autumn in January

On a roll with painting - this is my fourth in four days. The sunlight wasn't great this morning so all fruit in the kitchen did not inspire. I looked through old resource photos and found this one that I took last fall. I'm not sure where - possibly Rappahanock County in early November. I don't think it is our farm - I can't place those trees.

I know swirling paint around with a palette knife can be hack work. But. You do have to be careful not to end up with a muddy mess. I think some colors in the foreground grass may need to be dulled down a bit, then again, I don't know. The middle tree, the focal point, may also need some tweaking. Or, I'll leave it for now. I'm enjoying the time travel in my mind to not so long ago. I love watching trees change through the seasons, knowing that they will bloom again in spring, grow green in summer, and dazzle in the fall, leaving their true shapely forms to be seen in winter, stark and bare against the grey sky. Barring a sudden windstorm or blight, we can count on trees to be there.

Wishing

Lots of titles suggested themselves to me for this painting (8 x 10) of a tangerine and two lemons. I set up the still life this morning wanting to portray human feelings by the arrangement of the fruit, the relationships of each to the others by proximity and protuberances. Stems and blossom attachments have always made me think of eyes and mouths.

I had only two lemons and one tangerine and their colors looked lovely in early morning light. That's why they were the chosen ones over apples for today's painting. Thinking of choices, people chosen for friendships and love affairs, gave me the idea of having the lemons as a club, the tangerine looking on, wishing to be a part of the group.

I have many thoughts and emotions while painting. Memories are dredged up while I'm in right brain mode. Of course, I'm also thinking of shape and space and color and light and dark and palette strokes, but painting provides space for meditation and remembering. Wistful scenes from childhood came up repeatedly - times when I was excluded from games and cliques and birthday parties. I wanted to tell the tangerine that it would be ok, that there were other friends to find and other parties that would welcome a lovely orange fruit. Ah well. Sadness has its purpose just like shadows and muddy hues. These all make the bright happy times stand out in contrast. All is used in life for good purpose.

Left Out. Excluded. Sad titles, so I settled on Wishing. If some wishes aren't granted, others are! I ended up feeling old and wise at the end of this painting session, and most of all, happy with the paint working together. Emotions and memories aside, I'm glad that I seem to have produced lemons in oils - a challenging subject for me.

the driveway

Finally back to painting after several weeks. The sunlight was glinting off the grass, giving it a silvery blue sheen in places. I changed the tree line a bit to make the composition stronger. I'm learning that I don't have to make a map of where I was and copy actual shapes, but that in landscape it is quite ok to edit or change features to make a painting. I don't know why that hasn't sunk in before now - it's not a new idea!

news

This Saturday, December 5, I will be at the St. Nicholas Day Craft Show and Sale at Leeds Episcopal Church in Markham, with my paintings. I am showing with another artist, Jean Beckham. At the moment, most of the paintings are gathered in my living room, in various stages of framing. Relatives are curious as to the prices - one thing is for sure, they keep going up! My father was considering buying one last night, and I kept upping the price by 100 dollars each time he dithered. We had to laugh, and he agreed my final price was what it should be, although maybe he regretted not buying it when it was 300 dollars less.

What did sell last night at the family council was the cow triptych - my brother bought all three and I was willing to let them go rather cheaply as he agreed with me that they shouldn't be framed and that they should also be displayed as I like them - propped on a mantle or table next to each other. I had thought about hinging them together, but I kind of like the looseness, also it is important that they be seen as a group of three. And, I can visit them when I visit him.

It's so hard to let my paintings go! I need to get over this...

autumn maple

This little maple tree is not all that noticeable to me, even though it is one of a pair that flanks part of the driveway. Other trees around it and behind it drown it out, but for a few days this fall, this tree took center stage on its small hill.

