Posted onMay 23, 2021|Comments Off on Spring follow-up
One of many beautiful peonies. The scent is so lovely.
We have been so busy with spring activities here on the ninety acres. The temperatures have exploded from the frost predictions earlier this month to near 90s this week. No rain so we’re doing lots of watering. Everything I planted last weekend – the entire garden pretty much – is up and looking healthy. I’ll post photos later when there’s more to see.
The air is a flood of beautiful scents, roses and peonies, honeysuckle, too. The locusts are about done. The strong perfume seems to be the only redeeming value of the multiflora roses and the wild honeysuckle, both which are fighting it out in the scent category.
Top: Tame climbing roses vs wild multi-flora roses. Bottom: Tame honeysuckle bush vs wild honeysuckle vine.
The farmer who rents some of our fields has been working until way after dark these days. You can see by this monster disk how much time it takes to prepare the ground. Not counting that “other” natural odor that was spread on the fields. Well, that’s called soil improvement.
Disking the fields. That is some big piece of equipment.
And the cicadas have emerged in ever-increasing numbers. They don’t bite or sting, just climb out of the ground and then hang onto anything they can while they emerge from their shells. They can’t climb on vinyl or metal but they do like wood or just about anything else they can attach to. My husband uses the leaf blower to blow them off the porch. I use the broom. And now they’re starting to sing to attracts mates. Not as loud as it will be but it’s already beginning to sound like that weird alien noise in a sci-fi movie. The birds and frogs and toads seem sated but I watched two little lizards stalking the same bug today. I think they both missed.
The Reader, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 18, Kit Miracle
Of necessity due to the heat, studio time has been limited to afternoons. I did manage to finish the painting which I started as a demo a couple of weeks ago. The Reader is a lovely piece, not in any series of paintings but just because I like the subject. I’m already scouting around for the next topic.
Posted onMay 9, 2021|Comments Off on Gallery opening….and more
A wall of paintings.
Wow, what a week!
My Intimate Spaces exhibit opened this week. It was so inspiring to see two and a half years of work on display, instead of being propped against my studio walls or in boxes. Due to the virus restrictions, there was no opening reception but other events did pop up.
Visitors are allowed to take photos.Part of the exhibit on opening day.
On Friday, I held a brief discussion about my work with a group of high school students. They asked some very perceptive questions. They were also later allowed to choose a gallery among the three to spend some time sketching.
The students were very attentive and focused.About 35 students attended my presentation. Great questions, too!Two high school students sketching parts of my exhibit after my presentation.
On Saturday, I held a free public demonstration. I began a painting in my contemporary impressionist style. I got about half way through and will post photos of the completed painting at a later date. Several people I know stopped by to chat and see the show. I was happy to have a friend whom I haven’t seen since before COVID come over and visit, spend some time at the new cultural center with me, and share dinner with later. Miss my old friends terribly.
Set up in the gallery on Saturday to begin my demo. I’ve already applied the color outlines. The color doesn’t necessarily match the objects. The red-toned canvas works well as an underpainting for landscapes and greenery.After laying in the outlines, I usually begin with the background and darker areas. Plenty of time to tweak later.About half-way done on the painting that I started earlier. Lots of visitors so I was chatting and seeing old friends.
This was also the week for running around, buying plants for the garden and flower beds. They are still waiting for me and sending guilt vibes until they’re in the dirt.
Shipped a couple of paintings which I sold online. This always entails packing and paperwork, then actually posting them.
And I sorted and delivered some new work to one of the local shops. I feel so guilty for neglecting my friend but there’s only so much time. Somewhere in all this chaos I updated my website and did some posts. Whew!
So, today, Mother’s day, I’m going to take a break and do nothing. Well, that probably won’t happen as I always have something going on, but at least I have several bigger projects completed.
Visual Arts Coordinator, Emily Colucci Peak, helping to unwrap the paintings.
