Pear Squared!

Change is in the air. Nothing seems to change as fast in spring as the appearance of blooms on fruit trees. One minute they are ablaze with blooms, and the next they are leafing out. Here's a little ditty I did yesterday morning right from my own garden. Mine is largely a late spring/summer garden, but my neighbor shares a little early spring splendor from across the street:

"Pear, Squared" Oil on Panel, 8x8" Contact me to purchase!

It used to be really spectacular, almost cotton-ball like. Then a year or two ago a huge chunk either blew off in a  storm or it got struck by lightening. The top was split in two and I was so sad because I had always meant to paint it at this time of year and something always seemed to pop up to prevent me from getting to it before it leafed out. Any way, thankfully, it survived. And in spite of yet another very windy morning, I managed to get it down.

Spring Break

Yesterday I woke up to sunshine and blue skies. I had a sitter lined up to watch my daughter so it looked like a plein air painting kind of day. I was stoked. Fast forward to 9 a.m.ish at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, and me freezing my tuccus off trying to paint in gale-force winds. My first plein air of the season did not go well. Not only was it looking pretty dark and muddied, but at one point it landed face down in the dirt. In all honesty, it wasn't even worth it to pick off the debris. In fact the mulch may have improved it a little bit! "Well," I thought, "there's always this afternoon". Except there wasn't. My sitter called to cancel which meant I needed to close up shop. I felt pretty dejected. I arrived at preschool ready to assume Mommy duty as per usual. But as luck would have it my daughter and her BFF had conspired to arrange a play date at said BFF's house.

What a lucky break! I'd been granted a 2 hour reprieve, and I was not going to waste it. After dropping my daughter at her friend's house, I peeled away, tires screeching (kidding) and headed for home to get my gear. As I was pulling up to park, these forsythia caught my eye:

"3 o'Clock Glow Oil on panel, 8x8" To purchase, please contact me!

Though the wind whipped up around me and  I was still pretty chilled, the forsythia were beginning to take on a warm glow as the sun prepared itself for its inevitable descent behind the rooftops.

All is Quiet

Two more  days out of school this week due to snow, so I've had more wintry reference material at my disposal. I think after this much time indoors we are all going a little stir crazy, and things can be, well, crazy with an active preschooler,  from the time when my little angel wakes in the morning, until she lays her exhausted little head on the pillow once more at night. But since I am almost always the first person awake in the house in the mornings,  there are a few moments in the wee hours where I get to contemplate just how peaceful and beautiful the snow fall really is. There are no plows or tracks anywhere yet and the whole street is blanketed with pristine snow.

"All is Quiet" Oil on linen, 8x8" Contact me to purchase.

This is the view from our upstairs window, looking down our street and out over the rooftops. I've noted it a few times after it has snowed, and I always say to myself, "I really need to try painting that".  So I finally did. There was no brillian sunshine yet so the value range is not great, which made me enjoy the shapes and angles of the composition even more.

Full Moon Nocturne

I painted this little nocturne from my screened porch during a recent full moon.

"Four Square on a Full Moon" Oil on Panel, 10x8" Click here for more info, or contact me to purchase!

This is my neighbor's house. I see this house every morning when I pour my coffee, and every evening in the milder seasons when I sit out on the porch after putting my daughter to bed.   There's nothing particularly fancy about this house. It's one of many classic American four squares we have in the neighborhood. But I like it's austerity. You can't really tell in this painting but it's white stucco. I love the light that shines on it in the morning, too. The soft glow of the morning sun gives it a kind of weathered luster.

I wasn't sure if I would post this piece, as the composition is so dead on and simple. I actually imagined I would zoom out a bit more on this composition, but just having a small shop light on my work space,  I had to work very close in to see what the heck I was doing. That's the way with nocturnes; you never truly know what you're going to get until you bring it into the light of day! Nevertheless, it's grown on me, so I decided to share it here.

p.s. Almost finished with the large painting of the Hatteras Dunes. Progress shots and (hopefully) the final to come soon.

Spontaneity

Here's a little plein air I did a couple of weeks ago, before our most recent beach trip. This view is just around the corner from me. It shows another side of the Bellevue neighborhood; a little less neat-as-a-pin, and a little more unkempt and funky, but still with that spontaneous burst of color.

