Author Archives: ehwfram

About ehwfram

I am an artist living in Vermont, inspired by the day-to-day details of life.

The Reward of January

Happy New Year!

I’ve been getting my ducks lined up for the new year ahead – what about you?
What’s on your creative agenda for 2026?

With no chores hanging over me, I loved having time to sketch at our Airbnb every morning over Christmas week. This is Tom Leonard, Scottish Poet, painted from a photo I took at the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland, of a bronze bust by Alex Main (love what Main has to say in this short YouTube video)

Now that December’s festivities and accompanying chores are in the rearview, I’m pretty excited to get back into the studio. Sketchbook time and logging ideas/notes in my studio journal is a given, but otherwise last month’s change of scene (Christmas in Berkeley) and a holiday project for our new grand baby, were a good reset. Taking a breather – whether chosen or imposed – can be a very productive way to keep the creative juices flowing. Or maybe it’s just that absence from the studio makes the heart long to get back to it…or something like that.

The best way to learn about values is to minimize them

And suddenly it’s January — a month that I find tends to be relatively spacious and under-scheduled compared to the other eleven — or does it just seem that way because December is always overflowing? Either way, the weeks of January give us a chance to act on the new year’s sense of possibility. And that in itself is a gift.

A section of our yard, in greener days

My guidepost for the next month (and hopefully beyond) will be one of James Clear’s ideas from his most recent 3-2-1 Thursday Newletter:

“To learn, wander. To achieve, focus.”

I’m planning to put both approaches into action. I am following Peggy Kroll Roberts on Patreon and just enrolled in Lena Rivo’s course “Color Mastery”, which will give me a chance to dive deeply into gouache, as well as, I hope, new ways to think about incorporating stitching.

It was rainy and gray almost every day we were away which, frankly, I don’t mind. It helps other colors sing

Time to get to work!
And best of luck to you as you jump into 2026.

In and Out of the Studio

I have been having the best time lately, in and out of the studio.

Airport people

I never go anywhere without bringing some sort of art supplies, even if just a colored pencil and a tiny sketchbook. On our trip to CA earlier this month, I learned just how easy it would be to bring along my gouache and accompanying materials.

The center flap of this case flips over and has 6 pen straps on the other side which holds all my brushes. The numerous zippered & elasticized pockets assure I have plenty of room for everything.

I bought an inexpensive travel palette that has a silicone cover which keeps the paints moist and leakproof. It nestles within a generously sized collapsible water container which, along with all the rest of my gear, fits neatly into my 4″x9″ pencil case. Together with a lightweight Holbein 7.5″ x 6″ watercolor/multi-media sketchbook, I have a very compact but complete travel kit.

Note the palette with its silicone cover in place.

That said, makeshift studio space while traveling can be a bit of a crapshoot. Luckily, our Berkeley Airbnb not only had terrific natural light, but a lovely little desk looking out on the garden.

Berkeley Garden

You may laugh, but with no IKEAs in VT, wandering through the maze of the Emeryville store was more than a planned activity – it was an inspirational treat.

IKEA pattern

This boldly patterned duvet cover was a real eye-catcher. The calm of recreating it later with paint was equal to, if not better than, any meditation app.

This little exercise was a great way to use up leftover paint that I didn’t want to waste.

A subsequent field trip to the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek was just as fruitful in the inspiration department.

You have no idea how hard it was to choose just 2 photos among the many I took, to show here

This dry garden has been on my to-see list for a long time and it was worth the wait. So many wonderful layers of color, pattern, and texture.

Succulents

The bottom line is, pretty much anything can serve as input to brew in the back of one’s mind and eventually lead to new ideas. This trip got me thinking about ways to incorporate pattern within my worktable still lives — sometimes as a last layer, but also at the beginning of a sketch.

I used some Neocolor I’s for the under-layer of this experiment. Unlike Neocolor II’s, they aren’t water soluble, so didn’t bleed when I washed a thin layer of gouache over everything, followed by the contours of objects, again with gouache.

It’ll be interesting to see how pattern might affect a push and pull between the fore and backgrounds. Because of its opacity, gouache gives me the freedom to try this in a way that isn’t possible with watercolor. And that is a game-changer!

