A Vacation to Begin the New Year!

My husband and I decided to treat ourselves to a quick but rather indulgent vacation to begin 2016. We flew to Los Angeles to see my sister and stayed in the rather grand Century City Hyatt. Here is what the lobby looked like the evening of our arrival:

That night we attended a hockey game at the Staples Center. I had never been there before and it certainly is impressive. We saw the LA Kings play the Toronto Maple Leafs - and I think I was one of only  a handful of Toronto fans in the entire stadium. Having lived in Toronto many years ago I learned to love ice hockey!

Next we drove to Santa Anita Racetrack. It was a cold and gloomy day but the rain held off and we enjoyed seeing the magnificent thoroughbreds up close and photographing them in action. Serendipitously, California Chrome ( the horse that won 2 of the 3 Triple Crown Races in 2014) was racing that day and Penny Chenery (the owner of Secretariat) was there to receive a special award. It really was a fun day! A few photos:

California Chrome

Penny Chenery accepting her award. Bob Baffert, the famous horse trainer, is the gentleman with the shock of white hair.

Perhaps there is a future painting among the many photos that I look!

The next day found us at the Getty Museum. I had never been there before and marveled at the electric tram that swept us gently up the mountain and at the cluster of  modern buildings that house the art. For some reason I had expected the entire place to look like an Italian villa and was very surprised to be proven so wrong.

Entrance to the Getty Museum / Los Angeles, CA

Some highlights from the collection:

Early Picasso - I LOVE this portrait! Thick and yummy paint!

The incomparable Sargent

Degas! And my personal favorite in the entire museum!

The Impressionist Gallery - Renoir, Van Gogh's Irises and Cezanne in this photo!

 

Punchinello being Helped to a Chair by Tiepolo / brown ink and wash on paper 

Old Masters Gallery

Magnificent Nativity from 1400,s by Fabriano

Head of Christ by Allegri

After overwhelming my senses with all this beautiful art, it was off to the airport to catch a plane to Las Vegas where we stayed in the Mirage Hotel - the room was very large with big windows overlooking the Strip. Photos of our view at night and in the morning:

We spent the day wandering around the hotels and shopping in the Caesar's Forum Mall as neither my husband or I are interested in gambling. It is a wonderland there and was an experience that was almost surreal in nature.

Gold and Silver horse in the Bellagio Lobby

Shoes from Fendi that I absolutely covet!

Henri Bendel storefront

The Caesar's Forum Mall entrance with Roman statue and Chinese dragon!

Pegasus and me.

We came across a small art gallery that was exhibiting a serious Picasso show - 42 works of art - all Picasso - from a private collection. No photos were allowed but it was well worth seeing. I can't even begin to imagine a single person owning all those works by Picasso! Wow!

Our last event was the real reason we traveled to Las Vegas - to see the Cirque du Soleil show - The Beatles Love!

It was fantastic - so creative and unique - quite a feast for all the senses. And the music! The music - it was heavenly!

Back home safe and sound now - and I surely need a week to recover! Hope every one else is having a great and auspicious beginning to 2016! It promises to be a wonderful year!

Merry Christmas, happy holidays and a wonderful New Year to all!

Santa's Elves Take a Break / oil on linen / 18 x 24

HAPPY CHRISTMAS and a very MERRY NEW YEAR!

Three Months Later ....

and I am still painting! I can hardly believe that my last post was over three months ago - I don't know how time flies by so quickly. I have been busy keeping my galleries supplied with paintings and doing a lot of painting just for the pure joy.

A Moment of Disciplined Pleasure / 11 x 14 / oil on linen panel

This month Reinert Fine Art  opened a second gallery in the mountain town of Blowing Rock, North Carolina and Rick Reinert invited me to participate. He sent me this photo of the entry wall during the grand opening with five of my paintings so beautifully hung:

And the absolutely wonderful Roux & Cyr International Gallery of Fine Art in Portland, Maine, is celebrating the season with a small treasures show. The three wild running bunny paintings are my contribution and I am thrilled to report that two of them have already gone to wonderful homes.

I feel so fortunate to have these wonderful galleries displaying my work and making it available to the art loving public.

