Ringing in the Brass (8 x8 watercolor on clayboard) SOLD

Trombone bell resting on the bells and facing a flute. My daughter says this one has a Christmasy feel to it and I think she is right. In any case, I like the red and gold.

This painting has sold, but prints available through my print shop and Fine Art America.

Reeds Between Sets II (watercolor 8 x 8 ) SOLD

This is a second and slightly larger version of Reeds Between Sets which sold before I could get it posted.  Like most of the rest of my instrument series it will be on display at Art In the Valley beginning November 1st.

Reeds Between Sets (6 x 6 watercolor on clayboard) SOLD

I painted this little watercolor just after we got back from vacation and promptly sold it at the Silverton Fine Art Fair a couple days later.  I love the composition and I’m tempted to do it again a little larger.

Between the Showers on HWY 101 (watercolor 10 x 14) SOLD

This January we spent a weekend in Lincoln City. It being January in Oregon; it rained at lot; it was often foggy; and in between the sun shone. I took the photo for this little painting in the car on the way to wave watch in Depot Bay. Before we reached Depot Bay it rained again and then the sun came out to stay for the afternoon.

This painting has sold, but you may still purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

Spinning Tales (13 x 19 watercolor) SOLD

My eldest daughter learned to spin last year and the Oregon State Fair.  She came home with a drop-spindle and proceeded to spin several pounds of wool within the week.  The obsession continued and all she wanted for Christmas was a spinning wheel.   We obliged.  Since then, she spins whenever she sits down to talk or watch TV.    It’s a good thing the wheel is beautiful, because it’s become part of our living and family rooms.

Naturally, as I think both the wheel and the girl are lovely, I had to paint them together.  As she also writes I thought a background of our family room books was appropriate.

The painting turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated.  I began with the pouring method,  a process much like batik involving multiple masks and literally pouring cups of paint over the paper.  After a day of pouring, I got out the brushes and promptly ruined the painting by making it too dark.  So I began again, spending another day pouring paint.  I began work with the brushes at the gallery and was very pleased with everything except her face which I though was good, but could be better.  So improved it until is was merely okay.  And then I improved it some more until it was bad and my paper was damaged beyond repair. But I loved the rest of the painting so much that I began a third time, first pouring and then painting.

This time I am happy, and while there are a couple details I might like to alter just a hair, I won’t improve it anymore.

Prow Reflected (6 x 6 watercolor on clay-board) Sold

This is a companion piece to Two Times Two in Depot Bay. The palate is my usual burnt sienna, cobalt blue, phthalo blue, and new gamgee.

Prow Reflected Finished

The Ranch Below Fetterman's Masacure (watercolor) 9 x 16 SOLD

I began painting it at the Oregon State Fair this summer. When the light got bad in the evening I switched to clay and propped the painting up behind me. It caught the attention of a lovely woman and her teenage daughter. It reminds them of a ranch they know. After much discussion she bought another two big sky paintings and asked to purchase this one on completion. Last week she saw the completed painting for the first time and bought it. I’ve never been quite so pleased with a sale.Visiting the mountain west this summer, my husband and I toured two American Indian War Battle sites.  The first was that of the Fetterman Massacre which happened about ten years before Custer’s Last Stand.  The view is from but not of the site of the Fetterman Massacre in Northern Wyoming near Fort Kearney.

Fort Phil Kearney was set up in the northern Rockies to guard the Bozeman Trail. The Bozeman Trail (northwest from the Oregon Trail), passed through Wyoming, and on to the gold diggings in Virginia City, Montana. Unfortunately the trail crossed traditional Sioux hunting grounds. Sioux war chief,  Red Cloud, vowed to defend the territory. Washington, however, ordered the trail kept open at all costs.

In 1866, Colonel Henry Carrington, in command of the 18th Infantry Regiment, was sent to build and garrison a series of posts along the trail. Captain William Fetterman joined the regiment.

The Sioux harassed the fort and posts, particularly parties detailed to work outside the fort and those traveling between the forts.  Red Cloud and Roman Nose of the Cheyenne assembled several thousand warriors to remove the U.S. Army from the trail. Red Cloud’s plan was to send small parties of warriors to attack the wood trains and lure the soldiers off to meet the main band of warriors.

On December 6th, a wood train was attacked by a large party of warriors. When Carrington came out to retaliate he was met by an imposing force of Cheyenne warriors including Red Cloud and Roman Nose. He retreated to the fort, leaving too dead and five wounded. Carrington forbade any of his men to pursue fleeing Indians in the future.

