First Day Of Spring.....

My newest painting was finished this past week, my last one for a while.  My studio is being cleaned, sorted through and boxed up over the next week or so.  It is amazing how much junk I found and also located things I've been looking for as well.  Too many art supplies and too little time I guess.  I probably will not be getting back to painting until July as we'll have things to do on our new house that we want to take care of right away (to actually make sure we do them) and also, we want to spend some time driving around and doing things in our new area, to get to know everything and have a bit of fun as well.

Last week we finished all the odds and ends in the basement and I stumbled upon a bit of a surprise. 
I found our old coffee table buried under a pile of boxes that had accumulated over it through the years ( I knew about the boxes so that was no shock ) but the coffee table had quite a pile of nuts on it.....yes, nuts and nuts mean that there was a squirrel in my basement at some point enjoying a meal.  I'm so glad he left before I could run into him down there, I would have screamed my head off.  We're leaving NY for Orlando on June 12 and while most of the work is done, there are still some things to sort through.  Hopefully no more squirrel surprises though.....yuk.

Anyway, this little chickadee is 6" x 6" on gallery canvas and the bird, tree and greenery are all done with stucco for extra texture. 

An Abstract Tree-Scape

This week I got the bug to work on a contemporary piece, a quadtych (4 panel) tree-scape, "Extensions".  Sometimes when I'm planning a multi canvas painting, I will run down into my basement and grab a bunch of assorted sized canvases and just begin by arranging them in all different configurations on my studio floor.  I play around with the layout until I think I've got something that pleases me , as I try to keep in mind the design that I want to create as well being that has a great deal to do with the sizes of the canvas and the layout I have chosen. 

This piece has a very abstract background of different slashing shapes (((( and ))))) .  Many times with my paintings I work with  very wet surfaces and watery paints so I must lay the canvases out flat.  With this piece the varying background colors and shapes were done very wet, while the foreground tree branch was done in a dark, bold...thick black acrylic paint.    

The end result was exactly what I had in mind for this painting when I started it, contemporary, colorful and abstract.  All artists have a varied and unique process for their creations and for me, when I'm doing a multi-canvas painting, I like to play around and arrange things and then experiment with color to determine what the base of my painting will be built on.