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.