Nearby Meadow

Nearby Meadow
plein air oil  8" x 10"
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was $195.00

November/December Holiday 20% Off Special $174.00

As I do every Holiday season, my paintings are marked down.  While I can't go back and change every post, if there is a painting that you would like, please email me!  

Once again this meadow of sun flowers was at Bear Creek Park, right next to our house.  The sun flowers were amazing this summer and being right out my door I couldn't stay away!  I loved how almost the whole hillside was covered with flowers.  Some years there are only patches of flowers.  Some years there are hillsides of cerulean colored grasses.  Who knows what next summer will bring.  It seems to me that if there were that many sun flowers, that millions of seeds would have fallen to the ground and millions of flowers would return.  Who knows?

Up The Hill

Up The Hill

plein air oil  8" x 6"

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was $100.00

November/December Holiday 20% Off Special $80.00

As I do every Holiday season, my paintings are marked down.  While I can't go back and change every post, if there is a painting that you would like, please email me!  

This painting was done in Stratton Open Space, about 1/2 mile from my house.  The sun flowers in this park were not every where, but grew in random locations.  I focused in on the blooms and yellows at the top of the hill.

Over The Meadow

Over The Meadow

plein air oil  8" x 10"

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was $195.00

November/December Holiday 20% Off Special $174.00

As I do every Holiday season, my paintings are marked down.  While I can't go back and change every post, if there is a painting that you would like, please email me!  

I have several summer paintings that I haven't posted.  You'll be seeing those the next few days.  The big meadow in Bear Creek Park, right next to our house, was filled with sunflowers this summer.  It was wonderful to paint there.  I did many times while the blooms were out.

Small & Wild

Small &Wild

plein air oil  8" x 10"

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$195.00 + $10. s/h

The next few paintings in the sunflower series are also done in Bear Creek Park, but in a field across the street and a bit south from the last two.  I found it very challenging to photograph the painting in the exact yellow.  Anyone else have trouble photoing yellow?  If so, what do you do about it?

The fields of yellow seem to go on and on!  These aren't the large, big-faced sun flowers that one thinks of as sunflowers.  But they're small and grow wild.  They evoke happiness!

Dip In The Meadow

Dip In The Meadow

plein air oil  8" x 10"

SOLD

$195.00 + $10. s/h

This is the 2nd of 5 sunflower paintings that I've done in the last week.  I guess that I'm channeling Van Gogh's sun flowers and Monet's series.  This meadow is along a path that I walk on regularly in near by Bear Creek Park.  I love the way the dip causes movement in the grasses, bushes, and colors. 

The photo below shows my set-up.  This was about the only patch of shade that day.  I focused in on just the dip area and not the whole hill side.  The challenge with this piece was the abundance of color.  Yes, there were lots of sunflowers but also lots of sage, different colored grasses, a variety of bushes, etc.  If I were to go back and paint this again I might try another approach...ie:  simplify all of the grasses and focus on the sunflowers.  What do you think? 

Meadow Of Gold

Meadow Of Gold

plein air oil  8" x 10"

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$195.00 + $10. s/h

We have been having monsoon rains here in Colorado for much of the last 5 weeks.  Our meadows are greener than ever and filled with wild flowers, especially these little sun flowers.

I live near Bear Creek Park, an almost 700 acre county park, which is filled with these flowers right now.  Whole hillsides look yellow from a distance.  It is so beautiful!

Sun Kissed

Sun Kissed
Oil  6" x 6"
SOLD
$100.00 + $10. s/h

And another sunflower from our backyard.  I know that sun-kist is used for oranges and orange juice, but, I think that it works for sunflowers.

And, a photo from our garden:

Summer Sun

Summer Sun
Oil  12" x 12"
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$295.00 + $10. s/h

My last few posts were of fields of sunflowers.  Now a couple of sunflowers close up.  We have these growing in our back yard, as well as the field by our house.  I love it when paintings are right there in front of me!

Golden Hue

Golden Hue
plein air oil  8" x 10"
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$195.00 + $10 s/h

This view of Bear Creek Park was done almost by just turning around where I was in the last post.  I was standing on the side of a path with fields of sunflowers on both sides.  It's just been a spectacular wildflower summer!  No complaints here!

Here's a picture from the park:

As I said in the last post, if you squint the meadow is just yellow!

