Saturday, August 27, 2011

Good news from The Healing Muse


My mixed media piece tiled "Wishing I Could Remember the Violets" was selected for the 2011 Healing Muse Upstate Medical Center for Bioethics and Humanities literary and visual journal.
This picture was inspired by my mother's Irish family who lived on Tipperary Hill. I also lived in that neighborhood for several years when I was a child. I had the pleasure of frequently returning to the old neighborhood when my daughter Irish Danced (from ages 7 - 18). I spent many happy hours watching the dancers all practice their steps and thinking about my Irish heritage, and listening to sounds outside like church bells, which I never heard at my house out in the 'burbs. And also, for some unknown reason I have always associated my grandmother with violets. That's where the inspiration for "Wishing I Could Remember the Violets" came from.
Now the picture is all the more poignant as my mother has been diagnosed with dementia and my daughter has gone off to college, and so the days of watching the dancers has ended. Life changes, sometimes fast, sometimes gradually.
And I still have no clue why I am obsessing over violets!?????
Anyway, this is a mixed media piece which started with an abstract watercolor background. Images were created with colored pencil and enhanced with metallic paint and markers; de-emphasized with a layer of thin gauzy rice paper. The people pictured in the painting are my maternal grandparents Peter and Mary Enright.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

A few more samples of student work



A few more samples of student work from our 3-day landscape painting session at Camp Iroquois.


Neither rain, nor bugs nor fading daylight kept our intrepid group of painters away from our 3-day Landscape painting session at Camp Iroquois last week. For most of them it was their first venture into plein air painting and also a first time using acrylic paint.The group ranged in age from teen to adult.
Here are a few samples of their work.