Sheila Wiley and Sue Furrow at 2nd Helpings Gallery

Hey Friends, It has been such a busy month (April). Yesterday, Saturday the 7th is when the opening reception for our show at 2nd Helping occured. Sheila Wiley, whose art work is below, was unable to attend. She had a family emergency, I hope all is well now. The photo above is my work. The 2nd Helpings Gallery is really lovely and a great place to have a reception. They have lots of room and wonderful catering on site.
Marjorie and Mark do a great job of keeping the place running smoothly. And they make wonderful hosts. I appreciate their efforts and enjoy working with them.
The little girl above played some lovely harp tunes. Very talented. And my biggest treat was getting to meet a lovely couple that bought a large piece of my work last year, Beverly and John Martin.! She has lots of stories to tell and I hope I get to hear them. They are moving to this area soon. I just wish I'd had the presense of mind to get our picture made together.

I still need to tell you about Gallery 108 art walk or crawl on Friday night. And show you the featured window artists.! Next time.

Happy Trails.

Greenway between Colorado & Apperson

Hey Friends, Took a little walk along the Roanoke River as it flows through Salem. Yesterday was a beautiful day here in the mountains of SW Va.
Next Thursday, the 5th of april already, our group will meet at this spot for some Plein Aire painting !!! I DO love to paint outside. And there is plenty of beauty here to capture.
The photo above is right along the rivers edge and if you only look at this edge you would think it was some place tropical.

This is a photo of our beautiful wild flower, Mertensia, or Va. Bluebells. Their color is so intense I can't seem to find a paint that suits.

And obviously, this is the fun spot. Someone has even put little strips of wood for a ladder up the tree. Summer memories ! I didn't test but I'm sure the water is too cold yet.

Happy Trails.

Plein-Aire Painting at Gum Springs

Hey Friends, The weather was fantastic here in SW Va. today. So I went outside to paint. Plein-Aire its called. Haven't done that for the longest time. And it is TUFF. It's really hard for someone so easily distracted as myself to concentrate outside. The first one above is 10x8.

The second above is 9x12. The spring isn't really those colors but I've not learned how to make brown water look like water yet. I need to do some tiny studies of just the water.

The third is 10x8 also and not nearly as red as this photo. Getting decent photos for the web is way to hard with a camera. I'm used to my scanner but these are oils so I can't scan them yet.

All 3 are at the bottom of our driveway and it is one tiny little spring. Most of the year it is dry but we've had some rain lately so I had to make the most of it. Hard work but FUN !! Surely I will improve with practice. I intended for these to be paintings not studies. So maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse.

Any feed back is welcome, just leave me a comment. And I'm sending this to my friends that I paint with. They don't know how to leave comments so I'll find out the slow way.

Happy Trails.

Gallery 108 - Featured Artists for March

Hey Friends, Of course I screwed up the order for posting these photos, but I wasn't going to change them. It takes forever to fix the line up. So..... Mary Anne Meador is above and it is REALLY difficult to get a decent photo through the big glass windows from outside. And Mary Anne's are spread out a bit, so I took this from inside.

Darcy Meeker does some lovely but large copper work so it wouldn't fit in the camera frame from any angle. So all you get to see is a card and a bit of sculpture. She does fabulous stone work.

Angela Shields has been an art teacher in high schools for a lot of years. She gave that up to be a full time artist. She creates paintings w/ a lot of textures and patterns.

Bonnie Mason is a traditional type painter. She uses oils and creates soft textures in her landscapes and still life.

Terry Lyon creates highly textured oil paintings. Mostly landscapes but a beautiful nude is thrown in every now and again just to keep him interested! His studio is downstairs and he usually is there every morning to paint.

That's the line up for this month. We have several new artists joining us, as members and consignment. I will post those next week so I don't bore you to death with a post any longer than this.

The weather here in SW Va. has been amazingly beautiful the past week. So get out there and enjoy !!!!!

Happy Trails.

Lessor Flamingo Painting 6x6x1.5

Hey Friends, I can't say I've got DPW figured out BUT I did get 2 paintings posted on there!
I'm not sure how their posting dates work. You would think that part would be clear as mud.
The problem could be I got tangled up, so to speak, on my first post and kept screwing up after that.
Anyway, some lovely person has placed a bid on my first, the Greater Flamingo !!!! I'm hoping they will click to this blog and see what the sides look like. DPW as far as I can tell doesn't let you post multi views.
I will try again to get the blog feed on there correctly.
On another note, today was fantastic weather here in the mountains of SW Va.. Sunshine and breezes. And my favorite little boy came to visit for an hour. We went for our usual little walk to the mail box and throwing stones and stuff into the creeks. Beautiful Day.
After my BabyDoll left, I went back down to the creeks to sketch and photograph all the fantastic moss growing everywhere. It actually seems to grow best on rocks or mortor. I hope/plan to do several paintings within walking distance of home. Should be fun to produce.

