Maine Rocks, 6x12 acrylic painting by Kelley MacDonald

NFS

Right about now I'm visiting Pemmaquid Light House.  These rocks were painted with a cast of thousands (felt like) standing behind me.  A big bus load of people emptied out and they thought this was part of the Tour. :)

Well, many left when I painted the whole canvas magenta.  ("She doesn't know what she's doing....")  And the way I painted it, I blocked in huge abstract shapes at first.  Then I went in and added depth, detail, strong values, color.  When I look at this I can hear the pounding of the tide on the rocks.  Yes, Maine Rocks. xo

Glow At Bristol Harbor, 12x12 Inch Acrylic Plein Air Painting

ONE more from the Paint Bristol weekend!  This was so fun to paint and I had a blast with the many layers of blues and greens in the very 'active' water!  The end of the day brings a pinkish glow over Popasquash....  how lucky am I to get to paint in beautiful locations, both near and far?  Again I will honor the $325 price from the weekend for a week.  Email me if interested at kcareymac@hotmail.com

I start my class next week at the Providence Art Club.  We're calling the class 'Small Format Painting' for 2 reasons... so many artists think they can't paint 'small'... and after we work together, they find that they can work as small as 4x4 inches - and STILL come out with a compelling paintings.  Painting small lets you finish - soup-to-nuts, solving all the problems a painting requires, and the more you do it the easier it gets.  Also we dropped the 'Daily Painting' from the title of the class because so many people had no idea that Daily means... well, daily, or even almost daily.  :)

I look forward to teaching again, and having my own class at my studio on Saturdays.  That will start in a couple of weeks, always a hoot.  Always great people.  ALWAYS a lesson learned.

Blue Boat, 6x6 Inch Oil Painting by Kelley MacDonald

This was, I think, the first plein air painting done this trip in Maine.   The first morning there I decided to do the obligatory 'boat painting'.  I mean, we were in Maine, right?  But boats are notorious.  They spin with the wind, they drive away, they get filled up with lobster traps as you look... but right off the bat I felt I had nailed the boat and reflections.  I was packing up my brushes and I heard a motor start up and, you guessed it.... this blue boat drove off!  I think I might paint this in a much larger format - or do you think it would be too much 'boat'?

Message In The Clouds, 30x40 Inch Original Oil Painting by Kelley MacDonald

30x40 inch oil painting. (LOOK how tiny my initials on the right look!)

One of my favorite scenes, which I personally witnessed and can produce the photo - I have painted this before but never this big.  The paint is thick especially in the cloud area, and when I look at the water it brings me right back to the beach I was walking that day.

It was a difficult time.  I didn't know how I could manage more... more... more.. you've been there?  Well, in a prayer, I asked for a sign... a sign to help me gather strength, a sign of love and support... and I looked up, and no kidding....  It looked impossible.  All of a sudden the beach was empty (it was September, but there had been other walkers besides me) and I stood, slack-jawed... and thought... "Yup, I can do it..."  and I did, and came through it.

This will be at my Open Studio - along with fun little paintings which are inspired by the foam edges of the gentle laps of the water nearby.  They are coated with resin, which makes a rock-hard-glassy barrier.. and makes the colors just sing!

If you follow my blog, and come to my Open Studio - TELL ME or the person at the 'desk', and I will enter you in a raffle for a FREE resin-foam/bubbles painting! (you'll just have to put your address on your entry so I can ship it - also free - to the winner, hopefully YOU.)

Example of Foam/Bubble painting before the resin coating:

Last year I had Blog friends from every state in New England, and more - it was such a great thing!

Good LUCK!

Morning View, 5x7 Acrylic

Yesterday morning I was all set up on the porch for this soft view down the Sakonnet River....

ALSO I didn't realize that at the Pembroke Arts Fesitval Mary Sheehan Winn (whom you all know from my Blog comments) has a lovely painting, too!

Cape Cod Bliss, 14x18 Acrylic

Yesterday I went to the Cape with Denise Zompa and Phyllis Adams to drop off entries for the Cape Cod Juried Show.  We figured it was so gorgeous we should paint while we were there. I amazed them with my organizational skills at the Art Association drop off (I had printed out the information on all my entries and had everything neatly wrapped in bubble wrap, labeled, with my business card taped to the back, and remembered everything I'd need - a first for me!  HowEVER when we got to the painting spot I'd forgotten my BRUSHES, and my PALETTE.  Kind of tough to paint like that.  Fortunately I'd found an old half hardened brush in the bottom of my bag, and I had a 6x8 canvas still in it's wrapper, so with the borrowed brushes from Phyllis, using the canvas as my palette, I was able to cobble together a painting.  Still felt discombobulated, though.  But the painting was about the sky and the water, the feeling of the day.  Hopefully that comes though!

