It's like painting a large abstract...

Making art.  Painting furniture artistically.  The same principles apply.  Make the color pleasing to the eye.  Add textures and more color/s.  Work the whole surface until you and your client are satisfied.   Seal to protect.  Head home for a dip in the pool... (See below.)  And I sold a painting last week! 

The finished desk.

The finished file drawers.  Yellow, gold and black over red.

Before - great functional piece - awful "pecan" finish.  Doors, hardware drawer fronts removed for sanding.

What?  You were expecting an in-ground kidney deal?  This is my rainwater filled cool down pool.  You'd be amazed how refreshing it is to just pour water over your head when the outside temp (and my body temp!) is over 95 degrees.   Sometimes the water heats up so much I have to add cold well water to get my cool down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gracie in the dryer.  The metal was cool and the house was hot...  Doesn't she look pitiful?

I Love the Rain

Perhaps I was born during a rainy fall day.  Would that explain how much I love the rain?  Walking through the pine forest in a mist or fog I have often felt that time has stopped.  I could be anyone in any hour of any day in this or another century.  Everything slows down and I am able to focus on what is small and near and tangible - as that which is far away is softly obscured.  Bark and leaves and textures, tiny branches, toadstools and fungi, droplets of water on my head - and sounds - sounds that are both muffled and magnified.  The tapping of the water droplets, the sweet percussive sound of a runoff creek  as it carries bits of the natural world down a fresh gravitational path.

If I am lucky, the tree frogs are singing - or I may chance upon a rabbit or doe rustling away into deeper cover.  I love, too, the light after a rain, when the mist rises from warm earth seeming to carry the light up and hold it in place; a mist lit from within.

And then everything blooms!

After two days of steady soaking rain...

 

 My narcissus doesn't bloom every year.  The drought and heat of the South cause undo stress - making me wait for well timed rains to bring it into full bursting glory.

Before the rain... two days ago.

Yes, I've been painting, but I post my commissioned works here - a pair of paintings for Mother's Day.  So for further entertainment, here is the very undignified Gracie lounging atop my (formerly) clean laundry.  No - she's not nursing kittens, she just has very fine short hair, rather like a Rex, on her pink and plump belly..

Gracie - rescued last year from a Walmart parking lot.  She never has to eat greasy popcorn chicken again.

Over the decades of my life I've rescued or adopted many many cats.  Gracie is unique in that she shows her joy and gratitude at being safe, loved and fed regularly.  She is affectionate, sweet and loving all the time, and wants nothing more than to be a lap cat.  Whoever dumped her there missed out on a very special feline.

Dreaming of Friskies...

Ain't that the pinkest kitty nose you ever saw?

And when it rains, Elvis gets back in "the box".  Note the new scratch on his nose.

Happy Mother's Day to all you Moms.

Two Small Pieces

Draped in Fur, 3 x 18, acrylic on vintage chair harp (sold)

I'm working on my next large commission, so I've only energy enough at night to sit on my couch and paint small things for myself. Here are a couple I painted this past week. The chair harp pieces seem to sell as fast as I can paint them. If I can't find a source for the harps, I'll have to start cutting out my own shapes on the bandsaw. The only problem with that is the vintage harps are shaped in a shallow "S" curve to fit a person's spine. This shape adds much to the character of each figure. My pieces would have to be cut from flat wood stock.

I took this to Sautee Gallery for the Holiday show - and it sold the same day.
If only that were always the case!!

Sitting Pretty will go to the Heritage Center tomorrow where I'll be demonstrating and working the sales counter. I'm borrowing a friend's car as mine will be staying home waiting for my mechanic.

Sitting Pretty, 10 x 12, acrylic on panel $58.00 (Sold)

Clouds - and Appreciation...

I sent a few images to The Cloud Appreciation Society yesterday. Imagine my surprise when I received an email this morning that they were already posted!

They do such a wonderful job there of featuring artists' works that are based upon - or related to - clouds and cloud formations. They also post the most amazing photographs of weather as well as the most up to date information about the weather on our blue planet . Weather isn't the least bit droll or boring when one is talking to someone wise in the ways of meteorology.

Due to my fascination with storms, cloud formations, tornadoes and atmosphere, this has been a favorite - and inspiring -site for me to visit. Take a look!

And a work in progress...

The Poplar Line... 24x 24 . acrylic on deep cradle panel

This is the painting Elvis was so critical of in a recent post. After much agonizing and looking and looking and looking, I decided to finish it - and go right on to repaint the image on another panel. A sort of before and after critique, if you will - and if there is such a thing as a series about "meta-painting" (painting about painting), I guess that's what I'm doing. I need to do this again, less "real" and more true. I like the asymmetry of the trees and the hint of the winds that have shaped them, and I want to emphasize this in the next version.











As for Elvis... He passed out on the printer from exhaustion after all his efforts to have me paint this one out failed. I mean really; he hasn't any credentials, he's all about instinct - and his are quite primitive.

I think he's trying to send me another message - when he grows tired of my surfing, typing and emailing - and of his attempts to edit same, perhaps it's time to retire !

A few small works - and a critique...

