These abstracts are actually details from a pastel painting I'm working on this week. See the finished painting, "Dream a Little Dream" on my Current Work blog.

My grandsons discovered this candy in a studio drawer. They gave it to me last Halloween from their sugar collection. After one bite, I decided to paint it instead of eat it.

This little two-person Valentine's Day cake is my first oil painting - created last night before leaving the studio for the day. It was fast and fun. But, it is still wet this morning (and will be for a while). I don't know about that...

Today's painting is another from the Leavenworth October series of reference photos. Here are a couple detail shots of trees. See the finished painting, "Leavenworth October Series" on my Current Work blog.

Into the studio with a steaming mocha, I set it aside to cool and began to unframed an old painting to reuse the frame. Lifting the mat, I was surprised to see the border of red paper from my pastel-on-colored-paper period. When I turned the painting upside down, I didn’t have an aha! moment as with a painting last month but since the mocha was still too hot to drink, I decided to play with the painting for a while.



I rubbed out the pastel and began applying the colors left from my last painting, still on my easel waiting to be cleaned. The large area of white in the middle suggested the reflection of a sky in water. A half hour later I have a freeing, spontaneous experiment and another cup of mocha gone cold.


This has been a good week of painting. As the weather warms for yard work and other commitments come up on the calendar, I may not have another week like this for a while. But, I will keep in mind a comment by author John Grisham about being a writer. Something about if you don’t do a page a day, forget about being a writer and do something else. This week, I’ve applied that advice to being an artist and it was good.

"Turning Point"

Pastel Journal Creative Spark Runner Up

http://pastelblog.artistsnetwork.com

New and Improved

Yay! My website has been updated. Here's a shot of the Homepage

Art is arranged in archives by year

Please visit by selecting the link to the left, "Barbara's Website"

"Heart Song"

11 x 15 inches

pastel on sanded paper

"One More Time"

11 x 15 inches

pastel on sanded paper

Inside Out

After a weekend crash course learning QuickBooks, I’m determined to think about, read about and maybe even MAKE art today. An article about abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell is on the top of my reading pile. It interests me to read that though she lived in France amid the lush landscapes painted by Monet, she always worked in her studio rather than en plein air or from sketches made on site. Here’s a quote from an article by Margaret Mathews-Berenson with Jimmy Wright published in the February issue of The Pastel Journal:

“Working from memory empowered her to paint or draw more directly – from the inside out. Throughout her life, Mitchell retained vivid recall, enabling her to record not simply a place but an entire experience and her emotional response to it. Every stroke of color represented in Mitchell’s expressive gestures is an abstraction created from the real world and each gesture is laden with the memory and poetry of her inner landscape.”

Painting from the inside out. Painting one’s inner landscape.
I like that.

Gray Road Trip

Did I say I was heading south to look for some color? I didn’t get very far because I-5 south-bound was closed due to snow.




This area was amazing. The trees are broken off like match-sticks...and these were BIG trees. Looks like a war zone.


One thousand road-miles later, we were very glad to be home.