Studio Happenings And The Gallery North Figure Show Opening

Hello All,

It's been quite the week over here.  I finished two paintings this week, started life drawing again, joined an art history book seminar and spent a lot of time applying to shows.  The Gallery North show that I am participating in was so easy.  Entry was all online and it took about 10 minutes.  I loved the ease of it, but alas, not all art shows are created equal.  Some who are not up to date technologically can take quite a bit of time, but it is worth it in the end when you see your painting hanging in a show.  I've sent out four submissions, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I get chosen for some of them.

Speaking of Gallery North, I not only attended the opening reception, but they also had an art panel for the artists to meet patrons of the gallery and discuss their work and answer questions.  Public speaking is not my favorite thing to do, but I'm so glad that I did this panel.  I loved listening to the other artists talk about their process and it was so nice to spend time with people who really wanted to hear about your art and discuss it with you.

The opening for the Art of the Figure show.  The opening set a gallery record for attendance!  People were spilling out to the front and back of the gallery.  Luckily, the weather was perfect.

My painting, Rochelle

At the opening

This is me again, only at the art panel.  Same photo op, different black dress :)

I must send out my thanks to Gallery North and their staff for putting on a wonderful show.  I'm so happy to be a part of it.

Day Trip: The North Fork

After reading about Habitually Chic's trip to the North Fork of Long Island, I was inspired to travel out there myself.  I had not been out there in many years.  Some of the area has really changed and is now catering to tourists, while other parts are just as I remember them.

We went all the way to Orient Point.  To get out there, you have to drive through many small towns and they are just lovely.  If you love Mid-Century Modern, get yourself out to Southold immediately.  There were three vintage stores on one block selling some great things.  I found a Syroco mirror (I am obsessed with them thanks to Pinterest) but it was too small.  I also did my usual hunting for some blue and white pieces but had no luck on that front.

Next we stopped in Greenport.  I had not been there for many years and the town has changed dramatically.  It now resembles the beach towns in every other waterfront community, and there were many more tourists there than I ever remember seeing.

The unfortunately named Deliverance.  Every one reading the sign had the same reaction "no thanks"!

Next we drove on to Orient Point.  I went there all the time as a child and had not been there in many years.  There was some beautiful scenery on the way.

See the egret?  There were egrets and ducks all over

Orient Point

Not sure what kind of bird left this footprint, but it must be pretty big.

The Connecticut ferry docking at Orient Point.  Welcome to New York.

Next stop, France!

The end

Then it was time for the long drive home.  Now, back to the sunflowers!

What's Happening And A Blog Update

It was quite a busy week over here in NYCP land.  Many things on the to do list were accomplished which is always nice.

First up: the stars aligned and I was able to photograph some of the finished paintings.

Brass Teapot And A Glass Vase, 16x20, oil

The River, 18x24, oil

The Red Robe, 16x20, oil

Lady In Red, 16x20, oil

White Pitcher With Oranges, 12x16, oil

Peonies In A Blue And White Vase, 16x20, oil

Peonies In A Glass Vase, 16x20, oil

I'm very happy to be able to finally post these paintings for everyone to see.  I'm hoping to varnish them this morning and then in a few days they will be ready for hanging.

I've also started applying to another set of shows.  I'll let you know what happens (keeping my fingers crossed!).

Next up, I was able to frame a bunch of paintings that I had stacked up against the wall.  It still amazes me how different a painting looks in a beautiful frame.  Of course, I had some help from my assistant :)

I've been framed!!

I also wanted to let you guys know that I am making a small change to the blog.  I've been hurrying to get paintings done so that I can get them on the blog quickly to show everyone, but I realized that I can't continue to do postings that way.  This week I ended up reworking a few paintings that I thought were finished, but later realized that they were not.  My usual way of working is to "finish" a painting and then let it sit for a week or two.  By studying a painting when you are not actively working on it, it is much easier to see what needs to be corrected.  A good painting takes time to complete and the only thing rushing me were my own self imposed deadlines.

Going forward, I will post my in progress shots instead of waiting until everything is complete and I will post new photos of the reworked paintings as soon as I am positive that they are finally done.

This is getting long so I'll stop here.  As always, I thank all of you for reading my blog and following along on my adventures.

Xo,
Frances

Gallery Show Reception Tonight

Hi Everyone.  I wanted to let you guys know that my painting, Rochelle, is going to be hanging in Gallery North on Long Island as part of The Art Of The Figure juried show starting tonight through September 27th.

Rochelle, 16x20, oil

The opening reception is tonight from 5-7.  If you are in the area, stop by and say hello.  I would love to meet you!



Xo,
Frances

My First Successful Sunflowers

Regular readers of this blog know that my favorite thing to paint are floral still life arrangements.  Painting flowers has always come very easily to me with one exception:  sunflowers.  I can't tell you how many times I have started a sunflower set up only to realize it was not working and wipe it down.  I could not understand why I seemed to have a mental block with this one particular flower.

One day I was talking with a group of painter friends and somehow we got to talking about Van Gogh's sunflowers.  One of the women remarked that while his sunflowers were very colorful, they were not luminous.  Ding, ding, ding - we have a winner!  As Oprah would say, I had a light bulb moment.  Every time I was painting sunflowers, I was trying to paint them in the same colorful style that Van Gogh did.  I was not trying to copy him of course, but I think all those years of studying them seeped into my consciousness.  My paintings lean more toward the Old Masters than the Post-Impressionists.  That bright color just does not come naturally to me.  

