"End of Season" series

Here's what I've just finished, for sale at the Food Bank Farm in Hadley next week when they open their "Thanksgiving Store" to the public. You'll find these little gems - all 5" x 5", matted and framed - right next to the cabbages and the butternut squashes!












Happy Thanksgiving!!

Les congés

Les congés

I have a week off, this rainy, humid last week of June and first week of summer. It isn't my first choice for a vacation week, nor my first choice of activity (I'd rather travel). Still, the company said "use it or lose it", so I'm filling my week off with trips to the gym, birthday celebrations, gardening, and .. oh yes... painting. I'll post at least two before the week ends, I promise.

Le temps qui passe...

I have painted, honest, but I have not kept my word about posting my paintings every week.. oh la la la, que c'est difficile! Here are several, none too special, à mon avis, from my recent Mondays painting en plein air:

Monday Monday

Each Monday I sequester myself in my atelier, put on my headphones, slip in a CD of something French - Francis Cabrel, en ce moment - and paint. Today's task is to render what my friend called a "pumpkin" at the market in Sarlot a few Octobers ago. My photo shows a colorful gourd that only distantly ressembles an American pumpkin, full of green and yellow and cream-colored striations. I use the photo to (loosely) guide my painting, and to recall the moment, of wandering the cobblestone streets that market day, the odor of woodfire, the bite of impending cold in the air.

Here it is:














And here is the just-finished Les Arrosoirs, the Watering Cans, from a photo taken in June 2007 in the bathroom (!!) of a chateau in Arnajon, where I painted and lunched in June 2007.

On commence...

How many years can I talk about doing something, study how it's done, consider how I will do it, ever procrastinating because it will not be be perfect, before I finally just DO it??

This is 2008, time to get started! I will paint something every week and post it here. I am determined. I hope someone wlll take note...

So here's the first, a favorite that I painted some years ago, just to get started: