Buckle up for a BIG OLE BUNDLE of new paintings! Two major factors inspired this painting frenzy:
A collection release coming up on June 10th through this gallery in Atlanta.
Being pregnant with a baby due June 11th.
A bonus third is that my painting courier only had availability this week to transport everything, sooo all of these factors conspired together and turned me into a painting fiend for the past several weeks! I shared a couple of these paintings in last month’s ITM so I’ll skip over those, but scroll on to read about the newest paintings in the studio.
As always, if you see something you’d like some more info about let me know.
Alright, let’s start with this river. The composition started with a landscape photo I screenshot from my friend’s Instagram story a while back. Things morphed a bit as I mapped things out on the canvas, but the initial photo gave me a good reference point. I never tire of painting rivers and how they have endless variations. The things I love about this particular one are the pinks in the mountain and shoreline and the choppier palette knife marks I’ve otherwise been veering away from lately.
Next up, this sweepy landscape. Honestly I don’t recall much conscious thought going into this one - it just came together quickly and effortlessly. It somehow feels simultaneously light and grounded, neutral yet full of color. I’m excited to see the home where this one ends up.
And now, we get into a more experimental piece. Yippee!! This one was inspired by a painting I did on raw linen earlier this year, however with this one I used raw canvas. The feel was understandably different than linen, but I am really enjoying working on unprimed surfaces overall. Raw canvas holds paint so differently than my usual gessoed canvases and unlocks a totally new range of visual textures. Whenever I try to use washy layers on gessoed canvas it ends up looking flimsy and flat, but raw canvas brings a depth and ethereal quality to those layers instead.
Back to Jordan Pond! In my last ITM email I had just started this painting, and now it’s finished. Still not quiiite as loose as I initially planned it to be, but I’m still pleased with the finished painting. I also modified a few things from the original photo (for example, the stream was a gravel path). I may have to revisit this one for a this a third time on an unprimed surface and see how it turns out.
Like I said, I never tire of painting rivers. Sue me!
The last time I painted this scene was for a little 12x12” oil painting a few years back, and I wanted to revisit the image from a drive to Scottish Highlands with a new approach. This time I used acrylics and focused more on blocks of color and light rather than trying to capture too many little details. I still wanted those pops of the red flowers in the foreground, but tried to let the layers in the landscape take center stage.
Once again experimenting on raw canvas, this time with an abstract. I started out with the washy layers, built it up with more brushstrokes, and sparingly added a few palette knife layers here and there. Toward the end I brought in some chalk pastel and smaller brush details, and overall I love where it ended up. She feels like a beachy day in late June. I’d like to come back to this concept later and try to do without some of the heavier palette knife marks to really let the raw canvas shine through.
This one is not raw canvas, but was inspired by that original raw linen piece I mentioned earlier. I was trying to recreate the softness of that piece on gessoed canvas, and using a large round brush helped make that happen. The whole image is brighter than it would be on a raw surface, but I’m still quite pleased with how it turned out!
Welp, that’s it for now, and probably for the next few months (due to the aforementioned pending baby). I’m planning one last State of the Studio post before starting maternity leave, then I’ll take some time away and hope to be back with updates in September or October! As always, THANK YOU so much for reading and keeping an eye on what’s happening in my studio these days.
They are all so beautiful - they make me feel serene- and I love the surprise of the pinks and lighter blues. I love hearing your thoughts - I find the process of creation to be endlessly fascinating. OH and I'm on a Wilder Woods kick now! I'm enjoying his music. Anyway thx for all this wonderful info and YAY for Baby #2!
The landscapes are beautiful