Lavender Fields - Uncommon Escape! - SOLD! & Working In A Series

12"x36"x2"deep cradled wood panel



"The fragrance of sandalwood, the scent of rose and jasmine, travel only as far as the wind. But the fragrance of goodness travels through all the worlds, like the garlands woven from a heap of flowers, fashion your life as a garland of beautiful deeds." ~ Buddha

As an artist, if you haven't tried working in a series, I highly recommend it. For the most part, this is how I usually work, (with a variation throw in here and there if I'm working on a commission, or perhaps exploring for the 'next series'. Several years ago, I was painting landscapes of Ireland following several plein air trips I had made over there. When I came hoe I had loads of photos, and journal notes about the places I had seen, painted, and spent time with. I painted more of these landscapes in the studio.

Monet spent many years in his own garden, I've found great inspiration in my own garden as well. Other series I've had explored are local parks and gardens, floral still lifes (both indoor and outside- painted from life).

As you complete each painting, you think of things you'd like to try in the 'next' one. Perhaps something similar but push the color a different way, or try a change of perspective, a view from higher up, or from a lower vantage point, or closer in, or farther away. Keeping a series going day after day is helpful,too. The closer these ideas are to each other the better, allowing you to really absorb and use the things you are taking in.

You may find a preference to paint under certain weather conditions, or bloom seasons, or availability to travel. When considering your 'next' series - be open to all possibilities, even if that turns out not to be one that you follow for now. I don't consider myself a 'winter painter' or have any great love of snow scenes, but each winter I do give it a try to see if that 'spark of interest' ignites within me. One of these years - it's bound to light!

Lavender Varieties

5"x7" oil on gessoed masonite archival panel

"Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems." ~Rainer Maria Rilke


One thing that is a wonderful sight to behold is a farm field where you can stand back and see "the big picture"...curving rows, following a hillside, or a bend in the road...and in this case certain varieties of lavender that are dark purple, alternating with a variety that's lighter in color! One more visual thrill that I love about this place- Keys Creek Lavender Farm, in Valley Center, CA.

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Pines and Lavender Hillsides

5"x7" oil on gessoed masonite archival panel

“Inward calm cannot be maintained unless physical strength is constantly and intelligently replenished.” -Buddha

I really loved getting to paint out at Keys Creek, it was such a beautiful, calm place - just a real balm to the senses. Funny how painting plein air just locks in those good memories to draw from & be able to paint it again in the studio from the wonderful views all over that place. (I keep thinking of the warm sun, the fragrance wafting over the blossoms, and the 'drunken' bees just humming around, oblivious to anyone else.) Then when you're quiet & standing painting, you notice hummingbirds nearby in the bouganvillia arch, hawks flying over the distant hills, songbirds in the trees edging the property. The magic just comes together...makes you feel lucky to be a painter! I know my fellow painters know that feeling! and yes, as Buddha says, that inward calm comes from replenishing and nurturing our physical selves. (Did Buddha ever walk through lavender?)

While it's wet:

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Nurturer

8"x8" oil on gessoed masonite archival panel


“Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.” -Lao Tzu

And who or what doesn't need nurturing? From plants and animals, and people....and ourselves, we all need tending to...with loving care.

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Lavender Lovelies

5"x7" oil on gessoed masonite archival panel


"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul." ~John Muir

John Muir sums up my thoughts so well. My visit to Keys Creek Lavender Farm is certainly one of those beautiful, natural places where nature heals and gives strength to body and soul. I'm sure that's why I've enjoyed painting from memory as much as I did painting out on location there. I'm hoping for a return visit some time this summer!

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Lavender To the Foothills

5"x7" oil on gessoed masonite archival panel

"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.... People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back." ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982

This is one of my favorite quotes, and I do remember back to that movie oh so many decades ago. And how could we not notice such beauty, and know it was created just for us to enjoy, and be nurtured by?

For more information regarding this painting, contact me here.

Lavender Valley

5"x7" oil on gessoed masonite archival panel

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Emerson really knows what I need to hear all winter....patience, summer warmth will come back again. Slow, steady....live in the moment....and day-dreaming is optional!

Lavender thoughts are sustaining me lately - not that this winter has been as harsh as last year. But I do crave those long days of sunshine with flowers tossing their blossoms to and fro. Wafting fragrance and the hum of flower-drunken honey bees.

