BLOG: Judy Lavoie Art and Gift Shop

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2012-01-24T17:20:00.000-05:00

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Mamaw & Papaw's House

2011-04-05T16:46:00.001-04:00

I delayed posting about my latest painting, since it was commissioned as a special gift and I didn't want to spoil the surprise. It was painted for a young woman named Alison, from her dad Mitch. This is the country farmhouse which was Alison's maternal grandparents' home when she was a child, so she has many wonderful memories of time spend there with her cousins.

The grandparents are deceased, and now the home is under different ownership. I had visited the property a couple of years ago when it was for sale, and wandered around the farmyard, with its rustic outbuildings and weathered barn. Old oak boards on the inside walls of one of the small sheds had various names written in chalk, with the year they were written, like "Alison 1995." Although quiet and deserted, the homestead had revealed some of its past life to me.

My challenge was to paint this home with contemporary photos as my reference, altering it to look more as it did a few decades ago. Mitch visited the current owners and took numerous photos, following my suggestion to photograph it either early morning or late afternoon, whichever lit the front of the house best.

From Mitch's reference photos, taken in the late afternoon sun on a late November day, we chose a slightly angled view of the front of the house, with one of the big maple trees framing the scene on the right. Mitch wanted me to depict the home in an autumn landscape, and reviewed some of the "changes" in the house details to make it look more as it did when Alison was young - no porch railings, different roofing, move the swing chair, etc.

I decided to emphasize the warmth of the autumn afternoon light, and cast a golden glow on the white clapboards. This was greatly accented by the bright foliage colors too. For the clapboard siding, I used a mechanical pencil with a hard fine lead (so it wouldn't smudge) and drew them with a ruler. As in many of my acrylic paintings, I used glazing of transparent paint over these pencil lines, giving a blue cast to the shadows and yellow near the strongest highlights.

As a final touch, Mitch had a custom frame made from rustic boards saved when the barn was dismantled. I hope it will be an image Alison will long treasure, along with the happy memories of her days there.

Watercolor Exhibition on PBS

2011-01-28T10:45:00.000-05:00

The Tennessee Watercolor Society's 32rd Exhibition, which took place last summer in Chattanooga, was professionally videotaped and will be shown on Tennessee PBS stations this weekend. So if you are in TN, tune in on Saturday, January 29, 2011, 7:30 pm ET and Sunday, January 30, 2011, 3:30 pm ET (adjust for Central Time, my friends to the west!).

The paintings chosen for this biennial exhibition were truly superior, and I was proud not only to be accepted with both of my entries but also to be an award winner. The very first painting shown in the video is my chocolates painting "Decadence," being viewed by two people involved in the exhibition. It's shown again with juror George James using it as an example in the workshop he presented (unfortunately, there's no audio at that part!), and once more with the chairwoman of the exhibition... so it gets lots of airtime! My dogwood blossoms, "Nature Paints a Picture," is shown as the video scrolls through all the paintings on display. The juror critiques some of the top award winners so the video is informative too. See which painting is your favorite... mine is "Orangina," an amazing still life of glass jars and goblets.

If you miss the broadcast, I own the DVD as well as the show catalog and would be happy to share them.

Painting a Snow Storm

2011-01-19T14:18:00.000-05:00

The monochrome tones of this painting are quite a departure from my usual use of color, bright lighting and shadows. I wanted to do something different from the snowy barn in sunshine that I most recently completed. And I admit being influenced to try a primarily gray painting after seeing the oil paintings of an artist I met on Christmas Eve, Phillip Anthony, who does exquisite landscapes entirely in black, white and grays.

