Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Goodbye to Summer


This painting isn't the only thing saying goodbye to summer, or goodbye to fall for that matter. This morning I awoke to a couple of inches of snow and large, white flakes have continued to fall all morning (I'm certainly not ready for the snow yet). This painting will be making its way to Monsoon Gallery in Pennsylvania.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Like a Blank Canvas


Why is it that people use the metaphor of a blank canvas as a thing filled with hope? I look at it as a sign of work, work, work. I just remembered last night that the deadline to submit pieces to the Holiday art show for Evergreen Gallery had snuck up on me and now look at the pieces I need to finish by the end of the day.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

One For Me


I finally got around to painting something for my family room. I had to do some paintings for a gallery stroll that Paisley Pomegranate was being a part of, and it was a perfect excuse for me to paint this for myself. If I hadn't had that deadline I would have never gotten around to doing it. I still haven't painted a new painting for my living room since I gave away the piece that was hanging there to a friend of mine more than six months ago.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Awash in Blue



As the title to these paintings suggest, I really have been awash in blue lately. Ever since I completed the blue commission a few weeks ago I've been a little addicted to these colors. I just sent a few of these pieces off to Monsoon Gallery in Pennsylvania. I hope someone else shares my interest in these blues.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Headin' to Wisconsin


I'm excited to be showing some of my paintings in a new gallery, Milward Farrell Fine Art, which is located in Madison Wisconsin. This gallery is full of a vibrant and eclectic mix of paintings and I hope that mine will fit right in. Maybe some day I'll be able to take a trip to all these gorgeous galleries so that I can experience them in person.


Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Cobalt


Blues have always been hard for me to paint. It's a picky color and sometimes it's hard to get right, but I really like the way this painting turned out. I painted it for a commission and hopefully it's well received. I'm thinking I might paint something similar for my living room. I have a bright blue fireplace and the oriental rug on my floor has bits of blue in it too. I think it will tie together really well. That is, if I ever get around to painting it.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

For One Night Only



On Friday September 19th I'll be painting live at Alpine Art for the 25th Anniversary Open House at 7:00. I'm always a little nervous to paint in front of people that I don't know, but I'll have the painting three quarters of the way completed and will try to finish it up during the party. By this point I should have a very good idea what the end product will look like so it shouldn't be quite so scary. The painting above is one of the pieces that I will be displayed during the show.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Return to the Land


It's been ages since I painted any landscapes, but on a recent trip to Idaho to visit my best friend Cathy I was so stirred by the farmland that I took a whole bunch of photographs to use for references so I could do a series of landscapes. I'm planning on using acrylic on paper. It's been so long since I've worked on paper and I'm excited by the prospect. Here is a phenomenal picture of the moon rising. The colors were amazing, bold, yet compressed. Ahhh!

Thursday, August 21, 2008

I'm Back

Yes, after three months of distraction I've ended my sabbatical. There has to be something said for the benefit of a deadline and right now I'm very grateful to A Muse Gallery in Columbus for being just the impetus to get me off my keister and painting again. If you're near Columbus in October, stop by the gallery to see the show.
My kids are slated to start school next week and I'm excited to get back to the studio with some regularity again. Ahh, I didn't realize how much I missed having a schedule. I'm hoping to get new work out to all my galleries and finally make some progress with the figurative paintings I've been working on for a collective show that I'm preparing to do with my brother.


Here are a few of the paintings I sent to the Columbus Gallery.


A Muse Gallery requested some monochromatic paintings and I had fun doing number of black and white paintings.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Mother's Day Show




I finally delivered eight paintings to Utah Artist Hands for the Mother's Day Show. Pam has a beautiful shop with an amazing eclectic mix of artwork that I would love to be able to buy. I'm always jealous of the people who go into a gallery with the intent to buy and I always feel a little guilty that I'm not one of those people more often. Most of the artwork in my house has been acquired through the beautiful act of trading. But it's a great feeling when I can actually pay an artist for her work.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Epiphany

I'm still getting ready for an upcoming show at an art gallery right here in Salt Lake, Utah Artist Hands. I'm still madly painting of course, but sometimes I think I do my best work at the last minute. This painting is one of a pair that will be up in the show opening in time for mother's day. I love the new color palette I used in these paintings. They're inspired by vintage, Art Deco fabric that I found in a new book.
My friends and family know that I'm easily distracted, an entrepreneur by heart, and I'm not really myself unless I have a new passion to follow up on every few months. This past weekend while at a beautiful fabric store with my sister Cathy I decided to finally follow through with the passion for textiles that I've had for years. In what you might call an epiphany I decided to start designing a line of fabrics based off of my paintings, which I suppose brings things full circle considering the fact that my paintings are inspired by textiles to begin with.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Bon Voyage!

