Blue Tree Blog

More new art!

I've added some new art to the store. One of my new favorites is "Memory Cycles"

In this piece, a woman is pondering the cycles of her life. The background is collaged with paper (maps, old letters, old photographs of men on bicycles) and then I painted over it, painting the figure and the bicycle in her dress. I'm offering the original framed or unframed and two different sizes of prints here.

I also have prints and originals available for "A Timely Message" above and "One Rabbit Night" below.

"Firefly Hill" below is only available as an original. It's on gallery wrapped wrapped canvas and I've painted the sides, so it's ready to hang.

Stay tuned for more new art, as I will be sharing the new "Subway Stories" pieces I've created for the "Tiny Enormous Show III" at Nahcotta, which will run from February 8 - March 9, 2008 and they will be having an opening on Friday, February 8th from 5 - 8 p.m. The last "Tiny Enormous Show" at Nahcotta was truly awesome, so if you're in the area, do check it out!

New Art Up and a Sale!

I've recently added some new art that I'm excited to share. Here are a couple of them. First, is Freya's Cloak which I created awhile back. The goddess Freya had been popping every where in things I read and in my art. When going through a difficult time, Pilar suggested imagining Freya's cloak protecting me. I liked that image and started doing more reading about this goddess. It was said that Freya had a cloak made of falcon feathers that allowed her to fly in the shape of a falcon. She is associated with fertility, the moon, water, wealth, creativity, the rune Fehu, and sexuality. Freya had two sacred gray tabby cats (a girl after my own heart!). Later those same cats were seen to be related to witches (the priestesses of pagan religions).  Cats were thought to be shape shifters and guards of the gate to the underworld, where Freya was known to go. I really love this piece and I hope you do too! It's now available as a small print on 8.5"x11" velvet fine art paper and the original is also available, which is on a 10"x10" panel with painted sides that can be hung as is or framed. You can read more about the piece and purchase prints or the original here.

Other new pieces include an 8"x10" encaustic work (hot wax painted on panel), called "Women of the Forest," that continues the theme of my Memory Tree pieces in exploring family history, memory and Alzheimer's Disease.

I also run a monthly sale on a piece of art, so if there's a piece you'd love to see on sale in the future, let me know! This month, the sale is on "Growth" which is 6.5"x12" on paper and is available unframed or framed. It's also available as a large print (13"x19" framed or unframed) or a small print (8.5"x11" unframed.) All versions are 10% off for the month of December!

Last month's winner of a free print was Sarah in Oregon. Congrats Sarah! You can be in the running for a free print every month by signing up for my monthly newsletter. You can sign up in the lower left corner of my website. I hope you are all staying warm and as stress-free as possible this holiday season. We've got some snow on the ground here in New England. And I'm drinking more tea and cocoa than usual. :-)

September Art News

I've got a new piece in my "Memory Tree" series for sale in the store. In this series I'm exploring Alzheimer's disease and how it relates to my family. You can read more about it here.

The piece above, "Memory Tree Lace I" is 8"x8" with encaustic and oil on panel for $200.

There's also a new size of prints available, 8.5"x11" prints on velvet fine art paper for $25. I'll slowly be adding this option to the website, but feel free to email me if there's a particular piece you'd like in this size. I've got one piece up at the new size and it also happens to be on sale! For the months of September and October you can get a Lotus Heart print (8.5"x11") for 10% off!

I'm thrilled to say that the "Subway Series" I did for the Nahcotta show has sold out! I will be making more of these pieces, so if there's one you like, let me know and I can create something similar for you.

My brother's getting married this weekend and my wedding is a little more than 3 weeks away. Wedding wildness. A bit of synchronicity in that this week's Illustration Friday is "wedding." If I can fit it in, I think I'll have to do something for that one!

Oh! And one last thing. Congratulations to Jena of Minnesota for being the winner of my free print drawing this month! If you'd like to be in the running for a free 8.5"x11" print in future months, then sign up for my newsletter in the lower left corner of the website.

Hope your week is a wonderful one!

News and Views

After meeting with a customer last night, I perused the magazines at Barnes and Noble. Oh, how I love a book store! The cover of the latest Art New England magazine caught my eye as it was smaller and glossier than usual. Turns out the latest issue is their first in a new format, much sleeker and more magazine like than their previous version and it's in full color! Gorgeous! So, I brought it home and was treated to a great article about Boston artist, Robert Freeman and some interesting show reviews that caught my attention, including a review of Rose Umerlik's show at Nahcotta, where I'll have some art next month. I'm working on a special series for that show and I'm very excited about how it's coming along.

The magazine also reminded me that the Joseph Cornell show at the Peabody Essex Museum is nearly over and I haven't seen it yet! I must get there before it closes. The work the PEM did on their website for the exhibition is pretty cool too, so do check it out if you have a chance. Cornell was a great collage artist who did these fascinating shadow boxes along with loads of other gorgeous mixed media pieces.

