DINOSAURS!

This week I have been painting a mural of dinosaurs in a local dinosaur bones and fossils museum. Children from local schools come to the museum and are fascinated with the petrified bones, vertebrae, and fossils of fish, plant life, and many other interesting items. The big dinosaur is over 8 feet high, and that is about one tenth of his actual size! 

Painted table

This table was brought to me by a client. She got it from an uncle and it had sentimental value for her so she wanted it to be painted as a focal point in a bathroom, using bright colors . 

Here are "before and after" photos. I enjoy projects like this, they are a form of recycling! 

I wonder how her uncle would have liked it !

Assemblages - Pearl Diver

Here is one of my newest pieces, made from mannequin faces that I've found at the flea market. Each one is first glued onto a piece of plywood, then I look at her and decide just who she is. "Pearl Diver" has sea green eyes that look amazingly like my Mother's. My sister thinks so too! However my Mother never dove for pearls.

 She has hair made from natural sea sponges and painted a pale aqua with many embellishments;  pearls with brass tassels made from tiny chains, seashells, glitter and beads, a piece of faux oriental money from Chinatown, a pair of little frogs, and the frame is painted with a pearlized paint. 

She can be yours, she is for sale in my Etsy shop.

My next assemblage is called "Mardi Gras Girl" Look for her right here, soon!

Laurel Ridge Kitchen

The kitchen at Laurel Ridge Bed and Breakfast in Chatham County North Carolina has been painted and decorated by me with a theme of wildflowers on the walls and on the cabinets. First I faux finished the walls and cabinets in a pale blue/aqua ragged finish. Then I painted flowers on the walls, above the tiles, on the cabinets and along the baseboards. There are also some bugs and butterflies that the guests have fun discovering. There's a ceramic sculpture by Joyce Bryan of Stone Crow Pottery in one corner, with a "faux" garden behind him.

Laurel Ridge

I've just painted a pair of tables for Laurel Ridge Bed and Breakfast in Chatham County, North Carolina, where I live, too. They are octagon shaped tables to go in front of their sofa. The bases are marbelized and the tops have a parchment finish with flowers painted on top. The flowers are painted in colors that coordinate with the fabrics and the lovely oriental rug.

Painted cabinet

I painted this cabinet recently to go in a client's entry hall. We had been looking for a piece that was the right size and that had some drawers for storage. I found this little huntboard at a used furniture store. It had a rather dreary pickled finish and the top was all scratched up, but I loved the shape and size and the tall legs that give it a more "open" look.  So I bought it and "recycled" it.

The top has a marbled finish that goes with her Mexican tile floor and the sides are finished in shades of taupe and greens that coordinate with the lovely stained glass piece in the window. [Made by her daughter !] Also terra cotta and black, as there is a black wrought iron piece in the hall, too. The pattern is taken from a "flamestitch" fabric and I cut the stencils myself. Then I used a glaze and a rubber comb to create the striped overpainting. Then several coats of waterbased varnish. 

Lotus and Fish

This is one of the paintings that I have for sale in my Etsy shop. It is an acrylic painted on canvas and I've used copper paint in the circle and in the moon. The fish at the bottom have a glaze that is combed through to give the illusion that they are in the water. The night sky is in the background and the day sky is within the circle.

Poppy floorcloth

This is my latest floorcloth. I made it for my friend Suza who is a gardener and loves flowers. The colors were mixed to match a rug that she has in her living room. The floorcloth is in a hallway off the living room and the hall leads to a blue bedroom. I designed the border to go with the border in the rug, and the poppies are from a William Morris design. It's a focal point for her hall and she loves that it's so easy to clean and she can just wipe those cat hairs off with a damp rag. It's five feet long and three feet wide.

See my other posts for more information about floorcloths.

