So last night we watch Rob Roy, a wonderfully-set, large-screen movie with big name stars just eking “Scottish.” It succeeds at the box office in 1996, if $28-31.6 million is any standard. A 1995 American biographical historical drama, the film was directed by Michael Caton-Jones. Liam Neeson stars as Rob Roy MacGregor, an 18th-century Scottish clan chief and the movie chronicles his battles with an unscrupulous nobleman in the Scottish Highlands.

All the things I love about it are right—the beautiful highlands, my ancestry—and subject in my latest series, The Highland-Cape-Fear-Thriller-Conspiracy Series. The fact that it shows awesome costumery (more about that later), the great love story of a man and his wife, the warrior Highlander genre in all his masculine, swashbuckling glory, my favorite movie star of all time, Liam Neeson (I always forgive his Irish beginnings), shocking scenes which make the blood boil produced by Peter Broughan and Richard Jackson, with music by Carter Burwell and screen play by Alan Sharp.

They deserve credit for the massive effort of projecting visually the novel by Sir Walter Scott, famous Scottish novelist, which none of the reviewers seem to even realize. Rob Roy is one of the Waverley novels, says the author himself about his historical written in 1817, followed by The Heart of Midlothian. Scott writes in the literary omniscient style of yesteryear with the named narrator, Frank Osbaldistone.

Scott is of interest to me for his love of Rosslyn Chapel as a Mason, a subject which arises in my books as well.

Rob Roy lived. A historical figure. Just how historical they made him does not worry me one bit. I like a wee bit of playing around with history as you will know upon reading my series if you haven’t already. If he was low country instead of high, I prefer the Highlands, so there you have it.

Tim Roth played the fop who I hated so much I refuse to remember his name. Was he ever the master of innuendo and expression. However, it’s those expressions that make one ill.

Rob’s wife Mary was played by Jessica Lange, and again, red hair glows on many of my leading women’s heads as well. That she exists beyond her relationship with her husband is my main rave to the part and person, a character to be reckoned with but also to be loved, so unlike the snippy, snarky strong women often portrayed in sitcoms.

I don’t care how many rotten tomatoes it got, ’twas a great movie. Back to the costumes as I promised–I got a little bored with it, and I think that can directly be traced to the period and costumery. That’s why, even when I love the look, it’s so limiting to the human psyche in terms of pigeonholing them in time, I don’t do it in my books. Yours truly threads in historical chords, but the main characters are thoroughly modern in today’s day and time, reaching into the future.

I prefer a main couple solving mysteries and taking on world would-be destroyers.

No more spoilers for ye. It’s worth it just for soaking up a bit of atmosphere. And thank you for waiting for my full-blown series, Book I, Stone of Her Destiny, of which is available right now. It’s the Prequel, Inheritance Spurned and Book II, The Tarbert Legacy, that ye’ll be looking for.

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And Big Words like ‘Provenance’

I find it all kinds of fun to follow art thefts. I began doing this while I lived in Germany in the seventies and eighties, even being offered a job by one of the art retrieval outfits. I liked the TV series “To Catch a Thief.”

I’m really fascinated by all the masterpieces stolen by the Nazis, and the repatriation of stolen works to their former owners–a ticklish operation when the new owner may have legitimately paid lots of money for the work with no idea of its journey along the way through thieves (a concept called ‘provenance’).

Just recently a Los Angeles man, Philip Righter, was convicted of selling fraudulently made works to a gallery in South Florida. The contemporary artists he forged were Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring for a million-dollar steal for which he plead guilty.

An FBI special agent announced this.

The scheme started with buying art forgeries on-line, at marketplaces and auction sites. Supplied with fakes, the schemer wrote up letters with embossed signatures claiming their authenticity. Using those letters he approached a gallery, piqued interest, sent forgeries to a warehouse nearby and sent a bill for a mill, plus, requesting the money wired, which turned around to bite him in one of the charges against him of mail fraud. All told, his possible prison time could be 22+ years.

In California he tried the same thing with additional artists like Andy Warhol.

If you like collecting art and scour secondhand markets for it, it might pay you to learn as much about provenance, the word and especially a written description of the painting or sculpture’s ownership journey, as you can.

