Dog Friends

Theresa's Greyhounds
14" x11" each - acrylic on canvas
SOLD

Wild Things

Wild Things

30" x 24"  acrylic on canvas 

This is for sale - contact me for price if interested.

As I have said before - sometimes it is challenging to come up with an apt, if not perfect title for a painting. The title for this work resulted from the changes I made after showing it to an artist friend Leeza, and expressing my frustration about what to do next. At that point the painting looked like this....

and I was feeling stuck. I can't recall exactly what she said but whatever it was, sparked my imagination and I decided to soften and eliminate (in some areas), the outlines of the flower petals, and change the background, and find ways to integrate the two. In order to do that, I took some risks, and it felt good. And I really liked the results. My nice orderly poppies got to go wild. The colours in the finished painting are quite saturated though not quite as neon as what you see here - again I have had trouble reproducing the exact pink-red hue; all of the colours are slightly darker, and richer.  A great dose of colour on the wall - especially if the view through the window is not as colourful as it will be in a few weeks. Cheers! 

Poppies

Several years ago, before we sold our house, we planted a lovely garden that included red poppies. The flowers were beautiful as were their tall, spindly stems. Of course I took lots of photos while they bloomed and lately have been looking at them in the constant search for subject matter. I painted this little watercolour back in January........

Poppies from My Garden I

........and did these more recently. They started out as watercolour paintings, but I then began to add intense ink coloured pencils, pastel, marker and acrylic paint. I was happy with the results, as they are loose and painterly.

Poppies from My Garden II

10" x 10"  mixed media on paper  $50

Poppies from My Garden III

16" x 12"   mixed media on paper  $50

Rock Objects II

Rock Objects II

24" x 24"  acrylic on canvas 

The last of my rock paintings - for now ! I had a difficult time photographing this and getting the correct colours to show up. The dark values you see here are very dark and richly coloured, almost velvety in appearance. In order to darken these values I had to play with other settings, so while the photo is pretty accurate, the real painting is, I think, much nicer. 

Rocks as Objects

Rock Objects I

24" x 24"  acrylic on canvas  

This is for sale - contact me for price if interested.

Like others in this series, Rock Objects I was inspired by a detail from a photo of rocks on the shoreline. The challenge was to simplify the rock shapes but still create solid three dimensional objects. Then I re-arranged the rocks to improve the composition and allow the background or negative space to work it's magic. As for the palette, the colour blue reminds us of sky and water, and the best colour to go with that  one is of course it's complement, orange. Together they sing, don't you think. 

Rock Abstract

Rock Abstract

18" x 18"  - acrylic, pastel, pencil crayon on archival acrylic paper  

This is for sale - contact me for price if interested.

This painting was inspired by the same photo of 'rocks in a stream', used as the basis for yesterdays' painting post.  

I had intended to paint more, but at this stage I really liked the painterly looseness, brush work and more limited (for me anyway) palette  - and so decided to stop. I think it was a good decision.

More Rocks

Rocks Upstream
18" x 18"  - acrylic, pastel, pencil on archival acrylic paper  
This is for sale - contact me for price if interested.

Another in my recent painting exploration of rocks in or near water. This one is based on a detail from photo I took of a fast running stream in British Columbia. As the rocks were small and difficult to see (covered by water) they share the compositioal stage with the water - flattened and simplified into two larger shapes. I really like how the image can be seen and understood both abstractly and representationally. Working on the heavy acrylic paper allowed me a great sense of freedom in both painting and mixing media as the surface was very receptive to pencil, pastel and charcoal line and scumbled paint - all of which was applied liberally. Great fun and I am very happy with the result..

who knew rocks could be so interesting

Rockettes

18" x 18" - acrylic and pastel on archival acrylic paper - $125

Last summer I started really looking at rocks - particularly the big ones that line the shores of lakes and larger bodies of water. I have been fortunate to travel to places where there are bodies of water, both wild and tranquil, and so I have many photos showing rocks in a wide variety of forms and settings. I painted these two landscapes as a result of that thematic interest.

Rocky Shore Georgian Bay

Georgia Bay Vista

Then I began to focus on the rocks and their shapes and became intrigued with how abstract they could appear, especially when enlarged, simplified and emboldened with expressive colour, and I painted these.

BAlancing Act

Rock and Roll

All of which brings me to 'now' and what I have been painting recently - more rocks. The work at the top of this post is called 'Rockettes' (with all that pink I had to name it something that sounded feminine) and is based on a photo of rocks in water, but if you don't see the water that's ok - just imagine the warm summer sun setting, and enjoy the arrangement of shapes.