After a week of final framing, I packed my exhibit of thirty paintings into two vehicles and delivered them to the new Cultural Center in Jasper on Friday. It’s always a little more difficult than one would think it should be. How to layer the paintings without them scratching each other, damaging the frames, or poking through. Also, so they won’t shift while driving.
First car loaded. These are mostly the Breaking Bread series so they’re all the same size. The important thing is to not have any movement of the paintings while transporting. Second car, side. Second car back. This is the Beach series. A greater variety of sizes, some framed and some gallery-wrapped. Again, prevent shifting during transport.
The Visual Arts Coordinator, Emily Colucci Peak, helped unload and move the work into the gallery. We unwrapped everything and sat the paintings around. Then moved them into position for hanging later this week.
Wow, so exciting to be in this new space. I still can’t believe that the whole building is the final culmination of ten years of work by many many people.
Laying out the exhibit before hanging.Another wall of the exhbit layed out.Third view of the gallery layout. It took a while to determine the order of the presentation.Final wall of the layout. I can hardly wait to see the actual exhibit hung.
So, for those of you who are interested, the show opens on Thursday, May 6th. Although there will be no reception due to COVID restrictions, the galleries are open to the public seven days a week. Free admission and plenty of free parking in the rear of the building.
I will also be doing a demonstration painting on Saturday, May 8th from 10 to 2.
If you’re in the area and would like a private tour, let me know and I will meet you there. But the staff is very helpful and each painting will have an explanation next to it.
Intimate Spaces: Breaking Bread series. Hung on the side of my studio. It sure helps to have all the canvases the same size. At least for ease of framing and wiring.
The good news is that we were able to escape to warmer climates for a brief respite. After two years of being stuck at home, we had a delightful and restful vacation.
However, upon returning, I had to start scrambling to prepare for my upcoming solo exhibit in May/June. Fortunately, all the paintings are completed. The frames were on hand. So I jumped into the presentation process.
Framing back. Fortunately with gallery-wrapped canvases (where the canvas is stretched around the supports), there is no real need for frames. The sides are painted. The canvases only need to be wired.
All of the Intimate Spaces: Breaking Bread series are on two inch deep gallery-wrapped canvases. This means no framing, only wiring. Actually, the process went rather quickly, especially after I bought special wire snips to cut through the plastic-covered wire. My professional wire scissors wouldn’t work.
Then I began the process of working on the Intimate Spaces: Beach series paintings. About half of these canvases are also the deep, gallery-wrapped type. Those went quickly. BUT….when I began to frame the rest of the paintings. I realized that I didn’t have the correct hardware. Plenty of Z clips, but no L clips. They’re on order.
Wait. Wait. Wait.
Fortunately, they’re due to arrive on Tuesday. It won’t take long to finish once they actually arrive. Remember, I’ve been framing my work for nearly forty years now!
Anyway, the show is coming together. The marketing materials have been ordered. The paintings will be delivered on Friday, April 30th. The show will be hung. It opens at the new Cultural Center on Thursday, May 6th. Unfortunately, with the COVID restrictions, there won’t be a public reception. But I will be doing a demonstration painting on Saturday, May 8th from 10 to 2. If you would like a personal tour of the exhibit, let me know and I’ll try to meet you there.
If you’re in the area, please stop by. It’s even worth it to make a special trip. Some great restaurants in Jasper, especially the Schnitzlebank, a German restaurant that attracts guests from miles around (closed Sundays). Plus, there are many other fine restaurants in the area and lots of neat shops downtown.
Address: Jasper Cultural Center. 100 Third Avenue. Turn right (North on Mill Street) and then right again (East) on Fourth street. Plenty of free parking in the rear of the building.
Anticipation. Intimate Spaces: Breaking Bread Series, Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24, Kit Miracle
This is the last painting in my Intimate Spaces: Breaking Bread series. I began planning this series in December 2019. I thought I had enough material. The theme was to observe people eating, either together or alone. Some were family members, others were people in the public – restaurants, picnics, etc.
I had a lot of ideas but unfortunately with the onset of the pandemic, my ability to observe was limited. I scoured through hundreds (thousands) of photos taken over about two decades. I laid out about a dozen paintings but towards the end I was running out of subject matter.
