The North Carolina Opera Ball...highest bid

This weekend the North Carolina Opera held their annual ball and fundraiser.  Having been asked to donate a portrait to help raise funds in this dreadful economy, I was happy to help. The lovely lady you see in this graphite drawing told the audience of the work I had done to create her mother's portrait last summer. (You may remember the oil I showed you in stages as we worked together before my sitter left to go home to Singapore.) It was a wonderful evening at the opera event - a very nice dinner, a lovely dance, with beautiful performances by NC opera hopefuls, and a very successful auction.  I am proud to share with you that Mrs. Romano's talk to the audience apparently encouraged some very generous patrons to bid for the portrait. The winner will have a head and shoulder portrait painted of the person of their choice. The bidding was very lively and very exciting. It claimed the highest income ( by more than a third) for any item that night! We all need to do what we can to help non-profits stay alive.  We must not lose our music, art, opera, ballet, drama to these uncertain times.  Read more about how the NC Opera has merged with other opera companies in NC. http://operanc.wordpress.com/

Red Cross Ball 2010 - Fundraiser

The Red Cross is one of my special activities.....  Now more that ever we need to be raising funds for their good works globally.  Happily, I am their signature artist here in the Triangle again this year. Their theme this season was "Carolina Nights."  This offers so many visual opportunities. Our state is wide and diverse in its topography, people, food, etc. So I decided to offer three designs - one for each of our regions. To the east, there are lovely white-sand beaches of the coastal region.  The extremely diverse central area of the Piedmont has the busiest of towns known for banking, universities, and technology,and are interspersed with rolling pastoral farmlands.  Then to the west, the wonderful Blue Ridge Mountains.  Tonight I will share the painting of the Coastal Scene. Now go to http://www.trianglearc.org/EVENTS/AnnualGala/tabid/896/language/en-US/Default.aspx

I'd like John Singer Sargent's opinion...

When I painted this sample oil portrait, I needed a solid, showy artwork for a faculty show in another state.  In my mind, the real key to this appealing painting is in its simplicity, elegance, and debonaire quality of the gentleman.  Happily, when people see this 40 x 30 oil in my studio, they often say how it reminds them of John Singer Sargent. Well, flattering as that may be (and whether they are educated enough in art to truly make such a comparison may be in question), I wonder what his opinion would be on this comparison? We too often hear something referred to as Sargent-esque.Wouldn't it be wonderful to have an opportunity to talk with a master painter just for a quick critique?  Let me know what you think. What makes a painting timeless and appealing...and maybe - Sargent - esque?

Working studio...

Welcome to my working studio.  Of the two rooms, this is the back room where the skylight gives me as much good light as I can hope for in an historic building.  My working wall is full of heightened chacoal sketches that I am using to work out sizes and compositions for paintings.  These three are 24 x 30 and 30 x 36. You can see tables with boxes that have just arrived, a couple of oil paintings in progress, and a large ink drawing on newsprint testing out the size requested by a client for their double portrait...the usual jumble of things that move in and out of the space as I work.

The cafe series...

A wonderful artist Johanna Spinks is off to France to do a five week residency. Love the idea. She will have a marvelous time.http://portraitpaintingbyjohannaspinks.blogspot.com/ to see her things. She will certainly have time to enjoy the scenery in the villages as well as the famous towns and their museums. In the meantime, I thought I might bring out my cafe series from Italy for you to see. This is a 7x5 oil called "Waiting." Just a little something fun.  There will be some more later this week.

A portrait warmup....

This young lady was the perfect subject for a quick warm up. You know that painters, like dancers, singers, pianists, etc., really tend to to warmups before beginning a long day's work. Many of us do tiny 5x7 paintings as a warmup or preliminary. But sometimes it feels good just to do as I did today and grab a 20 x 16 canvas that had a nice thick palette knife layer of texture onto which the painting could fly out of the brush... And this one really did. Let me know what you think...

Portraits and birthdays...

This is my husband's and daughter's birthday. When Doug was 40, I painted him in a three piece suit and tie and hung the sample portrait in the board room of our office. In recent years, he hit another milestone, and I suggested we do a more casual portrait. He said,"Yes, but this time paint the real me...the beach bum!" Well, although he grew up on the coast of Carolina, he hasn't lived there permanently in over 50 years! But one day, the light was right, the pose was accidental, and everything fell into place. This is a 40 x 30 oil portrait... I have as a sample in my studio now. Our children said it was "so Dad...in his story-telling pose." The Son of a Fisherman...

...so much for nearly daily posts...