Still inspired by our recent snows, I've painted another barn, this time in the midst of the storm. Lack of light limits the range of colors our eyes see. If you've ever done scuba diving, you know that the deeper you go, less sunlight filters through the water (especially the red end of the spectrum), and fewer colors are visible. I love the way this phenomenon is described in the lines below, which you might recognize as having been recited at the end of the Moody Blues' 1967 recording "Nights in White Satin:"

Cold hearted orb
That rules the night
Removes the colours
From our sight
Red is gray and
Yellow white
But we decide
Which is right
And
Which is an Illusion
- From the poem "Late Lament" by Graeme Edge, drummer and lyricist for The Moody Blues"

In this new painting I set the horizon line high, since the sky was less interesting than the foreground. Other than mixing black and white, my palette was limited to Raw Umber (a dark brown), Burnt Sienna (rusty brown), Jenkins Green (in the foreground tree boughs), and a little Quinacridone Red (for the metal fenceposts) - all toned down by mixing with black and/or white. I think the warm browns add just enough interest to make your eyes go to the horses, within the otherwise gray landscape. I used a lot of very light gray, even on the snow on the ground, so that when I used pure white it would show up a little better. As the final step, I held my breath and spattered fine drops of white over the entire painting, hoping I wouldn't ruin the whole thing!


"Before" I spattered with white to create the falling snow.

I chose the title "Let It Snow" after thinking of the Christmas carol by the same name. As a native of New England, I know snowstorms can cause lots of problems, inconveniences, danger, and even tragedies. These days I am fortunate to work from home, and I can stock up on food and essentials before a storm, and we've cut and stacked plenty of dry firewood to keep the woodstove going… so I don't have to drive anywhere until the roads are safe. Here in Tennessee, the snow rarely gets very deep, and usually doesn't stay on the ground long enough to get dirty and ugly… although our recent January storm lingered for a while. So I've been happy to have the snow and see the beauty it has created in my woods.

If you've visited me, then you've passed the barn in this painting, on the left before my driveway gate. The end I've painted is facing the little yellow farmhouse; the end more visible from the road is leaning considerably!

Technical Note:

I drew in the fine lines of the woven field fence which enclosed the barnyard with a .01 tip Pigma Micron permanent black artist's pen. It was a subtle detail, but I didn't like how the black lines looked - to sharp and clear. Because the lines of the fence mostly fell against the white snow background, it was easy to tone them down by painting white very thinly over the lines. Can you see the difference? It made the fencing blend in with the rest of the scene just as I wanted it to.

Great Grandpa Bunny Bunny - My Mentor?!?!

2011-01-14T16:57:00.000-05:00

Do you know who Great Grandpa Bunny Bunny is? You might think this is silly, but the beautiful blue shadows on the snow that fell here earlier this week have made me think of this character from my childhood. In a Little Golden Book called Walt Disney's Bunny Book, Great Grandpa Bunny Bunny teaches all the little bunnies in Bunnyville to paint everything around them - the flowers, the autumn leaves, the butterflies, the ferns… and the winter shadows. The little 22-page book had great illustrations of the happy bunnies creating all this beauty. "They painted up that whole wild wood till it sparkled and it gleamed." I loved this book, and a few years ago I accidentally found it in an antique store, with its retail price of 39¢ on the cover… so it has a place of honor in my art library! Do you think my early reading had anything to do with how much I love to paint nature, especially capturing its magnificent colors? I certainly enjoyed painting the blue snow shadows in "December Snow."

Perhaps bunnies painted these blue shadows from last summer's Japanese irises!

December Snow

2011-01-05T15:35:00.000-05:00

My newest painting is a result of our Christmas Day snowstorm, which left 6+ inches of fluffy snow. Freezing temps kept it on the ground, and, when the sun came out two days later, everything twinkled like a fantasy-land! The roads were a mess, so I donned my hiking boots and grabbed my camera and set out to capture the beauty… and ended up with oodles of inspiration.

