Gallery at Town Center

I have a new show up until November 14 at the Gallery at Town Center in Lake Forest Park.  The paintings are all figurative, with a couple of the paintings posted below.  Stop by and see the show if you have the opportunity.  See the following website for information on location and hours. http://www.shorelinearts.net/events-programs/gallery-at-town-center/

Huge Sale

I had a most wonderful happening two days after the successful Edmonds Art Studio Tour.  A new customer purchased an entire wall of my long legged people paintings.  That is nine paintings!  I have never had such a big sale, and it was very exciting.  I am going to post all the paintings that were sold on that wall.

Edmonds Art Studio Tour

Hooray!  The Edmonds Art Studio Tour will be here soon.  It is scheduled for September 19-20, and I would love for you to stop by and see my studio and all my new work.  The fruit paintings are back for this event for the first time in years.  Visit www.edmondsartstudiotour.com for a map and information on all 41 participating artists.  I can hardly believe it, but this is the Tenth Anniversary of the tour.

Encaustic Sculpture

I have always wanted to do encaustic figurative sculpture, and I have finally started working on some.  I probably should not post these images, because if I proceed how I have in the past, I will never finish them.  I have gotten further this time than I ever have though.  This first image is paper clay, a lampshade, a cardboard tube and a net skirt from a doll.  It is ready for encaustic now.

The next figure is composed of paper clay, a cage of wood strips like you make for a Santos doll, and plaster cloth.  I am not sure where it is going next.  I am thinking of trying window screen to make a skirt.

The last figure started with a wooden figure that you use to pose differently to practice drawing.  I should have taken a picture of it first.  It is wrapped in many layers of plaster cloth and is not yet ready for encaustic.  As with my paintings, I do not really have a plan, and I just have to figure out what the next step will be.  I think it is easier to be an intuitive artist when painting than it is for this kind of work.  I fear I should have had a plan!  I will post new images as the project develops.

The Fruit Continues

Once I got started painting fruit, I just continued.  Now I have a large collection of fruit paintings that I need to do something with.  Fortunately Local Color, across from Pike Place Market, had an opening for August/September.  Now that I have a venue, I don't have to worry about what I am going to do with all these paintings.  The problem is that I paint the fruit paintings really fast so I end up with a lot of them. They are all small, 8x8, 10x10, 8x10, so I think I will paint some larger ones now.

Pears! Pears! Pears!

Several years ago I painted hundreds of pears and other fruit.  It was a lot of fun until it wasn't anymore.  The other day I was looking at these paintings I had started and never finished.  They were interesting backgrounds so I painted a pear on one, and it was fun, so I painted more.  Now I have a dozen new pear paintings and I enjoyed it!  So, here are a few of them.

New Encaustics

I am back into painting with encaustic lately.  It seems that I go in streaks painting with acrylic, mixed media and then encaustic.  It is currently encaustic.  I will post some below.  I do not usually paint with such bright colors when using encaustic, but I did a couple last week.

I also did a few in the more muted colors that I usually use.  I don't really know why I paint with bright colors when using acrylics and muted colors when I use encaustics.  It just seems like the right thing to do. As an intuitive painter, I often cannot explain why I do what I do, which is why I do not teach.

25 5x5 Challenge at ARTspot

I cannot believe that this is my first entry in 2015.  It is the middle of April!  I have no idea why it has been so long, except for the month of March I was in Palm Springs.  There are still two other months unaccounted for and I could have done an entry while in Palm Springs for that matter.

I participated in a 5x5 challenge at ARTspot this month.  Art Walk was this past Thursday evening, and it was a great show.  Twenty five artists participated and each did 25 5x5 paintings.  It was a very busy evening and a lot of paintings were sold.  I forgot to mention that each one was $25.  Anything of mine that does not sell will end up at the Artist's Garage Sale at the Schack Center in June.  If you don't know about that, check it out at Schack.org.  It is a great sale.  Some of my 5x5 paintings are shown below.

Last Post for 2014

I feel I need to do a last post for 2014 even though I do not have anything particular to say.  The only news is that the 30 Day Art Challenge was very interesting, even though I did not sell as many pieces as I had hoped.  There were 3200 8x10 paintings in one room.  The room was so crowded with visitors that it was very hard to see the paintings, but it was a lot of fun.  I sold seven of my thirty paintings, so there are going to be a lot of 8x10 paintings in the Artist's Garage Sale in June.  That is my favorite event of the year.

The next show I have coming up will be Local Color in February and March.  Local Color is located across the street from the Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle.  I will be showing figurative pieces this time.

