We love watching the sunset slowly sweep across the wide spans of landscape from the view out our windows in our house on top of a hill overlooking the hills of Kentucky, the Ohio River, the city of Cincinnati alongside it, and all the bridges over and between them. From our view, in the wintertime around Christmas, the sun sets far left of the city into the boundless, beautiful horizon of the rolling hilltops of Kentucky and then incrementally makes its daily set slowly sweeping across the entire landscape and then the whole cityscape until it reaches into the hills of Mount Adams to the northeast of the downtown Cincinnati skyline. It is at that point setting over-top Mt. Adams where it reaches its farthest extension in the right corners of our window frames before it turns around and starts heading back to set over the whole length of the city and then into the hills of Kentucky again. Today, this June 20th, marks that furthermost Summer Solstice sunset over charming Mount Adams on the edge of the city that will cast a beautiful setting before slowly making its way back over all the hills to the other side of the broad landscape frame. It is still pretty amazing to me that throughout the year and all within our view, from the pivotal point of the Winter Solstice to the pivotal point of the Summer Solstice, we can literally see the world turn on its tilted axis, day by day and season by season, by watching the sun not only rise and fall but also by watching the wings of its sunsets move from side to side through our wide window panes and across the earthly landscape as well as across the ever-changing skies. Keeping an eye on the sky is my kind of entertainment and observing the wonderful, colorful sunset is my choice of a screen-free daily evening show. At its midpoint, during the Spring and Fall Equinoxes, from our view looking directly west, we find the sun setting with its rainbow of light in alignment with the Cincinnati Bengals’ stadium as it descends and sets just behind that city landmark on the west side of the cityscape around St. Patrick’s Day in March and then again around the Bengals’ home opener in September as it returns in that direction dressed in the fiery orange tones that the fall season brings. Below are a series of process pictures of an extra large ( 6' x 5’ ) painting inspired by the view out the windows of our home now that I did eight summers ago in the tighter quarters of our old home's makeshift studio space while in the process of packing-up our old house while our hill-top house we live in now was just finishing being built and just before we moved in. Now, after eight years and despite the fact that no painting or repeated snapping of photos can truly capture the sights or sunsets, I can certainly say that my anticipation then of the daily views and evening light show in the sky continues to shine above and beyond my expectations. Year after year, along with the clarity of observing the celestial cycle, another parallel reality that I consistently find pretty awesome is how green and expansive all the continually rolling hills are and how close they come-up just to the edge of the city. From our sights it appears as an infinite horizon of just layers and layers of green hill after green hill with the cityscape, like the fictitious Emerald City, sitting in a little pocket between them all. Happy Summer and Happy Solstice!! And finally a bittersweet memory I just came across from 8 years ago of our old dog, Moxie, who was always by my side in all the various processes of my creations and paintings and just about everything else I did in our old house who now looks down on us from The Rainbow Bridge. ...and here's another warm memory incorporating the scene in one of my Christmas Card paintings for a holiday season a few years back when our hill-top house was brand new. Read more about my following the sun artwork on my “About” page:
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Below is painting I made on a large 2’ x 3’ canvas for my son’s and his girlfriend’s apartment. The creative process of the improvisational free-form approach to painting the composition at times had me thinking of the late, popular artist Bob Ross being that it is a landscape I simply made-up in my imagination as I went along creating with thoughts along the lines of, “A bright, happy cloud there, A touch of sparkle on the water here… ” while keeping in mind the sentiment of impressions and memories of our family’s Rocky Mountain vacation home where we continue to spend seasons vacationing together ever since the days when my son was very young. As a pop culture icon, Bob Ross is known for his thinking out loud insights and commentary as he works. Much of the time he expresses painting thoughts like mine about making a cloud or adding a reflective sparkle on the water ( …often adding the adjective “happy” before the name of an element. ) Sometimes his thoughts are expansive as he creatively expresses the recognition of the universal nature of things or of the heartfelt importance of relationships; other