All season I have been filling you in on travel and activities as they happened. This month there have been some family events with the older generation that needed a great deal of attention. Painting, business, communication has virtually stopped for the past two weeks. Things are on the upswing now. I will be leaving Florida to return home to Raleigh, my husband, my studio, my activities early this week. But right now I am watching the most beautiful sunset over Clearwater bay on the west coast of Florida and can finally feel the juices flowing to start working again. This is a 20 x 16 oil painting still life I did here some time ago. A view of one of my mother's tables with pearls, teacup, and Italian mirror. Elegant. Quiet.

Beach Beauties and Blogs...

A wonderful artist friend, Mike Rooney, the North Carolina coastal artist who encouraged me to start this blog, offered to share some notes about using blogs in the art business. I am the speaker at the Pastel Society of North Carolina program this coming Saturday ( a week from today) and plan to include his information in this presentation. He's a great guy...just got back from painting in Cape Cod. You need to check out his site at http://mikerooneystudios.blogspot.com/
And so in his honor I am going to run this 5 x 7 oil of a beach beauty digging mussels one more time...
$150.00/ $9shipping/ NCSTx

Ballerina backstage...

This theme was helped along by a lovely young ballerina who posed for me in my studio. We had the opportunity to try a number of things including this 7 x 5 oil painting of a Ballerina on a Box. I love the backstage work. So many wonderful shapes and colors to play with...

Reflecting...

Do we love these little 5x7 oils of ballerinas because of their pensive qualities? Or do we love their poses because they are consumate athletes and are as graceful at rest as they are on stage...

The Perfect Day...

Today was the perfect day. The weather was at its very best. The sky was incredibly beatiful. I managed to study this morning, write a little, paint without a deadline, cook a great meal, and enjoy it leisurely on the patio over looking the lake until the sun finally set. Perfect. There have been few days like this recently. I am grateful for it. It reminded me of another day in Italy in Panzano near Florence... It was much like the day in this 24 x 30 oil painting. Can you feel the sunlight?

Splendid First Friday...

The evening started off very slowly. So all the artists thought that everyone had gone to the beach for the holiday weekend. Not at all. We had a stunning crowd by 7:30 and it never let down all evening long. Shoulder to shoulder, it was a massive group, all ages ranges. Great interest in the artwork, great questions, great fun. Here is an 11 x 14 pastel on Ampersand board to toss into the mix...

Memorial Auditorium at Sunset

After doing a series of quick sketches in graphite, charcoal, or watercolor like the one on yesterday's post, I can more easily decide which composition I prefer for the final work. Yesterday's sketch was a 10 x 8 watercolor and ink. From the group of those sketches, I chose a more elongated design at sunset. This oil painting is on a 36 x 24 inch canvas. Because I wanted a fuller, textured effect with different attack of paint in the columns, the greenery, the glass wall, and the sunset sky, I worked only in palette knife.

Small Oil Portrait

This is a sweet, high key 20x16 oil portrait that is another of those timeless faces,crisp Peter Pan collar,and velvet suspendered knee shorts...sattleshoes, too! Cute, isn't he?

Lemon Twist

With Summer coming to a close, we are still having weather in the mid and high 90's in the Carolinas. The favorite liquid refreshment here is iced tea, a sweet concoction made with dark, but clearly, brewed tea and melting sugar into it until it is nearly as thick as syrup. Thin and clear as it dilutes over ice, it is one of those things you can love about the south. But lemonade still is my favorite. Having fresh squeezed a great deal of it this summer, there have been an abundance of lemons around the kitchen. So here is a new twist...a 10 x 8 oil still life called "Lemon Twist." Now let's go take a break and cool off...

Art and Antiques

It is Monday. Today Artspace is closed. This made a great day to paint, go through files, and do preliminary work for future paintings. This image was designed for the Red Cross Ball. The Antique Store Window was the ultimate still life and really fun to put together. It represented many different countries for their international theme that year. An oil on 16 x 20 canvas...

Still life - Nonni's Tea Cup and Pearls

Well, that was an adventure! We managed to travel 1,500 miles in 5 days. Raleigh to the opening at Cape Cod, visits with family on Cape Cod, Boston, and Reston, VA... and now back to work. It took me two days to get back into the swing of things. In going through the studio to do some rearranging, I found this 8 x 10 oil of my grandmother's tea cup and pearls I had done some time earlier. The photo of the full image is a little too glistening with light on the dark colors...the camera and I disagreed on the settings...but I think the close up of the pearls is interesting. Any comments?