New Works in Two Shows

                                                                          Emma'sView
                                                                                          Oil on Canvas
                                                                             20 x 24

This Friday night is the opening for the faculty show, "Water" at BAYarts in Bay Village in the Dianne Boldman Education Gallery.   The painting shown above, Emma's View will be one of the works on display.  When I was asked by the gallery director to contribute to the exhibit with the theme being 'water', I thought...Great, this will be fun, a challenge, something new to paint--I don't often include water in my paintings.
It was a challenge.  Over the last few months, I was looking at water in many ways.  Water in a vase, glass, pond, rainwater, streams, rivers, lakes, ice.   I settled on this view of the river from my neighbors yard. The challenge was painting in cold weather, painting at the same time of day-- morning for this one, painting in good weather and finding the time.  Painting by the river became a peaceful experience.  Paint, birds, water, the sound of water, light, color, the warmth of late winter sun on my back.  It is titled after my husbands grandmother, Emma.  She lived in the house that is now my neighbors house.  Apparently, she would sit on her side porch and enjoy the view of the river; its' birdlife and plant life.  Many of my paintings of barns have paid homage to her husband Yaro, who built the barns.  Now it's Emma's turn.

                                                                           Light Behind
                                                                                           Oil on Canvas
                                                                                               30 x 40

This painting was accepted in the BAYarts 2012 Spring Juried Show.  Yay!  I'm happy and pleased that it got in.  The judges are people I respect, it's a boost to the old artist morale when your work is accepted in the eyes of people you hold in high regard. 
The opening for this show is also Friday night at BAYarts from7-9 in the Sullivan Family Gallery. 
It'll be a busy night at BAYarts, for any of you reading this who are in the area, stop in and see what promises to be two nice art exhibits.

Three to Get Ready

Orchard Path

Oil on panel

6 x 8

This little piece was painted last Friday morning, another one for the show at BAYArts this August.

This photo doesn't do enough justice to the juiciness of the paint application nor to the beauty of the colors.  The painting 'happened' after I spent an hour fixing another painting--which is so-so.  I guess I needed to loosen up.

Two for the Show

This summer's paintings are being generated for a solo exhibition in August at BAYArts.  I'm painting like a madwoman, trying to create works that are energetic, colorful and ideally with a focus on morning and evening light. The show is titled SUMMER COLOR,  I know I'll get the color part down, since I really do love working with lots of color. 

This one was completed last week. It's a view from our property looking at my neighbors barns, which were built by my husband's grandfather.


 

Yaro and Yaro

Oil on Canvas

16 x 24




Sky Song

Oil on Canvas

30 x 40

 

Dabbling with abstraction...Paintovers

Well, it had been so darn cold and snowy here for such a long time that it was...just sapping our energy. 

While it was cold, I had the desire to paint but no particular subject in mind.  But there were colors all jumbled up inside my head.  I took some old landscapes and did a few paintovers.

oil on canvas

12 x 16

love the colors here, the shapes too.

oil on canvas

16 x 20

I left some landscape elements in this one.  When I started this, the colors were driven by a new color I bought, Van Gogh, Azo Red Light.

 Oil on Canvas

20 x 20

Not sure about this one.  I plan to draw into it more, might change some color.  Might paint the entire painting over!  Who knows? 





Boxed In, Bobwhite Quail and What?

I call this one Boxed In (how I felt).  This started as a demo piece for Media Play Day in my AP Studio Art class.  We were messing around with acrylics that day, I ended up adding india ink and oil pastels.  What began as shapes, mark making and color applications led to this image.  It had been a very full and hectic couple of weeks and I was beginning to feel boxed in to the point where tension was settling in my shoulder blades---Not good!  Thankfully artmaking is always therapeutic and such a release.  Often revealing the truth!

This afternoon when I took the dog out, we came across four of these beautiful Bobwhite Quail in the yard.  This is only the second time I've seen them on this property in our 14 years here.  Two male, two female. 

When I came inside I got a phone call from a person who had bought one of my paintings several years ago.  He came across my card in his desk, looked up to where my painting was hanging, picked up the phone to call me and tell me how much he enjoys looking at the painting. What a great thing to do and on my end, so nice to hear!

