BUTTERFLIES

It is easy to find photographs and news about Monarch butterflies. So my story paintings have Monarchs. Such drama queens. That magnificent migration across the continent and flying in herds.

 This painting has a golden cheek warbler, too. It is a very small bird. 

So I made the golden cheek warbler tiny and one big Monarch. The painting below has my Gran'ma Hickerson in the lower right corner. That painting is in a gallery in New York City, right now.

The gallery is in Chelsea on 27th street in a gallery building. My painting is dwarfed by others in the exhibit.

2017 SELF PORTRAIT

It's done. Now I am working on the frame. I think I will put some bees and flowers around the edge.

 

SELF PORTRAITS

One self portrait per year. This is in progress for 2017.

2017

It is just (h) 14" x 11" on canvasboard.

The self portrait from last year is (h) 20" x 16", acrylic on canvas. All self. This year I'm fooling with the composition more. Trying that flat field and fooling with the spatial illusion. Last year it was about the paint. Photography has changed our relationship to illusion and the computer is doing that even more so. I'm just painting, really.

2016

AGAVE & ME

I think I finished the big 5 foot tall canvas of Agatha, the agave. A portrait? Sorta. The plant is almost finished blooming.

7-27-17 Agave 40 feet

Agatha, 60" x 40"

That's a big honeybee in front in the painting.

There have been many, many bugs visiting this plant.

PAINTING AND FORGETTING

I forget how much trouble....no...how long it takes to paint. What is this thing? An object of thought? I suspect too much thinking but it is fun, so fun, to mix and push. Pull up a shape. Natural world as teacher is very busy.

 This is the painting as it is going along. I think the sand dunes are done plus the "Japanese fire" which is really just a pink flat field in the middle of an illusion. Of 3D space on a static 2D surface trick then the flatness smacking up against the viewer, sort of. A curtain? A repoussoire, so to speak.

PLUS I've learned to put a layer with my name on the images! I sort of knew but there was one click I was missing.

flowers going great.

  The flowers are next to add 

to the painting. I am so old fashioned!

LEARNING ABOUT AGAVE AND PAINTING ALONG

These agave pups are making blossom stalks, too. I suppose they will die after blooming. How odd!

The painting progresses. I want to get the blossom at the top but they are too far away. I'll try pleine aire.

Here is a detail.

PAINTING IN PROGRESS

It has begun, on canvas. I may add a
 hummingbird or two. I don't know. That is
 why the tedium is fun. It's the process. 

h60 x 40

Learning and discovery. 

detail