Fall 08 Paintings

Inspired by a September Dogwood #1
Oil on Canvas
24" x 36"

I was inspired by the colors in a dogwood outside my window at work. Once it started to turn red this fall, I made a mental note of the image and decided I had to try to capture that beauty.

This is the first dogwood painting and the second "carved" painting. I got the inclination to use that technique on a painting one day and really liked the results.



Inspired by a September Dogwood #2
Oil on Canvas
24" x 36"

I didn't quite capture the colors or the feeling of the dogwood in #1 so I gave it another go. #2 is closer, and I like the overall warm orange of the painting. I was definitely feeling the fall when I painted it. Still unsatisfied, I went for it one more time on a larger canvas. Dogwood #3 doesn't have a photo yet, but it will be up soon.




A Soft Fall
Oil on Canvas
36" x 48"

I did not start this painting with any plan, other than doing a blended painting. My first marks were the yellow and orange linear marks you can see slightly through the top layer of paint, in the bottom middle of the painting. The progression to a softer blend was aided by my purchase of a small cuved edge pallette knife. Now I have about 5 pallette knives and use 2. Oh well.

The colors are softly browned and grayed along the edges, and the impression of the painting is calming but not boring...I hope.

Flaking
Oil on Canvas
30" x 40"

I used to do these kind of paintings that you can see underneath the flaking, and this year I started covering them partially or wholly with pallette knife marks.

Flakes are snow, Flake White is a color of oil paint. I like the name.

Umber Beginning
Oil on Canvas
24" x 36"

Both this painting and Flaking started with a dark Burnt Umber that dried more quickly than I had hoped. This style of painting is not very immediate; it usually takes me 3-4 days to make a painting, and by the time I get to the blending point, a couple of the colors have usually dried. That bothered me when I was working on Flaking, but with Umber Beginning, I started using the dried marks as a boundary or rule for the painting. The Umber and Ochre were dry, but the Cadmium and Blue were new, so they took over when the white went through them. The result is more blurry than I wish, but perhaps it will grow on me.

Golden Lavender
Oil on Canvas
30" x 40"

I was shopping and smelled this great lavender scent, found its source, bought it and brought it home. I used it as an excuse to paint a painting starting with a mixed lavender.

I like the painting but haven't accepted the almost straight but-not-quite lines.

Indian Arch
Oil on Canvas
24" x 36"

A similar experiment to Lavender, I left parts of the painting with hard edges and blended together other parts. I like the Indian Red arch in the bottom half and the sparse composition. It works.

Paintings Summer 2008

Most of these paintings were completed in the last 2 weeks. I have been painting every morning before I go to work.

I want to enter one of these (not the portrait though) into an Atlanta Artists Center show at the end of the week.
Let me know which one you would enter.

Cobalt Glasses

2' wide x 3' tall
Oil on canvas
Date: July 22-29, 2008

I wanted to start a painting with this really brilliant cobalt paint I bought from an artist in Boston who was selling away all his art supplies. The first strokes I made were the shapes of cobalt glasses. I made a geometric painting with the blue, red and yellow, on an eisel. Today, I decided to move it to a horizontal surface and experiment with covering it with white and smearing it together a little bit with the pallette knife. I had to make the decision before the paint dried, and I cheated a little bit and added back some of the alizarin crimson and cobalt, because it had dried a little too much. The knife strokes are made rhythmically almost like drumming, and it gives the painting a more scattered and interesting texture. I like the result and will probably try this approach some more.



Geraniums Reflected

2' wide x 3' tall
Oil on canvas
Date: July 28, 2008

Although not much of it shows through, this painting started with some cadmium red light, a sharp reddish orange. The color reminds me a lot of red geraniums. The colbalt I love had to hop into the painting too, and it took over. I have the choice to go into this painting some more, because it's still very wet, but I think I like the water effect and the muted red-orange.







Sam's Kiss

2' wide x 3' tall
Oil on canvas
Dates: February - July 23, 2008


Painted from a photograph of my boys taken when the baby was 6 weeks old, last summer. I still see things I want to fix in it, so maybe it's not done yet. This is the painting I've been trying to do for a while, and the abstracts are the fun stuff. This one's been a lot harder and time-consuming for me, but it's turning out well.
Started with a brush and then switched to pallette knife after the brush wasn't working out. From doing all these abstracts, I've gotten much more used to the way a pallette knife puts down paint and moves it around. I had to move the canvas up to finish the baby, because he was getting out of perspective when I painted him below my shoulders.



Sunlight and Shadows

2' wide x 3' tall
Oil on canvas
Date: July 21, 2008

Painted on a horizontal surface with rhythmic, drumming strokes of the pallette knife. Sometimes, I just have a visceral urge to use certain colors. This time I really wanted to start with that bright yellow. The purple and alizarin crimson are unusual matches for yellow, and I was curious about what kind of interaction they could have together on the canvas. There's a little bit of white on the canvas, too, to keep the darker colors from getting too muddy or black looking.






Begun with Green

3' wide x 4' tall
Oil on canvas
Date: May 2008

Completed in one Saturday while my huband was watching my little boys. I painted the canvas horizontal on a table so I could walk around it. I couldn't decide which way it should face, and it was way too wet for me to be moving it around, for a couple weeks. I signed it after it dried and I had a chance to choose the orientation. This style is similar to some paintings I did about 6 years ago, but the color choice is pretty different, less primary and bright.