Showing posts sorted by relevance for query they have come to bring us spring. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query they have come to bring us spring. Sort by date Show all posts

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

They Have Come to Bring Us Spring

They Have Come to Bring Us Spring
oil on 30 x 24 inch canvas
available here
Hello friends, and Happy New Year!  It has been a while!  A busy life keeps me away from blogging these days.   However, we can connect on Facebook and Instagram if you are there too.  Sometimes I miss the lazy days of blogging and reading blogs, but then life was going at a different pace then.

This painting began last fall and was finished a couple of weeks ago.  Long ago my mother in-law and father in-law happily dropped off this large canvas they had found at a garage sale.  It had a painting of a teddy bear on it with a blue blue background.  They asked if I could use it for my art, and I said of course!  

When finally getting around to painting on it, all I knew was I wanted to paint multiple figures wearing green dresses.  So it began with one figure in the middle-ish area and went forward from there.  There were six women originally, but it looked unbalanced.  Adding the seventh figure on the far right seemed to correct it.

The wooded scene evolved from there becoming obvious to me that the dresses represented the green that was to come on the trees.  
One serendipitous quality of this piece is that the figures and trees sort of glow in a dark room.

Here are some close-ups.  You can see the lines of texture from the underpainting.




Until next time!
♥ Lisa

PS:  I have created a site for The Finding Faith series.  The tab at the top of my blog will link you there.  This will be where you can view all the paintings, photographs and videos in the entire series.  

Tuesday, January 22, 2019

A Lot of Snow and What I am Working On


I am sitting here on a cold day recovering from some oral surgery I put off way too long.  I am full of pain medications, so I hope whatever I write here makes good sense.

We have had so much snow here in Colorado and the locals tell me it is just getting started.  Most of it occurs in February and March.  I love snow, but the late ones take some getting used to for me because in Kansas it starts to feel like spring in those months.  The birds are starting to show up, the days are longer and warmer and the air smells like spring.  Not that Kansas never gets snow in those months, but the usual is what I just said.  I am pretty sure I will adjust just fine.  It is lovely here.

I am working on a painting containing geese and another surprise in the composition.  The surprise is the fun part and I don't want to give it away.  It's taken a long time because I have been layering the oil paints and glazing quite a bit, so it all needs to dry between the layers otherwise it becomes a muddy mess.

In the meantime, I've been sketching a lot with acrylic paint in my hardback sketchbooks.  The above was done after a neighborhood walk.  The one below was done while cooking dinner.  I love olives and munch on a few while I cook...along with a glass of wine-yum!  The olives on the left were painted with care and the ones on the right were blobbed on with my fingertip.  I think I like the one on the right best.  Friends on my Instagram said the same thing.


I have enjoyed sketching these so much, I decided to try to do this more regularly.  It feels more free to paint in a sketchbook where you know it will not hang in a show or sell online.  


The above photo was taken last year and I just came across it.  The painting is one I did called They Have Come to Bring Us Spring and it's going to be shown at the Art on the Mesa show at Gold Hills Mesa Community Center in Colorado Springs.  The opening reception is February 7,  5-7 pm and the show will be up through May 1st.  This will be my first Colorado show so I am very excited to be participating with two wonderful artists:  Lelia Davis and Phyllis Davis.  I met Phyllis at Julie Ford Oliver's workshop years ago and it was Julie who helped reconnect me to Phyllis so that I could be a part of this.  I am so grateful!  I will share photos of the show after it happens.


This is a view from our backyard deck.  Snow snow snow!


But isn't it beauitful when the sun is shining?  This is a scene on a neighborhood path I take during my daily walks.  Sometimes I just can't believe what I am seeing.  The mountains have such a presence.  So quiet, yet so rugged and wild at the same time.  I am enjoying leaving footprints everywhere I go here. :)


I hope you are having a good month of January.  I am going to close for now and take a nap!  

