Tag Archives: flowers

Chair Paintings – Part 2

The shapes of chairs create interesting negative space. Their legs and slatted backs let the landscape or background show through. They frame a view and enhance their surroundings. You can put things on their seats that aren’t people – flowerpots, pillows, and cats. And, in the right light, they cast dramatic shadows.

The first chair painting I did was all about this negative space. I stained the surface of a canvas the brown color of the chair and painted the white walls around the edges of the structure and its shadow.

“Chair and Shadow,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 1974

In 1983 I began to make my “set-ups” of chairs, rugs, plants, windows, etc. I moved them around inside or outside my house to take advantage of the light. Certain chairs made stronger statements than others, and I’ve used them over and over.

Here are some of the images I’ve painted since that first chair in 1974.

A Chair for the Museum Show

In 1985 I had a solo show at the Anchorage Museum. I did a series of paintings using the east window in my studio as a backdrop. I think this painting was the first “set-up” I made using a dining room chair, a plant, patterned rugs, and patterned cloth.

“East Window – May,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on linen, 40″ x 32″ 1983

Sunshine and Flowers

Every fall I bring all my geraniums inside for the winter. I love to see them in the sunlit living room, as the weather outside gets colder.

“Char and Flowers – September,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 1992

The Kitchen Chair

Our kitchen chairs are straight-backed and sturdy. They’re a solid and reassuring presence and good creators of negative space.

“Chair and Canvas #2,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 40″ x 30″ 1993

“Dark Chair and Pink Geraniums,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 40″ x 32″ 1996

“Chair and Flowers in an Empty Room,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 40″ x 32″ 1998

The White Chair

When my grandma Crump went into a nursing home she let us grandchildren each choose something they liked from her house. I had always wanted this white chair and a little white table that had been in my father’s bedroom when he was growing up. My dad had it packed up and sent all the way to Alaska for me. It’s a hard chair to paint because of all the turnings on the legs, but I love it.

“Chair and Flowers – Spring,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 40″ x 32″ 1992

“White Chair with Pansies and Geraniums,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 34″ x 26″ 2005

“Pink Geranium in a Blue Bowl,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 38″ x 30″ 2005

Mara’s Orange Chair

In high school my daughter Mara painted her bedroom orange. And one summer her friend Meghan gave her this orange chair for her birthday. It had been in the coffee shop where Mara worked, and when the place closed down Meghan somehow fit the chair into her little car and brought it to the orange room.

“Mara’s Orange Room,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 38″ x 30″ 1998

The Wing Back Chair

For a while this was my studio chair. But now I keep it in the living room where I sit to read or knit. It’s been recovered twice – that’s how well used it is.

“Striped Chair with Two Geranimus,” Carol Crump Bryner, oil on canvas, 34″ x 26″ 2005

“Chair with Pink Geranium,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache and colored pencil. 2010

Thanks for joining me on this chair adventure. Happy spring!

Me and my Great-Grampa Biggs sitting in the yard on a summer day, 1947

Gardens

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When a cousin visited me recently, we talked about the gardens on the farm. Most of the large crops of hay, corn, alfalfa, oats, barley, etc. were planted in fields away from the house. But near the house my grandparents grew all kinds of shrubs, flowers and vegetables.

My mother and her brothers and sister started their interest in gardens when they were very young. In this photo of them from Children’s Sunday, 1921, they hold tiny potted plants received that morning at church. All the Hall children went on to have “green thumbs.” My Aunt Lydia studied animal and plant life and raised orchids, Uncle Francis worked his whole life on the farm, Uncle Aaron tended a beautiful yard and garden, and my mother made striking bouquets from her flowers and then did paintings of them.

Francis, Lydia, Ellsworth, and Janet Hall, 1021

The visiting cousin, Skip, spent many years working on the farm and for our Uncle Francis and my grandparents. Skip never understood how anything could grow in the vegetable garden behind the farmhouse – it was so very full of rocks. I pulled up carrots from that garden and wiped them “clean” on my pants before taking a gritty bite. They tasted of sunshine and earth, and I don’t think there is any better way to eat a carrot.

“Garden Carrot,” Carol Crump Bryner, watercolor, 2014

At the foot of the hill leading to my Aunt Glenna and Uncle Francis’s house my grandmother grew flowers, and around the front of the house and across the street near the barnyard fence my grandfather planted hollyhocks. When they bloomed in the heat of summer he brought single hollyhock blossoms into the kitchen for my grandmother. They looked like dancing girls in brightly colored skirts balanced on the tips of his fingers.

Iris, hostas, peonies, and phlox are what I picture when I remember my grandmother’s gardens. Maybe that’s because the plants lived on for many years after she died. In 1986, sixteen years after her death, my grandmother’s flowers were plentiful enough for a bouquet. During a summer visit that year, my mother and my daughter picked an armful of phlox and hostas to put into a pewter pitcher for the dining room table. Most people grow hostas for their foliage, but I’ve always loved the pale lavender-colored blossoms because they remind me of Julys on Whirlwind Hill.

Mara Bryner and Janet Hall Crump picking flowers, 1986

On Monday: Agnes

June Window

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June must have been a welcome month for my great-grandmother, Lydia Jane Hall. By 1921, when she wrote the second quote, she was spending her days in a wheelchair because of rheumatism. But she was also, by that time, surrounded by the busy life of a farmhouse with three young children in it. She patiently sat through her days, watching, trying to help a little, and observing.

“June Window,” Carol Crump Bryner, monoprint

Sunday, June 1, 1913 – “A very fine day – everything is lovely outside. The birds are especially fine around us with their sweet notes, which is very nice for those that are at home like myself. Should be lonely without them.”

