Totem
Why is the name of this painting “Totem” and not just “Green Onions.” I stumbled across the word “Totem” as I read about onions this week. And, given the circumstances of the last 10 days, the symbolism of onions as a mechanism for tears seems appropriate. Don’t you think?
This painting is a part of a series called “Favorite Things.” In this series, I share a painting every week. If you want to know, each week, when I post a new painting, please subscribe here.
What’s Next
Short answer…who knows? Right? But I will share what I plan to offer next in this post. At least, here, I will keep the surprises and uncertainty to a minimum. OK? So, I will share why I decided to name this painting “Totem.” Hey I will also share a cool way to re-use your spring onions. Is that so? Yes. I will also describe some of the challenges I encountered painting these green characters. And, I will include the palette and some other random thoughts, too.
Onion as Emblem
For me, spring or green onions, mean summer time. Even though I am pretty sure you can buy them year ’round, their crispy bright green appearance means summer! So, I wanted to paint these emblematic summer vegetables now!
At the risk of coming across as a bit “woo-woo,” I will share some thoughts that resonate with me from this post here. I love that this online article suggests that the “lessons” onions “teach” include release. Even though that release is due to a chemical that makes us tear up.
Lastly, I learned that you can regrow and rejuvenate these feisty little vegetables. If you only chop the green parts of the onion for your summer salad or side dish, guess what? You can plop the bulbs in water and – voila – the green stems will grow back. Don’t believe me? Here’s a short article with the details. NOTE: you’ll learn the most by reading the comments in the aforementioned link.
So, to sum up, onions seem summery to me, they teach with tears and they regrow and rejuvenate. Wow…not sure about you but this is a wonderful antidote to the grim news of the day.
Painting Challenges
Ok here’s where I invite you into my studio to hear the truth about painting indirect paintings. There are beautiful moments! And, then there are moments where weeping is possible. I guess I could blame the weeping on the subject matter? But, I guess I could also clarify and point something out. Every single painting I paint has a moment where I honestly wonder if I can go on or not.
And, this painting is no different. Typically, this moment occurs during what I have heard other painters call ‘the teenage stage.’ This stage, as you might guess, is after the joy and anticipation of the initial grisaille block-in. It’s also after the first and second pass in color. It’s a phase when you wonder what you are working on and why?
Plan of Action
How do I manage this? I beseech the mighty painter and one of my heroine’s, Cecilia Beaux. She, herself, described having this same experience with every single one of her paintings. She, who has her self-portrait in the Uffizi in Rome had this agonizing moment with every single painting.
What did Cecilia Beaux do when she experienced this feeling? In her journal, she describes taking a short break, running down the stairs, outside and around the cherry tree. She would return to her painting with a fresh point of view and relief in her ‘solar plexus.’
I share this story for any of you who are artists but also for those of you who may be bereft, angry, frustrated or even just sad with George Floyd’s murder along with so many others at the hands of police. I think it’s important that we release the tears, even if we need a mighty onion to help us do so. I also think it’s important to speak out and support and defend our brothers and sisters of color. And, I also think we need to regrow and rejuvenate together. But mostly we need to listen to each other! I am sure you know what it feels like when you don’t feel as if anyone is listening to you? I sure do. I hope you and I can take time to listen and breathe and honor each other.
Palette
So I used a limited palette again for this painting. What does limited palette mean? I used as few colors as possible, typically, six or seven. Now, let’s see if I can remember them all: Burnt umber, Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Scarlet, Cadmium Yellow, Phthalo Blue, Cerulean Blue, Quinacridone Magenta and Lead White. Whoops, it looks as if I’m on a slippery slope folks. I used 8 colors this week!
Eight is a far cry from the twenty-five I used in art school! But eight is more than I’ve used in the past four or five paintings. Stay tuned and sign up, if you haven’t already, to see if I keep adding more colors to the palette.
For Sale
I’m excited to say that this painting entitled “Totem” is for sale for $375. Simply click on this link to pay for it via Paypal and thank you!
How about you?
How about you? What is your plan for navigating this uncertain world in which we live? If you have any ideas or thoughts, please do share in the comments below and thank you.
4 Comments
Beth Dyer Clary
June 5, 2020What a fascinating post, Julie. Learned a lot of woo-woo about onions. I had no idea of their totemic powers. Are the onions on a piece of cloth or just a counter or table? (I would love larger images of your paintings!) There is something about that color that works magic on the onions – what is the paint color for that surface?
As much as I love the painting, and I do, I think your message is great: We do need to listen to each other as much as possible. I loved what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar recommends: Make friends and listen to people who are different than you. So simple and yet hard. Not sure I’ll chop of a green onion again without thinking about your post.
I do try to do a free writing response to your paintings as a kind of spontaneous exercise for my writing life. This one went i crazy directions but here it is, incomplete and imperfect but what came out in 30 minutes after staring at your onions:
Justine looked at the rows of different onions in her raised bed: spring onions, leeks,
shallots and yellow onions. She did love onions. But she hated how they made her cry. She was preparing a vegetable stir-fry for dinner and decided on spring onions – they made her cry the least.
