette seems even worse to me.

With each painting, the colors I mix change and blend with the dried colors of the previous painting. Usually after I finish a painting, I do scrape off the topography of the paint so I’m back to a somewhat smooth surface. But a layer of colors that have come before remain to coat the glass. My palettes grow into a color history of my work.

Oddly enough, each of my two palettes served me for 11 years. Without keeping track of the coincidence, last month, I started thinking that the ghost-like layers on my 11 year old palette were getting a bit bumpy. I couldn’t thin them out anymore.

My studio partner, Percy, was still painting on plastic plates. He had some for acrylics and others for oil. They were starting to stack up. So one day just recently, I ordered two new pieces of glass, taped the edges and placed them on our painting tables. How clean and neat! And uninteresting! I could hardly wait to mess up mine.

Now I have my third palette. What am I to do with the old, colorful palette that has served me through so many paintings? Percy said, “I’ll take a picture of it.” As you can see, it is almost a painting in itself. He wants to frame it!

I still haven't been able to throw it away. It's wrapped up in brown paper, sitting against a wall in our studio kitchen. One day soon, I will tell Percy it's okay to take it out and drop it in the dumpster out back. But...not yet! 

See you in two week with butterflies...and a messy palette! Follow my Blog and look for my continuing monthly Newsletter, NO STRAIGHT LINES. You can catch up at:  

https://www.suzanneelizabetmurphy.com/newsletters/archive

Stay strong. Be kind. And know that if you have to give up something, another something even better will come along. I promise!

Suzanne

We have chosen to replace our usual art Blog this week with these thoughts about finding humanity in our hearts. The human heart can hold many things; anger, jealousy, fear, prejudice. But it can also hold empathy, compassion, hope and love. Change happens in the heart and...

OUR HEARTS BEAT THE SAME!

Together we send this Message from Our Hearts to all of your Hearts.

Hear me.

See me.

Feel me.

My heart beats the same.

You love.

You laugh.

You dream.

Your heart beats the same

We hurt. 

We bleed.

We grieve.

Our hearts beat the same.

I Live Within

Color of skin I chose not

My body given

Tall or short

Feet and hands.

Face not planned

Nor hair nor eyes

Lips that speak

The smile they make.

All that you see

That is me

Was as intended

To be free to be.

Body gives cause not

To abuse by words

To amuse another

Treat with disrespect.

Color of skin earns not

Words of hate

Acts of violence

To incarcerate.

Body holds person within

Soul of human

Blood red as others

Subject to pain.

A color given 

My skin for all to see

I live within

Should be in harmony

Our Hearts Beat the Same

(c) Percy Kleinops 2018 

Poem from Percy's book Our Hearts Beat the Same

Paintings by Suzanne Elizabeth Murphy(c) 2008 to 2017

Please look inside to feel what your heart is holding and share it with us in your Comments here.

Stay safe. Reach out. Feel the wonder of the human heart.

Suzanne and Percy

Find more meaningful" Messages from the Heart" at http://handwords.com/    

IT'S ONLY PAINT!

Mistakes and missteps can be painful, in art and in life. The process of soul searching transitions that don't come easily is a universal opportunity for us to let each misstep lead the way to something better. But it does require courage and faith that what can be gained is more valuable than what is being lost. Ah! But when we get it right, it's worth it! 

I believe in bread crumbs! Ever since getting a digital camera, I have taken progressive photos of my paintings so that I can remember my decisions along the way. As a teacher, I advise my students to use this kind of visual diary. In the case of my unfinished “Meditation Mermaid”, it is now painful for me to look back at some of the good decisions I eliminated and the lousy ones I made in the first place. As you look at the progressive pictures and say to yourself, “Why on earth did she do that?”, remember what I always tell my students when they resist changing what they have done, “It’s only paint!”

One of my favorite painters, Joaquin Sorolla believed, "You should not know what your painting is to look like until it is done. Just see the picture that is coming."

My first mermaid was a young girl, caressing her fish tail. I liked the intimate portrait of her absorption in herself. I began blocking blue in the background as negative space around the sea fan coral I was planning. I quickly covered the canvas, developing the coral background. When I finished, it was nice. But I hadn’t created the feeling I wanted. What now? Maybe she was too young, and the hair needed to show movement in the water. Maybe my mermaid needed to be more exotic. What I did next scared even me, and it didn’t stay on my canvas very long.