8 x 10, oil applied with palette knife, on linen covered board.

more pear trees

A small painting, 8 x 10, again of the Bradford pear trees that guard our driveway entrance/exit. I love this view of the path winding into the trees - this is the fourth painting I've done so far of this image. I used my palette knife (really green and clean, no solvent involved) and instead of canvas, this is linen adhered to board. I found these at the Pratt art supply store - the only place I know that sells them. I'm checking into Pearl Paint and online art stores - such a wonderful surface to glide paint onto with a knife! The downside is finding frames to fit them - they are exactly cut to measure and have no excess to fit into frames - they fall out of the hole! But the manufacturer carves holes into the back so that they are easy to hang onto a nail or screw in the wall. I like to keep costs low for buyers - paintings are way cheaper without frames provided by me. Keep that in mind!

morning mist

This painting is 16 x 20 inches, oil applied with palette knife. I enjoyed painting the back tree line, trying to convey mist and morning light breaking through. The front field grass is dense, and changes color according to how the light hits it. I put the path on the corner - a risky move compositionally, but it felt right. I wanted the sense of the road just there, but the center of interest is the sun's presence, about to break out.

Michigan Dune

Somewhat of a prosaic title, but to me, dunes in Michigan seem a strange idea, although I think Michigan does have the most coastline of any state in the union. The lakes surrounding this state are a gorgeous turquoise blue and trees grow quite close to all of them. We spent some time on a peninsula where cherry orchards and vinyards flowed over gentle hills right down to the sand and water. Absolutely beautiful!


This scene is at a park. I have not painted Lake Superior which is only a few yards from the right edge, but I concentrated on the looming trees that are starting to cast a shadow on the sand dune.

oldie but goodie

Featured quite awhile ago, I wanted to re-post this painting again in the spirit of the pumpkin season! This is one of my favorite paintings and is centered on the title page of my website: fawkesfeather studio.

Many of my paintings and watercolors on this website have been sold so it is time for a major update. I have been focusing on landscapes recently and hope to expand that section under "places". Tomorrow: new painting of trees and sand dune next to Lake Superior. Hopefully, I will have a title for this painting by the time I post it!

forest for the trees

My husband and I stayed at a beautiful French Tudor mansion hotel on Mackinac Island in Michigan this summer. Down at the coast level of Mackinac Island are beautiful homes and tourist attractions, but if you hike or bike or take a horse drawn cab (no cars allowed on the island) up the hill, through the woods, and down some trails, you will come across this "home" once owned by a meat-packer industrialist.

This is a view of part of the front lawn, a wonderful grassy expanse with tall trees. I loved the way the sunlight made interesting striation patterns from the tree shadows. This was one of our best vacation trips ever and we hope to go back to this place again.

As for the painting - I did this quickly, in less than a day. It is a 10 x 10 inch canvas. Square formats can be difficult, and again, only 4 trees are featured (even number of objects are also tricky to handle). But I like this little painting and may not offer it for sale at my upcoming "show", the annual St. Nicholas Day sale at a local Episcopal Church. I will be showing my paintings there along with another painter, Jean Beckham. Email me for details if you are interested in attending!

Maine

My daughter and I were south of Portland last summer, driving around on a beautiful July day. I took a photo of this site as it seemed to evoke the feeling of the landscapes all around. I could spend all of July and August in Maine!

improvement?

Four Trees kept bothering me. The trees were realistic in color, the field was an abstraction, the painting was confused. I decided that the idea I started with was to go with color and shape; I wasn't interested in going back to depicting grass in the same manner as the trees. So, I worked a lighter color onto the trees to try to unify the painting. I lost the illusory effect (small as it was) of the leaves and now have something that is an idea of four trees in a field with the color changed to match what I want in my mind, not what I saw that day in the pasture.

I'm feeling my way here, with words on this blog and with paint on my palette. Landscapes that I see in the world are my starting point. The parts I keep in the composition and the colors I mix are an unconscious beginning of where I'm headed.

Close-up

I zoomed in on my painting "Four Trees" to show the palette knife work on the colors. I like the composition here better than the entire painting. If it was a work on paper, I'd cut it. We'll see. I might like this painting better as time goes by.

At Last

After a long break, I'm back to painting. I touched up this one, 18 x 24 inches, after looking at it for 6 weeks. "Too flat" was the consensus of my husband and son, so I added more color to the foreground, the trees, and then some more to the trees. There is no bright sunlight in this painting unless you consider the overhead sun on a cloudy day at noon which does flatten everything visually in a landscape. The elements become more important and I'm not sure about an even number of trees. But I was initially struck by the trees in a line on a field with a treeline behind them, and the color play of the shapes, especially the negative space of the field around, behind, and between the trees.