For the past couple of months as I did my stints at the Heritage Center, I noted that almost all of what was selling was priced under $100. (with the exception of jewelry). I determined to paint some small pieces to sell as I cannot even justify the cost of the gasoline unless I'm selling something. I love painting chickens, and I can do them fairly quickly. I was commissioned to do a rooster for an artist friend - and here is the hen to match. It's a Black Croad Langshan - and yes, it has "feathered feet". It's painted on a wood panel, about 9 x 12 inches, ready to hang and for sale at $48.00
This one (and the one below) is painted on tin panel/s that I found at a yard sale. These are folksy tuxedo cats painted in acrylic and ready to hang. About 10x 10,$28.00 each.
Amongst my collections of parts and supplies I had a few chair back harps. These are shaped into a delicate curve and cut with slight variations in overall design. To me, the shapes suggest figures - so I channeled the Pre-Raphaelite painters of the turn of the century to come up with my "Blackbird Maiden."
She measures about 8 x 22 - and she sold for $45.00 twenty minutes after I hung her in the gallery! Yay! There's gas money! Now I need more chair harps!

Here's a detail of the blackbirds...

And finally, The Critic. The is my latest larger painting in progress. Elvis realized as soon as he saw it that help was needed - and he was blunt. He looked closely...

He checked each area...

He nosily pointed out how boring and flawed the coloration and composition...

And when he had exhausted himself with explanations, he determined to hide the offending painting completely. Right now I'm in agreement with him. The painting is accurate, well drawn, realistically colored - and boring, boring, boring!! Y'all might be seeing it after it undergoes a bigtime overhaul.

Full circle...

I thought it might be interesting to post some of my older work to see how it compares, stands up to, resembles or differs from what I'm doing right now. Easier said than done, as I had to poke about my house for pieces I could photograph with my digital camera. I have old slides and photos - but I've not conquered scanning them into my computer.

The large ( 36"x48") painting: "Beadie's Back" was painted in 1987. The year before I had suffered a fractured skull and severe concussion in a riding accident which meant months of slow recovery. When I returned to my job (grants writer and program director for a NY arts council), I realized I was fast approaching terminal burn-out. I had made only three paintings in ten years! I couldn't stop thinking about how my life had nearly ended, and I'd never really been the artist inside me.

The summer of '87 I was able to spend two weeks at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina having an art and life choices R&R. The class I wanted to take was full, so I ended up in a non-traditional basketry group, but I quickly learned that it didn't matter what the class was, however, because the entire atmosphere at Penland was charged with creativity. I never spent two more enjoyable weeks in my life. Everything about the experience was wonderful from the people I met to the fun of staying in a dorm to the food, to the breathtaking mountain setting. (There's a link to Penland at right under "cool sites." If you have the opportunity to go there, don't miss it. It's a magical place that I highly recommend.)

Back in New York, I began to paint and draw like mad. Changes were coming.

The bird drawing is the beginning of my black bird obsession. It's colored pencil and crayon and measures about 12x12". If I'm asked why I began doing them, I can't really say, but the urge to do them has stayed with me all this time.


I began to experiment with capturing allegorical happenings from my life, especially those I found disturbing. I had a Dwarf Netherland bunny named Ernie who was the most gentle of pets. Then one day when I went to pick him up, he bit right through the flesh between my thumb and forefinger and wouldn't let go. I literally had to shake him off. Poor Ernie, as it turned out, had developed a brain tumor. I couldn't get that image of him clamped onto my hand out of my head - so I drew it, painted it, and purged it from my psyche. Shown here is one of the drawings in colored pencil and crayon.

Looking at these twenty-year old pieces made me realize that personal style comes through no matter the subject, no matter the influence, no matter the size or medium. How 'bout that?

Calico Pie

Acrylic on Masonite
11" x 15"
195.00















A long, long time ago, when I lived in Philadelphia, I wanted to adopt a kitty. I decided to go about the adoption in a sort of "chance operation" mode - so I looked through the must find home ads in the classifieds. The color or breed of cat made no difference to me as I believed there were no bad cats.

The first person I called was a charming young lady with a strong Hispanic accent. She had found a young female tabby and brought her into her home only to find that her two fully grown cats hated the newcomer to the point of physical battles. After a few weeks and no improvement, she put the newcomer up for adoption.

When I went to her house to pick up the kitty, she told me that she loved cats above all other animals and felt that they were so sweet that they should all be given the last name of "Pie". Samantha Pie, Tabby Pie, Fluffy Pie... etc. When I told her this would be my only cat - or first cat in Philadelphia, she said I should call her Una Pie, or number one pie... And I did...

Una Pie lived to be a fine fat old tabby cat, and all of my cats from then on have been sweet as pie.

The haunting...

Frosty - and His Best Friend...

acrylic on canvas, 18" x 24"
private collection











This is an old painting and I post it here out of a strange motivation. I think of myself as a very level-headed and pragmatic person, not given to superstition or unreasonable anxieties - and yet - I find that I rarely paint my own cats when they are alive. I rarely even photograph them. Somehow it's as if loving them too much will jinx them. So many times in the past it was always my favorite cat who went missing - or developed some rare disease. Is there guilt involved? Surely. I've been a rescuer and fostered cats all my life and because I've always tried to love them equally - and failed - do I somehow think it's a punishment? No - but...


Perhaps it's due to just missing them, perhaps it's the desire to offer a form of immortality; perhaps it's all of these things and I over analyze. This image of Frosty with a favorite toy says much about my need to think of him as having companionship out there in the great hereafter. And so, like Colette, I memorialize them when they are gone. (Colette used to recite the names of her dead cats - or she wrote of it - I'm not sure.)