Third day running I've worked on the Venice Laundry 2. So minutely detailed and I drill down until the world is the size of the end of my brush. I'm always surprised when I look up at 5pm and see there's more canvas covered.
Planning a trip to Vienna next fall and the thought of a week devoted to all the lustrous, detailed northern Renaissance paintings is incredibly enticing. Not to mention everything you eat apparently comes 'mitt schlag' (whipped cream). I'll be back in Venice for a few weeks as well. I guess this will be the V-towns Tour.

Working on another view of the Isle of Palms. This one has more of the sense of enormity that I was trying for. I think the silhouette of part of a beach house in the lower right is what gave it the sense of proportion.

The rest of the day I worked on the second Venice Laundry. It's so much specificity and and I still don't have paint on all of the canvas - but I'd say two more days an I'll be able to start layering in the subtleties and detail.

Went back to the first one (Priest's laundry) and worked on a door that wasn't quite right. I'm going to add a touch of detail to the doorknob and then I'll finally be able to let go of it.
I toned a canvas and gridded it with white conte and will start the drawing this week. I like have three balls in the air.

Four new paintings in the gallery

The painting are up in the gallery and I've sent out my own email notice. I've already had some kind responses and many of them cite the dawn painting as the one they want to see the most. The gallery has it, but did not hang it as they are concerned about how different it looks from my small, precise, detailed works. My instinct says it will find the right buyer, and be loved and appreciated.
We'll see how it works out.
Here's the email, with brevity as its chief virtue:
Four new works by Virginia Parker
Now showing at Twinhouse Gallery, 2815 Peachtree Road, 404-233-3433, Twinhouse.com
Two more in the Table for One series and two cloud-inspired works

three new canvases

There's something provoking and mesmerizing about a fresh canvas. To have three in various states of beginning is ticklish and galvanizing.
Painting has commenced on the first one - two rounds so far. It still has a third or more of the white gessoed canvas visible, but I work steadily and patiently. It's the second in the Venice Laundry series, a commission, and the elements are familiar to me from previous works; crusty brick and stucco walls, boats and reflections in water, shifting sliding water, iron railing, laundry like prayer flags, sky.
The second canvas is drawn, and the initial paint is mixed, but I haven't started. Tomorrow looks promising since the Venice canvas will be too wet to proceed without extreme caution. Better it has another day to dry. This is a larger canvas of ocean and skyscape that requires different brush work, lavish motion, melting edges.
The third canvas is the biggest - 30x40" - and I am experimenting gessoing it a mid tone of a neutral gray before I do any drawing. The reference photo is gridded into 5" squares in one half and 2.5" squares on the other. It's an image from Florence of a bench and a chair and an open book. Quite simple and for some reason indelible. I'd like to start drawing on it, but I have a deadline looming.

I worked on ithe copy for the article today, but I need to buckle down and get a sizable portion of completed by Monday. I'm distracted by a possible opportunity to go to Venice.

The Twinhouse show will open soon. Must focus on the here and now.
Life is good.

Spring Show at Twinhouse

These continue the Table for One series.














A new direction - sky and sea - I have three planned, one on the easel.


Getting ready to be party of a late spring show at my gallery. Turned in these paintings and hope to have two more - the dawn sky and the priests laundry ready in time. It's exciting! Plus, I love a deadline. Finally, two small works from the Swan House show.

Back to the Table

I finished the tomato - signed it on the vinegar bottle. Did a few small adjustments to the salt & pepper. Next week I'll varnish it. And in a couple of days I'll paint the sides with a dark gray color I plan to mix.
Spent the rest of the day working on the Met. All over it, but notably the glass, a few more layers on the pasta, the table edge, a reworking of the salt and pepper, the fork got an upgrade, as did the knife and bread, and the chairs. Actually the only things I didn't touch were George Washington and the sketchbook. In a few days I'll tackle the lettering on the museum map.

It was so good to devote a day to the brush. I did check my email periodically and fax an invoice. But this was a sweet, sweet day.
Tomorrow I'll work on the new Venice drawing. After I check it carefully I'll probably spend the whole day mixing my start-up colors.

focus and time

After weeks of focusing on the business of writing and adjusting the proportion of time allotted to writing vs painting, followed by a bout of bronchitis, I am at last free to paint. Today I began in a small way working on the fine details of the Lamott Tomato, the salt and the balsamic.
I have three works still on easel that needs looking after - the Priests Laundry , one of the first cloud paintings and the Met. And I just finished the drawing of the Venetian Laundry. All drawn and no color put together yet. So much pleasure in anticipation.

Tomorrow I paint. And the next day and the next.

A few breaks to visit the roses, to a riot of bloom. Also on the calendar- a visit to the theater, a friend's engagement party.

sea sand sky

Another layer on the reflection in the saturated sand, and the haze on the horizon, the lowest line of clouds in the distance. Deepened another layer of blues over the sky - radiant violet really helped here.

motion and stillness

Added another layer to the clouds and sky, and worked on the surface of the water. I loved adding the sky's broken reflection, bouncing off each angle of the surface of the waves.

