One For Me, One For You, 6x6 Inch Oil Painting by Kelley MacDonald

This painting is for the GirlsJustWannaPaint Challenge, whose topic this month is: Tropical.  It will hang in a show at Thayer Academy this Fall, I hope you visit my Challenge Blog, if you subscribe, you will get the email once a month about our different takes on various subjects.

I think this photo may be a little dark..... will repost tomorrow..

He Loves Me.... 6x12 Inch Oil Painting by Kelley MacDonald

$125 & $10 S&H

Click HERE to Purchase

I haven't painted flowers in a while, and here in New England, we are encountering packets of seeds and bulbs at the market and hardware stores, and at flower shows, etc.  The seed magazines send us into a frenzy of anticipation!  So what is sweeter than a bunch of simple daisies in a blue glass bottle? (BTW, he DOES love you.....)

Chillaxin', 5x7 Inch Oil Painting by Kelley MacDonald

SOLD

Right about now.. the tail end of February, seems like a good time to escape New England.  This looks pretty good to me...  how about you?

So... if I close my eyes, I can almost feel the heat of the tropical sun, smell the sunscreen (remember we used to call it 'suntan lotion'?), hear the lapping of the water against the shore, feel the chill of the cool drink... some soft lively music in the distance.... ahhhhh....  take me away.....

Just One Bite, 6x6 Inch Oil Painting by Kelley MacDonald

SOLD

Well, here's the last of last week's jellies!  This was actually earlier than the other stack of 3 jellies, yes, before they were halfway devoured ;)

I have really been pulling out of the Winter Doldrums!  My classes, both at the Studio and at the Art Club, are chock full of fun, fabulous artists.  I have a zillion ideas for new paintings, and thanks to an artist friend, am VERY close to announcing a new, fun event at my studio.  Set aside a Thursday night or two and grab some good girlfriends, that's all I can say for now... but soon.

I guess just like writing, a cure for a painting block or an artistic block is to JUST KEEP PAINTING.  Because eventually things start seeming exciting again, and there's that swish in your step, or at least in your brush.  I even am tackling organizing the new space with less trepidation.  And it will make people who have recently purchased my paintings THRILLED to know I have finally, finally located the box with the packing tape, so I can put it on the ready-and-waiting boxes.  Feeling sheepish, but there you go, the tape was not exactly where I would have thought. BEHIND me now! :D

In The Pink, 6x6 Inch Oil Painting of a Donut by Kelley MacDonald

$100 & $10 S&H

Click HERE to Purchase

Some days posting is easier than others.  I've been posting, as of this month, for SIX years!  Over a thousand posts over six years may not sound like much, but I think one thing you can say about me is I have grit. :)

In these 6 years I've had 3 computers (really 2 because do you count the one I spilled water on? - actually the CAT spilled water on it.  See... I was spending too much time typing on a keyboard and not enough time petting the cat...) 5 cameras (you have heard the saga of each one) and a lot of different ways to get the image of the painting on the blog.

Now I have an iPhone and take my photos on it.  Trouble and joy of it is I can edit (crop) the photos right ON THE PHONE.  But you realize how SMALL this image is?  I ended up bad-cropping this painting t-h-r-e-e times.  So when I tell my audience at my Blogging Talks (one coming up 1st week of March in Marshfield) that it takes me 5 minutes to post a blog - tonight is the exception to the rule.  It took forEVER.  Crop, email it to myself, re-crop, re-mail it... you get the gist.

Done boring you.  Have a bite of this Strawberry Donut.  I thought you might be getting sick of the jelly. 

Birthday Pug, 6x6 Oil Painting by Kelley MacDonald

$100 & $10 S&H

Click HERE to Purchase

This week my little pal Paco turned 4.  FOUR years old!  Hard to believe, and oh, how time flies.  For such an alpha-pup, he has turned out to be almost mello - and sweeter than sweet.  Pugs are very intuitive, and they are so attached to their people that it's painful for them to be apart from their people.  So, lucky for both of us he can come to 'work' with me!  He's mostly very good.

And I have 5 more boxes unpacked in my studio.  95 more to go.  :)

SOLD

Another do-nutty kind of day!  I feel like I really let loose with the jelly bellies in these two open donuts.  When you first *ahem* 'tear' them open the jelly might sit in there, but as time goes by gravity pulls it out... not that in real life it would get that way too often!  