There are working farms with aging buildings all around this area, and the subject of this painting is one of my favorite barns. It has so many interesting elements that added to the challenge of capturing it in a painting: multiple roof angles, worn white painted barn doors, a glimpse of the dark barn interior, round haybales stacked under cover, and the rough bumpy barnyard creating texture in the snow. The sky and clouds were fabulous on the day I traipsed through the woods - walking along the barbed wire fence line - and the nearby trees were casting cool blue shadows. The twisted rusty barbed wire was what initially stopped me in my tracks, and I could see how it would help me create the "layers" of foreground, middle-ground (the barn), and background (the distant trees). Barbed wire fencing is so characteristic of old property borders in this area, functioning like the old stone walls in New England. I could hardly wait to start painting.

Back at my painting table, I lightly pencilled in my shapes on a 20" x 16" canvas, creating a low horizon so there would be lots of sky. My palette of fluid acrylic paints contains many "blue" hues, and I decided the sky would be best done using Phthalo Blue / Red Shade, mixing it lighter and lighter as the sky merged closer to the treeline. For the clouds, I used a more grayish blue, Anthraquinone Blue, mixed with white gesso, and applied it with pure white so I could mix shades on the canvas and soften the edges. Clouds look smaller the further away they are, lower and lower in the sky, and the bottoms are darker than the sunlit tops. I knew I'd be painting a big tree trunk along the right side of the canvas, so I wasn't too concerned about the weird cloud shapes there.

Snow shadows are a "cool" blue, as opposed to the warm blues I used in the sky. I chose Payne's Grey mixed with white gesso. Painting the snow on the ground was much like painting ripples on water. Next, I painted the distant hill and leafless trees. Then came the best part - painting the barn. The haystacks were so fun… no wonder Monet painted them over and over again! I love to depict texture and details, and this barn is full of both. With the barn complete, I moved on to finish the snowy background evergreens, the tangled web of branches on the large tree on the right, and the loops of loose barbed wire.

One of the prettiest things about fresh snow in the sunshine is the way it is faceted to reflect light, sparkling like tiny diamonds have be tossed all over the surface. In an attempt to mimic this effect, I spattered the foreground and the barn roof on my finished painting with Fine Iridescent Pearl paint (Golden Acrylics) thinned with gloss varnish, which contrasts with the matte varnish I had already used to seal the painting. It's a subtle effect and one which you can only see in person and with light hitting the canvas at a particular angle, but I liked what this added.

Fortunately, there are many terrific barns all around Tennessee, and I've been collecting photo references for the past few years. I think there will be more barn paintings in my future, since I enjoyed doing "December Snow" so much.

Merry Christmas Jeb

2010-12-26T15:08:00.000-05:00

I couldn't spill the beans before Christmas since this was a surprise gift, but here is my newest painting, a portrait of Jeb. I was commissioned by Jeb's mom Pam, as a surprise for his dad Jim.

The biggest challenge with this portrait was taking reference photos. Not only did we have to sneak around Jim, but Jeb is a very active, big, 2-year old lab. We did the first photo shoot indoors since the weather on our rendezvous day was cold and rainy. My faithful assistant (Rick) got Jeb to stay relatively still, capturing his attention with a huge chewy bone... sort of like a child photographer does by holding a toy where they want the subject to be looking. Jeb moves around so much and so fast, that I had many out of focus shots. I did get some good poses out of that session though, shooting without a flash, but I was unhappy with the amount of detail in my shots. So I rendezvous'd once more with Jeb and Pam about a week later, and I took a bunch of outdoor shots - the pose didn't matter so much, since I had already decided on this quarter-profile pose - so I just concentrated on close ups of the side of his head, while his mom kept him calm. Finally I had a collection of reference photos I could combine and work from. Success!

I love to emphasize the eyes in my animal portraits. Jeb's eyes are very dark, melting into a big black ball. I opened my digital photos of him in Photoshop, and manipulated close-ups of his eyes, just so I could get a better look at where the pupil and iris really were. Since my day job has been as a commercial artist for 30 years I have many thousands of hours with Photoshop, so it's a natural and handy tool for me as a fine artist. Once I got to painting Jeb's one eye which is visible in this pose, I painted it as a medium brown eye, which I could see in the enhanced digital file. Then I kept glazing over with very transparent black mixed with payne's gray (a very blue-toned grey) until I got his eye close to reality. The final spots of white from reflected light made it come to life.

