Sold!

This painting, titled Morning Mist, along with two other paintings, sold at the benefit dinner and silent auction for The Friends of Fort Liberte, a children's orphanage in Haiti. It was a lot of fun to sit and watch people bid on my paintings (two of them were live auction). Even better was to have the proceeds go to a most worthy cause.

Reflecting

Tonight three of my paintings will be presented at a benefit dinner and auction, to raise money for an orphanage in Haiti. This is one of them, titled Reflecting, or, Reflection. It was at my daughter's apartment for several years and I had forgotten about it. She redecorated and it came back to me. I hope it now goes to someone who will love the quiet somber beauty of this woman. More, even, I hope it will bring big bucks to go towards materials for the orphans. I know my limits and can't ever see myself working in Haiti, but I am glad to contribute in some small way.

Figs

Back a few years ago, posting a painting a day was the blogging fad. Haven't heard too much of people doing that, but thought for my personal goad, ur, goal, I would try to commit to posting new art once a week. Here is a drawing from two days ago. My neighbor has the most luscious, extravagant fig tree. She had plucked these, thinking I might want to draw or paint them. I did! I now want to ask her for some more, to arrange in various settings for a photo shoot, to become the basis of paintings.

Turnips, again

Second painting of turnips, again painted with brushes on a Masonite board. The first painting has been given away to a very old friend, a master cook, to be perched in his gorgeous kitchen. I love it when my paintings go to good homes!

Turnips!

I feel so accomplished - the apple store geniuses had me convinced that I could not upload photos from my iPad to my blog, but I found a back door, so to speak.

Finally, painting again. Finished this about 5 weeks ago, and really enjoyed using brushes instead of my palette knife. This was done on a gessoed smooth finish board, with 2 layers of transparent "washes" to build up the turnips and cloth and shadows, then a finishing layer of thicker, more opaque paint on the turnips and for details and whites. It is 9 x 12 inches.

summer haze

One of my "little" paintings, 8 x 10 inches. Colors are limited in hue, but I liked working within this small range. For those interested in my palette, I used ultramarine blue, phthalo blue, alizarin crimson, cadmium yellow light, hansa yellow, and sap green. And titanium white. Actually, cadmium red light and dioxazine purple are the only other two colors that I generally use in addition to the above.

Art Show Coming!

However, this painting will not be in the show! Glory in the Common Spaces will open July 7 and run through August 2 at the Shenandoah Valley Arts Center. Please come and see landscapes painted from 2009 through June 2011.

Why post this little still life? I don't think I have posted it anywhere and found it in my desktop file of images. This little painting, 8 x 10, is painted on top of an old painting (recycling as well as utilizing texture) by using a palette knife (my usual technique) to spread on oil paint, scratching away to reveal previously applied color, whether dry or just painted. I like how the process is not controlled and surprises happen. I use this technique almost always in my landscape paintings, but not often in still life. This was the first painting of fruit that I painted in this manner and felt that no one would ever buy it. It's been stuck in a back bedroom for four years and I don't often see it or think to display it. Still a personal favorite. I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I do. Thanks for visiting!

deer path

Caught this image of light striking trampled grass while hiking in West Virginia - I'm assuming deer made this pathway as it led to nowhere in particular from the hiking trail. This painting is 24 x 36 inches and while the underpainting (ranging from cadmium orange to alizarin crimson) was applied with brush and solvent, the oil paint was stroked on, scraped off, gashed and swirled with a palette knife. Up close it is a mess of color and texture and patches. Hopefully the image from a distance conveys the light and color of evergreen hedges and long grass.

a poem lovely as a tree

quoted my husband when he saw this, my most recent painting. This canvas is 24 x 36 - I find that I am challenged by working a bit larger, but it's a pleasing challenge. I titled this Maple Glory - it is the tree featured in many of my recent work, at full foliage in summer.

summer maple

I love this particular tree on our farm because it stands so bravely on a hill. Other trees are sheltered on low places or in groups. I have painted this maple tree before (Maple Hill) in autumn colors; this image is from last summer, with the sunshine backlighting the tree, the far grass lit up by strong sunlight, the shadow cast by the tree changing the color of the same grass to cool blue-greens and a touch of violet.

Glory

is the title of this painting, from a photo I took while jogging along my road last summer in the morning. I loved the way the light skipped over tall trees and hit the front of this large cedar.

plein aire trip

I painted this outside in Sperryville, Virginia, at the end of October. I have since adjusted some details, and will probably go back and work on the colors of the pathway some more. But I have been conscious of neglecting my blog and wanted to post!

Two more paintings are being finished and I hope to publish these on the blog before our annual trip to Arizona next week. Happy New Year!

prizewinner

This painting, Bluemont Vineyard, won third place at the 2010 Gala Exhibition Juried Art Show in Elkins, West Virginia, last week. Even better than the ribbon was the nice check that went with the award!

