Honeysuckle

Honeysuckle   oil/canvas   14 x 11

is a quiet beauty.  Our challenge in class was to pair an organic feature with an architectural element.  Although floral paintings are quite "nice", they do not convey much to me emotionally...I would sooner see the flowers themselves.  I do, however, see them as an excellent subject source for painters learning to hone their skills as they are so very complicated.  This lowly honeysuckle vine is on the mend after having been removed from its trough earlier in the season for patio repairs.  They really are nothing special to look at...their power is in their fragrance I think.  Pairing this vine with its trellis surround thrilled me design-wise but, oh, was it ever complicated!(many many relationships, the lighter values where subjects become mush, and the right amount of realism to convey the subject naturally)

I am surprised by how much I enjoy this small painting. 

Lemons - Lesson in Scale

I am always up for painting lemons!  I love the flavor, the color and the appearance.....I guess they are a bit of a comfort fruit for me.  Sometime last year, I had an "aha" moment regarding scale.  As a longtime portrait and figurative painter, I seemed to have an innate sense about the human proportion and disliked the shapes that appeared too large, too monstrous.  (Likewise, and even more so, I disliked all objects that seemed just too small, even if well painted.)I think that this predisposition carried over into all subject matter.  Most of my still life works featured objects that were either life-sized or slightly smaller...and from a frontal viewpoint.  That seemed correct to me.  And, yet, I always admired dynamic larger works and those that featured objects from a bird's eye viewpoint.  And so I grew.....and came to challenge my notion of scale.  This time around, I took on a work that features lemons, both larger than life-size and from an aerial view.  I think that the white tray functions as a background or negative space.  The result, to me, was a simpler more dynamic work.  I pushed several of my former limitations here and I am thrilled!  Growth and evolution is part of the artistic process.  It is exciting to venture out and to grow.