SOLD - Golden Pastures - 8 x 10"

SOLD

Although I don't consider myself a landscape artist, I do occasionally enjoy painting country scenes such as this one. I live in somewhat of a 'valley", so I'm surrounded by huge rolling hills. During one of my drives through the countryside last Fall, I came across this beautiful cow just standing there, staring at me! I thought she would make the perfect subject for a painting... I just loved the way she was standing there, light beaming on her, seeing the farms in the faraway background.

SOLD - Egg and Toast - 8 x 10"

SOLD

My daily breakfast consists of exactly this: one fried egg on a slice of whole wheat toast. Even with this whole cholesterol-lowering craze, I simply cannot function without my daily egg. And despite this, my doctor tells me that my digits are well below what they consider to be "average"... so I must be doing something right!

I unfortunately came across a "bad egg" one day... one that had been sitting in my fridge for a bit longer than I'd like to. So instead of eating it, which probably would NOT have been a good idea, I cooked it and used it as the subject of a painting!

Swan Reflections - 10 x 14"

Back when I lived in Boston, a friend of mine came to visit me and we spent the entire day "being tourists". One of our stops was, of course, the Swan Pond. These elegant creatures were just begging to be photographed! I don't paint animals very often, but while looking through my stack of photos for inspiration, I came across this one and thought it would make the perfect subject for a painting.

This painting can be purchased through my Etsy shop.

Eggplants in Harmony - 30 x 22"

I love painting food - I don't know why really... but other people within my circle of friends and artists groups have noticed how some of my "food" paintings tend to lean a bit towards the, shall we say, "erotic". I think this is one such painting.

Eggplant is one of those vegetables that I love to paint - I love their smooth surface, and their purple-almost-black color. For this painting, I wanted to go big - really big - to further emphasize their curvy shape and "sensual" appearance.

This painting can be purchased through my Etsy shop.

Lakeshore - 33 x 20" diptych

Shortly after relocating from the busy life to our more serene lakefront home, I was inspired by my new view from the window. I had wanted to do a "diptych" (2 matching paintings) before, and I thought what better time to give it a try.

The painting depicts the lakeshore: the water on the bottom, sunset at the top, joined together by a white, wavy horizon line. I also added some actual river rocks to the piece, to add to the "organic", nature theme. The stones are held on the canvas by yellow waxed linen thread. It's an abstract piece that uses complimentary colors (orange and blue), and would go great in any home.

This painting can be purchased through my Etsy shop.

Tropical Abstract - 10 x 14"

As you can see in most of my work, I LOVE color!! In this painting, I wanted to attempt something I hadn't done - an abstract. Although it's not an abstract in the traditional sense (they're actually plant leaves, but I took a lot of liberty with the colors!). I'm happy with how the final pattern of colors worked out.

This painting can be purchased through my Etsy shop.

Apple Wedge - 6 x 8"

Still Life painting is by far my favorite... I love being able to place whatever I want in front of me, without having a model fidgeting or outdoor light constantly changing as I'm painting. I also, for whatever reason, tend to lean towards food... some people say my paintings are making them hungry whenever they're around them!

I particularly love painting apples... maybe it's their easy-to-work-with shape, but I like seeing the color variety within an apple. And this one is no exception. I had a nice, juicy apple in hand, and as I was cutting it in wedges, I thought "Hey, this is a pretty nice composition!". So I took it up to my studio, and the result is what you see here.

This painting can be purchased through my Etsy shop.

Canvas preparation time!

With the big art show just a few months away, I thought it would be good to take a day or so to get a bunch of boards ready for painting. Since I haven't been painting in Oils for too long, I was primarily painting on stretched canvas and canvas board, which were just the basic, store-bought kind. After much reading on canvas texture, stiffness, and other features I didn't particularly care for with the pre-made stuff, I decided to make my own Gessoed boards.

After a quick trip to the lumber yard, some serious measuring and calculating (I wanted to get the most out of my purchase!), and my husband's awesome cutting skills (we'll forget about his mitre saw accident 5 years ago...), I now had a huge amount of individual boards to prepare!

I figured the best way would be for me to setup my big, folding table in my office/studio, and just spread out all my boards across it.

You'll also notice that the boards aren't all that large. That's because I'm figuring out that it's much, much easier for me to transition from Watercolors to Oils on smaller paintings. It gets kinda daunting having to fill up a huge canvas with paint, when you're still learning how to handle the little challenges, let alone duplicate those on a large scale. So by starting small, I can gradually work my way back up to larger sizes. The boards I'm preparing now range between 4 x 6" up to 8 x 10".

After a light sanding on the hardboard panels, I applied a fairly heavy coat of Gesso. It's basically an acrylic primer, and it helps to seal the boards so the oils don't seep into them, thus ruining your gorgeous piece of work!