Two weeks later, Red Cloud staged another strike on the wood train. But this time, Carrington was not sucked in. There was just one day of wood cutting left for the winter. Carrington prepared to send out a Captain Powell to reinforce the wood train, but Fetterman demanded the right to lead the rescue. Carrington yielded. Fettreman rounded up 79 men and – with the exact number he had bragged that he could wipe out the whole Sioux nation – set off to meet the foe. Carrington’s orders to him were, “Relieve the wood train. Under no circumstances pursue the enemy beyond Lodge Trail Ridge!”

As Fetterman’s men approached the the wood train, the warriors began to break off from the assault and flee from Fetterman’s approach. The soldiers chased them up the side of Lodge Trail Ridge. As they reached the crest of the ridge a second party of warriors, swung around on Fetterman’s rear. Fetternan and his men were surrounded by nearly 2000 men.

Fetterman attempted to ascend the ridge he had just come over and hide behind the cover of some rocks. But Indians were massing up that side of the ridge too. Within minutes all 80 of Fetterman’s men were dead.

Lodge Trail Ridge is now Wyoming State Historical Site.  (More information about the massacre, Fort Kearny, and the Bozeman Trail can be found at the official site for The Fort Kearny State Historical Site.)  A hiking trail leads along the ridge, and despite the markers and other information about the massacre remains beautiful. This is the view west from the lower end of the ridge.

Wet Summer in Big Sky Country (watercolor 10 x 14) (SOLD)

I grew up in the mountain-west.   It’s dry country.  On the plains it’s high desert.  In the mountains it’s not exactly a desert, but it sure isn’t lush either.   This summer, it was wet all across the mountain states.  Wyoming was green.   Let me repeat that, sage brush covered Wyoming was green. Yellowstone was positively lush with green grass. The park probably had twice it’s usual allotment of wet land.

This is the east side of Yellowstone National Park above the lake, but below Yellowstone’s Grand Canyon. The colors looked like spring, but the grass was much too long.  The silver stream is really just endless wet ground—a spontaneous marsh, made just for this year.  But between the cloud shadows and the sky reflecting on the water it was beautiful.

I painted it conventionally beginning with the sky and stream, then building up the greens layer by layer.  To get all those shades of green I used three blues (cobalt, phthalo, and cerulean) and two yellows (quinacridone god and yellow ocher). In addition I used burnt sienna and quinacridone deep red rose.

This painting has sold, but you may purchase a print from my gallery at Fine Art America.

Autumn Landscape of the Mind (pastel 12 x 17) SOLD

This pastel is based loosely on a photo I took just east of Tetons National Park in Wyoming. The early morning light made the grass glow almost yellow against the darker hills. I drove my family slightly batty stopping the car over and over to take yet another picture of light on the hills. I was actually pleased when when had to wait twenty minutes twice for construction. I liked this view in particular because of the way the beckons you in.

But my pastel could hardly feel less like early Wyoming summer. It seems we’ve never quite gotten summer here in Oregon this year and my mind has moved right along to fall. So I went where my mind is, and left June behind, converting dying pines into turning foliage and taking the grass even further yellow. But I left the morning light.

Working on the rough side of peach colored Canson Mi-Teintes I used almost entirely soft pastels. Only the foreground grass went in in hard pastel. The shadows in the grass are more soft pastel.

The blues, greens and oranges came very naturally. I added a few hints of purple in the shadows to set of the yellow grass.

This painting has sold, but you may purchase a print through my gallery at Fine Art America.

At the Water's Edge

ABC has purchased the right to show “At the Water’s Edge” on Desperate Housewives.  It will probably show up on camera somewhere this Fall season.  I don’t know when or as part of what set.  But I’d really like to know.  So, if any of you spots it, please comment here or drop me a line.

They have purchased a 12 x 16 inch print on gallery wrapped canvas, so it could appear framed or unframed.

So far it has been a surreally fun experience.  ABC/Disney has entered into an agreement with the on-line printing house Fine Art America, to facilitate licensing images for use on sets.  Artists selling work through Fine Art America can opt in or out of the program.  I opted in and then promptly forgot about it.  It seemed much too unlikely.

But Wednesday morning I got an email from the design staff at Desperate Housewives.  Thursday they arranged for FedEx to pick up the signed license agreement and Friday they purchased the print.

The young women who facilitated this has no idea which episode or where.  Not surprising really.

My husband suggests I add “Painter to the Stars” to my resume.  Slight overstatement?  Of course.  After all picking artwork for sets is akin to picking artwork to go with the sofa.  It is fun, but not a critics seal of approval.

Prints of the painting may be purchased here.