Next post: a close-up

morning has broken

This shot was taken during an early morning run in West Virginia, at the previously mentioned bed and breakfast, Breath of Heaven. It is still misty, but the sun is breaking through and warming the grass in places. I'm not sure I like painting buildings; I don't want to imitate Hopper. But I liked the sun hitting one face of the house and I liked the yellow green starting to appear in the grass while everything else was light and cool, both temperature and color.

exit

Fourth little painting - I got around to actually measuring them and they are 5 x 7 inches, not 4 x 6! This is another pathway, and an area of our farm that I've painted many times. I love these Bradford pear trees that flank the driveway entrance/exit.

I hope to get back to painting soon. My oldest is getting married in less than three weeks, it's fall planting time (perennials only now, I've given up on the idea of fall produce), and I start teaching my fall/winter art classes next week, and did I mention wedding?

Also - a bit about some websites I've listed: zma3d is my son's animation demo site, check out his cool animations along with the intricate and elaborate pen and ink anatomy drawings also on this site. He needs, imo, some close-up views of those drawings, hopefully you can see his masterful and controlled strokes in the images. Popup Studio is a blog that my younger daughter contributes to along with two other pop-up art designers. They all work for Robert Sabuda, who designs and constructs those amazing collector's pop-up books! I've listed his website as well - my daughter's hands are in many of the how-to photos.

Liz Saucier is my soon to be son-in-law's sister - her photography of children is the best I've seen. The other sites feature work of friends and acquaintances - be sure to visit! And thanks for visiting my little online gallery!

breath of heaven

Painting Number 3, of some bushes in a yard at a bed and breakfast that we stayed at in West Virginia, named Breath of Heaven. A humble sort of house, built in 2001, not at all the Victorian or stately homes that are usually turned into bed and breakfasts! It's in a rural neighborhood of other homes like it, and I was disappointed the first time we went there. But, notice I said "first"! The innkeepers became friends and we've been back there a second time, with another couple. I intend to repeat the visit often. This image is early morning - the mist is diffusing the light, the colors are cool.

Blue Ridge

This is painting Number 2, done on a 4 x 6 inch board with palette knife. I'm very pleased with how the mountain ridge captures light. Thanks for visiting my blog!

4 paintings a day!

A year or so ago it was an internet sensation to post a painting a day on various art sites. This activity promoted a following among buyers. So far I'm not selling anything online from this blog, but I liked the idea of trying to paint more often and keep to the challenge of a painting every few days, at least. Yesterday I made up for some lost time and painted four paintings. Granted, they are small, only 4 x 6 inches, but I had fun churning them out.

Here is painting Number 1, I call it American Field, as I forget where in the USA this image came from - West Virginia? Virginia? Ohio? Michigan? Somewhere I snapped the photo on our travels in the past few weeks. There is no specific area of "interest"; I enjoyed swooping on the oil paint with the palette knife and playing with the colors: white mixed with sap green, cadmium yellow light, ultramarine blue, and cadmium red medium. There is some alizarin crimson mixed into the darks as well. My composition is bands of color across the horizon to suggest sky, treeline, and field grounds. The other three paintings are soon to be posted, be sure to check back soon.

pair of pears

A change from painting - a drawing! I did this a few weeks ago as a demonstration for a drawing class on how to shade form with a pencil. I love drawing and painting pears, not only for the shapes but to suggest relationships between them and to humorously suggest humanoid characteristics. This pair seem a bit ambivalent about each other...

Hollyhocks

In Michigan, the summer season is short, but the summer days are long. July and August flowers have extra sunlight each day and the hollyhocks there are enormous! I did this painting two years ago at a painting workshop. While I was working on it, another painter came by and loved this so much that she asked me to name my price and she'd pay it for the painting, right then and there. Flattering, and probably profitable!, but I liked this painting, too, and didn't want to part with it.

