Tag Archives: primitive style

GOSSIP!

What are they thinking ©

 

SOLD

 

Oh my, so much to talk about, so much going on. Just like in high school. Even my creatures can’t keep from gossiping. The red horned guy is asking if the elephant is going out with the Slouch, but his friend doesn’t know. I can tell you though, all the little cats and snakes know the answer. What do you think?

And, goings on….

I am  again participating in  South Coast Artists Open Studios this Saturday and Sunday July 21st and 22nd from 11:00AM until 5:00PM .

I am stop # 11 on this wonderful tour. 77 artists are opening their homes and studios to visitors this weekend. For a brochure and map, click here. Down the page a little ways you will see the link for the information and directions to my location. Please come visit and see my new work.

And I am in the Little Compton community center Juried Summer Art Show opening this Friday evening. http://www.lccenter.com/

As well as a wild 3 person exhibit at DeBlois Gallery in Newport, RI that goes through the month of July.

And….I have new work at The Art Stable Gallery, Westport, MA along with 7 other artists.

And if you are in Poland…well stop in and see my work at the Szyb Wilson Gallery. More on that trip in another post.

But most importantly I have some wonderful new works for open studios so I hope you will come on down and see the beauty of this area and the wonderful art being shown this weekend.

I am off Route 24 South if you are coming from the Boston area.

Exit 5 in Rhode Island which is Tiverton/Little Compton.

Go south off the exit for 2 miles to Nannaquaket Road. ( right next to a beautiful pond )

Right onto Nannaquaket and a right to 90 North Court.

Blue South Coast Artists signs lead the way!

 

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She’s Glowing! and monthly Gicleé and IPhone cover winner.

She's Glowing

I love bright pinks and this lady sure likes it too.  So what is going on here.

There are two creatures happily conversing while the south wind hangs out waiting for my wing propelled snail to pass by before fluttering Eve’s bridal veil. The snakes are contained in the plants so the are no apples to tempt Eve.

A slight departure on my painting today. After I used permanent ink, I washed the aqua board with hot water and soap thus lightening the ink outlines. Notice the difference?

Thank you to everyone who has signed up for my blog this month. Chris D. won the Iphone cover with one of my leopards on it and Kim, who helped my husband pick out a new iPhone,  won the gicleé.  Congratulations.

Soon we will be going to Europe and we are barely organized. Luckily our children have decided to spend some time here while we are gone so the cats will be well taken care of.

This painting is 6″ by 6″ and is for sale for $100.00

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Rebirth of Venus


cat painting

Titles tell us so much.  I first was going to call this “It Would Make A Cat Laugh”.

Then I thought about how beautiful the planets were in conjunction last night and wanted to call this painting “Waiting for the Stars”.

But Venus with her earrings reminded me of Willie Marlowe‘s series Peggy Guggenheim’s Earrings so in a round about way (since my lovely Venus is wearing earrings and maybe is as promiscuous as the wonderful Ms. Guggenheim) I thought, “One can’t be born with earrings, but one can make a reappearance, thus my title.

While you are here take a look at Willie’s website. Her works are influenced by Persian and Indian miniature paintings. Her use of color and reference to ancient art awes and inspires me. I feel so fortunate to have acquired one of her paintings in the series of Peggy Guggenheim’s Earrings. It hangs appropriately in our bedroom.

I love making my creatures appear and disappear. How many can you find?

This is an 8″ by 10” ink and watercolor on Aqua Board. I have been working and reworking this for the past two weeks. These paintings are slow going.

Rebirth of Venus is SOLD.

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Nesting

Nesting ©

Well it has been an incredibly busy time of year. Postcards are printed for the Exhibit at DeBlois Gallery The Art Stable Gallery is opening this weekend (I will be posting more about that soon), and we are getting ready to go to Europe for the exhibit I am in.  We went to a wonderful rock and roll wedding this past weekend and the bride and groom were one of the happiest couples I have ever seen.

I am loving painting such wild foliage and thought I might make a picture without any creatures. Not surprisingly, a few of them  snuck in here.

I am happy to say this painting is much less expensive than my others. I found that fewer creatures meant fewer hours.

Monday was such a glorious day that it is hard to remember what a cool spring it has been. I love how resilient we are. The flowers have opened in abundance and our nesting sparrow is surely going to have babes soon.

This is a 6″ by 6″ Ink and Watercolor on aqua board and comes with it’s own stand so you can display it immediately. It is for sale for $125.00

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Here’s Looking at You! and Gicleé Give Away

Heres looking at you © 2013

This was quite the challenge to work out as I wanted to stay with purples, oranges and browns.

Was able to put a nice wash of gold on the background.

Which creature would you like to be ? Any reasons why?

Please consider signing up for my blog and I will randomly choose a winner of a gicleé of one of my works matted to 8 1/2 by 11.

Learned today that I can significantly lighten Higgins waterproof permanent drawing ink from aqua board if I use soap and hot water.

I am interested to see how the painting will look with much lighter outlines.

Would love to have you follow my painting journey and be sure to let me know which creature  you would like to be.

This is a 8″ by 10″ Ink and watercolor on aqua board, varnished and framed in a shadow box frame.

To purchase click here:

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Lavender Reverie

Reverie © 5-13-13

I drew this painting while thinking about Mother’s day and storks and the notion that babies come from storks. Of course thinking about my family makes me smile.

As to storks though, I did not know that they are monogamous, often building one nest with one partner and living out their lives in one location.

