Show at Frame of Mine "The Hill We Climb"

 

The painting above is called "Going There" and it is in a show at Frame of Mine in my Capitol Hill neighborhood..  Every few months the Capitol Hill Art League, my art association, has a show there.  This painting is an abstract based on the teachings of John Salminen.  I love the colors and I think the show will be fun.  I saw a few of the other paintings in the show today when I took my work in and they are top quality.

I have another painting in the show called "Edges and Bridges."  It is also inspired by Salminen and I did it in a workshop he conducted several years ago.

The show will be up until February 26 for those in the DC area. Yes, it is an actual show with paintings hung on the walls and not "virtual."  Whew!   I'm happy about that.

Wing

 

This is unusual for me.  It is a bird wing of a dead bird.  I did this drawing from a photo sent to me by Ellen Cornett.  Ellen is my wonderful art teacher and she is encouraging us to look more closely at the things we are drawing.  She said we should be accurate in the number of feathers in each row on this wing.  It took me awhile, but I did that and am pleased with the result.  It is pencil--brown and graphite.

Holiday Snowperson 2021

 

I do a snowperson card every year for my holiday cards.  This year, I featured a "Snow Guy" who took over my zoom.  He's talking with Santa, Rudolf, and a couple of elves.  It was fun to do, but I need to note that he had to turn off my gas fire in the fireplace.  

I've been doing these for about 25 years.  Usually, I base them on something important, like birth of a grandchild or my travels, but this year zoom seemed appropriate.

Thank you Erik and Jen

 

I got a very special gift to start off the Advent Season.  It is a beautiful table centerpiece from Erik and Jen.  I made a card and sent it to them, but only now am I posting it here.  The candle is a LED candle, so it is very safe and it is surrounded by festive ornament balls, white sprigs, pine cones and greenery.  Very nice was to get me into celebrating the season.

Lido di Dante

 

This is a painting that I did from a photograph.  I took the photograph more than 10 years ago in Ravenna Italy.  It portrays a boat on "Lido di Dante:" the beach of Dante.  When Dante was expelled from Florence, he ended up in Ravenna and, in fact, his tomb is there.  I learned that, when Dante became well-known, the people of Florence wanted his body back and wanted his tomb there.  It was not to be because, as I was told, Florence had rejected him and Ravenna took him in.  Ravenna wanted to keep him and had built a beautiful tomb.  The beach is nearby and is on the Adriatic Sea.

I began this painting several years ago, but somehow never finished it.  I think I was saving the paper to make a painting on the other side.  When I saw the painting a few weeks ago, though, I realized it had good potential and so I finished it.  I love the pink horizon and the flash of yellow in the sky and left those alone.  I strengthened the shadows on the boat and the masts.  I am calling it done and I am loving the memory it invokes of my time in Ravenna.

Thank you Louisa

 

This was a big surprise.  Louisa had to go to Whole Foods and asked me for a list of what I needed.  I noted a few things and, when she brought them to me, she also brought this gorgeous orchid. It is tall and willowy and has more blooms that shown here, but I wanted to focus on this one particularly compelling one and its neighbors.

Thank you Louisa!   It wasn't on my list.....

Going There

I have been working on this painting for more than a year and decided that I should bring it to closure.  It is loosely based on a process I learned from John Salminen when he did a workshop for the Oregon Watercolor Society.  That was several years ago and I did about three of these types of abstracts during and immediately after the workshop.   So, during the pandemic, I decided to try again. I actually even bought his video about it. Getting truly abstract shapes is tricky. There's a lot of glazing to get what Salminen called "colors that have no name" and then there are some strong colors, too.  It's a llittle differnet than my usual work.