While we were on our trip to the Great Lakes State, we visited Macinac Island (pronounced Mackinaw). While biking around (there are no cars allowed there - only horses and bikes besides feet for transport) we stopped to buy fudge at a local hotel/gallery/fudge shop. The owner/artist had decorated each ceiling beam with quotes about art and life. Some I had read before, but one was new to me, although the thought was my own. In fact, after the workshop mentioned in the paragraph above, I drove home with a friend who had taken the poetry classes at the same time. We talked of all sorts of things that new friends do as well as about art, poetry, and religion (the workshop was sponsored by the Episcopal Church). I told her of my yearning for painting in eternity - she said she was SURE painting and writing and gardening would be work for us to do in the kingdom of heaven. Here is the quote, attributed to the painter Corot: I hope with all my heart that there will be painting in heaven.

And hollyhocks!

another path!

a little less obvious pathway, but still keeping to the theme!

the bike path

Again, West Virginia, a few weeks ago when we biked along a path that took us eventually to a wonderful mountain laurel forest. Several weeks later, I was at the Portland, Maine Museum of Art looking at a show of New England painters. Two paintings featured mountain laurel! There are no laurel in this painting, but the path is pink. Paths repeat in my landscapes - it's an easy way to lead the viewer into the painting and it's a common theme of walking along life's pathways. Now that I've said this in writing, I may finally stop painting obvious paths. Still, I jog along them, I hike and bike along them, I meditate upon them, I look for the way at all times.

Mrs. O's Red Onions

Gardens are starting to produce, and some crops are overabundant. I had well over 100 cucumbers in just one patch, plenty to share all around. My neighbor, Mrs. O., had more red onions than she could use, so here, captured in paint, and then cellphone photo, are the first bunch given to me in trade for cucumbers. They're too pretty to cut up and eat!

blueberry land

Two weeks ago, my husband and I and another couple took several hikes in the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area of West Virginia. I am not fond of West Virginia - the mountains seem too looming and make me feel closed in, unless, of course, I'm on top of them :-). This plateau area is open and high, so it is a place I like to visit. The view here is coming up a trail from some bog-type areas near a river, through some blueberry fields, soon to arrive at a cluster of very large rocks that look over a valley. The wind is always blowing up there and if you go on a day in early October, let me warn you to take thick parkas and gloves and hats. This is tundra landscape and atmosphere!

Wood's Path

Another painting from the bike trip in West Virginia, along the Greenbrier River pathway. This part briefly took us through some leafy bushes and trees. I love the way the light beckons us on.

on the Greenbrier Trail

OK, here is the painting, step 2. It may be finished, I may tweak it some more.

Yesterday, I wanted to work on this, but did not have any ultramarine blue or cadmium yellow light. Goldilocks came to mind when I first went to the hobby shop in town where I can purchase relatively cheap oil paint - they were closed. On to the "real" art supply store in the historic district where I nearly fainted at the price on the tubes: ultramarine blue - $14.50, cadmium yellow pale - $34.50! I wanted something in between, the price just right.

Came home and dug around in my squirrel pile of old tubes and found nearly squeezed out tubes of both colors. Enough to finish the painting! God provides.

in progress

I thought I would post a painting in progress today. I started this yesterday - palette knife as tool, old painting underneath. I am using up old canvases to save money, in the spirit of the economic times as well as to keep them out of landfills. The downside to using old paintings is that the texture of old work shows under smooth thin paint. At the moment there is a definite ridge line from the previous horizon. Sometimes I wonder whether to add thicker paint to cover up the "blemish" or just leave it as evidence of change.

Also, some of the color peeking through I will leave. Another reason I like recycling old paintings - I take advantage of the color surprises!

This is a scene from a biking trip we took a few weeks ago in West Virginia, along the beginnings of the Greenbrier River.

Sunset St. Michaels

I took a photo of this scene while biking around a neighborhood in St. Michaels, Maryland. So many scenic views of the bay and boats, but I loved the light pouring over the field and past the trees near a golf course. I used a palette knife over a canvas that had been "texturized" with a previous painting. I continued the texture with lots of thick paint. The canvas is now somewhat heavy! It may not last 100 years without cracking, but I enjoy looking at the play of color, knowing that the light really was that bright on that late afternoon.

bluemont winery

Life has eased up and I no longer teach math classes. This summer I am teaching two drawing/sketching classes, both on one day. So far, this has made more time for painting. I started this painting two days ago. The scene is Bluemont Virginia, at a winery where I participated in a juried show a few weeks ago.

