Closing the old year, building the 2010’s

Changes afoot.  I always spend December looking back and looking forward, appreciating what’s come before, determining how to make the next year better.

Looking forward on the professional front, I’m focusing on how to push my abilities as a painter as far as I can.  Clearly, major works accomplish this best, so I plan to focus on large paintings during the coming year.  It’s definitely where my heart is, and is also the work that develops my ability and vision.

My roll of Belgian linen arrived yesterday.  While it may not be clear to the casual observer, it’s obvious to me which pieces in my new series were painted on linen, and which on canvas.  Very excited about getting new canvases stretched so I can move into the new year with major works in progress on linen – a 5×5 foot, 3×10 foot horizontal, and maybe a 4×4 foot to start.  I expect most, if not all of my 2010 work to be on linen. I expect to work on nothing smaller than 30×36 in the coming year, and probably few that small.

If you’ve been considering purchasing a small piece, this may be your last chance to collect one for the foreseeable future.

I have two 12×12 paintings left in inventory through the studio, and a 12×24 diptych, along with one 24X24 and one 24×30 from my new series.  I don’t have a photograph of the diptych, but the other three are shown below.  Sirani Gallery in Pittsburgh also still has a few of my small paintings left.

Email for prices if you are interested.

After, 12x12 inches, ©2009 Genie Maples

Ever, 12x12 inch oil painting by Genie Maples ©2008

A Place to Be by Genie Maples, 24x24 oil ©2009

Wishing all my friends, readers, and collector a satisfying end to 2009, and a promising entry to the 2010’s!

Studio Stroll this weekend

Come down to Asheville’s River Arts District Saturday and Sunday to visit over 100 artists’ studios.  Here are some of the paintings from my NEW SERIES I’ll have available in my studio at the Cotton Mill.  Ask about installment payment plans if you fall in love with a painting.  Artists love predictable income, and we’ll often be happy to make it easy for you to own a painting.

Only a few paintings from the “Still” series left.

These paintings are extraordinarily peaceful, and were very well received.  I only have a few of these pieces left – the newer work has more movement.  If you loved the work you saw at the last two strolls, but were waiting to buy, it’s definitely time, because these are almost gone.  These paintings are available direct through my studio:

Update:  Learning Love’s Language and Possibilities have sold. As of Dec. 2, the other three pieces shown are still available.

Learning Love's Language ©2008 Genie Maples 60x60

The Blue Breaks, ©Genie Maples 2008 36x36 inches

Possibilities ©2009 Genie Maples 6x12 inches

The paintings below, also from the “Still” series are available through Sirani Gallery in Pittsburgh:

Where Love Is Born ©2008 Genie Maples

The Brighter Shore ©2008 Genie Maples

A few older paintings available at Studio Stroll this weekend

I have just a few paintings left from my more architectural 2007 series.  My newer work has moved in a specific, very defined direction, so if you liked the older work, I hope you’ll come by and choose a piece while they are still available.

Passages ©2007 Genie Maples

A Tranquil Page ©2007 Genie Maples

Congratulations

to Skip and Janis Rohde for winning the raffle for “The Home You Ain’t Got.”  Janis picked the painting up in my studio, and it will have a loving home.  Thanks to all of you who supported AHOPE and Homeward Bound.  Your donations will help people in need have a safe place to rest their head.

New major work “Endless”

Endless ©Genie Maples 2009

Endless

Genie Maples

48 X 60 inches

oil on canvas

Why I support subsistence level charities

Food and shelter.  In a country like ours, everyone should have access to those things.

We have a bootstrap mentality… We were taught that we’re all created equal, so for those of us who don’t know what it is to be hungry, to wonder where to lay our head, whether we will wake up in the morning if we close our eyes and let go of consciousness, how we will answer our children when they ask, “what can I eat?” “where will I sleep?”… people who haven’t had those experiences sometimes believe they can imagine what it would be like.  Some think they could never be in that position, or that if something completely out of their control, an act of God like a huge earthquake, or a terrorist attack, threw them suddenly into a world where they didn’t have what they need to survive, they would react the way movie heroes do.

