Gail Niebrugge's Blog
Here I stand with my pasty white Alaska skin, on the hot sands of Waikiki Beach looking conspicuously like a tourist. The town of Oahu, Honolulu, has grown enormously in the twenty years since we last visited. Previous stays we sought out all the major tourist attractions, so this time we opted to take the [...]
Our friends, Judy Tyke and Billie Lewis, drove two hours from the opposite side of the “big island” to meet our ship and show us around Hilo. We had a fabulous lunch at Pestos in the old town of Hilo, and fun at the Macadamia Nut Factory, but best of all we were able to [...]
After four days a sea we arrive at Hilo, Hawaii, today and meet with long-time friends from Glennallen, Alaska. We’ve been treated like royalty on the cruise ship, and food dominates each day. I especially enjoy the displays of vegetables and fruit carved and placed in decorative arrangements throughout the dining areas. Ice carvings also [...]
This winter has been one of the snowiest I can remember, the good news is that it is beautiful outside, the bad news is that it is a huge job keeping roads, driveways, walkways, patio Bar-B-Q accessible. We plow, snow blow, shovel and clean it up only to find wind drifts covering our work and [...]
Wow, this week has had killer weather, sunny and above freezing during the day. Let the winter recreation begin! The Chugach mountains are spectacular in the last rays of the afternoon sun, many tracks in the snow are evidence of snow machine activity, and an occasional hole in the ice a remnant of a fishing [...]
A view of Fairbanks from the airplane window at -20 degrees two days ago, today it is snowing hard at my studio in the Matanuska Valley and the temperature has warmed to +38. Wild swings, wild weather, wild Alaska. It has been a most amazing winter. Tons of snow, absolutely gorgeous. Snow plows, snow blowers, [...]
Yesterday I had the pleasure to serve as a juror for the Fairbanks Art Association upcoming show, Patterns of Influence “Symphony of Light,” that opens February 3 in the gallery at the Alaska Centennial Center for the Arts in Pioneer Park, Fairbanks, Alaska. Many artists braved the sub zero temperatures to attend my slide show/lecture [...]
About 40 years ago we brought our family to the historic movie set of Old Tucson, Arizona, John Wayne was still making cowboy movies and we recognized many of the buildings and streets in films. It was exciting. Yesterday we revisited this place of many memories after a drive through the magnificent Saguaro National Park. [...]
While eating dinner at the SaddleBrook Preserve last night and tiny herd of seven deer grazed in the brushy area below the patio. They are so much fun to watch, quiet and quick, first you see them then you don’t. An enjoyable memory of our time in Tucson, Arizona. Gail Niebrugge, Alaska artist
The temperatures drop in the evening in the 3500′ elevation of Oro Valley, North East of Tucson. I’m sitting at my favorite restaurant in the Preserve at SaddleBrook clubhouse, watching the evening sun on the Santa Catalina Mountains. The tallest peaks are over 10,000′ elevation and have traces of snow, in the valley below are [...]
Breakfast at the Westward Look Resort in Tucson. What a change from -22 degrees in Alaska. Yesterday we spent the morning with our old friends at Arizona Lithographers, we’ve been doing business with them for more than 20 years. It was so much fun to reminisce with the owner, John Davis, and put a face [...]
Dusk arrives at 4:30PM, we are gaining more daylight every day. Yesterday at sunset a cow moose and her two calves strolled through the yard browsing on willows and alders, the cow found my treasured China Rose bushes and managed to prune them into little stubs. After feasting in my garden they moved into the [...]
After three days of shredding files my shredder bit the dust, it will only run in reverse spitting wads of confetti sized paper out the top. One of the pitfalls of a home office is that unless we fix broken stuff ourselves, no one else will. The remote phones are not holding a charge, so [...]
By now everyone knows that Alaska is getting a double whammy of snow, something about the jet stream being much further north this year than usual. As I work in the studio office this is the scene outside my window. If I had the choice of wind or snow, I pick snow…..just sayin’ I’m starting [...]
Thanks to cold weather and continual snow, my office is getting a long overdue organization. Occasionally I stop, stretch, look out the windows and look at the beauty of colored lights buried on snow laden trees. A joyous sight, it brings a smile. During the inclement weather I’ve cleaned-up the website, organizing the “Original Paintings” [...]
Yesterday another blizzard, I watched from the upstairs studio windows only able to discern objects that were close, the distance blurred by white haze. Our chairs at the end of the dock nearly buried, iron sentinels in a white landscape. A good day to catch up clearing out file cabinets, shredding paper, filling five big [...]
A magenta sky above the silent frozen lake, natures beauty rose above my dread of sub zero cold, lifted my heavy soul with unexpected joy, I watched mesmerized until inky blackness extinguished the last crimson beam. Alaska in January 2012, preserved in ice until the April thaw. Gail Niebrugge, Alaska artist
Our lake is normally a busy winter playground; ice fishing, snow machine riding sometimes pulling sleds of squealing children, skate skiing, people walking dogs, and anything else you can think of, but since double digit below zero temperatures the lake is silent. As I watch through my cozy studio windows all I see is an [...]
The weather at my Alaska art studio continues to be cold and calm. This morning the thermometer registered -14 degrees and no wind, a gorgeous layer of snow gently covers trees and plants providing insulation from the deep freeze. Here is my rose garden with snow covered rocks creating a beautiful winter landscape in [...]
Gail Niebrugge (Knee-brew-ghe) born and raised in California has pursued art since childhood, winning a poster contest on the Johnny Jet television show at the age of twelve. Gail began her career as an illustrator for the US Navy and Marines in San Diego, and later established the Instructional Media Center for the Grossmont High School District in La Mesa, California. The Niebrugge family fell in love with Alaska while on vacation in 1976 and never returned home, instead they established a residence and studio in the remote interior settlement of Copper Center where the artist painted … [Read More...]
Wikipedia defines pointillism as; "a style of painting in which small distinct points of primary colors create the impression of a wide selection of secondary and intermediate colors." It goes on to say that the mind and the eye mix the color spots into a full range of tones and that it is closely related to Divisionism. Divisionism was practiced by Georges Seurat during the Neo-Impressionism period. He broke his color into basic elements and painted very small and regular dots. His dots are carefully placed as to not touch each other, so the white under painted canvas shows around all of the dots. I call my painting technique pointillism, but technically it is incorrect according to Wikipedia. The difference between my technique and true pointillism is that I use … [Read More...]
