Dog Portraits

Rosie

12" x 12"  acrylic on canvas  SOLD

Jasper

12" x 12"  acrylic on canvas  SOLD

I have a black labrador named Molly and I have taken many pictures of her over the twelve years we have been her humans and many have inspired dog-centered paintings. Friends have seen these and over the years asked me to paint their animals too - mostly dogs and the occasional cat. Rosie and Jasper are two such commissioned works I recently finished. Rosie is a Doberman (with all of her ears) and Jasper is an award-winning English Setter. It was a nice break from abstracts and landscapes. 

The Beguine - Water Reflections Abstract Six

The Beguine - Water Reflections Abstract Six

24" x 30"  acrylic on canvas
This is for sale - contact me for price if interested.

This is the third abstract I worked on this past week, based on a detail from a photo of water reflections, re-imagined as a composition of shapes, lines and colours. Not wanting to just call these works 'abstract number....etc', I have also titled them with the name of a dance. In each case I think the style of dance specified relates to the mood evoked by each painting. If you imagine the way the paint brush moves over the canvas energized by the dance steps and  music usually associated with the dance you will understand what I mean. I hope. Take a watch and listen here.  I am really happy with how this and the others have turned out - and have one more on my easel. 

Lyrical Dance - Water Reflections Abstract Five

Lyrical Dance - Water Reflections Abstract Five

24" x 24"  acrylic on canvas 

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

This is another painting based on a detail from a photo of reflections on water. The challenge has been to simplify the detail and create a composition of interesting shapes and lines and then paint it. Sounds easy, but it's not! In the past I have found it difficult to know if what I have created is any good, or where and how to push the design, and when to stop. I am not sure what has changed, but I feel really good about these recent works, and can't stop looking at them - and loving what I see. I have sub-titled this one Lyrical Dance.

Fandango - Water Reflections Abstract Four

Fandango - Water Reflections Abstract Four 

20' x 24"  acrylic on canvas  - SOLD

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

I have been madly painting - working on two canvases - each inspired by details cropped from some fairly mundane photos of reflections in water. This is the first I am calling Fandango, because its colour, rhythmic shapes and overall movement and energy suggests that lively Spanish dance. I can't stop looking at this one - it makes me smile and want to turn on some music. Enjoy!

Water Reflections, Abstract Three

Water Reflections, Abstract Three

24" x 24"  acrylic on canvas   

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

Every so often I paint 'water reflections' - based on small details cropped from photos I have taken of reflections.
This composition was developed from a detail taken from this photo - taken on Vancouver Island, a few years ago.

I love the varied and rhythmic shapes of those reflections and the possibility they offer for expressive colour and loose painting. I couldn't resist the pink and blue palette and I am very pleased with the sense of serenity I think the image evokes. It reminds me of summer and warmth.

Promenade III

There are so many things to paint, so many subjects, so much choice. However there are times when painting another version of a subject or image seems right, and I find myself doing this of late.  As someone who interprets their subjects,  there are always many creative 'what ifs....' to decide upon. Through drawing and painting you make that subject yours, and sometimes it's hard to let go of it after just one painting......which is all a preamble to the painting I finished yesterday.

 Les Bassacs Promenade III

24" x 18"  acrylic on canvas 
This is for sale - contact me for price if interested.

This is the third painting based on a photo I took while walking near the hamlet of Les Bassacs in Provence, last May. The painting does not do the setting justice, but it does remind me of the experience of being there, the light and the arrangement of landscape forms. I particularly love the receding diagonal pathway and the pattern of dappled light and shadow on that path and through the trees.






In the first painting (at left) I tried to capture the wonderful sense of light and place through active brushwork and a limited palette.

In the second painting (at left) I returned to detail, more colour and control. 

In the latest work (above) I limited my palette again, simplified forms and kept my brushwork loose and painterly.    Will I do another version - perhaps!

Honourable Mention Award

HM award winning 'Snoozin at the Beach'
SOLD

Last Saturday evening I attended the Opening of the Longboat Key Centre for the Arts 'Community Juried Exhibition'  (a division of Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, FL) to which I had submitted two recent paintings Ontario Northland and Snoozin at the Beach. The latter was awarded an Honourable Mention, so I was pleased, to say the least!

Ontario Northland
SOLD

Heat

This post is all about how one painting can inform another version in a different medium and in turn inform the original. The small, mostly watercolour painting (below) happened when I became frustrated with a larger version of the same subject I was working on in acrylic, last month. 

 

Heat

10" x 8" - mixed media on paper framed
This is for sale - contact me for price if interested.

When I started the acrylic, I wanted to suggest heat and the tropics where these wonderful symbols of sunshine grow so I chose a hot palette of magenta, orange, yellow, red, yellow greens and some turquoise. I wanted to juxtapose and layer these hues and push their saturation levels and values up and down the scale. And of course I wanted to keep it loose and painterly and not refine my brush strokes and paint individual fronds, which I have done in the past! When I stopped working on this painting it looked like this and it wasn't what I wanted at all. What to do - walk away!

I began this week with some watercolour play painting and thought I would try the same subject using a mix of media. Knowing that water media seems to lend itself better to certain techniques and ways of working, I was finally able to achieve a level of expression and spontaneity in the small painting on paper (called Heat, above) that I felt was missing in the acrylic. After completing the watercolour I went back to the acrylic painting and tried not to hold back. It went through various stages with the change and addition of colour and lines, paint and ink......

when I stopped yesterday it looked like this...more to do but I am happier and feel that I can complete the work successfully over the next week.

 

And one more note about the watercolour painting - it is framed with a white mat board and a simple white wood frame - and it looks great on both a white wall or a coloured one, like this.....