Art Works

Friday was the Opening Reception at Art Works for the Chesapeake Bay Artists Association show in the Jane Sandler Gallery.

We took a bus trip, I have been calling it a field trip, up to Richmond. We had a great day. We had a tour of VCU's art department. (Some of us were dreaming of being 4o years younger and going to school there.) We also traveled through the beautiful hills and went to the University of Richmond and saw a Ansel Adams exhibit as well as visiting many galleries. But the highlight of the day was visiting the Glass Spot and watching Chris Skibbe do a very exciting glass blowing demonstration.

The evening came and we went to the Opening Reception. It was exciting seeing the show and visiting the other galleries. We met interesting people and enjoyed the wine!!!

I hope some of you will be able to visit Art Works before October 18th. It is open Tuesdays through Sundays from 12pm to 6pm.

Jane Sandler Gallery

Chesapeake Bay Artist's Association is having a show at Art Works in Richmond. There are approximately 100 paintings on display for your viewing pleasure.

These are the three paintings of mine that will be on display in the Jane Sandler Gallery, 320 Hull St. Richmond, VA. The Opening Reception is tomorrow, Friday September 25th from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm. The paintings will be there until October 18th Tuesday through Sunday from 12:00 noon to 6:00 pm. The phone number is 804 291-1400.

I hope some of you are in the neighborhood and will be able to stop by. I will be there for the Opening and would love to see you there. It ought to be a great show.

Looking at my paintings I see that I am in a green phase. I have been enjoying all the colors of greens that I can mix. Green is such a calm, peaceful, restful color; it is found everywhere in nature (well most everywhere). It symbolizes life and growth. It can be warm or cool. I will move on to focusing on other colors as time goes by, but for now everything is green.

Good Enough to Eat

The East Beach Art Show was very nice on Saturday. The homes were beautiful and some of them are right on the beach.

I brought some of my oils including Good Enough to Eat. I created these apples about two years ago. They were so much fun to paint. Mixing the reds and greens without getting mud was somewhat of a challenge. The whole time I was working on it my husband kept saying they look good enough to eat. Hence the name.

I really miss oil painting. For the past year I have been concentrating on watercolors. They have been taking me to some very exciting places and I have certainly been enjoying the journey. I feel that my learning has been accelerated and I'm pretty satisfied with the work I've been producing. But they consume my time and along with the rest of my schedule (teaching, art groups, art shows etc.) I feel like there is very little time left to explore anything else. But oil is like an old friend that I really need to visit soon.

East Beach Art Show

The First East Beach Art Show is tomorrow September 19 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. It is at 27th Bay St. off Pretty Lake Rd. in Norfolk, VA. There will be art and jazz and wine tasting and food. The weather looks like it will be good (a blessing for outdoor art shows.)

So if your in the neighborhood come on by and visit, I think you'll enjoy the show!

Wine Bottle

This wine bottle is one of my favorite charcoal drawings. What I really like about it is the light shining through the picture. I think I really captured light and shadows, a real value study.

I cropped the photo a little too much on the bottom right corner and you cannot see the edge of the marble surface that the still life is sitting on.

Charcoal is a great medium to work values in. It is alot of fun to make the darkest darks. It is easier than graphite to capture the darks. And of course the lights look brighter when next to the darks. Then there is the gentle blending of values from dark to light.

For the past year I have been working mostly on watercolors. I have enjoyed them and learned in them a great deal. I do miss working in other mediums and hope to spend more time working in them. I just wish there were more hours in the day!

Queen Elizabeth

In my watercolor class with Rieneke Leenders, we painted Queen Elizabeth. It was a great deal of fun.

It is always a challenge painting portraits. Each time I paint one I learn a little bit more about what I'm doing and after it is complete I can look at it and see what I might have done differently for it to come out a little bit better.

I look back over the past year and think about the past portraits I have done and the challenges have changed. There are certain things that came more easily for me. Like leaving the highlights. And others that are more difficult like softening edges and how thick to put the color down. This is part of the learning process that fascinates me.

Overall I am pleased with the Queen. Her hat and suit were so much fun to recreate, but her jewelry was challenging. I painted her a little softer than she looked in the photo. I felt very close to her but cannot even imagine what her life is really like. I wonder if she is softer in her personal life or if she is always the "Queen"?

I want to thank all of you for continuing to follow my blog even with all of the computer problems I have been experiencing. I want to remind everyone about the drawing that I am doing at the end of the month. Read about it in the top right section of my blog.

Seawall Art Show

This was a picture I took from right outside my booth at the Seawall Art Show. I had the greatest view and was really surprised at all that goes on in the Elizabeth River on a daily basis. I not only saw beautiful sailboats but cabin cruisers, wave riders, ferries, cargo ships. tug boats, Navy ships and police boats.

The weather had been threatening rain and thunderstorms all weekend but we really lucked out and not a drop of rain. It was a very nice art show and I really enjoyed talking to the people I met as well as the other artists. The volunteers were wonderful. It was a great way to spend the weekend and I even got to sell some paintings and prints and note cards.

I want to thank everyone for hanging in there with my computer problems. My computer guy has been out of town but hopefully I'll get everything resolved quickly. Today I'm at my sister-in-laws, Carmen Staicer. She has a great blog that you might want to check out. http://momtothescreamingmasses.typepad.com/ Check it out.

No Computer

I just want to let everyone know that my computer has crashed and I cannot post any pictures for the time being. I hope that this problem will be resolved shortly as I have a great photo showing my view from the Seawall Art Show. I will be back with you as soon as I can.