Another View Near Yellowstone

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
contact me if interested

This peak is from my husband's trip to Yellowstone. Again, I repeated the cerulean from the sky and clouds in the mountain. This allows your eyes to go easily from one to the other. I also moved the clouds, peak and foothills just a little (artistic license) so that your eyes softly zig-zag back and forth across the painting.

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
contact me if interested

There's a lot of sage in South Park. There's a lot of sage all over the west, actually. I wanted to show open land, and brush in the idea of sage. I like painting the upper part of the sky with cobalt and white and the area of the sky near the ground using cerulean and white. I repeated the cerulean in the sage.

Glow over Buffalo Peak

9 x 12 oil on canvas panel
$100.00 + $10. s/h
SOLD


I never tire of sitting on our South Park ridge and enjoying the afternoon clouds. They are different everyday: the values, colors and shapes change every few minutes. Just this view provides me with daily paintings.

Yellow Ochre Clouds

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
contact me if interested

Our kids, both home for the holiday, are now gone. The house is quiet, empty and a little lonely. I loved having them here. But, I can get back to painting and posting.

The clouds and skies in the sunrises seen from our deck, are strong, bold and bright. I use a lot of cad yellow for these paintings. The morning clouds in South Park, a large semi-open area of Colorado about one hour west of here, are a much calmer, softer yellow. I wasn't happy using cad yellow in these paintings. So, for the yellow in these clouds I used yellow ochre. It works.

Dark Orange

6" x 9" oil on canvas on foam board

While painting this poppy series, I constantly struggled with the "dark oranges." I was adding alizaron and getting a redder orange. But I didn't see the dark orange that way. Finally, I went outside my regular palette and used magenta, part of my extended palette. I like this color mixture much better. I guess the extended palette is kind of like the extended family: great to have.

More Poppies

6 x 6 oil on canvas panel


I painted poppies regularly while they were blooming. While looking at the reds I think I should paint poinsettias. A more seasonal series.

Flanders Field

6 x 6 oil on canvas panel



When I was in 5th grade, I had to memorize Flanders Field. I don't remember what we were studying, or why we had to memorize this poem. But, to this day, I have a visual image of the graveyard with poppies growing randomly and haphazardly; unlike the perfect rows and rows of crosses.
We have three areas of poppies in our gardens. They grow well and easily in Colorado; not all flowers do well at this altitude (6,000 feet here in Colorado Springs.) I love painting them, and have done so dozens of times. I just wish their blooming season was a little bit longer.

Warm--temperatures and colors

6 x 6 oil on canvas panel


The temperature in Colorado Springs was 5 degrees yesterday; way too cold to go outside and photograph my recent paintings. So, I'm posting a series of poppies from this past summer, before I was blogging, which I painted in our garden on warm, beautiful days.

Morning Sky

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
contact me if interested

This is another cup of coffee view from our deck. I painted this one with the 6 flat and definately see that it's a little more geometric than my filbert paintings. However, I like the layers of morning clouds.

Yellowstone Sky

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
contact me if interested

This sky is from a trip my husband and a friend took to Yellowstone. The views there might be almost as incredible as the ones here in Colorado.

Clouds at Sunrise

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + &10. s/h
SOLD

This is another incredible sunrise from our deck. While the sky is cool in the morning,I found myself mixing both warm and cool yellows.

Afternoon View

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
SOLD

This is yet another view of the Colorado skies from our kitchen doors and deck. In the afternoons the clouds often build up and we get short, but heavy storms. The storms end, the clouds dissipate, and our vast blue sky returns.
I recently attended an evening demo by southern Colorado artist Tim Deibler. He was in Colorado Springs teaching a workshop at Cottonwood Art Academy. He uses a 6 flat for all of his landscapes. I've always used a 6 filbert. So, I thought I would try something different. Using a flat is really making me push to soften my edges.

They Rain and Snow on Ev'ryone

9 x 12 oil on canvas panel
$100.00 + $10. s/h
contact me if interested
Sold

This painting is done from a photo our son took skiing at Steamboat Springs, Colorado. I'm pretty pleased with the cool feeling it portrays. I used thalo blue and thalo turquoise (which I only use on special occasions) to get the affect of how cold it can be in the Colorado mountains.

They Don't Only Block the Sun

9 x 12 oil on canvas panel
$100.00 + $10. s/h
contact me if interested


I do have to say, that one of the things I miss about working, is that I'm not always up early enough to see the sun rise. This is the view from our kitchen. I don't know how many hundreds of days I looked out the sliding doors and watched this while drinking my coffee. The morning clouds and cool sun create incredible sun rises.
Again, I tried to to simplify the foreground and have the center of attention be the entire magnificent vista. I wanted to check Maynard Dixon's book, Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon out of our library, but it is only available to look at in the reference room. So, I'll have to spend an afternoon down there soon.

Castles in the Air

9 x 12 oil on canvas panel
$100.00 + $10.00 s/h
contact me if interested

Again, this piece is influenced by Maynard Dixon. I tried to create a simple composition, with only essential elements. In the west we have magnificent vistas and amazing cloud formations. Often when plein-aire painting, I start the piece outside and finish it in the studio using a photo as a reference.

Feather Canyons

9 x 12 oil on canvas panel
$100.00 + $10. s/h
contact me if interested

Last week I saw a Maynard Dixon video purchased at the Tuscon Museum of Art where his work is on exhibit. I had always thought of him as a western painter and the man who designed so many covers for Sunset Magazine decades ago. I had not realized what a great illustrator he was. And, I didn't know that Dorothea Lange was his second wife. A poster of her famous photogragh, Migrant Mother, hung in my classroom for years.
His bold, simplified, marching clouds are what always drew me to his landscapes. His paintings often had low horizons and cloud formations that may look unreal to the person who has never seen a western sky.

Tagged

I've been tagged by art friend Kelley MacDonald, who I met at Carol Marine's workshop in Santa Fe. Thank you, Kelley! So, on with the game!

The rules:
1. Put a link in your posting to the person who tagged you.
2. List 7 unusual things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 other bloggers at the end of your post (*including their blog links*) and comment on their blogs to let them know they have been tagged.

7 unusual things about myself:
1. I won an egg decorating contest in 3rd grade. The prize was a silver dollar. My egg's hair was made from turquoise feathers cut off of a feather duster.
2. My husband and I have known each other since we were 12.
3. I have studied 5 languages: French, Swedish, Hebrew, Farsi, and Spanish. But, only ever dreamt in one of them.
4. I spent spring break of 1978 in Afghanistan.
5. While working one week on a ranch in Dove Creek, Colorado (with no plumbing or electricity) I learned to lasso, spent most of one day riding through drought-dry plains and across a river rounding up escaped cattle, and participated in cattle branding and castration.
6. I bake great pies.
7. My least favorite jobs have been: ironing 6 hours /day, operating a cherry picker to pick the apples from the tops of trees, washing the inside, back windows of cars.

I am tagging:
1. George Coll whose western landscapes show the essense of light
2. the urban scenes of John Harrell
3. Daily Painter Kit Hevron Mahoney who paints incredible poppies
4. Robin Weiss : great composition, sketches, and paintings of Uganda
5. the colorful portraits of Sharman Owings
6. the multi-talented Marilyn Webberley who created incredible vases for the Mikado
7. Janice Warriner who is now a Colorado artist

I have looked at all of your blogs from day 1. Have fun.