It's a TURKEY!!! Yes, I'm painting some birds... these are for my "Nature's Gaze" show at the Vine Arts Gallery opening March 9th from 6-9!
This is from a photo Duane took a year ago at the Confluence Gallery in Bloomington. All the turkeys were hanging out close to the windows in the reflected sunshine and were just a hoot. I love them. There will be more turkey paintings. We have a local flock in the hood that walk around here. SO crazy!
This is a commission, and sadly Gus is no longer with us.
Time is strange. It is amazing the difference a day makes... or even a week. How things can change so quickly in a life...
Let's hope something good happens for you!
Yup! Another dolphin! I don't know if you have this kind of complication in your life, but sometimes I find myself wanting to paint things that I'm not sure people are going to be interested in, you know what I mean? Like we live in landlocked Minnesota, not near an ocean, and I want to paint dolphins and whales and sea otters... so I do.
I'll have to post some whales... and I'll admit that the whales I paint are from an old National Geographic magazine, because I've never had the opportunity to dive with them anywhere. Now, if YOU have, and YOU have photos of them you'd be willing to share with me, I'd be delighted to paint from them!
Oh and that said, I have a hankering to paint some turkeys too! For my show at the Vine Arts Gallery opening March 9th, I'd love to have a few big turkey paintings! So if you have any great pics of our local turkey flock in Minneapolis (or anywhere really!) email them to me!!!!
Thanks all!!!
Ah! More dolphins!
And WE HAVE SNOW!!! What a great Valentine's gift! SO much! Pom pom was beside herself last night and would have stayed out all evening if we'd let her! Her life with us started last January and there was SO much snow and she LOVED running around in the backyard chasing snowballs thrown by Duane- that was her delight! And we haven't had enough snow this year for her to enjoy that again- but NOW we do and she did NOT want to come in! And she was the first up this morning, barking at 6am so I had to take her out and run around the block and say GOOD MORNING! to everyone who was out shoveling! She just LOOOOOOVES it!
And this is another dolphin painting!
here's a video of their return to Brookfield!
I just always get a bit emotional about and around dolphins... when the Minnesota Zoo opened in 1978 we had them there, in the tropics exhibit where the tropical fish and sharks and skates are now. We also had beluga whales in another tank outside of where the interior wild bird shows are held. It was either that summer of 1978 or the next of 1979 when my brother Tom and my cousin Jim and I had a summer school class that dropped us off at the Zoo every other day at 9 when the zoo opened and picked us up at noon, and we were very unsupervised that entire time.
I can't even imagine that today!
One of the things we loved doing was playing hide and seek in the darkened nocturnal hallway in the tropics and running after each other on the Northern Trail. An amazing thing we did once (I'm not sure we were brave enough to do it more often, but I remember this happening at least once!) was we leaned WAAAAY over the railing of the dolphin tank and they came up with open mouths so we could scratch their tongues! I still can't quite believe we did that- we'd also play hide and seek with the dolphins below where the viewing windows are, running past the windows while they chased us, stopping quickly to hide behind the pillars... amazing to feel that this huge, beautiful, graceful water creature actually SAW me!!! That made up for a lot of things in my awkward adolescence...
Waiting Below, 12x36 acrylic on canvas $865 click HERE for purchase info!
I didn't consciously paint this as a wolf in a wildfire, and the background was different at first, but this is what happened and it seems to be right. Sometimes a painting tells you when to stop. So I stopped.
It's partially the wolf's posture, hesitant and considering his next move, and mostly the background colors.
I like it a lot, and it makes me kinda sad at the same time...
Here is one I started several years ago, and parts just weren't correct, for me- sometimes that happens. A painting may be partially done and then has to sit for a while until it surfaces again, comes to my attention somehow and then I'll play with it a bit more. So now I think this one is done.
Really big ears, yes!
This one may be hanging at the Vine Arts Center in March! you can come see it yourself on March 9th for the opening of Nature's Gaze~
Wahoo!
Yes, I'm still painting otters! I have a solo show coming up really fast at the Vine Arts Gallery in the Ivy Building where my studio is and I've been wanting to paint more otters anyway- and maybe some wolves and bears, and maybe turkeys...
I love the sculptural quality of this one-
It seriously takes turning off your judging brain and letting your visual senses say what they are seeing- like "it's lighter here, it's darker there- that shape is more angled, that one more curved" kind of a thing. It's like meditation, really. With paint. I love it!
Wow! Thanks for all the comments on the dolphin painting! There are more! Just not quite ready yet- so here is a mug~ kind of a study in white and a demo for my current painting class in the One-Stroke-Per-Color concept I learned from Carol Marine.
And I'll be sending out a newsletter later today to call for Cat Pics for this year's "30 Cat in 30 Days" Project! Send em on in if you've got em!
I'm also excited to announce that I have a solo show at the Vine Arts Center this March, with the opening reception on Saturday March 9th from 6 to 9pm!
Please consider yourself invited!
I'm painting in a little different direction at the moment- these are dolphin photos from the Minnesota Zoo last winter, when we had some visiting dolphins from California, I think- their home aquarium was under construction or repairs or something so we had them here for a while. It was amazing having them! We stood below while the audience above watched the dolphins do their act, leaps and spins, glorious and joyful, and we got to see the under bits, the dives, the flukes stroking strong. I loved it!
It's our ANNIVERSARY today! Yay us! And yay all you people who helped us and who've held us and pushed us and are a part of the larger US that made us even possible!!! We wouldn't be here without YOU!!!
Thank you.
Really. I mean it!
And here's an otter! I love mixing those browns and grays from my limited palette- two blues, a magenta and a yellow! Can't get more basic than that, baby!
This is a wolf. I'm just not feeling clever this morning, and can't come up with a title.
And then it just occurred to me that maybe AI could help with that- does that sound icky? Hmm. It's a weird thing, isn't it? I'm trying to think of it as a tool, and we're talking a lot at school about how to teach kids to use it.
And I'm an art teacher. I teach creativity. I teach that you can learn to draw. I teach that your hand needs to connect with your brain to draw something and that you can do it when you pay attention and really focus.
And here's another tool that "promotes" creativity....
I've got my work cut out for me, don't I?
