Give A Piece of Original NH Art for Christmas

Original art is special.  It's one-of-a-kind and originates in the mind's eye of the artist long before paint ever touches the canvas, and the soul of the artist has brooded over the work as problems are solved and pigments are mixed and applied.   The subjects of a still life, simple as they might be, may be perfect symbol of comfort for a special person, or an emblem of a some experience or place that is meaningful.  A landscape that looks like "back home," or a evokes a particular memory will hang in that special spot in a home or office, and the effort that went into that unique piece magnifies the love of the gift-giver.  

People pass by the mass-produced, soul-less printed canvases and prints stacked like cord wood in home fashion aisles of department stores every. single. day.  There's a reason for that.  It might look nice on your loved one's wall, but who wants to give a gift with no soul?

I have several small landscapes and still lifes that may be a special and meaningful Christmas present for someone on your list.  All artwork is unframed, but sometimes that's best done by the one who knows where it will call home.  Browse the paintings here on this blog.  Hit me up if you have any questions.  Shipping doesn't cost much; canvas art is lightweight.  

Merry Christmas!

~Shawne

Fog Signal House at Two Lights - SOLD

Fog Signal House at Two Lights ~SOLD (Somebody liked this!)

9 in. x 12 in., acrylic on canvas    

$148 (framed)

Last February we visited Two Lights, as we often do on our winter vacation trip to Maine.  It's quiet and sparsely visited.  I love it here.  You can pick sea glass from the little pebble beach right in front of the little parking spots, or you can check out the cave in the rocks if the tide's out far enough.  I love to climb the rocky peninsula and scramble out to a warm spot on the rocks.  There's a lot of subject matter to paint here.  In the winter, the lobster shack is shuttered until spring and all the whole place a long, wide, rocky staircase angling down to the rhythmic tidal spray.  The sea has a green cast here in the morning, and on this particular morning the sky was all movement and bars of sunlight between the windy clouds.  You might like this painting if you've been to Two Lights yourself.

You'd better mind the fog signal and not be too close if you're there when it goes off.  Here's a link below to where you can see and hear the signal, looking down opposite from the vantage point of this painting. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHtlCUDrmIE

Ursa Major SOLD

Ursa Major (Illuminated Twitter Poem)
11 in. x 14 in.,  Pen & Ink and Watercolor
Unframed, $85  ~  SOLD (Somebody liked this!)

For some time I have enjoyed the challenge of using what used to be the old 140-character limit Twitter format to compose a bit of poetic verse.  For those of you who know me, you will not be surprised that I have several rueful lines aimed at my disdain for the month of March.  A couple of Septembers ago I was out at night for a run and there in the darkening sky was The Big Dipper, that highly-recognizable portion of the constellation Ursa Major that as children we might first learn to find and become familiar with.  Staring at it twinkling in the cooling heavens, I thought about how much larger the full constellation is supposed to be and how the classic Baroque drawings of Ursa Major (The Great Bear) often showed an odd bear with a long tail (?) arranged over the stars in a non-sensical way.  And so often in reality the stars beyond the dipper in the full constellation are just not visible.  I found myself re-imagining Ursa Major along the dipper itself without the extended, invisible stars, and suddenly, there he was, crouching just above the horizon, eyes penetrating and ears at attention, his powerful back tense and curved upward and away.  

I drew Ursa Major on mixed media board with pen and ink in Zentangle-style and washed watercolors over the top.  There are washes of iridescent aqua blue watercolor over the surface of the sky.  In person, he sports interference shine across his intimidating form. The poem he is illuminating is casually lettered below.  At some point I will mat and frame him, or whoever buys him could opt to have it done themselves.  He was enjoyable to create, and I hope you like him. Maybe other constellations will follow.

Ursa Major

Unblinking
Straining across the cold black
he arches low, blocking the
northern passage.  I am pinned beneath
his unmistakable vertebrae.

Near Mount Tom - SOLD

 

Near Mount Tom ~SOLD (Somebody liked this!)
8 in. x 8 in., acrylic on canvas
$115 (framed)

I enjoy hiking when I have the time and opportunity, and if I can get someone to climb a mountain with me, I'll go.  But my friend Linda has logged serious miles hiking up and down and all around.  Recently, she posted a breathtaking photo from a cool-weather hike, and I fell in love with it.  She generously gave me permission to paint the landscape she captured in her photograph.  This is a portion of her ascent along the Mount Tom, Avalon and Field Loop up near Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.  The silent, frosty calm of the trail disappearing ahead and into the misty trees among the spruce was just asking to be painted.

Sometimes when I paint I listen to theological lectures.  It keeps the right brain working undisturbed by left brain who wants to criticize and backseat drive.  Listening to theology feeds my soul and also give left brain enough ontological meat to chew on so right brain can mix colors, choose brushes and make compositional decisions.  In classic Sesame Street fashion, I'm happy to tell you that this painting has been brought to you by lectures on The Psychology of Atheism, and by the first three parts in a series on Justification.  I hope both Kierkegaard and Luther would have liked this little painting!

Amy's Butternut - SOLD

Amy's Butternut ~SOLD Somebody liked this!

9 in. x 12 in., acrylic on canvas    

$150 (framed)

My friend Amy knows how much I absolutely adore butternut squash.  If I could only choose a single vegetable to raise, it would probably be these sweet, golden gifts of the natural world. So when she grew a small crop for herself last fall and presented me with one, it made me so happy. That being said, however, when I saw that she had left a portion of vine attached, complete with springy, dried, skeletal tendrils, I HAD to paint it.  I decided to forego enjoying the goodness of her harvest in order to have this specimen sit enthroned in the studio on an old cloth for a portrait.  

I played with the bluish and blushing fleshtones on his heavy, sturdy form at the Twiggs Gallery event in February, and the many people who came through to watch us in the live art room seemed to appreciate watching him become something.  His curly accouterments, however, dress his plainness up, like a good, non-symmetrical hairstyle; without them, he's just a big knucklebone. When I finished the painting and set it aside next to the actual squash to dry, I noticed I had painted it very near to actual size on the 9 x 12 surface, something that I hadn't necessarily set out to do.  Behold, the Butternut!

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