Reflecting

 

Reflecting, 24x24, oil available

 

Here is another fresh off the easel. As often happens when I am working on so many simultaneously, a few come to completion about the same time. This one I relate to in that I can sit and watch water for ages, be it the gulf, a brook, a lake or the ocean. Yet it seems like a short time only has passed. Even though I am more likely to walk a beach, I am often pulled to just sit still in silence, watching and listening. I saw this man doing just that one evening and the skimmers flying by just added to the story.

Cherry Creek Art Gallery partners with Project Angel Heart for online show

 

In case you are not on my mailing or newsletter list, I wanted to post the information on our partnership with Project Angel Heart for the month of June Fresh Art for the Heart online show. We have been off to a good start with sales so I do hope you will check out the link to view the show. There are 12 artists participating and we will donate 20% of all sales to Project Angel Heart. 

CCAG did a similar partnership for our Small Gems show back in December. Metrocaring was grateful for the $5500 we donated from our sales. I was blessed to make a sale from the day the "Fresh Art for the Heart" show opened on June 1. The happy owner sent me a photo today of where they have hung it. She said not only does it change the feel of the room for the better but the room feels lighter and brighter too! What a gracious thing to say to an artist!

Here it is: 

For those of you who would like to see a short video promoting the show:

Where I want to be right now

 

Sunset Over the Gulf, oil, 18x36 available

Jimminy Cricket! I thought I had posted this painting 2 months ago. Who'd have thought I would be this far behind...there really are no excuses except to say I have had a pinched nerve in my neck that makes my whole arm tingle and feel asleep ever since the 24" snow dump the end of March. That repetitive motion of a snow shovel is what did me in. It is better, but it is now settled into my fingers and thumb on my dominant hand. Gardening is not helping this situation. Nor is being at my easel or computer. 

Back to the place I would like to be right now. It is hot and dry once again in Denver after a most plentiful moisture filled Spring. For which I am very grateful. Still, I would much rather be on a beach with a gentle wind in my hair as where I was on the Gulf of Florida a number of years ago. I can almost get myself there by looking at this painting. There is something so magical about sunrises and sunsets. No two are alike and they are just so fleeting. A transient light show. I love them! And why I like them over the ocean or a body of water is that they are just out there with nothing to impede them. Full of Glory.

It took me a year to finish, which is not that unusual. I get excited by the initial block in and then I freeze up. I must wait patiently until my heart moves me back to the place I need to be to finish it up. Which is again, why I have so many paintings going at once. 

This is only one of many sunsets or sunrises I have been motivated to paint lately. I posted this sunrise in March and I sat down today to write two posts on recently completed sunsets discovering I have been negligent in getting this one posted. I have one more of the Gulf, totally different from this one and another from my trip to AZ this past Spring. 

Stay tuned! I will be doing my best to stay on schedule of posting every week.

Day Lilies in the Garden

 

Day Lilies in the Garden, 12x9, oil, Available

 

 

I started this smaller work as a way to paint with my friend who comes over once a month for us to catch up and paint together for the day. It seemed one I could do while talking without too much investment in the outcome. I am pleased with the outcome which is a bonus. I finished it up on my own but it was mostly done in this friendly and congenial atmosphere. 

To start work in garden in early spring after all the snow we have had and waiting for the so soil to not be so saturated, I began to dig up those plants that are taking over my main flower bed in the backyard. The tubers of day lilies and the bulbs of grape hyacinths both tend to be in clumps with not as much dirt around them once they get thick from lack of thinning. I have not thinned the thicket of where these particular day lily plants are, but I did ravish the other side of the butterfly bush - the purple flowers and the green tube shaped remnants of the flowers which divide the bed, east vs west. Most of the foliage in this painting is from the other plant that has taken over, spearmint. A veritable thicket. I purposely let it get out hand the past several years because it is the last flowering plant in the fall for the bees. A neighbor has a bee hive in my back yard and I want to do my best by them. However, I got after the mint as well. I have no doubt it will be back, but it gets to start all over now. I threw in some Zinnia seeds last year that I really enjoyed so I want more room for those this year. 

I have left this painting in my dining room for now, so that every time I walk by it brings joy to my heart. I am posting it on this Easter 2021 as a sign of hope for things to come. May the blessings of this day be with you now and always.

Seat in the Sun

 

Start of a New Year - A Seat in the Sun

I forgot to post this on New Year's Day...oops!

A Seat in the Sun, 9x12, oil

To start this new year it seems a good time to post this painting. To remind me that the sun is still shining!

A couple of my painting buddies were over before Thanksgiving to paint together. As it was a beautiful Colorado day we set up outside my back door. It was very interesting as we all painted "the same thing" yet they could not have been more different in approach. I pulled out an old plein air painting that was not worthy of the title "painting" to begin afresh. I do enjoy the challenge of that and I am always surprised by how it turns out if allow myself to not cover every inch of the preexisting image underneath. I believe this one to be fairly successful in that regard, especially in the interesting colors and shapes coming out of the darkness of the interior of my garage. Keeps the imagination wondering what is in there? I did not plan it this way, but the color of the chair is also coming through on the wall behind it, which originally was a brick wall with white trim.

 

I don't consider myself a plein air painter, but I always enjoy being outside painting. If I keep it simple, as I did in this piece, the exercise is more successful. As I mentioned above, there were three of us painting together. I was the most zoomed in on the subject. Jeannie added the whole garage, and Marianne had the whole garage plus sky and trees and behind the garage, on a much smaller sized canvas, I might add. How she manages to do that is a mystery to me. That is what makes the world go round! That we are all unique individuals. Thank God for that~

 

 

Cathedral Rising

 

Cathedral Rising, 18x36, oil Available-contact me

This one has been a long time in the making. It is hard for me to fathom that I have been working on this painting for 2 years!! I just could not make it work for me despite many friends and family telling me it was fine. One would not think such a 'simple' scene would be so hard for me to get right. It is because it is so straight forward that I felt it had to be a certain way. Can't tell you how I studied snow, and the light on the snow at a certain time of day. No two days are the same conditions but to get a feel for it. I still did not delineate details, going for an overall sense of a bright, yet crisp winter morning.

I clearly remember this morning. My walking buddy and I were at Washington Park in Denver bright and early. It was one of those crisp but beautiful blue sky winter day. As the sun was rising. Hardly any one else at the park. It was magical. We walk the park every day, most always in the early morning. I know this park so well, yet some days it takes your breath away. 

Morning Glory - EAST

 

Morning Glory-East, 24"x24" oil - available - please contact me

 

Here is another one I started over a year ago. I think I have determined I really don't like this canvas, that I once thought I did. I have a hard time taking good photos of any paintings I do using this substrate. That alone is not the problem, as it just reveals things to me I don't want to see, which is a good thing overall. I just don't like how the paint works on this slick linen. I am currently working over an old painting on cotton and on a board substrate and those paintings are coming along swimmingly. 

As I was raising the blinds in my bedroom one November morning this scene was a beautiful reminder of how unique each sun rise is. I ran to get my phone and then ran out to the back deck, and thankfully, the sky was still spectacular. This is looking East on Iowa Street towards Downing St. That is my garage in the lower right hand corner. When I was working and had a dog that needed to be walked prior to going to work at 7 a.m. I saw the sunrise way more than I do today as a retired and a dog-less individual. So I am far more moved by them now that I see them less often, and I have always been in awe of the beauty of nature.

I painted the whole street scene trying to keep it within a certain value group; enough variety to know what it is and differentiate between the houses, but still reading overall as a whole. The lighter values help you move within this larger dark shape. but not enough to take away from the sunrise. Hopefully, they compliment each other.