After the rain

This is the demo painting I did for Friday's workshop. It's acrylic on canvas, 16"x20". There are a few little touches I'd like to add but it's almost done. We had a great sky that day. Lots of clouds moving around. I love a dramatic sky!

Plein Air at The Good Earth

Yesterday was a day of plein air painting at The Good Earth in Beamsville. Here we are fuelling ourselves for an afternoon of painting with a delicious lunch + glass of wine. Stimulating conversation abounded ; )

N. found a nice place in the shade. If you look closely, a chicken photobombed the shot! LOL.

Beautiful clouds yesterday.

C. painted in a cool spot under a garden pavillion.

T. working on a lovely landscape in oil.

 A. painting for the first time. Bravo!!

B. painting the charming cooking school. She even worked one of the chickens in. Sweet.

Daisy. A Havanese. My favourite Good Earth animal ; )

A and T had to leave early so I got a snap of their photos before critique. Love the colour!

The rest of the work from the day. Wonderful! I enjoyed painting with all of you. Thanks so much for coming out! You were a funny, interesting group and it was such a pleasure. There are 2 more sessions for anyone who'd like to come out: Friday August 24th and Friday September 14th. Take care all!

Kiwi on dish - SOLD

I love kiwi fruit. Tangy, delicious and what a beautiful colour : )
6"x6" / oil on canvas / $100 (includes free shipping worldwide)

A Tart Thou Art - SOLD

A custard tart in a crushed nut-encrusted pastry piled high with fresh glazed fruit. Yum.
Thanks to my son for naming it for me!
6"x6" / acrylic on canvas / $100 (includes free shiping worldwide)

A Napolean Slice is Nice - SOLD

So after I painted the previous Napolean painting I had an oil and solvent smell in my nose for what seemed like a day. Yuck. Can't be good. So I decided to work in acrylics for a bit. That Napolean slice was a very seductive thing to paint so I slipped it out of the fridge and did it again. Unfortunately, at the end of two painting sessions under lights the bottom pastry was super soggy so it ended up in the compost bin.

6"x6" / acrylic on canvas / $100 (includes free shipping worldwide)

Napolean Slice

A Napolean slice. Enjoy with beverage of choice.

oil on canvas / 6"x6" / $100 (includes free shipping worldwide)

Who knows?

Playing around, experimenting with colour and layers. This is still very much a work in progress. It may become something entirely different tomorrow. I love what's happening in a few sections, just have to work at getting that rhythm throughout the whole piece. This is acrylic, 16"x20".

Yum, Yum, A Chelsea Bun - SOLD

This little devil gave me a run for my money. After painting for a while I realized it was looking kind of...meh. I stood back and it was obvious: value problems! I re-doubled my efforts and gave it my best squint and voila: a sweet little chelsea bun. 

Toasted Coconut Tart

A little something I picked up from the bakery yesterday. Summer holidays for the kids mean a summer schedule for me too - my posts kind of suffered this week! My schedule may be a bit erratic but I'll get into some sort of summer swing. Anyway, enjoy this tart. All the fun of visual pleasure without the calories : )
6"x6" / oil on canvas / $100 (includes free shipping worldwide)

Detail, work in progress + New Art Blog

Detail, work in progress. 

What you're seeing is about half of another rock painting I've started. I will keep you posted : )

Also, two of my children have decided to start their own blog to document their work. Their names are Cole and Riley. I posted Riley's first painting of the summer (Abstract Temple) here.

Today we talked about Fauvism and looked at paintings from this period. Then they completed these works. If you'd like to follow their progress and read about things in their own words, you can go to their blog and follow along. You'll find it here. Thanks!

 Sky's on Fire / 11"x14" / acrylic on canvas / Cole

Fauvism Shimmer / 11"x14" / acrylic on canvas / Riley

Rocks No.4 (taking a leap)

This one was totally out of my comfort zone. Have you done that? Where you strip away all your comforts and work under new parameters? It feels like you're free-falling. A couple of times I found myself starting to paint more like the way I would normally go about things so I stopped and reminded myself what I was doing - and to continue in that vein, not worrying whether there'd be a respectable outcome. Because of that this piece means the most to me so far. For starters I used a round brush (gasp). Never have done that...lol. And while I painted over a previous landscape (that was mainly greens and blues), I basically used 3 colours: titanium white, hansa yellow and carbon black. Black is never in my palette. Usually for my darkest darks I use a mix of anthraquinone blue and alizarin crimson. But here it is: black! I really thought about brush strokes and texture in a new way - feeling it as opposed to thinking it. And I just kind of let go as far as the sky was concerned.
12" x 12" / acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas / $200

Rocks No.3 + Abstract Temple

Here's no.3. For this one I used the same brush I usually use as well as the same palette but the switch up was working with high chroma (intensity or saturation). My intention was to be psychedelic but this is how it turned out. I will do one like that though! With every painting you learn something even if you're not always able to articulate it. I believe I'll find bits of things that will be useful to me in each of these explorations. 

11"x14" / acrylic on stretched canvas / $325

This is a painting one of my children did today and I got permission to post it. From time to time I will post some of the work they do. I find it inspiring. I'm hoping to get a fair bit of drawing and painting time in with them this summer. And with having a Mom in the field, they get to use real paint and brushes. Art supplies in schools haven't changed much since I was a kid. Cheap paint, cheap paper, and don't get me started on those sorry excuses for brushes! >: 0

This painting was inspired by a temple somewhere in a jungle in Japan. It had a walk-in mouth and eyes for windows. It's abstract. 

12"x12" / acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas

Rock Series No.2

6"x8" / acrylic on stretched canvas / $120

I'm feeling the need to stretch and experiment with my landscape painting. I received my David Alexander book "The Shape of Place" and it has me really wanting to push forward. I am going to do a series based on a plein air painting I did a number of years ago in Sedona (below). I want to try different palettes, various brush techniques etc... and see how it feels to incorporate new ways of thinking. I'm working from a previous painting because I liked the structure of it and felt there was ample room to experiment. Now, this is nothing compared to how it will be when I go outdoors and paint but it definitely will help with freeing my mind and habits. p.s. my website is back up and running. If you haven't checked it out lately, please feel free to take a look. All work is now sized and priced!

18"x24" / acrylic on canvas

Work in progress

Above: work in progress. Middle, below: detail.

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.  ~Stella Adler

So this is the next piece I'm working on. Just trying to decide now how much to push it. On a side note I wanted to mention that my website is still down (&@$#@!$ technical difficulties) but will let you know as soon as it's up and running.

acrylic on canvas

Bright blooms - SOLD

So this is different for me: I painted this out of my head. Abstracts? Yep. Representational works? Nope. I most always paint from life. So...something new! And thanks to my son for naming it for me : )

Wishing my fellow Canucks Happy Canada Day! Holidays are good things.

6"x6" / oil on archival panel / $100 (includes free shipping worldwide)