Farm-Ranch Studio pictures updated
I remembered the other day that I never have updated my website studio page since my move out here. SO, with that said, I took very quick pictures and didn’t take time to spiffy things up for them. It is hard sometimes to take pictures with the back lighting coming in but here they are finally up on my website studio link. I couldn’t get them up last night as the internet slowed waaay down. This morning things were working….yaaay!
I suppose I might have looked for a more appropriate picture for today’s blog, but this is the one I found for now…a shot of the creek back in greener times. On two hundred acres you can find a lot of inspiration.
Related Images:
Semi – Good Day
I actually had internet upstairs with ALLTEL Wireless today…..I luxuriously left it going for 5-6 hours straight on my laptop. I sat around browsing blogs, reading old email I’ve missed, and ate my lunch. All the time I was looking at paintings begun and at the “disaster” from a few days ago. So about 4 pm I just lit into the disaster and now it might be just as much a disaster as before, but a much more colorful one than before.
Sorry – no picture as I didn’t have the light for it. It may be just another layer in a long line of layers anyway when I go up to the studio next time to see if it looks better or worse.
I ordered a dozen books for friends today. Nita Leland’s newest book on “Confident Color” is a wonderful book…plug, plug. My work is in it and on the cover. After the past couple of days of painting, I’m feeling like a fraud being in an art book. Maybe if I pretend enough, it will come true. I used to do that when I was a kid. Maybe I’m easily influenced but it worked for me……….sometimes still does.
All in all …a good day since I could just take my time and absorb and paint and think. AND, the sun was shining.
Related Images:
Studio time
Up in the studio today, I put off making a decision about the painting from yesterday. Yeah I know….no courage. I haven’t gotten to that point yet where I don’t care where that painting is going.
SO, I got out a couple of new canvases in a new size 12 x 36″ and put some light weight texture paste on them. I love this stuff I buy from Nova Colors. It’s an inexpensive, but quality product as are all their paints.
It also occurred to me that I’ve posted pictures of my studio as I’ve been moving in. However, I never have updated and changed out pictures on my website. Guess I’ll have to put that on the “to do” list that grows daily.
Hum…maybe I’ll add some glazing to the darks in this painting and add more paint to the lights I want to keep before abandoning it to the garbage heap. Not really, I’m too frugal for that. As long as I can, I just repaint old canvases as long as the surface under can take the medium on top.
Okay, Cheryl….back to work. Where has all my past discipline gone I wonder?
PS…..also, I LOVE my new knife rack in the farm kitchen. So handy here.
Related Images:
Where Am I Going?
Humm…not sure where this is going…or maybe it’s already gone.
The sun is shining and not a lot of wind………..so up to the studio for most of the day today. I needed to varnish the painting I posted the other day. AND, get some paint on that other one that has been staring at me forever on the painting wall.
The painting I’m referring to is one that was originally going to be part of a diptych. Well, good intentions aside, sometimes things just don’t work out as we hope. This one never did make it out of the studio so rather than trying to keep fixing on it, I just painted over the whole thing with paints I needed to clear off the palette. This made for a VERY dark under-painting with all the reds, browns and purples. Where to go – where to go?? I don’t, so I just decided to load up a brush and start making marks and shapes. They had to be lighter so out came the yellow. Before I knew it I had this on the wall. I have no idea where it came from other than I’ve been staring out the windows of the house and studio a lot and it IS winter. It needs some life as it’s so somber. It may see the light of day again, or maybe not. I won’t know until I either paint over it again or like magic something will come to me to breathe more life into it.
I had to quit for the day to mull this one over more…….and besides my Ipod went ‘low batt’.
Related Images:
Promised Painting Images
The sun finally came out and barely in the nick of time for outdoor photo shooting. Here’s the one I finished yesterday and the encaustic I finished earlier but had to re-mount and re-shoot the photo of.
The encaustic still looks a little subdued…but hey, maybe it just is ‘subdued’….the other is a lesson in keeping the glow in intense color painting. Same subject matter, different feel.
Related Images:
Finished
Yaaaay……….I think I have this painting finished. At least I decided it was worth signing. I can’t take a picture as there is absolutely miserable dark, cold, rainy weather outside and my studio lighting is not good for actual color rendition.
The one I’m referring to is the earlier ‘start’ I posted………Umbrella Pine,Late Day, Umbria. This painting is 48 x 24″ and is acrylic on canvas.
This painting brings back the memories of all the times my friend, Carolyn, and I passed this lone pine in all our traipsing around Umbria and Tuscany this May. So many times we were coming through this area at a late time of day so this particular low key/value suits it, I think. Not that these are the true colors of Umbria…maybe I should call all these paintings, Texas meets Umbria …or Umbria through the eyes of a Texas artist. Whatever, I choose to use arbitrary colors most of the time in my paintings. This one has more representation than most.