As with my previous portrait of a white-furred dog ("Tom"), I used a lot of color and glazing in painting Jeb's fur. I started by coating his body-shape with a solid base of a light golden color (raw sienna mixed with white gesso). This created a neutral ground, upon which I could add lighter and darker strokes, building up texture. Jeb's fur was much whiter, shorter and finer than Tom's, and I exaggerated the highlights and shadows to give a three-dimensional appearance.

Pam reports that Jim is thrilled with his portrait of Jeb, and that's all I needed to satisfy me!

Glazing Layers of Color

2010-10-21T13:29:00.000-04:00

In my newest painting, a commission called "Greenhouse & Gardens," I used a technique of layering in the bottom right corner, to get the effect of masses of leaves. This technique is often called GLAZING. I do this in acrylics by painting with white (I actually use acrylic gesso for maximum opacity), letting it dry, then painting over the white with very transparent acrylic colors. As with watercolors, some acrylic pigments are more transparent than others. I can choose those colors which are naturally transparent, or thin others with acrylic glazing liquid (I use Golden brand) to make them more transparent. Then I paint the color over the entire area where I used the white gesso, and it covers it with color. Often times I repeat the whole process, glazing layer upon layer. It is a good technique for creating depth.
Here are six steps showing how I used this method for the leaves of the zinnias in the garden:

I have used this method in many of my other paintings, since it creates great depth. I suppose my experience as a watercolor artist influences me, since watercolors are naturally transparent and often layered in glazes.

I especially like this method for creating thick fur on an animal, and have used it in many of my pet portraits. Here you can see how I used the glazing to create strands of hair on my dog Darla's floppy ears in "Into the Wind" and the overlapping fur on the Scotty's face in my painting "Single Malt". I painted layer upon layer, using white gesso and various transparent colors and brown tones, to create the background of dried brown leaves in "Three Sisters", my painting of three Lady Slipper wildflowers.

Give this method a try to create wonderful effects of depth in your own acrylic painting adventures!

Traveling Show

2010-06-30T17:12:00.000-04:00

The Tennessee Watercolor Society's 32nd Exhibition has ended in Chattanooga, TN, but 30 selected paintings will travel around Tennessee in three other shows in the next 5 months. My award winning painting "Decadence" is part of the Traveling show.
You might live close enough to catch one of these venues:

Customs House Museum, Clarksville TN (Nashville area), for July and August
West Tennessee Regional Art Center at Humboldt (Memphis area), for September and October
Pryor Gallery at Columbia State Community College, Columbia TN, for November

The other painting I had in the show, "Nature Paints a Picture," is a winner in my book too, since I've sold it. I am sending it off to its new home with my cousin Lisa in Phoenix. Thanks Lisa!

TWS Award :-)

2010-05-25T16:31:00.002-04:00

I just won an award for "Decadence," one of the two paintings I got accepted into the Tennessee Watercolor Society's biennial exhibition. The show opened at the Chattanooga (TN) State Community College last Saturday with the awards ceremony, and runs through June 25th, open M-F 9-5. It is a beautiful show, with some fabulous paintings, so I am very proud to have been chosen for the show, and delighted to get a prize! My second painting in the show is going to be purchased by my cousin Lisa, so that's a winner too!

You can read more about this painting in my earlier post "Calling All Chocolate Lovers".

