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