"Rex Beach Road - 12/12/09" -- plein air field study -- oil on canvas panel -- Margie Guyot

At last - a sunny day! We'd had blizzards since Tuesday night. Something like 15" of snow on the ground. I hadn't driven anywhere since our band concert Tuesday night, so today everybody and his brother had errands to run. I finally got my Soltek into the Flex and drove up US-31 toward Charlevoix. I turned west onto Rex Beach Road and thought this view was pretty interesting. No mountains here; only rolling hills, trees and lake. I love the rare days we have sun here because that's when the blue shadows occur.

It was a rather balmy 28 degrees, but it was also very windy. I was so glad I'd put on my heavy-insulated snow pants and heavyweight down coat. Otherwise it'd have been miserable.

This road leads down to one of my favorite painting spots: Rex Beach, which is one of the Antrim Creek Natural Area parks. The parks aren't plowed here in winter, so I probably won't be able to get down to the lake to paint unless the snow melts. Somebody decided they should pay something like $35,000 to put up some "interpretive" displays. I think more people would have preferred doing without the interpretive displays -- and having at least one of the area parks plowed at least once a month here.

I look forward to doing more still lifes, but at the moment my studio is very cluttered. I moved a ton of things out of a side storage room and took several days to insulate that room. My neighbor Jerry has been helping me build storage shelves for my large canvases and frames. Once this project is over, I can put everything away -- and get back to painting still lifes. Itching with ideas!

"Blizzard" -- plein air field study -- oil on birch panel -- 11x14" -- Margie Guyot

We're right in the middle of a major blizzard today that's said to last until tomorrow morning. Really pretty out. I was itching to paint something, so I set up my easel under the porch overhang and painted this view to the south. That's a big white pine and the spikey things to the right are the dead stalks of mullen. I liked how the snow makes the flower stalks bend. I've included some in the foreground in this painting.

It was surprising how much "putty" color and gray I needed to add to the white to make the snow colors.

Even though I was under the overhang, snow still got into my palette. It's next to impossible to paint when it's snowing. When it gets into your paint it just makes a big mess.

I suppose I should just go do housework this afternoon!

"Fisherman's Island - November 28, 2009" -- plein air field study -- oil on canvas panel -- 8x10" -- Margie Guyot

It was cold. It was dark. It was windy. Sometimes it drizzled; sometimes it snowed. But my friend Janet had driven up from Dearborn and she wanted to go painting! Thank goodness for heavyweight goosedown coats!

She'd seen 2 paintings I'd done from this same spot earlier this fall. "Let's go there!" So we drove up to Charlevoix and headed off into Fisherman's Island State Park. It really was a dreary day, but it was far more enjoyable than staggering around in a shopping Mall.

I'd had a bout of insomnia the night before. Had gotten up and fixed a cup of Sleepytime Tea and pulled out Richard Schmid's book "Alla Prima: Everything I know about Painting". In it, he wrote that it's important to always paint the sky first, before the trees. I'd always wondered about that. This time I did paint the sky first and the trees second. Liked the way it turned out.

And it's always challenging to figure out how to handle the light-colored rocks in the foreground. It's not sand there but broken rocks.

I always love the look of Lake Michigan. The colors fascinate me. I love how the distant horizon looks so dark. Closer in, the water often takes a sage green or sometimes turquoise tone.

We were both pretty frozen by the time we finished our paintings. My friend apologized for dragging me out there. Ha! I told her I was glad she suggested it. Otherwise I'd have spent the time cleaning out the henhouse.

"Gnome for the Holidays" -- oil on canvas -- 30x40" -- Margie Guyot

People always ask me what my inspiration for a painting was. In this case, it was the ancient accordion I happened to see high on a shelf in Petals, a flower shop in Charlevoix, MI. The woman told me she used to play accordion (me, too!) and she'd found this old instrument out in a Las Vegas pawnshop. Reminds me of "Accordion Crimes" by Annie Proulx -- one of my favorite novels, by the way.

I thought this was such a cool accordion. I dared to ask the woman if I might borrow it sometime to use in a still life painting. To my utter surprise, she said yes. She'd never seen me before, but was willing to let me whisk away her accordion! This would only happen in the rural Midwest! As a thank-you, I bought a bunch of lime green fuji mums, which I managed to incorporate into this painting.

My friend Ev had been suggesting to me that I should paint a musical instrument-themed still life. Now that I had the piece-de-resistance, I could build the rest of the setup. Ev loaned me the cornet, guitar and violin.

I had the gnomes. This big one in the center is from Meijer's garden department. Usually it's stationed right inside my front door, greeting all vistors in its namaste pose. The other gnome in the back I brought up from my old digs in Farmington Hills. How it survived the move without being broken, I consider a minor miracle.

Found those great, old vintage poinsettia glasses in Consign Design, in Charlevoix. I love old schlock like that! The poinsettia tablecloth was from my "early garage sale collection".

For reasons I can't really explain, I had to set everything atop a tropical print with turquoise and golden palm leaves. Maybe it's locked way into some subconscious fantasy about spending Christmas down on a desert island.

The cookies are entirely made up, from memory. The miserable grocery stores up here have the nastiest, most pathetic cookies you could imagine! I'm trying to cut the carbs, so I didn't want to bake any. Plus, I'm too impatient to stop & bake cookies when I'm inspired to start a new still life. But I do remember how Christmas cookies USED to look. They're sitting on a Depression glass plate I inherited from my mom.

