House Portrait Archives - Carol Skinger

Crandy Grant’s cabin on a lake

May 15, 2021

winter scene of a cabin on a lake — Cabin on a Lake watercolor by Carol Skinger

I was so pleased to hear from an old friend from my ski racing years- Crandy Grant.

Crandy and I have kept in touch on social media where he follows my artwork via Carol Skinger Artworks.

In recent years Crandy built a delightful cabin on land his family owned in VT for many decades. He involved the younger generations of his family to help in construction and I feel sure they built some great memories together.

In the beginning of 2021 while the whole country was still dealing with the COVID shut down, I heard from Crandy through my contact page that he’d like to commission me to make a watercolor of the cabin on the lake. I do that.

Crandy is an ideal client: “I have been very impressed with your work and I’m especially fond of watercolors. My preference would be to leave you completely on your own for sizing, colors and however you feel best to depict this scene“.

I have to say I am very lucky that many clients feel this way and I appreciate it.

I made two paintings for Crandy in the end as I got stuck at a certain stage! Wondering how to proceed, I started a 2nd painting showing the cabin in winter. In the end both paintings came together, I sent both and he loved them. We agreed that one day my husband and I will come spend a night or two in the cabin.

It’s fitting that we connected over a cabin. My big experience with Crandy was in 1968 when he and Greg McClallen were the ski coaches for a small band of ski racers from VT including me, and we drove from VT to Colorado and stayed at the Tagert Hut 17 miles from Aspen. We drove out in 3 cars, one of them our VW bus. Parents out there, would you let your 16 year old with 2 month old driver’s license take one of the cars and do this? Grateful to my brave and independent mother!

Tagert Hut, an A-frame was located up a dirt road full of switch backs high above Ashcroft which is on Castle Creek Road. This was June of 1968. The hut was built in 1960 and it was under the care of John Holden in the 1960’s. He and his wife Anne had been faculty members at the Putney School in Vermont and they started Colorado Rocky Mountain School in nearby Carbondale in the 50s. I had been a student there for 8 weeks the previous summer.

When fellow ski racer Bill Farrell and I decided to get up before dawn at Tagert Hut and hike or hitch our way to the only ski race of the summer at Montezuma Basin, I recognized the Holden’s right away when they picked us up. Like Tuckerman’s Ravine there was no lift at Montezuma Basin so we both hiked the course with everyone and studied it on the way to the starting gate. I won! Greg and Crandy’s training camp was a great help. I was trying to move from a ‘B’ to ‘A’ classification and winning that race was the first of several to cinch leap.

Tagert Hut – Colorado 1968

Here is my summer painting of Crandy’s cabin which I started first and finished after completing the winter painting. If you drew a line west from there you’d be on lower part of Lake Champlain and to west of that, Lake George. The low mountains you see are in NY state. I look forward to seeing it.

Cabin on a lake — Crandy Grant’s Cabin in Summer by Carol Skinger

Many thanks for the interesting commission Crandy. It’s one of the things that made my COVID winter of 2021 memorable in a good way.

I was working on one of the paintings when I took a break and watched a (virtual) Red Bench talk via Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum in Stowe. It was titled Nose Dive- A History of Mt. Mansfield’s Famous Trail. Guess what? The 1967 Jr. National Alpine Championship Downhill on the Nosedive was THE LAST important National or International race on the Nosedive, that cold day in March ’67 when you won the Men’s Downhill and my sister Erica Skinger won the Women’s Downhill (and she won the overall Women’s title). So you both get that piece of Nosedive history.

Love this 1935 photo showing the Nosedive when that’s all you could see, 5 years before the single chair opened.

1935 Nosedive photo Stowe VT — Screen shot from Nosedive: A History of Mt. Mansfield’s Famous Trail

Tips for framing original art and prints

February 9, 2021

Commissioned house portrait by Carol Skinger

I’m going to describe best practices for framing here but caution you that using these methods is expensive. I myself sometimes use these methods for art in my own home and sometimes I don’t. Not everything needs to be handled this way. Not everything needs to last for 100 years. In short, if you have art or prints you have hidden in a drawer because you cannot afford museum grade framing, maybe you need to rethink the plan so you can enjoy the art you own now.

Archival framing methods are the way to go, which means 100% kozo paper hinges, 100% cotton rag, acid and lining free, alkaline pH buffered 4-ply mattes, and conservation glass or Plexiglas.

You can also go with plastic corner mounts and hinge the top matte to an acid-free foam core backing with acid free linen hinges.

There is some back and forth on buffered and non-buffered matte board, but with concerns about general acidity of the air, using buffered matte board is the more conservative method.

I have always found Japanese paper hinges (using rice starch paste) a real pain to work with, so I tend to use a middle ground:

Acid-free linen tape hinges
100% cotton rag, acid and lining free, alkaline pH buffered, 4-ply mattes
Conservation glass or Plexiglas
Acid-free foam core backing

For something that you want to be long lasting as well as reversible (so the owner can have the print or art re-matted later, etc. if so desired) you will want to avoid dry/cold mount methods.

If you insist of entire adhesion to backing for a totally smooth appearance, digital prints should probably not be heat mounted. Ask your framer or reprographics professional. In Pittsburgh, that is Modern Reproductions and Tristate. But lets face it lots of things can be fully mounted.

Pictureframes.com has a “personal frame shop” on their top header. This is a great way to try on mats and frames and you can even select a wall color behind the framed art. You have to upload an image from your computer. Because color can appear differently on a screen than it does in reality I still suggest using a local framer. In the Pittsburgh area I like (in no particular order) Boxheart Gallery, James Gallery , Framezilla , and Panza Frame and Gallery. And I think you should not feel embarrassed to take your big discount coupon to Michaels as well. They have archival and museum glass too.

