Window in the Green Room SOLD

This is an interior view of the Green Room in the White House, painted for the Daily Paintworks Challenge.  The subject was taken from a Google tour of the White House.    Click here to see other entries in the Daily Paint Works White House challenge.  The challenges are a fun way to share and to learn from other artists across the country.

Silver Bowl Tangerines on Magenta

This feels luscious - lots of saturated colors, all reflected in a shiny silver bowl.  The areas of gray and charcoal make the colors more interesting by adding contrast.  I like the shadow in the foreground that is magenta on the pink table cover and turns to blue on the gray table cover. 

Orange Centered Jonquil on Gold SOLD

Another spring jonquil with a gold background and a dark diagonal stripe.  A mostly neutral palette with just touches of saturated color - orange. green, rusty red.  Those neutrals give the saturated colors lots of contrast and make them important.   The jonquils have been blooming for weeks, they're almost over.  Maybe just one or two more paintings.

Jonquil with Diagonal Orange Stripe

The same white jonquil slightly different composition.  I really like the blue background.  Again the painting is mostly blue for dominance.  The orange stripe in the background adds a nice bit of conflict and repeats the orange of the jonquil cup and the warm tones in the stem.

Jonquil on Blue and Turqouoise

The white jonquils with orange centers have opened in the garden.  I was eager for a new color after all the gold daffodils on gold backgrounds so I decided to try blue.  I find my compositions are better when I have color dominance; here, it's a very large piece of blue with just a bit of gold and green black and white.  And I like the turquoise contrasted with cobalt blue. 

Two daffodils Purple tabletop

The gold background is essentially a dark yellow, so this painting is a study in complementary colors - purple and yellow.  I enjoy that the lightest parts of the painting are the highlights in the glass jar. 

Single Daffodil Gold and Green

Another daffodil, and a very limited palette.  Because the colors are analogous,  the painting is very harmonious.  The background is a gradation from medium to dark.  Dark value pushes the pale flower forward while medium value enables lost edges, and keeps the flower from feeling like it's cut out and pasted down on top of the painting

Two Purple Crocuses SOLD

We've had a cold late spring so I got to paint crocuses in April.  These crocuses were moving the whole time I was painting.  Even outdoors they only last a couple of days.   Most of this painting is purple and lavender.  This creates color dominance.  It also makes the gold sing (complement of purple) even though it is not a huge leap in value from the purple.

Daffodil on Gold

The daffodils are blooming like crazy even though we've had rainy cool weather.  I like how sculptural these flowers are and how lovely and translucent the light struck areas.  This was painted with lots of juicy medium - I wiped out a lot of the lights so the whites are thinly painted.  I try to put each color down once, but I always wind up going back into areas, wiping out  and repainting.

Salt Shaker and Spoon on Brown

This salt shaker with its shiny silver top has lots of sparkle and reflection.  So when I added the shiny spoon I decided to simplify the background to keep the composition from being too busy.

Near Dockton SOLD

A sunny view of houses on the beach at Quartermaster Harbor near the Dockton Marina.  The pilings are left from boatyards and drydocks that were built over a hundred years ago.

Garden and Greenhouse in Fall City

Another painting from last August in Fall City Washington.  The day was both sunny and cloudy so there was lots of drama in the gray clouds.  The houses are older on small lots and offer great compositional possibilities.  Because the bushes and trees are blacklit, they are more simplified and massed together.  I had fun getting the perspective of the roofs believable and getting the shadows on the roof to show exactly where the sun was.

Fall City Houses

Painted in Fall City in August during a workshop with Ned Mueller.  A small town with older houses on small lots.   The sun was shining but the clouds were out too.  I liked that almost half the painting was a green lawn, allowing the viewer to "walk in" to the painting

Through the Madronas SOLD

The view from my yard on Maury Island looking west across Quartermaster Harbor towards Vashon Island.  Painted out of doors in late summer.  The sun was bright overhead and we had been having very dry weather.  I was annoyed during my painting by a helicopter buzzing overhead -- I finally paused in my painting and found out that my neighbor had set his yard on fire!

Orange Slices, Silver Bowl on Pink SOLD

This is another  of the 10" x 10" paintings that I worked on for the Vashon Allied Arts Fundraiser Auction.  I painted several so that I would have lots to choose from.  I really like the orange slices and pink table reflected in the silver bowl. It feels like you could reach in and touch that silver bowl and it would be hard and shiny.  But it's just paint!

Orange Slices on Blue SOLD

This is the third painting that I painted as a commission for the Vashon Allied Arts September fundraiser auction.  I like the colors in the tabletop and in the shadow of the orange slices.  The blue goes from very saturated  to very neutral blue.  But it looks blue because it is against orange which is the complement of blue.  I also like the green stripe.

Black Cup Orange Slices on Green SOLD

The second of the three paintings I chose for the Vashon Allied Arts  September fundraiser auction. This time the orange slices are on a piece of glass on top of a green tabletop.  That way I get to paint the reflections and the cast shadows and the green color of the tabletop.  The gray in the background allows me to use a large number of intense colors The piece of calm gray balanced the orange and lavender and gold as well as that vivid lime green. I also like the reflections on the cup.

Paintings of Oranges - Orange Slices on Pink SOLD

Vashon Allied Arts commissioned me to create a work for their annual September fundraiser auction.   I painted several 10" x 10" paintings on the subject of orange slices and then chose three as a triptych.  Painting in a larger format was fun though it was difficult at first.  I like to paint items actual size, not enlarged, so the effect on the composition was to increase the number of orange slices and items that wound up on the canvas. 

Turquoise Plate Yellow Cup Sienna Wall

The same cup stack -- this time I put the turquoise plate on a piece of glass.  The light color under the plate is light bounced around by the glass.  I like the blueish-greenish stripe at the bottom of the painting- the color of the edge of the piece of glass.

Yellow Cup Stack on Glass

Another stack of cups  on a sheet of glass to give more reflections.  I enjoy the limited colors, yellow, black, and white and that hazy yellow gray streak that interrupts the reflection on the glass.