"My Personal Taste in Art" Chapter 1

Since I started this blog in May of 2010 I have posted photos of each of my paintings when I completed them.  If you go back to the beginning of my blog you will see my various styles of subject matter and use of color.  When I started to sell my work in Arizona I became known for my unique cactus and desert scene paintings along with my critter paintings.  I use bold colors and lots of dot work.  I also did floral paintings but my biggest sellers were my southwestern style paintings.  When I moved to Michigan I changed my direction to a more mid-west look doing various type of animals in the patchwork style but still using bright colors and of course dots.  While sales here in Michigan are not a plentiful as they were in AZ, I am still getting name and style recognition.  When people here see my paintings they know it is my work before they look at the signature.

That being said, when I look at the art I paint for my personal use in both this house and the house I had in Arizona I realize it is different than the art that I show in exhibitions and that have been my biggest sellers.  That is why I decided to do a series of blog posts showing the paintings I have done for myself over the years and where I have them hanging in my home. 

Many of the paintings I did for my AZ house and have found a place for them here in MI.  I even have a few that I painted for my Ohio house and the condo we had in Ohio.

Since I have so many paintings and craft items, I decided to go  room by room and give a little commentary on each piece of art.  This post will feature my living room and powder room.

The first painting I am showing has a lot of history behind it.  I'm not sure of the exact year, I'm guessing it was in the late 60's that we remodeled our living room in our Ohio house.  I wanted a large painting for over the fire place.  I found the perfect size painting at Kmart but the colors were all wrong.  It had a black background with orange flowers.  I bought it anyway as the price was right and proceeded to paint over the orange flowers changing them to red flowers.  Red was my accent color.  I hung it horizontally where it stayed for many years.  In 1990 we sold the house and moved to a condo where my color scheme included teal so I painted over the red flowers and changed them to teal.  They have remained teal through the condo years, the AZ years and  into the MI years. You will notice it hangs vertically now. I never gave this painting a title. 

The next painting I did last year.  I call it "Persian Pickle AKA Paisley".  Persian Pickle is a quilt pattern based on Paisley.  I did this one to match the table topper on the round table between the two accent chairs.  The chairs were bought new here but the table and lamp were from AZ.  Most of what I have were things from AZ except for the two chairs, our entertainment center, and a new recliner we bought a few months ago. You will see that in another photo. The container that holds the books is something else I painted.  I bought a set of three of these in various sizes at Ross Dress for Less which was one of my favorite Tucson stores.  They were the wrong color but the right shape so it was no problem for me to repaint them.

The next item is something I got from my dad who was a professional photographer.  It is a posing chair.  He gave it to me when he retired in 1972.  It was gold at that time with black legs.  I had it recovered in red and refinished the legs.  When we moved to the condo I had it recovered again in teal. 

Roger built this game table for our office in AZ.  I painted it with the flower design on the front and the top.  Roger made the stained glass window and we made the hanging lamp swag lamp from various parts we bought and a lamp shade from another lamp we already had.

On to the table and mirror by the front door also from our AZ home. I bought the table at Target and guess what?  It was the wrong color. Do you see a trend here?  It was black and I panted it gold to match the mirror.  I also painted the little gold tray and  painted the chess board which my dad made for the little chess set .  You get a good reflection of the living room in the mirror.  I want to mention the tray was a yard sale find along with a number of other items you will see in coming photos.

 I painted a yard sale table for another chess set and two yard sale side tables.  I'm sure none of them cost over $5.

Here is one more photo showing the whole couch with both tables and the recliner.  The recliner is our most recent buy and the color is not what I really wanted but Roger was having knee problems and need a chair ASAP so I settled for grey which matches our kitchen counter top.  The coffee table was made from a left over piece of granite from our AZ kitchen.  The oval bowl was another yard sale find and I liked the color so left it as is.  The dried artichokes  were given to me by an AZ friend many years ago.  She was tired of them and was going to throw them away but gave them to me instead when I told her how much I liked them. 

The door to the right of the painting is our powder room.  We redid it last year.   The painting was painted in AZ and hung in our master bath. It is one of my favorites which is titled "Ala Georgia
O Keeffe".  I used the 3 door chest in my art studio and decided to re-purpose it for the powder room.  It is another yard sale item. Notice the painted plate.  I got a bag of 12 of them for $5 at a  consignment shop here.

 

When you compare my personal art with my public art you can see that I prefer more subdued colors and more traditional subject matter.  I think  reasons is that I spend so much time creating bright colorful paintings that I need a more peaceful quiet color scheme for my everyday living.

I didn't expect this post to be so long but maybe I did when I said it was chapter 1.  Look for chapter 2 coming soon.

First paintings of 2018

We are having our first really bad winter since moving to Michigan.  We have been snowed in since before Christmas until the past few days when the January thaw began.  It is raining today and I would guess that most of the snow will be gone by tonight. 

 I have not accomplished much this year as far as painting goes.  On the other hand, much is being accomplished in the realm of home improvements.  We have started our master bath renovation.  We started shortly after the first of the year making decisions on what we wanted to do.  It took many trips to Menards, Home Depot and Lowes comparing light fixtures, cabinets, mirrors, tile, sinks, etc. We bought some items at each place and now the project is underway.  Roger and I made the choices together.....well.....maybe I had more say-so on what we got but he agreed to everything.  Once the choices were made he took over the project.  I am glad I am married to someone who is so handy.  He did all the electrical work which includes three light fixtures and more outlets for all my curling iron and blow dryer and all the other appliances we ladies have.  He is now working on the tile.  I pop in every so often to say "Great job Honey".  I'll post photos when the project is finished. 

As far as painting goes, I'm going though a dry cycle for inspiration on subject matter for what to paint.  I'm seeing my inventory of paintings building up.  In Tucson as fast as I did new paintings they would sell so I never had a huge build up of unsold work.  It is different here in Michigan.  There are not as many opportunities to show my work and people here do not spend as much money on art like they did in AZ. I also think the cold snowy weather keeps people at home and not visiting the places where my art is showing.  In AZ we had all the snowbirds come into town during the winter and they took advantage of the nice weather to shop at all the galleries.  People here are the snowbirds and they clear out during the winter to warmer places like AZ and FL.

  Most of what I sold at the holiday show were smaller items.  For that reason, I decided to concentrate on smaller paintings and craft items.  I completed three tiny paintings in the past few weeks.  Here are photos of what I did.

This one is called "Pretty Kitty".  It shows large here but it is a only a 5X7 canvas painting as are the others I did.

Next is "Welcome Home".

The last one is "Pretty Posies".

I took a photo of the three of them together which helps you to get a better perspective of size.  I sell then with the easels.

 The opening of the Carnegie Regional Show was yesterday.  My chair titled "Sitting Pretty" was accepted for the show but they did not accept the matching painting.  It was a smaller show this year so a lot of artists had only one or two pieces accepted.  Here is a photo of me with the chair taken at the opening.

I will be working on a couple of craft items next.  After that I may work on some glass mosaic things just for something different to do.  We will see....... who knows what kind of ideas will pop into my head and to which direction it will lead me?