A toot on my horn...

My Fred and I are both featured in the CNY Art Showcase magazine... we have donated two paintings apiece to the Eastwood Rotary Foundation art auction & festival on April 23rd to raise money for the Ronald McDonald House. It's going to be a good time... we're going to have a booth to feature our artwork and have the opportunity to meet n' greet bidders.

I think I finished this painting last weekend, I just never got around to posting as it was late at night when I put on the finishing touches and the lighting was too crappy at the time to take a decent picture...I have yet to name it...it has multiple ideas happening, a Nocturne with a Blue Moon sort of theme...and my favorite corrosion colors...

*edit* 3/19/2010... I've given it a name! It's after a Sappho fragment: If Not, Winter

Then I started this little guy 16 x 8 inches...a burnt sienna wash with payne's gray scumbled on top...I have some thinking to do about what I want to do next...

I've been having multiple Fibromyalgia attacks this week, Monday being the worst day, I stayed home from work and slept much of the day away. I've been up and down all week long, I blame it on the time change mostly, that usually messes up everything for a while, my inner clock has no idea what time it is...I've taken tomorrow off from work to do a few things, possibly sit on the porch and soak in some sunshine...paint...read...write...do the things that get me out of bed everyday...

Tho' I have these little brown eyes that force my feet onto the floor and out the door early everyday...
What a sweet little boy dog! I think anyone with Fibromyalgia should have a dog to get them up everyday!

Yet another work in progress...

A Blue Moon Nocturne...? No name yet for sure...I'm still fooling around with it, so it's not done. I tried to take a picture tonight, but the lighting was so bad once the sun went down, it just wasn't working out...so here is Saturday afternoon's photo...the "moon" at the top is paler now...not much else too different, a few splashes here and there...I think you get the idea... I loved dabbling with the lower half, that turquoise corrosion color is juicy stuff...a very thin wash that I rolled on with a small brush... the back ground is a layer of payne's gray with a layer of my 'moss' brown (which is a mix of burnt umber, raw umber, and a greenish-blue color in a mangled tube that I've been squeezing the last of the last out of for weeks that might be called viridian, I forget.) Lots of subtle goodies going on in there...

A new drawing... a little one

A small drawing, I'm sticking with the harder leads, the softest being an HB, but mostly worked with 2H and 4H, I'm going back to the earlier work... I do that now and then, there's comfort there working with pencil. I just make the random marks and then make more random marks, and follow the flow... very relaxing.

Getting back into it...work in progress

Work in progress #1, acrylic, monotype, and sumi paper on Stonehenge paper, 8 x 8 inches, I liked this one better before I added the marks...sometimes I should just leave well enough alone! I fear it will wind up going down the 'f-it' road and turn into something else (which at times turned into a good thing)...but maybe not...there's some bits that I like, some I don't like...I'll need to spend time looking at it to see what I'll come up with next...it needs some time...

Work in progress #2, acrylic, monotype, and sumi paper on canvas, 30 x 12 inches, I'm in love with this one, I keep seeing more in it, but I don't want to muddy it up too much...(I liked the color combination so much, I had to make another one...)

Keeping busy, yet laying low, my back has been giving me a ration of grief for about a week, so I have been lying on my bum with pillows and the heating pad most of the weekend and just spent about an hour splashing some colors...now I can feel like I did a little bit of something on the work that have been sitting around gathering dust!

Sometimes the monotype plates are just as pretty...

My Fred told me that I should frame some of them...but I had already reused them for other things by then...or had managed to get something on them...

It seemed I did a lot this weekend, but feel like I did nothing of consequence...new canvases arrived in boxes, and I started the foundations for future things...fiddled with some works on paper, but nothing to tell about yet...two of them had some of their layers scrubbed off...hmmmmmmm...we'll see what happens another day...

A new work in progress...

Just the wash so far...gosh it's pretty!

Progress...

New Moon, 1/24/2010, acrylic, monotype, Hosho paper on canvas, 24 x 8 inches...a pretty little thing...it took some doing.

Bones of the Earth, Ancient Bronze, 1/24/2010, acrylic, monotype, Hosho paper on canvas, 24 x 8 inches. This was originally pink...imagine that? The pink disappeared on it's own, it just didn't seem to want to be on the canvas or the paper...too thinned down I guess...anyway...the corrosion of bronze is a theme I adore...I might go back into it later...

Finding Gold, 1/24/2010, acrylic, monotype, Hosho paper on canvas, 24 x 8 inches...once again I tried to do a yellow painting and found gold instead...


