Birth of an Oil Painting.....Happy Birth Day.

This is a photo of my finished commission for my client in Missouri....still wet on the easle. 

Yes, I am happy happy happy and I hope the owners will be as well. 

That glass looks like you can pick it up and drink out of it (if it wasn't empty!)  I added the little marks that make the glass on the wine glass and the salt & pepper shakers come to life.  Mostly the less you can add and the more you can imply the better off you are where glass is concerned. 

The lable on the wine bottle is another favorite spot for me.  My client sent me a bottle from one of his favorite local wineries in Missouri.  At the bottom of the lable in tiny letters you can read Hermann MO.  How personal!  My goal with lables is to have them just realistic enough that they are not just generic, anonymous spaces....but not so bogged down in detail that you can read everything word for word.  I want them to evoke the image, but not photocopy it. 

What I try to create is what I told my client in an email...A blend of a very representational piece that is very literal at first glance but then if you look you see the basic "loose-ness" and "expressiveness"  that is the root of impressionistic painting. That is why I love the little imperfect parts...messy edges and the sides of the bottles and the s & p shakers that are not totally matchy-matchy. This is what keeps you looking at a painting long after your eyes have told your brain that this is a painting of some bottles and stuff on a table.

That is why I paint.

Bottle Collection.....oil painting

These bottles are part of a collection that I have been working on for years.  They normally reside in the windowsills of my three kitchen windows.  But they took a little vacation out to the sunshine of my back deck for a photo shoot one day.  I love it when I paint glass and it comes out looking like you CAN see through it. 

Tipsy Wine and Wine Straight Up..Oil Paintings...

Painting 1 Painting 2

#1........Tipsy Wine................8x16............$130

#2.....Wine Straight Up........8x16............$130

These are two more wine bottle paintings that I have done to get ready for my two upcoming shows. They are fun and evoke thoughts of having a good time, I think.

Speaking of having a good time.....I have some more paintings waiting in the the wings to unveil. I just love them, the style, the subject, the mood of them. I am finally getting a more consistent "look" for my work. I have all my new stuff hanging in the foyer to dry and when I look around I see that I am heading in the direction that I want to be. I knew that my little "painter's block" that I experienced last week was probably a harbinger of change and I was right. I am so much closer to where I want to be.

This is not to say that everyone is going to like my paintings better, or that they will sell better (but I hope both of these things do happen). I used to paint a painting every now and then and be able to say..."this is how I want to paint!" But then I would fall back into the inconsistent mode and paint something totally different in style and mood. Now I am finding that I am turning out one of those "this is how I want it to be" paintings much more often now.

I don't ever want to be one of those painters that finds a "niche" and then paints nothing but trees or nothing but houses. I want my unifying factor to be my signature style and my consistent choice of colors. I think in this past week I have taken a step closer to achieving that goal.

More Tabascos for the Art Festivals...

Painting #1 Painting #2
#1......Just a Drop.......8x16......oil.......$130(sold)

#2...Tilted Tabasco...10x20.....oil......$200

You may say, "is this woman not tired of painting Tabasco?" I'm really not. There are many good thoughts associated with the Tabasco paintings I do, one of which is that they always sell, lol. But aside from that, some of the most important men in my life put Tabasco on everything. One of my first paintings that I did as a gift was a Tabasco for one of my favorite people in the world, my stepdad, Bob. Plus, it is such an iconic item. There are Tabasco clothes, and housewares. If you are sporting a Tabasco tie or shirt, it says something about you...you have a spicy side.

Plus, I have discovered another thing I like about them...just like my tomatoes that I paint all the time, I just love painting the shades of red that you use...I love the way that alizarin crimson gives way to cad red deep and then cad red light...and when you add that pop of orange on there...well, I guess I am lucky, it just never gets old.