Picture: Book II, The Tarbert Legacy, baking. Pix: Seals and Castles Speak Authenticity

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My 2020 in some ways just began, but with all that’s going on, that’s easy to understand. Focusing on writing is saving me during this pandemic.

I’ve just finished writing the Prequel, Inheritance Spurned, to my Highland-Cape-Fear-Conspiracy Thriller Series–and Stone of Her Destiny, Book I, many of you have bought from Amazon or Kobo.

I have one disclaimer and one forewarning.

You may have sensed a literary divide between contemporary and historical. So have I. But I don’t understand why.

My feet are firmly planted in both camps, lol. I love current time zones, but I love historical stories. I’ve grown up around history where every house, every framed picture, every path prompts a story, and people are still around to tell them. My cousin is a real historian.

BUT, I will drive the tedious historian mad. That’s because I love alternate history. I write some within my novels which are all contemporary or not so long ago. I also play with history. Not revisionist history to “right” a movement we now consider wrong. I’m totally at odds with rewriting classics to purge controversial copy. I’d rather know the foibles of a people and era. But history shaping now, or history still alive, I love. I’m not as enamored of costume and speech pedantry…unless it’s a fragment of an old costume found.

Take the year-old article on Sotheby’s. For £3,000, a 1.4 cm piece of stone was on the auction block–a chip off the old Stone of Destiny–subject of my latest book, Stone of Her Destiny. The fact that the history of this stone can be traced back a millennium has piles to do with its high price–as does the provenance, since it was used in the coronation of monarchs.

When you think that the 1.4 cm piece was kept by Stonemason Robert Gray, who repaired the Stone of Destiny, broken after it was stolen from Westminster Abbey by Scottish nationalists in 1950, you get a hint of what the stonemason knew about history adding worth. The Courier in Scotland wrote that Gray, now-deceased, never revealed whether the returned (repaired) Stone was genuine. The framed fragment went under the hammer at Lyon & Turnbull’s Sale of Scottish Silver and Applied Arts in 2018. I searched the sold registry, but could find no proof of sale of the sandstone piece he certified was taken by him.To the best of my knowledge, it probably sold for that at Edinburgh auction. If not, I’d buy it, given enough fluid cash.

Well, Kenna, my redheaded Southern heroine and I have chased the Stone for some years now. Its first theft was in 1296 from Scone Abbey by King Edward. Even then major figures contested whether or not it was the real stone, at least a look-alike was taken back to England as a coronation stone until now. Their return of the stone to Scotland in 1996 is token, since the crown contracted to have it back in England on the occasion of Britain’s next ascending royal to the throne.

But the real Stone of Destiny, the one that cries out when the rightful king sits on it like happened when Scottish kings sat on it–its whereabouts are hotly contested, even today.

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Renewal by Icon

Already Thinking New Year? Yes, if you’re anything like me.

1. My signal to change is hearing myself whining about appreciation, sales, reads, time. All that good stuff creatives need. Do you have a process for changing direction mid-flight?

2. The first thing I do is write it down. I have so many scraps of paper. Don’t laugh, you “just-do-it” folks. That process is proven to imbed the thought in psyche as a precursor to action. Keeping the slip of paper isn’t the point. Writing it is like a pushpin to memory.

3. Fussing has begun. Upgrade everywhere, in studio, students, subject matter, styles, and products.

4. Inquire. When I began writing and painting, I asked those further along for advice. For ideas. My nephew Peter Granucci told me to determine my icons. So I began making lists of things I loved visually, like owls, butterflies, dragonflies. I kept idea files from newspapers or jottings from journaling that piqued my interest for a plot or a scenario for a book.

When faced with the daunting task of filling a 3-year-long contract for a month-long 2-person show in Southern Pines, I asked what smaller works would shine and sell. Medium range prices were the Exhibiting House’s specs. I’m reviewing these now. Which are repeaters?

5. Make a list, even if you’re not a list person per se. It’s a magnet for related answers called the cluster method.

6. Throw anything you’ve outgrown or never want to see again away. Organize subjects below your pictures. Coordinated clutter looks less cluttered. Throw some pictures away. Hurt, but felt better later. There’s a time to gather stuff, and a time to throw stuff away.

