"Tea in the Garden"

"Tea in the Garden"- 24x24

I was pleased to find out that this painting was chosen as the winner in the recent North Port Art Center's contest. It will represent the art center's Spring fundraiser, a high tea and fashion show to benefit the center.

Please contact the art center for more information about the event.

Fancy Free

SOLD
Fancy Free, 8x10, oil on canvas- Framed

Here's a fresh, spontaneous palette knife piece with beautiful color and passages of thick impasto.

If you would like to purchase this painting, please contact Leah at Collector's Gallery and Framery at 941-488-3029.



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Tea in the Garden, 24x24

"Tea in the Garden", 24x24, oil on masonite

I made a few revisions to this painting today, and I think I'm pretty satisfied with it now. I also changed the name of the painting to a more positive title, lol.

I will probably make some 12x12 giclees of this one, please email me if you are interested. The price will be about $50 for canvas, and about $35 for a fine art print.


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Left Behind

SOLD
"Left Behind", 12x16, oil on canvas panel (Please click on picture for better detail)

Some people have told me that I paint like a millionaire because I use tons of paint on most paintings. Truth is that palette knife work requires the use of a great deal more paint than does painting with just brushes and medium. In these difficult economic times, I have become increasingly aware of how costly my paintings have become to produce, and although I have experimented with using brushes in lieu of the palette knife, I've come to the conclusion that for me the excitement of creating passages of extreme texture within a painting still out weigh the cost restrictions that they impose. (Just don't tell my husband that I said that when he sees that I charged a $60 tube of cobalt violet on his credit card!)

Lately, I have begun the habit of saving leftover paint at the end of a painting session. I gob the color together with my palette knife and swish it all together, sometimes creating mud but oftentimes creating gorgeous grays. Then I smush it over a brand new canvas and start playing with my 'mud". The painting above was a mishmash of gobs of paint left over from the past two weeks' serious painting sessions, and spread like icing over a new canvas in a haphazard "left behind" format.

Yesterday, I looked at the mess I'd created (be glad you didn't see it, too!) and decided to try to make something of the mess. Thus "Left Behind" was produced. As the purple vase began to take shape, I knew that I had to do something with the thick impasto in the lower left hand side of the painting. Thus , the impasto became a discarded, or "left behind" sunflower. The rest of the painting came together quickly after that, once the concept had been created. I left interesting passages of original texture here and there within the floral arrangement, just because I liked them. This painting is a conglomerate of color and texture, without rhyme or reason, so please don't expect perfection on symmetry.

Full of texture and surprise passages, this was a fun piece to do!

Mission San Juan Capistrano

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"Mission San Juan Capistrano", 8x10, oil on linen

On Sunday night my husband and I watched migrating swallows create tornados of shapes and patterns in the sky here in Venice, Florida. This reminded me of a visit we took to Capistrano Mission in San Juan California back in March of 2007, while visiting my son in San Diego. The beautiful old Spanish mission is a site where the swallows also return annually to migrate. I took a ton of pictures while we were there , but now I wish I had taken more! At the time the grounds were covered in bright yellow and orange poppies, and the weather was quite gorgeous. I have had a hankering to do some paintings of the mission for some time now, but until I saw the majesty of the swallows in formation on Sunday night, I just didn't get around to it!

I elected not to add the brightly colored poppies to this painting, as I wanted the effect to remain soft and I didn't want the flowers to compete with the beauty of the mission's rosy architecture against the soft southern California light temperature. If you happen to go there for the swallow migration this year, which falls on March 19th each and every year, be sure to have a yummy lunch or dinner at the delightful Sarducci's Capistrano Depot restaurant, which sits right at the historic train depot, just a couple blocks and walking distance from the mission.

I was happy with the way that this little gem came out, and may enter this into the Philadelphia Sketch Club's small painting exhibit that is coming up in a few weeks and which I took part in last year.


If you would like to read more about the migration of the swallows at Mission Capistrano, please go here.
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Victoria, British Columbia

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Victoria , British Columbia, 11x14, oil on wrapped linen

I painted this from a photo taken last summer at Victoria, British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. As you can see, the light temperature that day had a soft, pinkish hue. Victoria is a stunningly beautiful place, with a light quality similar to the Mediterranean. To learn more about Victoria, its wonderful restaurants, gardens and charming bed and breakfasts, please go here.


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Antique French Bottle with grapes, lemons and orchids

SOLD
"Antique French Bottle with Grapes, Lemons and Orchids", 8x10, oil on linen

I painted this one back in the fall. Today I added the purple orchids to the top right hand side of the painting. It looks more balanced now. I also enhanced the colors in the grapes and lemons somewhat, which is more in keeping with my style as a colorist.

