"Chesapeake Bay Tranquility" (oil on stretched canvas; 11" x 14") sold

sold

I once saw a lone house on an inlet to the Chesapeake Bay. I imagined tundra swans flying over the house. In my mind it was the dusk with the mauve sky and the dark, choppy water.

"Red Sails" (oil on stretched canvas; 18" x 18")

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Also titled "Red Sails" (watercolor on Yupo, 20" x 26")
sold

Hello, June!  With one foot into the summer, I thought it would be a terrific idea to do a series of boat/ship paintings this month.  The June Challenge is "Sail Away"!  To kick off the series, I revisited an old painting of Newport, OR.  The fishing boat with red sails had become a floating museum of seafaring in this picturesque working harbor, where my family spent a lovely day during a vacation in 2001.

I painted the first "Red Sails" in watercolor on an unpredictable support, Yupo.  It turned out well to my relief; it went on to be juried into the Art League Landscape Show in 2002 and was sold in my first solo show in 2006.

It was my husband who suggested that I should do a painting of "Red Sails" in oil.  Why not?  I cropped the scene into a square format and came up with a new color scheme of red and green with blue gray and grayed yellow orange as the neutral backdrop.  It was a perfect project to test out Gregory Packard's method of a neutral, mid-tone beginning.  The busiest, brightest, lightest, and darkest elements of the painting are all packed into the central area.  

I loved the watercolor version and was a little sad when it got sold.  Now I have a new "Red Sails" to look at.  So please tell me which version you like better?

"Seagulls at Sunrise Sea" (oil on linen; 12" x 8") sold

sold

Wake up early in the morning.  Take a walk at the beach.  The sun rises.  Its glow envelopes the world.  The moment doesn't last long.  While it lasts, you feel warm, safe, and hopeful.  "Seagulls at Sunrise Sea" would have been the perfect painting to greet the dawn of the new year.  But, hey, I wasn't well then and nobody's perfect.  So here we go belatedly.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

"Golden Gate Bridge on Sunny Day" (oil on linen; 9" x 12") sold

sold

The famous Golden Gate Bridge on a sunny day.  Fluffy clouds float by in the sky.  A red ship in the distance is about to glide under the bridge.  The red bridge casts colorful reflections in the choppy water.  I thought of Claude Monet's "The Bridge at Argenteuil" when I was working on the above painting.  I wrote about how much I admire Monet's painting three months ago.  Something about a bridge, boat, clouds in a blue sky, and reflections in the water makes a happy painting.  Don't you agree?

"Moonrise" (oil on linen; 8" x 6") sold

"Moonrise"
sold

"Moonrise over the Sea" (oil, 8" x 6")
sold

I thought I would have some fun working on small canvases a series of big paintings, that is, paintings that feel big.  With a size 6 flat brush, loaded with paint, I whipped out three tiny paintings in one afternoon.  Not bad, ha! 

In John Murray's class, the pressure is always on painting fast and large.  There is a student who manages to finish a 18 x 24" canvas in every class!  It is liberating to brandish your big fat brush like a sword, squeeze out loads of paints as if you are a millionaire, and paint like a crazed daredevil.  On the other hand, it is also nice to rebel against your teacher by painting small since it is vacation!  Just don't tell him what I am up to.  Shhhhh.

"Sunrise" (oil on linen; 12" x 8") sold

sold

The beginning of a new day.  The beginning of a new year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

"Winter Sunset at Sea" (oil on linen; 8" x 12") sold

sold

Thank you for taking time to read my blog in 2011. I will be back with more (and, hopefully, better) paintings and stories next year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

"Sunset Clouds" (oil on linen; 9" x 12") sold

"Sunset Clouds"
sold

"Lighthouse at Sunset" (oil; 9" x 12")
sold

It is a great idea to work in a series.  To get to the bottom of things, so to speak.  Sunset sky is one of my such on-going series.  I am perhaps inspired by my mentor, Sara Linda Poly.  She is my first oil painting teacher, whose luminous skyscapes never fail to take my breath away.  As a veteran plein air painter, she paints on location these "golden moments," which don't last very long.  Half an hour, tops, if you are lucky. 

Sara draws the landscape parts--trees and so on--on a toned ground first and waits for the sunset to work its glorious, spectacular magic.  It is, of course, hard to paint looking at the sun in rapidly fading light, and I don't know how she does it so well.  As a newbie to plein air painting, I prefer to paint these sunset scenes in my studio.  "Sunset Clouds" and "Lighthouse at Sunset" are my two latest attempts at sunset sky.  I am pleased with them, for now.

"Golden Girl" (oil on canvas; 18" x 18") nfs

nfs

Some paintings I do to sell; others for entering juried shows.  And there are paintings just for myself.  "Golden Girl" belongs to the last category.  The girl who is holding something in her right hand is my daughter when she was ten.  She had just found a piece of sea glass and was showing it off.  We were at Glass Beach in northern California.  Yes, Glass Beach--I didn't make it up.  Apparently, there used to be a bottling factory nearby and lots of broken glass made into the beach, hence the name.  The time of the day was obviously the sunset.

Reference photo

I had this girl when I was almost 40.  She was my dream child come true--healthy, happy, affectionate, and bright.  She just became a teenager this summer, and well....  She has changed quite a bit since I took the picture above.  Although I wouldn't change anything about her for the world, I still miss her when she could sit on my lap, be a flower girl, and pose for the camera gladly.  I miss those days. 


So I painted "Golden Girl" to remember my daughter at the age of ten, just as I painted her when she was a preschooler.  She was about three when she posed for a photo in a rose garden in Portland, Oregon. Of all the beauties I saw that day, she was the prettiest in my eye.

"Pretty in Pink" (watercolor, 17" x 12") nfs

I will probably do more portraits of my daughter, perhaps as a young lady, definitely as a bride, and hopefully as a new mother with her baby.  I am thankful for my family and my ability to immortalize their likeness in paintings.