Pocket Lindt

Pocket Lindt

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

$100 unframed (no frame necessary)

The reference for this piece is courtesy @dennispfeil.art who manages Instagram's #foodpaintchallenge, which I've made use of frequently for fun and interesting subjects for painting.  Originally, the photo was a grouping of four of these wonderful chocolate bonbons but I chose two of the four to focus on and paint.  The crispy, dented foil-lined cellophane wraps were fun to render in acrylic, and who doesn't love a Lindt Chocolate? I hope you like it!

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This Little Light of Mine

This Little Light of Mine

8 in. x 10 in., acrylic on canvas 

Not yet priced; unframed

Yet another painting of a shiny object.  This is from a photo my son Dave took of a glass-bottomed oil lamp happily glowing on the wooden dining table at his home.  The bright flame and reflections in the chimney against the warm darkness feels like security, safety and hope.  Isn't that what we are called to be, the darkness be damned against the light that is in us, but does not originate with us?  This little light announces to the the darkness who we are, and Who we serve. That little light tells it, "You cannot pass."  And it knows it can't.  It knows.

Red Velvet on Gold

Red Velvet on Gold

6 in. x 6 in., acrylic and metallic paint on gallery-wrapped canvas 

$100 unframed (no frame needed)

The holiday season is the perfect time to make use of metallic acrylic paints, and about halfway through this little poinsettia study I decided to cut some bright gold metallic into the background around the bright, velvety red bracts. Did you know that poinsettias don't actually have true petals?  Those red things that look like leaves are actually, well... leaves.  The flowers are actually those tiny little yellow doodads clustered in the centers. I hope you like the festive gold against the soft, layered reds.  This piece could brighten a mantel, a bookcase or a wall where the light can play on the metallic gold during the Christmas season.

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Jingle All the Way

 

Jingle All the Way

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

$100 unframed (no frame needed)

I've been on a shiny kick lately, appropriate for the Christmas season.  It's a great exercise in creative self-mastery to hold back from punching in the lightest lights (or the whitest whites) until very late in the painting process so that you intentionally work from dark to light.  I find it keeps me from getting ahead of myself to hold the dark and mid-tones within a controlled range until it's time to go in with the lightest of shades, and, of course, titanium white, when there's cause to use it.  The curious little shapes of the reflected colors and lights in the surface of the polished sleigh bells are a scream to paint.  They're just SO WEIRD, and it forces me to have to trust my eyes and simply paint the shapes I see in the colors they are.  It's like a little miracle when they begin to add up to a convincing illusion of real reflective surfaces.  I hope you like it.

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Wet Sand and Crimson - SOLD

Wet Sand and Crimson ~ SOLD!  (Somebody liked this!)

8 in. x 8 in., acrylic on traditional-depth canvas 

$140 unframed 

Back in 2020, we decided to take our annual Christmas shopping trip up to South Portland earlier than usual to avoid the crowds because of the pandemic.  So we went in early October, when Moody's Motel and Cottages hadn't yet closed for the season, and it was glorious.  Dustin booked us in one of his very quiet rooms at a time when not many people were going places like Wells, Maine. The best thing, however, is that the beach is literally across the street.  A short stroll across Webhannet Drive will take you to the ramp at the corner of the sea wall.  There we were, enjoying Crescent Beach... and in October, nearly by ourselves.  One of the two evenings we were there, the sunset on the beach was an otherworldly kind of beautiful, the tide was going out, and the wet beach was like a mirror. The firmament was on fire for fifteen minutes, burning up the whole world with yellow and orange and pink and crimson... and then it was gone.  If you can believe it, this painting is an attempt to capture it, not exaggerate it. 

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Mulled Pears - SOLD

 

Mulled Pears

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

$180 unframed  SOLD~ Somebody Liked This!

A couple of falls ago I put up several jars of mulled pears to give away for Christmas.  If you don't know what mulled pears are, they're quartered pears stewed briefly in sugar and sweet red dessert wine with orange peel, cloves and cinnamon. As they sit on the shelf after canning, they continue to soak in the flavors, getting better with age.  To serve, you drain the juice into a small saucepan and simmer it over heat until it thickens a little.  Then you spoon some pear slices over vanilla cream and drizzle the warm sweet wine sauce over all.  In lieu of an actual jar of mulled pears, I offer you this portrait of a pint jar of mulled pears, which, with all the shine and embossed glass, was a fun challenge.  I hope you like it!

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Hazy Saltwater Reflections

Hazy Saltwater Reflections

9 in. x 12 in., acrylic on canvas    

$160 unframed 

I never tire of painting New England salt marshes. We frequent the Maine coast and the marshes along the Webhannet River and estuary there look different from morning to afternoon.  This piece, with the sun overhead at midday in summer, leaves the colors soft and slightly muted.  I love the hazy clouds reflecting in the tidal water.