This painting is from a photo that I’d saved from several years ago. It was taken by a friend of mine at a special dinner, Thanksgiving I think. I’ve always loved this image but could never figure out quite how to capture the scene. So with his permission, I decided to add it to my series.
It made me think of several paintings of the impressionists who portrayed pets in their work. Even the formal setting seems reminiscent of that era. I thought, well, pets are often our dinner companions so it fits with the theme of the series.
The painting was so much fun to do that it almost painted itself. Some pieces are like that. I don’t usually paint animals but even the fur of the doggie was fun to paint. If you can zoom in on it, you will see that it contains many colors and perfectly captures this little girl.
So, it is with a big sigh that I’ve finished this series last month. Now just to do some framing and I’m all ready to go for my big show next month at the new Jasper Cultural Center. If you’re in the neighborhood, come check it out. More details to follow.
Anticipation, detail 1 Our little friend R. A well-loved, well-behaved companion. Loved painting her fur/hair.Anticipation, detail 2. A table setting for celebration.
After the Dinner Party. Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30. Kit Miracle this is the final version of the painting. I’ve tweaked a few things. I didn’t like the shape of the wine bottle, added a few more highlights here and there. The whole idea with this type of impressionism is that the brush strokes are clear and bold. Your eyes will fill in the rest. I think this makes a much livelier painting than if I had meticulously smoothly brushed all of the shapes.
One of the most frequent questions that artists get is, How long did it take to paint this painting? I’m not quite sure why people ask this question. Are they trying to gage how much per hour that I’m charging based on the price of the painting? Maybe. Is it worth more if it takes more time? I don’t know.
My flippant answer is, Thirty years and a week. No artist reaches a professional level without a lot of work. This is actually true for most professions. Some people may have a little extra edge in a skill, maybe eye/hand coordination, color discernment, perfect pitch, but most people get where they are by plain hard work. I think this is true for athletes, musicians, artists, chefs, frankly nearly everyone.
I painted this painting After the Dinner Party in my Breaking Bread series pretty much in one day. But that number is deceiving. There was a whole lot of work required before I even began painting.
First there was the canvas prep. I purchased the gallery-wrapped 24 x 30 canvas. Then sanded it, applied two coats of gesso allowing for drying and sanding in between. I like a textured canvas so you will notice that in some of the photos. All of the canvasses in this series are primed with a greyish/greenish color.
Then there was the time to sort through the hundreds (thousands) of photos that I had to select the one that I wanted to use. Then to decide what I wanted to keep in and what to take out or move or change. I did two small NOTAN (black and white) sketches, two large charcoal sketches, and a preliminary watercolor painting. I noodled around with the idea of placing a bouquet of flowers in the background. Which lead me to paint two possible floral candidates. In the end, I did not use them as I thought they didn’t add anything to the painting set up. Finally, I sketched the full painting on the primed canvas.
THEN….I could begin the actual painting part.
I started in the morning with the colored outlines and painted in the larger areas first. I pretty much worked all day until late evening. Once I’m on a roll, I’m on a roll.
It takes time to achieve a certain level of skill in nearly anything. Larry Bird shot 200 hoops before school every day and was known throughout the NBA for the hours he dedicated to conditioning. Even after decades of success, Norman Rockwell agonized over the details of his paintings. How many hours a day do you think Yo-Yo Ma practices his cello? (He estimates over 10,000 hours every five years which is five hours every day.)
Next time you admire someone’s artistic skill (or other skill), keep in mind that the final product is just the tip of the iceberg of work behind the scene. You can do it, too. If you wish to work at it.
Impressionism is, without a doubt, one of the most continually popular painting styles of our times. But this has not always been so. It evolved in France in the 1860s to 1900s with a group of artists whose names you know well – Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cassatt, Degas, Pissarro, etc. In an act of rebellion against the strict styles of the time of realistic, classical-based story-telling, this group of artists burst onto the scene with a new style which emphasized the beauty of nature.
