This past Spring, the Oasis Gallery invited the Seven Palettes (some of my art buddies and me) to mount a live exhibit at its Washington Metro location in Bethesda. Our exhibit ran from Monday, May 2d to mid-August 2022. Understandably, the show didn’t get much traffic, given Oasis’ use of zoom classes during the Covid hiatus, so I thought I’d post one last look at the paintings I contributed to the show. You can see the work of the other artists at the link above.
Took an online workshop recently from Zoey Frank ~~ ‘self-portraits from observation’. It was weeks long – with almost 300 students (critiqued by five or six assistants). I didn’t get around to finishing the one self-portrait I started – just made a couple of smaller studies . . . before giving up in boredom at my composition.
I’m now taking a watercolor class with Ed Praybe. He tasked us with doing THREE monochromatic self-portraits during one week – facing front & diagonally to each side. Under the short and specific deadline, I produced these three. Warning – it’s impossible to smile AND paint simultaneously, but . . . here they are anyway.
Here is the series of monochrome studies, all 6″ x 8″, done during the workshop with Bernie Dellario. Such a concentrated repetition of that exercise was useful in helping us spot values quickly.
New work to share! Here’s what’s on my easel, about to be signed. Sons Sam & Will, with their families, and Pat & I visited the Virginia side of Great Falls on the Potomac River last Christmas. I finally got around to making a studio painting of the magnificent scene!
I’m not great at landscapes, but I think I made real progress on this one!
During my hiatus on the blog, I posted from time to time on Facebook, so I’m going to update my postings here to include that material ‘for the record’. A painting buddy challenged me to post seven paintings in seven days. Here’s what I offered for Day 1:
Challenge accepted. I’ll start with one that’s different from my usual style ~ some abstracted shells done in a class at the Yellow Barn last year.
Sometimes it’s fun to challenge yourself: can you make a painting in a very limited number of strokes? Say, 15? I decided to try it the other day. I placed three shells from my beach-combing stash on a sheet of paper and attacked, carefully plotting color and placement of each stroke. At 15, I was itching to do ‘just a few more’ to beef it up ‘just a bit’, but gritted my teeth and concluded the effort. Here it is, along with a snap of the shell subject.
In keeping with the spirit of the test, I made only a few light guidelines for size and placement, before constructing the design via ‘color-shapes’.
Continuing with my flower binge, here’s another I finished today — of some sweet white calla lilies.. I hope you like it!
#19 White Calla Lilies. Oil on Primed Arches Oil Paper. 10″ x 8″.
Before the recent workshop on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I tried to get in the groove by painting one of the places we would visit there. I call it ‘Susan’s Marsh’ because it was based on a photo my sister took in showing us potential venues. I didn’t finish it then, but did so a couple of weeks ago so I could include it in our new Maplewood Exhibit. I decided to spice it up a bit by adding a heron — it was looking a bit too tranquil without it!
We’ve got a beautiful fluffy pink smoke bush in our front yard. It’s only a few years old but it’s grown huge. Its color is very interesting. Not ‘PINK pink’, but something fairly indescribable. I can show you better with my brush than with my words. I also give you a few photos below to get a sense of what I was looking at when I painted this one live.
Last week I painted purple irises atop leaves from the Japanese Maple out front. I focused on the irises rather than on the leaves in that one. After the irises faded, the lovely tangle of leaves and stems continued to hold my attention. So I painted them – or tried anyway. The leaves are mostly very dark — deep reds and greens, so I wanted a light background, but what color?
I tried one color; nah. I tried another; nah. The next morning, I covered it all up with a creamy yellow/white and didn’t like that either. In frustration, I picked up a rubber wedge tool and scraped off the top layer of background, trying hard not to wipe off the leaves themselves. I was left with all sorts of interesting marks around the leaves. They’re weird but I like them and thought I’d keep ’em. Let me know if you like them or hate them!
#16. Tangle of Japanese Maple Leaves in a Pitcher. Oil on Arches Oil Paper. 10″ x 8″.
The leaves and vase I painted (from life).