"Splash of Color" Oil on Multimedia Artboard, 6x8"

The Crape Myrtles are still hanging on.  I hope I can get out a few more times to paint before they fade completely.

There are some benefits to time limits, but I think one of the biggest challenges to working with them is deciding how much of it to commit to R&D (research and development) and how much to commit to production end product. Of course with art, there is plenty of overlap, but I still consider my plein air painting time R&D. That doesn't mean that many aren't "frame worthy", but they are small and spontaneous and not all of them are completed statements. This is good because it allows me a certain freedom in my approach, with less deliberation and concern for the end result and more for the process and just really studying light effects, color temperature, values, and textures.

However, studio paintings are still paramount to my work, and at some point I need to get  some larger pieces done,  no matter how much the great outdoors may call me.  My goal with all of this is to see how well I can carry over the spontaneity and that feeling of the light from my field work into a more complete statement with my larger studio pieces. In terms of subject matter, they may not always seem to relate all that much, but for me the two disciplines are very interdependent.

The Crape on the Corner

I've long admired this pretty crape myrtle on my summer morning walks in my Bellevue neighborhood, so I decided to pay it a little tribute today:

"The Crape on the Corner" 8x10", Oil on Panel Contact me to purchase!

When we see Crape Myrtles blooming in Richmond, we pretty much know summer is here to stay a while. And if the heat isn't already upon us, it  is sure to quickly follow. Yes, folks, it was definitely hot out there! This painting pretty much demanded some Permanent Rose, which (of course) wasn't among the supplies I packed. I suppose I could have gotten by with Alizarin, but it wouldn't have been the same. There are definitely advantages to painting in my neighborhood; my studio (and agreeable husband) were just a couple of blocks away.

My lunchtime view

A major goal of mine this year has been to return to a regular practice of plein air painting. I've made kind of a slow start of it, but with a young child and a constantly changing schedule, finding the time to do this has been a major challenge to me. Before I had my daughter, I became accustomed to traveling around in search for the perfect painting site. Now, that's not really practical, (or most times, even possible). This is actually most peoples' reality and it's only in hindsight that I realize just how spoiled I was to ever have been able to do this in the first place! But these kinds of constraints shouldn't prevent me from plein air painting. After all, an exotic location does not (necessarily) a good painting make. And in fact, painting my world around me, just as it is, provides a pretty good challenge and a good discipline.

This is the view I behold every time I eat outside on my patio (which I do quite often in the temperate months). You may recall the distant flower bed from another recent plein air I did in the spring. This is a different view, from beneath the shade of our Crepe Myrtle:

"Patio View, Midday" 10x8", Oil on panel To purchase, please contact me!

Of course, painting my current reality doesn't mean I have to include everything. Here's what you don't see on the other side of that column:

Bellevue charm

Not too long ago I joined up with the Virginia Plein Air Painters group (VPAP)based out of Richmond VA. I paint often on my own, but painting with a group definitely has its advantages. The group meets once a month at a different location to paint outdoors together. Funnily enough, this month's location was my own Bellevue neighborhood. Obviously since this is my home, I've had plenty of opportunities to paint here. But  I really never tire of this area because it is so charming and architecturally interesting, not to mention that it is lush with flowers. Painting with the organization allowed me access to the private  gardens that would otherwise have been off limits. Here's this morning's effort:

"June in Bloom" Oil on Panel 10x8"   

I think the challenge to anyone who attempts to paint in Virginia is the number of different greens one encounters. Today's was no exception! But it was a challenge in a good way, as it really made me try and discern all of the variations and the subtle shifts in color temperature.

Shopping local

As the title of my blog might imply, one of my passions is to travel and paint the beautiful places I've been. But home commitments these days often don't allow me the time needed to go farther afield for scouting subjects and painting them. Instead of lamenting this fact (which I admit I did for a while) I have decided that if I don't find some options for painting close by I will not get very far with my work (or my sanity!) So I've started shopping local. I really only have a few mornings to myself so I need to get in and out of a place pretty quickly in order to pick up my daughter on time from preschool. The Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens are close by, and they are a lovely option, as is Bryan Park. But there really are a lot of interesting subjects even closer to my home, in my Bellevue neighborhood and even my very  own gardens.