Keys Creek Lavender Farm (Valley Center, CA) is one of those magical places that will forever have an effect on my painterly life. Being able to spend a few days painting on location locks these wonderful sensory elements into my brain. mmmm, can you feel the sunshine and smell that lofty fragrance???

For more information regarding this painting, please contact me here.

Luscious Lavender Rows

5"x7" oil on gessoed archival panel

"With immediacy and intensity, smell activates the memory, allowing our minds to travel freely in time." -Tom Robbins

Along with plein air works, I had brought home some 'souvenirs' of my visit to Keys Creek Lavender Farm (in Valley Center, CA). It's true, the fragrance will bring back such wonderful memories. Rows of lavender, sweeping and waving in the soft breeze bring such delight. I was so attracted to the 'abstractness' of this view, I now have a larger painting in the works with this view!

For more information regarding this painting, contact me here.

My website: www.roxannesteed.com

Lavender Harvest

8"x6" oil on Belgian linen mounted on archival panel

I've been craving some winter escapism, but other realities & duties prevent me from taking off to indulge the travels for right now. Isn't it wonderful to have some terrific memories to draw from when we need to 'fill our well'. There's a particular journey to a lavender farm in southern California that fills some of my daydreams! Keys Creek Lavender Farm to be exact- a what a wonderful multi-sensory experience. Bees buzzing happily over rows and rows of purple lushness, and these lush flower stalks waving in the gentle breeze. The rows make a wonderful visual effect of being lost in a 'maze of color', what a delight. If you get there early in the morning, before the sun is too high in the morning sky, the fog burnoff is a wonderful hazy dream-like effect. That's when the cutting was being done, harvesting these long stalks of flowers - to be sold as bouquets. These large bundles of flowers are gathered and hoisted up over one shoulder of the gatherer, almost looking like a small bale of hay (though purple). The days that I went out there to paint are forever etched in my brain, for every painting I'll ever do of the place from that time onward. Plein air work just has a way of locking all those sensations into memory.

For more information regarding this painting, please contact me here.

From Hilltop To Valley At Keys Creek

6"x8" oil on Belgian linen mounted on archival board

"There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last."
-Robert Louis Stevenson


I took a short break for some water and a snack, and set up my easel again at the farm, up near the top of the hill, by the farm house. There is a wonderful view across the valley. At this point it's approaching mid-day, and I've found a bit of shade to shelter in while I paint this view. I really enjoyed being out in this open space, with long horizons so far away.

Contact me for purchase information on this painting:
roxannesteed@gmail.com

Morning Sun, Lavender Rows

6"x8" oil on Belgian linen mounted on archival board

"Instead of looking at the subject and bringing it into ourselves (as beginning artists often do), we should learn to ask, What things within me can I bring out in this subject?"
- Dan McCaw


I'm finally back home after some extended travel, and it is so good to get back into my normal routine again! So my dilemma has been either no internet connection, or no time to share what's been going on! So- back to where I left off, almost three weeks ago now, during my trip to San Diego - I enjoyed a couple days of painting over at Keys Creek Lavender Farm - what a wonderful place- even in the off season. During my second day of painting there, I wanted to arrive early enough to paint the rows you see when you initially drive up. Even though they've been harvested, the rows themselves and the shadows they cast around the curve of the dirt road are really wonderful in the early morning sun!

I have one more painting from Keys Creek Lavender Farm that I'll post tomorrow...and in the coming blog-posts, news about a recent commission, my trip to Norfolk, VA for the big art event (my newest collector is Bank Of Hampton Roads!) as well as an award for another painting...finally ended by spending this past week helping my daughters in northern Virginia move from 2 apartments into one (that part of my travels felt like boot-camp). It's good to be back home.

Lavender Labyrinth

6"x8" oil on Belgian linen mounted on archival board

"Creating expressive art demands more than just rendering. It requires you to develop and give voice to your point of view."
- Dan McCaw


Gosh, I would hate for you to think I've been sitting around doing nothing- because it's been anything but that! I just got back from a week in San Diego, (hubby had work/meetings out there, so of course I went along to paint). I returned to Keys Creek Lavender Farm for part of my three days there- what a wonderful place- even in the off season. I really fell in love with the place back in June during my first visit (during peak bloom time). I found a new appreciation for the lavender I was growing back here at home and have since nurtured it to get a second bloom this summer.