I am posting a couple of new paintings below.  This first one is encaustic mixed media and the second one is acrylic.

30 Day Art Challenge

I have finished all 30 paintings for the 30 Day Art Challenge, and what I lot of fun I had.  I used several different mediums, styles and subjects, which I would not do in my normal painting day.  In other words, I played even more than usual.  I also discovered a new series that I am working on now as a result of this exercise.  I highly recommend this sort of activity to any artist.  Below are a few of the paintings that I did.  If you want to attend art walk in Pioneer Square for this event on Dec. 4, check out www.30dayartchallenge.com.  There will be thousands of 8x10 paintings all priced at $50.

Burridge Workshop Paintings

These are the promised images from the Burridge workshop mentioned in my last post.

 

Bob Burridge Mentor Workshop

I just returned from a three and a half day Bob Burridge Mentor Workshop.  Those of you who know me, know that I have taken a workshop from Bob once a year for 18 years now.  I will never tire of being around him and his work.  He is an inspiration to me and the first workshop I attended changed my life.  Since I have been attending these mentor workshops at his home, I have not attended any of his larger group workshops.  The mentor workshops only have seven artists in them.  As usual this year we had a great group of people and I hope to stay in touch with them and see them at future workshops.  This year was also different in that my friend Donna Wallace attended.  This was her first Burridge workshop and she loved it as much as I do.  I feel as though I created some really interesting figurative work, and I am anxious for the work to arrive home so that I can continue to work on it, mount it on boards, varnish, etc.  I have to ship my work and supplies home because Bobs' studio is located in Arroyo Grande, CA.  My supplies have arrived, but not my paintings.  So, I will post the paintings once they arrive and I get them photographed.

30 Day Art Challenge

I am participating in the 30 Day Art Challenge at the Toshiro Kaplan Building this year.  You can see more information about the challenge at www.30dayartchallenge.com.  I am painting 30 8x10 paintings in 30 days.  It is such fun to just paint whatever I happen to feel like doing that day and not worrying about working on whatever series I am currently doing.  I have done collage, acrylic mixed media, encaustic, my long legged people and other types as figurative work.  Who knows what will be next.  These are some of the paintings I have done so far.  The first one is Acrylic Mixed Media, the next one is Encaustic Mixed Media and the last one collage.

New Acrylic Paintings

Here are a couple of new acrylic paintings that I particularly like.  I had two abstract paintings that I no longer loved and wanted to reuse the canvases.  I just negative painted the figures and scratched in a few lines, and now I have two figurative paintings.  I have found that this happens sometimes.  Take and old painting and do very little to change it completely and end up with something I really like.

Time Flies

I cannot believe a month has gone by since my last post.  I have done a lot of painting and have participated in the Edmonds Art Studio Tour, so I have been very busy.  This was the most successful art studio tour of the nine we have had.  It was a joy to talk with the 298 people that came to visit my studio and the 4 other artists that were at my studio!  That is a lot of people to talk to and it really wore us out, but it was such fun.  The tour was successful both in number of attendees and dollars earned by the artists participating.  Below are a couple of the paintings that I sold during the tour.  The acrylic is 20x30 and the encaustic is a tiny 4x6 that I created at Daniella Woolf's workshop in July.

In the Works

I have just returned from a two week cruise to Greece and Turkey.  We were supposed to go to Israel, but you can imagine why that did not happen.  I am now frantically trying to get ready for the Edmonds Art Studio Tour, which is September 20 & 21st.  More about the tour later.  I want to get a few small acrylic pieces done for the tour, as I have mostly been painting with encaustic for the last year.  There just does not seem to be any time to paint lately as other things seem to keep taking precedence.

The painting group that meets monthly at my house is today, so hopefully I will get a lot of painting done over the next few hours.  This group has been meeting for at least five years, with a few changes, and it is a high point of my month.  Edmonds artists Tracy Felix, Lynn Scott, Mona Smiley Fairbanks, Angela Bandurka, Nancy Thompson and Donna Wallace from Redmond are the group members and it is a truly talented group.

I'll be back with some new acrylic paintings in a few days!

Here is a nice shot of some of the ruins at Aspendos in Turkey.  This is just one of many lovely sights I saw during the cruise.

Gelli Plates

Have those of you who are artists discovered Gelli Plates yet?  They are really a lot of fun.  There are a lot of things you can do with them, and I have only just begun.  I have four finished pieces, and they are shown below.  They are currently showing at ARTspot in Edmonds.