Autumn
« Previous EntriesSumac Bushes Chair finished
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
Sumac Bushes 47H x 22W x 16D inches refurbished directors chair, acrylics on canvas
Four cropped pieces of the 1999 painting that inspired this chair hang above it, framed red; the chair and small paintings are a set.
Click here to view the previous post January 6th.
Branching Out
Friday, March 20th, 2009
Branching Out and Conifer, each 6 x 6 x 2 Inches Encaustic, sides continue with the same work.
Branching Out also indicates my recent venture into Encaustic (painting with beeswax). I’m not usually intimidated by trying any new medium, but wax is so unique and there are so many possibilities for it, I was a little overwhelmed when I took an introductory course with Deanna Wood. She offers her students workshop days where they can use her supplies to continue experimenting with the medium. Although I’d love to have my own supplies to work at home, the encaustic process is so messy I may just continue taking her up on that offer. Today’s studio work produced 4 small encaustic paintings, and 2 are successful. Compared to other media, wax is so verstile it can be scraped off to whatever degree, reworked, layered, carved and manipulated as much or as long as you wish.
Sweetgum
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
Sweetgum Seed Capsules, 11 x 11 x 3 inches acrylics on canvas, gallery wrapped sides painted.
Please pass the peace
Saturday, February 14th, 2009
Garlic Chive seeds
..and click here for some joy that has just come my way from Virginia Wieringa. This video emanates true human spirit, where there are no barriers of language or land or any of the other superficial stuff we create around us that we think will make us happy; joy is simple. It’s right there in a goofy dance.
..and click here (and scroll down a bit on that page) for some laughter that just came my way from Chris Bolmeier. Regarding Art, love and laughter: we need to be no more or less than ourselves to inspire one another. One person inspires so many.
Sumac Bushes director’s chair
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
Back and seat of 47H x 22W x 16D inches refurbished tall wood director’s chair, work in progress. Acrylics on canvas, will be varathaned.. functional Art. The wood will be painted a dark faux cherry wood finish; reddish burnt sienna.
Shadows of Summer update
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
Today’s work, above: Played with color/gel washes and studied the painting a lot today, judging what needs to be changed and what should be left alone. The right side of the trunk needed definition but not with hard edges. The leaves may still too bright with that tell-tale Acrylics look, which I seriously don’t want. There was extra paint on my pallette, so I pulled out The Fourth of July and started in on that one again; may only paint that one tomorrow and set this one aside to study for a while before making any more marks. It may even be finished; put out of sight for a while I will know at a later date.
September 21: Phase 6, started gaining more confidence with the trunk and some of the motion via abstract that I’m searching for. After a lot of work softening shadows and contrasts on the trunk by adding and removing color, the leaves now need more definition and depth.
September 18th post, right detail image: The upper bark is too pink, keeping it on the same plane 
as bright leaves on the side; am building up the layers of color and have put most of the work into the shadows so far…so now maybe it’s time to start basking in the light! Also just started to play with space implied by streaks of color and washing out areas…see detail, right. The painting may become subtly cubist. Also still hoping a more unique title hits me while working!
Seasonal treasures
Sunday, November 11th, 2007
While photographing the filigree on many of the decaying oak leaves in a park forest, leaning backwards with my head in the branches, a little green snake struck out at me, the delicate body about 8″ long and no wider than a baby finger. I wrote to the Biology Dept. at Texas University, and they identified it as a Rough Green Snake – Opheodrys aestivus – it’s nonvenomous.
Walking back home completely happy to have chosen that path, expecting no more treasure for the day, a leaf twirled in the breeze, hanging from a spider web strand.
Gold In The Mountains #1
Sunday, November 4th, 2007
Gold In The Mountains #1, finished - 20 x 16 x 1 inches Acrylics on stretched canvas. Mounted on a box-frame, extending out 2 extra inches on canvas-covered background, with rustic barn-wood finished edges.
This is one of those paintings that never felt truly finished until this week. Started late in 2005, it has evolved through many changes. The first thumbnail shows the painting at a stage where I thought it finished and entered it into Artjury.com’s 2006 Spring/Summer online exhibition, and it was accept ed. At the time I liked the larger areas of flat orange-gold, but about six months later after it had been stored out of sight I felt that the work needed more depth, so began a long process of repainting, scrubbing off, build-up, scraping, etc. The painting reached a few different stages where it could have been called finished, but I was not entirely pleased, so continued.
One never knows beginning any painting, how long it will take.. The image above shows the painting as it is today, now well and truly finished! Click on the thumbnails below to enlarge and view a few stages in the life of Gold In The Mountains #1.
North Carolina
Monday, October 1st, 2007
Alain and I flew to North Carolina for three days ( a little business trip and I tagged along—he threatened to take my camera with him and I was sure I could not manage without it!) We drove around the eastern countryside between Raleigh and Washington (NC) through old, old towns (it takes a looong time for wooden doors to shred, and a looong time for conditions to be just right for vines to sprout then twirl round and round, entwined and squished between panes of glass!) …old, old farms: tobacco, cotton, peanuts.. and an interesting gas station.
There is a lot of history in NC - fossil, human/settlers and Civil War history. We stayed at Kitty Hawk (first flight – Wright bros.) and walked the shores at various places along the narrow coast of the Outer Banks. We watched the sun rise and dolphins feed - too far away for good photos, even with the telephoto. As soon as the sun rose they swam away.
Along Cape Hatteras, groups of Grackles ate ripe grass seeds, bouncing up and down on the stems, their bodies too heavy for the tall grasses.
On Pony Island a large sand crab tried to buff up and look tough, but it was quite vulnerable there out in the open; all the other crabs scurried into holes but this one stayed, trying to hide in footprints, which offered no protection if we had been birds looking for a hearty meal.
Great fun to watch the behaviour for a while. It’s clearly outlined crab-shaped shadow following it everywhere, creating a few graphic photos that are perfect resource material for drawings and paintings but do not stand alone as good photography because it was moving so fast.
Just off the 2 1/2 hr. long ferry at Swan Quarter, and sunset with a short, wide rainbow after a storm that we managed to escape and watch from the better side.
NO OLF – we were curious about this sign in many people’s yards. The following website shows a video describing how the U.S. Navy has purchased over 30,000 acres of land near the eastern North Carolina coast, planning to move their pilot training program from Virginia.
Part of the huge contraversy is that over 75 families would be forced to leave their homes, many of them farming that land for generations. The human issues are enough, but the cause and effect on the wildlife and ecology would be drastic and unrepairable. Thousands of ducks and large flocks of snowgeese that feed in the area annually would no longer have sanctuary. The large birds would also be a danger to the jets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XDmC1LD1Kc
…and what Nikkistory is complete without a moon?
Calgary in September
Thursday, May 18th, 2006
Calgary in September 14 x 11 Oil pastels on paper ~ Part of the Paper Places series ~ Available, framed size 26 x 22 inches. Placed Second in the Paintings category in Plano Art Association’s annual One-Two-Five Show Exhibition in Plano, Texas April 11 – May 8, 2007
(I think of pastels to be drawings because no brush is involved, but they are commonly categorized elsewhere as paintings).
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