The New Blog & upcoming show!

I'm going to be ending this (neglected, sorry!) blog, and will be posting in a new blog!  The new link is https://pourchewgal.blogspot.com 

The reason for the new blog is that I'm headed to Portugal for 2 months to paint studies in the Algarve, Lisbon and Porto and I'll be reporting on that adventure as Pour Chew Gal (a pun on Portugal and a poke at Eat Pray Love).  I will post the images, both works in paint and photos, as the time there unfolds.

When I return,  the plan is that I'll be working madly to turn the studies into full sized paintings and will have a show opening May 4 at Gallery B in Bethesda MD.  It'll be open for the month of May.  What will really happen is anyone's guess!

Please check out the new blog and also you can visit my website (which will also be getting some TLC and maintenance soon) at judygilbertart.com.

Narrative Painting

 

I've been working on this narrative painting for several months.  It's big -- 5 feet wide -- and it is being painted a "start with a part" strategy where I've been making it up as I go along.  The elements in the painting combine painting from life, painting from photo references, and painting from imagination.  The story the painting tells is of a young family and shows places they've lived, experiences they've had and things they are passionate about.  

My next step with the painting is to get it into the room where it's going to be hanging, to see how the colors and elements look in the light of the space.  It's got a lot of natural light, many more windows than my studio, so I want to be sure it works as I intend.  Just getting it out of my studio and onto a wall in my house I can see some things I want to tweak.

It's too wet to travel, so stay tuned.

Mason Jars

 I took oil paint and gouache paint to Maine with me this summer.  My usual practice is to start with oil paint and then switch to gouache to allow the oils to dry before traveling home.  This year, I spent the weeks leading up to my trip to Maine working in gouache to really settle in with it. 

I'm using Turner Acryl Gouache, which is an opaque water-based paint.  It doesn't reactivate like regular gouache, so when it's dry, it's done.  It's a challenge, especially outside where the sun and breeze can harden a glob of paint in minutes, but the result is a matte finish paint.

The bouquets of flowers I'd been painting on the porch were arranged in mason jars and every day we had to pull out the flowers past their prime.  I reached a moment when I thought, if I had any courage, I'd paint the jar without the flowers.  Well, I have courage.  And I also loved to look at the way a striped landscape (table, railing, grass, rocks, ocean) seen through a jar became a mishmash of colors and forms.  So the jar series began.  

Now that I'm home and heading back to my studio, I'm planning on continuing the series in interiors seen through jars.  Maybe back into oil paints for larger canvases.  Stay tuned.

Website Updated!

 I have finally updated my website after neglecting it for way too long!  

Judygilbertart.com now has a painting gallery under landscapes for the work of Summer 2021.  I have been in Maine and painting landscapes and flowers and my new passion, mason jars, this summer.  I still have a lot of work to do to update the site -- and iPhone camera images are not the best way to view work! -- but it's a start.

The pandemic year upside has been my immersion in online classes with painters I admire, whose classes always were out of reach, too hard to get to, too expensive and unapproachable. No more!  Online art instruction is oddly more wonderful than being in a classroom in person.  The artists are generous with their expertise and the process of critique is so much better with online uploading and Procreate software used as a tool to teach.  All of which has led me to new ideas, new approaches and, as Peggi Kroll Roberts so aptly puts it, "expanding the universe."

More to come and happy painting.