times his thoughts are pointed in a more self-reflective way often with a fun-loving sense of humor. Here are a few of the many true-to-life quotes I picked-out of an article titled “Happy Little Quotes” which lists a collection of Bob Ross comments noted from various episodes of his old television show “The Joy of Painting” where he is as much admired for his words of wisdom and his peaceful and playful optimism expressed in his distinctively calm voice during the process of creating as he is for his demonstrated profound skills at painting landscapes: "I guess I’m a little weird. I like to talk to trees and animals. That’s okay though; I have more fun than most people.” ~ Bob Ross "Talk to the tree, make friends with it.” ~ Bob Ross "Look around. Look at what we have. Beauty is everywhere—you only have to look to see it." ~ Bob Ross "It’s hard to see things when you are too close. Take a step back and look.” ~ Bob Ross "In nature, dead trees are just as normal as live trees.” ~ Bob Ross "Let's build a happy little cloud." ~ Bob Ross "It’s so important to do something every day that will make you happy.” ~ Bob Ross "Don’t forget to tell these special people in your life just how special they are to you.” ~ Bob Ross …. And along with my own thoughts of “bright happy clouds” and “sparkling waters” in the tone of Bob Ross, I will add to my collection of quotes and to my artwork itself my personal wishes which this painting brings for Love, Peace, and Happiness in all the places that we may go. ~ With Love Always from Mom. The mountains have continued to bring inspiration to me through the years like in this painting I made for our Christmas cards many years ago when our sons were in grade school. In addition to the continued inspiration found in mountain landscapes, my thoughts are also bringing to mind other posts I have made about Bob Ross that also touches on the previous blog posted here about the subject of bobbleheads. See: “Pieces in the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum” Here is a screenshot of a post from years ago recalling such Bob Ross and bobblehead inspirations that I remember sharing on my Cincinnati Reds & Bengals Art Facebook page of Bob Ross posed as a Cincinnati Reds bobblehead: While in the process of writing this particular blog and recalling the Reds Bob Ross bobblehead, my son happened to share a photo that coincidentally continued to tie my stream of themes together. The photo is a capture he shared while on one of his Rocky Mountain trips this winter that displays his ever growing life-long love for the mountains just before painting a fresh layer of snow on the slopes with his skis while sporting a T-shirt with some old-school Reds love (Larkin #11) just like Bob Ross is sporting in the baseball collector’s piece pictured above. Here are a couple more paintings of some snowy mountain love on top of the love of trees and animals that Bob Ross mentions in the quotes I listed which includes my son’s Bernedoodle, Gigi, who has a good amount of Bernese Mountain Dog in her blood and is as sweet as can be. The painting of Gigi is a gift I made for Christmas 2020 and the picture is from “The Joys Found in 2020” which has some of my dog paintings with pictures of both of my sons’ dogs that they each got that year. Process Pictures A few pictures of my relaxed process of finding my way through the springtime landscape painting. ( This large canvas sat in my studio for months where I pulled it out every now and then. Now as I put together a camera roll of pictures, I see how each approach brought added colors and perspectives, currents and forms. ) Years ago I was contacted by the founders of The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin about their interest in my bobblehead painting of “The Big Red Machine”, and I supplied a piece of my artwork for their collection. This past week I was asked by the Director of The Bobblehead Museum if I could answer a few questions about my piece for a profile they have interest in doing about the artwork in the museum. I felt that they were good questions that were posed that were worth taking time to reflect upon. Below are the inquiries and some of my thoughts: Questions: I wonder if you can tell me why you chose to depict these players as bobbleheads? Do you have any special memories or attachment to bobbleheads? My Answers & Reflections: The idea to paint “The Big Red Machine” as an interpretive piece of artwork to look like an imagined mosaic and the idea to represent the players in the picture as bobbleheads came almost simultaneously. Why depict these historic ball players as bobbleheads? That is a good question which I know I could answer in many different ways, but I think that essentially it was the concept of piecing things together that influenced my inspiration to imagine a painting of bobbleheads. The concept of piecing things together and the consideration of the way a mosaic is created by taking distinctive characteristics of various different objects and assembling them to be integrated together to create