Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Paint Rehoboth

This past weekend I participated in the annual Paint Rehoboth competition. We started with a reception on Thursday night at the Aerie Art Gallery. On Friday and Saturday the 30 artists in the competition painted all day. It was very windy on Saturday and I had to hold my easel with my left hand while painting with my right hand. I also got some sun. I have a nice apron string tan on my neck. I painted four paintings and then entered my two favorite on Sunday for the exhibit which was from 2 - 5.
I noticed that I am getting braver about my painting locations. On Saturday afternoon I painted Penny Lane which is a pass-through alley with lots of cute stores. There were so many people who stopped to talk to me while I was painting. The kids are awesome.

Curves Show


I had a piece accepted to the Curves show at the Art League Gallery in the Torpedo Factory. It was juried by Warren E. Perry who is a curator for the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibit contains works that are based on the human figure. My piece is called Jalene Sitting. I painted it in the open-life class that I attend weekly.

Sherrie McGraw Workshop


I attended the 5 day Sherrie McGraw workshop sponsered by the Council for the Arts of Herndon. It was held in Herndon at the Coomber School of Music which is this great old building space attached to a Barn. Sherrie did demos for figure and still life and students in the class could choose to work on either or both. I choose to work on figure the whole week. Sherrie is a good teacher. She took the time to talk to each one of us individually and worked with us on the things that were important to us. I was working on giving more space around the figure so it draws the viewer into the scene instead of my usual close-up view. I was also using Sherrie's palette of colors and the medium Maroger to see how it felt. I like using Maroger but I can't really use it in my studio at home or at open-life classes at the Art League because of it's strong smell.


At the end of the week there was a reception and Sherrie gave a slide show talk about the progress of her career throuhout the years. It was a great week.