Miniature paintings, 5x7"

Storm Cloud near Tully -SOLD
I have been accepted once again to participate at the Plowshares Craftsfair and Peace Festival in December. For shows of this kind small paintings sell better than large ones, so I have begun preparing for it.

I painted these two this weekend. The more detail there is, the harder it is to cram it all in, as it happened in the second one.

Meadowbrook Pond -SOLD
I don't consider them studies, as many artists do when working in this size. I see them as paintings in their own right, and I frame them only when they look right to me. If I feel inclined to make a larger version of any of them, I already have the advantage of being familiar with the scene and color scheme, and very often the second version turns out better.

My husband call them "postage stamp paintings", but framed in a wide frame they look nice.

Leetonia Road, en plein air, 12x9"

As we had done in other years, my family and I spent Labor Day weekend at a friend's camp in Leetonia, in northern Pennsylvania. This area is close to the Great Canyon of the East.

There was so much green everywhere that I did not feel like painting; after some thinking I realized I was afraid of failing even before starting. So basically, I forced myself to paint. This in turn forced me to look more carefully at the possibilities I had before me, and this partially sunlit road offered the most interesting subject.

I think the correct name of the road is Painter Leetonia Rd.

Old Forge Plein Air Paintout

Adirondack Cottage, 9x12"

This past weekend was the Plein Air Paintout at Old Forge, NY, that culminated in the auctioning of donated artwork to benefit the new art center, View.

This first scene is one that I have been studying since I took a workshop with Susan Ogilvie in May of last year. It's a private entrance seen from the parking lot of the old arts center. It seems that having all this time to ruminate on the scene helped me immensely because the painting went very smooth.

After checking several places for painting potential I decided to go to the Moose River. This area is one that everyone sees when entering the town.





Moose River by Rt 28th, 9x12"
(donated)

Madison Windmills, 8x10"-Sold

My plan was to start another painting based on the previous one, but this photo from the same area begged me to paint it first.

For several years I had seen the windmills in the distance and was very curious as to what they looked like up close, so last year my daughter and I went to Madison county in search of them. Not only did we take lots of pictures but also fell in love with the countryside.

As a believer in renewable energy, I plan to include windmills in some future paintings. The ones here are barely visible on the left.

Cumulus Cloud, 8x10" -Sold

The variable weather we've been having has gotten me in the mood to paint skies.

This small painting took me longer to finish than I had expected. Somehow, clouds always look so inviting and easy to paint but once I start painting them I realize that it's not so easy after all to represent their three dimensionality.

I've just got another idea for a different version of this... I'll better get to work on it!

A Fast Moving Front, 11" x 17"

This painting is based on the same reference photo that I used for Distant Pond.
While a larger format allows for more detail, it can also make things more difficult if you want to keep it loose. Perhaps that's why it took me over three weeks to finish it. Several times I thought it was done only to come next day and erase the previous day's work. I even added a dirt road -and still think it would have been a good idea, but it did not come out the way I wanted, so maybe another time, another painting.

I'm becoming more aware of how much one can learn from painting different versions of a particular scene. To avoid repetition you are always asking yourself what to add or remove to make the painting work.

The Rock Garden, en plein air, 9" x 12"

My friend MaryBeth and I went painting this morning to her next-door neighbor's garden. She had told me about this garden before but I didn't imagine it had so much to offer!

This scene with black-eyed Susan, mullein, and globe thistle, was the first one that caught my attention, so after scouting for a while I figured I needed some practice painting foregrounds and this one offered the perfect setting.

From the very beginning my goal was to practice, not to produce a finished painting; that took so much pressure off and I'm happy with the results.