{ Category Archives }
Here’s a piece that began with smearing leftover paint onto a canvas-covered board. It started out as a landscape but then I got interested just in how the paint itself looked So I followed it where it took me. What I wound up with seems like a still life with a bottle but then I started turning the painting around and I’m not sure which orientation is best. Makes it hard to come up with a title.
Untitled 13 x 8 (8 x 13?) oil on canvas on board, unframed $150
Things get so busy this time of year I haven’t had a chance to post lately. I’ve also spent a lot of time painting a Christmas present but I don’t want to put it in the blog before it’s presented. Here’s a still life I’ve just finished, ready for a group show in January. I love the look of dried hydrangeas but wasn’t satisfied with the background. So I painted in trees and a moon and changed the shape of the vase to echo the roundness of the moon.
Hydrangea Moon 17 x 24 oil on canvas $500
I completely forgot a painting I finished some time ago–the end of October– right before I plunged into the DrawMo! project. It’s Strafford’s famous historic site, the home of Sen. Justin Morrill who served as a U.S. Senator from 1867-1898. He authored the Morrill Act which established federal funding for higher education in every state. The homestead is a Gothic Revival cottage, built in 1855. The exterior looks like plaster but is really board. And yes, it is pink. I painted this on a beautiful morning with the sun shining on the roof and fall foliage on the hills across the road. It was the last plein air landscape I got to do before cold weather arrived. Some hardy souls paint outside in the winter but I am not among them!
Morrill Homestead 9 x 12 oil on birch panel $250 SOLD
Two paintings are off to the local arts center today for the annual Christmas show.
Persimmon and Grapes 11.5 x 11.5 oil on birch panel $350
I tried a new approach with this one–massing in the forms and not using a line at all. It was exciting to work that way, without the safety net of a drawing underneath. I’m pleased with it.
Nothing Gold Can Stay 11.5 x 24 oil on birch panel $450
I started this landscape, intending just to wash it in and glaze over it. But the gesso on the board showed too much of a pattern so I wound up only using that approach for the trees. I dashed in the clouds vigorously and thickly and like the look. Dark clouds against bright foliage are so beautiful. I thought the line from the Frost poem made a good title.
Even though I’ve been drawing every day for the DrawMo! project I still paint every day as well; it just takes longer. Here’s a landscape completely from my imagination, using very thin paint diluted with lots of turp. I just dripped it on, mixing wet colors together and let the painting tell me where to go next. I’m pleased with it. I realized that the tree trunks look like Roman numerals, hence the title of the painting.
Two and Six Oil on Birch Panel 16 x 16 $350
So these are the last flowers of the series I started last summer. The petunias made it through two frosts but we’ve had to take down the window boxes now that we’re getting freezing temperatures every night. Maybe I’ll paint house plants some this winter but for now I’m done with blooms.
Petunias oil on birch panel 11 x 14 $350
Even though I’m participating in the DrawMo! project I still paint every day. This is a painting I started on site last summer but was so unhappy with I considered painting over it. But I pulled it out recently and decided I could do something with it. I love these barns; the owner built them with his own hands. I’m using much thicker paint lately, the goal being to get the brush so loaded it doesn’t make any noise. I like the look but all the time I’m thinking about how much paint costs!
Star Attraction 12 x 16 oil on masonite, $350 unframed
I can’t believe how late into October the weather has stayed warm this year. Usually I’m through with plein air landscapes around the first of the month but we’ve had lovely days throughout. The painting group recently went across a fairly scary little bridge into some fields across from a farm and near a stream. A couple of us set up on the bridge itself and this was the scene before us. I’m concentrating more lately on smaller vignettes, more intimate rather than expansive views. The autumn foliage in its many variations of gold and russet is a lot of fun to work on. Because we’ve had such a warm year the reds are not as prominent as they have been sometimes in the past but much better than last year when there was some kind of maple blight. I love reflections–always a challenge but rewarding. I’ve tried to keep the paint thin for the water but quite thick for the surrounding vegetation.
October Stream 9 x 12 oil on birch panel, unframed $250
October has remained unusually warm so I’ve been able to get out to paint much longer than I anticipated. Right after I started in on this one the road scraper came by within inches of me, the driver grinning and gesturing to me that I wasn’t in his way. He returned several times during the morning, turning up a lot of dirt and dust. I feared that I would wind up with unwanted texture in the painting but surprisingly not. Anyway, I liked the shadows on the houses. And it’s such a pleasure to have all the fall color. The big tree has a major split in the trunk and higher up (not visible in the painting) is a supporting rod holding it together. When I was a child my father paid me a dime to memorize Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees.” Now I think it’s pretty sappy but I did remember some of it when I was painting this tree.
Morning Shadows oil on birch panel, 11 x 14 unframed, $375
A few days ago we had a change of temperature, resulting in a nice fog. The view is from an upstairs window looking down our driveway. It was interesting to have to dull down the colors, reducing the contrast of values, so the palette is quite different. After I finished the painting I scumbled lighter paint over darker to increase the mistiness of the background.
Peak color was just a few days ago and now after a couple of hard rains we’re losing the leaves rapidly. One year we had snow while the leaves were still on the trees, making branches so heavy many of them fell on power lines. The blackouts were widespread and lasted for quite a while. Loss of power is common here. Most people have generators but we have a battery that runs essential equipment. Before we got a more powerful battery a couple of years ago we couldn’t run the pump which meant no water from the faucets and no water for flushing toilets. We kept a trash can full of water in the basement but often ran out before the electricity came back on. (Once we had two couples visiting from Texas and the power went out for nearly 24 hours–a much more intimate experience than any of us wanted!) Now we can run the pump as well as the refrigerator and only once has the battery not had enough juice to keep us going during the whole outage.
Foggy Morning 14 x 16 oil on birch panel unframed $375