“Artifact” ©Ruth Armitage, 2014 Cold Wax & Oil on Panel 48×36″ SOLD

The past two weeks have been the perfect summer weather, in my humble opinion! Cool mornings, gently warm afternoons and a couple of nice, drenching rainstorms for the garden. Then yesterday, the big heat turned on. Thankfully today is more temperate!

I love the cooler weather because it is so comfortable to leave the studio windows wide open 24 hours a day, and paint some of these large pieces in oil and wax. I plan to have this painting professionally photographed soon, this image seems fuzzy to me.

Where I Started:

“Artifact” was inspired by the memory of finding Native American artifacts on our farm in the fall during planting season. The title came first.

Occasionally my father would come in from working the fields and bring arrowheads that had turned up during harrowing, glinting from the dust in the field. Once when looking for something to prop up a sagging fence post, my sisters and I turned up a large smooth stone that must have been a moccasin mold. Our family had a small collection of primitive pestles and other artifacts.

As a kid, I often thought about the people who lived on our property before white settlers came. I pondered on what their dwellings must have looked like, and imagined their food gathering. I had a little playground ritual of collecting seeds from the grasses and pounding them into ‘flour.’ It was the Little House on the Prairie books that inspired me, I think. I was kind of a lonely child, and an avid reader.

When I started this work, my mother was also thinking about leaving our family home of over 50 years. Tied into the idea of finding artifacts from ancient people, I also considered what artifacts she will be leaving on the farm, and what she will take with her.

“All changes are more or less tinged with melancholy, for what we are leaving behind is part of ourselves.” -Amelia Barr

Our family spent one summer working on a house that came with farmland we had purchased, owned by the same people for many years. It spurred my imagination to consider some of the things they left behind. An old cupboard, chairs, tools, lemon verbena by the doorstep, decorative windows that they had installed… how they left their mark on the place.

Large farmers in our area habitually called parcels of land by the last name of the previous owners… for example the Muller place, the Hinck Place or the old McLagen Place. In our family we had the ‘Old Holzapfel Place’ – my great-grandparents’ farm, ‘Grandma’s Place’ – about seven miles away, our home place and a couple of others. When people asked where my father was, the reply might be: “He’s over plowing on the Old Holzapfel Place. ” Most farmers and suppliers could find him from that description alone.

How I Got There:

How does all this memory and emotion come through in the painting? One way I try to combine the ideas of history and artifacts is to use stronger, pure color representing current life (reds, oranges, greens, blues) against more muted, aged colors like the parchment, rusts and grays of the past. When creating the shapes in this painting, I tried to think of what shapes reminded me of old and new… ancient and contemporary.

How people respond to the work always interests me. Viewing abstract paintings can be puzzling or exhilarating. Whether the artist’s original idea is communicated is not always important, but every artist hopes that the viewer will find some meaning in the work beyond aesthetic. Less experienced viewers sometimes interpret shapes as a face or a dog… rather than seeing the painting as a whole. But that could be a blog post of its own.

“Collecting art is a lot like wine connoisseurship: When you drink wine, you begin with sweet white wines. As your palate matures, you graduate to the dry, dark reds.”
– Katy Durant, ARTNews Sept 99

I will be teaching in Newport next week, and packing and preparing this week. I hope you have a safe and happy 4th of July… remembering those sacrifices our ancestors made to gain us freedom.

Post Edit: 7/4

I had this painting and the next professionally photographed yesterday. What a difference, and well worth the time I spent in traffic driving to David Hooten’s studio and back!

“Artifact” ©Ruth Armitage 2014, Oil on Panel 48×36″
photo credit: David Hooten