Art on Oliver Street

'From the Farm Market' has been selected for reproduction as a large scale artwork. It will be displayed in the public art program "Art on Oliver Street", sponsored by Lumber City Development Corporation. In March I brought the original pastel to the Pencil On The River printshop to be photographed and enlarged for placement in a business window.

The work will be installed during May 2019 and a public reception will be held June 8 at Project 308 gallery. The gallery will display the original artwork there. The large reproductions of artwork selected for this exhibit will remain a minimum of six months. I am excited about the prospect of seeing this pastel painting greatly enlarged and on display.

Thomson's Market Vegetables 13x19 pastel

Packaging a painting for mailing

Allentown Infringement, oil on stretched canvas 24x30

This painting was discovered online by a resident of Louisville Kentucky and she contacted me to purchase it. Well, it’s pretty big and there are a lot of nightmare stories about packaging for shipping. 

First, I covered the back and face of the framed canvas painting with an archival sheet and a piece of strong cardboard. Angled cardboard corners held the parts together and they were wrapped tightly with yards of a strong plastic wrap. Next it was placed in a corrugated reinforced box, encased in a giant waterproof plastic bag and then slipped into another strong box with pieces of thick corrugated blocks and bubble wrap. 

Packing tape closed up the packaging and the address was written on the box underneath the postal label, in case the solid taping of the label should somehow be damaged. Sent two day delivery, signature required and insured, and another happy client has an original oil painting to grace their home. 

Some fading carnations preserved in oil

Before Valentines Day, and for my birthday I bought a bouquet of pink carnations and split the bundle among several vases. As they dried and died I removed the faded flowers. Two weeks later I was down to this last little bunch and the realization that I could paint them on a particularly tall canvas. Not every flower made it onto canvas and I didn’t have a title so I went back to my Facebook friends for suggestions. My titles are usually fairly practical and descriptive. Sometimes the title is meaningful only to me yet the observer could interpret it another way.

Connie Garver won by counting the flowers and the buds. And my birthday is the 13th so her title  achieved a double meaning.

"13 Carnations" 12x4 oil”

An “Award of Excellence”

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A year after it was painted I retrieved this painting from Houston. Painted en Plein air, it wasn’t dry enough to pack for travel. When I arrived home I could see the difference 1500 miles makes in the sun and angle of light of the season. Texas, big sky country, seemed to have closer, lighter clouds and softer blue in the sky, and while it snowed here in New York it ‘sunned’ there. I loved the painting so I chose to enter it in the Spring exhibit at River Art Gallery. 

I was fortunate to overhear our judge as she previewed the works and passed my painting. “That’s accomplished.” Although we later received her written comments, I felt that that two word comment had great meaning to me. At the reception I received an award of Excellence which was a wonderful affirmation. There was a lot of great work at this juried show and it humbled me to be awarded a great prize.