7. Think in series. Enhance what you’ve already begun by doing a new painting in similar colors and subject to extend or form a series. Ooh, that’s good for writing, too. Resonance works as well as novelty. “Airworthy” is the painting propelling my change this year.

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My New Show at Campbell House in Southern Pines, NC Reception Friday, October 4, 4-6pm I’m keen on nostalgia. Keen, but not sentimental. My nostalgia has a Cutting Edge. You might wonder what in the world that means. I’ll try to answer. It means things have halos around them. Like people, they have ‘their day,’ and then age, mellow, deteriorate, or gain patina like an expensive antique would. Or they die. It may mean that besides being three-dimensional, that they are multi-dimensional. An object achieves life outside of the people that own it due to the passage of time. Locks are designed for beauty and longevity to keep people safe. So when they age on abandoned buildings, their beauty beckons me. Their story intrigues. Why, I wonder, are such beautiful fittings left to ruin. I wonder where the owners went or why. Was there a murder or suicide like on Forensic Files, or an attempted arson. I ask myself if the heir or heirs died in a car wreck or in a battle overseas. As a child, I searched the fields for arrowheads. I visited our  250-year old family house and noticed the old doorknobs and decorative fittings. I saw spider webs lit by sun and dew. There is sometimes a sadness surrounding things–or a sense of place. When a moth lands on a windowsill it reminds me of a church basement and family feeds. When a dragonfly lights on a car, the mystery of an ancient creature and a metallic modern creation converge for a moment, maybe even collide. So I try out various subjects–the debris in a barn that saw its day, the sun playing over each piece after tobacco barns were a thing of the past, turned dangerous, and needed pulling down. Born in the outlying area of Dunn, NC, near the Cape Fear River, I have lived around the U.S. and abroad—in Massachusetts, Kentucky, North Carolina, Austria, and Germany. My husband and children and I traveled extensively over the U.S. and Europe. I work in watercolor, oil, and pencil and cannot give either discipline up. My family were arts oriented teachers who encouraged every appealing art direction, even drawing on the wall from my crib. Through influences of the masters, Rembrandt, Reubens, da Vinci, old lithographs in books, these moments were caught and seen. Through foreigners’ eyes as far away as Russia my home and pieces of reality were examined. In a rural setting in the Old South, my light catchers stored up birds, colored glass, warped and decayed wood. That’s how they achieved a cutting edge with me. Nostalgia cuts into my indifference and draws fresh blood and pain, sometimes from their unexpected beauty–and sometimes from sensing the story did not have a happy ending. Learn more »

New Books Brewing

Just when you get used to life as it is, changes occur. A friend moves away. Your massage therapist loses her place of operation. Nothing like it, I’d say. Well, I’m changing, too. Thanks to my web SEO, you’ve a new surprise waiting for you at the website bearing my name. A little clue: it’s in this article elsewhere.

My book Stone of Her Destiny just came out on Amazon on August 5, and I’ve written a dossier on Kenna’s ancestor, plus a new book, Inheritance Spurned, and another new novel begun, The Tarbert Legacy.

All of the new work is part of the Highland-Cape Fear Thriller Series, a series filled with all things Scottish, the Stone of Destiny, a Southern mansion, intense love, a Cape Fear River chase scene, and unasked-for-thrills and adventures, old letters and other treasures. A series, and yet each book is a standalone. My speed of writing has increased drastically, and I must say, it needed to.

Authors can make it today, but they have to work harder than ever. If an author wants to tell her kind of story for the reader to enjoy some gourmet goodies that are just a little bit off the mainstream, she has to publish herself. If she wants a higher cut of the proceeds from the work she does, she goes Indie. Yes, it’s easier than ever in many ways, but harder just due to the multiplicity of apps and services he or she has to have and pay for in order to make it in publishing and marketing.

Since I’m writing this to fans, readers, and lovers of the independent way, I won’t bore you with information that others can give you better. If you want to know about all the bells and whistles, check out Mark Dawson’s Self-Publishing Formula. I have him to thank for my recent progress. I have started dictating my books, too, which coincides with my shoulders protesting their typing and painting loads. It’s a pain (the dictating pain) that you can master, as well, if you have the inclination.