the wholeness of a new object is partly what lead to my inspiration to choose to use a collection of bobbleheads of a team of my childhood baseball heroes and make a complete picture of what is famously known as “The Great Eight” or with Sparky Anderson added, “The Big Red Machine”. In this integrative study of mine, by representing this team of ball players as bobbleheads, to a good degree I was recognizing that conceptually I was objectifying the individuals as figures to be broken down into parts and pieces so that I could do the work of imagined mosaic creating by arranging the pieces of each form to create the form of another bigger piece. With this understanding that a mosaic is made by putting together varying objects, it seemed fitting to me then that in the process of completing my painting, my objectification of the figure pieces be done in a spirited way of creating by playing with the animated athletes as a collection of dolls. Aside from the playful fun of creating with a collection of bobblehead dolls, the more inspirational part of these imaginings of a mosaic formed from the images of baseball player bobbleheads can be found in the colorfulness expressed in these figures. To me the colorfulness found in using bobbleheads to paint a picture allowed me to not only express the bright energy of these Major League legends, but it is also allowed me to depict the meaningfulness that the mosaic found artistic completeness through the distinct form and ethnically diverse full range of color found through each individual bobblehead image that when put together collectively in one united piece represents a vibrant picture of what American World Champions look like. I expressed more of these reflections on American ideals, diversity, and championship baseball here in my blog “Colorful Success” where I also listed some more of my projects and artistic studies through the subject of baseball and some of its best and most highlighted players that I knew from growing up and watching them play for my hometown. “Colorful Success” On this MLK Holiday Weekend in 2017, I will share one of my baseball art prints that I created four Januarys ago. It is a piece of art that I list in my Etsy shop as “Cincinnati Reds Big Red Machine Painted Bobblehead Mosaic” and it has grown to be my best selling print that sends me to the post office regularly for deliveries of continued incoming orders. My husband will clearly reason that part of the great sales success with my “Big Red Machine” art is because, as he says, “They never lose.” ; but, for me, the attraction and colorful beauty of this art subject has more historical meaning. As a child growing up in my hometown of Cincinnati in the 1970’s, this team of spirted ballplayers helped provide for me not only an understanding of an organization that my country clearly valued, but it also provided an example of what my country looks and acts like. It was through this team that I came to recognize and see what I was being taught in school at the time - - That the United States is a colorful “Melting Pot” comprised of people coming from diverse heritages and various nations around the world; and that, like “The Big Red Machine”, it is a collection of unique people finding common ground to gather for the sake of exercising their individual talents and visions as part of a unified whole. For this group of baseball players, it was through such obvious diversity and, of course, recognition that everybody plays a part and that the perspective of each position is needed, that this team was able to show itself as having the strength to become a legend worth celebrating. For me, as a ball playing eight-year-old in 1975, this collection of World Series champs of “America’s Pastime” represented a symbolic picture of my colorful country, The United States. This January, more than ever, I have grown to not take these idealistic views formed in my childhood for granted. I still admire "The Big Red Machine" and will forever celebrate the colorfulness of its success. On this day now in the middle of November in 2023, when reviewing this picture to think about the questions asked, I once again see how I was identifying my connection to it by recognizing that to some degree we all want to be like winners who can rise above loss, or elimination, or conflict, or struggle. Or maybe it could be that at times any one of us looks to envision a good team to be a part of or to be there to help shine light on and support for his or her cause, or spirit, or life even; but the reality often known is that conditions do not always reflect the glossy shininess of encapsulated spirit and vitality in the concrete way that this collection of triumphant “Big Red Machine” bobblehead collector’s pieces can. I’m sure that on another level this hopeful fun and pretend glorification that bobbleheads can bring was always another force behind my creation of this picture of repeated sole survivors of back-to-back Major League Baseball seasons so many years ago. In the same way that a child may play with a gathering of dolls