Sunflowers in Purple Jar, 6x6 Inches, Oil

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This is my little purple jar again, with the 'swan song' little sunflowers from the garden.  I was interested in the reflections on the jar and in all the yellows in the flowers, and in the transition from cool to warm in the background.  The board that the jar is on is a foam board, which is holding up another still life set up (liquor bottles - see them next week), so it was a platform... see below:

(except, yikes, I had kicked the flood light and it swiveled away from the flowers...)

Wish me luck tomorrow night, at North River Art Society, with my Blogging Workshop  - I'm pretty excited about it!

The Last Of The Sunflowers, 6x6 Original Oil Painting by Kelley MacDonald

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I just love sunflowers, and these are the last from my garden.  Not that I planted them, but last year I had a bird feeder along my fence.  This year my fence was lined with sunflowers!  Trying to keep it loose, but think I need more practice at that.  Yeah.  That and relaxing!

Sunflower Riot, 6x12 oil on Bristol Board

Taking my cue from Mary Sheehan Winn's Blog (see link to the right) where she talks about travelling far and wide for subject matter, when it's 'all' right in front of you, I went into the garden yesterday morning and plunked myself down in front of the sunflowers planted by the birds. See, if you feed the birds sunflower seeds, they repay you by planting some of them. These are growing on the perimeter of the tomato garden - perfect placement! Yesterday had a beautiful blue sky and I loved the blue I found in my paintbag - Horizon Blue by Holbein. I don't remember buying it but I'm in love with the color. Being New England, today couldn't bee more different, with the morning fog swirling around in violent wind, whitecaps on the river - these pretty sunflowers are bent to the ground! Ah, well, they had a lot of life yesterday, and I think I 'got' it.

Sunflowers, 6x6 Acrylic

I've probably been going on and on about how preoccupied I am with my upcoming show, and eviction from our studio building... I feel it's been interfering with my painting in general. Today I happened upon David Darrow's Blog (just google it!) and he was talking about a friend of his who was 'blocked'. His solution was to stop worrying about painting and just paint - plan on doing some crappy work, but do it joyfully, and see what happens. Well, I tried it this morning... and this is what happened! I'm really liking how loose it came out, and I like it on my French table runner with the coral & blue border. Thank you, David!