Tennessee Watercolor Society Exhibition

2010-04-22T13:40:00.001-04:00

Here's the official poster for the TWS 32nd Exhibition, for which my paintings "Decadence" (described in my previous blog post) and "Nature Paints a Picture" have been chosen. I learned that there were 213 paintings entered from all around Tennessee, and my two were among the 70 juried into the show. The selection was made from digital photos of the paintings; the juror will select recipients of the 18 awards when the actual paintings are delivered to Chattanooga, TN, prior to the show opening there on May 16th. I am proud to have been accepted!

Calling All Chocolate Lovers!

2010-02-09T14:21:00.000-05:00

My newest painting, titled "Decadence" by popular vote, is now complete. It's a different subject for me, and variety always makes the painting process interesting. My intention before starting was to do a painting to enter into an upcoming exhibition, and this necessitates something bold. When a juror stands in the center of a room with over a hundred paintings surrounding him/her, a painting needs to really stand out to make it through the initial cut. Of course, from there it gets down to being individually judged for creativity, use of the media, technical mastery, etc., so those are all elements I tried to incorporate. I wonder if I'd do better with a female juror for this painting of chocolates?!?!

I was inspired years ago by artists who do enlarged views of common objects, like the flower paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe. I remember seeing some enlarged candy by another artist, and it really caught my eye. About 3 years ago, I thought of doing the same with chocolates, the kind which come in a heart at Valentine's Day. I bought a little sampler box, but what was inside didn't look like what I was picturing in my mind - a molded plastic holder with the chocolates sitting in their designated spaces. I wanted the ones in little pleated cups! One day I noticed a Russell Stover store and went inside. They had many many choices of boxed chocolates, and you could see a sample of what was inside each box. I found just what I wanted, with interesting variation of designs, shapes, and colors... and in foil paper cup wrappers. Once back home, I took the chocolates and put them on a silver platter, being selective about the arrangement from a design point of view. Then I moved it around to check different lighting and photographed this little still life. Then I ate the chocolates [tough job, but someone had to do it!]. The photos went into my large digital file folder of references and stayed there until I was perusing for ideas about two months ago.

It was great fun to paint these sweets, and it was a new challenge to create so many shades of brown! I tried to capture the glossiness of the chocolates as well as the reflectiveness of the foil cups and the silver tray. I promise you won't get fat looking at the painting - unless it makes you hungry to go eat some chocolates!

Trying Gessoed Paper for a New Effect

2010-01-25T15:25:00.002-05:00

I made a resolution to experiment with my art techniques, and here's my first exploration. It's a technique I learned years ago using watercolors, but I've applied it to acrylics (which I often use much like watercolors, but they react differently). It starts with a sheet of watercolor paper which I coat with a layer of gesso. Gesso resembles white paint but it creates a harder surface and blocks the normal absorbency of the paper so paints applied on top when the gesso is dry will sit on the surface. The concept is that after you paint on the gessoed paper and the paint dries you can remove the paint by rewetting it and blotting or wiping it off. I wasn't sure if this would work with acrylics, because they are much more permanent when dry than watercolor pigments. I found it worked with the acrylics as well as it had with watercolor paints.

So after trying this on a swatch of paper, I decided to play and make a painting. My inspiration had come during a walk on one of the trails through our woods, on a winter day when we were in the clouds. The scene was very muted in greys and browns. I liked the way the hundreds of trees were silhoetted and fading away into the fog. I went back a few days later, when the air was more clear and took the photo shown here.

I decided to paint with a limited palette of just two colors, ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. These two colors mix to a wide array of browns and greys. A limited palette can give a painting an overall unity and calmness.

I proceeded as described above and did layer after layer of trees and branches, often "erasing out" branches and leaf areas (the beech trees hang onto lovely beige leaves until spring) and had fun. Just for interest, I decided to add figures on the trail. I drew silhouettes of Rick and Ellie Mae in the size that would look right in the painting. I traced the figures onto frosted vellum and cut them out with an x-acto knife. This became a stencil; I taped it to the dry painting, took a damp tissue, and wipe from the edges in. This removed nearly all the paint from that area, giving me a clean surface in the shape of the two bodies. The top image to the right shows the taped down stencil, the bottom shows the stencil removed and the cleaned off silhouettes. You can also see on the bottom one where I used a wet brush and painted in some branch shapes to the left of the silhouettes and wiped off the paint. Hey, that was fun!