Bones of the Earth, Stone Monolith, 1/24/2010, acrylic, monotype, Hosho paper on canvas, 36 x 12 inches...I think this one is my favorite...I built up the textures using some of my scrap paper that I tore off to make my rough edges...slathered on naples yellow hue for the undercoat and went from there...the blue/green band near the bottom was the last bit I added to it today to finish it off, it pleases me so much I can just about scream!

Yes, I've been a busy girl... well, I started most of these back in December, and today everything came together, finishing touches and whatnot...so, I wasn't like a crazy woman painting until my eyes were bleeding and my hands falling off...or my head popping off my body...no...not quite...tho' I'm going through a bit of pondering about things creative and feeling odd about what I do, feeling overwhelmed at the same time that I feel good...feeling exhausted, yet content...

Sometimes I just don't know the 'why' of it, I just do what I do because I need to do it, I'd be so unhappy if I didn't spend my days working out these images and these thoughts... it just comes, I have to do something with it...I'd be a sorry thing if I didn't.

I just go with it...

Gallery Opening...

This is our wall at the Delavan Art Gallery (pre-view before opening, I didn't take a single picture tonight, I was too busy people watching and chatting!) I'm sure you can pick out my little bits from past posts, they pretty much represent my summer evolution. The four paintings grouped in the lower middle and right are my Fred's (see his Blog "Crux" in the line up on the right!) He sold one early, the little vertical on the left next to my tall skinny vertical (Welsh Slate). It was Th3 in Syracuse tonight...and the opening was very crowded and lovely, we had perfect weather today and tonight, so everyone came out to browse the city's art world...We're both feeling buoyed by the event, it feels good to see our accomplishments on display!

Walkin' after midnight...what do I see...

Midnight Indigo, Elemental Winter (January Nocturne), 1/17/2010
acrylic wash, monotype, and Hosho paper on canvas
24 x 8 inches

I love the simplicity of the dark circle at the top and the complex layers in the rectangle are just juicy...the Payne's Gray wash was so exquisite I hesitated to make a mark on it! I wish I had taken a photo of it, I thought I had, but apparently I didn't (drat).

I really love the late night walk with Max...even if I'm tired and cold on a winter's night there's still things to see and think about...there's magic in the air when there's fresh snow down, stars in the sky, and the air so crisp and frosty that it hurts to breathe deep...makes poor Max lift his paws while he's sniffing for bunnies in the snow... well, we're warmer now, it's thawing, and we're socked in with fog on the hilltop today, it's a good day to stay inside and paint...or go outside and take pictures...

I might have a few more things left to do with this one...so it's a work in progress...

Work in progress, Night and Day, Winter Elemental, 1/17/2010


Bones of the Earth, Bronzed, 2009-2010
acrylic wash, monotype, and Hosho paper on canvas
16 x 8

I reworked this one a few nights ago...as much as I liked it before, it was bugging me, I kept staring at it one night (instead of reading the proof of my next novel) and took it down off the wall and fooled about with it really late at night, and then delivered it to the Delavan Art Gallery on Thursday afternoon...I was surprised that it was picked from the bunch I brought in...but yet, not. Four other paintings that have been posted here previously were selected as well...there's a group exhibition opening this Thursday night (1/21), I don't know which piece (or pieces) will be included so it will be a bit of a surprise when I get there for the opening...I'll take pictures!

My new scanner/printer is up and running...photo paper is on order...I'm working on an Esty shop for selling original artwork, photographs and signed copies of books from Field Stone Press so...there's much in the works, I'll keep you posted when that happens...a few things have to fall into place first, I don't multi-task as well as I used to...

Window Pictures, Courtesy of Frost...

It's been so cold it's breathtaking...I've been keeping busy with things...artwork, editing the book, playing around with the photos I've been taking of our winter wonderland...keeping warm is a priority...

I love incorporating the icicles dangling above...

Playing around with tinting the black and white...silver and gold...


Nature continues to impress me with its beauty...thinking about future paintings...

Since it seems I'm on a black and white theme, here's some pencil drawings that I finished...


December Winds, 12/11/2009, pencil drawing on paper 14 x 11 inches

These tend to be my mental putterings...an aimless relaxation...they take a very long time to make, they're very satisfying to me while I'm working on them...at times they're very odd...although I do try to "plan", they tend to be their own thing in spite of what I think I want to do when I lay down the first marks...


Winter Sonata, 1/1/2010, pencil drawing on paper, 14 x 11 inches...the first of the New Year...

I know, I posted this over at Upstate Girl...but just in case you didn't get there, I snapped this photo yesterday afternoon from my back window looking out at the hilltop behind us...all of the trees were coated with a fine layer of ice earlier in the week, then snowed upon for a couple of days more...and voila, winter wonderland! It's very pretty out there, and I have my camera full of pictures...so much to see, so much to look at...