Happy Valentine's Day 2018

I have been working on some functional items in the past few weeks.  Around the time they were finished I got a commission for a painting from a previous customer from CA.  I am going to show you all these items on today's post.

These three pieces seem appropriate for Valentine's Day because they all feature flowers.  The first is a 12" wooden plate.

Next is a 7" high pedestal bowl.  I am posting two photos so you get a better idea of what it looks like.

And....as always on Valentine's Day....a red rose painting.  This one is on a small 5" bowl.

I no sooner finished these projects when I got a commission via email from a customer who wanted an ocean/beach scene.  I had a 8X10 of "Beacon of Hope" so sent her a photo.  She liked the subject but wanted a larger size in a blue frame.  She said 11X14 was the perfect size.  I had a nice frame that size and refinished it in blue and painted a new version of "Beacon of Hope" to fit the frame.  I mailed it yesterday and it should arrive in CA next Tuesday. 

The first two winters here in MI were pretty mild snow wise but this year we have been hit hard.  I mention this because we were snowed in for 3 days and I never left the house.  I spent all my time in my studio working on this painting.  When I looked out my window all I saw was snow building up but doing this beach scene painting cheered me up!  We are really missing Tucson this winter.

"My Personal Taste in Art" chapter 2, The dining room

After I finished my last post I spent time walking around the house and really looking at all the art and other items I have collected over the years.  It got me to thinking about each item and the story behind it.  There is history in each thing that I have on display in my home.  Some things were built by my father.  I have pots that were thrown by my mother.  There are all the paintings that I did.  All the yard sale and thrift store items that I have re-purposed bring back memories of time spent with good friends and my mother as we went out on Saturday mornings spending fun time together looking for bargains.  I also realize how much stuff I bought new and repainted as soon as I got it home.  I never let an item that I knew was perfect except for the color stop me from buying it.  Another realization I had is how little money I have spent on decorating my home.  I could call this series of posts "Decorating on a Shoestring Budget."  I love a good bargain and I love creating art.  What fun to combine them both and bring beauty into my home!

Now to give you a tour of my dining room.  The first photo shows the whole room  I took this picture standing in the kitchen looking into the dining room.

I'll go clockwise around the room.  Starting with the credenza which is something I DID NOT paint.  Everyone who sees it asks if I painted it.  The answer is no.  I bought this beautiful piece of furniture from our friends who lived across the street from us in AZ.  She is the same friend who gave me the dried artichokes that I mentioned in my last post.  These neighbors were moving to Idaho to be closer to family and were getting rid of most of their furniture and offered this piece to us for the price of $75.  They also included the statue of the lady with the flowing cape.  I love both of these items and they will always remind me of Dave and Nancy.  The grandfather clock was bought  in Michigan from the neighbors who live across the street here.  They were having a yard sale and sold us the clock for $10.  The key is missing so it doesn't run and is always at 12 o'clock but I don't care.  It is a perfect fit for that corner. The painting on the easel on the floor is my first version of "Study in Patchwork".  I painted it is AZ and had it hanging the hallway on the bedroom side of the house.

The painting over the credenza was also something I painted of our AZ house.  We had high ceilings and I had a large open space near our entertainment center.  I did this painting to fill that space. I call it "In Flight."  Here is a photo of it hanging in the AZ house.

Here is some pottery I have sitting on the credenza.  The vase and small pot were made by an artist friend I met not long after moving to MI.  She commissioned me to do a painting and I told her that instead of paying me for it would she be willing to barter.  She said yes and I chose these two items.  The small dish is a gift from one of my grand-daughters.  It is a perfect match to the pottery.

As we go around the room to the back wall of the dining room we find this small bench.  This holds many memories and has special meaning for me.   I took a woodworking class back in the late 70's and made this bench from a step between our house and the attached garage.  We removed the step when we converted the garage into a new kitchen.  We no longer needed the garage because Roger had built a new three car garage in the back of the house.  We tore out the wall between our old dining room and kitchen and made one large combined family room and dining room and converted the old garage into a new kitchen.   When we took the old steps out I saved this board and made the bench in the woodworking class.

Next are a few yard sale items that I painted. 

Notice the key hanging on the wall.  I got it at a yard sale shortly after we moved to MI.  I paid $5 for it.  It was bright blue.  I had no idea what I would do with it so stored it until we finally redid our dining room.  I knew it would look good there so I painted it to match the room.  Here is a close up of the plate and bowl and also a photo of the back of the plate which I painted in a different design.

I have another painting hanging in the far right corner of the room.  It is titled "Vase of Elegance". I painted it AZ and showed it a few times.  When it didn't sell I decided to keep it for myself.

