Painting with Sophie

"Penny on the Porch"

My 9 year old grandniece Sophie, who I painted at Christmas playing her violin, is visiting for a few days and today we spent part of the afternoon painting. Sophie was a great student, working from a sketch she had made earlier of our dog Penny and creating a composition with flowerpots on our back porch. When she started this painting she commented that everything was a dark color and lightened the blue bed to make the black shape of the dog really stand out. Pretty smart, huh?
In the studio together, I looked around and decided that she was by far the most interesting thing I could paint so here's the oil sketch- as far as I got.


Now it's time to go make homemade pasta together and find some ripe tomatoes and basil in the garden to go with it.
Dennis and I are going to a wedding at the coast and will be gone for a few days. More when I return.

Star Gulch Ranch

'Star Gulch Ranch" 16" x12" oil on canvas $199

Three posts ago I showed you a painting done at Terry Miura's plein air workshop and said I would post another when I finished it. Here it is. I'm noticing a zig-zag composition appearing in all these latest paintings. Do you see it?

Oregon Coast at Smith River

Oregon Coast at Smith River 16" x 12" oil on canvas $250

We have been back for a few days and the contrast between the cool, overcast coast and the sunny, hot weather here makes me feel like summer has finally arrived. We've even harvested a few ripe tomatoes! After such a cool spring and early summer we were beginning to wonder if it would ever get toasty here, like it usually does. The folks at the coast said their summer lasted about two weeks and fresh tomatoes never cross their minds.

When we left here the air was full of smoke from all the forest fires so we welcomed the clean air from the ocean and felt blessed that the usual wind was not whipping up the sand. I was able to set up my easel, at the top of the path leading to the beach from our motel, and peacefully paint all morning without fear of the wind upsetting everything... or shifting shadows, or sun glare on my wet canvas! I was struck by how vibrant the yellow flowers were on such a gray day and so they became the "star" of my composition. Below are a few shots of the painting's progression which show how I had to mute things down all around the yellow in order to get it to "pop".

OK. enough computer time! I'm off to a "hot day" task of mucking out our pond before the water lilies are suffocated.

Ashland Sky

"Ashland Sky" 41/2" x 61/2" oil on paper, matted $98

A few nights ago we drove the 50 minutes it takes us to get to Ashland to attend the opening of a friend's show. She was in Terry's plein air workshop this summer and it was fun to see a group of her landscapes together.

The sun began to set while we were in town, turning the sky into a riot of purple and orange against a mild blue background. Both Dennis and I stopped at this wall and commented on what a bold image it made; I kept it in my head until the next day and did this little painting from memory. I guess this one would classify as a city-scape.

We are going to the beach for a few days so I will share what I do there when we return.

Back to Painting!

"Applegate River at Star Gulch" 9"x12" oil on canvas $125

It's been over two months since you have heard from me, but it has not been two months since I've painted. In June Terry Miura came to our studios at HUMMINGBIRD to present a plein air oil painting workshop and I participated as a student. I'm not really interested in becoming a landscape painter per se, but I often use landscape in my work and was happy to get some instruction on how to do it better. We live in such a beautiful place it's hard to resist wanting to paint what you see, and painting outdoors is very fun and challenging- almost a sport in some ways. Terry wrote a complete run-down on the workshop so I won't go into it here (Thanks Terry!), but a great time was had by all and I did three paintings. The first I sold without photographing it, the above is the second and I'll post the third as soon as the glaze dries.

More about what has been occupying my time in posts to come.

Beach Fires & Unconsciousness

Hello out there-
I said "you may not hear from me for a while" and it has been over a month!

The show in Portland went well and we came home to the joy of spring gardening and the sorrow of having to deal with a rental property we own and need to sell. It's been inhabited by too many animals whose owners were unconscious to the damage being done. As we have been cleaning and mowing and trying to decide how to best present this property, I have been thinking a lot about unconsciousness -- ours, the renter's, our property manager's, the country's, the world's. There is plenty of time to ruminate when you are swabbing the decks, but Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth has been helping me make some sense of it.

"Beach Fires" 6x8" oil on canvas SOLD

It's not a new theme for me. Last fall I made this painting of people on the beach enjoying a little campfire, oblivious of the raging wildfire that is about to descend on them. I think this image has power and intend to do a larger painting from it, where it will be easier to see the people on the beach and I can really get into swabbing all the color around.

If you, or anyone you know, might be interested in a lovely 3 acre piece of land in the country but close to stores, school, etc. , with an optional fixer-upper double-wide mobile, click here.

At the Window

"At the Window" 8" x 6" oil on canvas SOLD Thanks, A.M.

My daughter shot the photo below, in the bathroom mirror of our motel room, on the last trip we took together. She likes the work of Edward Hopper and maybe saw something of his mood in me standing at the window. Someone once commented that my work reminded them of Hopper (those paintings are on my web site, not on this blog), which I considered a supreme compliment, and Rachel's photo inspired me to move that way once again. I include it to show once more how a painting can come from photo without copying it.


My husband, Dennis Meiners, and I are getting ready to participate in our 25th year at Ceramic Showcase in Portland April 25-27. Dennis won Best of Show at this big event last year so his Falling Horse sculptural teapot graces all this year's publicity for the show. Since I no long make ceramic sculpture I show my paintings as canvas giclee prints mounted on ceramic plates which form their frames. Sounds pretty hokey, but they are not and my collectors really like them. Every year I resist doing this a little more. Truthfully, there's not much I'd rather do than just paint (and sell them so I can make more).

Soo...you may not hear from me for a while. We will return on April 29 and I will head for the garden, which will need much attention.