Just a couple more coats of Gesso, with sanding in between each, and I'll have a whole lot of boards to paint on!! So you can start to see (hopefully) more updates here very shortly! :)

Campfire Necessities - 9 x 12"

Living in a rural area has many benefits - one of them being the frequent dinners we have at our lakefront home, around a nice, cozy campfire. We love to sit outside at dusk, in front of a warm fire (helps to keep the mosquitoes at bay), listening to the haunting sound of the loons, and watching swarms of bats hovering and diving around our heads (also a good deterrent to mosquitoes!)

One of these nights last year, my mother and niece were visiting from Toronto, so we decided to go all out... not just hot dogs, but 'smores!!! Yummy... needless to say, this way of eating isn't very good on the waistline. But who can resist 'smores!!?? There's a reason they're called 'smores, cause you always want "some more"!  :)

This painting can be purchased through my Etsy shop.

SOLD - Girl with a Rose - 6 x 8"

I really enjoyed working on this Portrait. It was based on a reference photo I took of my friend a few years back when she visited me in Massachusetts (back when I lived there). We had gone into the city that day, doing the usual sightseeing, shopping, and catching up on each others' lives.

We happened to be walking trough Boston Common when this lovely, old-ish lady handed her a rose. Then came the expected "Would you like to donate..." line. I honestly can't remember whether she handed the nice lady a few bucks or not, but obviously she ended up with the rose.

I snapped some photos of her that day, and years later, here I am posting a painting from one of those references. The reason I didn't name the painting "Lise" (which is my friend's name, by the way...) is because I don't think it looks enough like her. I hadn't set out to paint an exact likeness anyway, although most folks are convinced it looks just like her (she even said so...). But still, I'm the artist, and I'd rather refer to this one as "the painting inspired by Lise" :)

Celtic Souls - 16 x 20"

People who know me well, know that I'm absolutely in love with the country of Ireland. I swear, I must've been Irish in a past life or something! I mean, it's not like I share their heritage or anything? Trust me... I've gone back as far as I possibly can in my research, and I'm proud to say that I'm 200% French-Canadian! :D

My husband and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary 2 years ago. We wanted to go on special trip somewhere - not on some cruise (been there, done that!), a warm beach (although I'm sure my husband would've been all over that!), or even camping (which we do love, but come 'on... this was a huge milestone anniversary!). After not much discussion, we decided on Ireland. It seemed like an obvious choice.

Well, let me tell you... it was the best vacation ever! Ok, granted we haven't traveled much, like many of the people we know. But still! It's just such a gorgeous landscape, you can't help but just be in complete awe all the time... that, and the Guinness is just to die for!!!

So while visiting one of the many castles, I came across this great old cemetery. It was kind of perched on a slight hilltop, so I crouched down and snapped some pictures. Two years later, I decided to immortalize (no pun intended) it in a painting. It's currently one of my favorites hung on my walls :)

This painting can be purchased through my Etsy shop.

SOLD - Green Apple - 2.5 x 3.5" (mini)

I've painted apples before, and I'm particularly fond of my "Sunlit Grannies" watercolor painting from a few years ago (which recently sold, thank you very much!). After getting these cute little blank canvases, I wanted to try a different take on those apples.

Here, I focused the attention more on the stem, and strong complementary colors of the green apple, and pink background. I really like this one, and it's even nicer when it's sitting on the little mini-easel I bought for it :)

SOLD - Orange Half - 2.5 x 3.5" (mini)

While at the art store one day, I came across the most adorable blank canvases I've ever seen! They came in packages of 5, and each one was about the size of a business card. They also sold mini easels, if you wanted them... of course I wanted them!

So I splurged (yes, that was intended to be sarcastic...) on a few packages. I finally took some of them out and tried my hand at painting on these really, really small canvases.

Here's the first - a close-up of an orange cut in half. People who know my work, know that I love painting fruit (particularly erotic-looking fruit, which this one isn't... although I'm sure someone will find something erotic about it... anyone?

Anastasia, 9 x 12"

I love painting portraits... I really do! But this one was particularly difficult. First, Anastasia is just a toddler, so that in itself is a huge challenge... I wanted to make her look as "fresh" and innocent as she is in real life.

Secondly, this was very first portrait done in Oils (actually, more like my first successful painting of any subject in Oils...). Coming from a Watercolor background, this was a huge leap for me.

And lastly, her demeanor in the reference photo wasn't exactly what most people would like to see in a child (I don't know how many times I kept getting comments like "But she looks so sad?", and "What was she pouting about?"). Personally, I loved her facial expression, and that's why I chose it for my painting. After all, I am the artist, right? :D

All in all, I was pretty happy with the painting, especially seeing how it was my first and all. I did give it to her parents for a Christmas gift, framed and all, and they were just speechless. They now having it hanging in their main living room, and anyone walking through the front door immediately sees it. That makes me happy :D