Thursday, June 2, 1921 – A nice cool day when the sun shines clear and warm. Everything is beautiful, the fields are full of flowers, the roses and peonies are coming. Lydia [my mother’s sister] brings them in to show me. Soon the harvest will be here. How fast we are going on the wings of time!”

Dark Purple Lilacs

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My mother’s likes and dislikes are not just memories for me – they’re imbedded in my own preferences. They go bone deep.

Maybe this is one of the ways a person lives on. Not just through memories but through the influence of their choices.

Planted near the farmhouse was a lilac of legend. It was reputed to have come from England on a ship with my great-grandfather, Joseph Biggs, my Grandma Hall’s father. He planted the first cutting in Glastonbury, Connecticut where he lived and worked and where my grandmother grew up. After my grandmother married my grandfather and moved to the farm, my great-grandfather Joseph planted a cutting from the English lilac at the back of the Hall farmhouse.

Joseph Biggs, sometime before he came to America in 1888, photo curtesy of Donna Palmer

The lilac was a deep dark purple – a very unique bloom, and highly prized by my mother. So when we moved to our own land on Whirlwind Hill, she planted a cutting behind the garage. It thrived. It was a lovely tree. I took this photo of a branch amongst a bouquet of lighter lilacs and dogwood in 2008. You can see the darker lilacs reflected in the mirror.

Whirlwind Hill Lilacs, 2008

Seven or eight years ago I pulled a lilac “sucker” from a dark purple lilac planted by a friend here in Anchorage. Because of my mother’s strong preference for this color lilac, I had to have one. The property where it was growing was being sold, the building demolished, and the tree transplanted, and I wanted to see if I could grow my own dark lilac. (The last I heard was that the transplanted tree didn’t survive.)

My husband and I have watched the baby tree every year for signs of flowers. Finally, this spring, we were excited to see buds. The friend who planted the original tree died this past winter, and it seems fitting for the tree to bloom in her honor. I’m sure my mother and my friend who both loved these English lilacs would be happy about their legacy.

Anchorage Lilac, 2014

On Monday: Doing Dishes

Violets – An Addendum

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Two weeks ago I wrote here about violets and about Mary E. Hart’s painting of violets. When I visited Whirlwind Hill recently I took a drive to Durham, Connecticut to visit the old cemetery in the town center. My mother loved this drive, and we went there together often to visit the Hart graves. My great-grandmother, Lydia, was a Hart, and her family had been long-time Durham residents.

So it seemed fitting that when I found Mary’s little grave marker, the grass surrounding it was full of violets.

Mary E. Hart’s grave stone with violets, May 2014

On Monday: The Letter

Wildflowers

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Spring arrives slowly in Alaska. Piles of dirty snow sit on the north side of the house and in the shadowed patches on the south. Near our front porch the white mounds defy the sun, and hopes for an early spring are usually disappointed. This is when my thoughts turn to Whirlwind Hill and wildflowers.

“Front Door with Snow,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache and colored pencil, 2013

My mother, who grew up roaming the fields and hills around the farm, knew her wildflowers and birds. The repeated rhythms of her stories about gathering spring flowers on the mountain come back to me in a list of names – hepatica, spring beauty, adder’s tongues, Dutchman’s breeches, trillium, violets. When she was growing up, she and her brothers and sister picked these wildflowers for May Day baskets.

The old-fashioned ritual of hanging baskets of flowers on doors on May first, “May Day,” knocking, and then running away to hide, appeals to me, but it’s not something that’s going to happen in Alaska. Instead, I hang a blue metal basket of hopeful pussy willows near the front door to remind me that spring will arrive eventually.

While my mother was still alive I continued a tradition started by her older brother Francis. Every spring when the adder’s tongues (also called trout lilies or dogs-tooth violets) bloomed in their usual spot by the spring at the cow pond, Francis picked a bunch and brought them up the lane to the farmhouse for his mother, my Grandma Hall. When my mother could no longer walk to the pond I picked them for her. They’re such lovely and cheerful little flowers, but they do have a slight reptilian quality because of their spotted waxy leaves, tongue-like stamens, and curled back petals. They grow in colonies that, if undisturbed, can last for decades. I find them in the same spots, year after year. They come back, much like I do to Whirlwind Hill, because their roots are there.

“Adder’s Tongues,” Carol Crump Bryner, gouache and colored pencil, 2013

From Lydia’s journal, May 5, 1924 – “Nice day. Agnes took Francis to school this morning – he took a large bunch of Adder Tongues he picked down in the meadow to Miss Martin. They are very nice, in full bloom. I think they will make her smile.”

On Monday: The Kitchen

Violets

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“Cold and cloudy, rained hard during the night. It is lighting up at noon. Think the storm has passed. Agnes has taken the three children [my mother Janet, her sister Lydia, and her brother Francis] in the auto to Sunday School. Quite a chore for her to get them washed, dressed & ready & home again. It needs perseverance – am glad she has got it. Should be glad to help her but have been miserable lately. The apple trees are out in full bloom. Daisies are budded, blue violets all out…” – Lydia Jane Hall, May 1, 1924

Violets may be starting to bloom in Wallingford now. To me they seem the most old-fashioned of flowers. Near the old barn site on my parents’ property the violets still grow in profusion, and I pick a bunch and put them in the middle of the kitchen table when I’m there.

My great-grandmother Lydia’s cousin, Mary E. Hart, painted watercolors and oils of scenery and flowers. (I’ll return to Mary Hart in more detail in the future.) The violets in this painting by her lie gracefully tied in a loose bouquet. Maybe they were a gift or maybe just an arranged still life. But they seem to me as fresh as they must have been all those years ago when she put her brush to the paper.

“Violets,” Mary E. Hart, watercolor, ca. 1860

On Monday: A Window on the Landing

On Whirlwind Hill

An artist's memories of a family farm – Carol Crump Bryner