Lane Campbell and Kenna Alford Campbell still inspect their ancestry, and are hot on the heels of an ancestor common to both of them. Their searches and activities have captured a lot of unwanted interest as well as buzz, enough to keep them ahead of the curve of their life spans and unexpected curves of impinging loyalties. Fortunately so far, the stalkers just want to know what they know. That might just change.

There’s nothing as certain as change.

Hop on the bandwagon and read my other standalones, as well.

 

 

 

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The Winning Attitude

Paint-through, a new term that I think I’ve created is cannibalized from the book marketing sector to apply to painting. Besides being a writer, I’m an art teacher of 30-some years. Writing webinars that tell you about click-through and read-through referring to number of one-author books a reader reads through prompted the term ‘paint-through,’ or what it takes to finish a painting, an art course or a stretch of growth as an artist.

As a lifelong artist and art teacher, I have taught thousands of students. I’ve had art school graduates return for lessons–in one case, to learn how to paint a pearl that was three dimensional. She began lessons with me for a second time and took art several years before returning for her art masters to UNC-Chapel Hill Graduate School. I have the advanced knowledge and taste discrimination that a teaching visual artist needs to guide those who want to learn art basics. I have helped develop artists’ skilled expression of their talent. But I had a foundation of many years of art training in high school, college, correspondence art school, and then in Germany, in Old Masters’ watercolor (Polish master Leon Jonczyk) and oil painting  (German master Bergheim). Plus, I came from a supportive family–but a critical one.

My grandmother thought an artist was born, not made. Even as a young person I argued with her, “Grandma, artists are made, not born.” I’ve taken a multitude of lessons over the years to back that up (and grow).

In my years of experience, what keeps so many would-be artists from actualizing hinges more on attitude than talent.

Yet what is the number one question asked me by parents, but whether or not I think their child has talent. Frequently, the boosting agency of parents as in ‘she has so much talent’ I find more harm than help, a vaccine against input from those experienced enough to teach you more. Talent is a given. A starting place. Skill is what you want to achieve with the talent you were given, not the ‘fun’ or pleasure you derive from it, also a given, I would hope. It is disheartening to a teacher to get a student who only wants praise and never input, who cries at the drop of a pencil. Many times they want a particular artist’s style, or a pretty look, but they aren’t willing to work hard to get it.  They don’t even care if they understand or not. They get discouraged and blame it on someone else who didn’t give them what they wanted. Many put their talent into cold storage.

Would-be artists put their talent in the deep freeze in one of several ways.

Seven good ways not to develop talent:
* Never use it.
* Don’t take courses, after all, it’s just a matter of drawing/painting what you see.
* Never-ever listen to your art teacher. I mean he or she still makes mistakes, doesn’t she?
* Never take critique. All your friends tell you just how great you are, how dare anyone mention a new idea, direction, art concept, way?
* Counting a sale as a statement of artistic merit, rather than the boost to ego and pocketbook it is.
* Cultivate the noble savage notion–that greatness springs forth from babes like a trial run of America Has Talent.

*Take from a teacher who only praises you, plays, and never shows you anything new.

So what sort of attitude is one that will enhance your art growth and create healthy improvement in your art? First of all, you need to look at good art. Educate your senses–disputing taste is different from developing your taste. That’s the basis of experiential art knowledge. If you refuse to look beyond coloring books and bad illustration, it’s hopeless. You need to view paintings and drawings of truly great artists, not only commercial, not to discourage but to inspire you. And above all to train your eye. Delight in nearby museums, galleries, and ateliers growing up around the country and whose artists’ works you can access on-line. Look at them daily.

THE SIX “D’s” or DECISIONS THAT GUARANTEE GROWTH

Number 1. Determination.

Is that a synonym for paint-through? Partly. It certainly takes determined effort to make it past the potholes of life and art. Determination is a hard factor that may grate on personality and impinge on creativity over time. It may translate to action, but it doesn’t of itself guarantee the action will be coordinated, planned or building-block. Without more it might just be a scattershot, hit or miss thing, sporadic, this determination.

Number 2. D for Dogged.

That’s quite similar in many ways to determined, but says more repetitive attempts and new trials. It’s sticking to it with a glue-like persistence which is admirable. You can get so dogged that your brains fall out, your insights dull, and your patterns become non-productive. So now, we add dogged to determined, but there’s more.

