Events

Hurray For Our Side!

sunrise
The Fierce Call of Morning

“Hurray for our side!”……That’s what my Dad would say when someone in the family accomplished something worth crowing about.  All of us knew just what he meant: he was proud and wanted us to know that.  When I got the news that “The Fierce Call of Morning”  (12×18 woven watercolor on yupo) was accepted into the 2021 Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration exhibit of the Tennessee Watercolor Society, I was sure I heard Dad celebrating with me with that expression.  Then it got even better this week when I was invited to attend a virtual zoom awards presentation where I was pleased to receive an Honorable Mention award.  Yep, there was Dad, cheering once again.   On-line only, the exhibit represents some of the finest watercolor in the South.  Hurray for my side!  You can enjoy the exhibit in its entirety here.

I have been experimenting with woven watercolors since January 1, 2018sunrisewhen I decided to try “something different” for the new year and did a small piece I called  It’s a New Day which now lives in Springfield,  Missouri.  I have lost track of how many I have done since ,but they are fun, challenging, and surprising.  The technique involves painting two paintings about the same size and similar or complementary subject matter, then cutting the two in opposite directions and  weaving them together. The result is hard to envision in advance and some end up in the recycle bin!  This one didn’t! 

Morning Moments. the story behind the exhibit

Moonrise“Morning Moments: the Story behind the exhibit”

Well over a year ago I started preparing for another hometown exhibit, painting images of a variety of subjects in a number of my favorite styles, some detailed and planned; others, loose and spontaneous.

Then 2020 happened.  The show went on hold.  Life itself went on hold.  I continued painting but something different started happening.  I found myself drawn to small pockets of time on small pieces of paper, usually in the morning before the noise of the news cycle got in the way and with a fresh abandon, perhaps freed from exhibition expectations.  I started thinking of these painting times as “morning moments,” not necessarily because of the time of day but because I was fully awake, alert, and aware of gentle stirrings that seemed to bypass my brain.  The small simple paintings became heart-filled responses to an anxious sleepless night, a line of poetry, the song of a bird, or the whisper of the wind.  What was common to all was an absence of thinking and planning.

The results of those morning moments are collectively some of the purest and most honest paintings I have ever done — simple, spontaneous, and highly personal.  When the opportunity came about recently to revisit an exhibition time at Glass Growers Gallery, I knew that I wanted to share them.  My hope, my prayer, is that they will communicate between my heart and your heart and that they will stir something in you and bring you some of the peace they brought me as I painted them.

I am grateful to Debby Vahanian and Glass Growers Gallery for giving me this opportunity to share these paintings with you, to have this “heart to heart” conversation.  In my nearly 40 years of painting and exhibiting this may be the most unique exhibit I have ever had. Thank you for joining with me on this journey.

This exhibit is now over.

 

Marie Spaeder Haas

August 1 – September 8, 2020

Glass Growers Gallery, 10 E. 5th St., Erie PA

gallery hours:  11-3 Tuesday through Saturday; Monday by appointment (814-453-3758)

 

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