Green Bowl and Oranges, still life 8x10 Acrylic on canvas

I think that every artist feels very happy and surprised when they produce one or several paintings in his or her collection that they truly feel is one of their best works. I feel that way every time I look at this painting. As I look at it, I'm hoping that I did everything right in achieving that certain professional quality that one sees in paintings that hang in galleries. However, one question that I've been struggling with since I finished this piece and that is, can I reproduce that same quality in my future paintings. It's not that I haven't given the same care and attention to my past creative endeavors but once in a while you feel you've created something special that your really pleased with and you want to do it over again by retracing your steps. Using cool and warm tones in this painting, I hope it's balanced as well as having a pleasing composition.  I've started a new small painting similar to this one, again using a white table cloth and painting it from life. I'm hoping it will end up looking the same too.  I'll keep my fingers crossed. 

"Who's been eating my apple?" Still life, 16x20 Acrylic on canvas

Whenever January rolls in and a new year begins, I'm already thinking about Spring and Summer. Reminding me of warm weather, flower gardens and just sitting on the deck, enjoying a cool drink. And just as the warm weather ends, later in the year, I'm thinking about Autumn, it's warm colors, eating apples and knowing that the flowers in the garden will eventually fall and die.  A kind of cycle in our lives that we all adhere to. There's a lot of symbolism here. But what I want to show as well is the style of this painting, which borders in my view, between Surrealism and Realism. I wanted to show the space around the objects, drawing attention to each of them. Reflected light, shadows caused by the sun or other light source and an overall airiness represented by the openness of the sky. These are elements that I'm most attracted to and hope that I've captured it in this painting. Hope you agree.



Bowl with Lemons, still life 16x20 Acrylic on canvas

For my first post for this year, I chose this still life painting of lemons in a white bowl. A few weeks ago, I began working on this painting in my home studio, where I created the set up on a small table. On that day, it was sunny outside and my studio was filled with lots of light coming in through the windows. The light cast shadows on the objects. I was particularly interested in doing this painting because I could also see the colorful reflected light inside the bowl that was caused by the lemons. Almost the entire painting is a series of thin glazes of paint, which is something that I don't always do in my paintings but now I think I'll be doing that more often. I used Golden's Acrylic Glazing Liquid (Gloss), which seems to make the colors pop and it extends the open time of acrylics. I got the idea to use the glazing liquid by watching an artist instructor use it in a workshop that I attended last year. I was recently asked by a friend, as to which part of the painting was the most difficult to paint. That would be the bowl I said. The bowl took the most time just to get the shape down but I hope the painting itself with it's bright and bold colors still looks very nice. And just for the record, I favor the color blue very much, can you tell!