"About Face"

"About Face", opens August 18th at Commonwheel Artists Co-op,  and is filled with a whimsical and amusing series of portraits celebrating views we all know by heart, but rarely see. Representing all ages and walks of life, "About Face" presents 100 small portraits of the back of people's heads. The portraits feature local residents and artists, including Kris and Liese Chavez, Phil Lear, Deb Komitor and many more. Even if you don't know the people personally, they are bound to remind you of someone!

I hope that you'll join me for this fun evening. 
Come and hear about my journey in painting this series.

When: Friday, August 18 2017, 5-8pm

Where: 102 Cañon Avenue
Manitou Springs, CO 80829

For More Info Call: 719-685-1008

Joining me are potters Arlene Woods 

and Nancy Morse with face-related pottery.

Show Ends September 11, 2017

Summer Sisters

 Summer Sisters   6x6 inch oil

After having fun painting "portraits" of individual hollyhock blossoms, I turned to painting them in the abundance that we are accustomed to seeing them.  This series has been a fun way to explore painting with pinks (I'm more familiar with reds) and the way that they create beautiful purples.  I also discovered the wonderful glow that adding orange gives them.

Singing Hollyhock 3

Singing Hollyhock 3   5x5 inch oil

In this little painting, I fell in love with the grayed pinks and lavenders that created the blossoms on the left and the spark of yellow in the center of the main flower. In the original painting, the flowers are a softer pink and don't look as blue as they do here. Sometimes, Photoshop baffles me....

Singing Hollyhock 2

Singing Hollyhock 2   6x6 inch oil

This hollyhock painting is slightly larger than the other two in the series.  It measures 6x6 inches versus 5x5 inches.  Although it's difficult to capture in a photo,  what excited me when painting this is the discovery of how much red and orange I could use in the foliage and still have it look green. The colors in the original paintings are just a wee bit softer than they look here.

Putting on the Dots

Putting on the Dots     6x6 inch oil

 

Whenever I play with patterns, this little guy shows up front and center. This time I think he's imagining how he would look in orange polkadots.

Singing Hollyhock 1

Singing Hollyhock 1  5x5 inch oil

I've been doing a series of hollyhock paintings, and have enjoyed playing with the light and shadow of the petals.  All artists fall in love with little areas of their paintings, and those areas are sometimes away from the central focus. My favorite  "gems" on this piece are the bud in the upper right and the blossom in the lower right corner!

Jersey Girl

Jersey Girl   6x6inch oil

 

It's hard to say which is warmer, the golden afternoon sun or the soft brown eyes of this lovely Jersey girl!

Soul Food

Garden of the Gods, Sept.4     6x8"       Available Sept. 20-21 during the Pikes Peak Studio Tour

Plein Air painting feeds my soul.  I've been working so diligently this summer on all kinds of things and have been whining in my head about how summer had passed me by. Yesterday, I put on my big girl panties and called my friend, Karen Storm (www.karenstorm.com).  She's set herself the goal of painting in the Garden of the Gods for 30 days in a row.  The sale proceeds of her paintings will go to a friend who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer.  Great idea, right? Anyway, she had invited me to join her, and I arranged to meet her this morning.  Just a couple hours of painting outdoors and my summer was redeemed.  Despite the work left to prepare for the Pikes Peak Studio Tour, I'm going to save my heart and soul by painting outdoors with Karen as often as I can.  Today, I actually created a piece that I can frame for the tour.

The Pikes Peak Studio Tour: Behind the Scene

I'm excited to once again participate in the Pikes Peak Studio Tour coming up on Set 20th and 21st.  Twenty artists have been juried into this year's tour and I think that you'll enjoy meeting each one of them. While many of you visit me frequently in Studio L in Old Colorado City, only a very few have seen my home studio.  The last two times that I hosted the tour in my home, I've set up a quasi-easel work station, but the door to the actual studio has been closed.  Maybe 7 people have even seen the room since we moved into this house.

I use the word "studio" loosely here, because, while I had a corner to work in, it was really an art supply storage room that I could barely walk into.....(many of my fellow artists are now nodding their heads in sympathy.). But, I spent the month of January excavating the room and creating a comfortable studio in which people can now walk without injury!

However, even the cleanest studio comes unglued when preparing for a big event, as this picture illustrates.  Creating lots of new work creates a lot of creative clutter.  Paint, canvases, paintings, creating, photographing paintings, matting, framing, eating, frame making, sleeping.....  But I promise that the floor will be clear again for the tour, so please stop in and see things like my frame storage and flying pig collection (my business name is The. Flying Pig Studio). Oh yes, I'll also have my artwork.

Until the Cows Come Home

Until the Cows Come Home      6x6 inches   $95 unframed

Auction and Buy It Now Options

After a very exciting trip to Burundi, Africa, I'm finally back in the studio with some concentrated time to work.  I'm currently painting images of my trip, and look forward to sharing them with you.  This little study was completed before I left.  It's a familiar scene from my home town.  I love the looseness of it, and how I managed to capture the late afternoon light.

