Special announcement and new paintings

I am very pleased to announce that I am now represented by Teal Gallery, a new Fine Art Gallery opening this month in Roswell, GA. The owners are putting some finishing touches on the gallery space and it will be up and running soon. Teal Gallery will offer original art by several artists located in the Southwestern U.S.

Here are a few paintings I've been working on lately:

Sunflower with tomatoes -- Oil on canvas 20" x 30"

The sunflower in this painting showed a good deal of perseverance. I purchased a packet of Mammoth Sunflowers at our supermarket back in the Spring and planted them at the end of our driveway. A few of the plants suffered at the incisors of a hungry animal (those little bunnies did not turn out to be so cute after all!) when they were just inches high. One plant survived its broken stem and while the unaffected sunflower plants grew like crazy, this little broken plant kept fighting growing up just a few millimeters each week.  A few weeks later, I had about a dozen plants over two meters high with huge, beautiful sunflowers following the sun the end of the driveway and one tiny sunflower hanging out there below all of the action.

The little sunflower lasted longer than any of its larger mates. I had long forgotten it until it was time to cut down the dead sunflowers. The broken little plant had made it! This seemed to me a sign that I was to paint the tiny "mammoth" sunflower. (I had tried to create a painting from some of the larger sunflowers, but I didn't like how it turned out.) It may not be perfect, but I am happy with "Sunflower with Tomatoes".

Hydrangea with tomato -- Oil on canvas 11" x 14"

Another one of our home grown tomatoes with some hydrangeas. I've done a few hydrangea paintings now and I really enjoy painting them. It's pretty challenging and it takes a lot of time to paint them, but it's fun to work on, and they are beautiful flowers (sorry, Madonna).

Pear -- Oil on canvas 7" x 5"

This small painting came together after our neighbor brought me some sacuanjoche flowers from the two plants she keeps on her deck. Lauren had just purchased two pears the day before and I was inspired to put the two yellows together in a painting to experiment with tone value.