Sunday, April 25, 2010

Now for something completely different....

The Goddess in Green
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This painting is  12x16, oil on linen and  mounted on a board. This is my "breather" painting from the series I am working on. I really need to do a piece or two in between three or four paintings from a series. One, I would get very bored if I did not break it up that way and two, it is great to come back to the series with fresh eyes.

I have entered a prussian blue mode. As with the last few paintings from my series, this piece was painted with mostly prussian blue, yellow ochre, raw umber, burnt sienna and yellow ochre with a little bit of titanium white.

I used bits of stenciling and scumbling for the background and let some of the stencil carry onto the dress. I also intentionally left her dress and arms flat so that it contrasts nicely with the scumbled background  


Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The World in Black and White.......

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And with only about five stations plus a sign off with the national anthem at about 12AM. Oh, how things have changed!
I do have to say, that it was kind of nice having the broadcasting day end at a certain time. The world was quiet just for a few hours.

This piece is 10x10 oil on linen. I used Prussian blue, raw umber, yellow ochre and a little bit of cadmium red. My black was Mars Black and the white was Titanium.

I also used a very light yellow from Vasari Paints for the highlights. I love their paints it is just so loaded with pigment !

The ground was an oil primer and I put a transparent wash of ochre and black over that. I roughed in the composition with raw umber and started painting when that dried.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Waiting for Miss Nancy

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When I was  very little girl I use to love to watch Romper Room which was hosted by "Miss Nancy".

One of the things I always insisted on was that I had to get all dressed up like the other little girls on the show.

Of Course this was very annoying to my mother.  Changing my clothes a couple of times a day was a chore but I had to have everything just so.

Oh..... how she longed for those days when I turned thirteen and only wanted to wear jeans loaded with patches and run around barefoot.

(How 'bout that TV!)

Waiting for Miss Nancy 10x10  oil on linen



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Not to happy about holding those flowers! It was one picture after another that day and I just about had it.

One More Time 10x10 oil on linen

Monday, April 5, 2010

It's about Time

It's about time I post something! The past six months have been difficult to get any painting done. We had lost our beloved dog, Degas, who I still mourn, and I lost my studio space.

I had to work at home which is not a great thing for me to do. There are always too many distractions. My husband works out of the home, there is laundry piling up, dishes in the sink, people stopping by, dinner to make, etc. I try to imagine Picasso leaving the easel, going past the bathroom and seeing the laundry flowing out of the basket and thinking "I better go wash those". You know that didn't happen. There was always a Mrs. Picasso or mistress around somewhere.

So a dear friend of mine ( I am making a plug for her book on marriage here ) offered me a space in a warehouse that she was renovating for her husband's East Asian importing business, Two Buttons and the Lovin' Oven, a very fabulous and funky restaurant(there are some photos of their new and old locations).

Well, as with most construction it took about six months longer then it was suppose to.  But....it is finally finished and  I moved in here a couple of weeks ago .It is just lovely and I am getting down to business! I will be posting pieces frequently.

I have started a series of pieces based on my early life. My mother had sent me DVD's of our old home movies spanning three decades and there is just so much great material in them that it will keep me busy for a while.

One of the hardest things about these DVD's, is to look at family members( parents, brothers, cousins, aunts, etc.) as  babies, children and young adults, all these happy bubbly beings, not knowing what life had in store for them and for quite a number of them, life has not been so wonderful.

So I will post works from this series as well as "breather" paintings over the next few months and hope you will enjoy them!

The first two are:

Little Red 1 and Little Red 2
9x12 oil on linen