Miniature Studies in Oil

Small Autumn Squash
Oil/Canvas
3 x 3

Yup, you read that right 3 x 3 inches. A miniature painting like this is great fun to do especially with a bigger brush. I'd been doing tiny little 2 x 3 inch oil studies in my sketchbook then remembered a lilliputian canvas that seemed so right for the pint sized gourd. You can see that I'm really in the mood for red lately.

Still Life in Reds and Greens - Oil Painting

Red Green
Oil/Canvas
8 x 10

I'm still painting tomatoes and am trying to get my last licks in while there are still a few ripening tomatoes left to paint. I'm down to a remaining few and will soon have to resort to store bought specimens which can't hope to compare for shape, variety of sizes, colour, personality, but most of all - taste and smell.

Many, many thanks to the hundreds of art lovers that showed up on Oct. 5 for the opening night of the Alberta Oil Painter's annual fall exhibition. Nine artists put up their best works for a total of over 100 paintings. The gallery was hung salon style and was lush with colour and a variety of subject matter. I love seeing all those personalities represented in paint.

Fall Bounty - Another Autumn Inspired Oil Painting

Fall Bounty
Oil on Canvas
5 x 7
Sold

Another painting inspired by the produce of my garden. The red and orange autumn colours in this painting are a homage to fall and bring out the green in this stout little squash. In my front yard I have a scarecrow overlooking an old wheelbarrow full of squash and pumpkins that were recently picked from my garden. Of course I want to paint it all! This painting will be in the upcoming fall show on Thursday.

Autumn Crisp-Fall Show Painting

Autumn Crisp
Oil on Canvas
8 x 10
Sold

A friend gave me a big bag of fresh apples, the smell was incredible and their colouring was so delicate, I had to paint them. They will be in the Alberta Oil Painters 3rd Annual Fall Exhibition being held this Thursday on Oct. 2, 2008 at Johnson Gallery, 7711-85 St. Edmonton, Alberta. We'll have over 80 paintings and about 15 will be mine. The next few days are a flurry of activity as I get ready for the show, one activity being picking eesny teensy flies out of the varnish and fixing those spots. Who knew flies would like varnish so much?

Love Apples in Black - New Oil Painting

Love Apples in Black
24 x 18
Oil on Canvas

Autumn, it’s a mellow golden time of year with ripening fields and an abundance of garden produce to pick. The vegetables are covered with sheets each night to protect them from early frosts and there is an abundance of tomatoes ripening faster than we can eat them. As always I’m lured to the greens, reds and oranges of tomatoes. I love the sharp, green smell of the vines and hate to wash it off. I do, and paint the tomatoes with the smell and taste of summer in my mind.

Love Apples in Black combines that wonderful, golden, autumn light with ripening tomatoes in a Korean jug which I've painted before, a heavy, chunky piece of pottery with a glossy rich black glaze. I think this is a Korean medicine jug but I'm not certain. This painting is larger than my usual paintings at 24 x 18. The tomatoes were ripening while I painted them and over a few days some of them turned from green to orange. A fun challenge to capture the original colour.

Sunflower - Oil Painting

Good Morning Sunshine
8 x 10
Sold

Painted with such thick paint that it's positively chewy. I loved painting this and did a companion for it. Good Morning Sunshine will be part of the fall exhibition that I'm participating in again this year.

Pear Series - Oil painting

Illumine
Oil on Canvas
36 x 24



Lavishly Red
Oil on Canvas
36 x 24

2 of a series of 3 large paintings. The topic appears to be pears but the underlying theme is space and seeing how the mood and intimacy of a painting changes when you place your subject near the top of the canvas or place it close to the bottom - and of course light. I also played around with colour, Illumine has an analogous colour scheme, the colours being in the yellow/red-orange family while Lavishly Red is based on the complementary colours of red and a very subtle dark green/grey.

These have been shipped off to Vancouver to be part of an opening exhibit for The Bay as they celebrate their national campaign ‘Artful Living’

Squash Blossom Journey-Oil Painting

Squash Blossom Journey
16 x 20
Oil on Canvas

This painting shows the various stages of a zucchini’s life, from flower to baby zucchini with the light pouring through the back of the flower making it the star of the show. The little zucchinis are placed in a tiny, old brass watering can which watered plants for a time, then served as a little pot for a plant outside and now lives out it’s life performing with various subject matter in my still lifes. The composition of this painting differs from some of my others which often have abundant space all around them to give a sense of air and atmosphere that I like so much, but change is good and this time the subject matter is cropped making it a much more intimate painting.

Studies & Painted Furniture

Forelli Pear Study
9 x 9 Oil on Canvas


Detail

The dog days of summer are here and they’ve brought both exciting wild weather and beautiful weather. I love those words, dog days of summer, they bring thoughts of hot, still and slow moving summer days. This summer I’ve been trying to do field studies as much as my schedule will permit, either in paint or with pencil to better understand the various colours, textures and patterns of nature. It’s a practice that makes the eye keener and the hand faster and better able to quickly capture fleeting moments. Studies are done to learn or as preparation for a larger studio painting, it’s basically information gathering. Forelli Pear Study was done for a larger studio painting.


Canada Geese

The Canada Geese are regular visitors to our pond in spring and early summer, coming and going but usually coming when I was busy with a deadline and unable to take the time to draw them. One day they stayed for a whole morning giving me the opportunity to draw them while they fed at our pond in the back yard. They moved a lot, one feeding while the other kept watch and then switching. I plan to use these sketches for the basis of a painting one day.


Cosmic Terrestrius
Grandfather Clock, Acrylic on Wood
7' tall x 18" square

This Grandfather clock commissioned by Lime Design has been in the works for a while as I juggled illustration assignments, other commissions, classes and outdoor painting. The theme is the rhythm of life, symbolized by the tree of life which links the cosmos (the top of the clock) and the earth (the base with earth dwelling creatures). The flora and fauna all have symbolic meanings taken from various cultures, luck, love, beginnings, knowledge, imagination, awakening, growth, the seasons of life, constancy etc. Painting something like this is quite different from working on a canvas. When I'm in the designing stage I have to consider how it will look from all angles. Later on when it's time to paint I stand on a stool to reach the top spending a lot of time with my arm up in the air, later on as I move to the very bottom I lay on my side to paint the decoration at the feet. Anyone who came into the studio would think I was napping.

Plein Air Painting

Wind-blown Aspen
8 x 10
Oil on Panel

Spring is in full swing and it is glorious! The birds are all so busy they simply don’t know which way to run and the choir of mating frogs in our backyard has been a wonderfully lascivious concert that’s come to an end now that they’d done their job and created hundreds of tadpoles.

The last couple of weeks have had me outside doing some studies of beautiful Alberta. Painting outdoors is always a challenging event and last week was no exception with a relentless and gusty wind. This little study features the ubiquitous aspens of western Canada bending in that wind.

I was recently a finalist in Canadian Brushstroke magazine’s still life competition for my painting Tipsy. To sign up for this FREE Canadian art magazine go to http://www.brushstrokemagazine.com