Number 3. Delivery.

This attitude lifts you up to the high spots, the aha moments, the tripping lightly from stone to stone in an ever-increasing stairway to the stars. As long as you are on an emotional high this can carry you quite a-ways. So we can add delivery to dogged and determined. But there’s gotta be more.

Number 4. Delight.

Now here’s a new idea altogether. Delight. What delights you? This is worthy of a great deal of morning pages (thanks to my book friend, Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, I’ve been doing this most every morning for years and years. By doing this exercise you explore your psyche and learn to be honest with yourself and turn into your own best friend. You tell yourself all your secrets. You see what irks you beyond belief, what makes you actually smile when you think of it–the feel of pain, the smells that evoke certain emotions, the particular images you like and speak to you. So we add delight to our attitude, and that’s it?  Not really; there’s more.

Number 5. D for Discovery.

Exploration, adventuring forward on a question is a way of turning the control knob down on fear and trepidation. it’s a way of opening the door to new ways of expressing old loves, not waiting until you’re ready but plunging in, diving into it. Waiting until I have money, waiting until I have my project defined. Waiting, waiting, waiting, until the cobwebs form. We want each new project to be a voyage of discovery, exciting and unknown.

Add all these things together to give yourself a lively attitude, but you also need the discipline of an apprentice.

Number 6, Discipline which comes from disciple.

You need to make yourself a loyal apprentice to someone who knows way more than you do, learn solid principles of color, design, perspective, figure and face drawing. You need humility not to be prickly, to take tips from an expert who can teach you. That will keep you from embarrassing yourself and from being a dilettante or turning out half-baked as an artist. Hard words to live by in a ‘do-it-yourself’ world with an attitude of ‘you can’t tell me anything.’

Growing up and achieving “paint-through” results in a satisfied student with an excellent portfolio who brags on her teacher and the corrections and teaching they have honed their art through. Hmmm, another coined word, ‘art-through’?

 

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“Executive Shoe Shine”–Clin-ton

Two days ago I finished a new full sheet watercolor painting! Plus, I’m getting another watercolor, “Grooves,” ready to show in West Jefferson, with the Watercolor Society of North Carolina in their upcoming October annual juried art show, but more about that, later.

In answer to a long-term friend, Rebecca Graham’s question upon seeing my work, “Is this a still that you painted? Where did the inspiration come from?” I have to say, this latest watercolor I’m calling a figure painting launch as it’s my first, makes it, of course, a portrait painting as well. However, I’ve done watercolor portraits before. I’ve done figure painting in watercolor before too, but I haven’t entered any of them in shows. They were done mostly as sketches in figure drawing classes on inferior quick-sketch paper, or as preliminary studies for my oil portraits.

The subject of this painting is a man I met in the downstairs lobby of the Reston Hyatt-Regency in Washington, D.C., or Reston, Virginia, to be more accurate on the very weekend of the Portrait Society of America’s annual convention and International Juried Show. I introduced myself to him and he to me. His name was Clinton, pronounced in a much stronger way than usual, indicated by the dash, Clin-ton. He was so friendly and delightful. I was tired from racing to seminars and convention specials, between venues temporarily. Being the good salesman that he was he wanted to shine my shoes. I looked down at them and saw that, indeed, they could use a good shine, so I said yes, but then remembered I had no change on me and told him I’d have to come down later.

He named his price but told me I could pay him later. Wow, I’m not sure I’d have been so trusting, but he assured me it was okay. I climbed up the massive piece of furniture to the leather seat and watched him shine and polish while we talked random subjects. He told me he hailed from Selma, NC, originally and I was amazed he had lived so close to me. I grimaced a bit and said, “where all the race riots were.” He acted as though he didn’t know what I was talking about.

We talked about Southern delicacies like okra and other good foods he ate when he returned to family reunions in Selma. He asked me why I was there, and I told him I painted portraits. Probably showed him a few I’d done. I had a new business card with a portrait on it I gave him which he exclaimed on and gave me his card for Exec-U-Shine, his second business. He was retired, but he needed the business for his sanity he said, which I understood a hundred percent. I didn’t notice the quote under his business name Exec-U-Shine until after I was home, but I laugh with delight now at “Politically Correct Shoe Polishing.”

