Painting of the Month Club

So I had an idea. You know all of those fruit of the month, cigar of the month, wine of the month etc clubs that you can subscribe to? The ones where you pay an upfront fee, and over the course of a specified number of months, usually 3, 6, 9, and 12 you get either one item every month, or one every other month. I was thinking I could do the same thing with art. Paintings would be originals, not prints and would range in size from 5x7 to 11x14 be of any number of subjects, still life, figurative, landscape, portrait, maybe even an abstract. It would almost be like buying a futures contract on art!

A 3 month subscription would be for 150.00, and you would get 2 paintings

A 6 month subscription would cost 225.00 and you would get 3 paintings

A 12 month subscription would cost 350 and you would get 6 paintings

What do you think?

Caroline in red

Here is a sketch I did on Saturday while I was live painting at the gallery. 11x14 oil on linen on board.

Hanging the Wash

18x24 oil on linen. This Painting is currently in the winter show at the Water Street Studios gallery. I painted this one off a photograph Joe took of Verity and I hanging the sheets on the line while we were on vacation at my grandmother's farm. Don't worry it's not a self portrait, for all of you thinking "hey, isn't her hair darker and isn't she a bit heftier than that?" I've always liked genre paintings, especially mothers and children. Rather than try for a tightly rendered finished version, I did this alla prima and tried to keep a fresh feeling to the brush strokes. Available at Water Street Studios in Batavia: 950.00

Here's a link to the blog of another artist at Water Street who does wonderful vintage inspired mixed media work Rebecca Ersfeld for Vintage Living.

Still life "PEWTER" 5X7

This year one of my plans is to do a number of small still lifes (5X7 8X10) with just one or two simple items, in order to push my skills and require a greater attention to detail. This is one of those. I picked just a simple pewter pitcher that I worked a very limited palette on. Available: 197.00

Fastest Portrait Ever!

11x14 portrait. Just finished this commission in record time. It's small and not super detailed, but I was still pleased to finish it in about 6 hours. It's something I'm not getting paid for it so I didn't want to invest a huge amount of time, but I have to say, I impressed myself with this one!

Expecting Persephone (in progress)

Drawing and block in of my current painting, "Expecting Persephone" Long way to go on it yet, but I did get the canvas covered today so I can have a better idea of where I'm going with it. The gold background will be gold leafed, I just painted it in so I could judge colors better. The ideas behind it is the story of Demeter and Persephone, except I started it before Persephone is born. Demeter of course is the goddess of the harvest and motherhood, when Persephone her daughter is taken by Hades, she eats 3 pommegranit seeds and then has to return to Hades for three months of the year, Demeter mourns her daughters absence, plunging the world into winter. My painting is an allegorical portrait built around the idea that even as we expect our babies we do so with the knowledge that as sure as the seasons, they will grow up and leave, but the expectation of loss does not diminish our love.

Continuing work on this one. I took a couple of weeks off of it, which was good because I solved some problems. Her face needed to be lengthened both to be accurate to the model and to give the figure the maturity that the story needs. Also worked on the background elements to prepare for the gold leafing and solidified the values a little more.

Started gold-leafing and realized that I'm not really that awesome at it. I need to order more to finish.

EEP! I might be done! Going to let it sit for a week and see if anything else needs to be done.