I've got a new print up in the store! It's a print of the piece, Bring Love and for the month of August it's on sale (framed or unframed) for 10% off. Also, the winner of the first free print drawing for newsletter members, was Tammy from Maine. Congrats, Tammy! She received a free 8.5" x11" print of "The Lighthouse." I will be choosing the winner for this months drawing later today, so if you'd like to be in the running, be sure to sign up for the newsletter which will also keep you current on sales and other happenings.

In other news, my friend Maria has just launched the freshly re-designed web-store for her business, Believe Street. She sells the most gorgeous handcrafted jewelry and gift items. I own her "Be Happy" necklace and matching earrings and they are stunning in person. I wore them last night for a bit of luck and strength/courage (red makes me think strength) and for serenity (the buddha helped me there) and it totally worked! :-) So, thank you, Maria! I also own one of her father's hand-carved leaf pendants and it is the coolest piece, smooth to the touch and impeccably made. I get many, many compliments on it.

I've got lots more art to be uploaded to the website this week, so keep checking in! In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderfully creative weekend.

Stories and Art

The "Full Moon" piece below is now up in the store! I've been busy creating, creating, creating. I've got more art to share soon, I'm working on a line of greeting cards, and I'm working on designing a new business card. If you have suggestions for cards that you'd like to see, feel free to email me or leave a comment on this post! Busy, busy, busy!

When I'm working away on art or on the website, I like to have some noise in the background. I have a great music collection (everything from Yo-Yo Ma to Amy Winehouse), but I'm so thrilled with the great (and free!!!) podcasts out there. I think I really enjoy the stories. I like to tell stories in my art and I love to hear a good story. My fiance loves sports. He loves to read about them and watch them. I've found that I only get interested in watching if I know something about the players. I like to hear about their history, their struggles, their personalities. And then I can get into a game. Here are some of the podcasts I'm listening to:

• new find: Craft Sanity, interviews with artists, crafters, etc...
• Hip Tranquil Chick: about yoga and creativity
• Craftcast: More interviews with crafting artists
• Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me: NPR's fabulously funny current events show
• This American Life: Another NPR show with great stories

You can subscribe to these podcasts and listen to then on your computer through iTunes. To subscribe, simply go to iTunes, go to the podcast section and search for these podcasts or just google them. Enjoy and try to stay cool in this summer heat!

Moon Art

Yesterday was the full moon and I have this and a soon to be finished painting featuring the moon (and a full one at that), that I started last night without realizing that it was a full moon. Funny how that happens. I'm a big fan of the moon. My astrological sign is cancer, but beyond that I'm just drawn to it. I love its rhythms and its beauty. The painting above is called "Moon Under Water" and can be purchased here. Sketching this image inspired the following poem:

I dreamt last night
that the moon was under water,
not the whole of it,
just half,
as if she was too hot for this summer night
and decided to take a dip.
Finding it bracingly cold
and frighteningly vast in its darkness,
she kept her face dry and safe
above the water line.
But just the legs of the moon
were enough to give the ocean
an ethereal glow
that startled the fish from their slumber
which caused the waves to ripple and dance.
And when the stars moved in
for a better view
the surface lit up like a discoteque
and the air hummed
like a refridgerator late at night.
On a distant shore the waves lapped, lapped
on the rocks
marking the thumping heartbeat
of the skinny dipping moon,
shivering and alive.

Poems often inspire art for me. Something in the way they're written is so visual that I find it inspires rich imagery in my mind as I read it. At one point, I was trading inspiration with my best friend as we wrote poems that inspired art or other poems back and forth. It was great fun. Looking for good poems to inspire you? I love the work of Mary Oliver. I could just gush over her poems, they're luscious. And then going way back, there is the poetry of Rumi, gorgeous and spirtual poems. Sometimes, I just like to use the wondrous Google (what did we do before Google?) to search for random words next to the word "poem" and see what comes up. Or you could check out Poetry Thursday, a great website full of poem prompts, articles about poetry, and shared poems.

The above piece came together unexpectedly. Pieces of the inspiration came from a long flight in which I couldn't sleep (I can never seem to fall asleep on a plane.) Other pieces came completely intuitively, such as using cut paper for the figure, her clothing and hair, whereas I usually paint the figure over a collage. The painting begain solely because I had accidentally squirted out way too much black paint for another painting I was working on. Since I can't squeeze the paint back into the tube, I put it to use by covering another wooden board with the paint and once it dried, I was inspired to get working on it right away. I can't really explain where this woman is from quite yet, but I have an idea which may lead to a large piece, so I'll explain then. In the meantime, the above art is called "Fly Away" and can be purchased here. Hope your evening is full of inspiration! Now, go howl at the moon.

Color for a Rainy Day

It's very gray here in New England today. People were bustling around with umbrellas, trying to get under awnings and ducking in and out of stores when I was in town. I don't mind the rain so much, but I do miss the sunshine. All the gray seems to bring my energy down to a snail's pace and active things take an extra effort. Rainy days are fabulous for curling up with a good book, napping, watching good movies, and snuggling up your favorite animal. But if that isn't an option, there are many ways to bring some light into the day. Making art is one way. I love to surround myself with supplies and have an art picnic on the floor, just creating spontaneously with no end in mind.

