Mother’s Day

Here’s the latest entry in my Burano series–an old woman admiring flowers on the windowsill of her home. I’m calling this one Mother’s Day. As always, the colorful buildings of Burano were a joy to paint, especially the yellow paper around the flowers and the bright, bright building, which was a combination of opera (the hottest pink), madder lake (a perfect lipstick color), cadmium red light (bright orange), and dioxazine violet (for shadows). I completed this 21″x29″ inch watercolor in six days and probably got a slight suntan from it.

Here’s a detail of the window.

This or any other painting can be purchased on my watercolor paintings page.

The woman’s face is about the size of a quarter, so my size 0 brush came in handy. Whenever I use that brush, I think of a professor in college who told me that the best thing that ever happened to him was when his professor took away his tiny brushes. His work is beautiful and certainly looser, spashier and watercolor-ier than mine, so I gave it a shot. I spent my twenties without my tiny brushes, but I always felt like I was missing a particularly deadly gun in my painting arsenal. My tiny brushes give my paintings the “how in the hell did she do that?” factor, so until I decide to change my style in a major way, I’m keeping them.

I’m excited about the work I plan to complete over the next few months. At the end of August and throughout September, I’m going to have a show at Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri (it pays to have connections). I already have enough paintings to fill 75% of the gallery so far, and I’m going to devote the next four months to creating new paintings to fill the rest of the space. Like Mother’s Day, I’m hoping each one will be completed in a week or so.

It’s probably pretty non-artistic of me to say this, but I love a good deadline.