2025 Elizabeth Fram, Gouache on paper, 9″H x 5.75″W As I go along, bits of the original pattern poke through, which I can obliterate or enhance with subsequent layers of paint

Before I go, you may remember that last year I took the month of December off from posting to Eye of the Needle. It was such a successful way to recharge my batteries that I promised myself I would do it again this year. With that in mind, my next post will be on January 1, 2026 — which will be here before we know it.

Till then, wishing you and yours the happiest of holidays ahead!

PS: I want to give you a heads-up that there are changes on the horizon for Mailchimp (the platform I use to send out blog notifications to all you lovely subscribers). Looking into other options is one of my December chores, so there is the very likely possibility that I may send you a test in December and that my notification emails may have a new look when I return for real in January. Thanks for your patience.

Risk, Discovery, Momentum

With Art at the Kent now in the rearview, I’ve just finished another broken vase and shadow piece and have a fresh sheet of paper stretched on my board, ready to begin a new one. I still need to get these pieces out of my system before I can move on.

Even so, I’ve spent the majority of my studio time pushing forward with gouache. It’s a dance of two steps forward, one step back, yet feels ever so liberating. With each sketch – and at this point they are definitely just sketches – I’m becoming more aware of what a deep and, at times, mysterious pond I’ve jumped into.

Stlll, there are plenty of folks to lead the way. Aside from masters such as Paul Klee, Lois Dodd, and Fairfield Porter, contemporary painters like Lena Rivo, Maru Godas, and Mike Hernandez give me plenty to think about and to study.

In a timely bit of kismet, I was listening to an “I Like Your Work” podcast by Erika b Hess in which she touched on the commonality, and even the bravery, of delving into the fresh territory of a new medium. Her characterization of such explorations as a period of “risk, discovery, and momentum” nails the feeling. What better time than now, after a couple of big exhibitions, to thwart complacency by breathing some fresh air into my practice?

Orange and Purple Bowl

Please note: I’ll be back in four weeks (Nov. 20th). We have a date to meet our first grandbaby!

Something New

Perhaps the biggest gift of an ending is the beginning that follows.

This past summer has left me with a lot to digest.
Marked most significantly by the loss of my father, I can’t ignore that that sadness was bookended by two events which have brought me tremendous joy. Both “Full Bloom” in June and “Holding – Mementos Kept, Memories Kindled” (which wraps up at the Kent Museum this Sunday, 10/12) have grounded me over the past several months while being an ongoing reminder of the irrefutable fact that life is inherently a mixture of bitter and sweet.

Maybe it’s the confluence of these three recent endings that has led me to seek out something new this fall. Without departing too terribly far from the familiar, I treated myself recently to a basic palette of gouache and a few new brushes. With no particular endpoint in mind, I have been having a wonderful time this week, just seeing what happens.

If you look closely, you will see this was the first pass for the painting below.

Following the examples of Sandi Hester and Peggi Kroll Roberts, I divided a sketchbook spread into quadrants of color as a starting point, then ad-libbed a composition of items from my work table — letting those initial four colors be something of a guide without being too restrictive. The point for now is to keep things simple, concentrate on learning to handle the paint, and to make discoveries about color. I’ve ended up happily lost in the process.

Up to this point, my only painting experience is with transparent watercolor, so the opaque quality of gouache is a revelation. It has triggered a whole different way of thinking and is SO MUCH FUN! I can’t help but consider a million possibilities, not to mention how great it will be to incorporate stitch once I get my sea legs and figure out where I may be headed.

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Not able to make it to Calais for “Holding” at Art at the Kent? Get a taste of its unique flavor with this episode of Across The Fence. If you keep your eyes peeled, you’ll see a few of my pieces along the way.

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In case you didn’t already see it, please enjoy this gifted-to-you New York Times article by Sam Thielman and Gabriel Gianordoli about Emil Ferris – “The Comics Artist Who Sees Monsters in Museums, and in the Mirror”. Her drawings are spectacular.

Things to Smile About

Cued by the trees, which seem to be changing color by the hour, I’ve been taking time to just soak in and enjoy the sights around me this season. Below are a few of the things that have caught my eye in the past couple of weeks.