My walls are covered in art, so at the moment adding some bright color wouldn't work for me. But if I had a larger space to work with, I imagine it would be quite fun to add some drama to the walls. Benjamin Moore has a great website with lots of great information about color. You can play with changing the walls, trim, and accents of different rooms in all sorts of wild colors and also get some great advice about how to choose the colors for your rooms.

Another great way to play with color combinations, whether it be for a piece of art or home decoration, is to look at the combos you see in nature. If it looks good in nature, it's going to look good elsewhere. I get a lot of inspiration this way. In the Dark Tree painting above, I was inspired by the look of dark wet trees after a rain storm against the bright orange fall leaves.

As you see great color combos in nature, in magazines, in art, it's helpful to have a place to keep them all. You might want to start an inspiration folder or book. I have a little of both, a folder to catch things and then a sketchbook to write down ideas and also to paste in images as I seem them. Collecting beautiful things that inspire you is a wonderful thing no matter whether you use them or not.  Play with mixing watercolors or oil pastels as you fill up your inspiration book. Color mixing can lead to endless color combos.

Looking for more colorful inspiration? Check out Pantone's website. Pantone has created a great color matching system (each color gets a number) that helps match colors across systems (computer to print for example) in the graphic design world and elsewhere. And for some color related fun, check out their Colorstrology page which links a color to each day, which describes the characteristics of people born that day. Mine was pretty accurate! :-) Interested in the psychology of color? Here's some info on that. And here's another place to play with paint color choices in different imaginary rooms, using True Value Paint.   

The Seven Sisters

With all this talk about sevens after the weekend's 7/7/07 date and all the subsequent weddings, a little meandering brought me to the myth of the Seven Sisters, a Greek myth and a constellation (the Pleiades). I was fascinated by the story in which seven beautiful sisters were pursued by the God, Orion and Zeus helped them escape by turning them into doves. There are many versions of the myth and interestingly enough, there is are similar stories in Native American legends. In the Kiowa tribe seven maidens were transported in to the sky by the Great Spirit to save them from giant bears. The evening after reading about this myth, I drew a sketch that later became this painting, "Dreaming of the Seven Sisters."

In this close-up, you can see a woman in the sleeping figures hair, in the process of becoming one of the seven doves.

The piece is 8"x8" on cradled wood. with paper collage, acrylic paint, and ink. It can be framed or hung as is; the sides are painted white as can seen below.

You can purchase this piece for $150 here.

7's, Synchronicity, and Pink Lotus Flowers

Where do you get your inspiration from? I love little coincidences and synchronicities and these are often a source of great inspiration. In the last six months I've been noticing lotus flowers everywhere. And for years, I've been noticing the numbers 7 and 17 in some combination. Over the weekend of 7/7/07 I began working on a painting involving a lotus flower. I let the image come intuitively and lotus flowers came in at her throat and heart, points in the chakra system. There happen to be 7 chakras going up the body, each with there own corresponding colors and themes. The heart chakra is green, so I used that as the color of her shirt and I included 7 circles to the right to symbolize the seven chakras which are described as wheels of energy. 7 was known as a mystical number in many cultures and religions. I think it's fascinating to read about.

Funny, I was looking for a link to share with more info about the chakras and I came one I've never seen before which is coincidentally called "the pink lotus." Hehe, I love synchronicity! And in the drawings at the top of the page there is a sort of flower at the throat. Very cool.

I like to notice repeating imagery that keeps coming up and then explore it further in my art and with a little research. Seeing a certain number, or animal, or image again and again doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I like to think of them as little winks from the Universe. It's almost like a game. And taken as fun, it can be an enjoyable thing to explore.

The "Lotus Heart" painting above is 8"x8" on cradled wood board in mixed media. It is ready to be framed or hung on the wall as is. The sides are painted white, so it doesn't need a frame. You can read more about this painting and purchase it for $150 here.

Series

A series seems to be forming with a recurring figure and some of the same symbols across many paintings. It wasn't an intentional series really, it just flowed out. Here's the latest in that series, "Ladders" which is 8"x8" on cradled wood. More info about the piece and how to purchase can be found here. (update: the original has sold, but prints will be available soon!)
 

The ladders appeared somewhat spontaneously and they just fit. The best art seems to come when I can get out of my own way and let the imagery flow. In other words, I can't think to much about it.

I'm really loving working on these wooden squares and plan to continue. They'd be great to work on with encaustic too (painting with wax), but I'm not set up for that yet. Maybe later in the year. Right now, textures and transfers are where I'm exploring, so I'll follow that for now.

Other inspirations include, the patterns I'm seeing in beautiful fabrics, such as those by Amy Butler, spirals (an ongoing love), the magical stories of the Harry Potter series, fun magazines like Cloth, Paper, Scissors from the nearby town of Stow, the full moon, and seeing all the wonderful ways people decorate their homes through visiting various open houses.

p.s. You can sign up for my newsletter on the lower left corner of my website and be entered to win a free print every month!