Red and Turquoise

I set up a table with a backdrop, having bought fabric like candy. The red cup and turquoise fabric intrigued me. Oil on 8"x 8" board.

Still Lifes

These paintings are 8" x 8" on archival Amerpersand gesso board. The objective of a colorist approach to painting objects in light is simply to see and recreate the color of light. The color of an object is different in light and shadow and you must practice seeing and mixing all the nuances. Lee Boynton taught me to use a larger palette to accomplish this because, although you can mix a color wheel's worth of color with just a few tubes of paint, the purity of the hues is most intense in the many colors straight from the tube in a larger palette. The paint is applied thickly and confidently...well, at least it is supposed to look like I was confident. Some days I am definitely more confident and energetic than other days, and it does show in the finished paintings. 

Ideally, I would paint a still life outside in the sunlight (like the middle one), but that is not always possible, so I have a strong daylight lightbulb light for studio still lifes.

Lee Boynton Workshop

Early this past summer I took a 3-day workshop about color at Maryland Center for the Creative Arts in Annapolis with Lee Boynton. Lee studied with Henry Hensche at the Cape Cod School of Art and is a devout colorist. He is fun, energetic, kind and knowledgeable. He never ran out of energy although we felt like we were completely drained at the end of each day. Here is a painting I did during that time, focusing on the nuances of shifting color in light and shadow. I was also lucky enough to take his plein air workshop in Booth Bay Harbor, Maine later in the summer.  And I'm even luckier to be hosting another plein air workshop for him down here in the Roanoke Valley this summer.