But when I went researching folk-lore, I was surprised by the variety of conflicting histories. What stands out is that storks have been symbols of good luck since Greek times. It is said that Aristotle suggested that killing storks be considered a crime. I also found that it was believed by the Scandinavians that ponds that storks waded in held babies’ souls. But then, one gets confronted by the depressing Hans Christian Anderson tale in which some boys made fun of a stork and the stork went to the pond of baby souls and brought that boy’s family a dead brother. Mr. Anderson is, of course, known for many more morbid stories with quite the moral message.

But in my picture lies a much happier tale of presenting flowers to ones sweetheart, or mother or friend.

So with an abundance of cheer, I made my little 6″ by 6″  Lavender Reverie. It is for sale for $200 framed in a shadow box frame.

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Elephant Walk

elephant talk ©

Sometimes I want there to be lots of interaction going on with my creatures but in this painting I decided to let the creatures speak for themselves.

Although my work  looks “childlike” to most eyes, I spend a long time on composition and work out color values on paper copies before I watercolor my painting.  I often do my work on aquaboard and varnish the finished work rather than use watercolor paper. I can go through 10 to 20 revisions of my drawing before I ever get to the inking stage.  Once I do ink in my paintings, I am using the old fashioned technique working with a crow quill pen dipped in indelible ink.  More on my process and intent in the next post.

Today I hope you enjoy the tamed wildness of sea anemones intersecting with jungle creatures and giant sized poppies.

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Sheepish and just hanging around.

Sheepish ç 426-2013

I love painting dramatic imaginary foliage and poppies so here they are combined with a family of creatures.

This painting is getting framed in a beautiful maple floater frame. This is the style of framing I did for 8 paintings I mailed to Europe today.  (Ask me about the complexities of that task!).

This is on top of being woken up at 3:31AM by my cat Arthur who jumped on my head 5 times, swatted his tale on my face and cried repeatedly. I thought maybe he saw an animal as the light was pouring in from the full moon, or we hadn’t left the basement door open but when I got up to investigate,  just sat at the head of the bed crying. My phone is right nearby and I had the sound turned down to one notch. At 3:39 my 86 year old mom called me from the hospital. She had been taken there by ambulance after falling.

Sometimes I know things are just coincidences but I have been reading the book Making Rounds With Oscar that my dear friend and amazing artist, Kelley MacDonald lent me. This is the story of Oscar the cat at Rhode Island’s Steer House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center who goes and curls up next to patients destined to die within hours in spite of what doctors state or predict.

I am not saying Arthur is an Oscar, and my mom is already home, with a small fracture in her neck and a few bruises but thankfully nothing more. He is a smart and intuitive cat who came into my life when I most needed to have a kitten to help me refocus my energies on joy and playfulness. And he woke me up in time to see my phone light up and be there to talk to my mom when she really needed someone to help her talk to the ER staff.

IMG_1875

 

Arthur is in orange, Bitsy the calico.

And if you know of anyone who might like to sign up for my blog, I am giving away an IPhone 5 cover with one of my wild leopard paintings on it to one of the next 5 people who sign up for my blog. So, please pass this along if you think someone might be interested.

This painting is 9″ by 12″ on aqua board, varnished, framed and going to go to a new home.

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Monkey Business or How to Eavesdrop!

new 6 by 6

This painting has gone through several revisions over the past few weeks. I was pleased with the drawing but have darkened and lightened some areas to make a more harmonious painting. I continue to be in the poppy business.

It has been a very busy few days. I am trying to get work ready for several shows and have encountered those old framing challenges. I have several at the framer and am changing frames I originally was going to use by sanding and varnishing them.

I also hosted a meeting for South Coast Artists, an artist group I am part of on Thursday. There was such great energy at the meeting it felt like a party.

We have begun gardening and I planted 7 rhubarb plants in the lower 40. It is my favorite fruit for pies and I am hoping these plants take off and give me years of pies. I used Skype to chat with my daughter tonight who is in Hawaii for work. Now that job has some wonderful perks. She is staying at Waikiki Beach. I wish I were there. I could use some warm weather.

This painting is 6″ by 6″ and framed in a shadow box frame. It is for sale for $250.

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Flower Jungle and Joy

FLOWER JUNGLE C 4:14:13

OK, I hope you smile. This is my way of making someone happy. Art gives me joy and joy is happiness.

I have spent several days working on this picture. It took quite awhile to work out the patterns and colors. Swirls and spirals always intrigue me and I like to see them in my paintings. The bunny is offering flowers to the elephant and my cats are hanging out in the tree.  I often add a Mother Goddess to my work. She takes care of overseeing each little world. This time she is communing with the flowers oblivious to the curious cats and the animals paying homage to the wonderful elephant. This continues to fit in my jungle series although the creatures are tamer. I do love the color combinations and the sky full of poppies.

flower jungle pic CLOSE UP

Here is a close up of this curious constellation. And we did not get to see the Aurora Borealis here due to cloud cover. My former office mate lives in Fairbanks, Alaska and I would love to see what the sky is like there. I also hope to go back to Iceland to see the Northern Lights (which we did not see when we were there both times we went).

If anyone out in the world of painting is working on aqua board, I would love to hear how you are framing them. I have searched the internet, watched videos on framing them and haven’t quite come up with a good solution. I am going to try a suggestion by Kelley MacDonald  and see how it works. I will have to get more creative on the best way to frame a flat varnished board in which the painting goes right up to the edges.

This is a 9″ by 12″ Ink and Watercolor on aqua board. It is varnished and framed in a black and maple shadow box frame. This painting looks really lovely and is for sale for $600.00.

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