My Art Hut

So here are some photos of my little art hut! Over the next few days I'll be posting more photos of the inside and the view out the windows. For now I thought I'd give an idea of how and where the hut is situated in the countryside. First a quick peek in through the front door...

Below is the front porch with a lovely vine and raffia roofing. View of terraced hills in the distance...

Here is the front of the structure:

Side view:

Here is a side view showing the nearby ruin:

My hut is near some trees:

Writing

Hello! I've been busy trying to gather my thoughts about myself, life and art for some articles and interviews I've been asked to participate in. I'll be a featured artist in an upcoming issue of the online World Artist Network Magazine. I was also asked to write an article on myself, my art and travels for a new publication that is aimed at encouraging young women to be creative and seek beauty within. I'll send you links of the articles once they're published!

Decision-Making

So here's how the psychedelic ink tree is going... I'm quite happy with it so far, but can't decide if I should stop now and say it's finished, or to keep going... For this drawing my original intention was to have a line of grass just above the roots, with some flowers, some butterflies, and a deer looking off to the right... But then I got this far and wondered "does it even need that?" I lightly pencilled in the grass etc, you can barely see it in this scan, but maybe it gives you an idea of how it could be...you see the problem with pen and ink is that once it's down, it's down! No take-backs, no do-overs! I just have this nagging feeling that I want to finish it with my original intention, and see what happens. If I don't, I'll always wonder how it would have looked!

Arc en Ciel

Well my art hut is just about finished, which is exciting! I've started moving my stuff in and decorating, and soon I'll be set up fully in there. Pictures to come!

The weather here in southern France never ceases to amaze me. Last year I remember boiling days of 100+ degrees. This year has been very mild in comparison - cooler, windy and rainy. I never could have fathomed wearing a sweater in July! On Wednesday we had a light sprinkle, accompanied by the most amazing rainbow over the town. I managed to snap some photos before the sprinking increased -


The blotches in the above pic were caused by raindrops on the lens. Can you see the house in the lower left corner? That is our nearest neighbor! We really are out in nature here.


And here's a closer view showing the end of the rainbow and the town. It looks far, but it only takes about 30 minutes to walk there. It's lucky we were out to see the rainbow - less than 10 minutes later it was gone! Perhaps that is a good omen...

New Photorealist Candy Still Life

I started a new photorealistic still life, featuring a bunch of brightly-colored Tootsie Roll candies in a glass tumbler. So far I've completed the underpainting, which you can see here:

New Ink Series

I received a set of really nice art pens for my birthday a couple weeks ago, and I've been having a lot of fun experimenting with them. So far I've only ventured to use the black ones, so I've been playing around with monochromatic designs and compositions. My first finished ink drawing (The Mystery of Meaning) is available for purchase this week, and provides an idea of what this new series will be like... a bit fun and a bit psychedelic, and full of tiny intricate details as usual! I've started on the next one in this series; you can see the work in progress below.

Lily

I have a new art assistant that I'd like you to meet! She's tiny, warm, furry, and purrs a lot. She likes to sit in my lap while I paint and draw:



We found this tiny creature one evening as we were walking home from dinner in the village. She was all alone on the edge of town, so cute and vulnerable, so we decided to take her home with us. Her name is Lily, and she's very quickly become the Queen of the household!

This n that

Not long ago I was approached by the assistant art director for the e-zine Moondance for permission to use my art piece "Mythic Self Portrait" to illustrate one of their stories. You can check it out and read a lot of interesting articles here.

In other news, I recently donated my painting Supposedly Aerial to a benefit auction hosted in July by Street Haven, a women's shelter in Toronto. Here's to hoping it will help raise some money for their worthy cause!

Here's a photo of me in my temporary studio here in France. This pic was taken in the beginning of May, when it was pouring for days!

After the rain

Last week we had the most rain I have ever seen in my life! It even beat my experiences of Florida during hurricanes. For about 4 days it rained pretty much non-stop, with heavy winds. It was quite a shock to my Floridian senses to be huddled near an evening fire in the middle of May. Here are some pictures taken during the brief spells of non-rain...

This is the view from the front of the property.

Here is a lovely rainbow over the fields of one of our neighbors.

My soon-to-be studio

I'm excited about my new little studio. It will be in this cozy little ramshackle shack, which we are piecing back together. Basically it needs a new roof and a floor, and we'll be cutting in a new window to overlook the expansive scenery which you can see behind the hut. It's in a nice, quiet, lovely location which will be perfect for creating art. I'll share some more pictures once we've got it fixed up and I am settled inside!

Bonjour!

