PAT'S COMEBACK AS AN ARTIST

My apologies for my long absence on this blog.  Due to family medical problems, I returned to work to help pay the bills for several years.  Good things have happened as a result of my financial and emotional contributions to my family.  And now, I am completely immersed in creating and teaching art!  

 For the time being, I am focused on developing my take on abstract expressionism.  Today's wide variety of new materials and techniques and modifications of traditional paints are leading a confluence of artistic direction resulting in exciting new works.  And I want to be a part of it!

Below is a work that I painted recently that won a merit award in "Splash."  "Splash" is an annual watercolor show sponsored by the Brevard Watercolor Society in Florida.  I was very pleased that it won an award as this is really my very first painting representative of my take on abstract expressionism.  

Cocoa Village Playhouse is one of my favorite places. The building is charming and I have enjoyed many of their productions. I hope you enjoy my painting of this beautiful historic building.

Cocoa Village Balconies

This is a painting I did recently for the "Drawing and Painting in Perspective" series of classes. It was drawn from a cropped photo of these charming Cocoa Village balconies. I used it to illustrate how to do perspective drawing from a photo. For such a simple painting, I think it turned out quite nicely.

Rosie's Place

Rosie's Place is a fun little painting I did as a classroom demo in the recent series of Waterscapes and Seascapes classes. The chartreuse door for Rosie's was a whimsical touch I added at the last minute. I hope you enjoy it. Maybe you could send me your version of the "story line" for Rosie's Place. What do you think the guy by the door is doing? Where do you think Rosie's Place is located?

This is a painting of a door in Paris. A walk on Boulevard St. Michel toward the river on the left bank is always fascinating, but I found the doors especially interesting They always seem to hide stories and make one wonder what happened behind all those doors. Most are private ones with double doors that open into a courtyard. But this one caught my eye because of the very modest hotel that caters to the students in the area. In years past, the time I spent in Paris was business related, but we returned there this spring for a vacation. We stayed in a little hotel on the left Bank, Hotel de Mine, across from Luxembourg Gardens. We walked a great deal and took some wonderful photos of the doors and the delightful cafes and bistros in the area.

Walk in the Woods

This painting was done in the woods of North Carolina in the Lakes District (Lake Gaston and Kerr Lake) north of Raleigh. We ran a bed and breakfast there and I loved painting the woods in the area. We used to have art weekends and enjoyed having artists and students as our guests and come for our classes.

English Villages

These two paintings were inspired by our times living in England some years ago where I first fell in love with watercolor. The ewe tree near the Church in the second image is very typical of old Anglican churchyards. Some of these trees are thought to be hundreds of years old.

I often teach how to paint buildings and I recently used these village scenes in my classes on perspective drawing and painting buildings in the landscape.