Now I'm back to DPW to post a few Dragonflies. I love playing with the colors on DF's.

Happy Trails.

Greater Flamingo

6x6 Acrylic on Deep Gallery Wrapped Canvas

Hey Friends, I finally joined the DAILY PAINTWORKS Gallery. It is a website where you can list your art works for sale or auction. Your blog is supposed to be integrated into your shop and it automatically pulls the paintings into your shop !
So this is a test run. I always do hate the first time I do anything on a computer. But I'm no longer afraid of screwing it up, so here we go.

Have a fabulous weekend. The weather doesn't look very promising here or in most of our great country.

Happy Trails.

My Sweetie Pies

Hey Friends, I'm back and I make no apologies for my absense. The two dolls above have kept me busy when not at work.
I admit I haven't painted like I should be doing, shows coming up etc. But I feel a little better knowing that one of my favorite professional artists has not blogged for 6 months either. I will not mention names, but like I said "good to know I'm not the only procrastinator".

I continue to walk as often as possible (a little bit of a woose in cold weather) and I see so much beauty, I'm inspired to do a series of landscapes within walking distance. We'll see.

And for my dear friend, Cat, I believe your email provider needs to up your bytes. Call them.

Happy Trails to ya!

Plein Air Painting

Hey Friends, I'll start this post with my Favorite Little Man above, Mr .Nic, such a happy boy.
Excited about SpongeBob and wearing Elmo Slippers! He loves to sing and dance too !
Today I finally got to meet up with friends for some Plein Air Painting !! Last week was too rainy. I just joined up with this group of crazy women and I love it already.
They weren't interested in painting the landscapes ! They were experimenting with new ways of slinging and pouring paint on unstretched canvas. I painted 2 small pieces and they are pretty bad. I didn't even think to photograph them for you. I've wanted to seriously knuckle down and paint from life for a long time BUT It's HARD !!! Maybe to hard for me but I'm not giving up after just one go. I used acrylics and it might be easier w/ oils 'cuz acrylics dry so o oooo fast.
Can you see the canvas' laying on the ground? Now they will pick out an area of the canvas and stretch it and then paint on top. Can't wait to try it myself but I need to order in some supplies.
This group is trying to find a name and several are on the marque, but not firm yet.

And I forgot to post about the reception held at Second Helpings last Sat. morning, to thank the artists that painted the table tops for their new cafe. I'll post some photos soon.

Happy Trails !

Hiking in the Blue Ridge Mountains

Hey Friends, I'm posting a few photos from the hike I took Tuesday. It rained the entire day, so I was hiking under an umbrella. I'm sure the critters thought I was the oddest hiker they'd ever seen. The photo above is of one of the prettiest spots in the whole ravine or maybe it would qualify as a canyon ?!
And this photo of the lake is at the lowest spot. Look at that color and I didn't alter it in Photoshop at all. There is a lot of sulfur in this area of Virginia so I'm guessing that's the reason for such a beautiful shade of aquamarine.
And this photo was taken from the very top of the tallest peak. Doesn't look so high but it is. And it took a while for this TuTu to get up there.
This was taken from the same spot, opposite direction. Foggy! These Blue Ridge Mtns. are beautiful. Hoping to get some paintings started soon. I'm thinking I might do some of the compositional work from the photos and go back to this spot to do the actual painting. Just wondering if my colors might be a little truer. Oh, this last shot is 2 photos merged but I don't know how to clean it up.

Getting out there with nature is one of the best things you can do for yourself. If you're alone you won't have to worry about if the other person is tired, bored, hungry, etc. But if someone wants to tag along, you just might inspire them to keep walking too.

Happy Trails.

Commission Work

Hey Friends, Yesterday I had my favorite little man for 4-5 hours. The photo above is Nic in the swing and I'm laying on the ground clicking away. I was after reference photos for my swing paintings! He was pretty entertained by me laying on ground. He is such a sweetheart.
I thought I'd show you what I've been working on for a while. I haven't painted with oils for a long time so I'm pretty slow. I'm catching up now, I think. The photo above is the initial block in. Already I'm not happy with it. Everything is in a line. And even though that's pretty much how it is in real life - it doesn't make for a good composition. S0000-0-0-0-------
Here I've painted out the arbor bench and made the pond bigger. This seems to give more of an aerial perspective. So now I"ll put the bench back in, lower in picture plane and rotate it to the right. There will be 2 children and a dog in here also. And the pond doesn't look exactly like this, but I wanted to see inside so the beautiful Koi and plants show up better. The lady that commissioned this painting has worked real hard to landscape her yard and it is beautiful. Hope I can do it justice.
Happy Trails.