Still enthralled with buffaloes! With this one I was thinking about how everyone thinks of the plains of Kansas as a bit drab, when actually it is teaming with all kinds of beautiful life. As a child I remember being in a field of huge sunflowers that towered high over my head and became the inspiration for the giant sunflowers in this piece.
“Home on the Plains” is on a 16 x 20 inch cradled wood panel.
“Pachyderm in the Posies” is a mixed media Citra Solv collage and paint on an 18 x 24 cradled wood panel. I had fun doodling details into the flowers with both paint pens and pen and ink.
This piece is currently at Tessera Fine Art Gallery in Wichita, hanging with several other animal friends!
“Letter Home” is mostly collaged papers with just a touch of ink and topped off with a light coat of walnut wood stain. It features a old envelope from the days when 8 cents would mail a letter. The doilies under the vase and muffin, are made from a foreign newspaper while the stamp in the background as well as on the letter are from the United States. The tag that dangles from the teabag is made from an old ticket. A fountain pen lays next to the letter, as if it just finished writing. Many of the pieces in the background, as well as an accent on the vase, and the wrapper on the muffin are made from the inside pattern of security envelopes.
The feeling is one of missing those back “home” but settled into new surroundings, enjoying a bit of tea with a morning muffin. What we do today to keep in touch with old friends and family through social media on our computers and phones used to happen by mail. I can imagine my grandmother (who loved lavender) sitting at this scene, enjoying letters from loved ones and writing messages of her own.
“Letters Home” is on a 10 x 10 inch wood panel, and is currently hanging at Tessera Fine Art Gallery in Wichita.
Several times a year I hang art as a temporary featured artist at various businesses like coffee shops, banks, or perhaps venues like churches or other public areas. For the months of September and October, I will have artwork in the meeting room at the lovely Dillon Nature Center in Hutchinson, Kansas.
Originally a 27 acre recreational park for the employees of the then locally owned Dillons grocery stores, in the 1970s it was given to the city of Hutchinson and turned into a nature conservation site. According to the Hutchinson Rec website, this 100-acre “wild arboretum” is designated as a National Urban Wildlife Sanctuary. There are more than 300 species of woody plants, hundreds of varieties of wildflowers and native grasses, 200 species of birds, and a large variety of other wildlife along three miles of National Recreation trails.
My children have grown up taking school trips to this ever improving nature retreat, and now my grandchildren ejoy to new playscape area and the hands-on nature experience. For those who like to fish, there is a spring-fed pond stocked for fishing. There are also areas for picnicing and beautifully maintained scenic paths for a stroll…. not to mention photo opportunities!
Inside Visitor Center features interactive exhibits, a classroom, an observation deck, and gift shop. Everything looks so fun and inviting!
My focus, however, was on the blank walls of the large meeting room.
Task at hand… fill them with nature themed art!
Finished a new piece this week as a companion to “Forest Queen” and “Princess on the Prairie”. This one is “Blue Bonnet Belle”. Can you guess where she is from?
She didn’t look like much starting out…
Almost done… ready to go back in with pen and ink and add some detailing.
Close ups..
The final touch was her hair with gold F.W. acrylic ink and a nib pen.
And she is done!
This piece is headed to Tessera Fine Art Gallery in Wichita. If interested in the piece, call (316) 262-2435.
Prints will be available in my etsy shop.
Last fall I took an abstract drawing class from the talented Brian Hinkle at Tessera Fine Art Gallery in Wichita. This is one of the charcoal sketches I did under his tutelage. I was pretty happy with this piece, so decided to turn it into a painting.
I used mainly acrylic paint, but I did end up adding some highlights with pastels. It was a lot of fun, and I am considering doing more in this style. I now have a much greater appreciation for abstract art!
If you would like a print of this piece, you can find it in my etsy shop. The original is currently hanging at Tessera Fine Art Gallery in Wichita.
I can’t decide which is my favorite part of this piece, the red pot made from some of my monoprinted paper stash, or the little bird who has come to perch by this pot of flowers. that I imagine sitting on a worn turquoise painted window sill in an old farmhouse.
The original mixed media painting hangs at Tessera Fine Art Gallery. Find prints in my etsy shop.
I have been working on this collage and paint still life, “Abundance” for awhile now. I work on it for a bit, and then let it sit for awhile. Later I come back to it and add some more, and then let it sit again. It has had kind of an evolving quality to it. I never know exactly the direction a piece will take when I began to work on it.
I knew this would be a still life with at least one vase and flowers, but I didn’t know a bowl would appear, and then I didn’t know it would be filled with pears, and then finally, one last pear outside the bowl would be added because, well, it just felt right.
I do my best work when I try to just let the piece lead me instead of trying to force it into a predetermined image in my mind. The pots were cut out of some of my monoprint paper from a printing spree I had a couple of weeks ago. The flowers are a lot of little bits of papers torn and pieced in a process that I call painting with paper. The background has assorted papers covered with paint and stenciled with my Dots in a Row stencil.
Finally, I added shading with my Derwent Inktense watersoluble pencils.
This piece will soon be hanging at Tessera Fine Art Gallery in Wichita.
Prints available in my etsy shop!
We have had some unseasonable warm days, and it has definitely put me in the mood for spring. I can almost imagine wading through a thick, luscious, field of poppies on a bright warm and sunny day.
What do you imagine when you think of spring?
This week I have had a lot of fun making a big stack of pretty papers using a printing plate and various tools, mostly hand made.
One of those papers found its way into this piece as the vase, and more bits and tidbits make up the tulips and stems. I imagine this scene with the light of the morning sun shining in through a window casting a bit of a glow on everything… It invokes a bit of calm and stillness for me, like someone took the time in the early morning to gather tulips and is sitting at a sunny kitchen table arranging them. I can almost smell the fresh air and see the cottage curtains flapping in the breeze!
But since I paint better than I garden, and am more likely to linger at my studio work table than the kitchen table, this is my alternative.
Hope you have a beautiful, sunshiny day!
If you are interested in this piece, contact Tessera Fine Art Gallery at (316) 262-2435.
Prints available in my etsy shop here.
from victory road 