You Gotta Love Her

6" x 6" oil on canvas on foam board
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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This cow was just standing there looking right at me. I kept wondering if I walked a little closer and tried to pet her what she would do. I think she was as interested in me as I was in her.

Home on the Range

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


These cattle are on an open range on the way to Antero Reservoir. There is a fence, and a cattle guard on this county road, out by the highway, but no fence on the range. So, the cattle are pretty close; sometimes right on the dirt road. They turn and walk away when you get too near. It seems all they do is eat.

Where the Buffalo Roam

6" x 8" oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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There are several herds of buffalo near our mountain property. Even though this guy looks pretty close, there is a double fence between us. The trees in the background are miles away. There's not much growing where the buffalo graze, they really trample the earth. It's a wonder they find enough to eat. I love it when we drive by and they're grazing by the road. Of course, sometimes they're on the far side of the field and are just a dark blur.

South Platte River 2

6" x 8" oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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No matter how many times I hike in the same valley or paint the same view, it is always completely different: a different time of day, different colors and values, different season. I used Naples yellow again in this piece, also using it to warm up the cloud reflection in the river. That's about the only thing warm in the South Platte. The water is really cold. The elevation here is about 8,000 feet and the river water is rain and snow run off from even higher mountains. When our kids were small they could only wade and play in the water for a short time.

Billy Boy

6" x 6" oil on canvas on foam board
$100. 00 + $10. s/h
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When I'm painting, songs and poems about the subject matter often flow through my mind. While painting these cherries, I was thinking about Billy Boy. I'm not sure who wrote the song, who Billy Boy was, or even if he could bake a pie. I have made a cherry pie. It is really time consuming; you have to pit every cherry. Maybe I need to turn up my music so my mind doesn't wander quite so much.

Patriotic Cherries

6" x 6" oil on canvas on foam board

$100.00 + $10. s/h

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This painting looks very American to me with the red, white and blue. Maybe that's where "it's as American as cherry pie" came from: a patriotic painting!

Naples Yellow Clouds

6" x 8" oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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Our daughter, Coley, and I just went to the Ernest L. Blumenschein exhibit at the
Denver Art Museum. Blumenschein was a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists and a renowned painter of 19th and 20th century western art. The exhibit was amazing. I couldn't stop looking at Blumenschein's clouds. Especially since I've recently been painting a cloud series. Coley commented that his clouds were so creamy. My clouds are bold, strong, bright, warm, cool, yellow ochre, but not creamy. Artist Martha Mans and I were discussing how he got his creamy clouds. She suggested Naples Yellow; it's a traditional yellow and probably part of his palette. So, I have a tube from a past workshop and painted these clouds with Naples Yellow.

South Platte River

9" x 12" oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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I think reflections add a lot of interest to a painting. Usually, light values reflect just a bit darker, so I painted the reflection in the river using the darker value of the cloud. (And, dark values usually reflect just a bit lighter.) The water color also affects the value of the reflection.

Sunset Over Buffalo Peak

6 x 8 oil on masonite
$100.00 + $10. s/h
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Once again we have an incredible sunset from our ridge. This one is looking just a little more north. With this painting I again used artistic license and left out several tall trees in the front; they were hiding too much of the view of South Park and the sky. I also scraped out and repainted the front ridge several times. The right side went up and repeated the left side almost exactly, and compositionally it didn't work. On the first repaint I just painted out the right ridge, but then the viewer's eye just went off the bottom edge of the piece. Not good. So I added the second small softer blue ridge. That way, your eye goes back and forth, staying in the scene: from ridge to ridge to open space to mountain to mountain to sky to clouds to clouds and back again. A soft, easy back and forth movement. I guess I'm trying to make the viewer's eyes dance with each painting.

Another View Near Yellowstone

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