Catch Up Time

 I am so far behind with my posts. It's been been a very busy time for the visual arts here in the Tri-Valley.  I currently have paintings in six exhibits!

Here are my more recent pieces.

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Exciting Exhibition

 I have these two pieces in the Grand Opening exhibit at Latte da Vinci in Pleasanton CA. The reception is this Saturday, August 16, 4:00-8:00.

Occasionally I am 'driven to abstraction', and these are part of that series. Both are mixed water media on Yupo.

'Moving On', 16x7, and 'Midsummer's Eve', 7x17.

New!

 I painted these interesting mushrooms for my dear daughter-in-law Jenise Robbins Batchelder's birthday. She & I both thought the photo (see below) I took of them looked like flower blooms.

'Shroom Bloom', 8x8 watercolor on paper.

Art update

I've been rather remiss in posting, and much has happened recently. 

My 'Prickly Power' painting of a prickly pear cactus received SILVER (1st place) honors at the Alameda County Fair Art Exhibition. 

'Silently Slipping Away' and 'Death by Plastic' were juried into the Fragile Earth: A Call to Action exhibition at the Bankhead Art Gallery in Livermore.

And I completed four new paintings that are off to the framer now. See below

Prickly Power, watercolor 

Death by Plastic, mixed media on panel

Silently Slipping Away, mixed media on panel 

 

Vintner's View, 20x20 watercolor on Yupo 

Bird's Eye View,  11x11 watercolor on paper

Grapes Aplenty, 8x10 watercolor on Yupo 

 Fore and Pour, 20x20 watercolor on Yupo 

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Step by Step to the Finish

As promised, these images the steps of the process to finalize the mixed media intuitive piece I started when I gave a demo at the LAA/PAL General Meeting in June.

I worked on this off& on for over a week, giving it plenty of time to tell me where it was taking me.

The first one is the beginning started at the demo, and the last one is the finished piece, 'Silently Slipping Away'. 

This is where I started during my demo.

Here I added more paint to bring out the lower right.

I decided the Moon (or Sun) need to be red!

I used watercolors for the tree trunk and added gold acrylic

 to the boulders in the lower right.

 Final steps were adding dead branches to the tree 

and doing some value changes.

And there ya have it!

What FUN!!!

Last night I gave a talk and demonstrated a fun - and challenging - mixed media technique I love to play with from time to time.

My goals: get some people interested in & maybe excited about doing some intuitive painting, something new & different, and HAVE FUN!

I'm happy to report that audience participation was great - I do believe people were having fun. 

A couple friends shared pictures they took of me working. And I'm sharing the piece as it developed last night. I'll be working on this in the coming days and will post progress. These typically take 3-5 days complete, around 8-12 hours of work and a lot of drying time.

Another one done!

This is another intuitive piece, 12x12 acrylic & mixed media with collaged rice papers on stretched canvas. 

I start these paintings with no plan, no notion of what it will become. I did hope for a moon and got it - this joins my Fly Me To The Moon Series.

I titled it 'In the Shadow of the Moon'.