Sky Light Paintings

In 2008 I finally removed these paintings from our sky light and I cut them up to sell in the conventional manner. They are matted and covered with a transparent envelope and sold in my my bin at exhibits. Some I may later post on the blog. I am looking at making another wrap around mural because it was so much a joy for so long. The acrylic colors and interference paint held up well in the intense light.

My home is my studio and my grouping of paintings is a work in progress. These paintings are intended as sketches for what I might make for my skylight. Might make? My original intention was to do studies for wrapped canvases but I like the paper and the look of not being finished. Unfinished is in keeping with my idea of painting infinity which keeps on going and is never complete. I question whether permance and archival is relevant for me as an artist living an art process. As I got up on a ladder hanging this work I decided it is an installation.
These paintings using interference and metalic acrylics and watercolor crayons on Canson watercolor paper are thumb tacked to the walls of my livingroom sky light. The painting is inspired by the Island in the Sky and my artist friend Diane Hoff-Rome who paints with pastel and interference acrylics. The hanging of these paintings in a sky light is influenced by Matisse's studio in Nice, France. Also I am influenced by Doris Duke's estate on Diamond Head in Hawaii. Doris like Matisse made her home a work of art in process. Like Matisse I tape a crayon to a long stick and I continue to make changes on my installation.

Painting at Dead Horse Point

In Canyon Lands National Park, I found an ideal inspiration. Maybe I took enough notes to be inspired to make a four sided painting to hang above my head in my livingroom sky light. It will be as though I was looking out at endless vistas bringing the expanse of the outdoors into my cozy livingroom. If all goes well by next month I will have a preliminary trial picture in my skylight. I will see how the lighting makes color reflect and how the color will make my livingroom glow in warm desert color. If the preliminaries live up to my hopes, I will make canvases to fit my sky light.

My Angel

I made this doll for Christmas decoration but I do not like to put her in a box for the other eleven months so now she catches light from the kitchen sky light.

Catching Rays Indoors

I paint where the light from outdoors is best like the dining room. I even bring my paints into the living room entry to work on all the paintings at once. I wanted to see how they worked into the architecture. The darkness of the corner is deminished by using iridescent and metalic paints. I am enjoying painting with acrylic and oils comparing how the light rays work the richness of the colors. I want to enjoy the textures and beauty of the outdoors inside my home.

Making Progress

I see my work differently without the traditional frame. My paintings are more like decorative tiles placed to frame the life passing through my home.

Navaho Rug Design and I Painting Light

This 12" oil painting is in the beginning stages and remains unfinished even in february 2008.

The Way I Paint

After one of John Clare's poems



From the first light of dawn until dusk

The fog hides the landscape

Except for a few moments

As the light pierces through

Revealing layers of flat back drops like a stage.

I see the rocks and life damp and dripping.

The colors are at their greatest brilliance.

I take in movement and gesture in an instant.

Just for a moment! The next moment the fog rises from them covering the land
once again.

I begin to paint with the intensity of the moment while the after image
compliments passion.

My Dragons Express Opposites

This painting is not for sale.
There is the desire to keep a gag on my camel headed dragon and hide my paintings and art treasures. Being public can hurt. There is however a much greater desire to spit out the gag and be a genie sharing the pearl of my creativity.
The whimsy of these dragons were inspired by the smiling camels at Doris Duke's Shangri La. More about my paintings inspired by the museum are in earlier postings.

Spanish Window Coral Reef

This painting took several years to develop and finally took on a warmwhite and ice blue color combination. It was exhibited at LaSelles Stewart Center in June 2007 and later at Sam's Station in Corvallis, Oregon in January 2008.
I was stretching trying to compare Spanish glass windows with looking down into coral reefs seeing the depths of the Pacific Ocean and getting a glimpse of tropical fish as they swam out and then back into hiding.

Shangri La / A lens focusing my creative flow

Both paintings sold.
My paintings in the background remind me of the whimsy of Doris Duke's smiling camel sculptures at her front door. The painting on my easel completes my journal for my "voyage" to Shangri La, a museum of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.
After a visit to her Hawaiian home, I see and paint my home paying attention to the light from the skylight and glass sliding doors. Now I can use my paintings to frame shadows dancing as Doris did in hers. I will leave space for breathing and life in my home.
My "voyage" will be remembered as a lens that has focused my creative flow.