The "and What? " section will have to be a ?. Blogger isn't letting me upload the last image. 

Until next post.....

Marblehead, Ohio~~Lakeside

Lake Erie Through the Trees

Oil on Panel  2010

6 x 8

This is the view I painted last Sunday morning at the Marblehead Peninsula during the Ohio Plein Air Society Paintout.  As mentioned in the last post, it took me a while to get in my groove, and I'm not sure if I ever really did.  I loosened up by the time I got to this painting, (after a good night's sleep which helped the head cold turn the corner), but not to where I wanted to be. 

Oh well.  C'est la vie. 

It was still beneficial practice learning to paint the colors of Lake Erie and so great to be with other painters.

HW Farber asked me what cornhole is in reference to the last post.  Ahhh. Cornhole.  How to explain it.  For those of you who don't know what it is and those of you who do and would like some mild enternainment courtesy of my brother then you might like to visit here. 

I'm not entirely sure where the game started, maybe southern Ohio.  Very popular on college campuses, tailgating parties and parties in general.  It is lots of fun, even the atheletically challenged (me) can play.  It's just tossing a bean bag at a board with a hole in it. 1 point if the bag lands on the board, 3 for getting it in the hole.  Play usually goes to 21.

Enjoy the video!

Yellow Sky

 

I painted this about a week and a half ago, it seems like another lifetime.

The days have been full since school started.

Once the routine settles in, I'll get out and paint some autumn scenes. 

For now there's this.  A sunset over a pond at Orchard Hills Park.  The sky started as a pale blue, but as the light changed it morphed to yelllow.  So beautiful.

Loosening Up

Orchard Hills Park

6 x 8

Oil on Panel

Since summer vacation started I've gone out to the local parks to do some Plein Air painting.  Each time out has been totally wonderful.  I try to arrive around 7:30 or so and spend a few hours painting.  Last time I painted two panels, with this one being the better of the two.

Last year I painted this:

I liked it for a while.  Then I didn't.  The composition really started bugging me.  I loved the colors, the brushwork, but otherwise...blech.  So I decided to do a paint over the other day.  I zoomed in on the Orchard Hills painting.

Orchard Hills

Oil on Canvas

24 x 24

Now this, I really LOVE.  Loosening up is soooo good.

Some details:

This is color I could just Eat!

What Looks Like a Stormy Day

At an apple orchard last Fall I took this picture with my cell phone. What I love about cell phone images is the distortion that occurs.  For the last few years I've been using cell phone pics as reference material for paintings.  Because the images are "bad photos"  there is less to be tied to when I start painting.

Stormy Day

Acrylic, Oil Pastel, water-based Oil on board.

18 x 24

For this week's lesson in Ap Studio Art each student is using their own cell phone pics as reference for a painting. For a ground we're using backing board (used in matting art work), then a gestural pencil sketch , followed by an acrylic wash to lay in general color and values.  After the wash the students can either continue with an acrylic painting or begin working on to of the acrylic in oil pastels. 

For mine I started in acrylics, began working in oil pastel, then because it seemed better to work in oils; I used water based oils along with the oil pastels. Kind

of a back and forth thing with the oils and oil pastels.

So now I've opened up the oils option to the students. The assignment is due next class, I'll post the pics soon after. They're doing great so far, it'll be interesting to see where they end up!

Barn

Art's Barn  Oil on Canvas (16 x 20)

A couple of summers ago, my sisters and I visited a friends home which is an old farm situated on a pretty piece of land about 15 minutes from home.  I took several reference photos that day, with every intention of getting back to spend some time painting on site.  I never did. 

Every so often I'd come across the photos.  Last week I began this painting of her barn and I finished it today.  It's such a great old barn, kinda weathered and falling apart.  Most intriquing to me is the opening from the door in front through the back door, you can see through to the view behind the barn. The whitish rectangle in the painting is the opening.  In my reference photo the view is from back to front so the white I've shown is actually her house.

 That day carried the weight of summer-- heavy with moisture plus the sounds of a summer afternoon. Looking through that opening, the negative space was the frame for the sensations of that day.

This summer I'll paint en plein air at her house, painting the view through the opening to the back.

 (Linda if you're reading this, can I come and paint at your house again?)

Painting in Acrylics~~~Haven't used them in a while!

