Summer Moonlight

I completed this painting in a Marc Hanson workshop this summer. My goal was to be able to produce a night time painting using a daytime photograph. In reality, this was a daytime photograph taken in late evening when sunlight was streaming over the hill; everything was mostly green. I think I've successfully captured the colors of the night.

BIRD GIRL

This was an experiment that became one of my favorite paintings. While talking on the phone one evening, a streak of sunlight came streaming across the room, hitting the crystal objects on the table beside me. I grabbed the camera and took a one-handed, fuzzy picture that didn't come close to capturing the beautiful colors I was seeing. Nevertheless, I was inspired to paint the scene. I wanted the shadowy figure in the back to be the most important part of the painting. A well-known way to do this is to surround a bright object with darker, shadowy colors but would the reverse work? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Success! Everyone who has seen this painting is immediately drawn to the mysterious figure in the back. Who or what is it? The answer is in the title of the painting. Bird Girl is a famous statue in an old cemetery in Savannah. She was featured on the cover of the novel, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," by John Berendt. A replica stands on our fireplace hearth.

EVENING SKY

HONORABLE MENTION & PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD

ART STATION 2008

I saw this sky in late summer after a Kudzu Art Zone meeting in Old Norcross, Georgia. My two artist friends and I commented that no one would believe such colors. None of us had a camera, of course, and I'm not sure a camera would have captured such luminous color anyway. I painted the sky colors while they were fresh in my memory and finished the painting much later. It is a pastel.

"FIREFLY EVENING"

This painting began as an oil painting of an ordinary fall landscape destined to never be framed. When challenged to do a painting for an exhibit entitled "All Creatures, Great and Small," I glazed the whole thing with dark blue and painted fireflies. The painting now speaks to me about the innocence of childhood and the place where I grew up.

"STORM CLOUDS COMING"

This painting was done one winter night when it was approximately 22 degrees outside. Several artist friends and I were in the North Georgia Mountains near Ellijay when I looked outside and saw there was a brilliant full moon illuminating flying clouds. I grabbed a piece of black sanded pastel paper, my easel, and my pastels and went outside to try to capture what I was seeing and feeling. Fortunately, my palette is arranged by lights, mediums, and darks because that's all I could see. The clouds were flying and I sometimes had to wait for the moon to reappear. After twenty minutes or so, when my fingers were beginning to get too numb to hold the pastel sticks, I went back inside to see what I had accomplished. The result is this painting. I didn't change a thing. I love to paint the dark.