Today I practiced some very basic mint math. You know, if you have four mints and you eat one…
Mint Math by Clancy – 5 x 7 inches – acrylic and gouache on board
mint math
A Creative Life, artistic inspirations, fine art, small things, still lifeMonth: June 2018
strawberry daiquiri fields
A Creative Life, artistic inspirations, fine art, food for thought, kitchen art, still lifeI first “met” the Pacific Northwest in the novels of Tom Robbins. His book “Another Roadside Attraction” has a wonderful description of the grey-blue skies, the abundant rain, the soil and how the “…strawberries grow lustily…”.
Fast forward a number of years and on one of my first visits to the region I saw a field of strawberries growing wild near the ocean. I was enchanted.
Then after many years of vacations to this land of enchantments we moved from Oklahoma to the Pacific Northwest. One of the first things my wife and I did as new residents was to buy 4 Rainer strawberry plants and plant them in our back yard.
Each year those 4 plants multiplied themselves. And each year we share strawberries with neighbors, friends, family and try to think of new ways to use them.
This year’s new recipe is a strawberry daiquiri. Here’s the recipe I used – http://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/frozen-strawberry-daiquiri-99140 – I went lighter on the lime juice than they suggest. It was quite yummy!
As you know from recent posts I’ve been practicing painting “stuff” a little more realistically – so I tried to get the glasses to look transparent and the fruits to look round and full. Here’s the painting, titled “Strawberry Daiquiris”.
Strawberry Daiquiris – by Clancy – 8 x 10 inches – acrylic and gouache on board
cherry cheers
A Creative Life, art exhibit, art gallery, artistic inspirations, still lifeIt’s Mount Rainer Cherry season here in the Pacific Northwest! After getting fresh cherries at the Farmer’s Market on a warm summer day – we went for a cocktail. Bartenders around here use seasonal produce and since cherries are in season the drink of the day was cherry themed. Well, the drink was so good it inspired our friend to say “Wow, this drink is almost a religious experience!”.
“Amen, sister!” I replied.
“Halleluiah!” added Judy.
Then I went back to the studio and created this piece.
Cherry Season – by Clancy – 7 x 5 inches – acrylic and gouache on board
It ended up being an artistic exercise/challenge in getting the two-colored cherries to look round, and the glass to look glass-like.
Since this one is slightly different than my usual sort of thing I sent an image of “Cherry Season” to the gallery owner at Caplan Art Designs – who said it’ll be included in my exhibit later this year! And I’m to keep ’em coming! Wahoo!!
Anyway, in looking up cherry-drink recipes for this post I found this link – which seems the closest to the drink we had at our local pub. http://www.cookingandbeer.com/2015/06/rainier-cherry-and-orange-campari-cocktails/
Cheers!
mundane matters
A Creative Life, artistic inspirations, still life, visual story, visual thinking, words and picturesIt took some doing but I finished the painting I was working on in my last post (here). I’ve titled it “A Novel Morning”. It is 24 inches by 18 inches – acrylic and gouache on board.
The text in the painting was paraphrased from Dona Leon’s book “Death at La Fenice” – the first book in her Commissario Brunetti series. I adjusted the text for artistic reasons too numerous to write about in detail here – mainly because I’m lazy about typing words in a row – the gist being that I wanted to convey visually what I find alluring in Leon’s novelistic work; i.e. I love the food connection.
And I included the Powell’s bookstore receipt in the painting because one of my favorite things to do is go to a local bookstore, find a new-to-me novel, visit the in-bookstore coffee shop and consider the author/book carefully. That’s my idea of heaven.
the art of the mundane
A Creative Life, art techniques, artistic inspirations, fine art, still life, visual thinking, words and picturesI’ve been reading a lot of novels by Donna Leon lately. Her Commissario Brunetti series. My wife and I had watched many of the movie versions, I got hooked and sought out the novels. As a result I’ve realized how often the detective mystery is solved by something mundane, trivial and even disposable. The clue that resolves the crime may be found in the wilted flowers in the office, the food take-out container, the receipt in a wallet – or something else really mundane. In Leon’s work the city, the food, the objects are characters in their own right. They certainly add to my perception of her protagonist Guido Brunetti and his cases.
These thoughts led me to thinking about how historians and archeologists both spelunk in the log-books, the diaries and the trash heaps of history to find the clues about life in the past.
And then there’s the concepts of wabi-sabi and hygge…
Amongst all these thoughts I had my cat’s exhibit open at Burnt Bridge Cellars. One of the benefits of doing one-person shows is that I get to see a years worth of my own work all at one time. As I looked around I realized that I’ve focused on creating my characters; the eyes, the fur, their animal-body-shape in people clothing and not as much on the stuff, the objects, they hold.
So I want to see if I can tell a visual story with “just stuff”. A still life basically. But I still hope to tell or imply a visual story. By doing this I’ll be practicing depicting the details of drinks, food and physical objects better so they can become “characters” in their own right. Kind of like what Leon does in her novels. Then eventually I hope to put my object-characters together with my animals…
Anyway, here’s me working on one:
