Whiteout (Deer) - SOLD

Whiteout (Deer)

8" x 8"

Acrylic on canvas

SOLD

Here's another of these smaller paintings that uses Golden's interference colors.  

Whiteout (Bison)

Whiteout (Bison)

8" x 8"

Acrylic on canvas

Available for purchase directly through the artist (contact)

The Seattle area experienced some record snowfall this season...we lost power for nearly a week, but that gave us an excuse to cozy up next to the fire, at least.  

I experimented with Golden's interference colors for several of these small paintings...these colors "flip between a bright opalescent color and its complement" depending upon the angle at which they're viewed.  That effect doesn't translate to a photograph, unfortunately - but I've really been loving it!

snow on the farm

Hunting by Starlight

Hunting by Starlight

12" x 12"
Acrylic on canvas

Available for purchase at Carnation Corners, Carnation, WA

We often hear the coyotes howling and yipping at night, and protecting our chickens from these intelligent hunters has been quite a process.

Trailing the last gleam after,

In the valleys emptied of light,

Ripples a whimsical laughter

Under the wings of the night.

-from "Coyote", Badger Clark

Patience - SOLD

Patience

24" x 12"

Acrylic on canvas

SOLD

The farm we're on has tons of beavers that are always busily building dams in the streams that run through the land.  When a flood comes, they take advantage of their good fortune and acquire lots of good, high-up branches that they usually don't have access to when the water's low.  We have a chewed-off branch sitting on our window sill - the bite marks from the beavers are so smooth and polished, and the branch is really quite beautiful.

When trials come, for come they will,

Be patient if you can

-from "Patience" by S. Moore

Steady On

Steady On

Acrylic on canvas

24" x 48"

Available for purchase at Carnation Corners, Carnation, WA

I'm finally catching up on photographing paintings that have been sitting in my studio for months and months.  I've been super busy (in a good way!) and am really excited about some new painting projects that I've been working on...in the meantime, I'll continue to post some older paintings on the blog to get caught up here.

Some of the fields on our farm tend to flood, bringing in huge flocks of geese (and even some truly stunning swans).  They've been great for references when I'm painting.

This painting is named after the Storyhill song (they make great music to paint to).

Big Sky

click to enlarge!

Big Sky
acrylic on canvas

24" x 48" x 1.5"

Available for purchase directly through the artist (contact)

It's time to play catch-up with my blog...the past few months have been a whirlwind!  We've moved to a farm - I'm really excited to be in this beautiful rural setting.  It'll be very conducive to my painting routine. :)  I've also been working on several commissions (in addition to other paintings), one of which I finished up yesterday.  I've unfortunately been lagging behind on photographing everything.

"Big Sky" is a painting that was finished several months ago; I decided to make the sky the central focus and have the bison herd be secondary.  I toyed with the idea of continuing to tinker with it but finally decided to keep it simple.  This is always a struggle with me - i.e., knowing when to stop and just put the brush down.  

I'm now hanging some of my paintings at Carnation Corners Gifts & Fine Art in Carnation, WA!  It's a lovely space that is an extension of a real estate firm.

"Sure is big country.  The only thing bigger is the sky."

-A.B. Guthrie, The Big Sky

Silent Witness

Silent Witness
acrylic on canvas
24" x 12"
Available for purchase at Carnation Corners, Carnation, WA

I'm steadily catching up on my painting after a crazy couple of weeks. I'm working on a series of farm animals for an upcoming show at Jubilee Biodynamic Farm.

I'm still painting lots of wild fauna, of course. I just finished this particular painting, which was my first attempt at painting a cougar. It's amazing how much my own housecats resemble this impressive animal. Cougars are the largest cats that can purr (to the best of my knowledge...scientists are still debating, apparently).

He crouched low and long on the road,
Low and long and golden against
The leaves, watching pensively,
A damp sphinx of the woods.
-Keith Holyoak, from "The Cougar"

The Great Gray Ghost

The Great Gray Ghost

acrylic on gallery wrapped canvas

14" x 11" x 1.5"

Available for purchase at Carnation Corners, Carnation, WA

The weather has thankfully returned to normal after being above 90 for far too long...so it's finally a tolerable temperature in my studio again, and I'm getting caught up on painting. This particular piece is a departure from my usual four-legged subjects...I just had to paint that beautiful eye! That striking yellow-orange color is the actual hue of the owl's eye - I based the whole color scheme of the painting around it, accordingly. Iridescent gold paint is mixed in with the pigments.

The sea, the stars, the winds, the trees,
The stream, the waterfall, the dell,
The bird, the flowers, the meadow-bell--
I felt that all of these

Were but the symbols of a soul
Alive with hope or memory;
The mind's immortal harmony
That through its chambers stole.

And to the spirit's listening ear,
Whilst slept the limbs and senses all,
Made every thing seem musical;
How could I cease to hear?
-Christopher Pearch Cranch, from "The Music of Nature"

In the Dandelion Field

(click images to enlarge)

In the Dandelion Field 

acrylic on canvas 12" x 24" 

Available for purchase at Carnation Corners, Carnation, WA

We saw this beautiful white horse outside of Wisdom, Montana. I was nervous about painting her, since I didn't want her painting to end up looking like 1980s-era white unicorn poster...but she was too pretty not to put on canvas! The yellow accents have some iridescent gold paint mixed in to give them a subtle shimmer (yep, still using that gold paint...I love the color tint it produces even more than the shimmery effect).

As I mentioned earlier, I'm trying to take more liberties with my painting. Although I used a lot of texture on the first main background layer for this piece, I didn't use nearly as much paint as I usually do for the remaining layers. The rest of the background was created by literally scraping paint onto the surface with palette knives. I rotated this knife method with doing color washes with a brush, and I think this created a lot more depth to the color than otherwise. The horse itself is a bit translucent in places - I wanted her to blend in a bit with the background. To give her a similar depth, I painted her using multiple layers of thin washes in varying shades of blue, yellow, green, and white (some palette knife scraping was involved as well).

Now my brothers call from the bay, 
Now the great winds shoreword blow, 
Now the salt tides seaward flow; 
Now the wild white horses play, 
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. 
-Matthew Arnold, The Foresaken Merman