Swirling around in the back are branches from one of the neighbor's bushes. They sure look like some kind of cranberry to me. By the time I finished this, they were dried-out mummies.

What was the hardest part about this painting? Painting the musical instruments! Unlike a squash or apple, they have to be ACCURATE. And those accordion keys -- oy vey! Early on, I'd painted in the accordion, then when I came into the studio the next day I saw it was all skewed. I'd stood close to the canvas, looking down on it. It looked OK at that angle, but from across the room, it was very much "off". As usual, I did LOTS of wipe-outs on this. But I'm pronouncing it done!

"Happy Halloween" -- oil on stretched canvas -- 30x40" -- Margie Guyot

"Happy Halloween" (Detail)

As a kid growing up in Iowa, I always loved Halloween. My cousins and I would make up the most fantastic costumes and go trick-or-treating weeks in advance. There was no special designated night for trick-or-treating back then, so we'd make the most of it, turning it into 5 or 6 nights. We'd go to each other's neighborhoods and stay out for 3 - 4 hours at a time.

Halloween was NOT a good time to live in or near Detroit, however. For 30 years I lived on the outskirts of Detroit, where the holiday was marred with vandalism and arson. They didn't call it "Devil's Night" for nothing. Thank goodness I moved away.

I wanted to include the two classic Halloween candies: candy corn and those horrible peanut taffy confections that came wrapped in orange and black wax paper. Ugh! Even as a kid, I never cared for either. But they do say "Halloween", don't they? Found a package of each at the dollar store. I checked to see if they were made in China (no -- Indiana). My holy grail was "Almond Joy".

Probably the first thing I'd found that inspired me to do this piece were the clear plastic owl trays. They came from a Charlevoix consignment shop. The clear glass-covered pumpkin dish also came from a resale shop in Ellsworth. As with most of my still lifes, everything either comes from a resale shop or garage sale. I love it: shopping roulette! I love the concept of trusting in the Universe to steer one towards things they need.

Don't you just love the warty pumpkin? Actually, I've been told it's really a squash. Today I'm going to bake it and maybe make a pie.

I've had that black ceramic cat teapot for probably 30 years. Love that thing. It's probably about the only thing I bought new, aside from the candy.

The first things I painted in this piece were the maple leaves. I knew they wouldn't last but a day before drying up. It's getting late in the season and I feared waking up some morning to find all the leaves on the ground before I'd had a chance to paint them.

Maybe working in the auto factory was a good thing in that it got me used to constant interruptions, struggles and aggravations. I've adopted 2 little kitties for the studio and they interrupted me constantly. Kept wanting to climb up my legs, sit on my lap, wanting me to play with them all the time. At the end of every painting session I'd have to lock up the palette in another room, as they wanted to walk all over it.

I included a close-up detail shot of Elvis, my favorite cat. This is the third time I've included him in a painting. He typically hangs around me all the time, watching and guarding me from errant mice.

"Creek House" -- plein air field study -- 9x12" -- oil on canvas -- Margie Guyot

My friend Pete called on the phone Friday afternoon, saying he wanted to show me a cute little house that just went up for sale down the road from us. We both just fell in love with it! Sitting on 10 acres, just off US31, between Eastport and Atwood, Michigan. South of Charlevoix, north of Traverse City, about a mile east of Lake Michigan.

That's a big porch on the left side. You can't see it in this painting, but there's a stream that winds all along the front of the house. A great spot to sit and watch the deer!

We met the owner yesterday, who told us the land around the house had been a thick woods, making it difficult to get back there to build the house. It had started out as a one-room hunting lodge. It's beautiful now.

I went back on Saturday afternoon to paint this view. I'd waited until about 4 PM. Which was too late to get a good sun-drenched view. The house sits back of a hill and the trees block the late-day sun. Finally a few patches of sunlight came through on the lawn in the foreground.

"Sunset - 10/16/09" -- plein air field study -- oil on canvas 9x12" -- Margie Guyot

Again, this was painted from my favorite spot: Rex Beach. I live only about 2 1/2 miles away. As usual, I had the entire beach to myself. That's Northport over in the distance.

"Flowering Kale" -- oil on canvas -- 30x40" -- Margie Guyot

A couple weeks ago I attended a "fungi/fermentation" workshop when I saw this huge, frilly, flowering kale. It gave me GOOSEBUMPS! Some people's heart skips a beat; for me, it's goosebumps. I went up to the workshop organizers and said I wanted to either "beg, buy or steal" it. Ended up making a $5 donation to ISLAND.

I loved the colors in the top part of the kale and selected a cloth from my fabric collection to echo those tones. The people in JoAnn Fabrics must think I'm cuckoo for the garish fabrics I buy.

The red-striped vase is from Pier One. That wonderful grape-shaped wine bottle I found at a flea market for $10. As soon as I saw it -- yep -- you guessed it: goosebumps. And that polka dot bag is so cool! It came from some hoity-toity boutique over in the Leelanau Peninsula last summer. I thought the polka dots work well, echoing the bumps on the wine bottle.

It was a bit of a challenge to get the sunlight and shadow patterns and colors. Usually I have to use my studio light during the cooler months, as it's mostly cloudy along the NW coastline of Michigan.