Garden Perch

This week I finished off "Garden Perch" ....... I decided to go for a colorful and vibrant background of blue with touches of white and purple. Below (in the previous post) is the same painting, minus the background. My garden irises have just finished blooming for the year so I'm moving on to paint another willing subject now. I think I will pick up a nice 10" x 10" canvas, just like this piece was painted on and get to work today on another painting. 

Bearded Iris Garden Almost Complete

 I'm almost finished with my bearded iris garden painting .  This week I managed to complete all the flowers and leaves, today I will start on the background for this piece.  First though, I wanted to get a great photo with no background to possibly use for licensing work.  I hope to put both to use, with background and without.  The new technique I've been working on for years now, that I've finally perfected for backgrounds, I've begun to use for the main focal elements in this painting, the iris blooms themselves.  I like the results so much that I will probably continue along this line with every new painting I create.  It is a time consuming process but I like the results.

 I do enjoy my iris garden each year, they bring me a lot of happiness when they bloom.  I love the purple but my favorites are the pinks.  These irises have traveled with with and moved with me for the last 17 years or so. 

 This will be the last year I will get to enjoy them as chris and I will be moving next summer of 2013 to a different area of the country, where these beauties I'm afriad, will not flower for me.  It is time though, onto another adventure and a new life.  We're ready for the change, something we're very much looking forward too.
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My irises though, will not be left to fend for themselves here in NY, they will go on a move themselves, via USPS this fall, to live with a friend of mine in VA.  I will enjoy the photos I have taken of them over the years and the artwork I plan to keep creating to celebrate their beauty.

Painting Some Bearded Irises.......

I started a new painting last week that celebrates the beauty of my bearded iris garden that blooms so faithfully for me each May.

This is a large painting, 20" x 20" with lots of detail so it is not a quick work. Good things come to those who wait though, or so they say anyway and I think the finished painting will be worth waiting for.

Right now you can see snippets of some of the individual irises and leaves in some of my favorite colors, purple and pink. I hope to show more of my progress on this painting next week. I hope lovely irises are blooming this spring for you, in your garden.

Sitting Pretty Monarch Butterfly

Another month has slipped by and I'm not really sure where all the time went. I've been working on some new canvases and making some changes in my marketing as well. The above is entitled "Sitting Pretty" and is a monarch butterfly painted against an abstract background. I'm in the process of painting some spring and summer themes at the moment and hope to finish up with those soon.

I love painting butterflies, all kinds of course but my favorites are the Monarchs. I find myself drawn to them again and again and somehow, they always seem to end up on my canvas.

All year I review butterfly photos that I've taken in the spring and summer to decide which beauties to paint. If you love to paint nature subjects, I highly recommend running around with your camera to capture your favorites on film, they will provide you with inspiration all year long.

A New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! I cannot believe it is here already. Where did the holidays go by the way? Come to think of it, my brain is still on summer and here it is winter already. At any rate, I often find I'm in denial when it comes to the seasons as my mind likes to imagine it lives in the warm weather. Actually, in a couple of years, that will probably be a reality for us and it is something I'm very excited about.

I do have some cheerful, beautiful Amaryllis to keep me from falling too deeply into the winter blahs.

Last year I think I was in a really bad place with blogging, I've been doing it for years and I guess I got bored with it, annoyed at times and yes, even put pressure on myself to blog.....that's just not right. I think for a while, I was on the path to shutting my blog down but since then, have changed my mind.

Why can't I after all, just blog the way I want too? What if I just sit down to write and post pictures every 2 or 3 weeks if thats what I feel like? I kind of realized I was self-imposing rules onto my internet existence that just didn't make sense. This is the new me, blog when I want to/can etc, no pressure, just fun.

I've been painting some new pieces over my break, lots of butterflies. These are 3 of the paintings but I have a 4th and final (for now anyway) butterfly triptych I'm going to be finishing up this week. These paintings are so far at least, un-named. I'll have to work on solving that in the upcoming weeks.

