Reflections

I only painted two paintings before I got my studio. One was a still life that included a vintage chrome drink pitcher. The painting wasn't very good but I really liked doing the reflections on the pitcher. That was 18 years ago, but I kept it - probably to remind myself that art is important in my life and so, after 14 years, I finally started painting. 

I was looking it at the other day and it inspired me to try a series of paintings with reflections. Here's the first one - another vintage item, but this is a little individual serving teapot:

Reflections 1
acrylic on 6x9 linen panel

Lemons and a Lime

New fruit. Happy with many things about this painting - the cloth, the lime and the lemon on the left.

Acrylic is becoming my friend.

Lemons and a Lime
6x8 acrylic on panel

My Buddy Billy

I was laid off in the fall. Besides losing my job, my income and a lot of confidence, the thing that really bugged me was that I was freaking crazily self-involved. My solution? Get a second dog.

It's hard to focus on yourself when you are housebreaking a 10 week old puppy in a snowstorm in December at 2AM. 

This is a portrait of Billie, the fantastic dog I adopted from Sterling Animal Shelter. She's the second dog that I've adopted from there, the first was Sammy, almost 9.5 years ago. She is also a wonderful dog, but Billie is something special. Sweet, attentive, loving and affectionate. Only negative so far is she manages to find and roll on every dead thing in the yard/woods/pond.

Billie

Grey Pear

I painted this last week and I'm really pleased with it. I like the palette, more muted than I usually use. I didn't paint much this past week because I had a visit from my wonderful old friend Timmy. It was fun and relaxing - we spent 3.5 days catching up, laughing, watching movies, walking the dogs and then seeing my son's play.

It's really amazing how your oldest friends are your best friends, and how - no matter the mistakes, no matter the amount of time that passes - the love is always there.

Grey Pear
6x8 acrylic on panel

Bowl of Fruit 1

Lots of glare on this photo but as good as the iPhone camera is - it's not perfect. Not loving this one, I really struggled with the paint - acrylic colors change when they dry! So irritating. At one point this painting was very dark, and each time I thought that I had lightened it up it would dry and be drab again. So then I decided to just exaggerate the colors to get the brightness and light that I like in my paintings, but then it got overworked. Oh well, try try again.

The colors aren't quite as vivid as this photo. The two things I like are the pear on the right and the tomato on the left attached to the vine. I like the bowl too. The orange on the left looks like it's losing air :).

Bowl of Fruit 1
9x12 acrylic on canvas