'Gilded Cage'

"Gilded Cage"
9X12
Oil on Raymar Linen Panel
Available

Click on picture to enlarge the view.

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As you walk the paths at Stowe Botanical Gardens you will come across a Victorian birdcage the likes of which you have never seen......or, at least like I have never seen. I could never cage a bird. In fact, if I could fly I would be gliding over the tree tops right now. But the irony is that I think bird cages are pretty...no doubt because I've never been cooped up in one. This one is amazing. It is the biggest one I've ever seen and it is a new version of a Victorian style. If you look closely at my painting you will see a red and yellow parrot that was sitting on a perch in the middle section. As I painted this I was wondering how the birds in it are managing the unbearable heat we've been having this entire month. I'm hoping they took the birds to an air conditioned location and left the birdcage empty for the summer months.

One of the challenges of painting this was indicating the screens. I hope I accomplished that. I worked on this painting off and on all week due to the other obligations of taking "the ancient one" to Dr.'s appts. and making meals for him as well as our household. I feel like I should apologize for the drop off in my posts the past few months, but it just can't be helped since I have taken on some family duties I didn't have prior to this. What is that movie quote? "I'm dancing as fast as I can."

'Walkway at Stowe Botanical Gardens'

"Walkway at Stowe Botanical Gardens" (Spring 08)
10X14
Oil on Gessoed Board
Available

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Right about now I either have great sympathy for George Seurat or I would like to strangle him. Whenever I do this type of landscape that involves lots of different plants and petals and leaves, all I can think of is how he had to have gone completely mad doing this in dots.....dots....and more dots....ugh!! He must have been the forerunner of the computer pixels ...more dots. So while I am painting this kind of scene I am trying to not be George Seurat. As hard as I try to simplify the thing, it still requires a lot of different strokes, colors, little bitty hits with the brush to reflect the light on those beautiful plants.
Anyway, here is what I saw at Stowe Botanical Gardens a while back on a really splendid spring day!!

Stowe Botanical Garden Irises

"Iris Times Two"
9X12
Oil on Raymar Linen Panel
Available

Click to enlarge the view.

This morning I worked only on the flowers.....so much variation going on here. Shapes and many different blues, violets, purples, deep crimson, all to be offset by the many greens of the foliage surrounding the blossoms....Finished this afternoon. Remember that everyone's computer monitor is color calibrated differently. The rich purples and blues were a difficult combination for photographing this time. I took the picture without any incandescent light, only natural light in my studio to get the best possible representation. The painting looks a bit more purple in real life than the blog is showing me.
There were a lot of sun strikes, transparencies, and shadows happening in this so it was truly difficult to capture all of the nuances. Hopefully I managed to do it without too much confusion.