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Note: I'm using my blog to support the writing of a new book so what I'm posting here is a work-in-progress. Changes will occur! I've already changed the subtitle to something shorter. The librarian at our local likes the title. She told me, "I'm a sucker for alliteration."  If you want to know when I post a new chapter, click on the "Follow this Blog" icon on this page.

August, 2022 finds me a couple of weeks shy of the end of another season in my home-based studio and gallery. I’ve been busy this summer: At month’s end I’ll return to Grand Rapids where at the beginning of June I installed in a large church 30 paintings in a show I called “Emerging Joy: Paintings from the Inside-Out.” I’ve just received an email informing me the four paintings that have been hanging in the American Embassy in Bratislava, Slovakia as part of the Art in Embassies Program for the past 2 ½ years are headed home and I need to make room for them. My annual open house with food, live music, and many paintings is just around the corner. As always, I have 3 or 4 paintings in progress.

With much to do, I’m vaguely aware the Joan Mitchell Retrospective exhibit that’s been traveling the country is at its last stop at the Baltimore Museum of Art and will close in few days. I’ve already looked at flights and hotels several times and I do so once more before finally realizing I won’t be going. There’s a lot going on in my own art world; I don’t have the time or the energy. And, besides, Baltimore in August? I won’t go.

Why all this interest in Joan (not Joni) Mitchell? I had first encountered her work in 2012. The instructor of a gouache painting workshop in which I was enrolled used pictures of Mitchell’s work to illustrate a point about abstraction. Looking at these images, I was attracted but wasn’t sure why. I did love how she used color, but I was not interested in abstraction—I was happy and commercially successful as an outdoor painter of northern Michigan landscapes. I bought The Paintings of Joan Mitchell anyway and, puzzling over it, from time to time would see if my brush could or would make paintings like Mitchell’s.

Then, in 2016-17, Women of Abstract Expressionism toured the U.S. and I went to see it at Charlotte’s Mint Museum. Until then I’d seen only one of Mitchell’s paintings in person—at the Art Institute of Chicago—but here there were at least three of hers alongside 50 or so other monumental works by the likes of Helen Frankenthaler, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Lee Krasner and others. The size and uniqueness of their art seem to invite me to take up space in the world and make my marks there. I’d not felt that kind of permission before.

While I appreciated many of the paintings by these Ninth Street Women, I was most drawn to Joan Mitchell and her bold, colorful abstract landscapes. My own gestural brushstrokes seemed to resonate with hers. I related to her “rage to paint” especially as the November, 2016 U.S. Presidential election yielded a result that terrified and angered me. Empowered by how Mitchell brought her strong emotions to the canvas, I let go of my practice of making popular outer-referenced paintings in favor of more raw expression.

Abandoning the Impressionist color palette I’d used since I’d started painting almost 20 years before, I bought my first black paint. I squeezed the pigment directly onto the canvas; I picked up and used other tubes of paint without looking to see the color. Using loud music to inspire the brush or squeegee to move more freely, I spattered and dripped, surrendering to what seemed to be powerful impulses that wanted a large canvas to receive them. Soon, my intuitive, Rorschach-like mark-making began to reveal shapes resembling birds and, once birds flew onto my canvas, they dominated my art.

In 2018, I conceived of an expansive multimedia, migration-inspired, avian-themed installation called BIRDS FLY IN: A Human Refuge. Having commissioned music from a young Mexican composer/violinist, I created 20 large scale painting to be displayed on a cage formed of chain link fence designed to evoke children in cages at the U.S./Mexican border. Scheduled to debut in 2020, the timing coincided with Covid; nevertheless, the project was installed twice. At our local art center it broke all previous attendance records with 1500 visitors; the following year, at the Dennos Museum in Traverse City, another five or six thousand visited. During each installation I would learn that the installation brought people to tears; the words used most frequently to describe it: “moving and powerful.”

When the exhibit came down from the museum in early January, 2021 I still had high hopes for the project; yet with what seemed like many good possibilities, by August, 2022, none had materialized. With so many testifying to the project’s power, not to mention professional video documentation and a beautiful exhibition catalog, I couldn’t understand why BIRDS hadn’t taken flight. I’d been living and breathing the project for the better part of 4 years and wondered if I’d been naïve to have expected otherwise. Well-intentioned friends suggested that I should feel gratified by the response the project had received; however, with the exhibit locked up in a storage unit, I was more demoralized than grateful.