I really wanted to be there and paint from life- as that is what truly enables one to paint 'with conviction' in the studio. I can look at these paintings done outdoors and feel the sun warming me, hear the birds, and the breeze, it just brings back the whole sensory experience.

So, some thoughts on this painting- "Lavender Labyrinth", a 6x8" oil on Belgian linen mounted on archival board. I feel especially fortunate that 'life's journey' has taken me to live in (and make return visits to) my favorite regions of American impressionism- that of the northeast, as well as the southwest. My husband didn't have to ask twice if I'd like to go along with him to San Diego. So I packed up the painting gear & made it 'flight ready' for three days of painting. Even in the off-season, the farm is beautiful. As a painter (and gardener) it's still fascinating to me to see this place in all seasons. And as luck would have it, I found the lavender labyrinth still in bloom, not yet harvested! There is a big bouganvillea arch with fuchsia & gold & coral colored blossoms. On Tuesday morning there was still a distant fog out towards the coastline.

It really is a blissful place for me that truly connects to all the senses - not only color and fragrance, but texture, and sound as well (of bees humming over the lavender, humming birds zipping by to check out who is standing in their midst, songbirds in the nearby tree, a hawk screeching across the distant hillside, and the rustle of the breeze across the hills). If you've used lavender in cooking, you'll understand what a total sensory experience this flower is.

***As luck would have it, the farm will be open for visitors again on weekends in December for the Christmas holidays and they will be carrying some of my small unframed paintings of the farm! I'm also working on a few other surprises yet to be revealed!

They are already booking weddings and events for next year's bloom season (May & June). Small paintings make such a lovely, memorable wedding or anniversary gift - as I've learned from many commissions this summer and fall. It's a unique & wonderful way to commemorate your special event!

Now, I don't know if you remember me mentioning that I juried into two art events in Norfolk, VA - Well I'm headed down there today! Out and About Norfolk is a juried paint-out event and Saturday night is the big event! It is also combined with a juried show which is a fundraiser for the Ballet Virginia International. Four of my paintings were selected for this show by Jeff Harrison, Chief Curator, The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia. The big event will take place:

Saturday October 23rd 6-9pm
Ballet Virginia International (BVI)
700 West 21st Street, in Norfolk

If you are in the area - I'd love to see you there!

Contact me for more information on this painting: roxannesteed@gmail.com

Lavender Rows

6"x6" oil on gessoed masonite archival artboard

"What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable."
- Joseph Addison


I can't imagine life without either of these....flowers or smiles...and I hardly think they are trifles! Necessities- absolutely!

Rows of luscious lavender, bees humming in the rows, soft breezes, gently winding way along an easy hill...and surrounded by warm air releasing a delightful fragrance. Can it get any better than this?

This is another small view from the lavender farm (Keys Creek Lavender Farm) that I visited during my recent trip to San Diego. I really hope to make it back there next year while the place is in bloom (and bring the paints with me next time!).

Contact me to purchase this painting: roxannesteed@gmail.com

Inland Valley, California Lavender Farm

5"x7" oil on gessoed masonite archival artboard

"If you pass by the color purple in a field and don't notice it, God gets real pissed off."
- Alice Walker, "The Color Purple"



Well, the quote did give me pause for thought....and a chuckle! Yes, how could you not fall in love with rows of lavender. I have been obsessed with the stuff ever since my visit back to San Diego last week. I had lived there for three years, and it's been almost 9 years since I had been back. When I drove into this inland valley to find the farm, it was like driving into an early CA impressionist painting.....took my breath away. Even when you think you 'remember' how beautiful things were, and how much you love a place, it really knocks you out, to go back there. The way the light changes over the course of a morning, the wonderful aromas of warm earth, sage, rose-geraniums, and....of course - the lavender; combine that with the breeze in the trees, the humming of the bees in & out of the mounds of flowers....it is a wonderful multi-sensory experience. And I can't wait to go back next year for next season's blooms!

Finished up a commission this week, hence the lack of posting; shh, it's a surprise!
(I love weddings!) I have been looking through Amazon.com for every book on lavender, trying to find some beautiful, helpful, books to enjoy on my current passion! I harvested my first crop of lavender this week, here at my own house. I put them in bundles tied off with a ribbon, and placed the bundles in a large shallow pottery bowl by my front door. Oh, it's so nice to be greeted by this fragrance every time I pass by. The memory of my trip is renewed each time I venture across the thresh-hold.

Contact me to purchase: roxannesteed@gmail.com