Blossom Connoisseurs, Commissions, and painting during winter

5"x7" oil on archival panel

For more information or to purchase, click here. 

As you continue to send out love, the energy returns to you in a regenerating spiral... As love accumulates, it keeps your system in balance and harmony. Love is the tool, and more love is the end product. 

- Sara Paddison, "Hidden Power of the Heart"

One of the things I love to do is complete commissions for others! There is nothing like collaborating on a project to help someone satisfy their vision - whether it is a commemoration of a special event, an anniversary, a birthday, a new home. 

These kitties are a small study for a larger painting that was commissioned as a birthday gift for her dear friend. I kept it under wraps for a long time...so as not to "blow the surprise".  It makes me so happy to be a part of this...especially to watch the giver and receiver, and the joy they experience.  The larger piece (in a square format), is now hanging in her home! 

 This winter I've been painting orchids in my studio while the snow continued to pile up outside. I did take a couple trips down to Florida to visit my mom, once for a beach trip, then to stay with her during cataract surgery. 

While my 2 orchid plants are blooming, I'm getting a lot of mileage out of them! And in the middle of these, I've begun the process for another commissioned piece that I'm VERY excited about! 

 

Irish Waves of Montbresia - SOLD! - Day 26 of #jan30in30

 

10"x10" x1" deep oil on cradled birch panel

For more information, or to purchase, click here.  

Time travel...

thousands of miles away -

a different season -

memories of color, fragrance,

and tiny fluttering wings...

a soft breeze

wraps around my mind.

There is no storm here...

all is calm and well. 

 

As I painted this, the howling winds of the January 2015 blizzard 'Juno' filled the air. I settled in to my studio, and remembered the colors, the fresh air, and my upcoming trip to Ireland.  The first time I saw these over there, I was quite amazed. The blossoms look so delicate, yet they surely must be hardy to tolerate sea air and a stiff breeze off the ocean.  So of course, when I came home, I asked my garden supplier Petie Reed at Perennial Harmony Garden Shop (in Waterford, CT-click on the link for a VERY zen youtube video) if these would grow here in CT. And she told me they will - if they are in a protected area. They're also known as crocosmia here. So of course, we planted them....and they have spread and grown beautifully. The hummingbirds love them! I've painted them in various incarnations both here and in Ireland. I'm reminded how they bob about in the breeze from the times that I've stood outside and painted them....over and over. I found the process absolutely meditative this evening...and falling in love with this plant over and over again....and came to the realization I will paint these quite large - I see them in a significant space. 

Join me on my workshop in Ireland this June

http://www.valentiaart.com/Registration.html

 

ACEO - Red Zinnia Sunlight - sold!

3.5"x2.5"

Click here to bid!

Zinnias are one of my summer garden favorites! They are so bright and sturdy! We've planted them in tall and short varieties....never met one I didn't like!!

  

For those of you not familiar with the acronym ACEO, it stands for Art Cards Editions and Originals.  The miniature paintings are the size of a baseball trading card, 2 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches.  This category of art has become increasingly popular on eBay the last couple of years.  These can be displayed on their own, or with a tiny little easel (like the kind you can find in Michaels Arts & Crafts type stores) on a display shelf, or these beautiful gems can be elegantly matted and framed with perhaps a mat of 4 inches wide.  

So, each year I have time to make just a few of these...and there's never any leftover. Here's your chance to join in on the fun and have one of these dear little mini's.  If you've just GOT to have it, and you can get to it before the first bid is placed, you may buy it out-right (and avoid the whole bidding process) at the buy it now price.  AND, my Christmas gift to you, FREE shipping!

Summer Garden, II - Sunflowers, Butterfly Bush, Crocosmia

 

16"x8" oil on linen mounted on archival panel
For more information, or to purchase, click here.

Summer days are fleeing so quickly. Seems like there's never enough time to do all the things you want to do.  I've been enjoying every bit of it, and I hope you have been as well.  Sharing another view of my garden, this was painted a day after "Summer Garden, I" and is a nice companion piece to it. The the montbretia flowers have fallen to the ground, and the sunflowers are beginning to droop under their own weight. Even though it's still August, a cool wind has blown through, and Fall is 'knocking on the door'. I suppose it's going to give up and just barge right in one of these days...a little too soon for my tastes.

Flowers and Fechin (sold)

8"x6" oil on linen mounted on archival panel

For more information or to purchase, click here.

By the time mid-winter sets in, I am snow weary.  I'm getting antsy to be outside, but either it's too cold, or as in yesterday's case, it was possibly warm enough, but there was no place for me to park in my usual painting spots without risk of getting my little car hung up on an ice berm. (and doing some permanent damage!).  By the time I got to the 4th place of looking yesterday, I did find a place to park in a safe place, where I could actually walk out to a safe place to paint, without falling into a deep drift of snow....I was tired, hungry, and seeking 'facilities'. Yes, I shot the whole morning looking for a 'place' outside to paint. By the time I got home, my husband had delivered flowers for Valentine's day! - Yay!!! Some wonderful painting material and beautiful colors to cheer up a dreary winter case of 'ice-blues'.  