Art at the Kent – “Holding”

There are so many wonderful artworks in this show! These shots barely skim the surface of the 22 artists exhibiting, or their work. I will be back again (and again) in an effort to capture more before the exhibit closes on October 12. I hope you can make it at least once.

Usually I am careful to document the labels which fully identify works that I am photographing. I was so excited moving through the exhibit that I forgot myself and, other than the piece above, can only provide the name of each artist for the works below. This show is that good. However, I’ve linked to each artist’s web presence, if available.

Veronica Y Pham

James Patterson

Jon Roberts

Paul Bowen

Kate Gridley

The preserved patina of ancient paint, wallpaper and exposed lath within the Kent Museum building all work in concert with the art on display. Below are a few examples of my pieces in the show. It makes my heart sing to see the thoughtful way they are presented in conversation with their surroundings and others’ work.

Pick Me Up © 2017 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye and embroidery on silk, 12″H x 16″W The curation of “Holding” is exquisite. For instance, consider the exchange between my stitched cup and Stephen Proctor’s clay vessel outside.

Ulysses’ Wave ©2014 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye, paint and embroidery on silk, 19″H x 38″W This piece, a visual narrative of the gradual, then sudden changes I saw in my mother as she struggled with the beginnings of dementia, reflects both the exuberance and the memento mori quality of the lush floral arrangement sitting to its right.

Québec City

The following on-the-fly shots in Québec weren’t necessarily inspirational and have no particular redeeming quality other than they made me smile. I think we could all use a bit more levity these days, don’t you?

Trois Garçons

The last in a lineup of cannons that are part of the Fortifications of Québec and which highlight this area’s past military function as a defensive battery, the irony of this vase tipped on its side with hands offering flowers and wheat from its opening is delightful. Zoom in to see that the treads of the tires are leaving tracks of roses. Having neglected to find any info near this sculpture, I searched the internet but came up empty regarding the artist. However, I did discover that In 1617, the first French family to settle in the colony — Louis Hébert, his wife Marie Rollet, and their three children established their farm on this site atop Cap Diamant which is today Montmorency Park. They grew cereal crops, vegetables and different medicinal plants.

Cat weaving

Slatted Window

Exciting Macarons

Creature

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One more thing that’s making me happy: I’m rereading Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Per his suggestion, I edited out any adverbs that had snuck into this post 😊. Ha! I haven’t gotten to the part where he’s horrified by emojis.
Regardless of what your creative practice may be – or if you even have one – you will enjoy this book. Not to worry – it isn’t remotely scary.

Diverse, Thought-provoking & Inspirational

Check out these amazing Vermont artists:

Julia Zanes Cindy Blakeslee Rona Lee Cohen Valerie Hird Susan Jane Walp

The unifying thread between them is that I first encountered their work at the Kent Museum in Calais, VT. Along with apples, glorious foliage and good sleeping temperatures, fall in Vermont means it’s time again for Art at the Kent.

Passages 1 ©2006 Elizabeth Fram, Hand-dyed, hand & machine stitching on silk and cotton, 32″H x 33″W I will have 20 or so pieces in the show this year. In many ways, those selected represent a survey of my work. While they are all connected via the idea of memory, the lure of color and texture manifested through stitched, drawn and painted marks remains constant. The pieces shown here are a teaser. As many of you know, in the early days, art quilts were my main means of expression. It was a medium that allowed for the interruptions and inconsistent work hours that go hand in hand with raising a family.

For me, it’s always been a treat to see the work of friends, as well as artists I have followed from afar, appear on the Kent’s walls and on its surrounding grounds. But just as exciting is knowing that each show will introduce me to artists I was completely unaware of previously. This is the beauty of an exhibit that highlights only Vermont artists and, until this year, has never repeated any of them.

Taking Pause ©2014 Elizabeth Fram, Paint, stitched-resist dye & embroidery on silk, 21″H x 33″W This is one in a series of dog-walk shadow pieces that marked a time of upheaval and transition. Walking the pooch in the early morning hours was one piece of our routine that remained regular during those months.

A quick swing through the exhibit archives is a testament to Vermont’s incredibly rich creative sector. I’ve had to pinch myself over the past months, knowing how privileged I am to soon be among them.

