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!