Beneath The Bud

Beneath The Bud
Acrylic on board
5" x 7" (12.7 x 17.8 mm)

A different view of a rosebud .... from beneath looking up so that the full, rounded base of the bud is revealed in all its plumpness! The bunch of rosebuds from which this one was chosen, lasted two weeks from bud to full bloom, and richly deserved the description: 'Delicious'. They were gorgeous.

As I am going to be uploading paintings of different sizes and different mediums to this blog, I won't put a price to them and instead ask that you email me to discuss their value if you are interested in purchasing. This has so far been a good experiment for me in that I've discovered that although small paintings can be satisfying and definitely have their place, I find producing larger paintings far more exciting and worth talking about!

Lily In Lilac and Purple

Lily In Lilac and Purple
Acrylic on board
5" x 7" (12.7 x 17.8 mm)
Price : Euro100
(includes postage and packaging worldwide)

It's been nearly two weeks since my last post and heavens knows where the time has gone! For some of it, the blogger website was down but for the rest I have been on trains to Dublin and back (delivering paintings to the fine art auctioneer), moving my studio out of our main living room, and painting like crazy to have something to offer the galleries who want smallish pieces for their Christmas exhibitions. Oh, and collecting kindling for winter fires, from the field next door. All things that just had to be done.

Today's painting is of a lily I bought from the flower sellers in Grafton Street in Dublin during the time my paintings were on exhibition at Airfield Trust in one of the southern areas of Dublin. The flower sellers are the one and only reason I walk down Grafton Street - it's always so full of people that sometimes I feel a little bruised when I emerge from either end of it! The flower sellers have banks of colour with the freshest blooms, the most expensive of them stylishly wrapped, and all just as tempting as the shelves in a chocolate shop. I veer off Grafton Street at the flower sellers knowing that another treat is just down a side road - the Apollo Art Gallery, which only seems to exhibit the work of already well-known artists and people like the Rolling Stones' Ronnie Wood who sold a self-portrait of himself for Euro55 000.00!!

The day is slipping by too quickly again so now I must continue with some support preparation - gesso-ing boards which I have covered in linen, and get back to the horses I am painting for this year's Art Ireland exhibition in mid-November.

Have a good one!

Heavens What a Garden!

Heavens What a Garden!
Acrylic on paper
11" x 7.5" (28 x 19 cms)
Price : $100

And now for something completely different!
An abstract. Filled with colour, texture and excitement. While working on the 'Deep Water Wonder' collection I used tons of paint, freely and generously, to create abstracts which, when each one was finished - and sometimes in the middle of the process, before it was complete - gave me such a lovely sense of butterflies in my tummy. Even now when I look at this particular abstract I am tempted to say 'Oh wow!' out loud.

The way the paint was applied has left textural marks simulating branches and twigs. In this particular painting the regular pathways made by the palette knife I used give a strong sense of a formal garden - but a rebellious formal garden exploding with colour and life. Definitely an exciting painting.

Click the image to see a larger, more detailed version.

I joined the fitness centre last week. If there's one thing that I miss about everyday life in South Africa it's a swimming pool. Not so long ago I read, or heard on the radio, that Ireland has only about 300 swimming pools, including private and public pools, in the whole country. Amazing. Just fly over any South African city or town and the swimming pools are more visible and seem more numerous than the houses! So it's great to spend 30 minutes on the walking machine followed by a lovely relaxing swim - thank heavens my swimming costume is still in one piece after not being used for about 5 or 6 years!

We have a lovely sunny and partly cloudy day here in Connemara - everything has that washed and sparkly look about it.

'Til next time ...

Delicate Lives

Delicate Lives
Acrylic on board
5" x 7" (12.7 x 17.8 cms)
Price : $100
(includes postage and packaging)

I have a lovely big yellow silk Poppy which, together with its scarlet red mate, they stand on long stalks in an attractive long-necked frosted German wine bottle. (The wine was excellent too - enjoyed at the opening night of my 'Walkin' On Sunshine' exhibition in Dublin this last August). The Poppies were bought to brighten a dull corner in my gallery (which is in the large and well-lit hallway of my home) and to enhance the colours of nearby paintings - but they begged to be painted as well.

The painting is delicate yet well-defined - and was jolly difficult to edit after scanning, to get it to as close to the real colours as possible! The flower was painted dry but the background has water added to it to give it a feeling of fluid blue sky.

Blue sky is probably something we will only glimpse on lovely autumn and winter days for the next few months. We've had lovely, heavy, soaking rain (and a bit of wind) for the past couple of days - waterfalls on the mountains are just everywhere. When the sun pushes through banks of clouds it picks out the rusts and yellow-greens on the hillsides - but is gone very quickly with fast moving clouds at the moment. Still, it's very beautiful ... this, and winter, is my time of year!

Green Apple Red Apple

Green Apple Red Apple
6.5" x 4.5" (17 x 12 cmx)
Watercolour pencil on watercolour paper
Double mounted/matted with a navy blue surround to the painting and an outer off-white mount board
The painting also has a frame included in the price - but you can choose whether or not you would like the frame
Price : $100

No fruit or flowers which pass our front door go unphotographed (as you will see from the photo library on my website)! And these apples and grapes were no exception. We live an hour's drive from our nearest city, Galway, and usually only arrive home on town days after 7 pm in the evening, tired from a day packed with chores, and laden with packages .... too late, and usually too dark, for me to fit in a painting as well as cook and pack everything away. So the photographs become gold to me.

The trick with watercolour pencils is to know how much water and how much not to use to give the painting just the right amount of texture and bonding. Every artist will choose a different amount according to the pleasure they find in texutre. The same applies to how heavily you use the pencil in different areas, giving a different kind of texture when lots of pencil markings leave little islands of medium once the water has dried.

After meeting my last article writing deadline for the magazines yesterday, I am free to start playing with my paints again today. Jolly good thing too because the stocks in my gallery are very low indeed at the moment - I've had a good run this summer!