RSBense
Isolation and Inspiration

These hauntingly familiar, otherworldly pieces were born out of the isolation experienced from the recent pandemic. The stay-at-home guidelines gave me lots of time to create. While I was cleaning and organizing my studio, I stumbled across some strangely sized ultra-high quality watercolor paper. In keeping with my New England roots, I just had to find a way to use it. Thus, this series of long and skinny landscapes was born. 

As usual, I am engaged in the process and not really doing any deep thinking. I am just playing around. I taped off a section of the paper for the “real” art and used the sides to test my colors. I was being particular about the testing, making deliberate areas of color. I was taking a class with Doris Rice, and she saw it and said, “Those look like remarques.” I quipped “What is a remarque?” It turns out that artists will sometimes paint in the margins of the print, thereby creating a remarque. “Cool,” I thought, and I kept doing my color studies on the sides of the pieces.  I then took the body of work to the framer, and I have to thank Rob at The Gilded Edge Frame Shop for telling me to keep these remarques in the framed piece. I am sure I would have covered them up! 

Judy Arnold
For Granted

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. So Joni Mitchell told us, and as I age, those words ring even truer. Change is constant and inevitable. But what once progressed at a sluggish creep, now assaults us at an epic pace. The cost and availability of goods. The state of our union. Restaurant survival. Ease of travel. Sustainability of our planet. Shifting politics. The past few years have raised the curtain on so much that I once took for granted. It makes my head spin.

When a building and business that I loved and depended on was suddenly lost to fire, personal change was thrust upon me, leading to a new appreciation of the every day places in my world. I began to look at everything around me with fresh eyes, and questioned my assumptions that familiar sights would be everlasting. They won’t.

Basements of some Strawbery Banke Museum buildings are sustaining water damage from the rising sea and crumbling. Almost thirty 80-year old trees in a Portsmouth neighborhood are being removed to install new sidewalks. Large residential developments are rising like mushrooms all over Southern New Hampshire.

Each day I pass by pastoral scenes, antique barns, quirky shops and centuries old homes. I practice appreciation of those sights which bring me joy — and I take nothing for granted.

Judy Arnold is a proud lifelong NH resident and UNH graduate. Retired from an engineering career, she now pursues buying and selling antiques. Her photography journey began with some blurry B&W Instamatic snapshots in the 1960s.

During the 2020 Lockdown, Judy found the time and inspiration to begin more serious study and practice of photography. She enjoys capturing New England scenes, details of the nautical lifestyle and new takes on the mundane.

Combining her passions for antiques and photography has led to a growing collection of vintage camera lenses. Her favorite is a 1930s Russian collapsible Fed 50mm lens with a red star on the lens cap. The timeless images from Polaroid-style film are a growing area of interest.  One of Judy’s images can be found in the Portsmouth 400th Anniversary 2023 calendar.