Hedda Gobbler & Tommy Two-Tone

Hedda Gobbler & Tommy Two-Tone

5 in. x 7 in., acrylic on cradled panels

$260 for the set, unframed (no frame necessary)

How can you not love these ugly wild turkey birds?  I mean, they're objectively not at all handsome, but the details in their colored, wrinkled skin, hair and feathers are kind of fascinating. It was an interesting exercise in painting them, and I figured I couldn't paint one without painting the other. It would be ideal for them to go as a set.

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Old Fashioned Hollyhocks - SOLD

 

Old Fashioned Hollyhocks

8 in. x 10 in., soft pastel on velvet panel

$300, matted and framed to 11"x 14" ~ SOLD

When my neighbors grew these magnificent magenta-red hollyhocks during the height of summer, I asked if I could photograph them.  Of course they said yes, and I took the reference photos to a one-night pop-up gallery event where I would have a selection of art hung and would be painting live.  I didn't sell any work off the wall that evening, but these hollyhocks I was painted garnered a ton of attention.  The lady who would be the buyer asked me to text her a photo of the finished piece in a mat and frame.  She snapped it right up, because it reminded her of her grandma, and this painting created a strong connection for her. 

Golden Hour Ghost

 

Golden Hour Ghost

8 in. x 10 in., acrylic on cradled panel

$300, unframed (no frame necessary)

This began as a free-for-use photo by photographer Ben Jenkins.  The simplicity of the composition and the subtle golden glow of last light on a barn owl was too much to resist.  I very much enjoyed utilizing the complement pair of violet and yellow, even though they are somewhat muted in this piece.  Those claws, though!

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Bowl of Stars (Tuckerman Ravine)

Bowl of Stars (Tuckerman Ravine)

6 in. x 18 in., (Triptych, acrylic on 3 - 6" x 6" cradled panels)

$450, unframed (no frame necessary)

Painted for an annual Tuckerman Ravine art show, these three panels hang together to form a triptych. The wide expanse of the glacial circle that forms the headwall of Tuckerman Ravine stretches across, rising above the trail, holding the expanse of stars in the night sky. Multiple panel paintings are often hung with a little space between them to give the feel of looking at the scene through a kind of window effect. 

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Alpine Garden Vista

Alpine Garden Vista

8 in. x 10 in., acrylic on cradled panel

$300, unframed (no frame necessary)

Painted for an annual Tuckerman Ravine art show, this painting depicts the view down into the ravine from the top of the intersection between the Tuckerman Ravine Trail and the Alpine Garden Trail.  The brilliant sun on the ridge at the top brightens the stones and alpine grasses by the weathered White Mountains trail sign for hikers to follow on their way down to Pinkham Notch, or on to the summit of Mount Washington.

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Butterfly Bush

Butterfly Bush

8 in. x 10 in., soft pastel on velvet board, framed to 11 in. x 14 in.

$300, framed 

This fun pastel piece was painted plein air at an annual event at Black Forest Nursery in Boscawen, NH in the early summer.  It's a beautiful place for artists to work, and the event, focused on pollinator gardens, draws a crowd. This wonderful cluster of fuschia and violet butterfly bushes was calling me and I set up my easel to paint them.  Love the way this one came out, very lively with dancing colors.  It's matted in a navy blue mat and silvery frame.

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High Summer at Portland Head Light - SOLD

 

High Summer at Portland Head Light

8 in. x 10 in., acrylic on cradled panel

$350, unframed (no frame necessary)

I can't tell you how many times I've painted PHL.  So far I've sold every single PHL piece I've ever done. This one sold to the same California buyer as Quiet Season at Portland Head Light.  They have one wall where there's kind of a shrine to PHL, which I think is kind of lovely and unique.  The buyer used to work in the area decades ago, and has fond memories of her time there.

Quiet Season at Portland Head Light - SOLD

Quiet Season at Portland Head Light

7 in. x 11 in., acrylic on canvas

$400, framed ~ SOLD

A view not often seen by tourists to Maine... who goes to PHL in the winter?  Well, the locals. Especially locals who know the ocean is beautiful even in the off season.  The windblown grasses and shrubs, shivering in the icy snow cover provides a kind of quiet loveliness rarely noticed by everyone else.  This was sold right off the easel and now lives with an ex-Portlander in California.

Single Malt Daffodil

 

Single Malt Daffodil

7 in. x 14 in., acrylic on canvas

$325, framed 

I found this bright little daffodil along the roadside while walking the dog last spring.  It had been plucked from a clump of them by one of the neighborhood children and left in the grass by the sidewalk.  I couldn't bear to leave it, having just opened up, fresh and new.  I snatched it up and back home popped it into a small-size Glenlivet bottle (empty, of course!) where it cheered my kitchen for a couple of weeks. 