Two books I would recommend to fellow artists: Landscape Meditations by Elizabeth Mowry, and Starting to Paint Still Life by Bernard Dunstan. Now I'm eager to purchase and read other titles by these authors.

Arizona Moon

New painting! I surely wish to live someday in Arizona. I love the landscapes there. Yes, I love my green Virginia hills and valleys, but there is something about the desert that makes me want to settle down there and just paint, paint, paint, hike a bit, paint, and drink a margarita in the late afternoon.

I added a little crescent moon to this image that I shot from a car, while we were driving to Yuma.

watercolor trees

As posted previously, watercolor is not my usual medium - I'm not always successful with it. Not only is this a, to me, rather nice watercolor, but it is one of the rarest of the rare artworks that I have done out of my head. The muse visited me while I was dabbling and playing around one afternoon. No other explanation.

another iris!

This one is loose, very loose. It is painted with watercolor, acrylic, and gouache paints on paper.

another iris

I painted this on paper with acrylic paints. The iris flowers were a lovely white-blue and I experimented with the complementary color orange for background.

red tail hawk

This is a red-tailed hawk, painted on 33 x 33 board for a sign for our farm which my husband named "Hawksfeather Farm" many years ago. You might notice my website's name: Fawkesfeather, which of course rhymes with the farm name. My kids and I are Harry Potter fans (Dumbledore's phoenix is named Fawkes) and I used to call my studio Phoenix Feather years before I moved out here. Fawkesfeather Studio seemed like a nice synthesis! On the back of this sign, I painted a large feather. People arriving will see the hawk and leaving will see the feather. We are planning to place it well into the property as farm signs are endangered around here. No matter how well they are chained onto signposts, people will find ways to steal them. I hope this one will last for years.

still tweaking

This is our front field. The painting is large, for me, 24 x 36 inches, and I wanted to straddle the line between realism - yes, you know these are trees and grass and shadows - and abstraction, playing with patches of color, letting the viewer stay with it as a painting on canvas. It's about the paint and texture and color interplay, more than an image of the fields and trees. Where should I make a stand? Hyper-realism is amazing when it's done well, but with photos as an option, I don't want to go there. I suppose Diebenkorn and Kahn and Avery are my influences - they start with real world places and images and then have fun with the paint and geometry of the rectangle plain.

When I start musing along these paths, I come up against the question of why paint in the first place. My kids do amazing things with computer programs and video. If I were thirty years younger I wouldn't paint, I don't think - I'd be doing what they're doing. Ah well.

This painting isn't finished. I want to work on the mid-field, the light area. It's too horizontal right now; it needs some vertical strokes, and maybe some striation of color to break it up visually. Maybe the design process is still valid, even though oil paints are so previous millenium.

apple study

Watercolor is an "iffy" medium for me. For every successful watercolor painting I do, I have about ten absolute muddles. This is a little study that I think is ok - I had some fun painting this and two other paintings which became gifts to a couple we stayed with last summer in Hampton Roads.

woods

This photo was taken from my yard of woods next to our main drive. Our farm has meadows, lawn with shrubs and fruit and flowering trees, woods, and a steep riverbank. I've lived here less than 3 years and haven't walked over most of it -- fear of ticks and two retired race horses that like to be left alone in their paddock area keeps me from some parts of the farm. But even a snapshot of these trees at the edge of the driveway can seem magical in the photo and even more so when transformed by paint onto canvas.

For wonderful paintings of trees, please visit Middle Street Gallery in Little Washington, VA. A friend, Barbara Heile, has a show there for a few weeks titled "My Vision is not 20/20". Her website is listed here on this blog: Happy Woman. We went to her opening on Saturday - her trees are realistic and abstracted both, with beautiful color notes all over. My favorite painting was of a white building without trees in the painting, only the tree shadow shapes ON the building. Gorgeous!

some of my "failures" in watercolor turn out to be images that I like a lot for reasons I can't explain. This is one! Same iris as yesterday's blog entry, different look.

may flowers

On our farm are little islands of hidden iris bulbs. Each May they come out and delight us. This is a watercolor sketch of an iris from last year's batch.