Acrylic on Canvas  24 x 24

While the students were painting their figure paintings I painted this portrait of one of the student models.  We've been using acrylics for this assignment.  Its been a while since I completed a painting in acrylic.  Wow, sooo different than working in oil.  I didn't realize how accustomed I am to using oils. 
I started painting with acrylics when I was in college; which is when I discovered how much I love painting.  I also  painted with oils, but I didn't begin to truly 'get' oils until the last 10 years or so; when I dedicated all of my painting to oil painting.
I only used water to move the acrylics, so they were drying quickly...at times good, and at times frustratingly bad.  I could have used a medium to push the flow and moisture of the paint.  Hindsight is 20/20!
I enjoyed painting with the acrylics and loved painting a person. 
Yesterday I used acrylics as an underpainting for a large oil landscape.  The results so far are exciting. 

For the love and mystery of Crows

About ten years ago I had a dream about a crow sitting on my left shoulder.  I sculpted this terracotta piece after having the dream. (it fell off a shelf a few years ago, excuse the cracks and glue!) I wrapped a Great Blue Heron around my back and shoulder.

I included a computer drawn image of the dream in the center of a collage, the image shown above is zoomed in.

After talking about crows in my last post and I found that there is a kindred feeling many of us share towards them.  I love their smart, canny ways. The crowish way they move and walk. That certain tilt to the head.

Crow lovers know what I mean and could add much more.

So I got to thinking about the crows I have at home in my own art or others.

My Picasso postcard from the Cleveland Museum of Art, of  Woman with Crow. (One of my most favorite paintings!)

My stuffed felt crow made by the woman who runs the fabric shop out in Amish country.

I have more crows in garden art, on ceramic pieces from other artists...I wasn't aware of my crow volume until I took stock!

Thinking about it even more, crows are used in art quite often.  Leafing through art magazines, you can find crow imagery frequently.  Ubiquitous.  Why?  Is this part of our Collective Unconscious?

Not a crow, but a raven from a larger painting of mine. Now there's a bird I love and I've never seen one!  But I will.

What's your crow story? Do you have crows in your art?

More Book Art

For this post I chose some of my favorites from the book plus the ones with similarities in style.
With the exception of the second picture, they all feature the odd figures that I've been drawing/painting for about the last ten years.  I'm not sure where they come from, but they happen on pots when I glaze,  in sketchbooks and sometimes in paintings.  To me they're universal symbols--part of the collective unconscious I guess.  I feel they represent a sense of joy or lightness.

The lefthand side of the  second picture is a dream image--my house was on fire with a moon overhead.  (On the right hand side, I was just drawing legs!)

oil paint, oil pastel, fabric, old peterson field guide, pencil, colored pencil, thread

Book Art

                                                      PEACE

During the months of November, 2009 through the start of February, 2010 The Geauga County Park District held The DiscARTed Art Show revolving around the theme of recycling.  Artists submitted a range of works from stringed instruments made from cigar boxes (a bluegrass band played them the night of the opening), to lamps, jewelry, wall art, huge iron sculptures......

I submitted this book.

Last spring our school librarian was getting rid of boxes and boxes of books, to make room for more computers. (I've got mixed feelings about that.)  

I took many of the books for conversion to Art; for both me and my students. The book I reworked was from a series called THE GREAT IDEAS.  Full of writings by philosophers of whose work I know next to nothing.   The first page (shown above)  includes some of the names; Cervantes, Descartes, Spinoza, Newton, Locke, Hume. Faraday--these last three names are significant for any LOSTIES out there!

When I started with the book this summer, I used the pages in a random fashion for wiping my excess paint from my brushes.  Which then becomes a nice start for sketching, painting or collaging on.

What you see here is the Front Cover and the inside cover (p. 1)

Collage, oil paint, oil pastel, photographs, string.

Likenesses

As we're settled deep in the heart of midwinter; the red Hibiscus is blooming against the backdrop of white.  It struck me with its likeness to the canvas I was prepping for a new life.

(the hibiscus is one I brought in for the winter, its leaves are a bit scraggly right now, but it just started blooming one flower at a time.)

Woo Hoo! The commission is done!