I did few paintings the past few months - gardening with heirloom seeds and getting inspired by local organic farms kept me busy outside, then a desire to have serenity in the house spurred me on to organizing and purging stuff, and finally, teaching duties started again several weeks ago. But, but, but, all the while I have been letting ideas simmer on a back burner of the mind, absorbing views outside, musing on the main theme of my work, which boils down to light. I have sketches and photos and blank canvases, and now, after the excitement of participating in an art walk in Orange, and attending two receptions for art shows and gathering even more inspiration from other artists' works, I am ready to paint.

I look forward to sharing here soon, and often!

onion family

When I paint a still life I like to express human emotions through the interaction of the various components. This trio seemed like a mom, dad, and child to me. I'm still tweaking this one, planning to add some transparent dark glazes here and there and maybe a lightening of the back table plane. The "Onion Family" will be one of three of my works on display at the Food for Thought show at Village Frameworks in Culpeper during the month of September.

Other news: Just heard that I will have two paintings at the 2010 Gala Juried Art Exhibition in Elkins, West Virginia, September 10 - 29. Opening reception is September 10, 6 - 10 pm.

Maples

I've been entering several juried shows and exhibitions in the past few weeks. One painting was recently accepted into a national landscape show and another was selected for a calendar, to appear as the image for November. It is currently on view at the Calendar Show in Culpeper, Virginia, at the Windmore Foundation's Headquarters in oldtown Culpeper.

While pulling together a group of ten paintings for another show, I re-photographed this painting of our farm, painted as an image of early autumn when the maples down by the driveway are in fiery form. This painting is 24 x 36 inches, one of two that I have done in that size format. I find that I like working large, but at the same time enjoy doing quick paintings on 4 x 6 boards, too.

This painting is titled Fall At the Farm, and is not for sale as it was a gift to my husband. It hangs in my studio and reminds me daily of the beauty of our Piedmont region.

floral bouquet

20x30 watercolor pencil and watercolor on illustration board. Five years in the making, as I kept taking long breaks. This shows a little over half of the work; the complete image is of a bouquet centered on a white background.

haybales

Yesterday I spent the morning under a tent at the Culpeper Farmer's Market. Besides vendors selling produce and frozen beef, this particular market also allows cake bakers and artists to show their work. As a member of Windmore Foundation for the Arts, I volunteer to hang out and display paintings. I was dubious at first -- people are coming to buy lettuce, not art, I thought, but I learned that you just never know...

Sold two paintings (small) and had lots of good conversations with people who stopped by to comment and chat. Several paintings prompted these talks, one of which is Hay Bales. Hey, this is Culpeper, home to flatter land than most in this Shenandoah region and thus full of miles of hayfields and rolled bales. Folk who live here either own these fields and harvest the hay or they have moved here to enjoy the sight of green/golden grass.

This painting is actually of a field in Michigan! It is one of my first landscapes, painted three years ago.

Summer Field

Playing around with color patches...

Don't Box Me In

I've discovered that some people dislike boxwood shrubs - the smell (which I can't detect), the link in mind to geometric garden styles (which I like in their place, in lovely Colonial gardens), or who knows. I don't have any in my yard which is a rambling sprawl of lawn and perennials and bushes and trees. However, I do know that I have been attracted to hedges lately, as a theme to paint. I like the pattern of bushes next to each other, the play of light on different parts, the oblong rounded shapes of greens.

Yesterday I went with a group of artists to an alpaca breeding farm. A very large, lush heaven on earth for alpacas - an enormous pond, rolling hills, grass, huge fenced enclosures, able-bodied people taking care of the animals: recording of age and breeding times, pregnancy watches, exercise walks, bottle-feeding newborns whose mothers were unable to nurse. If one didn't want to paint the alpacas, there were gorgeous vistas everywhere you looked, even shady tree-lined driveways and an old manor house, plus tidy barns and stables.

But I was attracted to this over-grown boxwood hedge. There it was, front on, blocking my viewpoint from that vista. I liked it's rhythmic pattern, I liked the shade cast on grass and driveway, I liked the play of light all over.

I'm also pleased by my pencil drawing that I did before the painting. So often I plunge into painting, but when painting outside, with quickly moving sunlight and cloud cover, I've learned to take the time to make thumbnails to get the composition right at the beginning. Find my darks to ground the image, use the pencil strokes to establish brushstroke directions to make a lively painting. Color takes care of itself once I begin.

Oil with palette knife on Ampersand Gessoboard, 11 x 14 inches. "The Boxwood Hedge"

Iris Time

Today was watercolor day (Wednesdays) and I painted radishes, plums, and a yellow iris. This time of year, irises are all over our yard and others. Neighbors and friends admire each other's different colors and varieties. This purple and white iris was painted last year during Iris Season, but it got lost in a shuffle of papers. I found it last night and intend to frame it, but first will make some color prints and notecards of it.

I used acrylic washes, on paper, carefully choosing the background color, capturing the opposing hue on the color wheel and matching the intensity of the blue-purple. Betty Edward's book, Color, is an excellent text for learning color theory and putting the knowledge to practical use in painting. I painted this study after working through her exercises and highly recommend this book for all artists working with color but baffled by typical college color courses, which generally leave one with extensive charts but no working knowledge.

Tomorrow: today's watercolors