 

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Mount Willard Trailhead - SOLD

 

Mount Willard Trailhead ~ SOLD!  (Somebody liked this!)

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

$100 unframed (no frame necessary)

A couple of springs ago my son Sam and I hiked Mount Willard up in Hart's Location, New Hampshire, and it was a fabulous hike.  A short 3 mile out and back hike with one of the most stunning views available in the White Mountains. The trailhead for Willard starts out fairly level with young trees before rising sharply after a shallow wet crossing. The spring foliage letting the light through onto the young green grass dancing along the path seems fresh and promising here.  I hope you like this little piece!

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Heirloom Pumpkin Trio

 

Heirloom Pumpkin Trio

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

$100 unframed (no frame necessary)

A fellow gardener grew a few heirloom pumpkin varieties last fall and had these big, blocky specimens posing in a perfect little grouping on the sideboard in her kitchen. The pinky-orange one is an Indian Doll pumpkin and the others were a more traditional orange variety.  The interesting ribs and chunky textures were fun to paint.

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Plum Island Sand Dunes

Plum Island Sand Dunes 

8 in. x 8 in., acrylic on traditional-depth canvas    

$220 unframed

I can't stop painting Plum Island.  Most of the island is protected land and part of the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge. Venturing through Newburyport, MA and out to the island brings you into a wonderland filled with songbirds and seabirds, rabbits, coyotes, horseshoe crabs and wild, salt-tolerant vegetation of all kinds. In this painting, I'm capturing a glimpse of the sun-kissed sand dunes and beach grass just uphill from the high tide line.  Can you smell the salt and feel the hot sun on your shoulders?  This piece welcomes you to heady, salty, coastal New England, where, 70 miles of coastline south of here, Pilgrim feet waded ashore and here praised God for the wild land that promised a free future.

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Strawberries

Strawberries 

10 in. x 10 in., acrylic on traditional-depth canvas    

$250 Framed

My fellow artist friend Pam of @arthavenstudios picked a whole bowlful of strawberries last June and had the audacity to post them on social media.  Her photo was so delicious I told her she ought to consider using it as a reference for art.  She is an accomplished print maker and I could envision a beautiful print of speckled strawberries done in her lovely, organic style.  She, instead, suggested I use her photo for a painting, and she might think about a print.  It was deal, I said, and this became by studio work-in-progress that I'd fiddle with over a busy summer as time permitted.  I still hope to see Pam's interpretation of her beautiful strawberries; maybe we could show our pieces side by side some time in the future.  I hope you like this one!

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Garden Radishes - SOLD

 

 

Garden Radishes  ~SOLD Somebody liked this!

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

$100 (no frame necessary)

This was a fun and and challenging little still life of fresh radishes dancing across a surface with their wonderful green stems and leaves trailing behind them.  Painting this reminded me of walking barefoot in the garden as a kid and pulling a fresh, crispy, red radish from the rows, wiping the dirt off on the grass and crunching into it right there where I stood. I love their peppery bite and crisp juiciness. The reference for this piece was a photo by Fiona of @still.shapes who shared it for the painting pleasure of others.  The colors in the shadows were particularly delicious to paint.

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OMG Bacon!

OMG Bacon!

8 in. x 10 in., acrylic on canvas    

$160 unframed

Well, that's what everybody said who saw this painting in progress.  What can I say? Who doesn't want their art collection to reflect the things they love most?  I mean, I love landscapes and still life pieces of pretty fruits and veggies and even donuts.  But is there really anything any more beautiful than a crispy slice of pork belly, glistening with hot, bubbly fat?  The fork in the second photo is a real fork from my kitchen, and sorry, it doesn't come with the painting, but it sure makes it irresistibly lifelike.  

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The Pink House - SOLD

The Pink House ~SOLD Somebody liked this!

12 in. x 12 in., acrylic on cradled panel    

$200 unframed

It's a colorful, abandoned house on the edge of the salt marsh in Newburport, MA on the road going out to Plum Island, and a landmark to multitudes of people who live in or visit the area.  It hasn't been lived in for decades, and a little while back the local government wanted to pull it down.  The people of Newburyport responded immediately in protest and moved to save The Pink House.  It's been photographed, painted, drawn, cartooned and become a fixture, despite its deteriorating roof, siding and paint.  Here's my hot, hazy, high summer portrait of the familiar, glowing, retro manse basking in sun amid the long, overgrown grasses and shrubs, still tethered to an old utility pole high in the salty air.

