Me Trying to Be BonnieLuria

Holy Herring, people!

This is the second in the series, “Me Trying To Be You”. After months of blogging, I am beginning to see the world like some of my readers.

This time, I am seeing my world through BonnieLuria’s eyes, an honest to god painter, who is blogging about getting back to doing oil painting in her home in St. Croix. So, I decided to do an oil painting, too. Uh, but you don’t paint, Pat. Yeah, so?

I chose a photograph of spud leaving Boston Harbor on a ferry bound for Provincetown as the image to paint.

Across the harbor is the skyline of Boston. On the right is the Institute of Contemporary Art with the Anish Kapoor exhibit that I’ve written about several times.

People, this is an exercise in humility. When you can’t paint and you don’t have brush strokes, a baked potato is hard! It was in fact impossible for me to do! The ridges, the skin surface..Did Rembrandt paint spuds?

My painted potato is blended with the photo of the spud here. I had to do it. My painted spud looked like…well, use your imagination. That’s what it looked like. And, since it takes up a good third of the painting, I had to do something so you wouldn’t gag coming to my site Monday morning with your cup of coffee.

Seriously, this challenge gives me such an appreciation of how skilled a painter BonnieLuria is! Good Grief.

You go, girl. I also look like I took a bath in the paints as well. Dots on the table, a few on the rug–the turpentine is outside–hopefully, offending the mole underneath my porch. I’m not smelling so sweet, either!

Despite the results, the process was fun. Oh, yeah, don’t wear a white top if you paint.

Who’s next?

26 Replies to “Me Trying to Be BonnieLuria”

  1. Aha! I knew it. You ARE a painter. You qualify because you have paint on your clothes and consider turp to be a fragrance.

    And damn if you didn’t succeed in being better than me because you actually posted a painting in oils which is more than I’ve done in the past two weeks, being busy milking the birthday thing, houseguest thing, excuse thing.

    Spud- I never would have thought to have him doing crunches while setting sail. Or maybe he’s craning his neck to gaze with his spud eyes one last time on the Kapoor exhibit.

    Your loyal spud-niks are going to be so thrilled to see another installment of favorite tater taking a vacaycay.

    Oh, hell, I think we’ve all morphed into one jellyblogrollcheeseplanetwithanhwikkp ( which I still see as the abbreviation for wikipedia)

    I’m calculating the next target but I gotta move fast.
    LOVED this.
    I suspected when your home page started downloading and I saw that blue water, that you were up to something…….

  2. PS Congratulations on the kick ass blog award. I thought it was the kick US award ’cause you are always kickin’ us around being your clever, irreverent, inventive self.

  3. Excellent painting, Pat. I knew you had it in you. Somewhere. Bonnie, you do great work. I haven’t visited your site in a while so I’m due . . .

  4. I did a double take because the spud looks like it’s part of the foreshore and I thought, hey that’s well realised texture!

    You see, TV doesn’t fool me but paintings do.

  5. BL: Seriously. No, I mean seriously. It took me a hour of experimenting to get a color for the baked potato and then when applied, it was so totally gross I thought, “Brown, I hate you.” I know why you have not posted a painting in two weeks: Real painters take their time. That was another lesson, (aside from no, pat, you really really can’t draw, never mind paint)..Paintings take Time. Patience. Judgment about things you take for granted: windows in a skyscraper, for example. Mine have none. Too much judgment, too few thoughts available. PS. This spud photo was taken back in early July when I visited Provincetown. It is about half the size now and…well, spud smells worse than turpentine at the moment.

    Now,Tysdaddy, your pants are on fire! Yes, you. This is not a beautiful painting. Even if you were speaking to me from TV, I would not believe you on this one. I think your nose grew so far out that it bumped into the computer screen as you were writing such a whopper. Will you be my brother? People, go read about Tysdaddy’s sisters.
    http://thecheekofgod.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/sister/

    Sweetiegirlz: As I said, this was based on a photo I took when leaving Boston on the ferry. There were people on either side of me at the railing of the ferry. When I pulled spud out of its baggy and held it out and did my framing photographer thing, they all quietly left my side and went to another part of the ferry. I was going to try and explain, hey, I’m a blogger, I’ve got this series…Oh, the hell with it, I concluded. Click.

    At last!! ‘BUFFNIK BAMBOOZLED” is the headline. I saw an exhibit in DC last year of JMW Turner, the British landscape painter. There was a ginormous painting of the Battle of Trafalgar or some such maritime battle. This particular painting had never traveled before. It was the biggest damn thing I had ever seen. Anyway, big old sea ships, billowing sails, cannons firing, glorious sky. The sails on his ships were so freakin’ beautiful that I stared at them for at least 10 minutes. I said to myself, “I’d like to live my life like JMW’s sails.” The color, the texture, the billowing lightness of them. Honestly. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything so beautiful in my life. And, that was just the sails part. Just brush strokes, right? Incredible to think of him in his studio with a chicken sandwich. “Hey, let me touch up this sail a wee bit.” Dab. Smear. Dab. Dab. Ok, I’m done. Unbelievable. Brush strokes, indeed.

  6. Oh, yeah, forgot. And, the one building I gave windows to: the Institute of Contemporary Art?? It looks like it has been strafed with mortar shells from an aircraft carrier in Boston Harbor for God’s sake.

