Day 22 - Gone Fishin

 Back a year or so ago, I painted a small series I called "Animals Behaving Badly". Each painting featured an animal leaping out of a mixed drink.  This was one I designed during that spell, but never painted.  While scrolling back through the archives the other day, I came upon the design and decided it was a good time to paint it. :) 

I love how it came out and am particularly happy with the glass and the liquid.  Not necessarily a difficult subject, it still just makes me happy when glass turns out looking like, well, glass!

I imagine this Bass in a martini glass was just hanging out, lazily minding his own business when along came a fisherman.. apparently unable to resist a challenge, this guy may have ended up someone's meal, already pickled and seasoned for the pan.. or, maybe he was the one that got away..

Gone Fishin, oil, 9"x12", click here for purchasing details

Day 21 - Buzzing Around Ms. Daisy Bell

Lately, one of my favorite animas to paint is the Scottish Highland coo.  I wish there were a farm near me that had a herd of these adorable, furry creatures, but even though I am surrounded by lots of rich farmland, so far, I have not located one. That won't stop me from painting them though.. Its funny to me that although you can rarely see their eyes, they somehow still always have such adorable expressions. Funny how that works.. This sweet gal is munching on daisies and chicory (two of my favorite flowers), hanging around with a few bumble bee friends.. I'm ready for warm days and while lots of folks don't care for the bugs that come with warm weather, I love seeing the bees and welcome them to my yard!

"Buzzing Around with Ms. Daisy Bell", oil, 10"x10", click here for purchasing information

Day 26 of the 28 in 28.. a few teeny days left, and enter - Cocktail Snail...

A close friend of Hawking's snail, Miss Darling, an albino snail is feeling a little frisky.. She's sporting a Mai Tai cocktail as her shell nouveau..

The past 2 days have brought images of tea, a drink associated with a warm hug. Miss Darling needed a little bit more than a warm hug and thought a Mai Tai would fit the bill.. complete with umbrella and pineapple slice, this solar energy beverage will warm you up from your toes to your nose..

Cocktail Snail, oil on panel, 8"x8"
to purchase, please click here

Oh.. and something's not right here... do you know what it is?

The drink should be spilling out of the glass, right?  I didn't catch my design mistake until after I painted it... and when I finally did, I just stood there for about 5 minutes staring at it...annoyed.  But then I decided "I'm fine with it." ..."maybe it's jello mai tai...?" It just means I have to paint another one!

DAy 25 of the 28 in 28 - Moove over Andy.. and what keeps me coming back...

I know this is a pretentious title, but it is what came to me.  I would never deign to say that my paintings could come close to replacing Andy Warhol's iconic work.. but.. there's a cow in the teacup, man...  I had to!

In addition to exploring my foray into painting Tea Cup Critters, I continue to consider the balloon motif.  In my RhinOlive post the other day, I mentioned how much I love color and brush work.. and that is what keeps me coming back.  Well, I also love that I can just take motifs and follow them wherever my brain wants to take them... I've now paired the balloon with birds, a fish, a cat, a rabbit.. some ducks, and now a cow.. and each iteration carries with it completely different connotations, feelings and if nothing else, visual interest.  So, THAT... that keeps me coming back for more too.. :)

"Moove Over Andy", oil on panel, 9"x12"
To purchase, please click here

Day 24 of the 28 in the 28 - Slow Down and Drink Tea

And now for another edition of Hawking's snail for today's painting.. This time, she is trying on one of her favorite teacups as a potential new style :)  Yes, it's cute, and yes it's sweet, but, since tea is one of the simplest yet most satisfying pleasures in life, it might make good sense that a cup of tea could make for a great house.  Just by the look on her face, I can tell she thinks its pretty hot.. 

Slow Down and Drink Tea, oil on panel, 8"x8"
to purchase, please click here

Day 23 of the 28 in 28 - RhinOlive

 Ok, so this is not the smartest title in the world... I am typing this one at around 11 p.m. and my title brain is not functioning at optimal levels.. Be that as it may, I do love painting jars of olives. The muted greens and pops of red are saweet and painting them all squashed into a glass jar is even better. Add to the mix the fact that this was my first foray into painting Rhinos and this proved to be an all around fun painting to do :)  I can't say why jars of olives call for an animal atop, but I've painted them before with zebras, horses and even ducks, and it just makes sense to may aesthetic.  I'm not going to question this one.  Just let it be.

Check out the detail below for one of my favorite parts of the painting.
 

