Proud Grandma

I am so proud of my granddaughter, Katelyn, whose artwork is currently in an exhibit at the Worcester Art Museum.  She was one of five in her school to be selected, and that is really good news, since she loves to draw more than anything -- and her grandmother thinks she's pretty darn good.  I have never seen her use collage as a medium before, so kudos to her and to her art teacher!  Katelyn is just in third grade.  This is her ballerina collage.

It's Coming Along

Shelves mean the clutter pile is disappearing, bit by bit!  Yea!  Thank you Dave.

Colors and Clutter In My Life

Exciting news around here is that we finally have color in our home's interior!  Years ago before we moved in here, we were going to have the place painted first, but we completely stalled on color choices.  We have had beige walls and beige carpet throughout the place, and after awhile you just forget about them.  We put in these horrendous gaudy orange window coverings and matching throw pillows, and absolutely hated them until one day, we just could stand them no more and ripped them down and threw them out.  Then all that was left was beige!

It is somewhat ironic and humorous to me, as an artist, that I couldn't decide with a blank slate what colors I wanted to live with on a daily basis. "If you don't like it, paint it," has always been by retort to watching shows with prospective home buyers who hate the colors. This is because we have always done our own painting up until this time.  It's much more difficult when you have 9 ft. ceilings.

It wasn't any easier this time.  I fought for color, but the designer finally won out, and the main area is all taupe, and it does look nice and will be a nice background for varied artwork.  But!  My studio is a lovely and bright shade of apple green, and I love how fresh it looks already.  The master bedroom is a grayed-down shade of Tango Tangerine, and since it is a northeast exposure, the paint has just added so much brightness and life to it.  The guest bedroom and bath is a lavender gray, and looks wonderful.

My one source of bafflement now is how to get my shelves back up.  Just before the painting was done, my top shelf gave out and came crashing to the floor.  It was a tremendous, reverberating crash!  Seriously, if I had been sitting where I paint, I would be pushing up daisies instead of writing in my blog.  Now I need to find some way to install them securely and safely, because I am totally spooked at the idea of having anything behind or beside me that could come crashing down without warning.

Anyway,  love the colors!  Love the painters who were so adept and fast at their work.  I am really impressed.  Pictures will follow when my studio looks like more than a junk pile with pretty walls.

Sharing Within The Artist Community

Yesterday was an opportunity to gallery sit in the co-op I belong to in Holmes Beach on Anna Maria Island, FL, Artists' Guild Gallery.  I say opportunity, because it is fun to be there and talk with the visitors coming through.  Many of the folks who visit art galleries are also artists.

On this occasion, I talked with an artist from Natick, Massachusetts who was quite congenial, and I was reminded once again of how generous most artists are to share techniques, supplier information, photo opportunities and so forth with one another.  She mentioned the fact that when a group of artists paint the same subject, each painting will still be different, and this is so true.  Each one looks at a subject with a unique eye for discovering the depth and texture and color and intensity it offers and views with their own emotional makeup and life experiences.  We also bring a different skill set and different materials to the endeavor.  It's amazing to observe the differences we come up with in portraying the same thing.  (Of course, I am talking about painting a true subject from life and not copying someone else's work that has already been done.)

I do find that most artists are quite giving with one another, their experiments with techniques, telling you what colors they've used and how they approached the work.  Maybe part of this comes from the isolation of creating, and we are just happy to have someone to talk with who speaks our language.

After closing the gallery for the evening, we visited nearby Cortez and took photos of the beautiful scenery with our cell phones and enjoyed a nice dinner at water's edge while listening to live music.  What a great day!

Abandoned Art In The Arms of A Pirate

I am having a lot of fun with this Art Abandonment idea and looking forward to my next one. It is quite entertaining to be skulking around with a piece of art that is tagged with information about the Art Abandonment project, knowing you are going to do an ArtDrop in a stealthy manner so that no one sees you.

Yesterday this ACEO magnet found its way into the arms of a pirate in an indoor galleria mall in Georgetown, SC.  He was waiting in the hallway at the door of a shop there.  AAAArrrrgggghhhhh!  I wonder who would have had the nerve to pluck it out of his arms.  I hope someone found it who was very, very brave.

We are on the road right now and working our way slowly northward.  This makes it even more fun.  Today we spent the afternoon along the beaches around Wilmington, NC.  It was very windy, but nothing actually blew away surprisingly enough.  I am amazed the the pretty little beach umbrellas stayed in place.  Didn't see even one of them go flying off!

Art Abandonment

My first Art Abandonment "ArtDrop"
a "Palm In Paradise" Limited Edition ACEO Magnet

I am going to abandon some of my art.  Really.

