Sunny Day

The Proud Sunflower

12 x 16

Encaustic on Panel

Finally this weekend we had a lovely bit of sun and warm temps around here. The volunteer sunflowers started popping up everywhere, thick as thieves. My favorite thing about the garden is watching those teensy little sprouts grow into proud and graceful giants.

This piece took me a few weeks to work out. There are no oil washes in this one, just layer after layer of fused encaustic paint, which gives it a cool, rustic look I think. I'm debating as to whether I want to give it a final oil stain to deepen it up even more, but I haven't decided if it needs it yet...  Some paintings are just done when they're done. Others require lots of sitting in my favorite chair with a steaming mug of peppermint tea (to get the little grey cells going) and staring staring staring... it can go on for days...

Feeling Circus like

White Flowers in a Spotted Vase

8 x 10 Encaustic on wood panel

Hmm... I had a hard time capturing the real colors in this one. I reeeely need to build that lightbox that has been on my big long studio to do list forever. The reds are slightly orangey-er in real life and it's quickly become one of my favorites to sit and stare at because it has this great big-top vibe.

Moo

Dutch Belt  

8x8 Encaustic on wood panel

Sold 

New Life

White Blossoms 8 x 8 Encaustic

This painting used to be this painting. 

Ocean Life

Red Coral  16 x 20 Acrylic on Canvas

Sold

My little one has been into watching dolphin documentaries lately so...  an ocean muse caught me.

Ladybug

10x 10 Encaustic


The Ladybug painting in progress

The Napa Valley

Just back from a refreshing, sun-warmed trip to see my family in the beautiful Napa Valley. These are a few of my favorite pictures.

"faster" she cried





Honeycomb

A Queen's perch

Quality Sister time

Refreshment

Paradigm, the original Red Mare

A first ride

Looking Back

Looking back

8 x 8 inches

So the last month or so I've been working on portraiture. An encaustic face is no easy endeavor I'm finding. There is so much movement during fusing that the features change considerably during the painting process. I'm looking at different fusing methods to see about getting more control, but I don't really want to get too crazy. I'm in love with the journey, and the imperfections that happen, so I'm going to keep on playing. 

In other news I had a piece accepted to the Whitefish Literary Review which comes out this summer. I'm pretty excited about it because I've heard it will include a short story by one of my favorite authors. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say who so I'll keep you guessing about it for a while, but I'll most likely put up a post about it in June. Happy Spring everyone!

New R & F encaustic paints

Warm colors came in the mail today :)

Blue Fan Flower

Blue Fan Flowers 

8 x 8 Encaustic

I've been enjoying this sunny little painting so much I just had to re-post it now that I've fixed the blog to allow for bigger pictures. It's been a rough week for working in the studio. My little one has had a horrid flu and needed constant care and lots of mama comfort. I'm itching to get back into it...  right now my head is full of ideas for paintings I want to submit to the next Whitefish Review, a very cool local literary journal.