To add to my glumness, a few days before the Joan Mitchell Retrospective was due to close, an artist I know from social media, posted on Instagram a photo of herself standing next to one Mitchell’s big paintings. She wrote: “Just back from Baltimore after seeing the Joan Mitchell Exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Amazingly beautiful and impactful.”

Overcome with envy, I kicked myself for not having gone. I could now see that my excuses—each eminently justifiable—didn’t add up as good enough reasons for denying myself an experience that I truly wanted. Not only that, it could have been an experience that, like the Women in Abstract Expression show, would move me out of the slough of despond in which I’d been wallowing for the better part of a year.

As I continued mindlessly scrolling through postings, another image of a Mitchell painting caught my eye. There in a post by the Joan Mitchell Foundation, I see: “The Retrospective exhibit is headed to Paris where it will be paired with another exhibit Monet-Mitchell: Dialogue. The showing at Fondation Louis Vuitton, which is the final venue in the exhibition's tour, will be the most significant Mitchell exhibition in Europe in almost 30 years, creating an opportunity for the public in France and Europe to be immersed in Mitchell's work.”

Immediately I realize I won’t let myself miss this opportunity see the Joan Mitchell Retrospective with the bonus Monet-Mitchell show. I read the rest of the notice and a plan for an art pilgrimage falls into place: “Monet - Mitchell presents each artist’s unique response to a shared landscape in the French countryside northwest of Paris, which they interpret in a particularly immersive and sensual manner.” Not only do I want to experience the exhibits in Paris, I want to experience their shared landscape myself.

An idea takes hold: My husband Roo (who loves France and speaks the language) is game and together we plot an itinerary that meanders with the River Seine to the Normandy coast. We’ll stay in Paris for a few days, then we’ll rent a car and drive to Giverny, Vétheuil, Rouen, Etretat, Honfleur, places known to me only from the titles of Monet’s paintings. Then we’ll return to Paris for a second visit to Monet and Mitchell at Fdn. Louis Vuitton.

As a pilgrim on this chemin des artistes, I intend to consider what insights Monet and Mitchell might reveal to me on these topics: What does it mean to be a Real Artist? What exactly is the job description? How does one find an original voice? And, with my mind still bothered by my stalled BIRDS FLY IN project, I would also seek to know What’s it all about, anyway?

As I’m about to embark on this quest, I tuck into my suitcase a small kit with small tubes of gouache, a set of ink sticks, a few brushes, and some small pieces of watercolor paper. I have no sense that I’ll want to paint in France—I’ve let myself off the hook in advance--but if I do want to paint something, I’ll be prepared. I arrive in Paris, weary and jet-lagged, yet quietly expectant that more will be revealed.

Note: In my last blog I mentioned I'd be posting a Table of Contents for Monet, Mitchell & Me: A Book About Art this week. I'm not doing that today. Instead, I offer you an early draft of a possible first chapter. That said, I do have a framework in mind for organizing the book. And, next week, will post another installment. Stay warm, work hard!  -- Ellie

#MuseumSelfie

It's our first full day in Paris and Roo and I have decided over our omelette at a café near our Airbnb to visit the Musée de L’Orangerie. Neither of us have been there and it would be a great warm-up for the Monet part of the Monet /Mitchell exhibits to see his famed Nympheas installations.

It's an overcast but warm day in Paris and we start out from the Marais in the general direction of the Orangerie. It’s easy to log steps in Paris; later our devices will tell us we’ve trod than 10 miles, but we don't notice. We're entranced by the River Seine, the Louvre, a view of the clock on the Musée D’Orsay across the river, Samaritaine department store, the tiny shop on the Ile de la Cité where they carve a rose into the gelato before serving it up. Delighting in landmarks made familiar for having seen them in guidebooks, in films and, in some cases, on past visits, on and on we walk. Following Google Map directions, however, we've ended up not at our destination but at the Grand Palais. Finally, we ask an actual person for directions, backtrack a few thousand steps to a corner of the Jardins de Tuileries and there we queue for tickets.

As American tourists in Paris the last thing you really want to see are other American tourists, yet we’re everywhere. Clearly, Roo and I aren't the only ones who thought it would be a good idea to visit the Orangerie. If we read such things we'd have know it's on most popular Paris "must-see, must-do" lists.  Some of the largest of Claude Monet's waterlily paintings are here and they are famous. (He made them made in his studio in Giverny especially for installation on the curved walls of this former hothouse.) Clearly, I also believe they are worth seeing or I wouldn't be here, with this crowd.