I'm actually surprised that this one hasn't sold yet . It is so pretty! Okay , so it's not David Leffel, mind you, but it's still darned pretty! (David's 8x10's also cost thousands of dollars!)

Last spring I tried to enroll into a David Leffel workshop that was offered at the Long Boat Key Center for the Arts, where I am a member. It was filled by the time I tried to enroll, in spite of what would have been the highest tuition I'd ever paid for a master workshop! (Don't even ask.)

Anyhow, at least I took a workshop with Louis Tedesco, one of David's most avid students, now deceased (regretfully). So I learned a little bit about chirascuro from Louis. Here's the first version. Now isn't the new version better?

"Antique French bottle with grapes", 8x10, oil on linen



PS: Check out the picture of me mopping the paint off the kitchen floor after 6 hours wrestling with this bottle!

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Wake-up call, Rooster painting

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"Wake-up call", 9x12, oil on canvas panel

Ever have a wake-up call? Something that changes your like drastically, so that you no longer sweat the small stuff anymore? Sometimes we get a wake-up call and we are happy for a while, but then slip back into our old ways of worry and distress. I remember the day that my doctor told me that I might have cancer, back in 1998. It took a week for all the tests to come back, happily negative, and for a few months after that I was gloriously happy, basking in the after-effects of averting catastrophe. Slowly but surely I reverted back to a worry wart, as so many people do in these unpredictable times that we live in.

After I painted that handsome piece of poultry that you see above, I decided to call him, "Wake-up call", since he stands on the hillside poised to cheerfully announce the new day to whoever or whatever happens to be listening. Just for fun I googled wake-up call. I discovered that there is a movie called Wake-up call, a song by Hayden Panettiere called "Wake Up Call" , (appropriate for the broken hearted on Valentine's Day), and a bunch of scary YouTube videos about The New World Order that are called Wake-up call. I didn't watch the video because I didn't want to start off the day depressed, but the introduction to the video said "Do not watch this video if you rely on a rigid belief system to give your life a false sense of security and meaning.The information contained in this film is potentially life changing, but must be watched with an open mind. Unless you are willing to put everything you think you know temporarily on hold, and open up to the possibility that you may have been systematically deceived and lied to
your entire life, this film is not for you. " The movie then started with a scene from The Matrix, a movie which scared me so thoroughly that I had to walk out of the theatre 20 minutes into the film, leaving my teenage son without a ride home!

Whew! Aren't you glad I decided to call my rooster, Wake-up call? Cock a doodle do!

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Tahitian Moon- My first oil painting-WILD!

"Tahitian Moon", 22x28, oil on wrapped canvas, with sides painted

This is the first original oil painting that I ever did by myself, after buying my oil paints back in January of 2006. I have never offered it for sale before for sentimental reasons. To celebrate
a New Year of painting opportunities, I have decided to offer this painting for sale. PLease contact me at maryannejacobsen@aol.com if interested in purchasing this painting.

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The Pansy Party

SOLD
The Pansy Party, 16x20 oil on wrapped canvas
"Purple flowers of velvet so suffering From your soft eyes the color of pansies."
John Antoine Nau


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"Raah"

SOLD"Raah", 8x10, oil on canvas

My friend Joyce recently told me that the Hebrew word "raah' means to see. She said it's the kind of "seeing" that God did when He made creation and He saw that it was good.. It's not just a physical seeing. It's a spiritual seeing. It's a gift from God and not from ourselves when we can see this way.

Painting this rose was a revelation for me in many ways. My sweet friend Holly had sent me the picture of the rose and had encouraged me to try to paint it. But I didn't want to. Holly knows everything there is to know about roses. That's what she does for a living. So I knew that she would look at my rose with an expert eye, and I didn't want to fall short. In the end, I forced myself to paint it in a realistic style, which does not come natural or easy for me, but which is the style most befitting a rose this lovely.

Trying to render this rose with accuracy was hard, but it forced me to see in a whole new way. I had to study that rose and every single petal it contained in order to see it with brand new eyes. I discovered that the rose is an incredibly complex thing to paint. It has multiple petals, and each and every petal has it's own set of curving planes, some parts of the petal turning towards the light, some parts facing away from the light, some catching reflected light and some catching highlights. It took me a long time to paint this rose. But in the end I was glad that I forced myself to do it, as it enabled me to see the beauty and complexity of the rose in a whole different way- much different from the typical abstract palette knife strokes I generally use to haphazardly render one of God's most gorgeous creations.