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Big Sky at Chapman's Landing

Big Sky at Chapman's Landing

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

$240 unframed

A spring trip through Stratham, NH when the new grasses were green green green brought us by Chapman's Landing, a little salt marsh pull-off, boat launch and estuary area where the Squamscott River joins Great Bay at the New Hampshire seacoast.  This piece is painted on a cradled gessoed wood panel, which was great fun, since the paint moves across the surface with little drag compared to canvas.  I very much enjoyed the brushy marks I was able to make and decided I liked the look of leaving some marks a little raw with the warm brown underpainting peeking through. 

 

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Great Neck, Ipswich

 

Great Neck, Ipswich

8 in. x 10 in., acrylic on traditional-depth canvas    

$160 unframed 

When you're stomping around on the southern end of Plum Island in Massachusetts, you look across Plum Island Sound and you see a little community dotting a couple of hills and wonder what's over there.  Well, upon taking a drive up and over and down and around, you find out that it's coastal Ipswich that's over there, that's what.  Topping a little rise, the road on Great Neck rolls down the hill and overlooks the Atlantic Ocean here, with late afternoon clouds building in the moody, hazy summer sky.

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Shroom With a View

Shroom With a View

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

$100 unframed (no frame necessary) 

All I'm saying is that, one day, while leaving Tilton House of Pizza, there, on the ramp going down to the sidewalk, there lay this massive white mushroom slice. It was kind of Alice-In-Wonderland wonky and curvy and velvety, and, frankly, just plain HUGE.  I knew it hadn't launched itself off the surface of a to-go pizza, because it very obviously hadn't been touched by the ovens; no, this thick, supple slice was fresh produce. My best guess is that it very briefly graced the top of a salad, but, gravity being what it is, claimed it as its owner trundled down the ramp to their car.  I whipped out my phone, irresistibly drawn.  My husband asked me, "Are you taking a picture of that mushroom?"  Of course I was.  How could I not?  I believe the checked backdrop elevates this mushroom far above the non-slip-grip mat surface the wooden ramp on which the subject actually sat. Hail, big mushroom slice.

 

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Morning Ebb Tide at Wells

Morning Ebb Tide at Wells

14 in. x 18 in., acrylic on traditional-depth canvas    

$280 unframed 

I started with a hot magenta underpainting to warm up all the blues that would lie on top, and if you take a moment to notice, you can see it peeking through here and there and coming through layers deliberately left thin. This one was a fun study in drastic contrasts; darkest darks and lightest lights close together with just two or three shades in between. And dropping those white sparkly bits in?  Nothing like it. I'll admit, it was an utter joy to paint, almost as sweet as having been there on an anniversary trip.  This is just before 8 a.m. on a late May morning at Wells Beach, Maine.  A hot Dunkins coffee may have been involved in the enjoyment of this moment.

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Laid, Hatched, Grown, Flown (Quadriptych)

Laid, Hatched, Grown, Flown (Quadriptych)

24 in. x 27 in., 4 panels, acrylic on traditional-depth canvas    

$1200 unframed 

This is a quadriptych (two 12" x 16" panels and two 7" x 14" panels) that hand as an interlocking set of four pieces, telling the progressive narrative of the human feminine and specifically the maternal "nest" experience.  It was painted in response to a call for art for the NEST show at Twiggs Gallery in Boscawen, NH.  This theme intrigued me and immediately stimulated a creative flow of ideas in my mind.  See below for details on each panel.

Laid

12 in. x 16 in., Panel 1 of 4, acrylic on traditional-depth canvas

  

A trompe l'oeil of an incubating nest serves as the concept and the metaphor with its vaguely uterine form, the nail holding the suspending string is right where the navel would be.  When one is first told they are pregnant, there is an funny unreality to it.  One asks, "Is this real?" like they do when viewing a trompe l'oeil painting.  The wall is flesh-colored, and the concept of my own body being the nest is offered as the point of connection with the painting; for the rest of my life, anything outside of myself that I build for the ones I am growing within is an extension of the next inside my body.  I am the nest.  

Hatched

7 in. x 14 in., Panel 2 of 4, acrylic on traditional-depth canvas  

This is the raw and visceral portrait of surgical delivery, the narrative of breaking from inside to outside.  A necessary part of bringing forth life in the nest is brokenness as a result of growth.  The harsh reality of some ways that breaking is accomplished is displayed here, for all its uncomfortable awkwardness that not many see. Sacrifice for the sake of another deserves a moment's contemplation.

Grown

7 in. x 14 in., Panel 3 of 4, acrylic on traditional-depth canvas

The still life of real life, this is the concrete and incarnational; the one who came out is becoming, as illustrated by these mundane and common emblems of maturity.  There is feeling of being on the edge of maternal protectiveness and the tentative progression toward letting go, as symbolized by the youthful sneakers and the precious first car key; the little bird is becoming mobile and trying out his wings. I am both proud and terrified; I don't want him to fall too far, too hard.

