Dessert

This week I was excited to visit my artist friend, Lori, and paint the fantastic fall colors here in northern Wisconsin.  I live three hours north of her and our trees are bare here, but in her area the leaf colors are at their peak.  Driving in the rain hid natures colors from me as I sped down the freeway, but I knew from Lori's report that the vivid yellow and orange colors were there waiting for my paint brush.  When I arrived it was still raining and our painting time outdoors didn't look promising.  So on our first day together we painted in her studio instead of venturing into the landscape.  This bowl with ripe luscious pears was sitting on the kitchen table and became my still life set up.  We had the pears for dessert.  Delicious! 

Group Hug

My tomatoes are ripening and I decided to feature only these beautiful ripe ones in another DPW 'paint an emotion' Challenge.   The emotion for this painting is love and is entitled Group Hug.

Green with Envy

This weeks Daily Paint Works Challenge is to paint an emotion.  Wow!  I have never painted an emotion before and was excited to get started.  Except what emotion would I paint?  How would I paint it once I decided on my choice?  Many choices came to mind but were quickly dismissed.  Then I looked in my kitchen for a snack to fuel my tired brain and there was my subject, my just picked garden tomatoes. (While I was out of town, Jane, my neighbor had saved them from the frost, by picking every tomato still on my plants. - Thank you, Jane.)   A few of the tomatoes were ripe, red and perfect.  Most of the tomatoes were green, blemished and pretty un-tomato looking.  These green tomatoes looked like they were envious of the red tomatoes maturity, ripeness and beauty to me.  So I set up my tomato still life and painted the emotion 'envy' thanks to these tomatoes.
PS  To all those green tomatoes out there - you can ripen up if you are put in a paper bag with a few green friends and placed on top of the refrigerator for a few days.  Or you can be turned into fried green tomatoes!

The Fruit of the Vine

Autumn in Wisconsin is our most colorful month.  When I had the opportunity to paint this pumpkin field, I took it!  Painting the orange of the pumpkins was quite a challenge and I learned, early on in the painting, that using cadmium orange straight from the tube was not going to work.  I had to wipe that color off (thank goodness it was oil paint) and come up with another color game plan.
That is what I love about painting, you have to solve different problems in each and every painting you create.  The problem I tackled in this painting was how to paint orange pumpkins without using orange paint.  Exciting!

Two Bee or Not Two Bee

Two bees were working this sunflower today.  It reminded me of Shakespeare's famous line from Hamlet as I painted, "To be, or not to be, that is the question."  A possible answer to Shakespeare's question came up at last weeks Bible study, on the first eight chapters of Genesis.  This question was asked,"Why would a God of Love create death for Adam and Eve after they left the Garden of Eden?"  One of the answers given was that eternal life with corruption, illness and evil would be unbearable if it went on for eternity.  So God in his goodness gives us something better, relief from all evils, and only goodness forever.  I wonder what Shakespeare would say to that answer?

SUNFLOWER LABYRINTH

This sunflower was covered with bees when I first stepped into the garden.  Most flew off leaving only one to enjoy the pollen and nectar from the flowers on the tips of the sunflower seeds.  The lone bee seemed to be walking around the seeds from the outside to the inside in ever tighter circles.  It reminded me of walking a labyrinth.   

Duck Tail

This is one of farmer Greg's ducks.  He also has rabbits, goats, chickens, cats, a wife and three blond children.  Greg read an article about people in Europe paying farmers to camp on their farms and was intrigued by this idea.  The European farm campers stay in canvas cabins with flooring, a deck, beds, chairs, and a filling farm breakfast.  Even hot showers are available.  Most of the campers are families and they camp on the farms so their children can experience the farm life by gathering eggs, feeding the livestock, doing choirs and picking produce in season for a weekend. Would you pay to camp on a farm here in the USA?  I certainly would!