I continued with the painting in much the same manner, creating various colors from the two paints, adding more layers of trees to create a foreground, and painting in some details on the two figures.

The photo below shows how far I've gone with the painting. Not what I would consider a masterpiece, but a fun exercise. It's good to stretch my painting legs and do something different every so often!

Sally Mae Dog Portrait

2009-11-25T17:19:00.004-05:00

I've just completed a new dog portrait, of "Sally Mae". It's a surprise Christmas gift for her dad from her mom, so don't tell if you know them! Take a look at the reference photos I took of Sally, using some of the tips I shared previously on photographing your pet. You can see which photo became my main reference, and how I simplified the background. Sally Mae is part of the same family as "Tom" who I painted two years ago, so I tried to make the format of the painting coordinate, to make a nice pair.

New Painting: When She Was Three

2009-09-18T10:32:00.008-04:00

Just finished my newest painting, the first since last spring (gardening, making a living, and other stuff make for interruptions!) It is called "When She Was 3" and I was inspired by photos I took last June of a friend's little girl playing at the edge of a river. It's a bit reminiscent of two other little girl paintings I've done which you can see in my internet gallery, "Molly By The Sea," which I painted in watercolor a few years ago of my niece on Hampton Beach, NH, and gave to my parents as their 50th anniversary gift (Molly is their youngest grandchild and they live in Hampton), and "In Her Own World," which I did from photos I took of a little girl on St. Augustine Beach who I didn't know. The anonymity of the little girl prompted many who saw the painting to be reminded of little girls in their lives.

On my Facebook fan page, I have created a photo album of this new painting in progress. Click on the Facebook icon in the right column of my blog to see it.

I Designed a State License Plate!

2009-07-29T13:18:00.006-04:00

I recently designed a new specialty license plate for the State of Tennessee, and it will go into production soon. It commemorates the Cherohala Skyway, a scenic byway through the mountains connecting Tennessee and North Carolina (traversing the Cherokee National Forest and the Nantahala National Forest, thus the name). Proceeds from the license plate sales will benefit local causes. My design is shown here without the numbers (which will go to the right of the deer) and corner stickers, which I had to allow space for, so you can get a good glimpse.

Spring Wildflowers 4

2009-06-19T11:56:00.007-04:00

As spring officially comes to a close, I present my final Spring Wildflower slide show for 2009. I discovered the chiggers were out the day I photographed the Horse Nettle, so I don't walk unprotected into the woods and field these days. "Queen Anne's Lace", aka Chigger Weed, is flowering now, but I haven't seen it growing on my property so it didn't make the show. The final photo is Dandelion, a wildflower which has been with us all spring, often unappreciated for its great values. (Background music is a live recording of me on banjo playing Blackberry Blossom.)

Spring Wildflowers III

2009-05-12T11:13:00.004-04:00

I seem to be making more wildflower discoveries every day, pouring through my books to identify them. Just imagine, these are only the ones I am finding on my property... I pass by so many others in my travels through this area. We are truly blessed to live in an area so rich.

When is a wildflower a weed? In the case of "Cranes Bill", shown in this slide show, I must confess calling it a weed. It has taken over this year, introducing itself into all of my "cultivated" gardens. I have planted showy evening primrose, echinacea, and other wild flowers into my gardens, so that absolves me from insulting Mother Nature I hope!

Too busy gardening to paint much these days, but it's all part of the inspiration process.

Spring Wildflowers II

2009-05-07T11:11:00.004-04:00

My woods continue their amazing show of spring wildflowers, and these are the most recent in my continuing show of Mother Nature's beauty. There are many others which I haven't gotten to photograph, if you can believe it!