The reflection off the saturated sand is still crude, but I don't doubt I can get it where I want it to be. Pondering the inclusion of more cloud in the upper right corner. I may just add some semi transluscent wisps.
I am drawn to the opposites - the crisp precision of the foam at the edge of the tide, the blurred melting refection on the sand, the stillness of the earth, the restlessness of the water. The invisible wind pushing the great towers of cloud.

Here's a closer look at the waves.

Isle of Palm

Here's the beginning. I painted the sea yesterday and the sky today. Trying to figure out the best way to render the there/not there edges of clouds. It's from a photo I took on the Isle of Palm last spring. What I loved was the way the sky reflected in the saturated sand.

I'm working on this using three reference photos. I love that it shows three of the four elements - earth, air, water - and the fourth, fire, is implied by the light.

It's only the first layer, but I think it's going to break the cloud jinx.

Here's a peek at the Venice Laundry series. Possibly a dip or triptych. When there was a sunny day, all the laundry came flying out the windows, strung in swags, like bunting over the canals. When I saw this I realized it was the laundry of a priest. And no, I haven't painted the clothesline in yet. That will be the last thing I do. There is plenty yet to work on, like the iron grillwork over the green door and the bricks next to the window. But I love the mix of textures and the neutral palette. And I'd hope the clergy will wash their laundry and hang it out to dry. The church's dirty laundry has been in the public eye enough.

In the sometimes shells, sometimes peanuts way that life has, two people came by my house for a studio visit and left saying they were heading straight to my gallery to commission a painting. They liked another one of the Venice laundry series (one that I haven't started yet, with laundry strung at different levels, all the way down the canal). It looks like prayer flags to me.
They were delightfully enthusiastic about my work and, especially heartening to me, loved the dawn sky painting.

Still painting, though every day is prettier than the day before

Here's the last version of the tomatoes. More refining to come, especially around the lettering and the salt and pepper, but it's close.

Here's a somewhat blurry and blue-ish (shot late in the day when the light was almost gone) photo of the Met painting. I've added the background chair, more layers to the tile and worked on Washington. The pasta is slowly coming into focus. I'll probably do the glass next. Much, much more to do here.
I'm going to go running in the morning - definitely need to keep those endorphins rolling in. And yes, I did work in the yard today, if you can call admiring the bells on the snowflake flowers and the butter yellow of the minidaffodils and the leaves busting out of the climbing hydrangea 'work.'

Presidents and Tomatoes II

Here's the Met, with the olives and tomatoes popped in, and the first layer on the portrait of Washington that's on the cover of the paper museum guide. Here's a close of that detail. It's still splotchy and vague, but it's 'lying down' on the page which is a big deal for me.



Another round on the tomatoes, this time the balsamic label. I had fun with that because I didn't paint the letters. I painted the dark shapes around them. Of course I'll paint the words too, in due course, but there is something magical about painting dark curves and angles and having letters appear.

Presidents and Tomatoes

Good painting morning, so I thought I'd upload two that are on the easel so you can see the progress. First, the tomatoes. This week I added the place for the lettering (on the left side of the book cover (the book title is like the place in a church where they post they hymn numbers) and refined the tomato surfaces and plate edge. When it's drier I'll work on the balsamic label and intensify the salt and pepper. The author's name goes in big letters across the top. I'm thinking about putting my name on the balsamic label.


And this is what I was just working on - a lunch I had at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. This is really early in the painting - I don't even have all the white of the canvas covered yet - but you can see where it's going. Today I added the red caran d'ache pencil and it really pops. I'll wait until I've got one layer of paint on everything before I decide whether to dull it. Gave the sketchbook another layer of blues, filled in the fork and the salt and pepper. Yesterday I started the pasta. The spaces have olives and sun-dried tomatoes in them, dark rich colors, so I'll wait for the pasta to dry before I go in again there. Maybe work on George's face next or the glass reflectins. I've got another chair to add behind the table, and am thinking about dimming the tile floor with several layers of glazes.

Three runs, no outs, no errors

About tomatoes - one day I may tire of them. But not yet.
There are very southern. Someday I'll try to paint a tomato sandwich on white bread. Done properly, you have to eat them dripping over the sink. And my daddy always planted tomatoes in the garden when I was growing up. That and hearing crackly baseball play-by-plays on the radio reminds me of him.

Meanwhile I’ve worked on the Priest's Laundry. I painted two doors, the upper story windows with curtains, and canal level windows with bars (also mesh - got to keep those wharf rats out). The remaining white canvas is a bit of the brick wall, the guard rail of a bridge (the one I'm standing on to take photo) and the laundry. It's going to have to be dry as a bone around the laundry before I do it so I can lift any errors or wobbles with turp without erasing the background.

Now I'm starting a third canvas - the paint is so wet on the other two that it just makes sense. This is the lunch at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC last year. Did 90% of the drawing. Love the blues. Decided to swap out the yellow #2 pencil in the photo for the Caran D'ache red pencil my daughter bought me in Paris when she surprised me with the blue sketchbook. Finished the drawing in time to paint a bit more on the tomato - worked on the knife handle and bread. Then mixed the colors for the Met painting. Realized Gilbert's George Washington portrait on the museum guide is particularly appropriate to paint this year. Great colors to work with - all those luscious blues! And there's a tile floor that stretches away in the background, like a little Flemish nod.