Neighborhood News

The nest from the video in the last post is finished. This cardinal had a story to tell so I'm calling it Neighborhood News. Birds are such resourceful creatures. You never know what you're gonna find tucked into a nest. I've found cloth, yarn, plastic grocery bag pieces, hair - horse and human, moss, newspaper pieces, and a gold foil strip from a cigarette pack. 

This new piece is available on my website. I've also added a new landscape to the site today. Have you been to my site yet? Please check it out by clicking here. There's a link to this blog along with tabs to take you to each section - nests and landscapes along with a few other collections of things I do. We don't have to stick to painting only one thing do we? It's much more fun to mix things up - kinda like the birds and their building techniques. 

Have a fabulous rest of your week. On to the next painting....

C

 

It has to be painted...

I haven't recorded myself painting in quite a while so I wanted to share a little clip I did this morning with the start of the newest nest painting. I got the reference for this nest from a friend of mine and I thought it was just gorgeous. It has the fine straw in the center, Spanish moss all around, twigs with leaves still attached and pieces of newspaper tucked in for good measure. It was begging to be painted. I hope I can do it justice.

I'll share a picture when it's finished. Until next time.....

C

The Best Break

There was no studio time this past week. I didn't paint. I didn't work the gallery. I didn't post anything. What I did do was get in the car with the hubby and drive to Texas to see some of my favorite people. Distance from children and grandchildren hurts the heart during the best of times but during a pandemic it's especially hard. We hadn't seen our babies in a year and a half and that's just way too long.

My lovely daughter and grandson.

Granddaughter silliness!

Our little guy loves painting, drawing and origami so of course we had to have a fun, artsy afternoon along with the swimming, karate classes, gymnastics, and water balloon fights.

On the way home we stopped in Tallahassee at the Signature Gallery to pick up some of my work to swap out with Gallery B in Ocala. Soon I'll be shipping some new work to the Signature. It's good to move work around and keep the galleries fresh. And now that we're back from the trip I'm ready to PAINT!! I have so much I want to do. I have some abstracts to finish for Signature, new landscapes to do, a new nest reference I'm dying to work with, and a portrait commission to start. 

Sometimes the best way to get inspired and motivated to paint is to stay out of the studio for a while. Take a break, think about other things and do something completely different.

Now I'm ready.

C

It's Experiential

The little abstract painting below was a piece I did a few years ago. I liked it then. It's where I was at the time. Looking at it again recently, along with a number of other ones, I decided it wasn't what I wanted anymore so I started putting more layers on top, sandwiched between layers of thick gloss acrylic gel. In those layers I also scribbled with graphite and colored pencil, and dribbled alcohol to lift color. If you look closely you can still see bits of the original painting peeking through so scroll down to see what happened to it. 

When the last layer of clear gloss dried I added a final touch.... accents painted with BLK3.0. This is the most matte black paint I've ever seen. It absorbs all the light so you don't even see the texture that's underneath the paint. I love the contrast between the matte black and the high shine of the gloss gel. 

One thing about this kind of work where you have layer upon layer and extreme contrasts, it's hard for all the details to come across in a photo. It's so experiential, it's best to see pieces like this in person. Below is a detail shot and then a couple of pictures at angles so you can see the difference between the shine and the black areas. 

The original painting was called Time Passage 11 so I guess I'll call it Time Passage 11 Redux. There's more experimenting to do so stay tuned for a few more of these. I just added this one and one other to my website so check out the abstract page to see more. Of course I have some new bird nest paintings in mind too, and some landscapes. So many paintings to do!

Happy Wednesday and I hope the rest of your week is spectacular.

C

Fresh Eyes

I'm working all the angles this week! I just finished a commission for a nest painting. I'm working on a landscape and I'm playing with layers on 5 small abstracts. If you paint, do you like to work on different things at the same time. It may seem unfocused to do that but for me it makes perfect sense. While layers are drying on the abstracts I can be working on the other two paintings. If I feel stuck with something on the landscape I can always switch to the nest and work on it for a while. When I go back to the other piece I feel like I have "fresh eyes" and can resolve whatever the problem was. 

This nest is 20x30 and heading to a customer in Virginia.

An abstracty landscape in progress. I'm not sure how much more I'll be doing to this one.

5 little abstracts in progress. I'm REALLY not sure how much more I'll be doing to these. They're still speaking to me. Do you listen to your paintings?