Commission Painting

42 x 36

                                                        Diptych version of Commission Piece

                                                                             42 x 36

Finally!  The top painting is the commission painting I've been wrestling with for the last few months.  I'm fairly satisfied.  I'll send the image to the gallery owner, she can show it to the buyer.  After that, who knows, either she likes it or not. The background trees are more purple than blue.  I made some value adjustments in the sky and in the background trees.

I love the diptych, which I'll send along with the other.  Again the blues are more purple.  The center horizontal line is a vivid pinkish orange--melon.  It is bolder line than the photo depicts.

On a weather note, it has been snowing all day and night.  Snowing to beat the band!  I measured at 11:00  and there were 13 inches on the ground.  5 hours later, I'm guessing 18 inches or so. 

Dream Chapel

Last week I dreamed of the shape of a church or a chapel against a dark sky with a  light glowing foreground.  The chapel shape literally seemed to glow and shimmer against the sky. 

I like to think of this shape as a Sanctuary.  Which according to Dictionary.com is among many definitions; a sacred or holy place, a place of refuge, asylum.

I'm reading Sue Monk Kidd's new book, Traveling with Pomegranates.  Sue Monk Kidd is one of my favorite writers and I'm so happy to be immersed in her new book which is co-written with her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor. What I like about her writing/thinking is through her various quests to gain understanding about areas like the Feminine Divine or The Black Madonna is the honor she gives symbols in her life.  Whether they be from dreams or  'chance' encounters.

I've been thinking about the chapel image from my dream.  The word Sanctuary is meaningful.  What shall I place in  this holy, sacred Sanctuary?    Why have a Sanctuary?

To have a place of refuge, not a place to hide, but a place of serenity.  A place to lay out ideas, joys, sorrows, dreams, laughter, troubles.

Happy New Year!

Painting from a Dream

About a week ago, I dreamed of a landscape somewhat like this.  It had a mauve sky, and a dark green treeline.  I don't recall the foreground so I improvised.

(In real life this painting's sky is more of a mauve, the camera doesn't relay the color accurately.)

oil on panel 8 x 16

Gray Day

After spending an hour or more working on this; the commission piece that is taking its good old time reaching any sort of resolution, I switched over to a fast painting over an old painting. 

(a side note about the commission:  the buyer saw one of my smaller paintings (8 x 10) that is soft and moody.  She wants a larger work, about 42 x 36--soft and moody.  At this point, I'm beginning to get the softness, but its been a challenge to take what is so easy to capture in a small piece and bring it to a large format.  There are some compositional kinks I'm working on, and I'm struggling with the trees in front.)

Today was a Gray Day.  Rain, rain and more rain. 

The fast painting over the old painting is below. I plan to work some lighter grays into the sky. 

I like to paint Gray Days. I find it a good challenge to capture just the right colors for gray sky.

(my camera hasn't captured the colors with accuracy)

We were driving to a Christmas dinner at dusk. The white barns in sillouhette against the white sky were striking. After painting for several hours today, my seeing eyes were charged up. I wanted to turn the car around and go home to paint the white on white.

From Here to There (sketch to painting)

This summer I spent a few days with my sisters at the beach in Vermilion, Ohio on the shores of western Lake Erie.  I sketched a bit one afternoon, loving the variety of blues in the water.

For the last two weeks while "trying" to paint a commission piece--which isn't going so well--I started and finished the painting above.  I usually work on a couple of pieces at the same time, if a painting is too wet, I'll move to another.  It also keeps my energy for the paintings fresh.  This time I think I was using other paintings to avoid the commission, but also in hopes that I could take my enjoyment from the other works and infuse it into the commission.  So far its not working. ugh.  Fortunately there isn't a huge rush on the commission and I plan to get to it when I figure out what is blocking my creativity. (maybe I'll post a pic of what's happening so far)

So about the sketch and painting pictured here. In the painting I ended up turning Lake Erie into a landscape. Initially I had painted water, but I came back to the canvas a day or so after the water was in and it kindof morphed into landscape--which I know so much better than water--simply because I don't see the Lake on a daily basis, whereas I do study my little corner of the world everyday.
I painted a few pieces this summer which have a similar composition to the painting above.  I'm toying with the idea of painting a Horizon Line series.  I love the meshing of color, verging on abstraction; still landscape.