RhinOlive, oil on panel, 10"x10"
to purchase, please click here

One of the reasons I love painting is my ongoing love affair with color and brush stroke.  Sometimes magic happens and the color just zings and the juicy brushwork sings.. and that is what keeps me coming back for more.. ♥

Day 17 of the 28 in 28 - Ballooning for Fish

What does it mean to balloon for fish?  I'm not sure, entirely.  I do know that fishing is a sacred art and to some, it is almost a religion... Look up quotes about fishing, and you find things like "It's better to sit in a boat and think about God, than sit in a church and think about fishing." I won't promise you that this painting is as deep as all that, but it could be. All depends on how you are seeing it at this moment. I know I will get some folks who feel sorry for this very worried looking fish (reminds me of C-3PO a little..)  Don't worry.  No fish were harmed during the making of this painting.. <3 :)

And if you read my facebook post, you will remember that I was wondering also about why balloons are the things that help to make special occasions even more special.. what is it about balloons? My paintings aren't necessarily about answering these questions.. they are more just visual places to sit and ponder for awhile.. hopefully in a smiley kind of way..

"Ballooning for Fish", oil on panel, 9"x12"
to purchase, please click here

Day 12 of the 28 in 28 - Shell of a Cake

I haven't paid snails enough attention.  This shortcoming should be remedied as I explore a new series of Hawking's snail.. who is on a bender creating contemporary shells for herself.. Today's experiment is a cupcake.. I do love the spiral shell that snails always sport, but the question occurred to me last week, what if snails could change out their shells, and if they could, what kinds of shells could they choose from.  Turns out the selection is just about endless.  So many possibilities.. I don't think the bender is going to end soon...

Shell of a Cake, oil on panel, 8"x8"
to purchase, please click here

detail of Shell of a Cake.. yum.

Day 9 of the 28 in 28 - Dreaming of Tea

 This here is another painting that is a bit outside of the box for me. It started out as an old painting that was just meh and had been sitting in my painting archives for a few years.  I recently did a purge of this archive - made some tactical decisions of what to keep, what to chuck and what to paint over - and thought this one would be a good one to paint over.  The bones were good (meaning the substrate) and the colors in the original painting could look cool poking through a new painting.  I designed the new image and dove in...

The image of an elephant dangling on the end of a red balloon spawns from the Red Balloon series I've been exploring.. I thought it would be interesting to suspend an elephant from a balloon to see what that would do visually.  I do really like tea and tea cups (ask my family.. I have a cup problem..) and also enjoy playing with scale. Suspend an elephant from a balloon over a cup of tea and add a lot of interesting palette knife texture to the background and it turns out you get... Enlightenment!

Well, maybe.  Enlightenment is trickier than that... However, I can say that I am pretty excited with the results.  I love the texture and as I said, the layers that poke through and the imagery is sufficiently compelling to keep me pondering and continues to pull my attention to observe. And, doing a bit of research into the symbolism of Tea, elephants and balloons, gelling it all together, it turns out that this painting could very well be about a powerful spiritual experience of wisdom, strength and a little bit of luck.  I'll take it. But you don't have to.  It may just be an elephant floating above a teacup.. Regardless, you will want to scroll down do check out all of the juicy, yummy texture and color..

Dreaming of Tea, Oil on panel, 16x20"
To purchase, click here

Day 9 of the 30 in 30 - Carrot Soup

 Had to kick off Monday, which is usually serious and somewhat daunting, with a light-hearted, whimsical concoction of seeming nonsense! :) As I mentioned in a recent post, I love to put together unrelated things to see what kind of story I can tell, and this was just exactly one of those kinds of paintings.  I absolutely love when paintings happen like this, and even more tickled when they somehow 'work'.  I'm not entirely sure how or why, but to me, this one works.  Why do roller skates on the bottom of a soup can with a tiny rabbit and carrot on top make sense?  I don't know but, they do, and now you have caught a glimpse inside of my brain. :)

I have taught art to children ages 6-18 and the biggest setback and difficulty I findis that most people tend to censor themselves when they are trying to come up with ideas for what they will next create.  People tell themselves "this is stupid", "its already been done", "I can't possibly do that", I don't know how, or that doesn't make sense.  And then they believe that B.S...  Here is the secret, most important piece of advice I can give you if you are an artist struggling with ideas.  Don't Censor Yourself.  If you are sitting in front of a blank canvas and have convinced yourself that you have no ideas, you most likely don't realize that you are actually censoring yourself unconsciously.  In reality, hundreds of ideas probably were bubbling up, but possibly before you barely caught sight of them, your mean old ego smacked them back down into the recesses of your imagination under the pretense of one of those lies I stated above.  

One of the most important gifts I have given myself as an artist was permission to let my ideas flow, no matter how strange, impossible or improbable they seem.  If my brain thought it, then it is a true expression of me, and who am I to censor it?  And even better, maybe the ideas that surface in my mind's eye are a true expression of a larger creative consciousness of which I am able to access, just because I listen and don't censor.  (wouldn't that be cool?)

Carrot Soup, 9"x12", oil, to purchase click here

So this post became a lot more personal than I thought it would.  I thought it was going to be silly and kind of funny. But I am very serious when I say that the best thing you can do for yourself as an artist is to believe in the ideas you have and allow them to come without censoring them.. follow them and explore where they take you. I promise you, you will never lack for ideas again!

Namaste and Carrot Soup.  

Please see below for a recipe for real Carrot Soup which  looks simply divine!