International Museum Day

Since today's hashtag is #InternationalMuseumDay, I thought I'd show you some of my favorite paintings from my local museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I'm incredibly lucky to be a subway ride away from The Met.  I can easily pop in any time and get a dose of great art, something I really needed when I hit a creative wall last year.

You could spend a month in the building and not see everything, so I picked out a few of the pieces that I'm sure to see every time I visit.

This is my all time favorite painting in The Met, Woman With A Pink, by Rembrandt.

Being a floral painter, I always stop to see the Fantin-Latour's.  Above is Summer Flowers, the painting below is Roses In A Bowl.

The Dance Class

Love all of Degas Dancer paintings and sculptures.

The Dancing Class

Of course, I always visit the VanGogh's.  This is one of my favorites of the Sunflowers.  One of these days I'm going to try doing a copy of it.

Roses, Vincent Van Gogh

I can't pass by the most famous woman in The Met, Sargent's Madame X.

The Pink Dress, Berthe Morisot

I always visit the Monet's.  Years ago while visiting France, I trekked to Rouen just to see the Cathedral.  It was pretty amazing to see the building that I knew so well from the paintings.

Garden At Sainte Adresse

Morning On The Seine Near Giverny

I hope you enjoyed seeing a few of my favorite paintings from The Met.  By the way, these and thousands more of their works are now in the public domain, so if anything catches your eye, you can download the images for yourself.  Have a good weekend and enjoy the Royal Wedding!

A Visit To The Florence Griswold House And Museum

This past weekend I went on a visit to Old Lyme, CT to see The Artist's Garden exhibit at the Florence Griswold House and Museum.  The exhibit was beautiful and I have so many photos that I will give the show it's own separate post, but today I want to talk about the Griswold Home.

Miss Florence, as she was known, ran a boardinghouse in Old Lyme, and it became the center of the American Impressionist movement.  Artists came to Old Lyme for the summer to paint the landscape and stayed in the house.

The house is a national historic landmark, as it should be.  I'm so happy that the place has been preserved and we can see how these artists lived and worked.

I was dying over the pink glass in the window frames of the front door.

This is the front hall of the house.  There are beautiful paintings on the walls and lovely antique furniture.

A portrait of Miss Florence.  I don't know which of the artists painted it.  Since this was her home, there are no tags next to the artwork.

This room was originally the parlor.  It was transformed into a bedroom and studio, and this room was reserved for the most special guests of the house.

Apparently, it was quite festive in the evenings.  This parlor is where everyone gathered after dinner.  There was music and games and conversation.

Another beautiful bedroom.

Miss Florence had quite the blue and white collection.  You know I wanted to abscond with all of these beautiful pieces!

Finally, we made our way to the back of the house.  The whole house is beautiful, but what I really wanted to see were the famous painted doors.  The artists that stayed in the house painted the door panels.  This is one of the many reasons I'm so happy that this place cannot be torn down and replaced by condos or something equally awful.

The above photo is in the dining room.  The painted panels in there were incredibly beautiful.

The gardens outside the house are as beautiful as the inside.  In a few respects, they reminded me of Giverny.  Not surprising as the exhibition noted that many of the American Impressionists spent time there.

check out this busy bee

I hope you enjoyed this look at the Florence Griswold House and gardens.  If you find yourself near Old Lyme, please stop in and check it out for yourself.  A really amazing place.

Day Trip: Southampton

Hi all.  I apologize for the lack of posts last week, but the painting that I had such high hopes for ended up being a wipe down.  It was just not working and by Thursday there was no getting around it, so I decided to stop work on it.  While disappointing, this does happen at times.  Years ago when I visited the Musee Marmottan, they had canvases there that Claude Monet had abandoned.  If it could happen to him, it can happen to any of us, right?

Anyway, yesterday I had an appointment on Long Island, and since I was halfway there, I decided to continue on to the East End.  I had not been out there in years and we finally had some gorgeous weather yesterday, so it seemed like the perfect time to visit.  Not only do I love to stroll around and window shop, but it was the perfect opportunity to do some studio prop hunting.  I did find two things on my wish list, but unfortunately they were way too expensive to use for studio props so I passed, but it was fun to look around anyway.

As usual, I snapped a bunch of photos.  Hope you enjoy seeing one of my favorite spots in the world.

This adorable pelican was guarding the front of his store.  Around the corner there were some paparazzi going crazy trying to get a photo of someone, but we never found out who it was.

We stumbled upon this cute beach shop.  Made me wish I was staying in town so I could visit one of the beautiful beaches.

Some shops on Jobs Lane.  If you love little, interesting, independent stores, this is the place for you.

All along Jobs Lane there are little alley ways that lead to great stores that are hidden away from the main road.  It's such fun discovering them.

This is the Topiarie Flower Shop.  I'm obsessed with this store.  As you can see in the pictures above, they have gorgeous flowers and accessories.  Unfortunately, I don't have a garden, but if luck is with me Wednesday night, I will be the proud owner of this house and will have an enormous flower garden to paint.

Yes, I am planning on winning the big Powerball ticket and hanging out in my East End garden painting for the rest of the summer!

Another little alley led to these great shops and this lovely fountain.  It was a great day, but now it's time to get back to the easel.  Have a good day, everybody!