Go Figure Contemporary colorful paintings of fun and figures.
I needed to do something different so I chose this portrait of my grandson. I love this little 4"x4" format. It is just so cute! I prefer non-smiling portraits because they look more natural, but it was difficult for me to find a photo that really showed his personality and a reasonable likeness. I associate his features with smiles, but when he is teething his cheeks get red and he gets this set-jaw look.
Optical illusion art objects are always fun for museum goers who like modern art. People are really good with their hands or they touch everything. Mostly I think they are aware of how close they come to objects and it always makes for a good pose.
This is a favorite image of mine which I have painted once before, but this one is in a square format and the colors are lighter and cooler. For some reason I tend to go with a particular palette for a number of paintings and then switch to another one. I may do a lot of warm yellows or cool blues or tend toward lavender grays or greens. I am not sure why I do this so I am just going to call it "my personality style showing itself." I like the figures in this painting but I really am paying tribute to Bonnat's Roman Girl at the Fountain, which I think is an exquisite painting.
I struggled with the colors on this one...trying to balance the warms and cools and choosing the right color for the walls and clothing. Those struggles are good because they make me really think about what I am doing. Sometimes it just comes easy and it turns out right, but even if I struggle and I don't get it just right, the struggle is productive. This has a cooler temperature than many of the museum paintings I've done and I am not sure I like that, at least for this one. I do like the way they are studying this and the tension in the arm that is being held back...it is clear she has an awareness that she doesn't want to touch this art. She is holding back her bags so they don't swing forward.
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one of my paintings was chosen for "the painting of the month"...I am honored
I like groupings of 3. There is something pleasing about the arrangement. This scene is as common in a large museum as those of people looking at art. Where are we and how do we get to the.....Egyptian art??? the bathroom??? the cafe???? where that famous painting is???? or in the case of the Met, to the roof!
This is from a gallery opening and Sculptfest at the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center in West Rutland, VT. The patron and fellow sculpture is admiring a welded steel piece that is covered in rust of a high wire acrobat on a unicycle. The patron has wine in a paper cup which seems to be pretty common in less high brow openings. This is one of the big events at CSSC which has been called "The Carrara of America."It is a sculpture center located in a quarry.
The lady on the right was inching closer and closer to this painting. Her arms were raised and resting on her large flat bag, but she looked like she wanted to touch it. The other lady held back a little nervous about being "Drawn In" too close. It is of interest to me the huge bags that people carry in NYC. There are lots of tourists from everywhere and they seem to haul around everything they might ever need. This woman's macrame bag is a perfect example. It must have weighed a ton. You can tell that it is affecting her posture by the way her left shoulder is slightly raised. The colors are a little faded in this photo and there is a glare.
It feels so good to painting in oil again. I am a bit rusty, but I still like this overall.
Got home late tonight...a post...what can I say. Hopefully I will be back to oils tomorrow.
This young lady's name is Lily...it was painted from a photograph that caught this interesting image of Lily in a prayerful position adjacent to these lillies in Florenze, Italy.
This was painted from a photo I took at the Morgan Horse Show at the Morgan Horse Farm near Middlebury, VT. This young lady was getting ready to enter the show ring with her beautiful horse. My grandson is becoming my best fan. The other day he came in and saw a painting I had done and so enthusiastically said, "I love this!" with such honesty and emotion it made me want to cry. I consider myself to have "made it" based on his reaction. It is really important to consider who your critics are and who you are going to listen to and believe. To bring such joy to him fulfilled what ever goal I ever had of pleasing the public! He loves horses and lives across the road from a beautiful horse ranch, so this one was done for him.
