Can this painting be saved?

An update post..... since I was here last I've shipped 10 paintings to the Signature Art Gallery in Tallahassee and I have 8 more boxed up and ready to ship to Macon Arts Alliance in GA. You have no idea what a relief it is to move some paintings around! Since leaving Gallery B brought many pieces back home, I needed to make room for new stuff. Thankfully, Macon Arts is having a special small works show in November so it's perfect timing. And the wonderful people at Signature wanted some new work for the holiday season. Yay all the way around and doing a happy dance. 💃

Shedding Light

16x20

The painting above is one of the new ones. I love playing with paint like this. It brings my two favorite things together - landscapes and abstracts. After painting that one I decided to try doing something a little different by toning the canvas yellow instead of red orange like the previous one.

so far so good.....

ugh!

now I really hate it....

maybe it's salvageable.

This is as far as I've gotten today so you'll have to stay tuned to see what happens to it. So far the only stage I like is the very first one. In the latest stage it's just starting to come together but boy, it's hard to get past the ugly stage sometimes. When you hit that point you have 3 choices - 1. trash it (gesso over it and try again)  2. grit your teeth and push on through. or 3. take a break, work on something else for a while and come back to it later.

I think I'll take door #3.

See you next time. Hopefully by then this will be resolved and I can share. 

The travels of River Cruise

River Cruise

I had something interesting happen this week. Actually 2 somethings. The first one was about the above painting - River Cruise. I sold this painting last spring through my gallery rep in Tallahassee, Signature Art Gallery. When you sell a piece through a gallery you don't always know where that art ends up. You just assume it's hanging in a collector's home somewhere. 

Then you get an email from a previous collector who said they won it in an auction in Miami. Miami is a bit of a trip from Tallahassee. But, there it was, pictured in the email. This collector is local so River Cruise has done it's own traveling from here in the middle of the state, to the top of the state, then to the bottom of the state, and now back home in the middle again. That's cruising!

This collector wanted to know if I had some more work she could look at so of course I emailed images and she did buy more work. So this week I got to see how far my painting traveled, and I also got to send some more paintings out into the world and a new place to call home.

It was a good week. I hope yours was excellent too!

New Horse Fever and More

 

What a crazy year! I'm happy to say I'm fully vaccinated and ready for life to be "normal" again - whatever that means. I'm still painting, doing commissions, and working Gallery B so maybe normal will just mean wearing a mask less often. 

I've painted another horse. This time it's for the 20th anniversary of Horse Fever. It's called Home Sweet Home and it's part of the Giving Collection. It's one of 3 horses that will be going to a lucky raffle winner June 4th. The tickets are $100 and available at  Marion Cultural Alliance. The proceeds from the raffle benefit the arts in Marion County. Very cool! Is anyone surprised that I painted nests all over this horse? 

After painting the horse, me and my co-owner friends have also been incredibly busy doing a bit of a refresh in Gallery B. The walls have fresh paint and there's new carpet on the floor. We've also brought some new friends in to share our space. Welcome to The Graceful Gardener, Pen and Ink, and Grated & Cured. We've also added new artists to the gallery so if you're in the area you should definitely stop by.

New pretty space!

I have lots of new work to share so I'll just start with the three below. I also updated most of the pages here so click on a tab above to see more. My abstract work seems to be influencing my landscapes. I still love realism but these are fun too. I felt the need to loosen up and play more. I've also started adding colored pencil to the canvases - swirling round strokes layered between glazes of acrylic. 

Sparkle

8x8

The painting below was inspired by a tall stand of trees at a local park. It just sold at the Signature Gallery in Tallahassee to a lovely gentleman who called to tell me how much he appreciates my work. That call made my day! It's such an honor to have someone spend their hard earned money on something I created and then to have them call and tell me about it, well, that's just plain wonderful and I'm so grateful, not only to him but to the Signature and staff.

Soaring

36x18

SOLD

Relaxing

12x12

We have a long weekend coming up. I hope you find time to relax and also remember all the men and women who served our country and paid the ultimate price. 

