Lunch at La Valencia
Original Sold
June 2009 I showed my work at the La Jolla Festival of the Arts for the first time. My first long roadtrip, I loaded Joe’s “Mighty Toyota” with the art and the booth equipment and headed south. It was a challenging weekend it RAINED!
The festival organizers with the Torrey Pines Kiwanis seemed to like my work, because a couple months later they asked me to be one of three artists to present ideas for the next year’s poster art. Holy cow! Was I excited! This meant another trip down to La Jolla to hunt for painting subject ideas.
My inspiration was to have lunch on the balcony of the La Valencia Hotel, overlooking the ocean. I had to come up with something that said “La Jolla” within the realm of what I paint – which is intimacy in some form.
I flew down for the day and had lunch with Ronn Rohe, the festival chairman and Chris Palmquist, a wonderful woman who lived in La Jolla at the time. She and I met at my first year at the Sausalito Art Festival. It was a perfect day; we had lobster salad and the staff graciously saw to it that all my crazy photo shoot requests were attended to.
Don Ludwig, the 2010 Chairman and his committee helped me improve upon the composition, and after a few rounds of changes – including replacing the actual wine bottle label with my brother Matt’s pinot noir label – I got painting. I got most of it done while Joe and I were on Kauai. I finished it the day before the earthquake an Chile spawned a tsunami that was headed for the Hawaiian Islands. What a trip!
This painting put me through quite a bit – starting with flying down there for the day to get the photo, to all the Photoshop revisions, I drew it three times and painted it nearly twice. I started over after having done two thirds of it!
The original painting was auctioned off as a benefit for the festival’s charity benefactor, so no prints were made – only posters. My hope is that the poster makes people think of being on vacation, taking the time to appreciate the abundant goodness that life can offer.
February 2010 – 22″x30″ – Watercolor on paper
Late Summer Zin
Original Sold
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10″x7.5″ – $75
Late in the summer of 2009 I visited Mike’s yard to see what his zinfandel grapes were like when they were nearly ripe. BJ and I climbed all over his hill in the evening light, having to climb under the netting draped over them – more sugar in the grapes and the birds want them. The light was just so lovely on this one, coming through in bright shocks on the left.
I was working on this when BJ died. In a strange way, painting this was harder than painting BJ. In resuming painting it, I am moving on with life. I finished it on vacation in Tahoe, where BJ was a big part of our time here – his incredible dock jumping and our morning hikes on the mountain trails. Another layer of acceptance. This is my third painting of grapes. I love the leaves in this one – each leaf is quite different from the other and they come in from the corners framing the cluster of fruit – which is softly cast with the green light on the darker side. New life shines in the shadow.
July 2010 – 30″x22″ – Watercolor on paper
August Bounty
Original Sold
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My husband, Joe came up with this idea. It was mid-August, 2008 and I had just come back from the farmer’s market with some ripe figs and rich, red grapes. They were sitting on the kitchen counter next to some Bartlett pears from my parents’ tree. He said matter of factly, “you should put that fruit in that plate and paint it” – pointing to the piece of Italian pottery hanging on the wall, that he’d bought as my birthday gift on our first trip to Italy.
The large decorative plate was from a shop owned by a young woman faence artist in the small Tuscan town of Montaione. I fell in love with it. We’d already bought “the” piece of pottery we’d planned to buy on the trip, yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I asked if it could be my birthday present – he said yes.
It ended up arriving from Italy ON my birthday. Later he told me that one of the reasons I’m in his life is that I respond to things like that. He’d barely noticed it on the wall in the shop with all the other pottery. Because of how I did, now he gets to enjoy it in our home.
Making the painting was a trial. The ivy was really dark in the original photo and hard to make out. Without a strong drawing, I was painting half-blind. Not being very good at making things up, I was making a mess of the background. More than half way across and I gave up on it.
I put the whole piece of paper in the kitchen sink and washed off the paint as best I could. So empowering! I took a new photo under better light, photoshopped the new ivy background in to the original, dried and flattened the paper, redrew the ivy and began again. Better. Much better. The tablecloth was challenging too – without a decent drawing I had to again make it up.
With all the surroundings done, the fun started. Painting the plate was a delight. I kept imagining the moment when the ceramic artist had originally painted on the glazes, appreciating her as I re-traced her brush strokes.
This painting speaks to me of generosity – that of the earth, of another artist half a world away and of my wonderful husband.
August 2009 – 16″x 30″ – Watercolor on paper
Summer Zinfandel
Original sold
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There’s nothing like a deadline to put a fire under my butt to get painting. I really wanted to have something to submit to the California State Fair Art of Wine exhibit the summer of 2011. I had a painting accepted in that category the previous three years in a row and I wanted to try again, but I didn’t have any originals that hadn’t yet been submitted to this exhibition.
I had been deliberating for a while about whether or not to paint this image. I loved some aspects of it – the fun colors of the grapes, the detail in the leaves and especially the grapes that are peeking from behind and above the upper left leaf. I couldn’t make that up. Something about the composition seemed busy and that’s what had me wondering if it I really wanted to spend the time on this one. I’ve learned from past images and paintings that sometimes a just-ok photo can be a wonderful painting. Besides, I didn’t have any better candidates. In I dove.
This is the second of two paintings I finished in April 2011, after spending five months and only finished one painting. It felt good to be able to sit down and focus on my work.
The leaves on the left side were pretty scary. My mind told me I had no idea how to paint them. I just sat down and gave it a go. The first time I stood back from it after painting a section, I was blown away at how the pillowy texture of the lower veined leaf came to life. It’s so odd how up close, it’s messy and just a bunch of brush strokes, yet from a distance it comes alive. The mystery of art shows up again.
April 2011 – 30″x22″ – Watercolor on paper