ACEO's

ACEO's are my newest obsession! They are small paintings, collages, photos that are collected and sold or traded.  ACEO stands for Art Cards Editions and Originals. Mine are all original acrylic paintings. The only requirement is that they must be 2 1/2 inches x 3 1/2 inches. That's a SMALL painting. They look great in groups or matted and framed in a standard 4 x 6 or 5 x 7 frame. Some people put them in magnetized frames and decorate their refrigerators with them. Mine are for sale in my Etsy shop. Here are a couple of my recent ones. 

Floorcloths II

More floorcloths! Please read the below post for more info. about floorcloths. The one here with the compass rose in the middle now lives in Maine in a beautiful home overlooking the ocean. It's in their front hall, so gets a lot of traffic from both people and dogs. Floorcloths are VERY durable. 

The other one has more of a southwest theme with stencils of spirit animals that I designed and cut. It is now in the home of a friend who is also an artist.  

Floorcloths

One of the things I like to do best is to make floorcloths. I have designed and painted about 150 of them for my clients. A floorcloth is a rug painted on canvas . They were made of sailcloth and used in the colonial days before linoleum was invented. I have made floorcloths up to 8 1/2 x 11 feet. Each one is different and designed to go in a special place. I make a few as samples and to sell on Etsy and on the annual Studio Tour that I participate in. Here are two that I currently have for sale on Etsy. My next blog will have photos of some of my custom floorcloths.

Folding screen

I've just finished this folding screen for one of my clients. She wanted to block the view into her kitchen from the dining room and a door would not have worked because it would have opened awkwardly in any direction. I found two sets of wood folding doors at our local Habitat store and used three of the four panels and replaced the hinges with folding screen hinges so that each panel can fold either way. 

The side facing the dining room has a large tree spreading over all the panels to create a picture of the tree as if one were looking through a door. The other side is more whimsical with castles, elephants, camels, trees , and birds. More to look at while working in the kitchen! 

The edges are all "faux bois" which is woodgraining. Originally they were all white.

Elephants!

Elephants are my latest subjects. I hadn't painted any elephants in my circus series, then I painted a folding screen for a client [pictures of that later in the week] and the screen has elephants on it, among many other creatures and things. So I painted elephant # 1: then an Etsy creative challenge came along and the challenge word was bubbles. I saw the elephant blowing bubbles in my mind, then there she was. I'm thinking about the next elephant picture now! Keep posted!

Gaudi and Barcelona

I have been fascinated with the architecture of Gaudi for as long as I can remember. A number of years ago I finally got to go to Barcelona to see his buildings. I spent most of a week traveling around Barcelona on foot and by subway to see as many of his buildings as I could get to. In the process we saw many areas of Barcelona. The fish market near Las Ramblas. Lots of shoe stores. A terrifying ride on a cable car. A funky little bar at the waterfront. A flasher in Parc Guell. The flea market. The view from the top of one of the towers at La Sagrada Familia. That one for a very short time; it swayed in the wind and we took the first elevator down. Gaudi built his own house in the Parc Guell and I did a painting of it from a photo I took there. 

I loved Barcelona! and hope to go back someday!

The Circus !

Last summer a traveling circus came to town - for ONE night! I went to see them unloading and setting up the big top and all the other attractions. I even saw the camel getting a bath. He loved it on such a hot day! 

That night I went back with my friends to see the circus. Lots of the performers were the same people who had been setting up the show that morning. As you see, the camel was dressed in his finest! When the show was over they started taking everything down and getting ready to move on to the next town. We had barely left our seats when the bleachers were being loaded onto a truck! 

This is for sure a vanishing part of America.

Fish placemats

Fish! They are fun to paint! I've done several sets of four, all the fish are different. They are cut out of heavy canvas, usually the ends left from making a floorcloth. Then I prime them and paint the fish, then varnish with several coats of acrylic varnish so that they are wipeable. They last for years, I know because I gave a set to a friend 4 or 5 years ago and she uses them constantly and they still look new! The backs are painted too, with waves in shades of aqua.

Dancing in the Moonlight