Peace and love,

C

Finding Peace

I need some color, some lightness, some vibrancy. The last couple of weeks have been very hard. In fact this year has been hard. A lot has been going on in my life since 2018 began, starting with my father's death in February. Just a week after the funeral I had to begin the process of refinancing my house so I was rewarded with 2 months of banking hell. Then not long after the closing my mom ended up in the hospital because of an accident- thankfully she's ok now. And of course we have the national news..... 

In a previous post I talked about being included in the Professional Artist magazine article called Get Inspired by Darkness. In it I talked about my Silent Voices series and painting through the grief of being a mother of adoption loss. Well, because of that loss and knowing what it's like to have a child taken from me I'm having a particularly hard time with what's happening to migrant children right now. I don't know what those families have been through to get here but I do know what they're experiencing after they arrived and their children were taken away. I know the terror and grief. Hearing the audio, the cries of little ones was too much. I found myself sobbing for the babies who need to be back with their mothers. I'm doing what I can to help the cause but I also need to do something to keep myself from sliding down into despair. I've toyed with some ideas for a concept piece about the situation but it's not coming together yet.

So, now what I'm doing is painting light, color, and things that remind me of life such as the bird nests. I did the first Color Dance painting a little while ago and decided I needed to do more so recently I did #'s 2 and 3. And, I have to admit, I love fall color because it reminds me that this Florida summer heat won't last forever.  :)

Color Dance

16x16

Color Dance 2

16x8

Color Dance 3

16x8

Below is the newest nest painting. This one along with 3 others just made their way to my gallery rep in Tallahassee- Signature Art Gallery. I think this one is my favorite so far. I want to do more with that format when I get some new canvases.

In the Shadows

6x12

And here, a new one in progress. This is what I need right now- life affirming images and a process that keeps me going. Getting immersed in playing with gold leaf, squishing paint around, throwing splatters of golden yellow, these things will keep my spirits up and keep me going and sane in what seems like an insane world. 

One other thing helps this summer... playing with grandbabies and going to the beach. Ah... salt air!

If you paint, keep doing that. If you sing or play an instrument, please make more music. We need inspiration. If you have grandbabies, make a play date because we also need more smiles right now.

Til next time... check out the rest of the nest and landscape paintings at my website.

Peace

The gallery, the Etsy shop and a nest update

It's Monday morning and I'm sitting here with my coffee, listening to the birds and thinking about the week ahead. Today is art class. I'll probably just have 3 people in the studio today since a few folks are traveling. The rest of the week will be spent in my home studio working on several paintings. I usually have more than one going at a time- keeps my energy up that way.

Another thing that boosts the painting energy is visiting my gallery rep. Last week I delivered 10 new landscapes to the Signature Art Gallery in Tallahassee. They've been selling my work for a couple of years now and I'd never been there! Shame on me. So, since I had a couple of larger canvases for them this time I thought it would be good to deliver instead of shipping. I'm so glad I did. It was a beautiful day. Yellow flowers (friends from the area will know what kind they are) were blooming all along I75 with the occassional purple ones thrown in here and there- very pretty- you know those complimentary colors work so well together. 😄

Finding the gallery was very easy and what a nice place! I met Mary, the owner, and we had a lovely time visiting. Walking around, looking at the other art there, I realized I wanted just about everything in the place. Every piece in the gallery was beautiful! I truly felt honored to have my work hanging there with so many wonderful artist's work. I could've stayed all day just studying the brush work and techniques in all the other works. 

One of the larger pieces I delivered.

The 2 floating walls where my work is currently hanging. They've made room for a few of the new pieces.

So my gallery is updated and now my Etsy shop is too.

Once upon a time I was doing Friday Painting Parties. I did them for about 3 years but due to a change in the studio space I stopped doing them. I had a number of workshop demo pieces left from those parties and I got tired of tripping over the box of canvases so I added them to the shop at a special price. This week, through Mother's Day, you can get one of these paintings at a bigger discount with the coupon code MOMLOVE20 for 20% off. It really is a great deal so check it out if you're so inclined. There's a mix of subjects and techniques - take a look at the Etsy mini shop on the sidebar to see more examples.