worried mom

This image is from a photo of a woman in an African country, worried about cost of food during last year's raise in rice prices. As a mom, I feel her pain. Her head covering is flowing past her to the right, in the wind. I thought of angel wings when I painted this, keeping the strokes loose and abstracted. I pray for all moms everywhere, as they pray for their children.

favorite painting

I loved eating these plums and I enjoyed painting them. This is my favorite painting - it is 8 x 10 inches on a linen covered board, paint applied with palette knife. It is the second in a series of plums on the blue tablecloth. The first painting (see archives) was done on a textured canvas. I may do more of these - I like the combination of alizarin crimson with touches of yellow on the warm light blue ground. Color theory works if you keep it simple - can you see the green and cadmium reds and violets as well?

Bradfords' Spring

I took a photo of these trees in April and I can't remember whether it was early morning or late afternoon! I'm geographically challenged, as my husband will confirm. But the light really made these colors in the digital shot, and I played with them in the painting. This was done with a palette knife, no brushwork.

morning cow

This is a section from a 12 x 36 painting, too long to capture and post here. The painting shows a dairy barn, silo, and three cows in the morning sunlight, down the road from our farm. I run by the cows (a big herd) every morning. Only the calves are startled, once in a while one of them jumps and runs so fast that a stampede is started. But usually they just graze and look at the nut trying to boost her road speed.

Seems like I should enter the 21st century and paint urban-type scenes, at least put a car or two in the paintings. But for now, I'm enjoying the clouds, greenery, and yes, cows.

Sudan woman

This is a small 8 x 8 canvas that seemed suited for this woman's portrait. It had a a few lines of paint from a previous start of a painting, but when I lightly added dry brush strokes to start fleshing out the face, I felt the need to stop even though there is a red streak showing from the underpainting. It suggests a scar, which wasn't in the photo, but I left it.

Several years ago, I made an oil pastel image of the woman in Nigeria who had been condemned to a stoning death for having a baby out of wedlock. I titled it Nigerian Madonna. She was eventually saved by world outcry, and my drawing/painting sold as soon as the gallery owner put it on display. I like working with images of women who are not supermodel types, in fact, who are not looking for limelight or even a portrait painter. I want to capture the image of people who God made, in his image - especially the underdog, the underachiever, the unsung, the unassuming. I love the beauty in her eyes.

Potamac River Woodland

I photographed this scene in 2002 at a friend's farm on the Potomac. The day was misty and wet, with subdued colors. Painting the scene, I played up the colors from their gray tones. I was influenced by Wolf Kahn's lovely ethereal pastels of trees but used thick paint and a palette knife to build texture, scratch off paint, and spread more paint like icing on cake. I wanted to "feel" the scratchy twigs and rough bark, but I wanted to "see" the ghostly trees seen through a misty haze. Whether I was fully successful, I don't know, but I like the final image.

This particular area was the scene of a battle with Mosby's Rangers. The owner of the farm reports stories of hauntings in his old house. The farm itself is occasionally "haunted" by Mosby fans who trek to all the Mosby sites in our area. In the town nearest to me, the resting place of Mosby (in life and death), he is not seen as such a hero as he made lots of money after the Civil War in business with the carpetbaggers! Old southern resentments last long!

This painting is one of five on view and for sale at The Stable in Bluemont this weekend.

my three pears

I painted pears a lot when I studied at the Corcoran. A fellow student commented that my pears appeared to have human attributes by their relationships to each other as they leaned in or out in their grouping. I always think of my three kids when I look at this painting! This is one I don't think I would ever sell. My "model" was a photo by Priscilla Treacy.

visceral reaction

The heart is amazing. I did two heart drawings after having my own broken a few years ago - I shared them with a friend who grieved with me - left them with her temporarily, and then lost touch with her. Ah, but I'm glad to have them in her keeping. I did this painting last year; I wanted to make it beat and pump and glisten on the board using oil paint and palette knife like a scalpel. Some people don't like this painting, others really love it. One of my children has it now; she was one who seemed to have a visceral attraction to it. She used it as a prop in a play in NYC and told me many of the actors liked it, too!

the white pumpkin

I love this little pumpkin painting. It is for sale, but at a high price, as I don't want to see it go.