When he finished, I was refreshed, my shoes looked great, and I’d made a new friend. He was beautiful in every way, and I asked him if he minded if I took a picture of him. At first I didn’t think he was going to let me, but then he gave me permission to do so along with permission to paint him. I can’t wait to contact him and let him know I think it’s done.

I’m about to enter it in a show, now, under my title which I tested on Facebook and got rave reviews from Rebecca Graham that went like this: “Oh My Gosh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????????? joANNA ?????? This is flipping INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!  “I loooove ‘Executive Shoe Shine.’ Gosh, I’m so struck by him. You have drawn me in and made me want to know everything about him… his birth story, his childhood, his injustices, his triumphs, his great loves, his favorite foods, his view on God, his world view. I just want to connect with him. And is that a cup of java I see?? Ha! Every good gent needs his fuel! Wow. Jo, you make me feel like I’m right there in front of him. I can smell the shoe shine and hear his old man breathing grunts as he positions himself to shine on. His tennis shoes, those chairs! The detail is phenomenal. I can’t quit looking at it!”

Well, here it is, then. Wish me well on my show entries one of my students Allison Coleman who attended two PSoA conferences with me commanded me to do after saying she thought it was her all-time favorite work of mine.

Oh, and I just remembered, Clinton gave us a shortcut home that probably saved us three hours travel or sitting in traffic time. Thanks, Clinton. ‘Til we meet again, because I am sure we shall!

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Swirls of blue, orange, yellow and red make an exciting focal point for the eye. Crabs say “beach” and “childhood memories.” And Pat Smith, formerly of Texas which state also claims the blue-shelled crab regaled me with tales of how they caught their crabs on lines. Pat hales from Texas, Virginia, Boston, Connecticut, and now Dunn.

Pat came to j’Originals’ Art Studio/Art on Broad Atelier as an accomplished student already, although she calls herself “a late-starting amateur artist who paints occasionally.” She has turned out some terrific paintings there, so it was particularly flattering to have her fall in love with one of my newest paintings done on 22 x 30-inch, 300-lb Arches watercolor paper, a painting entered into several juried art shows, most notably, however, selected for the 72nd Juried Exhibition of the Watercolor Society of North Carolina (WSNC) at Greensboro College in Greensboro, NC, in October 2017.

The show was juried and judged by nationally-acclaimed watercolorist Mary Whyte where it won the Golden Artist Colors Award. I am a signature member of WSNC.

The painting hung in the Anne Rudd Galyon and Irene Cullis Galleries in the Cowan Building at Greensboro College, October 15 – November 18, 2017. There was a début gala weekend October 14-15, 2017, and the painting was also honored in the WSNC 72nd art exhibition catalog, as well as being selected for the follow-on WSNC Traveling Show.

With the traveling show, the painting hung first at the Florence Thomas Art School in West Jefferson, NC, from December 1, 2017 to January 13, 2018.

It then traveled to Theatre Art Galleries in High Point, NC, where it was on view until January 25 to March 29, 2018.

Finally, the show including her painting hung at Edward C. Smith Civic Center in Lexington, NC, from April 4 to May 19, 2018.

“I love the spontaneity of watercolor, the challenge of a puzzle, and the brilliant-colored blue-shelled crabs caught and encased by a simple-yet-complex spiral net.

“I took multiple pictures of the crabs caught on the pier near Carolina Beach, and produced two paintings. I loved the spiraling rope that issued the challenge of leaving white paper by painting bright colors in reverse up to it. The crabs would’ve bitten my toes off, if they could have. They are a wonderfully-crafted map of color. I loved every minute of my 40 to 60 hours of painting them! I must say as well, they are very tasty.”

“Crab Art-Attack” had several admirers before choosing to go to its new home with my latest collector Pat Smith, mother of Cara Shackelford, both being now from Dunn. Pat has lived around and about. She and her husband have four children all over the U.S. and landed in my studio in Dunn after our meeting as her daughter Cara’s guest at Daughter of the American Revolution (DAR)’s Cornelius-Harnett Chapter before its shut-down.

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“Stone of Her Destiny-Stormclyffe” Special:

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