My Blog

  • Degas and Cassatt, Partners in Crime
  • Quote on Wednesday
    ‘Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do’.   Edgar Degas Friend of Mary Cassatt (who I quoted yesterday).  Realistic painters.   She, although single, is noted for her mother and child subject matter.  Degas is often associated with his ballet dancers, among other subjects.
  • Quote for the Day
    Through the years, I have read quotes that inspire me and give me added confidence to paint.  Here is one by Mary Cassatt: “I live alone, and I love my work.” Let’s hear it for solitude!
  • “All art requires courage” Anne Tucker
    As I sit regarding the blank white canvas, I am struck by the quote by Anne Tucker.  Even though we (as professional artists) have made canvas after canvas, the blank canvas still ‘rquires courage.’   Once I asked my son why he wished to travel to exotic places, he said, “Mom, I’m just a blank…
  • New Abstract Painting “Ancient Symbols”
  • Exciting Exhibit – the Cortile Gallery
    I was invited as a guest artist to show my work along with 10 other artists for the annual Gallery Labor Day Exhibition. The Cortile Gallery is located in Provincetown, MA….on Cape Cod. It should be a great opening on Aug. 29 from 6:30-8:30. For anyone who lives near, come on down! I am showing…
  • Process over Finished Product?
    What is more exciting. The action of painting a piece, or looking at it after it has been resolved into a finished work? I often wonder what artists think about this. I hope there will be some comments from artists in regard to this.
  • See.Me Billboard Show
    It was pretty exciting, seeing the work of hundreds of artists flashed on billboards in Times Square. I didn’t get to the city for this event, but published photos of the works were as thrilling as fireworks. I actually could not see my 4 acrylic paintings but realize they were there for the crowd to…
  • Mannerists: The first Modern Artists?
    As college student, I studied Renaissance Art and its non-conformist painters, the Mannerists. When I first viewed Parmigianino’s work, “Madonna with the Long Neck” , I found it so unsettling. It violated all the Renaissance compositions that reflected harmony and a sense of balance. The Madonna is extremely distorted and the baby on her lap…
  • Grey Day in New England
    I bought the house I live in because it has an all weather porch with 7 windows near my easel. Artists are certainly concerned with the light and today is so rainy and grey (as it has been most of week) I probably will not paint. When the sun comes out tomorrow, the painting will…
  • July 15 Words of Wisdom?
    Second day writing. This is a discipline really. It’s better than a ‘Dear Diary’ I believe. Although diaries were mostly private. I belong to a writing group and usually do sketches in the journal after I finish the exercise, while everyone is still writing. It becomes a word and image sort of thing. Back in…
  • Blogging
    Let me say this to all that have seen my website. I have learned that I don’t ‘blog’ enough. So I am going to try and get a new page going that not only helps artists with technique, but talk about my everyday life as a painter. And I do apologize for the ‘educator’ in…
  • Upside Down Love/Client environment
  • New Abstract Painting –
  • Won “Best of Show”
    It was my honor to win Best of Show at the annual juried exhibition of Monson Arts Council. This new work, as pictured, was inspired by Charles DeMuth’s “I See the Figure Five in Gold” which came from the poet, Wm Carlos Williams poem about a fire engine. My painting is “I see the Figure…
  • Jackson Pollock
    Playing with Fire
  • New Work
  • A New Abstract Painting “Conversation”
    I try to paint every day. This painting “Conversation” is one of my newest works. It’s an acrylic 24×30″ and available in giclee form as well. The process of painting combines new technicques using rollers, scrapers, palette knives, brushes. It always works from the inside out and ends up in a unity of composition after…
  • The Poetry in the Sculpture of Eva Hesse
    Eve Hesse’s works were called brilliant, eccentric, and loony by critics.  I was privileged to give a few presentations at conferences held in Canada and Ireland, hosted by the International Word and Image Society.  I missed the deadline for the conference held in California, but I put together a proposal about the relationship of text…
  • New Abstract Paintings Added to Abstract Gallery
    New acrylic work on canvas added today.  Using tools instead of only brushes, I can scrape layers off and leave transparent passages that are juxtaposed against opaque shapes, then justified to create finished composition.
  • My Acrylic Choices “You have to change to stay the same.” Wm deKooning
    MY ACRYLIC CHOICES
  • AOM Art opportunities newsletter
  • lightspacetime abstract exhibition
    SR – Carole Guthrie – ABSTRACTS 2013 AWARD CERTIFICATE
  • TheArtfulHome.com Spring Catalog
  • The Armory Show, NYC
    The recent Armory Show features many artists we know and love along with new talent.  l wasn’t able to physically attend, but the online presentation is worth a look!
