Soften My Heart

  

       Soften My Heart - oil on canvas - 34" x 37"

Who doesn't love pink and turquoise? Who doesn't love pink roses from the garden placed in a clear glass vase?

Who doesn't love when the petals start cascading onto a reflective surface?

It is enough to soften any heart. 

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Reveling in Cherry Blossoms

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One of the pleasures I have as an artist is exploring color and color combinations. I was so drawn to paint these pink little puffs with a golden mustard color as the background. The violet shadow tones in the blossoms "sang" beside the yellow, pushing the pleasure of painting and viewing this piece when finished. 

 

Cherry Blossoms

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Making this painting was a first on a few levels.  It is the biggest painting I've made to date, 48"x44". Additionally, it was the first time I painted a tree inside my studio. Well, maybe not the whole tree. 

I actually bought three cherry blossom branches from my local florist, and then brought them into my studio, plopped them in a bucket of water and started painting. Having the branches inside meant I could take my time with the little dangling puffs of pink,  and pay attention to the value  and color changes on these intricate, delicate forms. It was lovely to get up so close to them for a thorough study. 

Following the twisting, rising lines of the branches and foliage was dizzying at times. I had to push the perspective to create the sense of the branches reaching up, while putting thick bold paint on the thicker bark  sections at the base.  The chance to spend so much time intimately contemplating the beauty of these boughs was like a blessing. 

Pantone 2022 - Very Peri

Pantone chose Very Peri as the IT color of 2022. The purplish tone encourages individual inventiveness and creativity. Game on. Let's get some Very Peri on the walls. This little collection of recent work is a good start. 

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Cherry Blossom Jubilee

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My local florist sells cherry blossom boughs in early spring. I bought one, and brought it into my studio. The branch, plopped in a bucket of water, stood patiently while I placed different color swatches behind it, "feeling" for the right match. The pink flowerets seemed to sing when I put the turquoise cloth behind them, and that, of course, was the tell. 

Painting nature indoors is a curious thing. Without the elements, I could explore the details of the leaves and bark and buds almost leisurely, and at eye level, which was very sweet. But at times, especially as it started to die, the cherry branch seemed painfully out of her element. I realize now, that it was the turquoise cloth which echoed an open, free sky that helped soften the story of this wild beauty, held captive inside the walls of my studio.                                                              

Flowers for a Finch

 Happy New Year's Eve

I was just thinking that it had been a while since I last posted here, and that maybe today was a good day to check in. Looks like I had the same thought exactly one year ago. Check out the last post if you don't believe me. What are the chances of that? ... well, 1 in 365. 

 Flowers for a Finch is a breakout piece for me, new in every way except for the flowers, of course. I will  be back at my easel on Monday and am excited to continue exploring this new direction. I am resolute in my wish to post here regularly in the New Year.  I have a sneaking suspicion that was my resolution last year, too. Oh, well.

Here's to the best year yet for all of us. 2022, we are counting on you. 

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Sweet Peas and Peonies

I am very please with the colors in this piece and the sense of light. Color and light are two aspects of painting that I have been honing for years, and am starting to feel a sense of confidence in those areas. I am currently trying to up my composition game, and made two choices that I believe were successful here. The first was to juxtapose soft curving flower forms with the straight edges of a square glass vase. Secondly, I paid extra attention to the placement of the subject matter in the canvas space. Here, I made sure that the distance between the edge of the canvas and the painted object closest to that edge was the same on all sides. Again, I believe it was successful. 

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Zinnias in Glass

By the time I finished this painting, I had probably gone through 2 different bunches of zinnias. Working from life with flowers as subject matter, means that I have to have a strategy for getting the work completed before the blooms fade. In this case, I was lucky in that zinnias have a long season, and the farm that grows them is just down the street. I began by arranging the flowers in a way that drew me in, then quickly went to work starting with the vase and the flowers that hung down around it. I worked my way up, making sure to get the key (anchoring) blooms painted in next. Those would be the large reddish orange one near the center and the yellow one to the right of it. By that time, I needed fresh flowers and added them in to the existing fading blooms, placing them as needed to create an interesting completion of the composition. The three outstretching blooms at the top are examples. I "posed" them in such a way as to create a graceful twist and sway to the arrangement. 

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The Verdict is In .... and Kirkus Reviews says, "GET IT!"

 

                                              with a wonderful review!

Read the Review in it's entirety below...and get a copy of the book by visiting My Website. I will be happy to dedicate and autograph your copy.

 

SEVEN CIRCLES OF LIGHT

HOW THEY WERE BORN AND WHAT THEY BECAME

BY MARYANN LUCAS ‧ RELEASE DATE: JULY 30, 2020

Seven circles of light explore mortality in this spiritual picture book.