Painting ...and learning to paint, is all cumulative. You spend years learning, experimenting, combining some techinques, eliminating others.  All of it eventually comes into play at any given time to make up you 'the artist'.  I have been toying with combining several different techniques that I have employed over the years, using both brush and knife, laying some thick & thin areas with transparent oils in the darkest areas, topped with ever lighter layers.  Thanks to my hubby for the wonderful flowers. I usually never stack things on my art books in my studio, but I had placed this bouquet on top of my Nicolai Fechin book (that was on top of the large Edgar Payne book).  So of course I decided to paint them this way as well!  I hope these flowers last, I think I might spend the next several days painting more bouquets!

Zinnias To Brighten a Gray Day, ACEO Floral Original Oil

3.5"x2.5" oil on fine canvas board

Bidding starts at just $1

 

Each year my hubby starts lots of seeds, but some of my favorites are the zinnias! They are great for cutting to make arrangements and look great in the garden, too! He reminds me to keep cutting them, as the more I cut, the more blossoms they'll put out! How could a gardener, painter find anything more fun?!

 

For those of you not familiar with the acronym ACEO, it stands for Art Cards Editions and Originals.  The miniature paintings are the size of a baseball trading card, 2 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches.  This category of art has become increasingly popular on eBay the last couple of years.  These can be displayed on their own, or with a tiny little easel (like the kind you can find in Michaels Arts & Crafts type stores) on a display shelf, or these beautiful gems can be elegantly matted and framed with perhaps a mat of 4 inches wide.  ACEOs also make wonderful gifts!   

 

Autumn Bouquet, Trying a new triad of paints

6"x6" oil on gallery wrapped stretched linen

$150 includes shipping/insurance

Buy It Now

or, contact me here for more information

In between painting ventures over to Barn Island, and working in the studio on a bigger piece, it's fun to take time for these little ones set up in the studio- mainly an exercise in shape and color. Trying out a new (to me) triad of color, Prussian Blue, Indian Yellow, & Perylene Red, all by Gamblin. Oh yeah, add a bit of Titanium white - you can get an incredible range of color from these 4 tubes! The triad is transparent, but you can get opaqueness from the white.

 Colors of Autumn 

all in one bouquet,

Mimicking the foliage

 of the surrounding trees. 
 

Crocosmia Summer Blazes

8"x6" oil on linen mounted on archival panel

For more information about this painting follow this link or contact me here.

Brilliant orange-red set afire by the sunlight

bouncing on long stems among long thin leafed foliage

the humming birds love this stuff.

They dance among the blossoms

drinking in the nectar of life

chattering their pleasure

and singing to me while I paint. 

Life Savor!

6"x6" oil on gallery wrapped linen

It feels so good to be back in the studio again, with lots to do to start off the new year. Fresh flowers in the house during the holidays made me realize how much I've missed these. During summer, I always have fresh flowers cut from our garden. For now, the grocery store variety will do just fine...they do brighten your outlook on a cold day.

Savor life....is what I've been spending the last two weeks doing. The week before Christmas, I spent some time with my brother who was hospitalized for a long term illness. The week between Christmas and New Years, our daughters came up to visit from Virginia. It was so much fun to reconnect with family friends over the holiday! Our loved ones (family AND friends) are the best gifts of the holidays or any time!

Lots of things I'm excited to be working on: a new commission, more 'little faces', small still-life, and some larger landscapes.

For the folks that have been following me for a few years, you may remember that I had quite a series of paintings of Ireland. I am in the process of making some of these available as prints! More news on this later in the week!

Happy New Year 2012 - and remember to take a deep breath, ....and savor life!

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Price: $150 USD plus $10 USD s/h

Or, send me an email

Montbresia

12"x12" oil on gessoed masonite artboard

"Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and necessary, that's hard for a Puritan to understand." - Gunter Grass

This was such a wonderful day outside painting this from life. This is one of my favorite plants that blooms in the summer, that I had originally learned of in Ireland. Over there, it grows wild in hedgerows, just crazy lush each summer. It's the most wonderful shade of hot-red-warm orangey brilliance, and the foliage seems to vary from lime-green to blue-green depending upon how the sun light is hitting it. While I'm standing there painting, a couple hummingbirds are darting in and out among the blossoms- they LOVE this color of red. I think this is the plant that makes our hummers the happiest. Even with the wind blowing that sunny day and the flowers bobbing up and down, those little birds are tougher than any fighter pilots- they can maneuver in any direction while these flowers are bobbing in the wind. They are so tenacious!

I knew this summer I would get a painting of these from life and it would not be a 'botanical type rendering' but more of an impressionist viewpoint of the feeling I get from these incredible plants. Known as Montbresia or Crocosmia as well, I was happy to find that it would survive in southern New England, if in a protected area. This stand of them has tripled since we planted them. They are protected on one side by tall ornamental grasses and butterfly bushes.

This painting can be purchased directly from me from my DailyPainters.com gallery store