A small painting

This is a quick post to show my latest little painting.

It was fun to paint. Like magic.

Sticks & Stones #64

9 x 12, Acrylic on Paper

New “Arte”

Finally! Inspired by the small study on paper entitled Arte de Natura, Elemental will be submitted to the Artful Home for consideration. Hopefully, it will be up by the end of the week.

Elemental

24 x 24, Acrylic on Canvas

5-31-12 Update: it is now available on the Artful Home!!

My own art collection

After my post yesterday it got me thinking… perhaps people would be interested to know that I also collect art and have for several years. So I think that from time to time I will talk about my art purchases and show pictures of them hanging in my house. This first piece that I will share is a piece I bought about eight or nine years ago. The artist is Sunstone Maria. At one time, she sold her work on eBay and that is where I purchased this piece. The painting is entitled “Saturday Morning” and it measures 24" square. I remember she listed this piece a few times and to my complete surprise, it did not sell. But every time she relisted it, I would watch it. Then one day, she put it on an extreme sale and it was a “Buy It Now”. At this point, I could not pass it up, so I immediately “bought it then”. It’s always a little bit of a gamble with art on eBay. A lot of the artists (at least then) did not know how to color-balance their painting images and I have to admit that a few times an art piece would arrive and I would be very disappointed as the color was no where near what I was expecting. But this piece arrived and was exactly as it had been depicted. I have been happy with it for the past several years and it hangs in my living room above the fake fireplace. Below is a photo of my living room in its entirety, taken a few years ago. I've added a few things, but the art is still the same.

Full view of the living room. Sunstone Maria’s “Saturday Morning” is in the center above the fireplace. The piece on the left is a reproduction (the only reproduction I own) and the three pieces on the right are paintings that I have done.

A closer image of “Saturday Morning”.

I recently did a Google search for Sunstone Maria and was pleased to find that she is still creating art and has a website:
http://sunstonemaria.com/

Whatever happened to…?

I recently had a conversation with someone about how I love to receive photos from the people who buy my paintings showing how my paintings are framed or displayed. I got the urge to locate those photos and here’s what I’ve found.

Sentinel and Rhyme & Reason (2005) were both purchased by the same person and this is how she had them framed.

Back in 2005, I did a lot of Small Works on Paper. They all measured 9" x 12" and I found the process quite freeing. I think this is where my love of working on paper originated. I approach a piece on paper with an eagerness to try anything (after all, it's only paper!), and usually what happens is something good and I'll think, “I wish I could just transfer that onto a canvas!” These next pieces were all in that series and the same person purchased all three. I love how they look framed.

Small Work #19 (top) 

and Small Work #23 with Small Work #24 (bottom)

The customer (an art consulting firm) did not send me the photos below. I found them on their website in a section displaying samples of their corporate installations. These were commissions done in 2008.

Reclamation 28 and Reclamation 29

So, if there is anyone out there reading this who owns a Glenys Porter Original, please send me a photo(s) of how you have it (them) displayed. I would love to see them again!

Linger and Lollop

So this is how they turned out, the pieces on paper that I was working on last weekend. They took an unexpected turn in a completely different direction and ended up looking like this, no bright colors, no blue, no orange. Still, I like how they turned out.

Linger (left) and Lollop (right)

18 x 18, Acrylic on Paper

Progressives of New Work

So now that I am once again inspired to make paintings, I thought it would be interesting to post the progress of a project. Shown below is the beginning of a new set of paintings, inspired by a study I did in my new "messy" style. The piece that inspired this is shown below, entitled "Arte de Natura (a study)". It's a small piece, painted on paper. I enjoyed painting it. It happened kind of magically. I love when that happens.

So the pictures below show the start of the new pieces. The idea is that they coordinate with one another, ideally ultimately hanging together. So I paint them simultaneously. This picture was taken after two painting sessions, each about 30 to 40 minutes each.

Then I changed my mind! I was liking the general direction/color scheme and then I hit a block. I couldn't see where to take these. They were too unfinished to be paintings, but I couldn't tell where they needed to go. I started to worry about creative block again, so I knifed over the whole thing and started over. The next post will show the two and how they ultimately turned out. So different! The new ones look more like "Reverie" and "Fall Where They May" than the "Arte de Natura" study. It's funny how these things take unexpected turns!

Latest email blast from the Artful Home

Well, I was very excited to see one of my new paintings featured on the Artful Home’s latest email campaign! Below is an image of the blast as it looked in my email program. Click on the picture to see it full-size. Notice how all the art pieces are color-coordinated in this well-designed blast. "Fall Where They May" goes perfectly with the other items depicted!

Check out the Artful Home:

http://www.artfulhome.com/

The Latest Sticks & Stones

Immediately after the paintings in my previous post, I did a couple of Sticks & Stones in this new looser style. These did not happen as "magically" as as those in the previous post. They started off in a completely different color scheme. Then I changed my mind. Then I changed my mind again. They finally ended up here, not as planned, and I still wasn't so sure when I finished them. It took a couple of days, but these really grew on me. Now I wouldn't consider a different color palette for these. I absolutely love them. They are works on paper measuring 20 inches square and were originally painted for consideration by the poster company, who showed no interest whatsoever. Not able to sell these on the Artful Home, I have posted them online elsewhere for sale, where to my continued disappointment there continues to be  no interest. I have decided that if they do not sell by August, I will take them to the local framer and have them professionally framed for my house. I will hang them in the living room side by side and enjoy them myself! So here they are, the latest in my Sticks & Stones series: #s 60 and 61.

Long time, no paintings…

Okay, well it's been a while since I've posted. And truth be known, painting dropped off for me shortly after that last post in '08. I can't really explain what happened. I guess I just got caught up in the day-to-day work-friends-life experiences and simply lost touch with the creative painting process. I did a few commissions in '09, painted a couple of small pieces in '10 but I didn't create a single painting in the year 2011! It recently came to my attention that my website didn't have any new work in the "new" section. I decided to update the site and discovered how long it had been!

I missed making paintings. I often wondered what it would take to "get it back". I hoped, even prayed for the turnaround. While I occasionally felt "stirrings", nothing seemed to materialize from them. There were a couple of times when I sat down in front of the easel, wanting to paint but nothing happened. I started to disregard the stirrings. Until this past February…

So things have turned around a bit and I have been painting. It started with some figurative work that I had an urge to do, evolving into a return to the abstracts. And the paintings are a little different. Looser, without my usual hard edges and I'm liking what's happening now. Even my color palette has brightened up considerably. Whereas primary colors used to look so "wrong" on my canvases (please understand I have always loved bright colors, just not in my own paintings), now I think it looks completely wonderful!

Two of my recent favorites are shown here that I posted on the Artful Home (artfulhome.com). The first is titled "Reverie" and the second is "Fall Where They May".

Ah, it's good to be painting again.