or toys to project and create an image of a dreamed-up ideal, or maybe have them to represent a collective symbol of victors who were able to overcome and conquer adversity, or simply just take them to create a scene of figures in a mission accomplished, I similarly used bobblehead pieces of these solid World Series Champs to put together an enduring picture of imagined heroism. Find the “Colorful Success” blog with links to many more baseball pieces and reflections here: “Colorful Success” …And find additional links to baseball artwork including more bobblehead teams in these blogs: “My Wire-to-Wire Summer with Twelve Stars and A Piece of American History” See another Reds bobblehead for the famous painter Bob Ross in the next blog: “A Bright Happy Cloud There, A Touch Of Sparkle On The Water Here” I also more recently did another piece about toy figurines found in the blog: “Canvas #12: Six Elements Plus Six Green Figurines” During this season I often hear comments about how Christmas seems to come earlier and earlier every year even starting as early as Halloween time. I guess that is why the word “Hallothanksmas” was created and continues to grow more and more popular. The expression “Happy Hallothanksmas” of course suggests that the Christmas season and its theming and marketing is now wrapped in with all the end of the year holidays starting in the early fall making Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas one big *Hallo-Thanks-Mas* feast. In some certain ways, “Happy Hollothanksmas” may be a fitting expression for me this year because though it is just nearing All Hallow’s Eve, Christmas is where my mind is. …And before I start seeing and hearing exclamations like “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” as the holiday season rolls in fast with accumulating *To Do* lists, parties and travel plans, I’m finding a little patch of space & time now to do one more piece in my art project that I explained here: Is It Bigger Than A Breadbox? ~ "TV Land", "Saturn", "December", and "Parrot Wallpaper". Of my ongoing collection of numbered canvases, this Canvas #15 is only the second one that I have done this year with the other one ( Canvas #14 ) painted back in the beginning of the year in January 2023. I note the timing of these canvas additions to this project because this piece is partly inspired by past reflections on 2023 and thoughts of a new year coming after the series of holidays on the horizon. In terms of calendars of all kinds and considering the holiday season that will mark the transition from the days growing in darkness to the pivotal point where the light of the day returns to be on the rise as the earth’s “new trip around the sun” begins again ( as well as my own personal “New Trip Around the Sun” that comes on my Christmas Day birthday ), it seemed fitting to make the animal in this picture a goat. A goat seemed fitting to me being that the goat is the symbol of the sun sign Capricorn that aligns with the celestial positioning where and when Christmas is celebrated along with other celebrations marking the season of light and the dawning of the birth of a new year. Reflections on this year 2023 so far and its history brought to mind many of the joyful memories I continue to collect as I am grateful that all years bring much for which to be thankful. On the less positive side, it also brought to mind various happenings in this world including far too many devastating events on this earth with the wildfires in Hawaii being one of them. It was with thoughts and memories of beautiful Hawaii that I proceeded with my fashion magazine project as I looked through my collection of them to see if I could find some styles of the tropics or maybe even a Hawaiian girl as a model. Though I did not have any luck finding a model figure looking or posing like I was imagining, it really didn’t matter to me because I had decided to make this canvas more of an abstract painting that I could mostly just create out of my head without referencing a fashion magazine. Nevertheless, I remained interested in coloring the figure with some distinct Hawaiian Island flair because I thought that style could fit with the hula hoop I was intent on giving the girl to represent a mineral element in this “Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral ~ Is It Bigger Than A Breadbox” piece. As another mineral element for this themed *Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral* artwork, I thought that while the girl balances on a goat, the goat could be balancing on top of a floating ball - - so a big blue and green marbled ball serves as another mineral element for this composition. ( …As a unicycle rider in my youth, I have always loved balancing tricks. ) Finally, for the vegetable element, I figured the figure could naturally be suited-up in a bounty of botanicals including a ring of bright flowers the color of the sun around her head. Canvas #15: “Rings Around the Sun” Below are some process pictures. - - Because I improvised on creating the figure and her posture from my