Disparate Pair ©2014 Elizabeth Fram, Verithin pencil on mylar, 10″H x 8″W Also one in a series, these pieces tell a story through the shadows and seemingly distinct personalities of decades-old chairs on a cottage porch.

There will be 22 of us exhibiting this year. I’m intrigued to see how all the work will interact with each other and with the historic building which houses the exhibit. I have every confidence the experience will be as remarkable and unique as it has been every other year, thanks to the vision of curators Allyson Evans, Nel Emlen, and David Schutz.

Letters from Home: Mussel Memory ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye & embroidery on silk, 12″H x 16″W As we were emerging from the pandemic, I wasn’t ready to give up on the house shape after spending months making my 3-D “Covid Houses”. One day I had the epiphany that the shape of an open envelope is the same as that of a house. With that, I began a number of “Letters from Home” pieces, most of them carrying memories of Maine.

In fact, one can’t help but wonder how they manage to pull together a show that hits it out of the park, year after year. As always, this year’s exhibit “Holding – Mementos Kept, Memories Kindled” will most certainly contain viewpoints that are diverse, thought-provoking, inspirational and, not least, a celebration of the act of making itself. What more could one ask?

Fleeting Reflections ©2025 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor & knotless netting on paper, 6″H x 8″W On the heels of my Full Bloom series, I have become interested in knotless netting, incorporating it within paintings. As you can see from each of the pieces above, as new work develops, one element will invariably carry through from one series to the next – be it shadows, stitching, or portraits.

Have I piqued your interest? I hope so. Please come between September 12 and October 12 to see for yourself. I’ll be at the opening on Saturday; see you then?

Holding Poster

And to further entice you, there are numerous accompanying events scheduled throughout the exhibition month, including:

Words Out Loud

Just Like Us

First, a huge thank you for the kind, supportive comments and emails so many of you sent after my last post. I am so very appreciative.

A tiny portion of Janet Van Fleet’s exhibition “DEI: All Kinds of People”, offset by glorious gladiolas from her garden

One thing I know to be true (or which is at least true for me): art is a through line. Like friends, it is a constant that is steadfastly supportive and often distracting at just the right moment. I have been reminded of this fact often over the past weeks and have been leaning on it accordingly.

Janet Van Fleet; DEI: All Kinds of People

There hasn’t been time for me to make much of my own work lately, other than the brief sketch here and there. But I have made a point of grabbing what moments I can to view the work of others — in books, online and, most importantly, in person. And doing so has been tremendously restorative.

Sunday, I visited Janet Van Fleet’s 2-day exhibit “DEI: All Kinds of People” at Towle Hill Studio in Corinth, VT. Especially at this point in time, it was both an important reminder and, beyond that, a reassurance of our collective connection regardless of our differences.

I am a huge fan of Janet’s work, especially her ability to create a magically inventive world out of what, to the average eye, are throw-away odds and ends. She is a modern day alchemist who, through the mirror of her art, guides us to see the various layers of our humanity without taking ourselves too seriously.

This latest assembly of quirky and fantastical figures spans a spectrum of poignancy, humor, endearment, relatability, enlightenment and depth; these works have a soul. In other words, she has created a gathering that is essentially just like all of us.

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Another fun distraction I recently discovered is The Art Detectives on Amazon Prime. You may be able to stream it, or alternate versions of it, on other platforms. It’s all sorts of nerdy, arty historical goodness. Enjoy!

Epiphany

My father passed away last week.
He was a Mainer through and through, a fact upon which most of his life hinged.

White Pines 1

Sitting by his bedside during his final week, I listened as he fondly reminisced about many things that were so “him”, including: his love of being on the water (he marked periods of his life by sailboats, much the way many of us recount the years by the succession of dogs who have graced our families), the pride he had in crafting the delicate curve of a particularly challenging set of table legs for one of his many fine furniture projects, and memories of the island people whose salt-of-the-earth integrity had greatly influenced his own approach to life throughout his 98 years.

Early in the morning, before going down to be with him, I would sit on his apartment porch and take a few moments to quietly paint the nearby pine trees — tall and stately Eastern White Pines, which coincidentally are Maine’s state tree.