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Great Head Trail, Acadia

 

Great Head Trail, Acadia

8 in. x 8 in., acrylic on cradled panel

$250, unframed (no frame necessary)

My friend Janette provided the references for this stunning area of Acadia along the Maine coast.  The hike along the Great Head Trail provides incredible ocean views and expansive areas of glacial rock slabs that catch the light in the sun.  This composition allowed me the opportunity to push the light and shadow toward bright, saturated color to leave the viewer with the impression of midday coastal sunshine.  

Photo reference courtesy Janette Rondeau

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Shimmering Pines

11 in. x 14 in., acrylic on canvas panel

$250, framed

I enjoyed painting this winter alpine scene and getting the glow of the sunrise emerging behind the trees just right.  This piece is quite a simple composition, but packed with a lot of color and a wide value range, with very little pure white. I painted it as part of a show meant to pair haiku poetry with art.  This one was paired with Peggy Willis Lyles' poem of the same name:  

Shimmering Pines /A taste of the mountain / From your cupped hands

Comes in a brown wood frame.  The total piece size is 12" x 16".

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Full Snow Moon

Full Snow Moon

8 in. x 10 in., gouache with pen & ink

$250 matted and framed

The bottom of Fairmont Street just a short way up from my house, goes up the hill toward the horizon, meeting the sky. Last February, while walking the dog, the sun was setting and the brilliant full moonrise was centered over the top of Fairmont.  As crazy as the colors seem to be in this painting, the color of the sky was exactly this for about 10 minutes as the moon hovered over the top of the road.  This piece is double-matted with a black and white strip bordering the painting, and a black frame.  The total piece size is 12" x 16".

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Up, Up and Away

Up, Up and Away

8 in. x 10 in., gouache with pen & ink

$250 matted and framed

This fun painting takes advantage of gouache's ability to reactivate with water after it dries.  The softly-lit bubbles and glowing spots floating in the dark blue water around the jellyfish are made by allowing carefully-placed drops of water to "stain" the painted surface and pull the pigment out and the illusion of glow.  This piece is double-matted with a black and white strip bordering the painting, and a black frame.  The total piece size is 12" x 16".

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Suspicious Minds

 

Suspicious Minds

8 in. x 10 in., gouache with pen & ink

$250 matted and framed

Artists share supplies, or treat each other to new mediums.  I was the recipient of a set of gouache paints and cold pressed watercolor paper from a fellow artist, giving me a fresh way to play. The ability to layer pen and ink over the dried gouache created an opportunity to add textural lines and fine detail, which you see here in this raven. Gouache dries with a soft, matte finish, which is quite nice.  This piece is double-matted with a black and white strip bordering the painting, and a black frame.  The total piece size is 12" x 16".

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For the Healing of the Nations

 

For the Healing of the Nations

11 in. x 14 in., acrylic on cradled panel

Not yet priced

Taking up a challenge to produce an abstract painting for a show, I had the idea to explore an iconographical image with a tree-of-life theme.  The tree runs through the Bible from cover to cover and several places in between.  It is the occasion of the cosmic tragic fall of humanity into death and moral decay and the material that composes the rescuing ark of Noah; it is the Ark of the Covenant where God meets the high priest on the Day of Atonement and the thing that gets planted as a place of memorial; it is a tree that was the instrument of execution on which Jesus was sacrificed, and finally shows up in the New Jerusalem at the consummation of the coming Kingdom of God in Revelation.  I wanted to create an image that conveyed a dynamic full of movement, power and mystic symbolism of a greater reality; something that pulled into one the scriptural themes running through the biblical tree. The title "For the Healing of the Nations" comes from and illuminates Revelation 22:2, describing a divine Christophanic tree so incredible and transcendent, it nourishes and restores humanity.  I hope you like it.

Ruby Red

Ruby Red

6 in. x 6 in., acrylic on cradled panel

$150 unframed (no frame necessary)

This painting reminds me of so many Christmases when we were a young married couple and my husband would buy me a big box full of oranges and grapefruits from someone he worked with.  Some years only grapefruits were available; large, fragrant Ruby Reds so fresh that they would often last me through February or even March in a basket near a window in a cool, winter house.  A gorgeous mixture of pyrrole red and quinacridone magenta achieves the unique, saturated jewel tones of the red grapefruit in this still life.

Reference photo, courtesy by Sarah Sedwick @sedwickstudio 

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No Plow Yet

 

No Plow Yet

6 in. x 6 in., acrylic on gallery-wrapped canvas

$150 unframed (no frame necessary)

This little piece was painted in response to a call for a black & white themed art show.  Painted without many values (just black, white, and maybe three narrow midtones), I very much enjoyed using the occasion of a dark, snowy night street scene illuminated by a single street light. Only the immediate area below the lamp, the surrounding snowflakes, and the icy wires glisten in the stormy darkness. I found this to be a fun challenge for me to try and express a lot with just a little information. Those who live in northern areas with snowstormy winters will truly appreciate both this imagery and the title.

