Pansies!

Gosh we love Spring. The colors, greens and flowers, birds and warm weather are delightful. A pot of cool-loving pansies graced the porch for weeks before it was painted. Bluish blooms turned lavender and white faded to yellow. A still life that kept moving  

Pansies 12x16 oil

Pillbox Hats in the Studio

Mom always wore a pillbox hat to go out, and a neighbor gave me a few more in their original boxes to use at school. For years, the boxes lay on a closet shelf until this still life was set up in Studio 120 at the NACC. I can let the hats go now to new closet shelves, I have made this painting of them for my memories. The boxes are from Beirs, a lovely Niagara Falls department that is long gone. Vintage Pillbox Hats, 16x20 oil

Pansies! Spring is really here.

Yellow Pansies, oil 16 x12  c. K. Schifano

In Texas, pansies are planted outdoors as soon as the New Year's blooms fade. Visiting family in March I love the masses of color at street corners and gardens. A cold hardy flower, in New York we wait until April to see little plants shining at grocery stores, garden centers and the neighbor's baskets. My front yard gets a lot of sun so they don't last when it turns warm and I've planted them just a few times. 

This pretty little thing was in a 4" pot. I couldn't resist the purchase but before it went intomy patio display I had to paint them. I brought the plant to Thursday Niagara Painters at the NACC and spent an unusually long time on this painting.  Perhaps it was the arrival of Spring or the joy of this glorious color but this Pansy has a lasting presence in oil paint.

Of course I also bought the magenta pansies and painted them on another day.

 

Filling sketchbooks, one story at a time.

I like to use art supplies and my brain. I don't need to make oil paintings or pastels, I just need to draw to satisfy myself. As a member of Buffalo Urban Sketchers we find ourselves limited by Covid to not being in a lobby or cafeteria to draw. Like the rest of the world, we have started Zooming together and our first Virtual Field Trip was to Acadia National Park in Maine. This is Jordan Park Trail which is familiar to Acadia visitors. I used Google maps to explore the park and choose this site.

A little bit of Christmas in my studio inspired this. My big artist nutcracker and a fake tree were joined by a poinsettia and some garland to make me feel festive in a time when no visitors or parties were on my horizon. This is a good candidate for a future Christmas card. 

I have a painting of the poinsettia that I keep fiddling with, changing the direction of light, the background and also the color of the plant and its leaves. There is a pile of paint building up but experimenting is allowed at all times. I don't paint for business, I paint for myself and my soul. The plant continues to thrives on my good studio juju.

Bringing Spring indoors

An unusually early Spring brought out glorious flowers that lasted weeks longer than usual because it didn't get hot. The Forsythia bloomed for at least a month and the huge yellow bush out back reflected yellow into every window. We had planted 3 of them in one spot and it is about 10 feet tall and 15 feet wide, a haven for birds waiting their turn at the feeders. I have planted lots of yellow daffodil bulbs over the years but the majority have turned themselves into these orange centered daffodils.

This is a traditional still life with soft pastel sticks and it was a very happy project as long as the flowers lasted in my studio.

In progress

Bringing Spring Indoors

Bringing Spring Indoors, pastel, 20x16

BNAA Fall exhibition

The transition of the Eastern Hills site to a town square continues to evolve.

 The lovely and large, well lit site, Expo 68 Art and Design Gallery features the Buffalo Niagara Art Association Fall art show through December 5. It's open daily, except Mondays. These two paintings were selected for this spectacular Exhibition at Expo 68.

Peony Bliss, 48"x24" oil

Under American Falls, 12"x16" oil

The BNAA is a juried group, new members are juried into the group, then the shows are juried for exhibition and awards. New artists are welcome to join as Associates or Juried members.

An Abundance of Vegetables

Residing and painting for a month in the midst of a self sufficient organic farm there were many different flowers, plants and especially vegetables growing. Acres of farmland provided all the food for guests as well as animals, such as llamas, chickens for their eggs, cows for milk and cheeses, and bees for the farm and their honey.

A lovely stone bowl was on my outdoor patio table. It held two yellow apples and would make a lovely still life to paint indoors if it rained. I asked a gardener if I could have a few fresh vegetables for my little bowl. I returned from lunch to find this huge selection of perfect specimens, artfully arranged with accents of yellow dill and straw. It was huge and weighed 15-20 pounds. I made use of the contents for the rest of the month, painting some, eating others and experimenting with drying peppers. Definitely the most delicious painting. Later in the month I painted the stone bowl with some assorted peppers.