imagination instead of referencing a picture of a fashion model from a fashion magazine, I sketched the subjects before painting and creating the rest of the piece. Sometimes I sketch a little before I paint and sometimes I do not do any preliminary sketching. The goat is also from my own imaginings - - a composite of various goat features. This time I did the composition on a large canvas board that I measured down to 8”x 10” to be consistent in size with the other canvases in this numbered series of paintings. ( I also do not usually sign my paintings before I paint, but that is how it went down this time as I was just creating and naming it all as I went. ) ![]() A little collection of old paintings from around the house that I am starting to gather as I begin to cycle out the canvases with summer season feels to bring in some paintings for the fall season…
Starting a little Jimmy Buffett tribute on the bar as I begin to get ready for our Labor Day party this year… Feeling sad about the news of his passing. Jimmy Buffett wrote so many beautiful songs along with all the renowned fun ones that have colored most all the years of my life. Thankful for all his poetic positivity that he left with us, always bringing feelings of relaxed reflection, happiness, and warmth. RIP my fellow Dec. 25th birthday twin. 💖 Pulled out a painting: “Parrot Wallpaper” with a Margarita Glass which today is making me think of him… #JimmyBuffet #Parrotheads #Margaritaville #TidesOfEternityArt Notes from when I created this painting which is part of a series of canvases that I am working on over time: Is It Bigger Than A Breadbox? ~ "TV Land", "Saturn", "December", and "Parrot Wallpaper" I’ve been painting various gifts this summer including a few to give as wedding gifts. Below is a photo of one of the wedding gifts I painted to give to the daughter of my husband’s cousin who lives in the country with lots and lots of beautiful land. Many years back when I first got on social media, my husband’s cousin posted this wonderful photo of how her family had been mowing the grass on part of their big spread of land to carve out the word “LOVE”. It was from so many years ago that I remembered seeing the photo shared that I imagine the bride was still a pretty young girl at the time. The photo of their mowed “L-O-V-E” land from so many years back impressed me as so wonderful at the time that when we received a wedding invite from that family for this summer, the memory of it just popped in my mind and I thought to go dig back and find a picture of it to recreate a painting of the scene as a surprise wedding gift for the young bride and her groom. … a screenshot of the old photo shared: …the painted canvas: Baseball begins today in my hometown of Cincinnati, the birthplace of Major League Baseball here along the Ohio River. To start the season, former Cincinnati Red, Todd Frazier, will throw the ceremonial “First Pitch” on this “Opening Day” in Great American Ballpark. Here is a painting I did of Todd Frazier back in 2015 when he was the All-Star Homerun Derby Champ during the All-Star Game weekend at Great American Ballpark midsummer of that year. Back then one of my favorite tunes, Frank Sinatra’s renowned hit “Fly Me To The Moon” was Frazier’s up-to-bat song; so in the graphic speed-stream strings of the flying ball I added the song lyric “Fly me to the moon, let me play among the stars…” scripted in the wind. I also drew *the man in the moon* to look like and characterize the face and expression of the old-fashioned “Mr. Red” mascot including his signature old-timer mustache. Read more about “Opening Day” in my hometown including additional links to more of my baseball artwork in: “Hope Springs Eternal on Opening Day” The month of March is managing to “come in like a lion and go out like a lamb” once again as spring is beginning to show its graceful arrival. Here is a photo of some early springtime blooms against a bright and beautiful blue sky that I took on an evening stroll the last Sunday of March and shared on my Instagram profile with notes about “VanGogh vibes” and the composition’s reminded inspiration of Vincent VanGogh’s famous “Almond Blossom” painting. I note this photo as an Instagram share because Instagram allows me to add a song to my posted image and as an additional expression of the inspired springtime feels Van Gogh’s painting and images bring, another very favorite, Rachmaninov and his Symphony No. 2 { Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, Op. 27: Ill. Adagio specifically} accompanies the picture in the post with some musical artwork that brings with it a similar springtime sense filled with the season’s beauty, peace, and hopefulness that Vincent VanGogh's and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s incredibly beautiful art reflects to me. |
AuthorI am a 'self-taught' artist who can hardly remember a day when I wasn't in the process of creating something... Thanks for visiting my site where I can share some of my work. Archives
June 2024
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