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Where Winter Listens - SOLD

 

Where Winter Listens

8 in. x 8 in., acrylic on canvas panel

$250 framed ~ SOLD

Inspired (instigated?) by a call for art for a show featuring black and white works, this landscape is actually done entirely in Payne's Gray and Titanium White with a few touches of Mars Black. It showcases a range of subtle value shifts to create a sense of space, distance and atmosphere, and felt good to paint; an excellent stretching exercise for any artist to practice care and deliberation in values.  Beyond that, I like the feeling this painting creates of a silent, snow-blanketed landscape in winter, and the suggestion that it might even be still snowing that tiny, fine kind of precipitation that loses the shapes of the far treeline into low visibility.  It does feel like winter is straining to hear any sound, doesn't it?

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Simple Joy - SOLD

Simple Joy

6 in. x 6 in., acrylic on gallery-wrapped canvas

$150 unframed (no frame necessary) ~  SOLD

This little cup of tea almost painted itself.  I know artists work best when painting from experience, and the speed and trouble-free manner in which this little still life flowed out of my brush might just be a testament to how many cups of hot tea I've savored since I was 8 years old and Ma let me use to stove to make myself my first cup.  I love the warm, honeyed tones of the tea; a pool of burnished orange and sienna cradled in the center of the cool porcelain cup and blue background. The simplicity of creating this piece was a uniquely pleasing experience for me.  I think the title almost speaks more about how it felt to paint it.

Reference photo courtesy @sedwickstudio

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Advent Sunrise - SOLD

 

Advent Sunrise 

5 in. x 7 in., acrylic cradled board

$135 unframed (no frame necessary) ~ SOLD

There is something about this frosty sunrise, with early morning blues and mist being cut through by the rose-gold brilliance of morning that speaks of Advent to me.  The late November chill, condensation in the air and delicate frost clinging to grasses, crispy leaves and windshields triumph over the remains of a harvest past, with winter ever nearer.  This is the back property of a friend, who lives in my old hometown of Andover, NH.  I could feel the familiarity of the space in my heart as I painted the hills and field.

Reference photo courtesy Kate Goodin

November - SOLD

 

November

8 in. x 8 in., acrylic on panel

$200 framed  ~ SOLD

I paint a lot of landscapes and still life, with the occasional supernaturalist/devotional work.  There are a few times, however, when I feel something breaking out of me that requires expressing.  This painting is how November makes me feel.  Yes, there's a barrenness to the bare trees, the early darkness and winter cold pressing in through your fall jacket; all a bit forbidding.  But I love November.  November is the coziest month to me, full of warm, rich comfort foods, soft flannels and warm wood.  November has a more natural, primitive feel than December, with all its foil-wrappings and twinkling.  November is brown and organic.  November is dusky purple mountainsides wearing a sea of bare tree branches amid the evergreen swaths.  The muted browns and purples in this piece are what I see in my mind when I think of November.  The full beaver moon frames the perched raven and is a reminder that all living things do not die or abandon our fast-wintering lives, but rather becomes more compact, more resourceful, more resilient.  This is November for me.

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Lakeport Village from Opechee

Lakeport Village from Opechee

11 in. x 14 in., acrylic on cradled board

$325 unframed (no frame necessary)

Lake Opechee is across the street from our house, a small, 426-acre lake snuggled between the massive Winnepesaukee and long, reaching Lake Winnisquam.  Our across-the-street neighbors took us on a sunset boat ride last summer.  As the sun dipped below the horizon, I snapped a photo of Lakeport from the rippling waves; pink, peach and yellow skies and the spire of the Lakeport Baptist Church greeted us from the eastern shore.

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Margaret Hatcher - SOLD

 

Margaret Hatcher 

6 in. x 6 in., acrylic on cradled panel

$130 unframed (framing not necessary) ~ SOLD

She looks like a Margaret.

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Joe Cocker - SOLD

Joe Cocker ~ SOLD

6 in. x 6 in., acrylic on cradled panel

$130 unframed (framing not necessary)

I know it's a punny name, sure, but look at him.  It works, doesn't it?

