Leaves

Leaves turn, then fall

Silence

A cacophony of color

before the sleep

  

Patina and a Painting

I love the patina of well-used hand tools!

Acrylic on canvas

16" x 20" x 3/4"

Another weekend has come and gone.  I began a new 36" x 36" painting and have deemed the above painting to be finished.   It's good to have a painting in progress.  So much easier to pick up the paintbrushes after a day at the office, once a painting has been started!!  So much less energy... and thought ...and effort required to sustain the work compared to initiating the work.

Spent just a little time in the garden cutting down the rampant phlox and harvesting the last of the tomatoes before the deluge. It felt good.  (Way too little time spent gardening these past few years.)  And I spent some time visiting your wonderful blogs, where I find so much inspiration....Thank you!!

Etsy Shop.....Now "Stocked"

 "Ambitions"

Mixed media on canvas

10" x 10"

You might have noticed......last weekend I finally "stocked" my Etsy shop with a couple of mixed media collages from my June Remnants show.  (Mind you, it's only taken me FIFTEEN months to actually upload an item to my shop! )  So I'm in a bit of a celebratory mood because, you know what they say -- "Beginning is half done."  Not that I have a zillion more things ready to upload to the shop.  But I do have some possibilities, and I'm beginning to see that there could be a sort of rhythm to this process.  "Ambitions" will be in the shop sometime this weekend.

A heartfelt WELCOME to new and continuing followers!

Have a wonderful day and weekend!  And if you have small children in your life, be sure to check out Joel Henriques' blog.  I discovered this Portland designer months ago while perusing blogs.  Made by Joel is devoted to creative, artistic, play (and learning) activities for smallfries and I think it's awesome.  Sure wish it had been around when my children were small.  (Of course, Joel was around then, but only a youngster himself!!)

Jill Mayberg: Painting Good Cheer

I have a dog. And not just any dog, but a beagle. And not just any beagle, but a surrogate beagle -- a stand-in for the lovable, devoted, irascible, barking, bolting, BITING beagle that we brought into our home as a puppy and returned to the breeder two years later. Oh, we were so full of hope for the wonderful companion that Harley was going to be! And the day I put him in his portable crate and loaded him into the back end of the breeder’s car -- never to be seen again -- was, quite literally, one of the saddest that I can remember. (Ever give up on a dog? It feels really lousy.) Fortunately, a couple of months later, I met artist Jill Mayberg at Art in the Pearl in Portland, and brought home my new “beagle” who greets me daily from my kitchen wall.

Acrylic on canvas

Image courtesy of Jill Mayberg - all rights reserved

Even now, nearly three years later, this painting continues to bring a smile to my face and only the fondest memories of Harley to my mind and heart. Jill’s paintings just have that kind of effect on people. They’re as cheerful and colorful as can be, with interesting layers, variations in surface dimension and quality, and small and intriguing collaged and painted elements within the larger compositions.

Acrylic on canvas
Image courtesy of Jill Mayberg - all rights reserved

Acrylic on canvas

Image courtesy of Jill Mayberg - all rights reserved

Acrylic on canvas

Image courtesy of Jill Mayberg  - all rights reserved

Jill’s a full-time, self-supporting painter who travels to shows around the country annually. And although she lives just across the border, in Washington, I think of her as being a Portland artist because she participates in so many shows here.

Acrylic on canvas

Image courtesy of Jill Mayberg - all rights reserved

A nature and animal lover, Jill says she finds much inspiration while on her daily walks and that her ideas have "evolved over the years from a confluence of traditions such as primitive folk art, expressionism, and abstract modernism. "

Acrylic on canvas

Image courtesy of Jill Mayberg - all rights reserved

Although I don’t yet own one of Jill’s original works, I have two of her prints and I have frequently displayed a half-dozen of her greeting cards on a shelf because they are so lovely en masse. Visit Jill's Etsy shop,  and her new blog to see more of her work and to find out where she’ll be showing next.

New Painting...

Acrylic on canvas (in progress?)

24" x 24"

Painting (or printing, or drawing...) is hard work. At least for me it is. Especially when I don't begin with a sketch and don't have a definite palette in mind. I started this painting on Thursday night and spent most of Friday and yesterday working on it. There must be at least 10 paintings of varying compositions beneath the surface -- some of them in glorious, deeply saturated colors, and some of them in pastels. (Afterall, this was an attempt to respond to an invitation to participate in Cathy Nichols' Found Art Friday, the theme of which was "Everything Blooming" (as in: spring). The intent of Found Art Friday, by the way, is to do something spontaneously. Well, since Friday came and went, and since my painting became a major project that went decidely autumnal, I did not submit it. However, several on-the-mark pieces, were submitted including Cathy's own, lovely encaustic piece.

Below, is the iteration of my painting that I awoke to yesterday-- before I started playing around with all the colors of the rainbow. The "gray" on the right side was actually white, so you can imagine how intense the yellow/ochre sections of the painting were.

Due to the inordinate amount of time fussing with the painting, I am now behind on my posts. But I hope to have a another post up, featuring the work of a wonderful artist, by Tuesday.

Another painting in progress...

Well, I took the large ring and cube painting to Oysterville intending to finish it, but I wasn't brave enough to continue working on it. So....I started a new, smaller painting. Now I have two unfinished works to deal with! The numbers and letters are from a railroad sign along the tracks that lead to Bellingham. 16" x 20"

Work in Progress

I'm halfway into this painting. It's 30 x 40. Have to put some more time into the left half of the painting before determining what happens next on the right side.

India Silks

Here are some cropped images of decorative papers that I worked on last weekend. The full sheets were 18" x 24". I was thinking of beautiful sari silks from India while I was painting and printing them. I love the quality of the gold gouache paint, which of course, is not truly apparent in these scanned images.

Acrylic painting by my sister, Cathy Cain.

Abstract on canvas. 24" x 36"

Hydrangea in Mason Jar

8"x10"

Acrylic on canvas

by Cathy Cain

I love this little beauty that my sister painted. She did it while visiting us on a summer day.

White Flower. 24" x 24"

This is an acrylic painting that employs some reductive technique on the circles. If you click on it, you can get a better idea. The photo lighting is not good. 2007