Painting 1 Painting 2

#1"Middleman"..10x20...oil on canvas...$200

#2"Hotty"....12x24...oil on canvas...$290(sold)

This first painting is a composition that my son and daughter-in-law have been wanting me to paint for a while. They saw something similar in a restaurant in Lexington. I love the negative space. I want to revisit this one another time and try it again. But I love the idea of it. Thanks Michael and Heather.

Painting 2 is another Tabasco for my upcoming art festivals. I like it...see, I told you not all my paintings were going to be "twisty" like yesterdays's.

Tabasco with a Twist...Oil paintings

Painting 1 Painting 2

Painting..................."Pssst"....10x20.....oil on canvas....$200(sold)

Painting...."Twist of Tabasco".....12x24....oil on canvas....$290

I have struggled, since I returned from my two are shows, to get back into painting mode. The posts from the last few days since I returned have been of paintings that I had done prior to the shows that I had not had time to post before I left.

I knew why I was struggling...it was because I was headed in a new direction. I had looked at lots of good art at the two shows I had been a part of, plus I had spent 8 days in a tent surrounded by my own work. I knew what I liked and I knew also, what was missing. I knew where I sort of wanted to go but I just couldn't break out and make a move in that direction. I unpacked and primed new canvases and did all sorts of "useful" stuff instead of painting.



But then I saw the art of Carole Foret online. She is where I want to be. She even paints Tabasco! Looking at her stuff got me going. It says what I want my work to say. I want my paintings to look like they are moving. I want them to be alive and happy and colorful. I had the colorful part and the happy part (according to comments I heard during my art festival stint) but I was missing the moving part. The work you see above is a result of combining what I already did with what I see others doing. I will not switch completely over to this form of expression, but I can tell you for sure you will be seeing more of it.

"Bottlenecks"....

24x30......Oil on gallery wrap....."Bottlenecks".......$725($825 framed)

I really am happy with this painting. Not only is it a subject matter near and dear to my heart, but I like the different composition of this one as compared to some of my others.

This is from a photo I took in a restaurant in Las Vegas this past spring. I had a blast one afternoon wandering through some of the restaurants when the wait staff was setting up for dinner. I just wandered in and asked it they minded if I took pictures of the bottles or tablescapes or whatever interested me. Not one person said no.

We are just returning from my niece's wedding in Tampa. It was this past weekend and it was beautiful! My brother and sister-in-law did an awesome job putting the entire thing together. They did everything themselves...decorations, food, flowers...everything. They had some good helpers in the family and it could not have been any nicer if they had had highly paid professionals to do it all. (I still hate that I missed getting a stuffed tomato, though. Everyone was raving about them the next day. Where was I?)

Wine Bottle Oil Paintings....

24x36.....oil on 1.5 gallery wrap.......Three's Company......$875 SOLD

I took this photo at the Cork Wine Festival, also. The light was coming in from the back and you could see it through the bottles.

Well, I have been busy busy busy this week and have gotten several paintings done. They will be posted next week after I have them all photographed.

Thanks to all who have commented and welcomed me back after my long absence.

And now to end the week with a smile. Check out these two party animals. Am I lucky to have a daughter-in-law who realizes how much I love getting these photos or what? The girls will be seven months old on Sunday. I feel like I fell asleep in January and woke up and it's September!

Corona on the Beach...16x36

This is my first painting since returning from my art class/extravaganza in Santa Fe. I cannot express what an effect that week had on me as a person and as an artist. The workshop itself, the people I met and the art that I saw while there all bonded together and hit me right between the eyes. I came home wanting to be a better artist and convinced that I could be one. Thanks to Carol, Bernie, Paula, Bruce, Faye, Jeannette, Vicki, Kathryn, Bonnie, Mary, oh my gosh, the list just goes on....suffice it to say, thanks to all of you who touched my life.



This painting is certainly different from what we did in class...to start with it is 18" x 36". But, I was able to apply many things that I learned in class to a painting such as this, as well as the small format that we worked on.



This is a painting that I had committed to weeks ago for a pal who did wome work for us, so this one is for Stephen. As promised it is the first one I did when I "started painting again".