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Bass Solo, Unfinished

Bass Solo, Unfinished

5 in. x 7 in., acrylic on cradled panel

$130 unframed (framing not necessary)

I know, I know, it's weird, but hear me out.  There is was, sitting on the beach with my chair in the water and the waves coming up around my feet and ankles (like you do), enjoying the salt air, the sunshine and the sound of the ocean.  I look over to my right and see this chunk of something washed up in the surf about 20 feet away.  Being a curious girl, I get up and walk over for a closer inspection, and discover what was left of an Atlantic striped bass, staring up at me from eyeless sockets. Whatever beast consumed the vast majority of this unfortunate fish didn't quite finish its meal, leaving me with this strange little how-do-you-do moment with what remained. I snapped a few shots, thinking it could maybe be an interesting painting. And I guess what I'm getting at with this whole thing is that what non-artists need to understand is when artists say that something might make an "interesting painting," what they mean is interesting to them.  We don't necessarily mean "interesting enough that someone might buy it." Don't get me wrong.  Someone might!  And that's great, of course!  It just means that our motivation for painting a subject is the challenge to explore it because it's somehow different, and we want to see if we can render it to our satisfaction.  That's why I thought it might be fun to paint a dead fish head.  Do you like it?

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Family Portrait

Family Portrait

8 in. x 8 in., acrylic on cradled panel

$250 unframed (framing not necessary)

As you know, pumpkins and winter squash make me happy.  This set of happy cousins posing for a formal picture against a classic dark background seems like quiet, quintessential fall to me.  I hope you like it!  

(Reference photo courtesy Smit)

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Dune Path, Plum Island II

Dune Path, Plum Island II

20 in. x 24 in., acrylic on canvas

$850 framed

This painting is a scaled-up version of a small piece I painted and sold a few years ago.  The sweeping perspective up the dune, and the interplay of violet shade and golden light on the sand is interesting and exciting to me.  The dunes on Plum Island down at the end at Sandy Point are beautiful against the blue sky and worth the trip.  This painting is large and would look lovely on a wide, sunny wall or over a fireplace.

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Stop Sign at the Bottom of Fairmont

Stop Sign at the Bottom of Fairmont

8 in. x 10 in., acrylic on cradled board

$300 unframed (no frame necessary)

This little street is just a short, 2 minute stroll from my studio, here in Laconia, NH.  It goes straight up from the stop sign and meets the sky when you're viewing it from the bottom in the middle of the the crosswalk.  Recently, while walking Archie, our collie, the blue sky and brilliant white clouds combined with the warm light and cool shadows, and I had to snap a few reference photos. I decided to name this summer study of dancing light on the road after the prominent, elongated stop sign shadow pointing upward toward the utility lines sweeping back and forth across the sky.

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Harvest Harmony

Harvest Harmony

8 in. x 8 in., acrylic on cradled board

$250 unframed (no frame necessary)

I adore pumpkins.  Any size, any shape or color.  When I was a kid I was an idealist and a purist; pumpkins had to be big and orange and perfectly shaped.  If only I knew what a boring composition they would have made!  I suspect Linus Van Pelt might have extolled the virtues of the oddities and underdogs of the pumpkin patch to me as he waited for The Great Pumpkin to make his appearance. As I grew up I began to discover and love all the nubbly, warty, thickly ribbed, flat, tall, dusky, and brightly multicolored varieties of pumpkins.  This painting began as a tutoring piece for a painting student I'm coaching.  It was one of the most enjoyable paintings I've done as of late, with the varied surfaces, colors and lighting.  It reminds me of music, cooperation, and abundance.

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Petal Dance

Petal Dance

5 in. x 7 in., acrylic on cradled board

$150 unframed (no frame necessary)

The subject of this sweet little painting was chosen by a friend and art student I'm coaching during my lunch break painting sessions at work.  She is making great strides learning to paint, and selected a free photo reference of this little female hummingbird feeding at these lovely pink bell flowers. This was a little out of my comfort zone and not my usual, but we went ahead and had some fun. I played with the subject hovering in space, creating a sense of depth with lovely juicy brush strokes of blurred background flowers and greenery. 

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Sophia Lor-hen - SOLD

 

Sophia Lor-hen

5 in. x 7 in., acrylic on cradled board

$150 unframed (no frame necessary) ~ SOLD

I'm not sure this painting needs an explanation except to say that I feel like this portrait reflects the kind of classy elegance of her namesake. Artistically speaking, getting the bumpy texture of her comb and wattle right was fun to paint.

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Over the Headwall - SOLD

Over the Headwall ~ SOLD

8 in. x 10 in., acrylic on cradled board

$250 unframed (no frame necessary)

For those not from New Hampshire, this is Tuckerman Ravine.  It's a formidable glacial cirque cut into the southeast flank of Mount Washington up in the White Mountains.  The top of the rim is 5,100 feet above sea level and the drop from the lip to the bottom of the ravine is 800 to 1000 feet.  Insane people ski this monster.  Avalanches kill people here.  In this painting of Hermit Lake, where there is a shelter, the "trail" hiking up to the top from this point is essentially an upward ascent over moon boulders baptized with the occasional paint marking.  All that being said, the breathtaking majesty of this gigantic, cavernous amphitheater rising over 5000 feet over the landscape is hard to describe unless you see it in person, even from the trailhead at the bottom in Pinkham Notch.

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