Watercolor plan for a large painting 6x8

Organic Vegetables, of Course. 18x24 pastel c.2019

A Still Life That Needed a Little More

Fresh flowers are abundant on the Tuscany estate and peach and pink multiflora roses surround the Art House. Rose of Sharon in the back appear to be a wall of violet and herbs are grown as shrubs and landscape plants along the paths. My bouquet needed a little support, I added short dense branches to make it stand. They were a soft blue green and scented like sage. Not looking, I titled the flowers with the color name of sage in the title.  It took a day or two before I realized that the plant I had clipped was rosemary, and so the title was changed.

"Put Some Rosemary in it" 24x18 pastel on paper

Burchfield Penney Saturday still life

Two fun Saturday afternoons at Burchfield PenneyArt Center in their first floor classroom

involved an art project with unusual still life set ups by invited artists. I like to work with real objects outdoors, but these were so different that I kept smiling as I painted. It was difficult to choose a particular part of these unusual structures to work with because there was so much going on in each still life.

Saturdays With Myles

Watching the museum's schedule for additional opportunities to do this challenge, I am disappointed that these two paintings will stand alone. There is no way I could put up a crazy still life like either of them for myself. I have to laugh that I did this for my students regularly. Because the setups were completely my choice I didn't have the perspective of strange and new objects. Planning the shapes and colors gave me an unfair advantage. At this moment I want to apologize to all the art students who were overwhelmed by art room still lifes in Niagara Falls High School. It took me quite a few years, but now I know how you felt.
Both paintings are 12x9 oil.  My Guerrilla Painter pochade box worked well on the classroom tables.

Critters With Eyes

Putting color into a still life

My dear friend Raquel brought me a spectacular bouquet of tulips which kept expanding in the winter light, reaching taller and wider until I finally brought it into my studio in front of a canvas. What fun!! 

I hadn't worked larger for a while so I loved the challenge. The tulips continued to grow so I had to make artistic decisions about placement and not look back. Then they wilted, and drooped, but I wasn't finished so the artist in me had even more fun building form and light. As a simple still life of white tulips it was lovely but when I decided to add color it told its own story. 

Paintings often name themselves or rather a title comes to me while I'm working but this one eluded me. I posted the picture on Facebook and asked for help. Two Pink Tulips. Tulips Breaking Out. Spring Bouquet. In The Pink. I Will Wait For You. Just One More. Tulips From The Garden.  Beauty of Spring. Tulips Apart. Spring Splendor. Acceptance. Thank you, friends, I chose 'Color Doesn't Make Us Different ', suggested by my artist friend, Marolyn Corriere. 

The second photo shows my painting in progress and constant companion, Chiquita. She's on loan with us for a while and loves to be with us, wherever we are.

Color Doesn't Make Us Different, oil on canvas, 22x28 c. 2018

An 'indoor Plein air' at Buffalo's Botanical Gardens.

It is 'back to the gardens' season. Too cold to stand outside on ice covered ground in the swirling snow with wind chills hovering around zero, my Thursdays at Frederick Law Olmsted's 1900 Botanical Gardens are a relief from winter house air. Oxygen, green tropical plants, fragrant flowers and happy visitors make for wonderful paintouts-indoors.

  

Orchids and Amaryllis, oil 9x12, 2015

An indoor study

Nearly finished, 'Fresh Orchids'

Ah, February, it hasn't had a thaw yet and it is too frigid to paint outdoors. 

Contemporary realist painter,  Thomas Kegler held a one day workshop in still life painting at Partners in Art, North Tonawanda, and I joined for a day out and some inspiration. I had attended his workshop two years ago and was intrigued by his use of glazes, especially on a finished painting.

At that time, I had a spray of orchids which I carefully protected on the frigid drive to East Aurora. For this workshop, I hunted around for a similar subject and found this cymbidium plant. My plan was to create the same size and subject to create a pair of pictures. Now that I have them home together I see the difference two years of painting-and thinking-can be. Yes, it is a pair and I hope they stay together.