  7. I think it’s cool. I love Spud, and the fact that KAPOOR must be exhibiting at the Institute gives you artistic kudos through inclusion/association.
    What has really made me giggle here is Bonnie’s ‘Vacaycay’. First Vajayjay, then exagerbating, now vacaycay… We have our very own blog community language developing. Try this:
    No, I’m exagerbating a bit but my vajayjay really does need a vacaycay. BRILLIANT. Giggling away here.

  8. Hells’ Bells’ will I ever get anything done around here? Why does everyone who reads this blog and comment on it have to be so funny, sharp, and consistent?
    Damn…..

    Pat- see… the reason you are an artist ( nevermind the semantics of painter blah blah blah ) is that you just forge ahead without fore thought which can ruin a wet dream in a heartbeat, if you know what I mean.
    You created a piece ( we all know skyscrapers have windows and don’t need to see microscopic renderings of them to believe in them ).
    You can overanalyze to the point of non production.
    I love the freedom of this painting- and I love just a teeny weeny bit more, the image of the person standing next to you on the ferry as you unveiled Spuds Lonigan for another photo shoot. ( You could become known as the John Wayne Gacy of potoatos )
    ” She seemed like such a lovely woman- I had no idea she kept dozens, maybe more, of potatoes in various stages of decrepit-ness and decomposition in her basement…..” ” we can’t be too careful around here anymore”.

    Epicurienne- did I make up the word vacaycay? How funny- I thought I was paraphrasing Nathalie but anyway, it is darn funny isn’t it?
    So what is vajayjay?

  9. S. Le, welcome! And, you’ve got this right. Good luck trying to be BonnieLuria! Oh, no…this was my first and last foray into that! But, the fun part was just trying.

    In the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, one of my favorite paintings is by Fitz Hugh Lane of Boston Harbor with sailing ships at dawn.

    http://www.canvaz.com/gallery/946.htm

    My rendering of spuds departure from same harbor? You quickly see why I have taken up and given up trying to be Bonnieluria simultaneously.

  10. Epicurienne, you are right! We are creating language as well as community. Now, I really like that concept. I’m going to make a card! Cards, I can do.

    Uh, BonnieLuria, vajayay? It’s that part of the female anatomy….Epi, you tell her.

  11. PS. Mole is gone from porch! Turpentine can fell over during night. A true benefit to oil painting the way I see it.

  12. I first thought the spud in the foreground was burlap attached to the canvas, creating a 3d mixed-media piece. Nope, just more photoshop. Sigh.

  13. Better go sigh somewhere else, Mt. Brooks! And, get down on your knees in gratitude for Photoshop. Without it, you’d be reaching for a barf bag over the knees of that drunken disowned brother of Eugene Levy in coach. The painted spud was like your “middle-aged” lady on the cellphone. Gross.

    See, I do read your posts!

  14. You go girl!!! Whoooo! Meeow! Cat fight! I think Mr. Penis is shriveling in shame!

    I actually like the way you painted the buildings. The little red sign next to Kapoor, is that an homage to 1,000 Names?

    Great post! Probably the messiest ever!

  15. Cat fight? Moi? or Meowoi? I don’t think anyone who has his blog name has shriveling issues do you? Like the Project Runway contestant said last week, “A sista’s gotta look out for herself– that’s all I’m saying.”

    The little red sign next to Kapoor is a sculpture in the show (not the 1000 names one but points for knowing it!). It has a funny name. Inwendig Volle Figur. Inwardly Turning Full Figure. It’s pictured here:
    ttp://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1812056,00.html

  16. If you put a space in the name of the blog it really reads:
    Pen is in the Rowboat.
    And yours, Pat, is still mightier than the sword.
    Now I understand vajayjay………

  17. Harrrrumph. I never shrivel. Well, one time, but the water was even more frigid than the tone I’m detecting in these comments. Cold, I tells ya!

  18. I knew you didn’t shrivel, Mt. Brooks! Knew. It. Iphone owners don’t shrink from or shrivel up; we just download new apps. VoiceNotes is my latest.

  19. i like your painting and all that you have said, “how did she get that potato in there like that” and “how can anyone who paints like that not be a painter” and “how cool it is to see the ferry potato to ptown from boston harbor” and imagine life at fort point channel, well I don’t have to imagine, since I lived it, but to imagine your life not mine in the environs, i guess i’m fascinated. i have a lot of observations, boston, tv, but i like your art(s)
    here –

  20. Hello, Tipota, and welcome! I would love to know more of your fort point channel life, for indeed that is the specific name for the waters around the museum and the ferry docks! I love the name of your blog, “spacebetweentrees”. I’ll visit soon.

  21. I would never have done a “Me Trying to Be You” about painting! Anything I would have produced would have been very unpalettable. As my inner-white-girl would say, “You go girlfriend!”.

    note to self: no emoticons on Pat’s blog.

  22. well, i had this boyfriend see and he lived at summer street and then i went to south america and then came back and then summer street seemed awfully winterlike….thanks it’s nice to be back

  23. Pat, you are such a harsh critic of yourself. (ain’t we all?).

    That is so utterly cool! Just call it “mixed media’ and you’re good.

    Spud looks wearisome, looking with longing eyes at the vanishing views of Boston. A very emotional moment for Mr. Spud. AND – with the windows on that building, as well the texture of those clouds so skillfully echoing the texture of Spud – how can you claim you are not a painter?? I hereby protesteh.

  24. Well, tipota, I so love how you phrased that: “and then summer street seemed awfully winterlike”. Been there done that, but no so graciously recounted as you!

    Nava, get a hold of yoursheth! But, thanks.

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