Friends, if you are in the Pikes Peak region, First Friday is next week, May 2nd from 5 to 8pm.  I'll be in my studio and would love for you to take a peek at my latest paintings!  Let me know if you need directions to get there.

With Compliments

With Compliments                                           6x6 inch oil Sold

Click to Bid in My Online Auction

As promised, I've experimented with a background color other than red and have decided to explore the compliments of purple and yellow a little more. I'm enjoying mixing yellows that give the impression of petals in shadow.

The starting bid for this painting in my online auction is $45. If you are interested in my "Buy It Now" option, the price is $85 unframed or $125 framed. Just contact me directly, and if no one has yet bid on the painting, I can stop the auction and guarantee that "With Compliments" is yours. Email me at juliekirkland@info.com

Turning Toward the Sun

Turning Toward the Sun                            6 x 6 inch oil

Click to Bid in My Online Auction

I can't promise that this will be the last sunflower on red, but I am moving on to a different background color tomorrow.  In this painting, I'm particularly fond of how abstract I got the background flowers.  I also love the light on the petal that drips into the flower's center.

Plenty of Sunshine

Plenty of Sunshine                         6 x 6 inch, oil

Click to Bid in My Online Auction

A few years ago, I discovered an artist online who painted thirty different compositions of three plums, and for some reason, that made a great impression on me.  I'm thinking of her as I work with my sunflower series, wondering if I won't lose interest before long...my red phase is drawing to a close, and soon I'll turn to some other background colors!  With each piece, I learn something new that I can do with the palette knife...

Sunny Faces

Sunny Faces                5x5 inch oil         Sold

 So far, this little piece is one of my favorites in the sunflower series.  I got really loose with it and love the  purple/yellow color scheme.

Sunflower on Red

Sunflower on Red                                    5x5 inch oil

Click to Bid in my Online Auction

I'm committed to my series on Sunflowers and am learning more and more about using the palette knife.  I'm also learning to quit sooner than a do.  I often leave the studio vowing to give up painting altogether given the "mess" I've made on the canvas, but am almost always surprised to walk in the next morning with a fresh eye and find that what looked disastrous the night before is actually quite exciting.  It's the "just let me add one more stroke" that leads me to reworking the whole thing, and in doing that I often end up with something more generic looking.  Luckily, that didn't happen with this piece!  Current auction bid is $40.

Red Makes Me Happy

Red Makes Me Happy                   6x6 inch oil

This sunflower was painted entirely with a palette knife and I've decided that is my favorite method of painting these flowers.  The strokes give the petals such energy and expression.

Currently not available for sale.  Please let me know if you'd be interested in purchasing this piece when it becomes available.

Radiant

Radiant                                                      6x6 inch oil

Click to bid in my online auction

Summer is here, and sunflowers are back!  I'm doing a series of them with thick paint, using a brush and/or a palette knife, and experimenting with different background colors.  I find it much easier to be more expressive with sunflowers than I am with many other flowers.  I think that it's because their petals are so pleasantly unruly.

Copying a Master: Edgar Payne Part 3

Eucalypti, after Edgar Payne                        20x 24 inches

And here is the completed painting.  This was a terrific experience that I will be sure to repeat.  I learned SO much.  My next step will be to paint a landscape of my own using the same methods I employed while copying this piece.  I hope you enjoyed the process as much as I did.  I'd love to answer any questions you may have.

Summer Mowing

Summer Mowing                                          8x10 in.  oil    $360 

Painting outdoors is my most pleasurable activity.  I love being out in warm weather enjoying the sites, smells and sounds of nature.  Painting "plein air" is challenging.  The light changes quickly, and in this case, my model didn't stay still very long.  I consider my plein air pieces to be studies of light and color to take back to the studio, along with a photograph of the scene, with the possibility of creating from it.  But occasionally (and in this case) I'm happy with the painting as it is.  If I repainted it, I'm sure I'd lose the looseness and immediacy of the piece.  My strategy here was pretty simple: get my model in before she moved and then paint the scene around her. She happens to be "Patches,"  Rock Ledge Ranch's resident jersey.  It was a perfect morning of painting in the company of some favorite artist friends.

Simple Pleasures

Simple Pleasures                                          6 x 6" oil

Click here to bid in my online auction


With this painting, I focused on creating a very simplified interpretation of the vase and flowers.   When I painted it about one year ago, it didn't turn out at all like I had wanted and I tossed it into my "reject pile."  Last week, I was cleaning up in my studio and ran across it.  My first reaction was "Where did I get this great painting?"  It wasn't until I looked at the signature that I remembered painting it.  When I judged the work on its own merit, versus what I had wanted it to look like, I realized that it worked very well.  Lesson learned: don't scrape off every painting that doesn't please me.    I need to put it in my reject pile and look at it again down the road.