Marketplace

Marketplace   oil/canvas   20 x 16 x .5

There are many facets of my life, too many really.  At the top of the list these days, I am a PAINTER and I am a COOK.  Sooo...the market is a place where, for me, visual pleasures preside.  The colors and textures are widely varied, and the imagined flavors boundless.  We are lucky to be exposed to so much variety these days!  

I am pleased with the way this painting turned out - four quadrants of varying textures and colors keep the chaos away.  For me, the metal shelving adds design relief.  Maybe it's just my secondary career calling, but I want to reach my hand right in!
 

Landscapes?

Freshly Shoveled Driveway   oil   11 x 14

Landscapes are my least favorite subjects, I'm afraid.  While I look out at the fresh environment, I am certainly taken with its beauty, but have no need whatsoever to replicate.  Interior::exterior.  Interiors, taken figuratively, are what move me.  

The artists in my classes always list landscape as one of their subject choices, so I comply.  In order to capture my interest, there simply must be a very personal reason to spend the effort.  In this case, a 22"  snowfall gave me just cause.  There were no snowplows for hire.  Two painting problems resulted.  Both were so very exciting.  One involved the play of the warm light against the cools of the shadows, temperatures, and the sky.  Cool dominant playing with warm.  the second involved the interesting topography of the lay of the snow:  harder vertical snowbanks and softer ones.  Shadows that helped to explain all of that.  Yes, I  feel tied into this picture.

And....I feel very very tired.

Patterning

Pot From Lebanon   oil/canvas   11 x 14 x .5

I love patterning and spent some time earlier on designing wrapping paper.  I love fabrics, and all paper products, a guilty pleasure when thinking about environmental waste and unnecessary spending.

And, for some reason, I am always stimulated when some of these patterned pieces end up in a painting.....one person's art being featured in another's.  What could be better than pairing a hard, smooth and shiny object with a backdrop of leafy pattern?

In this instance, an antique familial vintage pot from Lebanon County, PA and a wallpaper that has graced our bedroom wall for 35 years.,,it is quite humorous that, while I have changed just about everything in every room in the house, that wallpaper has remained.  Lessons learned and relearned:  study of the multitudinous whites on walls and surfaces, as well as the reflective qualities of the shiny black surface.