Pirate's Cove Plein Air, 8x10 oil

This morning was the very first Monday Morning Painters session, and, it being overcast, 39 degrees, with 20+mph winds, I was the only idiot who showed up.  So I stuck it out in case anyone else came, and first I painted the little island in the cove, only to realize that it looked very, very much like my Gould Island paintings which I could do literally from inside my dining room, so.... I wiped it off.  I was wearing 5 layers, a fleece hat, a hood, thin gloves under my winter gardening gloves.... and it was still freezing.  The wind was rocking my CRV and threatening to drag my eassel into the water by catching the grocery bag tied to the side for paint rags...  NEVERTHELESS I soldiered on, and decided to paint the old quarry buildings across the cove.  Finished it with 2 warm-up breaks for thermos coffee (thank you, Tim) in the car... so here it is.  I don't know that I'll get an actual Daily Painting done, it's kind of  a crazy day, so this will possibly be the substitute!

Hull Sunsets, 6x6 Oil

I once lived in a beautiful town called Hull, MA. It's a peninsula that stretches up from the South Shore of Boston into Boston Harbor. If you've ever flown out of Logan Airport going south, you could probably see it's unique shape from the window as you pass over it. Because it's such a narrow finger of land, ocean on one side, bay on the other, and it's low, you get incredible light throughout the day. But the most magical time is sunset, when literally if you look west you see something like I've painted above, and if you look east you see the reflected light in the sky over the Atlantic, all pink, purple and teal. I've never been anyplace like it.

Now, I've been fortunate enough to be commissioned to paint 6 small Hull sunsets. I've been working from photos, and if anybody ever tells you they did an entire painting from 'life' when doing a sunset... be suspicious! This moments are fleeting! The first two, shown here, are complete, with the exception of the grass, etc. that blew on the wet paint. That will flake off when dry. I'm mid-way through the third, and will post #3 and #4 together. So these are not for sale, although I'd take one more commission on similar ones before the holidays.

Boathouse Road, 6x12, Oil

SOLD

This is a 'late' post - I painted this on Thursday of last week in Westport on Boathouse Row, - a gorgeous day in a gorgeous spot. I'm getting bored with the little landscapes, though. I feel the need to do some 'color shots', and play a little with design. We'll see what comes through. Sand and sea and sky and trees... nice and all, but it's failing the 'So What' question. What do you think?

Little Gould Island, 6x6 Oil

This was actually painted this winter, before Blogging entered my life! It's one of many paintings I've done of Little Gould Island, which sits right across from my house. I've painted it in fog, snow, sunny weather, sunsets (no sunrises yet, lazy thing that I am) and it still calls for more paintings of it. I think of Monet, and how his wife maybe said to herself "Not MORE waterlily paintings!" I understand it! Anyway I spent yesterday painting in Boston's North End, one acrylic and one oil - I'll feature them later today on http://welcometomyartworld.blogspot.com/.

Bass River, 6x12 Oil

SOLD

This was painted on my recent trip to the Cape. It was that magical moment just as the sun sets and the glow is caught in the sails of the boats. I know a lot of people won't paint this colorful moment because 'nobody will believe it', but this moment at dawn and dusk are the times of day that make me feel most alive and connected to everything else in the world, corny, I know. So actually I dont' CARE if anyone ever buys this type of painting from me, I do it for myself. I did a workup of this on a sleepless night last weekend, in an 8x16 format in acrylic - you can see it on my studio blog : http://welcometomyartworld.blogspot.com.

Tugboat on the Sakonnet, Acrylic on Board 4x5

This is a tiny painting, but when I photographed it, it enlarged it and shows all the 'grain' of the canvas! The other morning just before 7 a.m. I was having coffee, looking down the river, and I saw this red tug tearing past Gould Island. It was very heavy air, very moist, and Aquidneck Island was barely visable in the background. This is one of those pieces that looks better in real life, the photo doesn't do it justice. Oh, well.