Last week I started a new still life, and it was amazing.  I finished in just a couple of days and had no problems at all.  This was a good lesson in staying true to your own style no matter what.  

This was my original set up.  It was nice, but something about it was bugging me.  I woke up at 7am yesterday and realized that the problem was that the right side was too empty compared to the left (don't you love it when problems seem to get solved in your sleep?).  I happened to have another bouquet at my house so I snipped off one of those and brought it to the studio.  

Here is the finished painting.  I'm so happy to have finally gotten this right.  I found a guy that has different sunflower varieties and I am going to try them next.  

Sunflowers, 16x20, oil

I'll post the new painting as soon as it is ready and as always, thanks for following along on my painting adventures.

Sunflowers: Monet and Van Gogh

I'm working away on my sunflowers (finally!) and I wanted to take a look at Monet's sunflower still life.  Since my bookshelves currently have a bunch of paintings stacked in front of them, I turned to google and the painting hanging in the Met popped up.

Bouquet of Sunflowers, Claude Monet, Metropolitan Museum of Art

According to the website, Van Gogh saw the painting in the Durand-Ruel Gallery and in a letter to his brother, Theo, remarked that Gauguin told him that while Monet's sunflowers were very good, he liked Van Gogh's better.  Van Gogh said he didn't agree.

Sunflowers, Vincent Van Gogh, Metropolitan Museum of Art

I'm a huge admirer of them both.  I love finding out about these anecdotes.  It seems amazing to me that the masters were having the same conversations with each other that I have with my artist friends.

This is my set up.  I'm hoping to have the finished painting in a few days.  Have a great weekend!

My New Blog Design

Hi Everyone.  I wanted to pop in to let you all know about my blog re-vamp.  Ever since I started blogging I wanted to create tabs so readers could just click and see the paintings they were interested in.  
Last night I was finally able to do it (thanks to some help from my long suffering husband) and while we were at it we decided to change the design of the blog a bit.  When I first set the blog up I read a blurb that you should not use the advanced template if you didn't know what you were doing, so I went with the basic.  Google is not very intuitive (to me anyway) so I never did anything else.  Luckily my hubs has no technological fears and just dived right in and now I have the paintings separated into categories.

Just click on the top tab to see portraits, landscapes, etc.  The new paintings I've written about recently are not there yet because they haven't been varnished and photographed.  If the weather is 90 degrees and sunny as the weather people are saying, that will happen tomorrow.

I hope you guys like the new layout as much as I do.  Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.  I would love to hear your thoughts.

Frances

The Nectarines Are Done!

In my post yesterday, I said I hoped to finish up my still life today.  Well, I'm happy to report that I was successful.  The nectarines were driving me nuts so I finally decided to just turn around the second one from the left.  It became far easier to paint ( I wish I'd done it days ago).  I lightened up the wood and the grapes, then put in the pattern on the vase.

This was the set up.  Once I changed the position of the nectarine, the rest of the painting went very smoothly.  I also lightened up the wood.  It is hard to see in the picture, but the vase was casting a cool blue light on the shelf.  When I added that it really livened things up and the fruit no longer looked like it was floating above the shelf.

Here is the finished painting sitting on the easel.  If you look to the upper right hand corner, you can see the still life set up.

Blue and White Vase With Nectarines, 16x20, oil

And here is the finished painting.  I'm very happy to have it done.  Now, on to the sunflowers!

Still Working On The Still Life

I thought I'd be back with a finished painting to show all of you, but I'm still working on the new painting.  Every day this week I thought it would be done, but it still needs some tweaking.  Well, more than tweaking.  It needs work.  In the meantime, I thought you would like to see some in progress photos.  I usually wait to post until I have a completed painting, but since it was slow going on the last few, I may post as I go along.

This is the original set up.  I was half way to the studio when I realized that I did not have anything to paint!  So I popped into the grocery store and grabbed some fruit.  This vase was already in the studio as I had it planned for something else, so it went into the set up.

I also didn't have a canvas (yes, there was a complete lack of planning that day), so I picked one to paint over.  This was an early nude that was never completed.  Once I started painting in my grey background it became kind of weirdly interesting, but I did cover it up.

This was the start.  Just a simple block in and then shadows.

This is what transpired over the next two days.  I thought all I had to do was put in the vase pattern and I would be done, but something was bugging me about the painting.  The next morning I realized what it was.  There are an even number of fruits (you should always use an odd number) and those two nectarines on the left are just hanging out by themselves and don't seem a part of the painting.

I got myself to the store, grabbed another nectarine and cut a slice.  I put it in front of the two whole nectarines and it made an enormous difference.  It gave a nice pop of color to the painting as well as making the whole set up look more cohesive.  Also, I painted it in about ten minutes.  The whole nectarines have been driving me bonkers, so it was nice to have something easy to do.

Tomorrow, I have to put in some more detail on the wood as well as the pattern on the vase.  I have to get done quickly as I have a gorgeous bunch of sunflowers waiting for me.

I'm not promising, but I hope to have a completed painting to show you tomorrow.  Keep your fingers crossed that it all works out!