On the home front, my daughter, who has been living and working in Amsterdam for over a year now, was home for the Thanksgiving holidays. As a surprise for me, and all the way from the Netherlands, she carried a selection of powdered pigments ground in one of the last industrial dye windmills operating in the world today! I am so excited to have them and have been experimenting with how to use them in my work.

Pigments from the De Zaansche Molen windmill, Zaandam, the Netherlands

I would like to express a note of thanks to several of my blog followers who noticed my prolonged absence and were kind enough to send me emails telling me so - thank you Hilda, Julie and Vic. It does feel good knowing that my work was missed. You have warmed my heart, especially during this very special Christmas season and I am deeply appreciative. In fact, it was your concern and your words that inspired me to post again today. I have certainly missed following your blogs in this time period and intend to catch up as soon as I can. I need the inspiration that viewing your work provides to me!

Thank you to all for following this blog and reading my musings!

Nude Study

Nude Study / oil on linen / 12 x x12

What a great model.

 I am running on empty today and promise to reply to all who commented on my last post and to visit your blogs as well just as soon as I can. Many thanks to all who visit my blog and take a moment to comment and tell me your thoughts!

Ballerina #42

Ballerina #42 / oil on artboard / 20 x 16

Why paint large ballerinas you may ask. Several years ago a friend of mine confided to me that she often thought of herself as the ballerina she thought she wanted to be when she was a little girl. I found that to be a fascinating remark and set out to paint mature, accomplished women as they are but also living out a childhood dream. The ballerinas took on a life of their own and I discovered perhaps there is some humanity, elegance and truth in their large forms. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I have enjoyed painting them.

More Big Ballerinas

Ballerina #41 oil on linen / 12x16

Ballerina # 40 oil on canvas / 16x20

Ballerina # 39 / oil on linen / 8x10 / SOLD

Wild Burro Family

Wild Burro Family / 12x16 / oil on linen board

Perhaps painting animals will shake my summertime blues? This little black baby burro was one of the cutest babies I have ever seen - photo was taken at wild burro auction in San Diego a few years back.

Doldrums and a Few Sales

I didn't realize until yesterday just how long it has been since I have posted a new painting on my blog. What triggered my realization was that I spent the day in my studio scraping off a multitude of old, unlovely paintings and gessoing canvas after canvas. Needless to say I have been in the doldrums and, although I have been painting consistently, I have not been happy with my recent work. I have signed up to take a portrait painting workshop in October and hope that will help to jump start my efforts. In the meantime, I will continue painting and see if I can recover some of what I have lost - I believe it is spontaneity and fearlessness that are lacking in my work. I have been through times like this in the past and my solution has always been to keep on painting, take some new instruction, watch art videos and never give up.

I received notification of sales this week from two of my galleries and that has helped somewhat to buoy my spirits. It is always encouraging when a complete stranger feels passionate enough about my work to purchase it for their home. I also sold an older painting off my website.

Del Mar Down the Home Stretch - This painting sold off my website and found a permanent home in Washington DC

A Hint of Merriment - Sold through the Reinert Fine Art Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina

Winter Cows - Sold through the Roux and Cyr Gallery in Portland, Me

The new owner was kind enough to send me a photo of Winter Cows hung in her lovely home!

Poetry of the Moment

Poetry of the Moment / 12 x 16 / oil on canvas

Reno Portrait Society and an Explanation

Kristi / oil on toned board / 9x12

Kristi / oil on toned board / 12x9

Kristi / oil on cardboard / 10 x 8

A family emergency that necessitated a long trip to Florida has kept me from painting for the last several weeks. Just prior to that trip, I received some very good news from Jason at the Reinert Fine Art Gallery in South Carolina - both of my large paintings sold within a week of their arrival at the gallery! That was some very exciting news! Here are the two SOLD pieces:

A Haze of Possibilities / 16x20

Galloping With the Light / 18x24

The quick sales got me all fired up to finish the new steeplechasing painting that I had on my easel at that moment - about 50% done. But before I could even pick up a paint brush, I had to drop everything and leave town. Getting back a few days ago, I found I just could not recapture the prior excitement that I had about the partly done piece  and ended up ruining it in grand fashion! Sadly, it was unceremoniously consigned to the trash heap.  Normally I would be kind of upset about something like that happening but I made up my mind to just begin again. Hopefully this time I can carry it through to completion.

