Postcards From California

Receiving a card from Pat is always special, and i was doubly lucky to receive two!  The top image image shows Pat's walking trail in Orange.  I think Pat is particularly brilliant at depicting trees in graphite.  All those negative spaces and array of tones.  I always feel inspired to pick up my pencils after looking at her work!

On the reverse of the card is an image of Sam, Pat's cat.  The nice thing is, Sam looks just like my own cat, so it's particularly fun to have received this. Don't you just love the wacky positions cats can get into when they are grooming!




The second card depicts the beach near to where Pat lives. She says "I can watch the water forever and not get tired of seeing the colours change, the shapes transform and of course, the people."

I love this, it captures the beach and the weather and sea breeze perfectly.

 

Thank you Pat! 

 

 

CORK OAK, SYCAMORE, EUKALYPTUS, PALMS, ELM, JACARANDA trees by Pat Reese

Dear Pat, yes your card has reached me happily and healthy. Here, too, the summer is over. The green slowly turns into a symphony of yellow, red and brown. The nights are becoming colder. Where we live on the other side of the road chestnuts break every few minutes loudly through the leaves of a giant tree.

As you know I love trees. Therefore, I am especially pleased with your great composed gathering of trees which you've drawn with a beautiful spontaneous stroke. It is another fine card of my growing mailart collection. Thank you so much! Albrecht

A peaceful garden

I received this gorgeous card from Pat on my arrival home from my recent trip. She says” this is a garden I designed. I had a chance to visit with the owner and sketch while she took a phone call.It really loos great and sitting there was just what I needed to have a few moments alone with nature. Ah! Isn’t that exactly what this card expresses?... The lovely tranquillity and rest of sitting in a beautiful garden. As someone who never uses pencil and is addicted to colour, I really love the way that this simple pencil sketch tells us so much about the garden that Pat was in. I am always constantly amazed by all the things that my sketchercise friends do as well as there artwork– including designing gardens for friends! Thanks Pat – your card made my day!

196 Cards from A Postcard from my walk - a tribute to Earth Day

Our project has come to an end. With many stories to tell about lost cards and some destroyed by rain and some never received and some resent...it was exciting, kept us on our toes and we were constantly challenged to come up with interesting and original subjects. But here we are...a little over a year later and very appropriate for earth day 2012, we look back on our cards and a great satisfaction and contentment bring a smile to our faces. It was a year well spent around the pencil and brush.

 

Click on each image to see the bigger version.

Cards sent by:

Albrecht Richter - Germany

Alison Staite - England

Bridget Hunter - Scotland

Cathy Gatland - South Africa

Charlene Brown - Canada

Desirée Dianne Habicht - USA

Felicity Grace - Switzerland

Katherine Tyrrell - England

Liz Steel - Australia

Martin Stankewitz - Germany

Pat Reece - USA

Robyn Sinclair - Italy

Ronelle van Wyk

Vivien Blackburn - England

Thank you to everybody who shared this trip with us around the world, whether it was by regular visits or leaving comments or simply just stopping by. The more the company, the merrier the spirit!

Thank you!

Postcard from Pat

I can't really call this a postcard from Pat as in reality it is 10x8" and is so exquisite it needs to be framed and hung on a wall! The scan doesn't really do all the colours in this card justice but it shimmers with warm Californian sunshine and the darks lead you into the distance and draw you along this beautiful path.

Pat's great sense of humour comes across with these gorgeous little painted stamps on the back!

As if all that wasn't enough, there is also a fabulous pen and watercolour sketch on the envelope! Thank you so much, Pat!

Baubles and Fir Trees

How would you feel to see this bright, colourful card lying on the doormat on a dreich December afternoon when you'd just struggled in laden with gifts for the grandchildren after a tiring day's shopping. My reaction was to kick off the boots, make a coffee and sit down to enjoy looking at Pat's wonderful Christmas design.

Then turning it over I was doubly blessed to see a beautiful winter tree study, so simply but effectively drawn.