Blaze Of Yellow

Blaze Of Yellow
plein air oil  8" x 10"
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$195.00 + $10. s/h

This is another Bear Creek Park sunflowers plein air piece.  Once again, I headed over to the park to paint before breakfast.  As I said, we live right next door to this incredible almost 700 acre park.  I've walked its' trails thousands of times, painted it in different seasons dozens of times, enjoyed its' sunrises for years.

Normally, I tone my canvases in yellow ochre, but here I used cad red light.  I love the way the bits of color peek through.

Yellow Orchestra

Yellow Orchestra
plein air oil  8" x 10"
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$195.00 + $10 s/h

While much of the country is having a drought, especially California, here in Colorado we've had more rain this summer than in the last 20 years.  Every thing so so green and there are wildflowers every where!!  The last 3 weeks we've had fields of the most amazing, tiny sunflowers.  In years past the meadows were a beautiful yellow ochre.  Right now when you look at a field while squinting, you see nothing but yellow.

This is a recent plein air piece done in Bear Creek Park, right next to our house.  I went down several mornings with my coffee and paints.  We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful location!

Summer Sun

Summer Sun

Oil on cradled panel  12" x 12"

$295.00 + $10. s/h

Day 7 in the 30 in 30 Challenge

Our summer garden has different kinds of tall sunflowers.  I'm sure they each have names which I don't know.  This one, which we have more of, reminds me of large daisies.  Whereas the one I posted yesterday seems more like the typical sunflower.  Because this one has smaller seeds it attracts more of the smaller birds.

I love this quote:  "The good life is lived best by those with gardens."  I guess I have a good life!  This quote came from one of the books our son gave me for Christmas:  An Absorbing Errand, How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way To Mastery by Janna Malamud Smith.  One of the chapters talks about the similarity of gardening and art.  She talks about how life is better when you have a continuous practice that "holds your desire, demands your attention and requires effort" like gardening.  What a great chapter.  I grew up in a family of gardeners.  Long before I painted I planted and nurtured gardens.  It was something that was so easy to do while our kids played in the yard.  No one plays in our yard now, the garden gets less nurturing, most of my attention and effort goes toward my painting.  But my life is still good because as she says "The good life is lived by those with gardens!"

Following The Sun

Following The Sun
Oil on cradled panel  12" x 12"
$295.00 + $10 s/h

Day 6 in the 30 in 30 Challenge

With so much of the country having cold weather ....18 degrees and 4 inches of snow here in Colorado Springs...I thought that I'd post some paintings from our garden this past summer.  We always grow a huge patch of sunflowers in the middle of the yard.  Actually, we don't plant the sunflowers anymore, they reseed themselves every year.  They grow to over 10 feet and sit in a raised garden.  This is so great!  While sitting on our deck we can look right at them and enjoy their color as well as all of the birds that they attract.

This was our yard last July.  

For Vincent

16" x 20" oil on stretched canvas
$495.00 + $10. s/h
contact me if interested

This is my submission for Michelle Burnett's Following the Master's blog. When I taught middle school I often did units on famous artists. Van Gogh was one of my favorites. I would read "Camille and the Sunflowers" to my students and we would discuss many of the social issues in the book. In the story Vincent had very few friends; but, he was friends with the postman and his son. The son was very upset because the people in the village were mean to Vincent and threw rocks at him. Additionally, no one bought his paintings. Many great conversations developed with my 12 year olds about how Van Gogh's life might have been different if people could have accepted him with all of his illnesses, and how wealthy the ancestors of his patrons might be today.

Weekend with the Masters

12" x 16" oil
NFS
I spent the Labor Day weekend, and a few additional days, in San Francisco helping our daughter move into an apartment. She graduated from college in June and has her first job in SF. What a great city. She took this painting with her!
While in SF I had lunch w/ fellow blogger Nancy Hartley.



I am spending parts of this weekend attending some of the events at the Weekend With the Masters at the Colorado Springs Fines Arts Center. This is sponsored by American Artist Magazine and has so many great artists giving demos, lectures, and workshops. Yesterday I attended Quang Ho's lecture: Nuts & Bolts: Everything I Wish I Knew Before I Started Painting. Originally from Vietnam refugee who moved to the US in '75, Quang lives in Denver. Some oif this main points were:
-no shape, color, size in a painting should ever be the same
-strive for maximum randomness
-soften your edges
-flow--everything should be visually connected to everything else
-shape is the secret to painting (although he has other secrets)
-when you make a decision it's never wrong. it's wrong if you don't make a decision.

I took several pages of notes. Those are just a few hightlights. He also has a video w/ lots more information that I would love to see for review.