Yesterday morning was life painting at the Reno Portrait Society - the first time I have been able to attend in weeks and weeks. As our model for the day, we were fortunate to have Kristi, who agreed to pose in the nude. She is so professional, researches her poses before arriving, needs very little direction and gives us a quite a challenge. She provided us with three different poses - each about 40 minutes - and the above three efforts are my results.

Over the next few days I intend to visit my favorite blogs and make my presence known once again - it feels like I have been away for such a long time and I have a lot of catching up to do!

A Visitor from Amsterdam and a Visit to Cantor Art Gallery

My daughter, who is living and working in Amsterdam, flew back to the US for a business trip and was able to spend a few days with us in Reno! She was here and gone in the blink of an eye it seemed but we did have a chance to show her around the Lake Tahoe area, enjoy some home cooked meals and talk about her European life while eating Belgian chocolates until the wee hours of the morning. I have missed her terribly and now that she is gone again, I miss her more than ever.

When it was time for her to leave, my husband and I drove her to the airport in San Francisco for her return trip and then we continued on to Palo Alto. Even though it was still quite cold and breezy with merely a hint of Spring in the air, everything is riotously blooming and the air is filled with perfume from all the flowers. California can be so beautiful. I wanted to tour the Linear Accelerator but unfortunately it has been recently closed to the public. We were able to spend some time at the Cantor Museum which is on the campus of Stanford University. They have a nice selection of paintings, many from artists I was seeing for the first time, and an extensive collection of Rodin sculpture.

Cantor Museum entrance

Deborah Butterfiled's driftwood horse Viktoria. It is larger than life and is actually cast in bronze - quite remarkable!

A portrait of his wife by William Merrit Chase. Her face is so softly and lovingly painted - she is breathtaking.

A little ballerina sculpture by Degas. The upper  little pastel on the wall behind her is also a Degas.

Study for a portrait by Thomas Eakins - about life size.

Portrait of a young boy by Robert Henri

Italian devotional painting from 1518 - I fell in love with the faces!

A young Napoleon - I have forgotten the artist but the portrait is arresting in life.

Rodin The Thinker

I am yearning to get back to my easel!

A Big and a Little and the Gallery of Small Works

Untitled / oil on linen panel / 18x24

Untitled / oil on linen panel / 12x12

I am really honored to be included in Rick Reinert's new Small Works Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina. There are some really incredible artists represented there - I have to pinch myself when I see my name listed with theirs! Here is the link to the new website: Reinert Fine Art-The Small Works Gallery

A Distinct Sense of Self or Ballerina #38 et al.

A Distinct Sense of Self / oil on linen panel / 12 x 12

 And trying my at hand a a few tiny pieces - a wee 5x7 nches! They are quite a challenge and require smaller brushes than I generally use.

A Potpourri of Possibilities / oil on canvas / 7x5

Hidden Variables / oil on canvas / 5x7

A Haze of Possibilities and the Way a Horse Sees

A Haze of Possibilities / oil on linen panel / 16x20

Having painted this composition with a trio of horse and jockey combinations before without satisfaction, I determined to try it again.

I learned some quite interesting facts about equine vision this week. Horses do not see the same way humans do - they have only color receptors for the blue and green spectrum and cannot discriminate reds - apparently much the same as a person with red-green color blindness. The theory is that this may cause the horse to rely more on contrast to judge distance to and height of an obstacle when calculating take off. When a horse is approaching a jump he will see it in sharp focus, but will lose this focus around 3 meters away and may not be able to accurately judge distance to the jump. He will perceive the jump differently from his rider not only because of the difference in color perception but also because he has a much wider field of vision due to his eye placement. This adds to the importance of the connection between the horse and rider as they approach a jump.

Having long been fascinated by the interaction, partnerships  and cooperation that are established between man and beast as they interact together during moments of great intensity, it is part of my underlying drive to paint steeplechase as a way of expressing this relationship.