Peaceful Weekend

Yesterday I had a wonderful gabfest/private art lesson with my friend Julie. We had a ball painting poppies. She's been working hard on her own too - she brought in the most wonderful little painting! It's bold, colorful and fun. Did I remember to bring my camera so I could show you that painting and what we were up to? Of course not. So instead of sharing those photos I'll share these. I was sitting on my front porch on this wet Memorial Day weekend, enjoying the peace and feeling thankful for it.


These guys are the house protectors, our rugged attack cats....they should have names I think. What should I call them?

I can't resist looking for compositions to paint.

Happy little raindrops all in a row. I thought I'd enjoy the parade of cool reflections before I rip this pain in the #$%^&* vine out of my azalea bush!!!! These things grow everywhere and drive me crazy - but for now back to the regularly scheduled peaceful weekend.

Enjoy, be thankful, be at peace,

Carlynne

Wow, it's early

Good morning. I have no idea what I'm doing up. I've been awake since 3:30 so I just gave up the tossing and turning and came out here to the computer to mess around. So.....here's an acrylic landscape just for the heck of it. This was really fun to do. One of these days I'm going to do some more like this. I toned the canvas with red first and did the landscape with a palette knife. The sky and some highlights on the ground and tree trunk are gold leaf.

I have a question for any photographers out there. Are there any tricks to getting gold leaf to read a little better in a photo? I know it won't be the same no matter what but it would be nice to get some of the effect of the golden glow.

Back to bed, maybe I can fall asleep in time for the alarm to go off......
peace,
Carlynne

Baby dreaming

Well, you just never know what I'll be working on in the studio. I did this yesterday for my new grandbaby. She's due to arrive in about 3 weeks. The nursery is coming together, crib is in place and now she just needs some artsy touches from Grandma. The vinyl letters were a gift to the new parents from my sis-in-law Leigh (no, I didn't do the lettering - there's no way it would look that good if I did!) but they weren't going to work that well on the paneled walls so I thought doing a canvas background for them would work and then they could hang it wherever they wanted.

That was my Sunday fun, now back to the work week...... hope your Monday is happy and peaceful,
Carlynne

A new series, a new venture

Wow, where have I been? Hard to believe it's been since the 8th that I've posted. Where did May go? I've either had my nose buried in a book or I've been at the easel. These are good things!


In the last post I mentioned the new series I'm working on about adoption. The above piece is the beginning of that series. The canvas is 3' x 4' and I'm using acrylic, collage and gold leaf. Since I took this photo I added the gold leaf to the web pattern. There's still much to do. There's some issues to work out on the flowers but for now I'm going to continue layering on the background - right now there's bible pages attached but I may add some other elements too. I'll keep you posted on the progress.

Mosaic 10

24x24

Now this one in the Mosaic series is one of 4 pieces that is being included in Bentley Publishing Group's summer line. They will be on the Designer Services website around mid July. They will be available as giclees on paper or canvas. This is a new venture for me so it's very exciting! Of course now, it means patience. It's time to just focus on new work.

And it's time to turn up the music to drown out the sound of my neighbors and their lawn mowers and blowers. Why can't they just let their yards be wild and free like mine.

Have a great weekend,

Carlynne

Do we need another holiday?

Happy Saturday folks. Did you know that a new holiday has been invented? It's called Birth Mother's Day and it's today - the day before Mother's Day. I had two thoughts when I found that out. My first thought was - oh, cool - we have our own day. My second thought was - hey, does that mean I'm not good enough for Mother's Day? My second thought is the one that keeps coming up. Back in the day, 30 years ago, when I was becoming a "birth mother" I felt exiled from society. Now I feel exiled from Mother's Day. Birth mothers ARE mothers and should be celebrated with all the other mothers on their day.

This is a topic that's way too huge to go into here and now. I don't want to hijack this art blog and make it something else, besides, I don't think Kelli would appreciate it. So, that brings me to this........... I'm in the very beginning stages of starting a new series of paintings about the adoption experience from the birth mother's perspective. I've been doing a lot of reading, sketching, note making and I've begun the first canvas (hence my reason for not posting much lately). Now I'm wondering if there are any birth mothers reading this who would like to share some of their story with me. I haven't worked out the details yet but I would like this to be not just autobiographical, but to give a voice to other women who've been silenced by her birth mother status. If you or someone you know is willing to share please comment or send an email.

So, in case I'm not on here tomorrow..... Happy Mother's Day to ALL the mothers out there.
Peace,
Carlynne