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Watercolor on Handmade Paper
More work in progress of this painting, Gate of Reverence. This is still in the block in phase. I'm not concerned about being super tight and getting things exactly how I want them at this point. All of that will come later after the initial color block in is complete.
Me and judge Anne Abgott
I just had a wonderful weekend in New Orleans! Saturday was the reception for the Louisiana Watercolor Society’s 44th International Exhibition at the Garden District Gallery. It was a such a treat meeting some of the other artists in the show. I had a chance to meet David Poxon via Skype, since he is in the UK, and a fellow Facebook friend Vicki Monette, whom I got to know through Carrie Waller. So nice to finally meet her in person. All had fabulous work in the show. Sorry I didn’t get to meet Facebook friends, Carrie, Iain Stewart, and Arena Shawn, who couldn’t make the reception but got to see their lovely paintings. Thanks to judge Anne Abgott for including my painting in the show and for jurying such a well balanced beautiful body of work for this exhibition! And a special thank you to all the LWS members who organized the show. Without all of their hard work these events wouldn’t happen!
One of the rooms in the Garden District Gallery
The Garden District Gallery is catty-corner from the famous Commander's Palace Restaurant in the Garden District
I didn’t know the long weekend was going to start off with such an adventure. I had dinner with friends Friday evening when Iarrived only to come out of the restaurant in a torrential downpour, and my phone piercing my ear drums to tell us there were flash flood warnings. Luckily we werein and SUV and my friend had experience driving through flood water. Looking down the side streets off of St. Charles Ave., on the way back to the inn, I was getting a bit nervous seeing water up to the middle of doors on the parked cars! With my friends expert driving, we made it to the street where my car was parked and luckily the water hadn’t passed the bottom of my car door. If I had been parked on the South side of St. Charles, I would have been in trouble! I moved my car to higher ground and waded back to my room with water almost up to my knees! (You will just have to trust me, it was dark and I was a bit scattered to take pictures!) By morning the water was gone and all had gone back to normal.
After the reception Saturday afternoon and dinner, I was lucky to stumble upon the annual Champagne Stroll on Magazine Street! Sunday, I spent the day wondering around the French Quarter and the Garden District, getting inspired by all the beautiful iron work and architecture and taking lots of photos. I’ve already got some potential painting ideas swimming in my head!
Nothing better than this! Jazz in the French Quarter!
Nothing better than this either, a paté sandwich and a glass of iced tea at Le Croissant d'Or Bakery
A pilgrimage to the Avart- Peretti House where Tennessee Williams wrote Streetcar Named Desire, one of the best plays and movies ever!
Ironically the house is currently a shop named "Fleurty Girl"
On a side note, speaking of Streetcar Named Desire, in the movie actress Kim Hunter, won a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1951 for her role as Stella. Iv'e always had an affinity for this actress, because we had the same name until I got married! :-)
Watercolor on Handmade Paper
More progress on this new painting. I'm approaching this one similar to the last painting, Paris Passy Gate, and also to how I would do an oil painting. I'm doing a block in of all the color first, and then will go back and add details and value changes. This is what I call the teenager phase of the painting! I hope it grows up and turns out.
Work in Progress, Watercolor on Handmade Paper, 15" x 22" , 38 cm x 56 cm
Last week I designed and started a new painting also inspired like Paris Passy Gate, by the area where I lived in Paris. This is the third in a "Gate" series. I'm very intrigued by the design of gates and metal work, and like focusing on a detail that lends itself to the composition having abstract qualities and the mystery of what lies beyond.
Watercolor Sketch on Handmade Paper
Spring is my favorite time of year in France. I thought I would share a sketch I did in the Spring of my last year living in Paris, on a visit to Chartres. We had just finished the day site seeing at the Cathedral and sat in the little park just behind it during the magic hour time of the day when the light is golden. This is the back side of the Cathedral, done with ink pen and watercolor. A wonderful moment frozen in time.
Chartres Cathedral is on the Unesco World Heritage List. It is a perfect example of French Gothic Architecture. Construction started in 1145 and continuedover a 26 year period after the fire of 1194. It is in an unbelievable state of preservation with the majority of the original stained glass windows intact and only a few minor changes architecturally since the early 13th century.
Watercolor on Archival Handmade Paper, Framed
22" x 19," (56 cm x 48 cm)
Framed Size 30.35" x 27.5," price includes frame
Accepted into the 2015 Pennsylvania International Exhibition at The Carlisle Arts Learning Center
Inspired by the Passy area where I lived in Paris. For more information please visit my blog by clicking here.
I’m happy to post that Paris Passy Gate, c’est fini! If you have been following my blog or Facebook pages I have been documenting the work in progress on this painting. The last post I had all the block in completed and needed to analyze the painting for value and add details. I hope you can see what a difference value makes! There is a saying among artists and no one I’ve talked to seems to know the origination of the quote. “Color gets all the credit, but value does all the work.” This is so true. You can paint something in a completely different color scheme than what the original subject is, and it will work if the values are correct.
My goal for this painting was to experiment with getting a lot of texture from the pigments and work with a grayed palette. I’m very happy with the outcome. I’m always nostalgic for Paris especially in the spring time, and wanted to capture a place in the area where I lived which is also down the street from the apartment of a very dear friend I met while living there. When we met she was 90 years old but seemed like she was in her 70’s. We met by chance in a cafe and she started speaking with me in English because she had been married to an American man whom she met in Paris on V-day after WW II. From the day we met we got together almost every week for lunch and we are still friends and speak on the phone often. I thought of our special friendship a lot while working on this painting.
Impression:Sunrise, Oil in Canvas, Claude Monet, 1872, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
Ahhhh April in Paris! What a better month to hold an art exhibition. On this day exactly one hundred and forty years ago was an exhibition that changed the art world forever.