It is generally agreed that the invention of paints in tubes provided artists the freedom to begin painting outdoors. Before this time, paints were hand ground from pigments, mixed with oil and turpentine, and used only in the studio. There was a possibility of using paints stored in pig blatters or glass syringes, but the Winsor Newton company patented the metal tube and added a screw cap. This gave artists the portability of leaving the studio for the open fields and forests. In other words, they began painting en plein air (out of doors).
Impression Sunrise by Claude Monet. This is the painting from which the movement derived its name. The painting itself isn’t very large, only about 19 x 25 inches.
The freedom of painting outside allowed artists to capture a “snapshot” or impression of what they saw at the time they saw it. This new style was labeled impressionism after Claude Monet exhibited his painting, Impression Sunrise. The label was meant to be derisive but as fate would have it, it stuck. After the initial shock of the crude paintings by this group of rebels, in a short time the public’s tastes were changed to one of acceptance and regard. This big change was as revolutionary as going from classical music to rock and roll overnight.
American collectors were the first to embrace this style and began snapping up the paintings of the notable impressionsts and shipping them back to the United States. Even today, many French musems relegate the impressionist paintings to some dim, out of the way spot while they are often featured in American museums.
Impressionism continues to be one of the most popular painting styles both among collectors and painters. So how can you recognize what denotes an impressionist style? Here are a few guidelines.
Painters express feelings more than capturing a specific place or event. How does the sun feel? Can you see the glint off the water? Express the coolness of the shady trees?
Thick brush strokes are another indication of impressionism. The brush strokes are visible and the paint is not over-worked.
The colors are mixed with the eye, i.e., they are laid down next to each other instead of being mixed to death on the palette. If you look at an impressionist painting up close, it will often appear fuzzy and unclear. However, if you step back a few feet (or several) the bold strokes and colors come together to form the image. Think of Monet’s water lily paintings. The paintings are huge and up close they appear to only be a loose collection of swirls and paint blobs. However, from a distance of about ten feet, the whole painting comes together and the beauty of the scene is striking.
The subjects are often common place, found objects or still lifes. People in ordinary circumstances.
There is an asymetrical cropping of the paintings. Parts of the scene are allowed to go off the edge. Many times the scenes are captured exactly as they are found. Landscapes often have a very high or very low horizon line.
These are just a few of the main points defining impressionist style. It continues to be popular with both painters and viewers. However, there are now many finer branches of impressionism – contemporary, nouveau, outsider, open, etc. Some use very bold colors and others are more muted. Frankly, it’s all good.
One of Monet’s many waterlily paintings. He painted over 250 images of these. Up close, it appears to be swirls or patches of paint. The composition doesn’t come into focus until you step back several feet.
If you would like to see more artwork, I suggest that you visit one of the many free museum exhibits online. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a breathtaking collection of work by the impressionists. There are few things so humbling than sitting in a room full of Monets or VanGoghs. Especially if you calculate how many millions (billions) of dollars worth of paintings are just in that one room.
There are more than 6,000 books on the subject listed on Amazon and more than 600,000 links about impressionism listed on Google search. Yep, still pretty popular. Here are a few links to museums with online exhibits.
Posted onSeptember 6, 2020|Comments Off on Something a little different
I’ve been taking a break for the past several weeks from working on my current series of paintings Intimate Spaces: Breaking Bread. Although I tend to be pretty disciplined when I’m working on a big project, sometimes I need a respite. Recently I’ve returned to some old themes, particularly western scenes and my travels. Culling through a couple of decades’ worth of old photos, scenes that I may have skipped previously, now draw me in. It doesn’t always have to be the entire picture, just a small portion of it. And I always feel free to change things around.
Atrium at Longwood Gardens, du Pont estate, Pennsylvania. Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20, impressionistic style, Kit Miracle
Here are a couple of my most recent paintings from my travels. The first one is of the Atrium at Longwood Gardens on the du Pont estate in Pennsylvania. Although I visited in March of that year, it was still beautiful. The gardens under glass were particularly impressive. Touted as the most beautiful garden in America, I couldn’t disagree.