There are a couple of challenges to my place. First of all, I live in an urban neighborhood. While we have tons of gardeners here and lots of green space we also have small lots and lots of large trees. So you have to get used to painting close in, and you're not going to get many sweeping vistas around here, which is the kind of subject matter that I have been most attracted to since I first took up landscape painting.

Secondly, aside from a very brief (but lovely) appearance of sunlight in the early, early morning, a good part of my back yard in particular remains in shadow until about 10:30 or 11 a.m. That means that the most interesting play of light and shadow only makes a presence for an hour, or at most an hour and a half tops,  before the shadows shrink up and burn off at high noon.

On the other hand, having planted every shrub and flower,  I know my garden intimately and  have had plenty of time to observe how the light comes over each bed. So I can set up my easel where I want it, walk back to the studio to do some work there, and then return to my plein air setup at the optimal time when the light is just right. I can work in this way all they way until the time I need to pick up my daughter from preschool (a 5-minute commute), and then just throw my gear into the studio right before I leave to get her. This was my approach for the little plein air below. It's not a big painting, but I still needed to finish this up in two different sessions due to the lighting situation mentioned above:

"The Curved Bed" Oil on Canvas, 10x10" Contact me to purchase!

At home we call this bed "The Bump Out", but I thought  that would be a weird title for a painting. At present there is still a sense of order, but in summer it's a lot more colorful, but also a lot more chaotic. ( I really tend to crowd my gardens terribly. This is a bad habit but I'm trying to get better, and not be so afraid to pull things out, give plants away, or just toss them if need be.) The summer flowers are beautiful, but  I like it at this time of year too because you can still see the "bones" and underlying form before the wildness ensues.

October Maples

When I woke up the other morning it was so stunning outside that I decided to leave the studio for a bit and do some plein air painting in my Bellevue neighborhood. Dave and I passed these gorgeous maples on Newport Drive during our walk in the 'hood the previous evening and I made a mental note to check them out again in the morning :

"October Maples" Oil on Linen, 9x12" For more information, contact me!

This is not the greatest of photos, so I will try and re-shoot this tomorrow morning when the lighting is better.  There are some areas where I might've wanted more refinement, but I am going to sit with this a bit and see how I feel about it when I can look at it with fresh eyes.

One thing I realized from the timed exercise I mentioned in my previous post was just how long my plein air paintings look like absolutely nothing. In fact, a common occurrence with me lately is the feeling of a sinking heart as I look at the confusing mess that is my painting and wonder if I might be better off just scrapping the whole thing. Bleh!

But then I'll think something like, "Just work on it a little more and then you can quit if you want to." Only a few strokes later (if they are good strokes) I find myself excited again and some logic begins to emerge.  It's almost as if something switches in my brain (on or off? I don't know.)  Maybe I just let go of the outcome and relax enough that somehow I can see the scene before me not as an overload of "things", but as a rhythmic pattern of lights and darks, colors and shapes.

This is not to say that there aren't areas for inprovement in this painting. But at least I managed to get the impression of place down, which, based on how the painting progressed in the earlier stage, was quite a surpise to me.  I guess the moral of that story is not to give up too soon. Some paintings are indeed "false starts" and probably just doomed to fail. But then there are those that have potential and a solid start and just require more patience and relaxed focus. Bargain with yourself to just stick it out a little longer and see what happens. By doing so, you often have little to lose and much to gain.

A Spot of Shade

I can always find something to paint in my own Bellevue neighborhood.  This is a lovely back yard garden down the street from us. I painted this from across the street so as not to be too voyuristic. ;-) :

"A Spot of Shade" Oil on Panel, 10x8" Contact me for purchasing info!

There may be few homes in Bellevue proper that would qualify as sprawling mansions. But what it lacks in that department, it makes up for in beautiful gardens and loads of charm. When my husband and I walk through our 'hood, we always note how lovingly the yards are tended. More often than not, even the smallest bungalow and the most modest yard tends to have some touch of personality to it. It's a special place.