In a fairy-tale–like opening, the Brightest Light lives alone, content, in the Big Quiet. But “one day, a Sharp Desire came…and changed everything.” The Brightest Light, looking like a soft white ball surrounded by darkness, encounters a prism that refracts light into colors. Now, the Brightest Light and seven balls of color live happily until the colors encounter a desire for more. The colors leave the Big Quiet for a world like Earth, becoming plants, animals, forces of nature, and humans. Violet and Red turn into lonely human girls who find each other and become friends, experiencing the strange feeling that they’ve met before. Eventually, the colors realize the time is coming to leave their incarnations and return to the Brightest Light, once again content until the desire for change resurfaces. Lucas does an impressive job of making this philosophical theme feel approachable and grounded. The author’s images vary in style. One resembles a doodle in a digital paint program while the images on the Earth-like world are more detailed cartoon illustrations with full backgrounds and a diverse human cast. Her handling of time passing in a panel-packed page seems natural, and the hints at death feel merely part of a cycle rather than sad.

An engaging conversation starter for parents and children about growth, change, death, and life.

 

 

 

Zinnias in Glass

Zinnias are by far my most favorite flower to paint. First off... what about those colors? It is pure joy to  squirt out hefty piles of pinks and yellows and oranges and just letting them swirl. How about the structure of the blooms? They are architectural masterpieces, with so many interesting details, big chunky centers and sturdy petals not to mention an array of assorted shapes. Finally, zinnias have a very long hang time... they really do hold their shape and keep their perky little heads up for many, many days. Knowing ahead of time that I do not have to race to finish the painting because the flowers are NOT wilting before my eyes, leaves me with a wonderful sense of calm that I believe translates into the finished piece. Before the zinnia season is over here on the eastern end of Long Island... I plan to do another still life, and then a landscape of the farm that grows them. Wish me luck and ... I'll keep you posted. 

 

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Turtle Island in Late Spring

The eastern coast of Long Island is populated by clusters of cedar trees that provide structure and color to the overall deciduous environment in winter and early spring. I've begun painting them and exploring the way they punctuate this landscape that I have loved since my childhood. Pictured here is Turtle Island, the magical isle I would swim out to in summer. I can remember exploring it in my wet bathing suit with bare feet hopping over rocks and shells, always in search of something. The victory of an abandoned bird's nest, or a dried clutch of wildflowers meant swimming back with the treasure held high above the water. They were my most favorite days, and so imagine the joy I had painting this place over 50 years later.
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Stand Your Ground

This is quite a departure from my usual subject matter... well, its flowers, and I often paint flowers, but here's what is different. The three foxglove plants are still in their pots. I bought them at the nursery when it was still cold and rainy outside. So, I set them up in my studio and draped a neutral colored cloth behind them. It was a delight to paint the little bells on the long stems, but when it came to the background, it made no real sense to paint it as a drapery. So I used my imagination, took a bit of artistic license and conjured a gloomy, mysterious sky behind it. Very different for me, but I think it worked.
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Dancing Roses

It was such an amazing experience making this painting. I stood before this every changing, moving, shifting, blooming, fading burst of color for four days... and tried to translate its beauty, to pin its glory down and contain it within a 30" x 40" two-dimensional space. How crazy am I to even try? Crazy happy. Crazy content.
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Orange Roses

Experimenting here with the warm orange tones of the roses against a white backdrop of cool blues. There is a magic that happens when working with complimentary colors and different temperatures. Overall, I think this was a successful exploration.
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Looking for an Uplifting Story?

Hardcover Available Here

I am so delighted to be launching my first children's book today. It is a delightful tale about the contentment found in connection with other kindred spirits and the restorative power of Nature. Perfect for these times. Learn more about the story here.

Cut Lilacs in Glass

When you plop a bouquet of freshly cut, amazingly fragrant lilacs into a vase and get ready to paint it, the temptation is to start right in on the blooms. I have found though, that consideration of the leaves and branches is vital to the overall appeal of the composition and the subsequent success of the painting. The subtle turns and arched extensions of the greens are like the arms and legs of a modern dancer, it's where the yearning and maybe even the tension lay. 

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A Sign from Above?

Whenever I see an egret fly overhead, it takes my breath away...and somehow brings me a sense of contentment and safety. For me the egret’s flight is a sign from The Universe that all is well. And so, the egret makes a magical appearance in my new children’s book. Link in navigation bar.

Mother's Day Hydrangea

I love noticing the colors of white on white,. They are subtle and yet so powerful. This was painted with so much joy... and I think it shows. 24"x24" oil on canvas panel
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Hide and Seek

When I was little, my favorite part of being read to, was looking at the pictures in the story. If the pictures had little animals or bugs hidden in the drawings, I was over the moon. So it goes without saying that I had lots of fun putting lots of little fun friends in my illustrations for ‘Seven Circles of Light-How They Were Born and What They Became’ ...my first children’s book - out soon!

A Happy Little Landscape ... (in my first children's book.)

It is a very different experience creating landscapes with pixels of color on a computer screen versus strokes of paint on a canvas. But my years of painting out in nature, observing values and perspective certainly helped inform the computer designs. It's very exciting to learn to illustrate my children's books with the magic of Adobe Illustrator and InDesign... a whole new world!
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