Please let me know how the quality of this wildflower slide show compares to the one I posted previously, since I saved it at a higher resolution. The earlier one doesn't seem to do justice to the flowers, so I'll redo it based on your responses. Thanks.

Tips for Photographing Your Pet

2009-04-22T11:11:00.011-04:00

When I do pet portraits I work from photographs, often taken by the pet owner. For my own dog's portraits, I've gone through the struggles of getting good photos. To get the best possible references, I've created hints for photographing pets, and many of my pet-loving friends use these tips to get good photos of their dogs and cats, not necessarily for me to paint from, but for their own enjoyment. So here are my tips:
- Take photos of pets outdoors without a flash to avoid the big "red eye" effect; an overcast day is better than bright sunshine or dark shadows.
- If indoors is necessary, try to position the pet near a window of bright light and take the shots without a flash.
- Watch out for too much lighting contrast, which can "blow out" the whites and make all the darks very black. When I paint an all-white dog or an all black dog, it's the subtle highlights and subtle shading which make the difference.
- It is also best to get at eye-level with the dog, not standing above looking down at his/her face... makes for a much more personal view. You might have to lie belly-down on the ground, but it will be worth it!
- Take loads of photos, since pets don't always give their full attention! You can try several angles, too: side, 3/4 view, head-on, tilted head.
Hope this helps! Shown are my portraits of a white-faced dog "Tom" and a black dog "Davis" (I titled this painting "Single Malt" after his Scottish ancestry). It was a surprise to me how many pale pastel colors I had to use to paint Tom's face and make it look 3-dimensional and realistic.

My Wildflower Paradise

2009-04-15T12:43:00.006-04:00

It's mid April and the spring wildflowers in my woods are magnificent. On my woodland walks I take loads of photos, often of new discoveries so I can compare and identify them with my wildflower books. I've created a little slide show of what has flowered so far since February, in chronological order, with some of my favorite photos, and labeled each shot with the common name of the flower. Along with the plants which grow on the forest floor, I couldn't resist including the wild flowering dogwoods, which seem especially pretty this year. Perhaps you'll see why I have been inspired to paint many of these gorgeous flowers. Enjoy the show!

My High School Sweetheart!

2009-04-14T11:49:00.000-04:00

Judy and I have been best friends for almost 40 years. We dated during high school and college for 6 years, and were married 33 years ago. We are together 24/7!

We decided to learn to play banjos just over 3 years ago. Recently, I wrote a personal song to express my feelings for Judy. You can download "Walking with you Judy" on our website.

A unique painting surface

2009-04-13T14:38:00.000-04:00

I was inspired by the texture of some 12" tiles my friend Kathy got as samples from a stone supplier. They told her it was "brushed granite" and the process created relief in the surface, so the harder stone of the veins and other elements was raised slightly from the background stone. The texture immediately reminded me of trees and branches, just waiting for some color to be added. Springtime in East Tennessee is very colorful, and I only needed to look out my window to see how to enhance the two tiles.

Hummingbirds are back!

2009-04-10T11:04:00.000-04:00

Our first hummingbird of the season arrived at our feeder yesterday. I anticipate their arrival at the beginning of April, so I have two feeders out waiting. This was a few days later than in past years, but they always coordinate with the flowering of our wild dogwood trees. They don't actually get nectar from the dogwoods, but there are loads of other flowering plants and trees awaiting them here now. It's a beautiful time of year!

Welcome to my BLOG!

2009-04-08T13:19:00.000-04:00

Spring is in the air and it's time to grow and expand, so I've added this new blog to my online art gallery and gift shop. I am excited about being able to post news, happenings, and thoughts about my art, and I invite feedback from you. I'll keep you posted on new paintings, print releases, art shows I'm in, art gift ideas, and new inspirations. This is going to be fun! Thanks for joining me, and be sure to visit my online gallery.