White Pines 3

I realized as I worked to capture their distinctively irregular shapes that these sturdy conifers could be seen as an apt representation of the man who, along with our mother, had raised my brother and me: tall, upright, determined, resilient, unique, long-lived, and even, to make a terrible pun that he would have loved to hate, a bit sappy (classical music, especially Bach, could bring him to tears).

Much of making art is seeing the connections and metaphors that hover over our lives. Thanks to this unexpected sketching epiphany, I have a new way of seeing and remembering Dad — not only here in Vermont, but especially along his beloved coast of Maine.

White Pines 2

Rolodex of Inspiration

Walking to the compost the other morning, this sight caught my eye.

Hosta Leaf

I’m not sure what creature or disease found this one particular hosta leaf, ignoring all others on this and numerous other plants, but considering how much I’ve been immersed in knotless netting over the past several months, I was immediately smitten.

My camera roll is filled with such images — quick captures of all sorts of things that grab me in the moment and which would soon be forgotten if I didn’t take the shot. The results would mean absolutely nothing to anybody else, but to me they are a reminder that inspiration for my work is everywhere.

The color combination of magenta and burnt orange in humble drips from my chipotle and beet leftover lunch concoction, were recorded and became the root inspiration of a later work.

Similarly, for years I’ve kept a couple of cheap spiral sketchbooks that I continue to fill with images of all sorts. Gleaned from anywhere and everywhere, just looking through them gets my creative juices flowing.

My inspiration notebooks with assorted images waiting to be glued into them

For the most part these images (or parts of them) are merely jumping-off points. Various elements — be it a shape, a color combination, a texture, you name it — are ripe for contributing to the structural underpinnings of some future unknown piece, or for making my way past the inevitable stumbling blocks that crop up in the middle of works in progress.

Those drips on my lunch plate were the impetus behind this piece from 2011

Deceptively simple yet worth their weight in gold, these resources are my rolodex of inspiration. Often lying dormant for years, somewhere down the line one image will seed exactly the idea I need.

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Distraction of the week:

Take a swing through Susan Lichtman’s website – her paintings are a wonderful dance between representation and abstraction, with light carrying the rhythm.

Acknowledging What Was, Embracing What Is

My first 9-5 job was as a potter’s apprentice.
I went into it imagining my throwing skills would blossom, but in reality it was my biceps that grew, not my artistic chops. The potter who hired me, in addition to his pots, sold clay and glazes. So I spent the majority of my days that summer carrying 40-pound bags of clay to other potter’s cars and measuring chemicals for glaze mixtures.

Poof! went my romantic notions of spending my time at the wheel. I left that job mostly having learned that I was glad to be headed to college. And while I didn’t get very far in becoming a potter, I’ve never lost my attraction for things made of clay.

One of my favorite books from that era is M.C. Richards’ Centering. In it she relates the following parable which has stayed with me as a wonderful philosophical riddle:

There are many marvelous stories of potters in ancient China. In one of them a noble is riding through a town and he passes a potter at work. He admires the pots the man is making: their grace and a kind of rude strength in them. He dismounts from his horse and speaks with the potter. “How are you able to form these vessels so that they possess such convincing beauty?” “Oh,” answers the potter, ” you are looking at the mere outward shape. What I am forming lies within. I am interested only in what remains after the pot has been broken.”

I was recently reminded of this story when I dropped a beloved hand-painted clay vase that I picked up at a flea market years ago. What heartbreak! I couldn’t bring myself to toss it out so I ordered a kintsugi kit to put the pieces back together, hoping to give it a second life.

But in the meantime, I’ve been painting the vase’s shards with dramatic shadows, incorporating knotless netting to accentuate the resulting forms and to insert a suggestion of repair or mending. The outcome is that the memory of the original remains intact, acknowledging what was while simultaneously embracing what is.

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Speaking of memory…
I’m over the moon to share that these latest netted paintings will be among a varied selection of my work chosen to be part of Art at the Kent this fall in their group show that will investigate memory.

Holding Poster

Mark your calendar now to be sure to visit one of our state’s most beloved annual exhibitions, presented in a truly magical Vermont setting during one of the loveliest seasons of the year.