When I start a painting I first draw out the image - a house with trees and other landscaping, or a dog, or a building - then I block in the colors of each object. This gives me the general idea of what I’m creating. That phase is hard to live with. All I want is for it to dry, or to have the time to work on it again so I can add the details. This morning I worked on a house portrait I’ve been staring at all weekend and I feel a lot of relief. It is beginning to take shape and I’m hoping a few more sits and it’ll be done.
I spent a lot of time reading this weekend. I met with a friend who is also a client on Saturday. We had lunch and I gave her the dog portrait I did. It’s for her daughter for her birthday and I think my client was really happy. That makes me happy. After lunch I went to the library and picked up some books. One of them is a biography of Emily Dickinson.
It never dawned on me that I was going to be reading about something similar to the history book on Concord, Massachusetts I just finished. Emily Dickinson was almost the same age as Louisa May Alcott and lived 74 miles away in Amherst, MA. Her father and grandfather were the same age as the folks in Concord that were written about in Transcendentalists and Their World. But they were very different families.
Emily Dickinson’s grandfather started Amherst College and built the house she grew up in and lived in until her death. He was a Trinitarian, which were puritanical Christians back in the 19th century. Trinitarians started Yale and Dartmouth as schools to educate conservative ministers. Ralph Waldo Emerson on the other hand was educated at Harvard to be a more moderate minister, but he left the church because he felt it too confining. Henry David Thoreau also graduated from Harvard.
Emily Dickinson’s family were members of the Whig party and the Transcendentalists were Republicans. The Dickinsons were lawyers and highly dysfunctional, while the Emersons and Thoreaus, if they voted, were Republicans and seem to be emotionally stable. The Transcendentalists had more self-awareness while the Dickinsons were hard-driving and suffered from anxiety.
So, it seems unlikely that the families knew each other. Emily Dickinson had friends and cousins who probably knew Louisa May Alcott but most of what I found on google say that the two women did not meet.
I’m excited to learn more about people who lived during that time period. I think I may be developing an interest in American History. I’m also reading The Last of the Mohicans which is set during the French Indian War that took place in the 1750’s. It amazes me how much has changed, but more so, how much is exactly the same. As an artist I want to learn about other artists that lived throughout American history. It makes me feel connected.