This was one of my faves to do. It's from a photo I took on the gulf coast.

We did a gold leaf sky on this one. What a mess in a workshop! We then used palette knife to paint the rest.

This one came from a series I did called Woodland. They're all sold now, this is the last.

Nest update!

So remember the nest in my mailbox? The babies grew up and fledged but sadly, at least one of them was lost to a predator - the kitty. I happened to be home when the little ones took off and suddenly I saw the cat hunkered down over something small while momma bird was screeching and flying circles overhead. Sad. All I can do is hope the others survived. 

Once I was sure no one was coming back to the mailbox nest I cut a piece of cardboard to fit the width of the box so I could slide it underneath and then carefully pull the nest out. It took some work but I finally got it out without losing much of their construction. Once I got it out I found an egg inside that hadn't hatched. Unfortunately, I broke it when I took it out to show my granddaughter but I kept the largest pieces and put them back in. Now I have a new nest to add to my growing collection. See, this is why I have to move that box of canvases I was tripping over. Seriously..... go to the Etsy shop!

From the front

Side view- you can see how much taller it is in the back.

And of course, I've added to the collection of nest paintings. In memory of the little one lost to the kitty I painted 2 Babies this past weekend from a photo I took of them in the mailbox.

2 Babies

5x5

Well, that's the update for now...... I have lots of paintings floating around in my head so I'm anxious to get back to the studio and get busy. 

Wishing you peace and creativity.

Baby birds and a kitty

If we're friends on Facebook you've probably seen photos of my mailbox nest. This has been a yearly occurrence for the last 3 or 4 years. Last year's wren babies didn't survive a predator so I've been keeping a close watch on these little ones (as if I could really do anything about anything if a bigger bird swoops in and decides to make a meal of them). Anyway.... this morning I woke to a lot of fussing coming from the front porch.

Apparently I wasn't the only one to hear the babies yelling for food. A neighborhood kitty also heard. We've had a beautiful calico hanging around our yard for a long time. I don't know who he belongs to but he certainly likes our space. So there he was, sitting on the front porch under the mailbox with huge, eager eyes. Thankfully he can't get to them but he sure causes chaos for the bird family trying to eat breakfast.

Look at those faces!

I shooed him away so mom and dad could feed their growing bunch. I watched them take turns bringing bugs and worms to the nest. Once the babies were satisfied it looked like they were doing some house cleaning. They appeared to have pieces of shell they were carrying out of the mailbox. Gotta keep things tidy.

Just to be sure they could keep on with their parental duties I sat with the front door open a bit so I could watch them and keep the kitty from disturbing them again. Near the top of the photo you can see one of the parents on the edge of the mail slot ready to take off again.

It's another beautiful, cool day today so I'll keep the windows and doors open and keep my ears open too so I can hopefully help the little wrens through another day without the scare of a large feline.

Last time I told you about the floral show happening at Magnolia Art Xchange. Here's my Camelia hanging at Ocala Union Station in one of the exhibit rooms. It was a really nice day- did a little painting, met some great people and got to visit with some old friends. And the photo below is just because...... This past Friday night was the Friday Art Walk in Tallahassee and Vera at the Signature Gallery emailed me this photo of "my walls" at the gallery. What a great place! And they sold 2 more of my paintings- a nest and a landscape. Oh happy day!

I'm going to finish my coffee and enjoy the rest of this beautiful, spring day in FL. It won't be long before we're all melting from the heat so it's wonderful to feel a cool breeze. Hope your day is great.

Painting what I love for people who love what I paint

The last couple of weeks have been good in the art world. I want to just take a moment to say thanks!

Thank you to my friends and family who give me so much encouragement about my work and support what I do.

Thank you to my Facebook friends who cheer me on and "like" my work, who tell me which paintings are their favorites.

Thank you to my students who show up every Monday ready to learn and practice and make me laugh in the process.

Thank you to the Signature Art Gallery and the Macon Arts Alliance Gallery for their help in connecting with collectors. Vera at the Signature has been amazing. I very much appreciate all she does for the artists.