Well I'm delighted to say that the weather has since warmed since my last post. I still have limited computer access, so I haven't been able to spend as much time updating this blog. In the meantime, here are some pictures of the beautiful surrounding countryside:

La France

Bonjour! We arrived in France about a week and a half ago, taking the train from England all the way down to the south of France. It was surprisingly cold when we got here... an interesting experience considering the house doesn't have central heating, or electric heaters! All we had was a good old fashioned fireplace to keep up warm during dinner in the evenings. I spent many nights wearing 2-3 pairs of socks to bed. I am thankful to say that the weather has since warmed up and we are starting to get back into the routine of being here. I've set up a makeshift indoor art studio, while we work on the little cabin which will be my workspace during the summer. I picked up this cute little canvas and easel from a store the other day, on which I plan to paint a mini abstract. The canvas is only 7cm square. Tiny!

'Ello!

Well I'm back in blustery old Brighton at the moment! Quite a shock from Florida... why just last week I was sunning at the beach and now I'm wearing heavy jackets and scarves. I heard rumors that it was warm up until I arrived, but I'm sure their opinion of 'warm' differs from mine. Yesterday we had a light flurry of snow that lasted about 2 minutes. Although I hadn't seen snow in 8 years and was enchanted to see it, I must admit I'm glad it didn't last longer as surely that would have meant my Floridian bones would have wound up even more frozen than they already are.

I've started working on a new Deep Thinkers drawing, this one featuring a lovely green parrot, the Thai language, and old typewriter keys. By the end of the month I'll be in France and resume my normal posting habits then!

Busy Busy!

I've been super busy lately getting ready to leave for Europe. I'm winding down my business here in Florida, by finishing up paintings and organizing my art and art supplies to be taken overseas. For example, in preparation for doing more landscape paintings in France, I've cut to size thirty 4" x 6" pieces of heavy 300lb hot-pressed watercolor paper with an X-acto knife, which I then triple-gessoed. That was a task!

Recently I took a walk in downtown Tarpon Springs with my camera, photographing some of the neat old buildings. Later I played around with some of the photos in Photoshop, to make them look aged and interesting. Here's what I came up with!

Candy Colors

Here is an update of the candy and marbles painting, which I recently finished. I'm pretty happy with it! You can see a larger version, showing more of the detail in this piece, here.

This painting is available for purchase here.

Our view

Here's the French landscape painting I started a couple days ago. This is my first attempt at an Impressionist landscape painting, and also at creating a landscape at such a small scale (4" x 6"). I mixed a gel medium with the acrylics to thicken the paints, creating a texture similar to oil paints. The technique was pretty fun, and resulted in a surface in which the brushstrokes were more visible than they usually are in my paintings. Working in this manner was a nice contrast from my usual smooth, photorealistic style of painting in realism. I look forward to trying a few more and seeing what happens!

New landscape underpainting

Here is the underpainting for the landscape I've just started (as inspired by the aforementioned landscape show!). This is the view to the northwest, as viewed from our veranda in France. I'm trying this painting in a small, postcard size of 4" x 6", with acrylic on 300 lb paper. So far this is just the absolute bare bones of the painting, a quick sketch to lay out the composition...

New appreciation

Last night I attended an Art After Dark event at the Tampa Art Museum. It was fun to mingle with the crowd amongst the art after hours, to the throbbing sounds of a live band. They had a really nice exhibition titled Tourism and the American Landscape, featuring the artwork of Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran. I will admit that these types of paintings, when viewed as reproductions in books or online, seem almost insufferably boring (in my contemporary opinion), so I didn't have high hopes. But viewing the works of art in person makes such a huge difference! It becomes an entirely different experience of the art when one is able to view them upclose, in person - to see the various brushstrokes, the thickness or thinness of the paint, the luminescent quality of the paint. I gained a new appreciation for these artists, and was reminded of how important it is to view works of art in person as much as possible. I was also inspired to try some landscapes of my own! I have plenty of reference material from photos I've taken abroad, so I hope to tackle them in the coming weeks.

Inside the art

Here's what my work space has looked like this week:

I've been swapping back and forth between the abstract paintings. The four middle ones are going to be sent to a gallery in Ohio, so those are the ones I'm trying to finish first. Usually I like to go back and forth between working on realism and abstract, but I've been so focused on getting these done that this week I've only been working on abstracts. It's interesting the affect it's had on me - when I close my eyes at night, it's like I can see different colors and shapes floating in and out and all around. If you've ever seen the movie What Dreams May Come, do you remember the part where Robin Williams is "inside" his wife's painting? The painting's colors are all around him. That's kind of like what it's felt for me this week, only in a much more abstract manner. Very interesting!

The Recent Cold

I've enjoyed the recent cold weather lately. Of course I'm saying that from a Floridian perspective, of having been a bit disappointed by the absurdly warm winter we'd been having. For most of December and January there's not really been any need for so much as a sweater. I like changes in seasons, since they are still quite a novelty for me (although I have no desire to experience another English winter!). So it's been really fun for the past week to be able to put on a jacket and take a brisk hour-long walk along the beach, to get the juices flowing. What's great is that when the weather gets like this in Florida, when it's overcast and chilly, the beach is practically empty. I love the sense of quiet solitude that can be had on those occasions. It's a good time for self-reflection and observation of nature, and rejuvenates the desire to jump back into those bright, colorful abstracts!