The last photo is of our dining room table.  We brought the table and chairs from AZ.  The flower arrangement consists of silk flowers that have been in various arrangements over the years.  I wash them and recycle them into new arrangements as the mood strikes.  The container is a companion to the magazine container in the living room that I bought at Ross in Tucson.  It has has been repainted to change the original color.  The table runner was made by a friend from Tucson.  She and her husband came to visit us here in MI and she gave it as a gift for our home.  She is a great seamstress and makes many beautiful items.  I talked her into joining the artist guild in Tucson so she could show and sell her fabric art.  I love the table runner.  It is so elegant.  It is the finishing touch for the room.

My next post in this series will feature the kitchen.  It may be awhile before I have time to do the posting.  I just got a commission to do a painting from a customer from California so will be working on that for awhile.

"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?

Contest Entries

I finished the painting and chair that I will be entering in the Carnegie Regional Show which is in January.  I am considering showing them as a set called "Lookin' & Sittin' Pretty".  That being said, maybe I should give each one it's on name.  The painting would be "Lookin' Pretty" and the chair " Sittin' Pretty".  Or another option being not using the apostrophe and use  "Looking Pretty" and "Sitting Pretty".  Decisions, decisions...sometimes coming up with titles is harder then doing the painting.  Here are photos showing painting and chair as a set.

Here is a close-up of the chair.

Here is a close-up of the painting which is a 22"X22" size.

When I do a stretch canvas I always wrap the painting around the edges.  Here are two photos showing the side edges.

I have no idea what my next project will be.  I haven't thought that far ahead.  Today is the day I have to take down my display from the holiday show.  It always takes a few days to get my shop organized when I take down a show.  Lots of things to be put away and paintings that didn't sell to be hung.  It is an opportunity to get the placed cleaned up.  Once that is done I can decide what my next project will be. 

Wishing everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year!

Christmas 2017

Christmas is a week from today and today is Roger's birthday.  I want to  wish you a Merry Christmas  and I want to wish him a Happy Birthday!  Here is a copy of the card we sent out this year.

Along with this current card I am posting a copy of the card we sent in 1996 which was the year we moved to AZ.  Weather wise, it is quite a contrast from where we are living now.  I remember that we played golf on Christmas day that first year in AZ. 

I have been busy painting  my entry to the Carnegie Exhibition which must be ready for application early next month.  That means I don't have any thing new to show except for this commission for a domino train station that I did for some friends who will be sending it as a gift to relatives in Puerto Rico.  The subject is their two cats Lisa and Tony.

Since this is the only new painting I have to show, I thought I would post photos of a few paintings I did in the past that had a holiday vibe.   Here is what I came up with.  The first is "Queen of the Night" which sort of looks like a Christmas Cactus.

The next one is "Flamenco".  It is rows of red ruffles that gave me a Christmas feeling.

The last one is called "Profiles in Red".  It reminds me of Christmas decorations and also a New Year's Eve celebration.

I want to wish everyone Happy Holidays and many Blessings in the New Year!

Three Rivers Artist Guild 2017 Holiday Show

It has been a busy two weeks since I set up my booth for the Three Rivers Artist Guild Holiday Show.  With Thanksgiving and the show opening on Black Friday and having to work the galley for 2 shifts I haven't had time to do a blog post.  I finally am making time to do that today. 
First is a photo of my booth.

 
Along with having a nice large space I was happy to be featured in all of the publicity that went out about the show.  I had a large picture in the article about the show in the local newspaper.  The only thing is (you will notice) is that they used a photo of my last year's booth.  I guess it really doesn't matter.  It is still a photo of my work.

One of my paintings is on the postcard that is sent out to the mailing list. It is the one in the middle.

They also had a poster made that was hung various places around town.  One of the guild artists did a painting showing the work of various artist who are in the show.  I love her rendition of my lighthouse painting.  You can't miss it as it too is in the center.

 
I have been so busy that I haven't done any painting in the past two weeks so I thought I would show you some of my greeting cards.  I sell them in sets of 4 large cards for $15.  There are 4 different paintings featured in each set.  They are blank on the inside and are suitable for framing.

I decided to try something new this year by making small cards to sell at $2.50 per card.  Here are just a few of what I made.

If you have been following my blog for awhile I am sure you recognize the paintings that I used on all of the cards.

My next project is to work on my entry for the Carnegie Regional Show which will be coming up after the first of the year.  I am going to do a chair and a companion painting.  They will be a version of my "Fun Flowers" design.  I have the chair base coated and ready for the design to be applied and have the canvas painting base coated, have drawn the design and have started the white under painting.

Photos will be posted when I complete the painting.