I'm getting ready to find a creative place, take a picture of a piece of my art in this location, leave a brief note and walk away for the first time.  This is called Art Abandonment.  If you're on Facebook, you can drop in and read all about it here:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/ArtAbandonment/

I first became aware of this group a week or so ago when I read another person's blog post, Etsy artist Stacey Merrill of Artsnark .  She had abandoned a piece, and then another and another within five miles of where I'm sitting right now.  I'm curious about who might have found her artwork, and thought this was a nice thing to do for the sake of art and for others, and decided to join in the fun.  You can find Stacey's blog here:  http://artsnark.blogspot.com/2012_06_01_archive.html .  The initial post about Art Abandonment was June 17th.  Go have a look, but please come back!

I started this post last night, but today at lunch I made my first "ArtDrop".  I left one of my ACEO Limited Edition magnets in the decorative fishnet handicap parking marker at Dockside Dave's in Madeira Beach.  The sign was decorated so great already, I just added my little decorator ArtDrop.  I hope someone finds it.  It would be really fun to hear what happens, how they came to find these pieces, and where and how they used them!!!

This is the site of my first "ArtDrop" at Dockside Dave's in Madeira Beach

As I'm writing this, the internal voice in my head has changed to what sounds very much like a TV reporter keeping his voice very low, so that no one will overhear.  LOL.

Happy finding!  Coincidentally, as I was making my ArtDrop, I made my first sale of an ACEO magnet in my shop on Etsy, and I love the happenstance of this.  It's pretty cool!

Daffodils Usher In Spring

Spring's Happy Dance

11 x 7.5 inches
watercolor

For me, daffodils are the number one signal that Spring has arrived!  In Colorado where I was raised, crocuses, and even hyacinths, always arrived before it really was Spring and they poked their buds out of the snow.  Not that it didn't snow occasionally on the daffodils, but by the time the tulips arrived, it was May and almost time for summer.  In a state where winters are long, but thankfully intermittent, the arrival of Spring was always special.

Now we live in the Tampa Bay area and are experiencing the gentlest of winters this year - fantastic after the last two years where it was not so nice.  I know it's all relative, and Florida winters do not compare to icy, cold winters in the higher latitudes of the continent, and that's what makes me so genuinely appreciate the lovely winter we have had this year!

Gorgeous sunset on the Gulf

I chose this photo, because of its simplicity.  There is a ritual every evening that the weather is nice, there are always lots of people celebrating sunset on the beach.

Back to Spring's Happy Dance -  This painting is available in my Etsy shop, DreamON. It has been painted, for Spring, in watercolors and gouache on Arches 140 lb. Cold Press watercolor paper.

Tulips For Spring

I worked on this watercolor off and on for a couple of years, and I feel such a sense of accomplishment to have finally finished it. Sometimes a painting comes together quite fast. Maybe it's because it features a subject you have painted many times, but honestly sometimes it just seems to almost paint itself. Then again there are the paintings that you start and put aside, pick up later and work on and then put aside again, over and over. You like what you've started, but something about it doesn't compel you to finish it. Sometimes you're just waiting for that special something inside you to come and let you know how to finish it, aka your muse. That was Tulips by Midnight. It took a very long time for my muse this time!

Tulips by Midnight

So. . . have you ever had anyone ask, "How long did it take you to paint that one?" What exactly are they wanting to know, do you suppose?  I dunno.  Maybe it's just a simple question, but my analytical side doesn't quite accept that. Is it that they are asking how long it took so that they can multiply the number of hours you say by what they assume your work is worth per hour? It is that the painting looks so basic and easy that it probably took about 5 minutes and so the price would be very, very cheap? Could it be that it's just so good that they think it took you a very long, long time? Hmmm, well yeah! Of course, there is the tried and true answer that it took a lifetime. That is the real truth, because it is the sum total of an artist's education, their travels, time spent in the studio and en plein aire painting, exposure to other artists and mentors, and most important of all - their life experiences - the good, the bad, the ugly and the ho hum!

Tulips by Moonlight may be found in my Etsy shop, DreamON.

My Happy New Year starts in February this year

Well, not really!  Since I had surgery the first week of January, January is what you call a lost month.  Everything went fine, and I am happy to be up and mobile again.

I have painted a number of new paintings, and now I can share some with you.  I have been experimenting with ghost flowers in the background.  This painting is called Poppy Shadows.  It was painted on a gold toned piece of watercolor paper 11 3/4" x 10 1/4".  I used a technique called color sanding to add some texture in the painting. I have just listed it in my Etsy shop. Click on the painting name under the first illustration to go to the listing.