If we have never been in that situation, where there is no straw to grab, where there is no ground to trust enough to take a step forward, we do not know.  We cannot know.  We cannot imagine.

But I think, if we do want to have an inkling, most of us have experienced some moment of isolation, where we were alone and the world out there just kept going on, oblivious to our private situation, our private pain.  All of us have felt, at least for a moment, that the others out there, over there, in there, were not alone in the same way.  Believing that, even for a moment, has made us feel isolated.

There are times when people feel not just alone, not just isolated, but invisible.  If you haven’t ever felt that way, it’s likely that at least for a moment, at some time in your life, you will.

I have.

And I know it could happen again.

I know that “there but for the grace of God go you or I” is not a platitude, but a deep truth, maybe the truest thing there is.

I think we all really know that, in the core of our beings, because whether it was about food and shelter or not, about the things that really do mean life could be grabbed away from us no matter how much we want to hold onto it, we have all felt utterly alone.  We don’t want to see people for whom that is not a momentary experience, but a way of life.  We do not want to imagine what it would be to have that moment bleed into the next, and the next, and the next until it becomes daily reality, until something shifts, and the idea that maybe one day we could be safe is the one that makes us feel “it couldn’t happen to someone like me.”

The reason we sometimes don’t have compassion isn’t because “that couldn’t be me,” but because deep inside, something in us knows that it absolutely could, and we don’t want to know that.

I do know.  I know that could be me.  It would be nice to forget, but I try not to.

Because if it were me again feeling invisible, I would want someone to look right at me, see me, and help me.

The people who do the real work at AHOPE do that all the time.  Every day.  I don’t know how they got strong enough to do that.  I’m strong, but not that strong, not yet.

But I can paint.  So I painted this.

The Home You Ain't Got by Genie Maples created to raise funds for AHOPE

I’ll bet you can do something too.  I’ll bet you could make a donation to help the people at AHOPE do what they do, which is provide a roof, counseling, and a solid place for people to put a foot so they can start moving forward.  It works.  80% of people AHOPE gets into housing are still there 3 years later.  That is a phenomenal result.  It makes things better for all of us.

If you give it by Friday 10/30,  you may get to take that painting home this weekend.  It may remind you that you don’t ever have to be alone.  Not really.  That sometimes the way to not be alone is to have someone help you.  And other times the way to not be alone is to help someone else.

Raffle tickets are on sale through the night of the drawing — Friday night 10/30/09 at the Spookyblogapalooza party. 100% of the sale price will go to AHOPE.

If it’s past Friday, October 30 when you read this, giving to AHOPE won’t get you this painting – someone’s beat you to that.  But giving can still give you the rest of it, which is the important part, so go do that now.  The need is still there.

http://www.hbofa.org/

Here is a video that will show you where the title of the painting came from, and why it is what it is.

And if you let me know you gave, it will make me feel good.  We all want to know that what we do makes a difference.  It keeps us keep going.

Please send a link to this post to anyone else you know who may not want to feel alone.

And if you want to have a great time this Friday, 10/30, please consider coming to the party.  Entertainment and food and drink galore!

Party info link

new painting – Whenever It Comes

Whenever It Comes ©2009 Genie Maples

Whenever It Comes

Genie Maples

36 x 36

oil on linen

currently available through Echo Gallery in Biltmore Park.

Two new tiny paintings – Ever and After

Ever ©2009 Genie Maples

Ever

Genie Maples

12 x 12 inches

oil on canvas

After ©2009 Genie Maples

After

Genie Maples

12 x 12 inches

oil on canvas

Nice mention on Ashevegas

Jason Sanford’s Ashevegas is Asheville’s premier blog.  Don’t know how he manages to be everywhere at once, all the time, but if it’s happening, he knows about it. Today, among many other things, he’s talking about the Blogapaloozanny fundraiser that benefits Asheville’s homeless population.