This new year's day also brings a brand new website for me....Chris has been working on it for months and finally it is mostly done and ready to go. A brand new, crisp, clean look that focuses strictly on the artwork is what I was looking for in my new site. With a few minor changes/additions in the upcoming weeks, it is for the most part, DONE!!! www.artfulcreations.biz .

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday....I hope to be back in a couple of weeks, no pressure, just for fun.

The Beauty Of Orchids

Even though at this time of the year my garden is in full bloom outside, I cannot forget my inside orchid garden. I was so happy to see my spotted phalaenopsis spiking this year. Last year when it tried to bloom it had a bout with spider mites and had to be relegated to the basement while I got rid of the bugs. By the tiime it emerged again upstairs, it was no longer interested in blooming.

Beautiful shades of white are always a favorite of mine.

A brand new orchid for my collection this year, purple and white are a beautiful combination.

The orchid above is one of my favorites, I call it "woody" fo the wooden pot it is planted in. I bought this phalaenopsis bare root off of ebay years ago. It took 3 years to start blooming for me and has been a reliable orchid ever since, creating beautiful blooms every year.

Life always inspires art, 2 years ago I created my "Purple Phalaenopsis" painting to express how much I love my orchid collection. This year I feel another orchid painting coming on and I think this time, I will create the painting with a multiple canvas layout. I'm not sure what kind of orchid I will paint yet but I'll be ready with my paintbrush when the urge strikes.

Butterfly Photos, Inspirations & Nature Scape Paintings

I was just speaking with someone recently about how ideas and inspirations for paintings come along. The kind of ideas that take seed in your mind, even through the course of years and end up being something you feel, as an artist, you have to paint, you cannot help yourself. That got me focused on butterflies and this lead me to think of the different inspirations for some of my favorite butterfly paintings that I've done.

I started getting fascinated by butterflies, I think, when I first took this series of photos back in the fall of 2009. We were at Mohonk Mountain House for our anniversary and these gorgeous Monarchs (I admit, they are my favorite butterfly) were drawn to the Verbena patch and I in turn, was drawn to them.

I took so many photos of these beauties over the course of the couple of days that we were there and then, like so many other photos, I filed them away for possible use in the future.

Fast forward to the summer of 2010 (at least, that is about when I think it was) that patch chuck full of butterflies from the year before , became the painting above "Monarch".

Believe it or not, those photos inspired these paintings as well. True, for these I left the Verbena behind and instead wanted to incorporate my favorite butterflies into my new obsession, trees. I was particularly fascinated with Apple Blossoms at the time and so, I created "Monarchy" above.

When Monarchy left my house, believe it or not, I was a bit sad, as it cheered me up each day that I looked at it. I had hung it in my studio and so, I could see it while I was working and really enjoyed it's happy presence . Because I missed that painting, I wanted another one with my favorite butterflies and Apples Blossoms but this time, with a bit of a different background and I wanted a multi-canvas piece and ended so up creating "Monarchs Emerging". This one hung in my dining room until it flew away so at least I did get to see it for a while.

Back in 2007, I spent quite a lot of time photographing this Swallowtail that was hanging around the front of my house to be near my Impatiens. I was out there constantly because pretty much every afternoon that I walked the dogs, there he was, back again, waiting for me to photograph him.

Actually, this particular butterfly was not very cooperative and did lead me on a merry chase throughout the yard. For this reason, I ended up with lots of blurry photos but, I did get some that came out well, the few times I could get him to sit still that is.

In 2008 I took photos of one of my spring time favorites....Lilacs. They grow on the side of my house and I love cutting them to bring inside each year.

A couple of months ago, I was on the phone with someone and for whatever reason, the idea came to me like a light bulb going on, I wanted to paint lilacs and a Swallowtail butterfly together. I'm not sure why this idea occured to me at the time it did but I immediately wanted to get started on "Awakening" below.

