The Davis Museum at Wellesley College has a gorgeous collection in a building spacious building where you can see between the various levels of galleries. They’re having an incredible exhibit of works by Carlo Dolci, a late Baroque painter whose work I know from his painting of David and Goliath at the MFA.
We visited the Margaret C. Ferguson Greenhouses at Wellesley College just to see something interesting in our own backyard.
As usual, Aaron and Casey served up delicious Oscar-movie-themed food for their annual Oscar party
I had a tube of gray oil paint in my studio for years and I’ve almost never touched it. Why paint with gray when there are so many color combinations that give you a much more interesting shade of gray? True-gray is, of course, a 50/50 mix of white and black, but out in the real world, we see grays in a rainbow of colors … just look at all of the shadows around you.
I recently finished a series of four oil paintings that I created together to explore many different ways to paint gray. The paintings are two views of two sculptures at the Portland Museum of Art, and each one is painted with only two colors, plus white.
Simmons Sculpture – series by Becky DiMattia
each painting: oil on 10×20″ canvas
2017
This series is special to me partly because this was a lot of fun to paint, but also because it was really challenging for me, and because of the special memories attached to these sculptures, which I first saw ten years ago. This series accomplishes several artistic goals that have been floating around in my mind for years.
First and foremost, my goal was to explore shades of gray with oil paint. I spent a delightful summer afternoon going back to my roots, painting a few color charts using the various tubes of reds, oranges, greens and blues in my studio. After a very scientific decision-making process (staring at them for a long time), I chose four combinations that I think make especially interesting shades of gray:
Each painting uses one only one of these combinations, and white, which means that two of the paintings use the same blue, two use the same red, and so on. In retrospect, it might not have been the best idea for one of the paintings to use only primary colors (red and blue), but as a lover of the color purple, I think it still works in this exploration of rich grays.
Two of the paintings are of one sculpture, and two are of another. Two of the paintings are a full-length view of that sculpture, and two are a bit more zoomed-in. Two of these paintings came together easily and were finished a while ago. Two of these paintings were left unfinished for months while I puzzled over how to finish them. I have been endlessly fascinated by the endless combinations of pairs among the set of four.
Another one of my goals was to finally do something with a few favorite photos that I took ten years ago. The Portland Museum of Art has a gorgeous gallery that is filled with sunlight and sculptures by Franklin D. Simmons. Each marble figure is magnificently carved, and they each look especially beautiful to me in the light of the floor-to-ceiling windows.
I saw this gallery for the first time ten years ago, in Fall 2007, on a family trip to Maine to visit my grandparents, who had a timeshare in Ogunquit that week. Having been to so many museums around the world, it’s a rare treat to visit a museum for the first time, and an even rarer treat to visit a museum with my grandfather, who is also an oil-painter and photographer. I remember being blown away by the beautiful marbles in the sun-filled Simmons gallery, and he and I took several photos. He has also experimented with how to make interesting shades of gray in oils, and he has a beautiful painting that uses only cadmium red light and cerulean, another inspiration for this series.
A week before that trip, I had started dating the man who is now my husband. I remember talking to him on the phone, looking out over Ogunquit’s Perkins Cove. Brian’s a fellow art-lover, so it was a real treat to show him the Simmons gallery when he and I took a daytrip to Portland the following year.
Here’s my photoblog entry from our family trip to Ogunquit and Portland in October 2007.
Here’s my photoblog entry from Brian’s and my daytrip to Portland in December 2008.
Brian is an enormously valuable studio assistant, and his opinions on my works in progress have become an essential part of my system. It’s so hard to decide “how much” to paint a painting … in other words, how to decide when the painting is finished. We have had ten years of fascinating debates about this, including a memorably heated debate over the Red/Green painting in this series, which he counts as one of my best paintings. When I saw how incredibly disappointed Brian was after I changed a part of that painting that he really liked, I learned a lot about how much painting can be a team sport. Fortunately, he still likes how the painting came out, and his many valuable insights really helped me to finally finish this series.
Here are the four paintings in the series ‘Simmons Sculptures.’
Please click on the thumbnails to view the whole painting:
These paintings are based on photographs that I took in 2007 and 2008 of two marble sculptures by Franklin D. Simmons (1839-1913), Medusa and Promised Land. Please click on the links to visit their pages on the Portland Museum of Art’s website.
We met up with Mel for dinner at Assembly Row and had fancy adorable drinks at Earls (yes, it’s a honey bear shaped glass … very grown-up)
Working from home means I can take a long walk at lunch time. It’s 60 degrees in February, and Jamaica Pond’s ice is still melting
Maureen and I spent a lovely evening at the Gardner Museum, where we met as fellow volunteers 13 years ago!!
We took a walk and picked up some incredible pie at the Pie Bar in Florence, MA. It was late afternoon, so the sun was coming in the from the front window at a great angle.
My sweetie walked home in the freezing rain/snow with a gorgeous bouquet of early Valentines Day roses, and they look especially beautiful with the rain drops 🙂
Due to the awful weather, my parents gave us their tickets to see an Italian Baroque concert by the Handel and Haydn Society at the New England Conservatory’s gorgeous Jordan Hall. phenomenal concert!
We popped in to the Copley Society Gallery on Newbury Street for a lovely demo by very talented watercolor artist.
For me, paintings are often nothing more than a way to capture a simple memory, or something that was particularly beautiful to me. I just finished this painting of the waves crashing on the rocks along the Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine. I remember spending a bright chilly February morning feeling relaxed and refreshed, watching the waves roll in and make these big foamy splashes on rocks, roll back, then roll right back in and crash all over again. I had a lot of fun taking slow-motion videos of this amazing simple feat of nature, and I posted the videos here … photoblog post from our trip to Ogunquit in February 2016. This painting was also a chance to have some fun with the colors of shadows, which are often far from actual-gray. Here, the waves cast shadows that were a gorgeous shade of deep cobalt blue, requiring the purchase of a shiny new tube of oil paint.
Ogunquit Waves – by Becky DiMattia, oil on 12×24” canvas, 2017
The ladies and their friend spent their bday party attacking Uncle Brian and racing with both of their godfathers
We are so lucky to have friends who spoil us rotten! Our friends recently got an indoor smoker, they invited us over, and treated us to smoked olives, roasted smoked garlic bread, smoked wings with three sauces, homemade fork-rolled gnocchi (I helped!) with an applewood smoked tomato sauce, and peanut butter banana cookies with smoked maple syrup. Seriously!
Our little cousin is obsessed with Curious George, and his parents used to hang out in Harvard Square all the time back in the day, so of course they absolutely had to take him to the Curious George store in Harvard Square, and we were delighted to be invited along for the ride!
Five DiMattis on a mission.
so many books
crossing the Mass Ave Bridge to visit a friend after work