And a big, giant, squeezy hug to my collectors. Without them I couldn't keep doing what I'm doing.

This is what my collectors make possible - days that are like Christmas in the studio - when art supplies come in the mail. New supplies means new paintings and new paintings mean new ideas and the cycle continues. I'm able to keep on doing what I love to do.

This is my dream right here, right now. I'm living it. Painting what I love for people who love what I paint.

Thank you!

Painting, sharing, shipping, bingeing

It was a busy week in the studio last week. I got lots of painting done, talked to lots of people, shipped artwork to the Signature Art Gallery and even sold a few paintings! And btw.... the Signature Gallery has a bird room- all things bird so if you're a bird watcher or are just fascinated with them like I am then go see what they have in there. So anyway, it was a banner week and the best of all was Friday when this article came out in Arts Business Institute. A big thank you to Carolyn at Artsy Shark for contacting me. Check it out and if you would be so kind.... tweet it or share it on whatever method of socializing you utilize. Thanks!

This is the latest bird's nest I did and it's sold so it's heading to NV this week. I have another one on the easel in the ugly stage.....

Kind of weird lighting in this shot. I had my spotlight on the nest I'm using for reference so the canvas looks a little dark. My laptop is there so I can message with people while I work and of course binge on Netflix shows- right now I'm bouncing back and forth between the new episodes of Walking Dead and old episodes of NCIS.

This is a little Instagram snippet from the process of applying gold leaf to my canvas.

Artist friends.... what do you do when you paint? Listen to music? Watch TV? Are you a binge watcher? Need silence? Just curious.

Carry on and happy painting.

No excuses, inspiration and summertime

No excuses. I saw this video on Facebook this morning and I thought- what an inspiration! I've had some issues lately with my hands due to a long time living with Rhuematoid Disease and of course the first thing that goes through my mind is.... what will happen if I'm not able to use my hands anymore? What if I can't hold a paint brush or colored pencil? Then I saw that and thought- hell, I'll just strap the brush to my arm if I have to. If you want to create or NEED to create like so many of us do, you'll find a way.

"Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway." ~Robert Henri

So.... on to painting. Remember the bird's nest from the last post? Airborne is done- 12x12, mixed media on canvas. These are fun and a challenge to do. You know how much I love texture but I can't decide if I like it with these particular paintings. I think the nest itself might be easier to paint if the canvas were smooth but I do prefer the texture behind the gold leaf. Putting the gold directly on the canvas without texture tends to show off the weave of the canvas too much for my taste. I'll do the third one with the texture but maybe I'll play with something different for future pieces.

In the meantime I received a request for a portrait from someone who loves the gold leaf that I use in the landscapes but wants it done for a baby's portrait. Here's my first foray into gold and people painting. I have 7 grandchildren so I'm never without subjects to test techniques on. This one is Mila Blaze.

I think this will take some experimenting with surfaces. I love using Canson Mi-Teintes for portraits because I love to work on colored paper but the adhesive size for the gold does make the paper buckle. You can tell in the photo- especially on the left side. I did this one pretty small because I had a feeling that would be the case. The paper size here is 8.25x11. Maybe it would buckle less if the paper were larger? I don't know. The Canson also absorbs the size so it took 2 coats of the adhesive in order for it to work and get tacky. We'll see how the next one goes....

In the "catching up" post I shared some new landscapes. Since then I've shipped them off to the Signature Art Gallery in Tallahassee FL. and my wonderful rep Vera emailed me the photo of how they have my work displayed there- you can see the brand new ones on the left. I love this gallery and am so happy to be included with the fabulous artists they have there. Check out their website, or better yet, visit them if you can.

What's next? NOTHING! I'm not painting a single thing for the next week because tomorrow I head to the beach. I thought about taking some art supplies with me but then I thought about the hundreds of books on my kindle and decided to make a dent in that list instead and this will be my view for the next 7 days. Ahhhhh.......

Here's to creativity, inspiration, summertime, relaxation, peacefulness, and sunrises over the Atlantic. I hope you're getting your own time to rest this summer. See you when I get back.