This is Thanksgiving week. I give thanks to Holly for encouraging me to do something that I didn't want to do. And I give thanks to my friend Joyce for helping me understand difficult Bible concepts. Most of all, I give thanks to God for helping me see many things in ways that I had never seen before. And in enabling me to paint this rose, God has given me a new confidence in my painting abilities.

This rose will be a Christmas gift this year, so it is not for sale. But thank-you for visiting my blog.

Painting awards!

"Simple Gifts", 16x20, oil on linen (People's Choice Award)

This was a good weekend for me paint-wise. On Saturday, I was awarded the "People's Choice Award" from The North Port Art Center for "Simple Gifts". I also received an honorable merit award for this painting.

On Sunday, I received the second place award for Fantasy Impromptu from the Englewood Art Center, which is a division of The Ringling College of Art and Design. I was also invited to do a solo exhibit there in the summer of 2009. Here are a couple pictures of me at the receptions.

People's Choice Award/honorable mention for "Simple Gifts", North Port Art Guild

Second Place Award for Fantasy Impromptu, 18x24,

The funny thing about Fantasy Impromptu is that I sold it from my blog to a lady a few months ago. The woman paid for it and I was about to ship it. The day I was supposed to ship it, I took it out onto my porch and sprayed it with what I thought was retouch varnish. The painting started turning all white and misty as I was spraying it, and that's when I looked at the can and realized that I had sprayed it with Elmer's mounting Glue!

I called an oil painting restoration expert in Sarasota and followed his instructions to remove the glue. It took almost a week and I had to touch up the painting afterwards, since some of the paint came off in the process of removing the glue. In the end it looked just fine, but I told the person who had purchased the painting what had happened with the glue and in the end she decided not to purchase it. I am glad now, since it has turned into an award winner.

This is what a friend of mine calls a "God Wink"; when God takes what looks like a bad situation and turns it out for the good.

Recently, I also won a second place ribbon for "Faces in PLaces" exhibit, for the Girl in the Red Unitard. See picture below. You can read more about it here.



Thanks to the Lord for giving a dumb person like me a little talent, and for using my talent to make people who buy my paintings feel happy!

Amen! Hope everyone had an uplifting weekend!

Bittersweet Memories

SOLD"Bittersweet Memories", 12x16, oil on Claussens linen

I named the painting "Bittersweet Memories" in keeping with the dramatic essence of the piece. The elements of an empty goblet, a lemon and peel, and blood red roses set against a midnight backdrop add romance, intrigue and a little mystery to this elegant still life. I have always been idealistic in a romantic and impractical way and so is this still life painting, if you think about it. The glass is empty, and all that remains are elements that are sour and thorny. Nevertheless, I didn't see it that way when I painted it. I saw a romantic grouping of beautifully colored and variantly shaped elements placed under a mysterious (chiaroscuro) light setting.

Summer Poppies in Umbria

SOLDSummer Poppies in Umbria, 8x10, oil on wrapped canvas

I am trying to get back into my groove. I like the way this has come out. I did something like this a while back and it sold within a few hours. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for this little gem to sell in this crummy economic environment. It was painted with only a palette knife and it has nice texture. The sides of the canvas are painted to match the scene so a frame isn't necessary.

Tomorrow is the last day of my workshop. I hope I get a successful painting out of it.

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Impressionist Pansies, 16x20

Impressionist pansies, 16x20 , oil on wrapped canvas

I finally forced myself to paint today. I've been in a real slump lately, and the only thing that helped me paint this was my Abba music. My favorite Abba song is Chiquitita, though it's a little silly that I picked that one since I've never really had any close girlfriends. Click the link and check out this gorgeous slide show, accompanied by the Chiquitita lyrics. You can also listen in Spanish, which is the version I personally prefer, but it's up to you! Thanks to whoever put this together!

Anyhow, I had to laugh when I went rummaging around in my paint box looking for dioxide purple. I almost never use that color and I had a tough time finding it! I guess it reminds me of my years in Catholic school as a young girl. Purple was the color of Lent and the connotation in my mind was of sorrow, though actually it's about atonement for one's sins. Truthfully, Easter is the best of all Christian holidays and If I remember correctly the priests switch their vestments to white from the purple on Easter morning. Go figure. At any rate, I rarely paint with purple, though I do love magenta, which is purple's warm side.

Not that any of this has anything to do with the above painting. Every now and then it's good to change your palette. These cool colors work in my present frame of mind, obviously. Hopefully I'll wake up tomorrow and have a fervent desire to paint a big red and orange landscape. We'll see...