  • Jurying for the Mac Arts Council Annual Show
    Vision as Voice Last week, three of us juried the annual show in Monson, MA.  There were over 250 entries, many of them digital.  It was a congenial effort for all three of us.  Reception is on March 23, 2013.
  • A Group of Artists interpreting Wistariahurst Mansion
    A group of us met in June and took in the feelings that the Victorian Mansion in Holyoke, MA provided. I felt the energy of the Skinner Family, silk merchants, still alive and well in the house. My painting, “The Ghost in the Music Room” hung in the gallery over the fireplace and I hope…
  • Beautiful England
    My visit to the UK to see son, granddaughter and son’s partner was invigorating in so many ways. Usually, we head off tot he Tate or a London museum, but this time, the South Downs provided all the inspiration needed. Perusing the pubs, with their eclectic menus and warm atmosphere is something to sit back…
  • Kandinsky again
    I guess it is heartening as a painter to know that some of my heroes, namely Kandinsky, sometimes miss their mark.  I refer to the early work pictured on my August Kandinsky calendar.  Whoa, buddy, what were you thinking?  Of course, Picasso had a few ‘unsuccessful’ works which still bring in millions at auction!
  • Musing on Kandinsky’s Point and Line to Plane
    Moving from nature and tornadoes to Kandinsky’s passionate philosophy about art making is a relief, even though the drama is revealed in the artist’s non-objective paintings. In his essay, “Point and Line to Plane,” he says the point is akin to language and is a language signifier. The point as period, but further he says…
  • Art and Passion
    Nature’s Drama of June 1 was unsettling and the funnel cloud traveled in a random pattern throughout Western Mass. I was in the basement with my 4 year old grandson, watching the eerie color outside as the 100 mile per hour winds uprooted trees and tore my fence apart. It was frightening. It was like…
  • Found: Two art Poems-Won Edgar A. Poe award for Sky Cathedral-
    Additions to my poems about artists and art.
  • UMASS Lecture
    In July, I was asked to give a lecture for Senior EdVentures at UMASS, my alma mater.  It was good going back there as a teacher, and the group was so responsive.  My lecture had to do with 3 artists that used Word and Image, drawn from several lectures given for the International Society of…
  • Large Acrylics (30×40″) just added
    After spending the spring and summer working on mixed media florals that are 18 x24″ or 16×20″ I decided to do some larger canvases.  They are of an abstract nature and require the viewer’s response and interpretation.
  • The Aesthetic Dinner Party
    “Fortune is a woman…”Machiavelli Michelangelo painted beautiful hands. If he was a guest at my dinner table he might quickly study hands, hands lifting wine glasses hands serving bouillabaisse in steaming pots hands arrnging yellow tulips, blue iris in a glass pitcher. If Leonardo ws a guest at my dinner table He’d bring his leather…
  • Art Poems
    COLOR Picasso had his blue period Then the rose, followed by The white, black and grey of Guernica, his ode to the horrors of war. I don’t of Picasso in terms of red, period. Red rests on every canvas in my living room above the red Turkish carpet.   Dense rich vibrant cadmium. It is blood…
  • Art Process
    I have just completed three new mixed media canvases using old master prints with florals…My colleague has just scanned this new one called, “DaVinci Revisited”…..See it in the Interior Design Gallery
  • New Work for Interior Designers
    I have created a new series of work based on floral themes. These are collaged mixed media paintings on canvas.  In researching floral paintings, I found that most offerings on the net were your typical ‘flowers in vases’ or photography studies.  I wanted to present an option to designers for client needs.  In particular, these…
  • My Process in Making 5 generations in a Collage
    history on a canvas, 5 generations of Boenzli-Guthrie males.
  • Spring and Miracles
    Spring is summoned out of icy doldrums with icicle melt comes the crocus poking their heads through snow vestiges. The Buddha in my garden uncoverd sits naked in the morning sun, wondering if the chives and rosemary survived. And what of the goldfish in the pond? A new child, a spring arrival. We see her…
  • Life is a Journey
    Waiting in Boston’s Logan Airport with my son, the excitement so heightened that we had to call someone. No cell phones yet. The public phone was the avenue to call dad in Michigan. “We’re on our way to Miami, the on to Guatemala. I heard Michael say. He is a Leo and Leo’s are bound…
  • Generations
    He is our family historian, he moves around the world with ease, discovering family secrets, uncovering lost traces. “I found the ship’s manifest online,” he said. “Shows the date and time Grandma Benzli arrived from Europe, with her Uncle John and sister, Betty.” Seeing the document I felt I had touched history, a fantasy made…

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