Flown

12 in. x 16 in., Panel 4 of 4, acrylic on traditional-depth canvas 

The realized, the attained; the purpose of the nest is consummated and fulfilled.  Nests are made to be emptied, I remind myself; he has left me some loose change and dents in the carpet where his furniture was.  The interior has been vacated and the remaining empty space is a transcendent monument to both the achieved and the grieved, and full of pathos.  It has been a few years now since this moment, and the space is now art studio space... but I cried when I painted this.

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Rain Coming In

Rain Coming In

8 in. x 8 in., acrylic on traditional-depth canvas    

$145 unframed

A friend of mine is blessed to have this gorgeous meadow literally as her back yard.  Her ability to capture a moment like this, when the sun is beginning to set and the rain is moving in, is superior.  I hoped to capture the feeling of the long grass and the Queen Anne's Lace bobbing in the gust front winds and smell of the rain on the air as the clouds roll in over the crest of the hill at the top of the meadow.  If you are in Missouri, please see my friend, Shyanna Hurley Busch at her small organic farm in Carthage, where you can get non-gmo pastured chicken and forest-raised organic pork.  You can find Shyanna on Instagram also at @everylivingthingfarm  and follow them, too!

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Cicada Study

Cicada Study

5 in. x 7 in., acrylic on traditional-depth canvas    

$85 unframed (framing recommended)

This was a fun and interesting little study to paint.  Cicadas are magnificent little powerhouses of an insect.  Formidable but harmless, these are the creatures that create that familiar, sometimes deafening buzz during the hottest days of summer.  They have these little organs called timbels on each side of their abdomens and it's fascinating that something so tiny can make such an all-encompassing sound.  This iridescent bluish guy was clinging to the siding of my house by the back door on a hot July morning a couple of years ago.  I took a shot of him and decided to paint his portrait.

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Morning Glories

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

$100 (no frame needed)

It was summer and my neighbor a few houses down the street pulled over in her car as I was working outside in my flower beds.  Tragedy of tragedies, she had been weeding her extensive gardens and accidentally ripped out an unsuspecting Morning Glory vine.  She had plenty more, but hated to see this one unfortunate vine go to waste.  Could she interest me in said vine, since it would look so nice climbing up my lamp post?  When I heard that this particular Morning Glory had been part of a plant belonging to a past relative and that she'd kept it going all this time, well, of course I couldn't say no.  Off home she went, and shortly returned with the business end of the poor, withered thing wading in some water in a Solo cup.  I took it and unceremoniously stabbed it into the ground near the lamp post, and off my neighbor went, feeling better that she'd at least tried to atone for her involuntary Morning Glory slaughter.  I'm happy to say that it perked up, found the lamp post and the twine I'd offered it for grabbing, and by midsummer it had covered the entire post and trumpeted its presence with dozens of bright white blossoms.  And here they are, with golden heliopsis photobombing in the background.

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Dune Path, Plum Island - SOLD

Dune Path, Plum Island ~SOLD Somebody liked this!

8 in. x 10 in., acrylic on traditional-depth canvas    

$160 unframed

Painted from reference shots I took on our Newburyport, Massachusetts trip last summer.  We spend half a day on the beach down at the extreme southern point of Plum Island in the National Wildlife Refuge area.  The dunes rise high in some spots and the abundant salt-tolerant grasses line the area between the preserve and the shoreline.  It's so beautiful there.  In painting this piece, it was an interesting observation, when mixing colors, that the difference between hot sunshine and cool shade is often a lot more dramatic than we often think they are.  The dark violets of the shady side of the path up the dune are quite dark in comparison with the warm, bright sunlit sand right next to it, with very few gradual midtones.  Before laying down my first strokes, however, I warmed up the whole canvas with a thick coat of bright magenta pink, which you can see peeking through the areas where the heat of the sand and grasses meet the August sky.

 

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Indian Doll Pumpkin - SOLD

Indian Doll Pumpkin ~SOLD!  Somebody liked this!

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

$100 unframed (no frame necessary) 

A fellow gardener grew these great hybrid pumpkins with deep ribs, yellow flecks, and a pinkish-orange hue.  I saw these large, heavy pumpkins in her kitchen and got a few shots so I could paint them later.  Blending the pink and orange to get that unique hue just right was a ton of fun.

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Cold Day at Two Lights

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

$100 unframed (no frame necessary) 

If I were an old Maine ahtist, I'd prob'ly tell ya that it's no use in askin' 'bout the deep meanin' of this piece o' ahtwork.  Seems ta me that all you need ta know is right thayah in the title.  'Cause I was thayah.  An' let me tell ya... it was wintah.  An' it were damn cold.

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