Since my paints were out anyway, and I was required to make something for a little gift exchange with all the other students in Senior Seminar, I decided to make everyone a little painting. I love working with the pre-stretched one inch thick canvases. For this series of thank you gifts I bought the 5″ x 5″ size. It will be interesting to see what each person thinks of their painting I made specifically for them. Each painting is of something having to do with that person’s artwork they made for their senior thesis show, except Janelle’s. She said she likes birds, so I painted her a bird instead of a wax-dipped-tea-stained pouch.

I’m wearing the Nagaland Head Hunters’ necklace to the dinner tonight at Heather’s house. It is in the thank you painting I’m giving Heather. She and her husband Brian went to Nagaland last year. A few months later the film students from Nagaland came to Nazareth College and presented their works. They were the nicest people! Once I saw it I had to buy this necklace I found researching Nagaland art. Luckily headhunting isn’t a practice any longer in Nagaland.

These are the little paintings.

The opening of my solo exhibit “misremembrance” in the Gallery at the Art & Music Library on Saturday was great fun! It was certainly worth all the work that went into it. The photos below show the gallery ready for the opening.

The brown paint was the perfect background for the series of paintings based on my Mom’s reference photos of my sister and me as small children. The white wall worked for the triptych of “Paige Loved to Dance”.

Edmund and I set up the yummy vegetarian and meat lover’s Open Face sandwich trays, little bottles of water and the wine. The CDs of 1950’s Greatest Hits were playing as we sat and waited for the first arrivals. I didn’t immediately recognize the first woman who walked in, because I wasn’t expecting my sister Betsy to fly in from Virginia to surprise me. And she was wearing the red cowboy boots she bought for the occasion!

The tripytch painting, “Betsy Had Red Cowboy Boots” was the image I used on my exhibit postcard. I had sent it to her when she told me she wouldn’t be able to make the opening. What fun to have the subject of most of the paintings actually there and wearing red cowboy boots bought to match her painting for the opening.

It was also fun to have our granddaughter Paige, the model for “Paige Loved to Dance” come with her Mom, Dad, sister and brother to see the paintings of herself.

My cousins came from Rochester and Syracuse. Cousin Jean brought her son, my cousin Brandon, as a surprise guest. He is the Wine Maker at Red Newt Winery and always lots of fun. A long time friend David came from Detroit as well as other Rochester friends, Gwenn and Terry, Ann and Will, Axel and Diane. And what a delight to see Nicki my EMT/painting friend again. My painting teacher Heather Layton and professors Grace Seiberling and Allen Topolski stopped by.

This photo of cousin Nancy from Syracuse sums up how everyone seemed to feel, especially me.

With wonderful memories I’m off to finish a couple of thank you paintings for my painting mentor Heather and department chairman Allen. Without all I learned from them and years of asking me to push my work beyond what it was, this exhibit wouldn’t have happened. Many, many thanks to them.

it was a whirlwind of a week last week. The paintings had to be finished, the hanging order needed to be decided, the vinyl lettering ordered for the gallery window, the gallery walls painted, the food ordered from Open Face and everything installed.

Since my new studio is about the same size as the gallery I was able to arrange my paintings along the wall in different orders and photograph them. This helped me decide the best color balance between paintings.

The photo above is the order selected for the left wall as you walk in the gallery.

After studying this photo above I decided to switch this order shown of the “Betsy’s Sundress” painting and the “We Always Wore Proper White Gloves on Easter” painting. These would hang on the end wall you would see straight ahead as you walked into the gallery.

Finally, after repeated study of the stack of paint chips I had collected, I decided on a soft suede-brown to paint the walls behind the paintings with the light backgrounds. It was from the color swatch with the two lighter browns I had used in the “Paige Loved to Dance” triptych. I decided to keep those three paintings on a single white wall. The Behr latex paint I used actually mixes nicely with the Golden, and Windsor & Newton acrylic paints I paint with. Some of the colors I can buy in small tester jars to create a certain mood I couldn’t mix if I spent hours trying.

I checked my list as I gathered my hanging tools, paintings. labels and artist statement. With 2 days of vacation from my real job at the University and the tremendous help carrying and painting from my husband Edmund my first solo exhibit started to finally happen.

On Thursday we picked up the vinyl lettering from Dave at EGI Vinyl, painted the walls and applied the vinyl to the window.  A number of staff who walked though as I was hanging commented on how they liked the warm, inviting wall color we were painting, On Friday we brought all of the paintings to the space. Staff and students who walked through as I was hanging them said they liked the paintings. One student asked if I had postcards of the paintings for sale. I had to tell her no, but thanked her for the great idea. I’ll have to offer them for sale on my website. I spent a long time studying the paintings leaning against the gallery wall that day and adjusting the amount of equal space between them until I was satisfied they balanced with the wall space.

Finally they were hung and I felt very satisfied to see months of long hours and hard work come together for this solo show. Exhausted but satisfied I had done all I could I left for home, to return the next morning to set-up for the opening . . .

This week I have been lucky to have a sun-filled weekend to finish the paintings for the exhibit. I’ve worked on adding details to the series of paintings of Paige and the Sphere. They will all work nicely against the tan wall color I’m painting the gallery. I’ll add photos to my next post. Off to finish painting.

When my sister Betsy and I were small we always dressed up for church, especially on Easter Sunday. I found some delightful photos of the two of us Easter Sunday, 1959. We had little straw sailor hats, proper purses, white socks, and the required little white gloves. We often wore special corsages on Easter. In this reference photo I wear a yellow rose. As we grew older my Uncle Carl provided orchids he raised in his greenhouse.

I’ve kept Betsy’s coat navy blue as I started filling in my pencil sketch on this next painting for my first solo exhibit.

I’m wearing a drab grey coat in the original photo and decided to paint it instead in the pale green blue I used for the ’56 Chevy. The coordinated colors contribute to the overall look I’m trying to achieve with all of the paintings in this series. This photo shows the painting surrounded by all the others I’m working on for the show. Looking back at my previous blog posts you can see this color scheme develop.

The little white gloves were almost always too long in the fingers. Wearing them did make us feel so proper on Easter Sundays.

Now I’ll continue to paint and draw more detail . . . and then go back and lightly dry-brush the background paint over the figure of me. I’m also going to add the front of the ’56 Chevy from another reference photo. It has a really fun hood ornament!