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Spring Tulip Suite Stationary and New Rural Landscapes

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Pink Tulip Arabesque colored pencil drawing
Spring Tulip Arabesque, from an original drawing in colored pencil on Moleskine

It’s Tariff Week, and the stock ticker has gone missing from Fox News today, presumably to indicate what a special moment this is. It’s beginning to feel a lot like 2008. That was the spring I sat stunned at my kitchen table watching the securities auctions fail, the securities that TD Ameritrade had said “were as safe as a money market but better.” My kitchen table became my oasis for reinventing sanity and meaning through drawing. There was no internet, only a radio and a tape cassette. Silence, doom, music, repeat. The silence was at first excruciating, but as I drew, it became an enveloping calm and helped me through a time of instability and fear I had not known before. The blog post of that moment has come in handy several times since. Kitchen tables stand the test of time.

In honor of that memory I have returned to the work created then and refined the drawings as the Spring Tulip Suite in my stationary collection. It has been a quiet revelation to pick up a pencil and to go back into work done 17 years ago. As part of my TariffWeek sale, subscribers to my newsletter receive a 10% discount on items in my shop (excluding stationary.) If you would like to receive a discount code I would love to welcome you as a subscriber!

Tulip Suite Stationary
The Spring Tulip Suite, from originals in colored pencil on Moleskine, available as fine stationary cards in my shop.
Tulip Leaves Fine Art Stationary
Tulip leaves are pure sculpture…As a leaf emerges it turns on its axis towards the light, and each turn creates a ripple of subtle greens and earth shades, at times picking up the blue of the sky.

In other print news, Seattle Art Museum Gallery has added a selection of unframed work from gallery artists, which you can peruse in the front of the gallery by the painting racks. I am excited to have a rotating collection of my limited edition prints there!

Farm Structures sketchbook
Farm structures, acrylic on prepared ground
Sky waiting for cloud form

As in 2020, the eerie lack of rails on society and the economy has brought the opportunity of time to explore and develop new ideas without external pressures. It is a great comfort to go “back to the land” and the farm structures and pastoral patterns of rural life that surrounded me as a child. If, at the end of the next four years, I can paint a convincing barn I’ll be happy. Here are a few quick glimpses of work in the studio: surface, abstraction, atmosphere and architecture.Farm Building 7

Regardless of the weather ahead, the sun today is lovely. I hope you can find the time to take a walk, gather camelias, and admire the incorruptible beauty of spring.

Summer Solstice Flower Suite

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Chiaroscuro of the Garden

The Summer Solstice is a day to revel in color and light. Only a few peonies bloom in my dappled shade, but for a week I live in the intoxication of their perfume. Placed with a stray branch of mock orange, the blaze of peony against the darkness of night seems like a Solstice anthem, holding all the mysteries of darkness and light. When I was a child I thought the longest day of summer was July 15th, in the middle of those three calendar months I filled in with yellow crayons. The adult knows better. I could start brooding now about the coming darkness. Or I could take a walk in the garden . . .   

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Spotlight North Open Studios 2024 Available Work

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Magnolia Blossom, mixed media on panel 6 x 6″ ©Iskra Johnson

Spotlight North Open Studios 2024

I have been busy this month getting ready for Spotlight North Open Studios, showcasing the work and studios of artists in Shoreline, Lake City and North Seattle. This is our third year, and it has been exciting to see attendance grow. The 2024 map is now up on the Spotlight website for planning your visit. This year’s tour has nine locations and ten artists, each with a very different way of working. Each week recent work and an artist profile is featured on our Instagram.

A gallery show is usually a consistent theme and subject matter. An open studio on the other hand allows an artist to show old work and new, and to share the process of how change evolves. In 2022 I focused mostly on prints and my botanical cards. Cards and prints will be available this year but I will also be showing drawings, paintings and mixed media pieces, many of them framed. Most of the work is small and very affordable, ranging from $175-$600 depending on size, medium and frame style. This newsletter shows a portion of the work available, and if you are interested in a piece and would like to inquire about price and put it on reserve please send me a note. Pieces that have pre-sold are not listed.

Mixed Media Studio Process: Juxtapositions

The spring has been a creative time of working in many media. I have always been interested in juxtapositions and technical media experiments of phenomena. Some of these explorations have become what I am calling “Quartets” of individual panels that form a single painting. My career in advertising and publishing was an omnivore’s life, always embracing new languages and means of expression. I love screaming orange, neon green and tasteful neutrals. Futura Bold and Spencerian script. Purely from a process point of view it is a great gift to take the time to look at the influences, absorb the languages of style and give each voice its time on stage. 

As I’ve gone through my archives I’ve found pieces to revisit with a fresh eye and sometimes hair-raising refinements (what was that color I mixed five years ago? Can I keep on drawing over a final varnish?). Some of these pieces are on paper and will be traditionally framed, but others are mounted on panel and floated. I have always reveled in the freedom of working on paper, but glass can create a sense of distance between the viewer and the art. It has been satisfying to embrace the craft of framing and find just the right alternate forms of presentation. 

Equilibrium, calligraphic abstract on paper, mounted to panel. 8 x 8" in 10" frame
Equilibrium, calligraphic abstract on paper, mounted to panel. 8 x 8″ in 10″ frame

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New Forest Card Designs and Sketching the Future

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Black and White Windows Sketchbook

The New Year has come in with a roar of ice, snow, rain and broken pipes. It seemed fitting to learn to mix the colors of January, although washing paint out of my brushes has been difficult with frozen pipes! Above is the first spread of my new industrial sketchbook, through which I hope to learn to paint some of my many obsessions: backs of trucks, kiosks, factories and scaffolds and the ever changing sky which they reflect. To move myself from the digital world fully into the work of paint I have joined the #InsightCreative30DayChallenge2024, brilliantly guided by Cheryl Taves. I met Cheryl about 4 years ago when I visited her studio with friends on Vancouver Island. Her studio and process was a revelation, and I knew I wanted to continue a connection. Through her coaching at Insight Creative, the Sketchbook Challenge brings together artists from all over the world to create audience and accountability for taking risks and finding ones own vision. [Read more…]

New Images from The Gardener’s Almanac: Hydrangea!

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From the Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena: The Hydrangea

As the autumn rains come, I notice the squirrel’s moods are completely unaffected. The squirrel has never bothered to look up, whisker the the winds of change and pause for melancholy. His job is to keep his head down, dig up every newly potted bulb and chrysanthemum and shred the babytears growing between the pavers – and he does not stop to admire the hydrangeas. Praising flowers with long and homely names is my occupation.

The delicate colors of Hydrangea macrophylla normalis are welcome distraction from the calamities unfolding beyond the garden. I hope you will find respite in the Autumn Suite from the Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena, just published and available today in my shop. For my fellow writers and thinkers and keepers of friendships far flung, these are excellent with ginger biscuits and strong coffee or black tea with honey. All you need is a table, a pen and a quiet moment.

Hydrangea in Amber botanical image and greeting card
Hydrangea in Amber

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