Gathering Yellow

20140429-174823.jpg
The spring has been filled with wonderful moments at the soccer fields. I have loved watching all the games: from my daughter’s team which started the season running like a gaggle of ducks all together, to my sons who play such intense games I can’t sit down. We have frozen and burned up, nearly have been blown away by the wind, and in between, watched spring unfold all around us. We have made new friends and reconnected with old ones, and enjoyed many yummy picnics.

I planned on painting a picture of the kids playing soccer, but this little girl was next to us in an overgrown field during my son’s last game. She was singing softly and gathering yellow flowers. She was such a distraction, I loved watching her as much as the boys’ game (which was a close one). The wildflowers and purple satin dress won out, I will paint the soccer players next season.

P.s. thank you to all the moms who take their daughters to soccer games in full princess regalia.

Spirit of Youth

20140419-094824.jpg

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything. (Sonnet XCVIII)”
― William Shakespeare

8″x6″ oil on single oil primed Belgium linen. I bought a multipack of panels trying to decide which surface I like the best. The single primed linen really grabs the paint, it takes more paint to fill the tooth, which was perfect for this wet rainy painting.

Puddle Dancing

20140418-205055.jpg

A rainy, dark scene seems appropriate for today, one with a bit of hope (only because I know how the story ends). So I painted a puddle dancer, a barefoot rain walker. I love the way the colors blended with my Portland grey underpainting. I also love the way this painting looks wet.

Green Creeping In

20140408-124450.jpg
I love to watch little bits of green sneak into the winter world of brown and grey. Green comes into an uncertain time: warm, or bitter cold, windy, or calm as can be. I watched a breathtaking tulip tree blossom out to soon, and a cold snap froze every last flower she produced. On wobbly legs the first blooms and baby animals cautiously come into the world, and step by step the green returns.

Winter trees

20140407-182248.jpg

Out of the bosom of the Air.
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent and soft and slow
Descends the snow.
Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels
This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – 1882) was an American poet.