A Traditional Still Life

For years I’ve wanted to paint a potpourri jar that belonged to my great grandmother.  The bittersweet vine I bought at the farmers’ market  also just asked to be painted.  The other vase is a gift from a friend, painted much larger than it is in real life.  And of course a half-peeled orange is a typical subject as well. (The problem with that is, the peel dries up within a couple of hours so I had to paint fast and cut more peel from time to time.)  I’m really enjoying painting in the dark although it does present challenges.   Orange and blue seem to be colors I’m choosing a lot lately.   I wish I could figure out how to keep the glare out of the photos of paintings!

The Chinese Jar   21 x 27  gold frame   $600

A Flash from the Past

I was looking through a box in the basement, trying to find items for still lifes and I came upon some little figurines given to me when I had my tonsils out many many years ago.  They look like Hummel figures but on the bottom it says “made in Japan.”  ( The boy is playing a violin; at some point  it got broken so that’s why he’s turned away.)  A long time ago an art teacher gave me the piece of fabric which I’ve saved all this time; the colors in it matched the figurines so well it was a natural for the background.  I’ve been trying chiaroscuro recently, painting in  the dark really, with one clamp light spotlighting the set up, another my palette and yet another the painting itself.  The boy and girl are sitting on a black table with a glass surface so the reflections are dark.

Made in Japan  11.5 x 17  oil on birch panel, unframed   $400

Sunrise

The still life paintings I do in the winter take so much longer than landscapes I’m not going to be able to post as frequently. But here *is* a landscape. I got up really early one morning and looked out on the most glorious sky. A sky like this only lasts for seconds but fortunately the camera was close at hand so I could get a photo. It’s hard to believe the colors were this vivid, that I’m not making them up. It was a breathtaking spectacle.

Baroque Sunrise  14 x 16  oil on birch panel  $400

This End Up??

Here’s a piece that began with smearing leftover paint onto a canvas-covered board. It started out as a landscape but then I got interested just in how the paint itself looked So I followed it where it took me. What I wound up with seems like a still life with a bottle but then I started turning the painting around and I’m not sure which orientation is best. Makes it hard to come up with a title.

Untitled 13 x 8 (8 x 13?) oil on canvas on board, unframed $150