The card became part of the Christmas decorations, nestling in amongst the holly on the mantlepiece for the rest of the holiday. Thankyou for this Pat.

An Ethereal Forest in California

I found this splendid painting by Pat Reese waiting for me when we arrived home from our Christmas travels. It's magical the way Pat has conveyed so much detail and atmosphere with each perfect stroke. I don’t think there’s one wasted mark here!

I’m guessing these are eucalypts, and that the card was painted using liquid graphite – Pat didn’t actually say much.  In fact, here’s the entire succinct message on the other side of the card. Isn’t it beautifully painted and just exactly right?

Liquid graphite from Pat

 

Yesterday this beautiful monochrome experiment with graphite watercolour arrived from Pat,  There are lots of subtleties of tone that sadly my scanner is refusing to pick up without overdarkening the darks,

Pat you've caught the light in woodland beautifully with this - it's so much like walking through our local woods with those lovely patches of mystery where you can hardly tell what's going on, and the intensely backlit leaves, silhouetted against darker foliage behind.

I have some water soluble graphite pencils but can see that this is another thing to add to my wish list!

and on the reverse

Sadly these little studies don't scan well but they are really lovely with subtlety and lost edges. 

An old tree in California

A couple of days ago I received this fine line drawing by Pat Reese showing a Californian tree. It seems that I am not the only one who is sometimes speculating what such an old tree has been looking on and has heard during it's life time.
Funny things, frightening situations, drama, silly conversations, a lot of lawn mowing and more...

I wish I knew what species that tree is and would like to request Pat from here to find out for me. Looking at the trunk I would guess it is a Metasequoia glyptostroboides (that sounds great) or similar. In that case Pat would have cheated us on the foliage, what I really do not want to suppose.

Thank you Pat for the beautiful tree and the kind words!

A beautiful tree and a bit of the Californian Hills

I am so excited to received this stunning card from Pat - for days the card has been sitting popped up on my computer(a reminded to scan and post!) and I have been admiring the seemingly effortless way she draws trees! It has been such a treat to be looking at it for the last week now

And then when I picked it up to scan I suddenly remembered that this was only half of it...look what is on the back- beautiful blues, purple, cream and yellows!
thank you Pat! I love it!

Peek into a Creative Corner

Pat's card has arrived and transported me into her private, creative world. This beautifully rendered study is a corner of her den. It has such a calm elegance I just want to take my mug of coffee and a note book and sit there, confident that it is the source of inspiration. Pat obviously took her mug of coffee in there with her because a little of it has added to the antique style of my card. You'd never pick it because it has been transformed into a grape vine, above a lovely splash of summer landscape on the reverse side of the card.

Beautiful environmental stamps too. Thanks Pat, I love it!

Balboa Beach Sunset

From a park above Balboa Beach, California

I've received this delighful postcard of the view from a park above Balboa Beach in California from Pat. It's on heavyish watercolour paper.  I couldn't quite decide whether it was NOT or rough.  It certainly stood up to its travels very well.

Pat tells me that she climbs up the hill in the park so she can see the ocean, the rooftops and the sunset in the evening.   She then sketches at the top before taking herself off a pastry and a coffee!

The view and her story took me back instantly to 2006.  I whiled away some time during my drive down Highway 1 from San Francisco to San Diego having my Sunday morning breakfast in a cafe above Zuma Beach on Highway 1 in Malibu.

Pat's postcard reminded me so much of being up high looking down at the California coastline and the Pacific Ocean.  It's great to have a reminder of what it feels like to look down at the ocean.

The weather is playing games on our gardens in California

I received this beautiful postcard from Pat the other day, such a surprise to have a hand full of mail and to glimpse the colorful corner of her card. She couldn't have sent me a more perfect card, the garden is my shangri la. Pat tells me that she has been working in the garden and sat down to rest and do her sketch. She says that the grapes are early and the Camilla's should have been all done blooming in February. I do feel your same issues although I am loving this cooler weather. Thanks Pat for such a perfect card!