I decided to direct her attention up and give her a new face. I left the turtle to add a little perspective and a sense of sea life companionship. But the change wasn’t enough. The tail was too high in the composition, and her caressing her tail didn’t make sense now. Then I took a drastic step. Remember, “It’s only paint.”

I painted out her tail and her arm. I brought her new arm down, resting her hand in a ‘receiving’ position, as in meditation. The background opened up for something new (or nothing), and suddenly her face turned skyward had meaning. I added a coral wall in the distance and light from an unidentified source and put back some of the red coral and an orange clown fish peeking at her through a clump of sea grass. Still not right.

Up until now, I have only had the courage to think about changing her again. This final image of her is not what I want, and I need to find her. So once again, I will be painting out the tail and the fish swimming down. I will add some coral patterns back in and find patterns of light on her skin. I will unpaint and paint until she is who I feel. When I get my mermaid right, I will show her to you. And we will celebrate! In the meantime, wish me courage and patience. I would love to know your thoughts about mistakes and how they have opened your eyes to other possibilities.

If you would like to catch up on my Art Newsletters which tell the Story of my zigzag Art Life, you can find them at:

https://www.suzanneelizabethmurphy.com/newsletter-archive

Keep reading(Follow this Blog) and share me with the Social Media buttons. Most of all, stay safe and sound. The world needs You!

Suzanne 

Painting, teaching, studio, gallery, exhibiting in shows and sharing it all with my Studio Partner, Percy. Whoa! My Art Life is anything but static and setting priorities is a daily thing. And there are No Straight Lines. You may be an art buddy, art student, friend, business associate, art collector, art appreciator or someone I have never met but would like to. The best way to let you into my head and heart is to talk about my paintings, how I make them and what they mean to me.  

Sometimes when things are sad and difficult and unsure, as now with life turning our lives upside down, I turn to painting. It does not necessarily provide answers, but the process can be consoling. Painting is a way to pull out feelings and then morph them into something I can see and touch. For those who don't paint, even looking at someone else's painting can have the same effect.

Surprisingly, what I produce at times like this is not sad, or difficult, or unsure. For instance, I am painting butterflies this month. I will show it to you soon. But as I begin this weekly Blog, I would like to take you to another time when I was anxious and not knowing which way to take my life. I pulled out a memory of a moment that quieted me, and I felt safe.

When I lived in NYC decades ago, I wrote the following for a weekly writer’s group I helped found. The words came from my first experience of scuba diving in the Netherlands Antilles. I could feel my breath slow, and a calm came over me as I descended into a world of blue. A mermaid painting sprung from these old memories:

Water Thoughts

In this place of drought and spareness,

memory of water takes me down.

I silently descend,

drifting beyond things I think I know.

The power of blue,

pulling me toward ecstasy and danger.

I will soon not be myself,

but something unimagined in that place above.

Something that belongs here below.

I am losing my colors, leaving them with the sun.

Disappearing into a world of watery flickering,

as if behind a sheer curtain moving in the breeze.

I am not afraid of what may show itself to me.

Of things I only feel might be so.

Suzanne Elizabeth Murphy

                                    1988

I began her  6 years ago. She has become my  “Meditation Mermaid", and somehow I know she is me. She has had many forms, and I have not been able to finish her. I remember reading somewhere that Leonardo Da Vinci worked on his Mona Lisa for 7 years until he died. It will probably be that long for me. But hopefully, I won't die!

Right now, she is sitting against my studio wall on her side. She is large, 36” x 48”. I can't ignore her any longer. I'm thinking that if I talk to you about her, it might help me understand what I want her to be. Join me for my next Blog where I will dare to show you images of all her evolutions, all my mistakes. I keep trying to remember Edgar Degas' wisdom, "Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things."

To catch up, you can find my first three Newsletters, No Straight Lines at:  https://www.suzanneelizabethmurphy.com/newsletter-archive

I invite you to share my Blog and Newsletters with a friend using the Social Media buttons. And I always welcome your comments.

See you in a few weeks for more. Stay safe and hopeful. The world needs you!

Suzanne