This piece, along with three others, are on their way to England. Liberty Gallery in Kent will be the first overseas gallery to display my paintings. Hopefully they find a happy home in England. Now if only I could hand deliver the paintings myself. Too bad my American dollar wouldn't get me too far.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Metaphor

I really struggled with these pieces. Sometimes a painting will just fall together, each stencil fitting in exactly the right spot, each flower the right size and color to begin with, and other times I feel like I'm fighting the whole time, exhausted at every decision, changing color and composition left and right until finally I end up too tired to paint any more. The funny thing is that it's usually these paintings that I end up liking the most in the long run, possibly because they were unexpected. They weren't the pieces I sought out to make, but were the paintings that struggled to form themselves out of the layers of paint, stencil and charcoal. No need to tell me that it's a metaphor for something larger. . .

Friday, March 28, 2008

Making a Stencil


This time lapse video shows the process of a stencil being made. First I drew the image on Bristol Board, referring to an image I had sketched in my sketch book. After I was happy with the shape I began cutting out the image with an Exacto Knife. Presto.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

A Little Bit of Red

I was just about to mail this painting off, along with a few others, to Monsoon Gallery in Pennsylvania when the gallery director contacted me to let me know that they'd like to feature them in a floral show in May and June. I think the show might get some more red pieces to go along with this one.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

It's not all fun and paint

I'm getting a group of paintings ready to mail off to Art Resources Gallery in Minnesota and have reached the stage in the painting process that I dread each and every time, framing and wiring. I have to admit that my husband actually cradles each of my paintings, but it's up to me to paint and varnish the edges, a task I would love to pawn off to one of my apprentices if only I had any.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Finished

I ended up really liking this painting. Every once in a while I'll have a painting come together very naturally and this was definitely one of those paintings. As I've said, I don't have a very big studio, and often during the middle of working on a painting I'll bring it into my family room where I have a little more room to step back and really get a feel for a piece. Another benefit to bringing a painting into the family room is the great input that I get from my family. They helped with the decision of adding the final layering of brown stencils which really made the painting feel complete.









Sunday, March 16, 2008

In Progress


Here's a painting that I'm in the middle of working on. I've added the first couple of layers of stencil as well as the silhouette of yarrow in dark green.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Stencils

I've got over thirty stencils, but I definitely have my favorites. And you can distinguish the favorites by the layers of paint which sometimes get so thick that I actually have to stop using a stencil because the built up paint has distorted the image. I usually don't just make one stencil at a time, although occasionally I'll feel that I just don't have the right one for a painting that I'm working on and then I'll make one with a specific painting in mind. Most of the time I'll make a few stencils at once. It's a very different process from painting and sometimes it's just the change of pace that I need. I make my stencils out of Bristol Board, which is thick enough to stand up to the paint, but thin enough that I won't lose all feeling in my fingers when I use my Exacto knife to cut out the design.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Welcome to the studio


Come on in. . .
Of course I dream of the day when my studio will have all natural light with big, beautiful, north facing windows, but for now I make do with this.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

To Begin With


Anyone who knows me, and has come to spend time with me as I paint, knows that my studio is a cramped space, overflowing with used canvases and panels, tubes full of posters and containers of gesso and matte medium, not an ideal space to sit down to have a conversation, or to stay much longer than a few minutes to watch me finish a layer of stenciling. So I thought it might be fun to take my studio to the web, a place where my friends could sit down for a while and watch as some of my paintings emerge, without feeling snubbed by the fact that I can't offer a chair for them to sit on (the one in my studio being covered by gardening books and fabric catalogs).