Gallery-May postcards

The round-up of our May postcards.

A pause in a wild spring garden: a postcard from Pat to Ronell.

Sometimes words aren't necessary to describe beauty. It should be left to be silently admired by each beholder.

...a pause in a wild spring garden...
acrylics and ink on watercolor paper, 12.8x17.6cm

For me, who loves "story painting", this beautiful card by Pat says it all: A pause in her wild spring garden.

Pat, who is a professional gardener among other things, captured so much of the exuberant energy and optimism of this moment with her brush and acrylics... and the poppies, of which the seeds simply came from her spice rack, call us by name out to our own gardens!

A detail of the thick luscious strokes of the acrylics on her poppies and the watery colors melting into one another to form the background. Great skill and comprehension of perspective and depth of field.

...detail...

Thank you for such a special card Pat!

A sketch, a short note and a face on the side of a flower pot. A postcard from Pat

This is my first mailart postcard that I get from California. Great! It shows a tree-shaded road that leads into a forest. And on the back of the Card Pat sketched an antique head on a flower pot. The beautiful stamp from Grand Teton National Park fits perfect!

Many thanks Pat for this spontaneous drawing that you have probably drawn with an ink pen.

Bolsa Chica - An American Wildlife Reserve

This is a beautiful postcard painted by Pat Reese. It's a glorious view across part of the Bolsa Chica Wildlife Reserve in Huntington Beach California. It looks like a very serene and special place. Pat told me a few days later she was visiting Las Vegas - I can't begin to imagine what the contrast must be like going from a place of such beauty and solitude to the bright neon lights, traffic, noise etc that is Las Vegas city.  I am so glad Pat chose this view for me!   Thank you Pat!

A Postcard from Californian Woods

I found myself singing 'Postcard Pat' to the tune of a certain well known children's TV programme as I watched and waited for this card to arrive in the letterbox and before long, there it was, a little gem of a watercolour done by Pat Reese, whose work I've followed and admired for a long time. I'm so thrilled to have this, and see close up and personal the subtle watercolour washes and delicately penned trees of the lovely Californian woods that she walks through with dear Ivy the Greyhound.

Thank you Pat! - I'll leave you with her last appropriate words and the pretty rose doodle on her postcard...

Introducing Pat Reese

I have thought of myself as an artist all of my life.  However, I was taught from a very early age that what I did was just a hobby.  My family believed that the best thing for me was an education in any field that would earn an acceptable income.  They believed that art would never provide security of income.  I finished my education, started my career, married, and created a wonderful family.  Eventually, after my family was grown, I retired and started a new life.  I gave myself permission to do what I have always wanted.  I found artists that I had been following and appreciating, and took classes to learn their skills.  I was able to go to many colleges, schools, workshops and studios to gain skills I required to ‘create art’.  About 20 years ago I found that traveling, sketching and painting made me very happy, and I began my first journal.

I have owned a gallery, providing an opportunity for local artists to display and sell their artistic creations.  I have participated in competitions, sold paintings, taught art and craft classes.  My art has been displayed in many galleries and museums, and my art is owned by private and corporate collectors.  Now I have pulled back from the requirements of others and found that sketching plein air, walking with my dog and journaling what I see daily is what makes me very, very happy. I am reminded of a story of a new school teacher who was brought in by a secluded community to teach their children.  The teacher found that the children never ran or jumped or ever let their feet leave the ground.  She found that the adults had trained the children never to lift their feet from the ground because, as the story progresses, the towns people could fly, and if others knew their secret, the towns people would be judged and persecuted.   The quote from Marianne Williamson, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure”, has become my motto for the last part of my life.

Through my blog, I found a group of like-minded artists who have brought a joy to my life that I didn't know was possible.  A little over a year ago, I found this wonderful group of artists, headed by Katherine Tyrrell, called Sketchercise.  With the support of this group of exercising artists, I have continued to exercise, lose weight and sketch daily.  The postcard exchange will be a great opportunity to see, firsthand, what each of our art really looks like in real life.