What's inspiring to you?

So yesterday I was out in my yard battling an underground wasp nest. It's really a matter of pouring some powder into the hole and running the other direction. Then I realized that I forgot the second step which was placing something heavy over the hole in the ground. This morning I repeated the process and remembered the second step. While standing there enjoying my yard without dodging flying stingers, I spotted the first camellias of the season. I have to take pictures. I may not paint them for years but I can't let this year go by without at least taking a few shots. They're just so ruffly!! 

These are the early bloomers. Some other varieties will bloom later in the winter like the one I painted below. I don't remember the names of the different varieties but I enjoy the different shapes, petal structures and colors. For this painting I used gold leaf in the background and glazed a bit of green over the gold. This flower isn't quite as ruffly as the earlier ones but I love the way the stamen surround the center petals.

January

20x10

Available here.

And then there's another kind of inspiration.... 

These girls inspire me all the time. My granddaughters were out in the yard (no, not anywhere near the wasp nest) doing a little role playing so they decided to come in and make masks for their characters. I loved the image so much I had to do something...

This was a lot of fun to paint! It's small, only 8x8, so it was fairly quick to do. I know I'll be painting at least one more of these and who knows, there may be more. We'll see. 👀

 

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

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.

Shiny gold and a bird's nest

Birds have always fascinated me. If I believed in reincarnation I think I'd like to come back as a bird. The thought of being able to fly, soaring on the currents, looking down at earth, seems so amazing to me! I first started using the bird's nest image in my Silent Voices series about infant adoption. As a thematic element it works to represent the position of the first mother, the place where life begins. And because of my love of birds it just made sense for me to use the imagery of their handiwork. 

Since then I've been lucky enough to have wrens visit my home and build theirs inside my mailbox. So far I've collected 3 nests and keep them in my studio for inspiration and painting reference.

Here they are sitting on my big drawing table. 

When I paint my landscapes I frequently use gold leaf and texture- I love shiny, and I love the way a painting with gold changes when the light in a room changes. Lately I've been focused on some new gold sky paintings and decided I wanted to change things up a bit. A bird's nest is part of the landscape so why not? Why not combine the nest idea with the gold sky idea and do something a little bit different. So here's the first one......

And the second one (below) is in progress, still lots to do. I've noticed that when I painted the nests in the Silent Voices series they were more stylized. It just seemed better suited to the paintings that way. Now with these new ones I'm getting more realistic with them. They're not quite so neat- more messy and real. It just seems to work better with the texture and the looseness of the gold application.

I'm enjoying this little crossover in painting subjects between 2 different groups of work. Who knows where else it'll lead. 

Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear your thoughts- it would be a nice break from the chatter in my head. :)

Projects, parties and inspiriation

Sometimes in my commission work I get to switch things up. Instead of doing a beautiful face in colored pencil I just finished a graphite portrait of this lovely home. I really enjoy working in pencil once in a while. It takes me back to focusing on light and dark values. Value is king after all. If you don't have the values down the work won't be successful. I'll be mailing this piece out to the client this week and soon will have another house to do for her and I also have another people portrait to do soon. I love my time at the drawing board!

This week I'm also prepping for the Friday Painting Party. We've been in the middle of a wicked heat wave so my brain went to the beach hoping my body will follow- hence this month's project.....

This is from a photo I took at last year's beach trip. I love to lie under the umbrella and watch these guys skitter across the sand, pecking and poking. To stay updated on Painting Party info please visit my Facebook page. I'm usually posting links to cool artsy stuff I find online too.

The photo below is from the park where I walk in the morning. Because of this very hot weather we've been having I go to the park as early as 6:15 so I can finish my miles before I melt into the concrete. I really don't mind because I love to see the early morning light on the trees. Sometimes I even get to spot an eagle looking for breakfast. This tree is the eagle's favorite look out spot so every time I pass it on my laps around the lake I look up to see if he's sitting up there. This particular morning the orange light on the tree trunk and the moon peeking through the gap made for an interesting shot. You know this is going to show up on a canvas sometime. I might even play with gold leaf on this one- we'll see. I'll share when it gets going.

What's inspiring you lately?

These might end up in a painting someday

A while back I was traveling north on 441 on my way to Gainesville. In McIntosh, on the right hand side, is a great little antique shop that has this out front. Any store that has something like this sitting out front is just screaming at me to stop and see what's on the inside!

What did I find inside? The coolest collection of bottles I've seen anywhere. There's just something about old bottles- the frosty softness of the glass, the way the light filters through and gives them a glow from within, the smooth curve of the glass where so many hands have touched.

Colors bounce back and forth. Blue, gold, lavender, green - all points of the spectrum shine and entice, begging to be shot and captured. Of course the shop owner was smart in the way he displayed the bottles - on shelves in front of mirrors with strings of lights in the just the right places.

What was contained within these shapes? What fragrance, what poison, what remedy? Who belonged to the hands that held the bottle and wished for healing or relief or maybe just a buzz?

Was there a reason for the shape of the bottle? Why do some bottles have ridges and bumps on the outside? I asked the owner of the shop these questions. He told me that some bottles were manufactured with a particular design specifically to protect the consumer from accidentally using the contents in a way that would harm them. Bottles meant to contain poison such as insecticide would have bumps in a pattern or embossing on the outside of the bottle that actually said 'poison'. If you were up in the middle of the night with a stomach ache, it's dark and you're going by feel to find your medicine, you won't make the mistake of drinking something that's not meant to be ingested. Good thinking! If you're interested in more info about the history of bottles, check out this site.

Anyway, learning these little tidbits about the bottles makes them even more interesting. It's not a subject I'm painting right now but I'm hanging on to these pictures because one of these days.... you might see a new series begin. When that happens you'll know where it started.