Poppy Shadows

I put one of these new poppy ghost flower paintings into the Artists' Guild Gallery, and last week I was notified that it was sold.  Yay!  It's title was Ghost Poppies.  It is shown below.

Ghost Poppies

Ghost Poppies was painted on a toned sheet of watercolor paper that had been textured prior to painting.  Then I added some texture with a roller before painting the poppies.

Enjoy!

Winter Setting In

I have created an Etsy treasury to celebrate winter.  Winter Mood Setting In

To me, winter represents a time of being thankful for having a warm, cozy home to come to when the weather is cold and icy and presents challenges to drive in and even to walk on icy sidewalks.  This treasury has some beautiful and special items in it, and I hope you will visit the Etsy shops represented in the treasury and see what they have to offer.  Right click on the link Winter Mood Setting In, and select open in new window.  While you're there, come and visit my Etsy shop too!  Mary Hamilton's Etsy Shop: DreamON

Recycled Art - Why Not?

Just having fun with the idea of making something new out of something old. This is the painting I had to begin with: that is, before I started thinking negatively. Negative painting, being what I'm getting at, and not having a bad attitude. This is a technique that I have used creating successive layers of negative painting, or painting around objects before, but this time I used the existing painting of the deer in the woods and only had a single layer of painting in the negative.

I was inspired by Etsy running the leaf pictures that had been configured into faces, and I thought that idea was very clever!

I have had a stash of painting starts, and paintings that need "something." Sometimes it seems that "starts" are what fits the mood, but in the last few days, I have been in the mood to do the fixing and finishing on a few of these

Over In The Clover

My painting with the deer at the edge of the trees had lost its charm for me, and it became my victim, as I cut the size down a bit and started drawing clover leaves on it, and then I painted around the clover in Indigo Blue. Before the paint was dry, I lifted some additional areas.

This new painting called "Over In The Clover" is what came of it all. It was fun to do, and sometimes doing a painting just for fun is better than struggling with one to fix the details that may never turn out right anyway.

Therapy!

To see more information about this painting in my Etsy shop, please click on the painting title.

49th Annual Glenwood Springs Fall Art Festival

While the Florida Watercolor Society is holding its annual convention in Sarasota, I am in Colorado. It's a conflict every year, but for 14 years now we have been out west and a part of the Glenwood Springs Fall Art Festival. This is a wonderful show with wonderful art displayed in all classifications and categories that takes place in the Ramada Inn in Glenwood Springs. It is the largest non-juried show in Colorado with usually two (or more pieces in the case of pottery and sculpture) of art by around 300 artists judged on Wednesday. Judges this year and their specialties are Mark Silvers, Watercolors; Liz Thiele, Oil Painting; and Mary Zimmerman, Sculpture. There are also a large number of paintings, pottery and sculptures available in the Bargain Bin that are not judged, but are great values. This show would not work at all without the hours and hours worked by volunteers. My husband and I are but two of them. It's fun to make our yearly stop at this show and renew friendships with artists at this show. My gallery paintings this year are "Fish Camp," a scene from the very picturesque Cortez waterfront in Florida, and "Beach Shoe Exchange," a sunny, sand and surf painting with white dune fences and a few stray shoes left behind. These paintings are both watercolor paintings that are 16 x 28 inches framed.

Since the original post, these two paintings have both been sold. For the availability of prints, please contact me by email or by Etsy conversation at DreamON.etsy.com. I also recently added a new Facebook fan page, The Art of Mary Hamilton which can be found by clicking on this link: (or pasting this link into your browser: http://www.facebook.com/MaryHamiltonArt ).

Front Page of Etsy This Morning

I woke up this morning to check my Etsy shop and for the first time saw an actual Etsy front page with one of my listings in it. What an exciting way to wake up! (The last time it happened, the item sold right away and I only became aware of the FP later.)

My item is called Under A Lemon Moon. It is in the second row, second item from left. Many thanks to DawnWillBreak for creating such a beautiful beach wedding treasury and for including my lemon moon watercolor painting in it!!!!! You can visit her Etsy shop by clicking here. Click on the image of the Front Page to see a larger view.

In other "Breaking News," I've added two new items to my shop today. The Sinking Sun is a 6 x 6 inch acrylic on canvas. The inspiration for this one is, of course, the glorious Florida sunsets we have here on the west coast of Florida where sometimes it looks like the sun is just melting into the Gulf. The water almost loses its color it is such a grayed-out aqua, except where the sun and sky reflections hit the water. It is so amazing to be able to live here and see such a gorgeous sight!