Sorting through the studio, coming upon old studies and paintings from a while ago, it's like a trip down memory lane.  But I try to not get too distracted, as Saturday is coming, and my students have been PROMISED a more put-away work space!

Many thanks to the patient people who purchased paintings during the move.  Everything is more or less located now, in terms of packing materials, and things are on their way to their new homes. :)

Double Decker Donuts, 6x6 Inch Oil Painting of Donuts by Kelley Macdonald

SOLD

Ahhhhhh.... donuts... it's going to be THAT kind of week, I think! :D

Been a long time...

Now For Something Completely Different

"Angels Watch Over Her"

6x6 inches

Well, it's about time I published the collage I did for my Girls Just Wanna Paint Challenge for January.  I was flummoxed over a collage, remembering my really bad attempts in high school.  So I took a painting I'd done a long time ago, and touched it up, and cut and tore some paper for it and voila!  

The studio move is over... and now just the sifting and more tossing out is ongoing!  I had a couple of new students in my Saturday Class (which is ongoing, and on a drop-in basis, just email me for info), and they were Angels themselves for putting up with the chaos. "I'll make everyone tea.... oh, wait, water boiling... where's the tea? Where are the cups? :)  It was better than this photo by the time class started, and will be MUCH better next week!

Snow Shadows, 6x6 Inch Acrylic Painting By Kelley MacDonald

$100 & $10 S&H

Click HERE To Purchase

Ahhhh... my favorite part of winter - the shadows on the snow from the trees.  And lately.... we've had snow!  So much that I couldn't even think about trying to find a place to park at my studio, till today.  (So I'm not unpacked, really, at all)  I've been painting away, though, once we got our heat back, and this is a painting I'd been working on, actually, for a while.. the snow and the shadows have many, many layers of paint.  I like the abstract quality, with no actual tree in the painting... just the shadows.

And, well, it's Valentine's Day, (at least for another hour or so) and I want to wish you all a Happy one!  In my class at the Providence Art Club yesterday we worked, again, on values.  I introduced them to my friend Laurel Daniel and her work, and showed them one of her exercises on values, and they we all did them... after which, we painted our subject, keeping in mind that, as artist Peggi Kroll Roberts says "Value does all the work, and Color gets all the credit."  Check out these two wonderful artists!

And here was my demo, it is a 4x4 painting of pink martini's - email me if interested, it's $65

AND who should drop in on our class but....

this guy.  He was very nice, and apparently is a native Rhode Islander!

Little Gould Island, 6x8 Inches, Oil Painting by Kelley MacDonald

I did this on a linen pad, and you can see there are still staples on the right.  I just had the urge to paint the little island that greets me every morning, and despite my husband's feelings that "nobody wants to see a painting of that island", I felt the need to paint it.  And an hour after I painted it, the sky became steely dark and the water was light gray and it started to rain, giving it a  whole new look.  I just may do some studies of this, for me.  

The practice of doing a whole, if small, painting every day is what the whole Daily Painters movement is all about - it's good exercise for your artist's mind.

Funny thing, I may have told you, the land mass in the back of the little island is Aquidneck Island, where Newport is, (further down).  On the other side of Aquidneck is another little island, also named Gould.  Those Goulds must have been something, to get TWO islands named after them!  Or, was it a case of the left side of Aquidneck not knowing what the right side was doing?

:)

Burro, 6x6 Inch Oil Painting by Kelley MacDonald

$100 & $10 S&H

Click HERE to Purchase

It's been almost two weeks since I posted.  Have I been painting?  SURE!  But there have been 3 bouts (yes, 3 different viruses!) of sickness, a couple of sad events in the family AND I moved out of one studio and into another.  Oh... and a blizzard.  Where we were living in a house with no fireplace or gas heat or stove, and the temps hovered somewhere below 40 for a couple of days.  

But just before the storm, in the midst of the crazy piles in the new studio, I pulled out this image of a burro in a field, and found my paints... and was blissful.  I forgot about the cartloads of kleenex and soup, the sadnesses and everything else, and painted with abandon.  I love burros.  And mules.  And equines of all stripe.  I think I should paint them more.  But for now... here's my little burrow.  I hope he makes you smile!