Brass at Rest (8 x 8 watercolor on clayboard) $65.00

Trumpet and trombone share fabric space on a mirror. This little painting in currently part of the Mini Treasures Show at Art in the Valley. Prints available through my shop at Fine Art America.

Mounted on a black wooden cradle frame and finished with clear polymer varnish,  this painting may be hung as is or framed.

Or purchase a print through Fine Art America.com.

Pear Roadie (6 x 6 watercolor on clayboard) $50

This is another little painting, completed during my Southwestern vacation. I started in a little Victorian Hotel in Durango and completed it poolside in Cortez.

Finished with clear acrylic and mounted on a black cradle frame, this painting is ready to hang.   Available through my Etsy shop.  Or purchase a print through Fine Art America.com.

Silver and Glass Music (11 x 14 watercolor on claybord) $300

I painted this in my usual palette of  cobalt blue, phthalo blue, ceruleun blue, hasna yellow, new gamgee, burnt siena and dioxian purple plus a new addition, phtalo green.  Like phthalo blue, phthalo green is extremely staining and very transparent. Even on clayboard and canvas it’s hard to lift.  Typically, I mix my greens rather than pour them out of the tube, but there’s something metalic about phtalo green that can’t be mixed and it’s the perfect color for depression glass.

When I finish this one, my mother-in-law commented that she admired anyone who could paint glass. I will tell you the secret about painting and drawing glass. There’s nothing any difficult about glass than any other subject. The only trouble is psychological. If you just paint the shapes you see, no matter how abstract, when you step back, it will look like glass. It’s only when you worry about making it look like glass that it doesn’t. The same thing is true of metal.

Painted on aquabord and  finished with a clear coat of acrylic, and mounted on a black cradle frame.

Or purchase a print through my Shop at Fine Art America.

Duet for a Pear (watercolor on clay board 8 x 10) $100.00

The is another painting from my photo session at Weathers Music, but I painted it on the patio of a beach house just outside Sarasota on the Gulf of Mexico.  Painting under an umbrella with the ocean just yards away–what could be finer?  We spent the last week there getting our fill of salt and sun.  After the long wet cold spring here in Oregon the sun sure felt fine.  But my is it hot and humid there.  I spent the afternoons painting in the cool.  I have five new paintings to post over the next few days.

This is the first one I did.  I really like the greeny black of the clarinet and piccolo in contrast to the greeny yellow of the pear.  The pear and clarinet bell shapes echo each other nicely too.

Another painting on clay board, the painting is finished with a clear coat of acrylic and mounted on a black wooden cradle.  Original available  through  Art in the Valley, Corvallis Oregon. Or purchase a print through my Shop at Fine Art America.

Dances With Pears (11 x 14 watercolor on clayboard) $200

No, it isn’t more instruments, but I’ll get back to those shortly. I painted this one at the gallery just after finishing “Jazz Buddies.” I love painting all the keys fittings on the sax, but it tiring work and I was no fit state to start another complex instrument painting full of reflections and reflections of reflections. So I painted nice simple fruit instead.

I took the reference photo while I had the mirror out for instrument photos. The pears and daisies were intended to be co-stars (and they probably will be in later paintings) but the looked so nice and fresh that I took a few photos of them by themselves too. I’m glad I did.

Painted on claybord and mounted on a black wooden cradle.  Ready to hang.

Available through my Esty shop or purchase a print through Fine Art America.com.

Musical Reflections (11 x 14 watercolor on clay board) $300

This is the first in what I hope will be a series.  It all began a couple weekends ago when I was taking pictures in Corvallis.  The instruments in the window of Gracewind Music caught my eye and I snapped a few pictures inside.  All of that shiny brass made me want to paint.  After wondering around admiring a little, it occurred to me that the bread and butter of many music stores is student rentals and that I might not have to buy the instruments to paint them.

After some negotiation I left the shop with three instruments of dubious music merit, a trombone, a flute and a trumpet which had been marked “for display only.”   None of the instruments is is great condition, but they are all pretty and shiny.  And a month’s rental of all three cost me less than what a single month’s rental of just one playable instrument might come to.

I have since borrowed a clarinet and a bells from a friend’s daughter.

Last week I took a whole series of photos of the instruments on a 42 x 64 inch mirror we had down for a remodeling project.  Spread out across the floor it added an intriguing double take on the instruments. I got out some of my blown glassware, a couple of silver vases, some fabric from my quilting collection, and mat boards for background a and began shooting.  The guys doing the remodeling must have thought I was losing my mind, but I had fun.

I painted this first one looking down at the  instruments from above.  However, the white ceiling reflected in the mirror did not provide the best background, so I painted in a dark reddish brown to set off the lighter instrument.

Mounted on a black wooden cradle and ready to hang.

Prints available through Fine Art America.com. See more clarinet artwork here: clarinet art

Nautilus with Glass Stones (10 x 11 watercolor) $150.00

My husband and I spent last weekend on the Oregon Coast. The weather was so fine we hardly even went inside at all.  So on our last day having not set foot in a shop all weekend,  it occurred to us we had bought nothing for our daughters.  So we stopped in a shell shoppe. We did find some lovey sea urchins for the girls. But we also found something for us, a bisected nautilus shell. Stephen wanted it to display it, but I wanted to paint it. I’ve just finished painting it and it now lives on our mantle together with fossil shells and a free form hand made basket. But it will visit the studio again.

I took great liberties with the color of the nautilus which is really is really a dull orange in the outer chambers fading to blue green at the center. The color shift in my painting was driven by the decision to heavily under-paint the shell in phthalo blue to emphasize the depth of the shell.  I over-painted with various mixtures of new gamgee yellow, quinacridone madder rose, and phthalo blue.

In Progress

The left most of the glass stones resting in the shell is actually stone marble. But the green and rust of the actual marble would have clashed horribly with the rest of the painting, so I changed it to a blue glass marble.

The background is a wash of burnt sienna grayed down with phthalo blue.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

Flower Doll Ball (7 x 11) $50.00

This summer by daughters made dolls out of toothpicks flowers and buds, a game handed down to them by my mother. Here is a selection of their dolls in dramatic sunlight.

It thought the contrast between the deep shadows and flowers would be striking. But I was unhappy with the painting when I thought I’d finished it. Despite the dark shadows and bright colors, it looked curiously flat. After pondering a day or so, I painted the background a cool light gray made from the left-overs on my palate. It worked– white highlights popped. And it’s done.

The palate is new gamgee, hansa yellow light, phthalo blue, cobalt blue, quinacridone deep red rose and opera (also a quinacridone). Most of the colors are mixed on the paper.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.