If you decide to have any of my work framed via an online framing business, you must take the dimensions from my actual art once you receive it and not from my “approximate dimensions” listed for each piece.

Framing is up to you! Yes archival framing is best but expensive, just do what you can to get art on your walls and enjoy it!

Lake Champlain House Portrait

January 26, 2012

Winter scene on an island showing a red house and a boat house

That’s the description and this is the back story of a very recent painting commission (see more examples). Sometime in November I sent an email invitation to a bunch of my friends and acquaintances to come and see my work at the “I Made it! For the Holidays” market at Bakery Square. But lots of my friends don’t live in Pittsburgh so I included a link of what I was going to be featuring at the market, my custom house portraits, which need to be ordered ahead of time. For many people the holidays are a time when they think of commissioning me to paint one as a gift .

I was so thrilled to hear back from a dear friend from childhood who wanted to order one for her husband. Susan and I had been out of touch for years but got back in touch a few years ago finding each other through mutual childhood friends.

She mailed me a book of photos of their vacation house on Lake Champlain, in Vermont. It is a house she had grown up going to in her own childhood as well. I decided on a view that shows not only the house but also the lake setting. It was such a lovely and unforgettable experience for me to work on the painting and I was dreaming about Lake Champlain as I drew and painted it. I also have a memorable Lake Champlain chapter in my childhood, though further north than Susan’s place. It is a 114 mile long lake so there are plenty of places for people’s memories!

My friendship with Susan comes from a time in my life of cherished childhood memories though these had nothing to do with the lake. I had a group of girlfriends who were especially important to me from age 10 to 13 and Susan was one of them. Because we were all the same age and gender, and during winter we all skied every weekend and school vacation on Mt. Mansfield in Stowe, VT- we discovered each other. Our group coalesced over a period of time and thereafter we always looked for each other. On any given ski day as lunch time approached we noticed who of us had stuffed our own brown bag lunches into a crevice inside a wood wind tunnel on top of Mt. Mansfield- not wasting any ski time by taking it inside to a locker. If we hadn’t found each other skiing before lunch we would always catch up with each other at the Octagon at the top of the single chair with our frozen solid sandwiches. Giggling, burning our mouths on hot chocolate and eating saltine crackers was followed by skiing together all afternoon until the lifts stopped at 4PM.

My most vivid memories involve long adventures in the woods, skiing off trail. Perhaps the trail that gave us this idea of exploring the woods on skis was the Perry Merrill because it was like skiing through the woods on a magical voyage away from the ski area. Then we began to try to find new ways to ski from top to bottom without going on any trail or only small parts of trails. I remember a time or two taking our skis off to walk across streams. It was a wonderful experience of play, exploration and independence. I wish all kids could experience the outdoors with this amount of independence.

Here is how the gentle Perry Merrill woods trail was made. In 1933, state forester Perry Merrill was in charge of Vermont’s Depression era Civilian Conservation Corps, and the first task he had for his men was to cut ski trails on Mount Mansfield, and other future VT ski areas. The first cut by the crew headed by Charlie Lord was the Bruce Trail on Mount Mansfield. After the Bruce trail was finished, they cut the Nose Dive, Chin Clip, Perry Merrill, Teardrop, and Lord trails, rounding out the first six trails that make up Stowe.

Painting can be a wonderful meditation on all sorts of things. Thank you Susan, for our continued friendship and for allowing my mind to travel to Lake Champlain, to Mt. Mansfield and to our childhood times while painting your house portrait! I am glad your husband loved it. I was thrilled to get your card with my painting on front of the card!

House Portrait

September 27, 2011

See more examples of my House Portrait

Here are few examples:

House Portraits

September 10, 2010

Do real artists paint house portraits?
This artist does. See more and learn about pricing

I can either visit your home to sketch and photograph it,

or I can work from your photographs. Here are some examples of my house portraits:

I sometimes like to paint a house at dusk when the lights come on inside. This is the house my cousin and her family lived in for several happy years. They are planning to build a zero energy home and they wanted to have a portrait of the home they loved so much. The new owner also loved the house portrait and they purchased a high resolution digital print.

I met the owner and saw this house in the summer but felt it would work well as a winter portrait. The owners collect house portraits of all the places they have lived. They bid on the chance to have me paint a house portrait of their home at a fundraiser for Fox Chapel Crew Club.

This was a going away present from one family to another. I am guessing the parents and children had some great memories together in each other’s homes.

This was my most recent house portrait. The young children of the family were seated on kitchen stools waiting to see the painting of their home. Their mom opened the cardboard portfolio while I watched and it was such a pleasure to see their faces light up with pleasure when they saw it!?I work in many different ways and I am comfortable with the mix of work. I recently enjoyed this piece in the NY Times about Wayne Thiebaud who has worked in many areas of both applied and fine arts even if most people know him for only his paintings of pastries.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/arts/design/03wayne.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=wayne_thiebaud

One part of the long article which gets at what I mean is this…”Mr. Thiebaud’s original aim was to be a commercial artist, a field he deeply respects. (“I still paint as if an art director is looking over my shoulder,” he said.) Over the years, he has worked a sign painter, a theatrical production designer, an art director, a poster designer, a fashion typographer and illustrator (his subjects included lipstick and shoes), a comic strip artist, a cartoonist for the Rexall Drug Company in Los Angeles and, fleetingly, as a teenage “in-betweener” at Walt Disney Studios filling in the figures of Dopey, Pluto and Jiminy Cricket.”