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.