It was a warm June evening and the spring onions were just ready to be harvested. She pulled on their leaves gently and out popped the whole onion, small white bulb and long green stalks. Justine rinsed the onions under the running water in the kitchen and couldn’t resist. She ate one of the onions starting at the white bulb and chewed the green leaves. The tang in her mouth made her mouth water. But she had to use the rest for the stir fry.
Seven bowls of different shapes, colors and sizes were lined up on the counter. Six had other vegetables including broccoli, carrots, celery, zucchini, red peppers, and summer squash. Justine laid the spring onions on their sides and sharpened her chef’s knife. It didn’t need sharpening, she knew. But it was part of her ritual with any onion. The fact is that the cleaner the cut the faster Justine could chop or dice or mince and the shorter the stingy cry session would last. She’d tried all the tricks to avoid crying but nothing had worked better than this. Those ridiculous goggles had come the closest but whether it was what remained on her hands or in the air, she always shed some onion tears. She took a deep breath, squinted a couple of times and started chopping.
The tears started falling. At first it was just the usual onion tears with their distinctive bite. But then she started really crying, bawling practically, and had to put the knife down and step onto the back porch to collect herself.
Sitting on the back step, Justine pulled a tie-dyed bandana from a pocket in her shorts and just let herself cry. In the same way she knew the impact of chopping any kind of onions, Justine knew if she let the crying take over she would hear her father’s voice. He always told her, “Sweetheart, quit crying. It’s the most selfish act in the world. It tells people all you’re doing is thinking about yourself.”
One day she’d decided to tell her dad how great it was for a person’s stress levels to cry. A hormone was released that actually reduced stress. Furthermore, crying killed off bacteria that might be building up in and around a person’s eyes. “So you see,” she said to her dad when she was home on a break from college, “it’s good to cry.”
This may have been the meanest thing she’d ever done. She hadn’t seen her dad cry since her mother died. He’d been the picture of stoicism. That, Justine still believed, was just weird.
“Honey,” her father had said to her that Thanksgiving break, “everybody grieves in their own way in their own time. Don’t worry about me and my sorrows. I’m dealing with it.”
Justine didn’t think he was. His business partner said he hadn’t taken any time off when Justine called to check on him and Dave had answered her dad’s line. Her brother had gone by every day for about six weeks after their mother died and he’d always find their father one of two or three places: in his garden; watching the evening news; or baking bread. He’d started that when Mom came home to die. It’s all she wanted to eat and all she wanted to smell. Not lilac or gardenias or even apple pie. No. Just baking bread. When she died three weeks after she’d come home, Dad handed a loaf of homemade bread to anyone who brought a covered dish “to tide him over during this difficult time.”
Justine heated oil in the wok on the stove and smiled remembering the expression Mrs. Carpenter gave him when he handed her a loaf of bread. She was an odd one anyway but she truly didn’t know what the correct thing to do was. Then again, she never knew what the correct thing to do or say was. That was what made Mrs. Carpenter the neighbor they avoided. But she was always the neighbor at the center of their stories too. Her beehive hair do that flying insects hovered over; the way she walked around the neighborhood waving her new Dust Buster because she was the first person in the neighborhood to have one.
Mrs. Carpenter had said, “No, Carl, I couldn’t possibly take a loaf of your bread.”
“You could and you should. PLEASE, I have too many. You’d be doing me a great kindness.”
She had turned the loaf around in her hands wondering how that could be so.
“Justine, get some of our onion jam for Mrs. Carpenter too.”
“Oh no!” She was blushing and coming all over silly. “I really couldn’t.”
“We make the most amazing onion jam, Lil. Justine is the one that does most of the work. She’ll be crushed if you don’t take the onion jam, won’t you Justine?” He’d winked at her then smiled.
That moment, her dad had gotten her to smile for the first time in weeks.
Julie Holmes
June 7, 2020Wow Beth!
I think this is your best one yet! I love it and am psyched that your writing is somehow inspired by these weekly paintings.
You had asked for a larger version of the painting itself. You can see that here. The colors are based upon what I see and sometimes are just not ‘nameable’ colors. So if you have specific questions or need further clarification, let me know. Thank you
Kathy Michaud
June 7, 2020I’m quite taken with your comments this week, not that the painting isn’t lovely, because it is. This has been a heartbreaking week and tears feel absolutely right. There’s something about the idea of new spring onions that is so hopeful. Undoubtedly this has been a most beautiful spring with lots of rain & cool days… perfect for onions to root & grow. There’s also something about water and the connection between rain & tears & growth to ponder. Humanity needs to grow & we are witnessing that!
Julie Holmes
June 7, 2020Hi Kathy, This is definitely a time for tears. I’m glad you enjoy the comments and the painting. Here’s to more growth and goodness ahead.