Lady with a Crystal Vase - Minimal Drawing by Sarah Myers

Lady with a Crystal Vase, Sarah Myers
Minimal drawing in charcoal

      This sketch is of a lady delicately poising a crystal vase in her hand – the single, top-heavy bloom leans toward her as she glances away. The ornate trim of her dress matches her dangling earrings, and all of the detail makes the drawing, perhaps, not quite minimal; but still, every part, from pearls in hair to the curve of fingers, is described by black lines that touch the paper sparely and simply. And we wait for her to look up out of the page, in our direction...

Lady with a Crystal Vase, detail.  Sarah Myers

Still-life with Pineapple - Painting by Sarah Myers

Still-life with Pineapple, Sarah Myers

In this large still-life are combined a handsome pineapple, an exuberant vase of red clay, a pair of early oranges from our own orange tree, and two solemn red pears. Shape echoes shape and colours mirror colours in smaller and larger forms. The spheres of the oranges imitate the rotund base of the pottery; the outline of the more prominent pear reflects the upright body of the pineapple, though its colour – apart from the brown tones that describe its softer, natural substance - is very similar to the earthenware pot.

This painting is in acrylics. The vase is a rendering of a hand-built ceramic by my sister Amy Myers.

Still-life with Pineapple, Sarah Myers.  Detail.

Still-life with Pineapple, detail.

Still-life with Pineapple, Sarah Myers
Detail

Bright Afternoon Bouquet - Photography by Sarah Myers

Brilliant Flowers
Photography by Sarah Myers

A small cluster of flowers becomes a flaming torch of joyful colour in the afternoon sunlight.  The simple vase with a brown-black "volcanic" glaze was made by my sister Amy Myers.  It holds a cluster of ruby-red, orange, and orange-yellow nasturtiums, a bunch of scarlet pelargoniums (geraniums) and three cheerful tetraneuris daisies.  These - the yellow daisies at the top - came from Amy's desert garden, while the other blooms are from my pots of flowers in the patio.

Cluster of Flowers
Photography, Sarah Myers

Nasturtium Detail
Photography, Sarah Myers

Bright Bouquet in Afternoon Light
Photography, Sarah Myers

Vase with a Rearing Horse - Art by Sarah Myers

Terracotta Vase with Horse, Sarah Myers

A rearing horse forms the forward part of this small vase in red earthenware.  Light-heartedly in the spirit of ancient art such as the old Persian rhytons, the container was created as a present for my sister.  I have placed a cluster of brilliant flowers - nasturtiums, geraniums (pelargoniums) and a coral-coloured rose - into its wide mouth.  This burst of scarlet, salmon, flame orange and deep yellow glows with intensity in the morning sunlight, matching the strong, natural red of the clay and the energy of the pawing, snorting horse.

Vase with Horse, Sarah Myers

Yellow nasturtiums and red geraniums in Vase with a Rearing Horse
Art and Photography by Sarah Myers

Grapes and Red Pears, Photography by Sarah Myers

Grapes and Red Pears
Photography by Sarah Myers

Wine-Coloured Chrysanthemums

Chrysanthemums, Desert Branches in a Pitcher
Photography by Sarah Myers

Great, glowing burgundy chrysanthemums, placed in a graceful pitcher - a form inspired by an ancient Greek shape, the oinochoe, and created by Amy Myers.  Photography by Sarah Myers.

Wine-coloured Chrysanthemums
Photography, Sarah Myers

Saving Art

Gourd, Vase and Gray Metal, Judie Myers   Still Life, Oil on Canvas

    Six months ago my mother, my sister and I stood in the small studio of our old house. A full-sized dumpster sat outside, already over half full.

   When you must move accumulated belongings, forty years of the life of a family and nearly twenty-five of that in the same house, it is not true there is no room for sentiment. There is almost no room for anything else.

   To standard household goods and beloved mementos you must take with you, you add the studio work of three artists. You resolve you will keep only the best pieces. You have already decided which are the best – long ago. Nothing else is going to accompany you.

Gourd, Vase and Gray Metal, Detail
 Judie Myers

Woman with Vase, S. Myers
Salvaged Piece

    But art has a little life separate from its creator, and an artist is often not the one deciding the fate of their works. In two cases here they were not...

   Out from back of a stack of unfinished canvases – many of them torn or injured in various ways – I drug a painting; it was red and yellow and gray, vibrant even after the dust and stress of an unheated, uncooled studio. I set it up against the wall.

Still-Life Photograph

Evening Still-Life, S. Myers   Photograph, 2013

   Geraniums and jade-plant flowers in a vase I created years ago make a tiny bouquet in my bedroom window.