I also included a new mermaid watercolor, In The Deep. I just love the song, "Rolling In The Deep" sung by Adele, and also recently on Idol by Haley. So this is the inspiration for my mermaid. I was thinking about her playing and executing full rolls deep in the ocean. This painting is very close to 8 x 11 inches.



Both of these photos are clickable. Hope you have as much fun dreaming when you see these as I did when I was painting them!

Season 10 American Idol

One thing you probably don't know about me is that I am a huge fan of American Idol.

What's different this year? The new group of judges selected probably the best contestants ever!

Although I didn't hate Simon Cowell, still I thought he could cut the contestants to the heart with only a few words. So I can't say that I miss him, especially with the new judges this year. The entertainment value provided by the judges on the show has gone way up.

I've always enjoyed Jennifer Lopez in the movies, and she seems to be a grounded, genuinely kind person as a judge, at least so far. Stephen Tyler is fun and unpredictable, and I am enjoying his personality. The fans love them both. Jennifer has started giving some technical advice which shows her classical voice training. Stephen needs to bring more in the way of advice to the singers as well. Randy Jackson, the experienced judge here, needs to give some real constructive advice. He tends to want to pigeonhole certain contestants into a mold when this early, it just seems they might be trying to show what a broad range they possess when they switch song types from week to week. Other contestants seem to get a pass when they switch from Blues to Rock, etc. Really Randy!

That said, this year I feel the contestants were much further along and polished than in previous years, at least not until towards the end did they show as much poise and stage presence as they do this year. The voices are better, and most any of them will probably have a future singing somewhere.

I know everyone doesn't feel the same, but hey, it's only one person's opinion: ME. My son confessed that Simon sometimes was the reason he watched the show.

The guys: I admire James Durbin having overcome Turret's and Ausberger's Syndromes to get into this competition in the first place, so I'm watching him with great admiration and interest. He has a really nice voice which he has shown, in addition to his preferred hard rock style. Scotty McCreery is a deep-voiced 17 year old who sings pretty good country, but it's hard to feature that mature voice coming from the face! Paul McDonald sounds a lot like Rod Stewart, and he has had a couple of rough weeks, but escaped without any scars from judges so far. Jacob Lusk can pull off a Luther Vandross song with seemingly no difficulty. Stefano Langone has a career in Vegas with his vocal style. And then there is Casey Abrams who in addition to his wonderfully intense singing possesses a great sense of humor and is so likeable. Jacob and Casey have the early lead. Stefano and Scotty are right in there too.

The girls: I tend to root for underdogs, and right now Haley Reinhart is someone I like, but she has an uphill battle convincing the judges she knows who she is. Naima Adedapo will also have a tough road and we will have to see if she can correct her tendency to be flat - that is her pitch is. Lauren Alaina and Thia Megia are the young ones, only 16 years old. What big voices they both have: one country and one more of a ballad singer. Pia Toscano is the favorite of the girls right now.

Well, there you have it - my opinionated opinion! I'd love to hear how you feel!

A Glimpse Of My World Tonight

As I sit here contemplating the world from my window tonight, I am thinking, "What could possibly top this for a studio view?" No, I'm not in jail!!! These are built-in partitions in the windows, and the view of sunlight playing upon the palm tree as sunset nears is pretty much all right with me.

Other than that, I have been painting, in acrylics, lots of grapes and grape leaves on a variety of surfaces from masonite panels to 4 x 4 canvases. Friends have been collecting corks for me for years, and I am planning to use them in some kind of art -- for years. About now, the corks are multiplying much faster than the artwork! So this week's project is to use some of them!

So here are a couple of my projects which are nearing completion. Here are a few of the little canvases which I am planning to mount onto a masonite surface which has been textured with acrylic gel and then painted with black gesso and with gloss gel. Wow! That didn't do it for me at all! I decided to back off and paint it with a warm brown, and then wiped and blotted some of that off of the panel. The glossy black surface looked terrible with the paintings and corks. After I took this photo, I decided to add a few corks. At this point, I have not glued anything down, but I can say I am getting close.

In the next photo, I have painted the grapes and grape leaves in a different style on a masonite panel. Yesterday, I had fun dremeling holes in everything I could get my hands on. Then I went to Michael's in search of some raffia, only to find they had no raffia in the natural color, but I found narrow ribbons on sale, so I bought 3 colors of those, and today I attached ribbons and a nice bow to the project and called it "done." The photo was taken "in progress" and before it was finished -- for sure! In this one, I decided no corks!
The dremel holes were drilled at the top left, and the presentation is vertical, with tri-color ribbons of gray green, lavender and natural, and a bow.

These have been fun, but there are Oh, so many corks to use. I fear, the fun has just begun!

Not sure where I will show these, but Etsy is probably not the venue this time!