Garden Cherub, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16. Pittsburgh, PA Kit Miracle
The second painting is from a different trip to Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh to be exact. One of our favorite places to visit is The Strip District, a multi-block area of food shops and restaurants, fish markets and collectibles. This particular shop had some very enticing items in the front of the shop, but as I walked through the store to the back, they had a garden shop with rusty gates and ironwork, birdbaths and outdoor trellises. I loved this little garden cherub. Now I wish I had purchased him but at least I could capture him in paint.
Both of these paintings are painted on red-toned canvases which peeks through, adding another layer of liveliness to the scenes.
In case you are interested, these are both available in my Etsy shop KitMiracleArt. AND….I’m having a 20% off Labor Day sale through Monday. Free shipping, too.
After School, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 Kit Miracle This painting is currently on exhibit at the 96th Annual Hoosier Salon show at the Indiana State Museum through October 25th, 2020.
This painting depicts two girls having a snack after school. I assumed that they were in band or cheerleaders as they were dressed alike. I was attracted to the silhouette shape of the figures. Despite the high contrast of the figures against the light background, the painting itself actually has a lot of color. Notice the distinctive color outlines. These are painted before the rest of the painting, however, sometimes I go back and reemphasize the colors.
The background is painted very loosely and doesn’t really include any details except the umbrella. It’s always as important to know what to leave out as well as what to include. More details, parking lot, would not have added anything to the painting, just more distraction.
This is another painting in my Intimate Spaces: Breaking Bread series.
After School, detail 1. Acrylic on canvas.
After School, detail 2
The painting is currently on exhibit at the Indiana State Museum. The exhibit opens tomorrow, Saturday, August 29th with free admission. It runs through October 25th. You can find the Indiana State Museum at 650 W Washington St, Indianapolis. There is so much to see at the museum it’s certainly worth the trip. A great outing for kids and adults. And it’s right next door the the Eiteljorge Museum of Native American and Western Art, too!
If you can’t visit the museum in person, here is a link to the exhibit online. All the works are for sale, of course.
Bread, acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20. The Food We Eat Series. Kit Miracle This series is all about food. We’re all a little bit obsessed, I think. But what is better than fresh made bread, still warm from the oven? Ah, the aroma. The crunch of the crust when it is cut.
Who doesn’t love the aroma of fresh bread? The crunch of the crust and soft texture of the body?
This week as I was waiting for more canvases to be delivered for my latest series, I spent some time doing some smaller paintings. This is another painting for The Food We Eat series. I guess since we’re all isolated at present, my thoughts return to food. Must be an animal thing.
My husband makes this lovely, crusty bread. I’ve posted the recipe in a previous post. It is very easy and so so delicious. It makes great toast and bruschettas. I think he’s making French toast for breakfast this morning with the last of this loaf. https://my90acres.com/2018/03/28/crusty-artisan-bread/
Bread, detail. It is often difficult to convey in the pictures that I post the brushwork and the texture of the paint. Just click on the picture and expand it to see. You will notice that I actually use very loose brush strokes for much of the painting. Again, as mentioned in my last post, the viewer’s eye fills in many details.
As I was waiting for a frame to arrive for a painting which needed to be delivered this week, I painted this and three other smaller pieces. One plein air and two landscapes. The frame never arrived, due to delays at the factory due to COVID. So I had a good friend make a frame but that’s a story for another day.
Anyway, if you’re not doing anything today and you’d like to surprise your family, or just yourself, try your hand at some homemade bread. You won’t be sorry.
I'm a professional artist, retired director of a performing arts center, bona fide book addict, and enjoy the quiet life...most of the time. I'd love to hear from you or get your ideas for future posts. Come back soon!
I'm a professional artist, retired director of a performing arts center, bona fide book addict, and enjoy the quiet life...most of the time. I'd love to hear from you or get your ideas for future posts. Come back soon!
my90acres 