A Journey of Untold Memories

Ever since I can remember, I have admired my mother's painting of "East Indian Dancers." After visiting Doris Duke's Shangri La, now a museum, in Hawaii, I came home and looked again at my mother's painting. The same time Doris was beginning to build Shangri La mother in Berkeley, California painted this egg tempera on plastered board. In 1937 there was a love of the exotic and a favorite book was the "Arabian Nights." I remember my father reading it to me when I was very young. Doris likened her home to the "Arabian Nights."

After painting ShangriLa and Christmas Island Homes

Watercolor painting from skechbook. Image 8" x 10" For sale $98
This month I will be looking at my own home and myself. I painted for a little over three hours at Doris Duke's Shangrila and then flew 1,300 miles south where I painted this painting. It was started in the screened living area in Agnes' Mini Hotel on Christmas Island where I stayed for a week.
Looking at myself and my home will be a challenge. It takes a degree of discipline to do myself. So I am glad I can set my goal on a blog to help me focus on my objective.

When the Full Moon Was at the Zenith

This 10" x 8" watercolor in notebook is for sale $ 100
At her Hawaiian ShangriLa home when the full moon was at the zenith point of the midnight sky, Doris Duke would have jazz jam sessions. I painted a reflection of the past in a window by her garden. I imagined her feeding her pet koi when the moonlight spilled over her waterfall and moonbeams danced.

Comparing ShangriLa to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel

On my recent trip to Christmas Island, Kirabati I painted in the shade.


On the same trip on Oahu, Hawaii I toured and painted at both Doris Duke's ShangriLa, now a museum, and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Both were inspired by the exotic Orient but are as different as day and night. The Royal Hawaiian is a huge structure and the entry is more massive to support the weight of the building resulting in an imposing entrance giving a feeling of darkness and heaviness in the interior while ShangriLa is full of whimsy and light. The smaller home blends in tune the surrounding landscape with the arts of Islamic cultures. The Royal Hawaiian Hotel as I remember it in the early 60's had a male dominance over the landscape before it was hidden by skyscrapers. ShangriLa has a woman's artistry in every detail.

Comparisons

Two watercolors in 8" x 10" notebook, for sale $100 each










Doris Duke was the richest woman in the world and Agnes of the mini Hotel had about the least on a desert isle but they both created beauty in their homes. Their homes were both built around a courtyard and brought the outdoors inside. Both played with lighting effects. Light is free.

Playful Designer/Doris Duke

Two 10" x 8" sketchbook watercolor paintings for sale. $100 each.

Doris wanted to make her home reflect the mystery and the exotic Orient she knew from the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments."






I felt happy and playful painting a series of Doris Duke's bedroom garden. I think any woman can be playful in our homes. Having unlimited sources of money has nothing to do with effects of lighting and bringing nature into our homes.

A Painter Sees Doris Duke's legacy of ShangriLa, Hawaii

This 8" x 10" notebook watercolor painting is for sale. $100
Just a few days old Doris Duke's infant died. She was divorced twice. Her inherited fortune begot on people's dependence on nicoteen was not to be wasted. Abhoring what she felt was a shallow life of a debutant, she poured her spirit for the rest of her 84 years into heathy living creating beauty around herself. Doris created her own peace thorough blending the Islamic arts of architecture and organic landscaping in harmony with the natural Hawaiian life style, country side and ocean.

Immigrants' Dreams

A second painting following "Immigrant's Dream" is "On Community Spirit" It is also acrylic on museum wrapped canvas, 30" x 40"x 2", for sale $400. I painted this one out under our patio cover thinking of nature's colors and then these spirit swooshes took form. I gave them a name, the spirits of community. They embraces disparate entities and brings them together as a harmonious whole.

This painting is not for sale yet.
All people have in their ancestry immigrants. Their dreams are universal.This painting marks an end for now to a series including two other paintings "The Spirit of Community" and "Welcome Immigrants." A new series is beginning but I am not going to post a blow by blow account of the process. I'll wait to post my paintings until they are resolved the week of January 30th. I hope.

Oregon Tempest

This painting is not available for sale.

On the second day of 2006 the sun and my easel came out on the Oregon Coast just south of Lincoln City.

Explosive Surf near Lincoln City, Oregon