Love of Three Pomegranites???

9 x 11 pastel on mat board

I've decided to play again with still life, after buying a pomegranite for a dish I never made and decided to paint instead! I'm using liquid acrylic, as I have in other still life, in order to set some base color that I want to show through, and I'm using soft pastels to layer color. I like the juxtaposition of saturated color in the fruit and lightly applied layers in the background. I haven't paid as much attention to color as I might, and I see a potential series of many more pomegranite pictures to come! Hey, at least they aren't pears!!!

Owl's Head Reflections

20 x 16 pastel on board

This is one of my first house and water scenes from Maine, painted in September. We were in Owl's Head on a very foggy Sunday morning in early July and I loved the buildings next to a small pond. I've changed them quite a bit to fit into a vertical format. I think they almost have a fairy tale quality to them! The painting wasn't working until I let the fir in the center go off the picture plane. Then I was pleased!

This area is very close to the town where Sarah Orne Jewett wrote Country of the Pointed Firs,

one of my all time favorite books. I thought about this a lot and the quiet beauty of her story as I was painting the trees in this and other paintings from Maine.

Still Life???

My painting "Shore Houses," which I earlier posted to this blog, just won the award for "Best Still Life" at the Maryland Pastel Society's Shades of Pastel Show! The juror, Richard McKinley, explained that he considers still life to be about planes and reflected light, while landscape is about light on natural objects, and thus he considers this to be a still life!

I was, of course, honored to get the award, but also found it very ironic, given my "problems" with creating still life paintings!!!

When giving the award, Richard said this could be considered a portrait, a landscape, or a still life. Whatever you call it, I DO love the interplay of defined planes with the natural forms of trees and shrubs and that is what I am concentrating on now. I'm also focusing, to some extent, on houses that are related in some way to water. I have been enjoying painting houses from our trip to Maine and will share some soon, I promise!