Life Is A Gift!

I am currently on a visit to Florida with my daughter and several mom and dad, to visit my mom and dad! 

First stop North Carolina to see my sister and her family. They are in Charlotte and WOW!!! what a booming place to live. There are several galleries, museums, restaurants, music festivals, wineries.. I can't name everything that is going on there! If you need a job that's the place to be. 

Down town business i booming and building is going on all over. 

Farmers market, four buildings plus outdoor vendors. I love pumpkins!

Mom and Dads' back garden area. I'm on an inspiration hunt!

Sand Crane

Cool texture

Cannas

Hibiscus

Neighbors rose, I love the color

Corn Flower

Palm leaf

Banana flower

Guava flower

Scruffy puppy

Triangle bug

There are more interesting things to come from this trip. I am sorry to see it come to an end but reality strikes and I must return to it. 

September Art Bead Scene Challenge

My polymer clay beads 1 1/2" long tube beads. Inspired by September Challenge

 painting.

View of the Pond at Charleston, East Sussex

by Vanessa Bell

c.1919

Polymer clay leaf, 2" long.

September Challenge

 from Art Bead Scene

View of the Pond at Charleston, East Sussex

by Vanessa Bell

c.1919

Oil on canvas, 79.8 x 84 cm

Collection: Museums Sheffield

About the Art

At the Royal Academy Schools Vanessa Bell was taught by and admired the work of John Singer Sargent. She was also greatly influenced by Whistler, and in the final pages of this letter to her friend Margery Snowdon she described the influence of his technique on her painting style.
Bell's first commissioned work was a portrait of Lady Robert Cecil. This was also the first work she ever exhibited, at the New Gallery, London, in 1905.
After her marriage in 1907, Bell continued to paint portraits, but with the birth of her son Julian in 1908, her paintings adopted more domestic themes such as still lifes and interiors

About the Artist

Vanessa Bell, 1879–1961, was a British painter and interior designer who established her reputation as part of the avant-garde Bloomsbury Group. Her most innovative works, which fused fine art and decorative design, show the influence of post-Impressionism, Matisse and Cubism.

Bell was the elder sister of writer Virginia Woolf. 

In 1906, when Bell started to think of herself as an artist, she formed the Friday Club in order to create a place in London that was more favourable to painting. Vanessa was encouraged by the Post-Impressionist exhibitions organised by Roger Fry and she copied their bright colours and bold forms in her artworks. In 1914, she turned to abstraction.

Bell rejected the examples of Victorian narrative painting and rejected a discourse on the ideal and aberrant qualities of femininity. Some of Vanessa Bell’s works were related to her personal life.

Bell is one of the most celebrated painters of the Bloomsbury group. She exhibited in London and Paris during her lifetime, and has been praised for innovative works during her early maturity and for her contributions to design.

 I love this painting I like the subtle colors  and the way that the artist used her brush strokes. It feels like a water color to me but I'm sure in person the brush work would show more clearly. The play of light as it comes in the window seems to mimic the pond and how the trees are reflected in it. I love a play on 2 to 3 dimensionality, it is how I like to work visually. It is not all that easy to express what you need to say with a flat two dimensional plane and get just the right enough information with the three dimensional to not take away completely the two. Sounds confusing? It can be I find that I have to simplify my work which is what I see in this beautiful painting.

My bracelet is made with a polymer clay bracelet bar made by myself, Czech beads, freshwater pearls and jasper. I tried to express the softness with a monochromatic palette and nature and brushstrokes with the pattern and texture. I also used alcohol inks for coloring.

Work That Blog!

Not always so easy. For anyone who has been looking at my blog you can see that it has changed several times.

I am in the process of discovery. I am trying to figure out just how to show people who I am through an image, my header or blog visuals. 

I start with one and I like it then I don't. I may like part but it doesn't tell the whole story. What do you do when there is a definite duality to your personality let alone the grey areas?

Hmmm, think, think, think????

I will be getting there and the road to discovery is interesting and revealing. Hopefully I will start posting more too. Again I was thinking as I was working in my garden this morning, "Ohh, I should have taken a picture of before and after". Well I don't have a cell phone that I keep on me at all times or I probably would catch those moments that I feel would make a good post. 

Today's moment was my Ginkgo tree garden, I had planted bee-balm in it and it was beautiful but every year after it is finished blooming I pull it out and it seems to always come back beautifully. This year I have decided that since I have some in my wild garden and this area is developing well with larger things I wont have it there anymore. I can't seem to find a before picture even though I was sure I had one but here is the after. Looks like a barren wasteland but after some shrub trimming and ground cover that doesn't cover the tree things will be just fine. I have two of my mother in law's roses and four pontentillia shrubs given to me by Judy.

Here in the left are some fizzled out bee balm in the wild garden. They are tall and that is why the Ginkgo tree was mostly covered. I also was happy to see some holly hocks arrive this year I guess the rabbits didn't find them.