Silver Moon

I hesitated to put this image on my blog. An artist needs to show consistency in her work and this is very differnet from my ususal style. It's one of my first casein paintings and is a portrait of my Tennesse Walker mare Reggie. She often had a far away look in her eyes...who knows what she was thinking. I always wondered and hoped it wasn't a sadness or longing for something. Guess that's what I was trying express here.

Experimentation with materials, application methods and subject matter are integral to my creative process. The image is mysterious but simple and expressed what I saw in her. It sold quickly so it must have touched a chord with the buyer too.

Maybe there's a lesson in this...

By the way..the reception at the cabaret went very well. One of my favorite paintings sold. Peculiar feeling though..I'm at once thrilled that someone loves it enough to buy it..but tinged with melancholy that I won't see it again.....kind of like what's in this painting.

Green Wind

The full moon these past two nights has been spectacular. I can't remember when it's been so bright and illuminating. Friday night I played ball with Koda and Baxter under the moon's pearly gaze but the scenery was so distracting I stopped frequently to study it. The trees on our property were coated with ice from the recent storm and glistened like crystal. The pines drooped from the weight of it all and looked so graceful silhouetted against the sky. I tried to hold that image for future reference.
I enjoy drawing and painting trees..each specie has its own personality and character that can change dramatically with the seasons and weather conditions.
This is a pastel painting of an ancient apple tree in Kennebunk in summer. It's on the property of a fellow pastel painter who hosted a group plein air demonstration in which I participated. Two of the tree branches are so long and heavy the owners propped them up with beams to keep them from breaking. I thought that was a valiant effort to keep their beloved tree going.
The old apple was a challenge to paint as I didn't want to get caught up in detail...just wanted to capture the spirit of the tree gently blowing in a soft summer breeze laden with the humidity of the day....this was my third try.
I'll think more about the tree shapes and mysterious colors of the these recent moonlit nights and plan for a nocturnal painting of them in the future. The feeling will be quite different from this one and a great way to explore the colors and tone values of night.
Green Wind is still available...I wonder if the tree survived the ice storm..

Velvet Night

In an earlier blog about my painting called, "Whispers in the Moonlight", I mentioned that nocturnal paintings have always fascinated me, so I added another book to my growing collection of books on artists called ,"The Color of Night". It's about Frederic Remington and contains 75 of his most well known nocturnal paintings of the American west. After many years of experimentation and constant study Remington became a master technician of the American wild west genre but especially paintings of the night. In the books foreword Earl Powell III of the National Gallery of Art explains why night paintings draw such interest, "...nocturnes thus reflect both the external beauty of night and the internal threat of darkness".

This is a 10 x 12 pastel painting executed on dark blue Colourfix paper. Kathi Peters, my good friend and fellow artist provided the photo of her Welsh Cob mare, Victoria, with her first colt, Legacy. The background scenery and barn don't exist in the photo....I made them up.
"Cut down and out...do your hardest work outside the picture and let your audience take away something to think about..to imagine." Frederic Remington 1903.

Whispers in the Moonlight

This is one of my favorite paintings, even though
the mood and scene may not appeal to many. I know..it's a little strange, but I love a good mystery and nocturnal paintings are such a challenge. The colors and subtle tone variations of night light require extensive study. Frederic Remington did some real beauties as did N.C. and Andrew Wyeth.
Gargoyle's are said to ward off evil spirits and this handsome fellow sits in my back garden doing just that, day after day, in all seasons. Sometimes he's covered in a deep blanket of snow or pelted with a driving rain, but he is stoic and vigilant. I named him "Nick" because of a notch on the bridge of his nose...a battle scar, no doubt the result of a skirmish while defending his territory. The cold blue moonlight and long shadows running across the snow reinforce the haunting rendezvous between these two . The cat, fluffed out against the chill, seems bewitched by him...I wonder what happened....Nick will never tell..