Another painting I did with this pine is an encaustic I posted earlier. The picture was horrible and I also did a little more work on it. However, I don’t have that picture down here in the house and I’m not going back out and up to the studio in the rain to get that camera. It also turned up to have a problem with the heavy wax starting to cause the canvas to sag away from the panel. I didn’t glue it down and only stretched and stapled it. I am remedying that situation (I hope) by carefully removing the painting from the panel and now I have used PVA glue to glue the back of the canvas to the panel and weighted it down until tomorrow. I see no cracks yet but will fuse them out if needed. I got some recommendations on this problem from the forum at RFPaints.com . They are a great bunch there to help all of us with technical problems address those problems.
I’ll try to post the photos tomorrow if I can just get a good shot of the latest one.
Related Images:
Tempting fate
I knew it would happen……..if you stay out of the studio too long, you forget how to paint or handle the brush. I tell you, it ain’t pretty.
This picture is of a painting I began some time ago and left to finish while working on the farm kitchen. Time was taken up by so much remodeling…along with lots of other events (Christmas, New Year and visits from those wonderful kids and grandkids). Now, IT’s come to visit, that weird time of knowing more in your head than your hand with brush can perform. Hopefully, I won’t be punished by being out of the loop too long. Maybe I can finish this as planned, or maybe it will morph into a disaster, or the best I’ve ever done. I never know until it’s all over.
Oh yeah…the other picture is of our trusty captured helper peering out from under the house as my husband is continuing his work on the gutted bathroom now that the kitchen is in working order.
Related Images:
Residency opportunity
Quotes from the newsletter/email………….
“The experiences I have had here are now a part of me. This time has been essential to the next step in my journey.”
Ebony Rose Scalf, Artist-in-Residence, British Columbia
“Colorado Art Ranch has been a profound and unforgettable experience. I am forever grateful for your support.”
Diana Rico,
Writer-in-Residence, New Mexico
We are planning on having three residencies for 2009. This gives us the chance to serve more literary and visual artists as well as rural Colorado communities. So far one is set in stone (or at least pixels). The others will be announced as the information develops. We hope you will consider applying and spread the word to other artists.
Grant Pound
Executive Director
Residency in Historic Trinidad, Colorado
Colorado Art Ranch will host visual and literary artists in Trinidad, Colorado. The residency begins April 17, 2009 and ends May 18, 2009. Deadline for applications is February 1, 2009.
Living Space
We have an unusual and very cool housing option this time. Residents will be housed in the Holy Trinity Convent (no longer active) in the heart of historic Trinidad. The convent features a large kitchen and an exercise room.
Residents will be our guests at the Artposium in Trinidad.
Read FAQs, and apply at online.
About Trinidad
Trinidad
Nestled against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains halfway between Santa Fe and Denver, Trinidad retains its Old West character and the vitality of its pioneering days on the Santa Fe Trail. The community celebrates its colorful past while embracing new public projects.
Visitors find gracious parks among winding brick streets and broad avenues. A wealth of historic architecture and outstanding history, art history, and archaeological museums depict how the West was once. Musical and gallery events occur throughout the year, and the town enjoys the finest in professional theatre. Historic Trinidad
Other Residencies
We have plans for a residency in Salida that will (hopefully) take place in the Summer. The Fall residency will be near Paonia, Colorado. Stay tuned.
Related Images:
It’s getting there!
This link will take you to some more photos as the kitchen is today on the day after Christmas.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cheryl75604/sets/72157611634044949/
Here are some pictures I took this afternoon after the man came to install the vent a hood. There are still lots of little things to do…………like putting in the back-splash and all the quarter-round along the floors….touch up paint, hang paintings, arrange things in shelves and cabinets…
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas Day. I wish you all good fortune and a healthy, happy New Year for 2009!
Related Images:
What A Day!
What a day!
As everyone who reads this blog knows, I haven’t had a real kitchen for some time. Today I needed to make something to take to a TX Wax meeting on Sunday and some cookies for a Christmas Cookie exchange party on Monday.
We’ve been using the old gas range in the kitchen of my studio so I put my fresh apple cakes in the oven and went about my business. I came to check on them about an hour later to determine how much longer they had to bake and clicked in 15 more minutes. It hardly registered that the oven wasn’t as warm. When I came back later, it did. The darn oven went out on me right in the middle of all this stuff I had to do. Yikes…………out to the well house to drag out the old toaster oven and I put them in one at a time and baked and turned and baked and turned. I’m crossing my fingers on this one but Curry said the middle of one of them seemed good to him. So I’ll take the other one to the meeting.
Knowing this wasn’t going to work for the cookies, I begged him to pull out my new oven/range and plug it in for cookie baking. The electricians only finished their work yesterday and I have no counter-tops yet. So I did all the cutting and slicing upstairs and went up and down, back and forth until they were all baked.
I’m tired………and went to get burgers for dinner…off to bed early I think.
I have done a few art related things…put hangers and wire on a couple of my latest paintings. Yesterday I had to make a run to Dallas to deliver some work. SO, art and art business continues, only not as I would like right now. Oh, and I added a couple of pages to my website since I’d forgotten to make pages for a couple of paintings.
Maybe this time next week my new kitchen will be in better working order……….most of it anyway.
Related Images:
I HATE painting cabinets!
Related Images:
From the studio window
Recent Comments