Making our way toward the first of two large oval galleries, we pass a sign requesting visitors to observe silence in the galleries. Benches are provided to facilitate a meditative viewing of the monumental water lilies. For a moment these instructions make me feel at home—a BIRDS FLY IN experience might be possible here!—I'm hopeful this will be more than a tourist stop.

We enter the first gallery, but no one is silent and, with the buzz of everyone's conversation, it's at all not quiet. Mildly annoyed, I wait patiently to find a spot on one of the benches. Once seated, shoulder to shoulder, I realize that engaging in any meaningful way the art that famously wraps these walls is unlikely.

Instead, looking at the other visitors, I wonder. Have we found our way onto the stage set of “Emily in Paris?” One can barely see the paintings for the selfie-takers that fill the room. Everyone has a mobile phone in hand and most are not looking at the paintings but at their device, far more interested in posing in front of the paintings than looking at them.  

One woman, dressed like a doll complete with white anklets and high-heeled Mary Janes, poses in front of some waterlilies while her boyfriend, receiving her instructions, snaps pics. As each image is considered, retakes are necessary. Finally, one is posted and the two pore over the device as, one imagines, Instagram delivers Likes, Comments and, she hopes, one or more new Followers. Others too, particular if less practiced, primp with a finger comb before extending an arm to grab a shot or two to send along. Evidence of attendance? I suppose.

Am I surprised? Disappointed, but not surprised. Ever since museums began allowing photography, the selfie is de rigeur, ubiquitous and for the most part obnoxious. In most places well-known art is displayed, it’s now virtually impossible to see the artwork for the picture-taking non-lookers.

Some might recall a time when visitors weren’t allowed to take photographs in museums. As recently as July, 2013 ArtNews published an article https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/photography-in-art-museums-2222/ “Why Can’t We Take Photos in Art Museums.” At that time museums were just starting to yield to those who broke the rules to sneak a selfie with their digital devices. In short order, institutions decided it was to their economic benefit for photos of posing visitors to appear on social media.

In 2014, Museum Selfie Day became an actual thing and since then each January (with Covid exceptions) museums seize the opportunity to encourage selfie-taking behavior. In a 2015 CNN article, "Selfies turn museums into playgrounds for a day," Jareen Imam writes:

"London mom Mar Dixon, who runs a website about museums, art and culture, came up with the campaign last January after visiting several museums with her young daughter.

“'My goal with my daughter when we go to the museum is to learn one new thing. It doesn’t have to be about art though. It can be that the museum sells good carrot cake,” she said….

"She thought a one-day, crowd-sourced phenomenon would promote awareness of great collections of work being housed in national and regional museums.

"Museums worldwide are participating in the online campaign, and some are getting creative. The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, shared a photo that re-envisions Greek mythological figures Paris and Oenone, snapping a selfie together.

"Dixon admits she has never worked a day at a museum and doesn’t have a background in art. She’s simply an advocate for museums, culture and art. She says she’s overwhelmed by the positive response #MuseumSelfie is getting online.

"'Today is about being happy, having a good time and getting involved,” Dixon said. “Even if one person goes to a museum today who never goes, just to be a part of this hashtag experience, isn’t that great?'

Great?

Sitting in the Orangerie, I’m troubled that not-looking at Monet’s monumental paintings seems the reason many tourists have paid the price of admission. I balk at the notion of museums as playgrounds, as places where not-looking at art is celebrated in favor of carrot cake. No visual artist I know makes a painting premised on a belief that is just as valuable when placed behind and not within a visitor’s line of sight.

A visual artist creates a painting or drawing for it to be seen and, preferably, deeply seen, and believes that when seen the art will do something more do than give someone a “hashtag experience.”* I want to look, however. Determined to celebrate the artist and engage the paintings, I stand up from the bench and, stepping around the selfie-takers, I bring myself right up close to the paintings. I don’t care who I’m photo-bombing. Now I'm an arm’s length away from the canvas that once was on Monet’s easel and I can explore how he used the brush to in certain way to conjure those lily pads and flowers. Finally, if only for a moment, I find the outer and inner space in which his lotus-magic can work on me. I also take some small pleasure in having prevailed over the crowd, and proud to have had a real art experience.

Leaving the Orangerie, we walk back along the Seine, we stop for a late lunch at Bistrot Pyramide on the Ile de France. It’s cozy inside, with a warm red interior, twinkling lights and the manager is friendly. I’m tired but beginning to suspect that my grumpiness is not really about #MuseumSelfie, or even jet lag . Yes, the art world is imperfect and not all work that deserves to be seen and celebrated ends up that way. But this is France. We're here and there's so much to enjoy—the chocolate mousse here is delicious—I want more of this.

