Summer Visions

Small Painting & Updated Small Painting

This was my first take

This is the redone painting

This is a 5" x 7" painting I did today with the remains of the hydrangeas in my studio.  I am not used to small sizes, small brushes... but it was fun.   There are "daily painters" who challenge themselves to paint a tiny painting every day -- and there are a lot of cupcakes, apples, pears, oranges, you get the idea, that are being painted that way.

 I think I'll be back to a larger painting when I'm next in the studio.

Update -- I came in to the studio, looked at yesterday's work and took out the scraper.  The flowers were still pretty much as they were yesterday so I gave this another go.  What I hoped to do was take the ordinary and add some inventiveness, some feeling to it.  I got rid of a lot of detail and hard edges.

Finished arrangement

Flowers from a study

I have the study I did last week of clematis and hydrangeas... and I still have hydrangeas I can cut from my garden, but the clematis isn't in any shape to bring into the studio.  And it's rainy out, so rather than cut new wet flowers to bring in, I'm working from the study.  I don't have a photo of the set up, but I'd roughed in a large painting while the flowers were still in the vase and between that and the small painting, it's coming together.

This is the work in progress.  In the study, I didn't include the pedestal the flowers were on and the vase shape was kind of odd because I was looking down on the arrangement.  I'm taking advantage of the longer proportions of the larger canvas to include the pedestal and elongate the vase so that the ratio of flowers to other stuff (background, vase, etc.) has changed.  I am making more of the background in this one.... at least so far.

Dupont North Metro

Dupont North is a completely uncovered metro station -- no glass canopy, just sky above the escalators.  I think the contrast with the Bethesda under-the-building station is pretty dramatic, so I am working on this one painting to get it ready for the July show at Gallery B, where I'll have all the metro series together.  I just got it roughed in today.

Under the Whitehurst Freeway, Georgetown

I had some time early this evening to spend in Georgetown and parked under the Whitehurst Freeway to do this quick sketch in oil.   I'd seen an interview with the artist Rackstraw Downes in which he talked about painting under elevated roads like this -- he said he liked putting the weight into the top of the painting where there'd otherwise be light and sky.

I took this a bit farther and darkened the freeway underside more and brought up the light in the sky along the roofline of the building.  Not sure what I'll do with this, but I might be back in Georgetown quite a bit this summer and might have a chance to work on this idea again.

Hydrangeas & Clematis

I brought flowers in from my garden to paint -- most of my blue hydrangeas died back to the ground over the winter, but my oakleaf hydrangeas and "lady in red" are both in full bloom.  This is a small painting -- 12 x 16 and I'm thinking of using it as a study for a much larger painting.

Flower Painting, one more time!

I've been working on a flower painting, another angle on the arrangement I've now painted in a few different ways from the studies I'd done last summer and the photos I took of the set up. In this painting, I decided to include the meadow-like view out the window, which shows how the color and feel of Maine flows from outside to inside.  This is a smaller painting, 16 x 20.

It was fun last night to be at an event held at a gorgeous apartment owned by people who have three of my paintings and a print of mine.  I was nervous -- I hadn't seen the work up on the walls (as much as I do move things in and out of my house, it's nothing like seeing the work in a someone else's home) and I wondered how they'd hung them, especially the 5 foot wide painting of Roses, Paris, Spring.   Wow, I hope it doesn't sound self-involved to say this, but I was incredibly moved to see how my work (and the other art and photographs they've hung) took its place in their home.  A very gratifying experience, and I spoke to many people who were interested in the paintings and talking about the places and ideas in them.

Looking at a Phone on the Metro Escalator

This captures what's maybe a rare thing -- only ONE person looking at a phone while riding up the metro escalator.  Usually everyone is!