Until next time!
♥ Lisa

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

On a Lazy Day in Matfield Green: The Second Finding Faith Project Complete

After the incredible response that our first Finding Faith project received, I was really eager to get to work on the second, and we nearly pulled it off in record time. The video and photo shoot went perfectly.  So perfect in fact, that it seemed the "art gods" were with us once again...a funny saying that Faith and I have started to say whenever things are going very well. But then life happened...not in a bad way, but in a busy way...and the painting came forth like a slug.  I never thought I would get it done and was tempted so many times to just "call it good enough", but the perfectionist in me won't allow such an ending and I HAD to keep going until it was right.  Even though I am not striving to be a realistic painter on this project, it is important to me to capture certain details and moods and emotions in the painting that are present in the short videos that we create as well as the photographs.  For those of you that paint, you KNOW this does not usually come easily.  We have to work for it.

A little bit about our setting...it was shot in a very teeny tiny town called Matfield Green, which is a little over an hour away from Wichita.  This little place is nestled in the beautiful Flint Hills of Kansas and its population is 50.  That's right...50.  I did not forget any zeros!  It would be easy to miss it, except for the hilarious signs they have along Highway 177 reading "Matifield Green Next 3 Exits".   But they are not exits, they are just streets.  The 50 people in Matfield Green have a great sense of humor.  :)

We filmed at a place called Pioneer Bluffs which is a gorgeous public property with many uses.  It consists of lots of tall trees, a creek, an old cabin from 1859, which you will see in the project, and many other interesting buildings and barns.  We were lucky on the day of the shoot because there was not a soul there.  It was early Spring and Pioneer Bluffs was operating  on their Winter schedule, which means it was basically closed (thank you, art gods).  

Modeling for this project are my beautiful niece Faith and her handsome fiancĂ© Sam.  They did such a fantastic job at the shoot.  It is not always easy because there is a little bit of acting necessary for this, and they have to put up with me constantly saying things like "turn your head this way...walk that way...no, other way...look at me, now look away", etc.  Their patience was extraordinary the entire time.  They moved with grace and their expressions were brilliant as you will see in the video and photos.  I could not have asked for an easier pair to work with!  Thank you again Faith and Sam!

So here we go with a simple story told in film, photos and painting...



******************

On a Lazy Day in Matfield Green







On a Lazy Day in Matfield Green
oil on canvas
24 x 30 inch

***********************************

Thank you all so much for your incredible enthusiasm for our project!  It has been a joy to create these and the fact that they bring joy to others encourages me to do more.  Thank you again!

♥ Lisa

Sunday, February 10, 2019

Art on the Mesa Art Show

My wall at the Gold Hills Mesa Community Center

The Art on the Mesa Art Exhibit at the Gold Hills Mesa Community Center in Colorado Springs opened on Thursday February 7 and it was a great night.  A lot of people braved the cold and dark to come out and see the show.  I was so happy to be feeling up to it as I had oral surgery that turned out to be more extensive than I thought and it had been a rough couple of weeks.  This is my first time showing publicly in Colorado since moving here last April.



I took very few photos during the evening because I was so busy visiting, but I did get some of the beautiful venue the day we hung the show which are shown below.   It was a joint show with artists Phyllis Davis and Lelia Davis (mother and daughter in-law), and I have really loved getting to know them a little more.  The show was curated by artist Carol Naylor who teaches watercolor batik.  Phyllis, Lelia and I plan to take her class which we hear is an absolute blast.


Lelia Davis' work, hanging in progress

Phylis Davis

The views at the community center are spectacular.






I loved the comments I received during the evening.  Words like "unique", "primitive", and "story telling" were said repetitively.  For any painter, it is always encouraging when people respond to your work and take the time to study the paintings.  At this showing, people seem to like my interior paintings the best, which I am standing in front of.  (You can see them in the first photo of this post).  There were also a several that questioned the meaning behind They Have Come to Bring Us Spring and I was pleased to know that most had guessed it correctly. 

The show will be hanging until May 1, so if you find yourself in Colorado Springs you can check it out.  It is free and open to the public.

 Gold Hills Mesa Community Center
142 S. Raven Mine Road

Until next time!
♥ Lisa

Thursday, May 6, 2021

Painting and Poetry


They Have Come To Bring Us Spring is an oil painting I did some time ago.  It recently went off to a new home, so I decided to take a short video of it.  It has always been a favorite.  And then a poem came out.  And then this video.