On April 15, 1874 a small group of artists put together a small independent art show to buck the establishment of academic painters and salons. This exhibition led by artists Claude Monet featured other works by, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot. They called themselves the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptures, etc.
It wasn’t untilfrench art critique Louis Leroy entitled his nasty, scathing critique in a french newspaper, “Exhibition of Impressionists” for which one particular painting by Claude Monet inspired this title, that the group would eventually be coined the “Impressionists.” It was his, Impression: Sunrise.
When I lived in Paris I was so fortunate to see this painting many times as well as other works by Monet, Renoir and Morisot at the Musée Mormottan Monet, which is in the 16th arrondissement only a few blocks from where I lived. Originally a hunting lodge on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, it is a gem of a museum. It has been bequeathed with many beautiful works of art over the years, most notably in 1966, Michel Monet’s collection of works inherited from his father.
What I love about Monet’scollection here is there are works that seem to be works in progress and those that weredone during his later years when he was afflicted with cataracts. With these one can get a sense of his painting process. And the color palette from the cataract years is much warmer with golds and yellows, not typically Monet but are gorgeous.
It wasn’t until the third exhibition by these plus other independent artists that they gave in and officially called them selves “Impressionists.”
Today on the birthday of this major art movement I wanted to pay homage to the “Artists Independent” who later became known as “Impressionists,” the painting that coined the term, and the Museum where it currently residues!
A side note, Impression: Sunrise was stolen from the Musée Marmottan Monet in 1985, recovered in 1990 and has been back on display since 1991.
These are the artists that participated in the first Impressionist Exhibition:
• Zacharie Astruc
• Antoine-Ferdinand Attendu
• Édouard Béliard
• Eugène Boudin
• Félix Braquemond
• Édouard Brandon
• Pierre-Isidore Bureau
• Adolphe-Félix Cals
• Paul Cézanne
• Gustave Colin
• Louis Debras
• Edgar Degas
• Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin
• Louis LaTouche
• Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic
• Stanislas Lepine
• Jean-Baptiste-Léopold Levert
• Alfred Meyer
• Auguste De Molins
• Claude Monet
• Mademoiselle Berthe Morisot
• Mulot-Durivage
• Joseph DeNittis
• Auguste-Louis-Marie Ottin
• Léon-Auguste Ottin
• Camille Pissarro
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Stanislas-Henri Rouart
• Léopold Robert
Watercolor on Handmade Paper
I love that my husband is also an artist. When we travel I can sketch and not feel guilty because he is usually right there beside me! Sometimes though we don’t always want to paint the same view, but he is usually in the vicinity. This sketch has a fond memory for me, because I remember us sitting on a low wall, side by side, sketching the Alcázar of Córdoba, in Spain.
This siteand fortress dates back to medieval times. It was used by Ferdinand and Isabella as one ofthe main tribunals during the Spanish Inquisition. In 1492 these monarchs met Christopher Columbus here before he took his first voyage to the Americas. And in the early 19th century, it was a garrison for Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops. Since the 1950’s, it has been a national monument and tourist attraction. It is well worth the visit if you happen to be in Cordoba to see the Grand Mosque!
Watercolor Sketch on Handmade Paper
I have been super busy working on the Coral Reef Restaurant menu commission, so I thought I would post another sketch today. This one was done on a day in Paris when the nasty weather had finally broke, (I know some of my readers can relate to nasty weather right now!). The sun had come out and everyone flocked outside to get some sun and fresh air including me!
I headed straight for the Tuileries Gardens, parked myself on a bench, (it was slim pickings) and started to sketch and paint. I had always wanted to do a view of the Louvre and not get too caught up in the details of the building but be very sketchy and insinuate them with value. I was pretty happy with how it turned out.
Just as I was finishing a lovely group of Japanese ladies on a tour stopped and started to gather around me watching me paint. The Japanese tour guide asked me in French if it was OK. (The Japanese are so polite.) I said, “bien sur”, they watched and made comments as I was painting, none of which I could understand. I only know a few words of “tourist Japanese.” The tour guide indicated to the ladies it was time to move on, and translated to me in French, thank you very much for letting them stop and my sketch was beautiful!” For which I replied, “arigatou gozaimasu,” the formal way of saying thank you in Japanese. You had thought I had given them a million yen by their reaction. They were shocked and amazed that I had replied in Japanese! They all giggled, bowed and smiled, thanked me and were on their way.
Little did they know, probably thinking they had happened upon a French woman painting in the gardens, was actually an American who happened to speak French and enough Japanese to make their day. They certainly made mine!
Watercolor Sketch on Handmade Paper
I’m working on a new painting inspired by a place I used to walk by a lot in Paris. That, and the very cold, rainy damp weather we are having lately in Florida have put me in the Paris mood. Working in the studio, I’ve been drinking Mariage Frère tea, listening to my French music mix and the two radio stations I used to listen to when I lived in Paris, TSF Jazz and FIP. Both are on iTunes! The ads are annoying but a great way for me to brush up on my French.
So today I’m sharing another Paris sketch. This one was done in the gardens at the Musée Rodin. The Hotel Biron which opened in 1919 as the Musée Rodin is undergoing a major renovation now. I can see why they would need to update it for accessibility and security. There was something quite nostalgic about it though, lacking in the modern layer of design polishing apart from the entry. Once you stepped into the Hotel and walked from room to room, you felt like you were wondering through someones emptied out home with the most incredible art collection that was left behind.
Tomorrow I will be announcing the winner of a Limited Edition Giclée print of my painting Poppies, which I’m giving away to celebrate the one year anniversary of my blog. If you haven’t left a comment yet to be eligible you still have time by clicking here.