With 3 new paintings that I've just finished, now is the hard tiime for me, deciding what to do next. Last night I was awake for some time trying to think of the next subject for the next painting. I think I know what I"ll do but I'm never totally sure until I start work on the next piece. I'm wondering, what inspires you?? What kind of thought process goes into creating some beauty in your life? www.artfulcreations.etsy.com

Attraction - Acrylic Hummingbird Quadtych Painting

"Attraction" is a new acrylic quadtych on gallery canvas that just came off my easel last week. I've actually been wanting to paint this for quite some time, a couple of years actually.

It all started one spring when I went to the nursery to get the annuals for my back porch. I have a very sunny location in the backyard so I love geraniums for my pots out there as they are so hardy, colorful and sun & heat tolerant.

I had always gotten zonal gernaiums but this particular year, I saw cascade geraniums and thought for my hanging pots at least, they would be perfect. What I didn't realize was, cascade geraniums attract..............

HUMMINGBIRDS!!!! Imagine my happy surprise at this discovery.

So now each summer, cascade geraniums fill my hanging pots out back and I am treated to the site of hummingbirds fluttering around on a daily basis.

This painting has already flown off to it's new home....I hope it will be enjoyed each day, for a long time to come. www.artfulcreations.etsy.com

Monarchs Emerging - Acrylic Quadtych

Has it really been almost a month since I last blogged?? I cannot believe it, where am I....what have I been doing....why did I wait, am I still alive?? All good questions, I've just been here, in the studio, alive, painting away and maybe, I don't know , carried away too because I was shocked to see how long it has been since I last posted. I'll have to pay a lot more attention next time.

Some people have wardrobe malfunctions, technical problems, you name it, depending of course on what profession they happen to be in. Me, I've had a camera man problem. In other words, the guy behind the camera, the one that usually takes my painting photos (aka Chris) has been really busy these days and so we just got down to work today, taking some photos of paintings that have been waiting very patiently to be photographed.

This is one of my latest paintings......"Monarchs Emerging" paying tribute to my favorite butterflies, perched on an apple blossom tree.

This piece is made up of 4 canvases, each 1 1/2" deep and measuring a total of 18"h x 25" w. Two canvases that measure 8"h x 8" w and 2 that measure 6"h x 4" w.

I've also just learned about the concept of measuring my paintings to include the negative space. Not just what the pieces measure if you just push them together but measuring them as they are displayed, with the exact amount of space inbetween each panel and the whole display being taken into consideration for the total measurment. I must have seemed dim as this concept was explained to me because it took me quite a while to get it, the measuring stick and I have never been great friends.....give me a ruler and I can miss measure quite a lot of things, draw a straight line.......are you kidding, can others really achieve that with a straight ruler?? Anyway, all kidding aside, Celebrations Gallery put me onto the concept of measuring properly ,who knew, you learn something new everyday if you pay attention.

I hope you like this piece. It has to be one of my favorites. Although, anything I paint with this species of butterfly is a favorite, also, any painting that any other artist paints with the beautiful Monarch always captures my attention as well so, maybe I need to GET REAL, I just plain old, love painting these butterflies!! I am however , really getting into the concept of using multiple canvases of different sizes in my work. I think this is a very sculptural look on the wall, something I'm really enjoying exploring. It is very creative, challenging and most of all, fun to lay out the designs on pieces like this.

I'm in the process of closing my Ruby Lane shop and will instead be hosting my canvas work on ETSY.... www.artfulcreations.etsy.com . This piece and others to come soon will all be listed there. That may be another reason I've been MIA the last few weeks, opening a new shop seems to take forever, which I never seem to realize before I start doing it. It is still not done but as some what of an optimist, I will refer to it as a work in progress.

Spring Breaking Through - Tree-Scape Triptych

The latest painting to come off my easel is a very symbolic piece of art....."Spring Breaking Through". The vivid color and happiness of spring, breaking through the darker, colder months of winter. I know everyone, everywhere is a bit disenchanted with winter this year and this piece is meant to portray the excitement of those first few days of spring.

Each panel measures 18" x 6" on 1 1/2" deep gallery wrapped canvas.

Lets hope for an early spring this year, maybe in March we'll all get to see spring breaking through in our own part of the country. www.artfulcreations.etsy.com