Making a silent vow to set aside my cynicism, I dedicate myself to the enjoyment of the next 3 weeks of artful adventure. I want to know more about Claude Monet and Joan Mitchell, but I also want to know more about the Artist that is Me. Who is Ellie Harold? Why has she been drawn to these two artists.  And what is her artistic purpose? In two days we’d be visiting the main attraction of our French tour: the Joan Mitchell Retrospective and the Monet/Mitchell exhibit. There, I am confident, more will be revealed and I’m excited to find out what.

Twenty five years ago, for the 24 month period when I was dating Roo, my English then-boyfriend, I thought nothing of flying across the Big Pond for a rendezvous every couple of months. Flights from Atlanta to London were relatively cheap and often there was enough room to stretch out across empty seats. Plus, I had a lot of motivation for going.

Now, it’s a different story. Roo and I are married and see a lot of each other without having to go anywhere. Good thing because travel to anywhere from where we live in northern Michigan is complicated: transatlantic flights are expensive and usually packed to the gunnels. Add to that the fact that these days my body doesn’t adjust all that well to time changes and different food, I need a pretty good reason to make the long trip to Europe.

In August, looking at Instagram, I found that reason: On the tiny screen of my device one of my IG artist friends had posted a photo of her standing in front of a large painting by Joan Mitchell taken at the Baltimore Museum of Art. A comprehensive retrospective of Mitchell’s work had been touring the U.S., first in California and now, in its final days, in Maryland. I’d toyed with the idea of traveling to see it there, but simply couldn’t get past my images of spending dog days in a city even to see paintings I knew I’d love. But, now, reading my friend’s description of how wonderful it had been to spend hours with Joan’s large paintings, I regretted my decision to stay home.

A day or two later, however, I happened to see a post announcing that the Mitchell Retrospective was moving on from Baltimore to the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris! And, not only would the retrospective exhibit be installed there for several months, but it would be paired with another they were calling Monet & Mitchell. This time I would not hesitate to seize the opportunity to make the journey, no matter what the cost in sleep and troubled digestion. And, it would not simply be a visit to the museum.

I mused about what would make the travel challenges worthwhile enough to constitute a legitimate art biz expense. I’d known that Joan Mitchell had lived and painted for decades in France in, Vétheuil, a small village along the Seine, and vaguely understood that she had been in some way been influenced by the fact that Monet had also lived there. (As it turns out, she lived in a house directly above the one her occupied for three years with an almost identical view of the Seine.) If Mitchell had been intrigued enough to live where Monet lived, I wondered what it would be like to follow in the footsteps of these iconic artists, to see what I might see in the places that inspired them.

We developed a plan that would allow us to visit the spectacular Frank Gehry building that houses the Fdn. Louis Vuitton on either end of our stay in France. Sandwiched between two four-day stints in Paris, we’d follow the Seine north to the English Channel, stopping in at places we knew Monet at least had painted. We booked Airbandbs accordingly finding accommodations in or near Vétheuil, Giverny, Vernon, Rouen, Etretat, Le Havre, and Honfleur.

Just back from this satisfying adventure last week, I’m happy to report my belly is recovering nicely and the painting juices that started flowing almost immediately after the first visit to the Mitchell and Monet/Mitchell exhibits continue to pour forth. (I’ve posted a number of small sketches I made in the various places we stopped along the Seine.)

But, wait, there’s more: I find myself wanting to explore in writing some insights garnered from my contemplation of what it means to be a Real Artist. What in fact is a Real Artist? What is the work of a Real Artist? And, how does any artist, inevitably influenced by other artists (especially those considered to be Real Artists), claim an original voice? I’ve discussed these themes in my workshops, but I’ve never taken the time it now seems I called to delve into for my own pleasure and edification.

I’m posting this introduction of sorts in my blog as a kind of kick in the seat of the pants to actually do the thing I’ve said I want to do for many years now. (A draft of a book called The Work of Art has been tucked away in my laptop for going on 10 years!)

With your implied permission, I intend to use this space as a Structure for Accountability, posting something relevant to a new book, Monet, Mitchell & Me, at least once a week, starting today, until it’s done, no later than May 1, 2023. (See 7 Habits of Deeply Fulfilled Artists: Your Aesthetic Needs & How to Meet Them.) I seem to work best when I know someone is watching or reading, so any and all curiosity, positive encouragement, or pokes on the part of whoever is reading this is welcome. I am willing to be embarrassed if I don’t follow through on my intention.

Next installment, look for a Table of Contents.

With thanks in advance,

Ellie