West Coast Sunset – new abstract paintings

The sunsets out over the Tasman Sea here on the West Coast in New Zealand have been just stunning lately. The sky is so clear, and the colours are so very vivid – the light catches on the sea and can be quite dazzling. Sometimes I watch out our kitchen window and just think “if I paint that exactly as it is, no one will believe me!”. I guess that is always one of the challenges for an artist; to take what they see and to make it believable even when it seems to defy logic. Or, as I usually do, to skip the reality and instead capture the feel of it; to capture the song it sings in your heart.

I think one of the things that I really value about living in rural New Zealand is the clean, fresh air – our sky is so clear that sunrise and sunset can be just amazing. I’m not much of a morning person so it is rare for me to see a sunrise. Okay, very, vary rare…   On the other hand, I am a terrible insomniac. Some nights, when I’m up at 2 or 3 in the morning drifting round the house, I sit and watch the night sky – clear and bright and full of stars. How incredible is that?

I have just completed two new paintings, both abstracting the view and colours I see from our house in the evenings. Do they capture what the view from our house looks like? No they don’t. Do they capture the colours of the view? Yes, I think they do. Do they capture how the veiw makes me feel, the joy it brings me? Yes, absolutely.

These are 6×6″ on gallery wrap canvas and are for sale on my Etsy site and on TradeMe

This ‘might’ be done – and the mess

Well, I did say I had art “stuff” everywhere – and I wasn’t joking. You can see what I mean about the bed being covered in paintings! And the winter light from the window is half blocked by my easel. Oh well…

On the plus side, I think I am happy with this large moon painting. Need to live with it for a few days and see if I stay happy. It’s a terrible photo by the way, but the best I can manage today.

Half done

This is the under painting for a new sunset work. Tonight I have done more on it, mainly lightening it up and adding some texture. It is too wet to put in the scanner, and the digital camera picks up too much glare. Going well though I think…

More sunsets

Loving doing this wee series

Sunsets – love ‘em

I really enjoy the sunsets we get here, looking out across the golf course to the Tasman Sea. This is a small work, just 4×8″, in acrylics on stretched deep edge canvas.

17_365 : sunsets in Patea

For a long time now I have had a fascination with the sunsets we see looking out across the golf course to the Tasman Sea.

This started as mixed media on black paper, then was worked on further in Photoshop. The final image in 6×7.2″.

13_165 : getting ready to paint

I have spent part of the day planning out how I am going to try and turn these 3 Photoshop’d photos into paintings. I’ve decided to crop the image tight, keep the colours clean, and work in acrylics. All going well, I’ll make a start on the 1st one tomorrow.

12_365 : still messing round with photos

And still thinking about whether I can successfully translate them into paint.
I’m at the “hmm, what would I use; oils? acrylics? mixed media?” stage, so that means it is probably going to happen soon. Watch this space…

Not for sale.

11_365 : weird sky at night

Okay, so it wasn’t quite this weird!! We’ve had some strange sunsets and I couldn’t resist playing with a stack of sunset photos in Photoshop. I particularly like the weirdness of this one. I love the colours and would be tempted to try and paint it.

Not for sale.

Water, water everywhere.

I’m still obsessively painting my way through a series of work based on my memories of the sea and sunsets.

Over the last week I’ve played with oil pastels, watercolour, alkyd oils, and acrylics. I’ve worked on pastel paper, white paper, black paper, cardboard…

I particularly like this one, based on my recollection of the tide coming in around the rocks at Mana Bay, Patea.

Today my main excitement was having to wash the kitten’s feet after she landed right in the middle of a very wet painting of the sea and then tried to run off with bright blue feet!! Luckily it was water based paint … but she certainly didn’t enjoy being dumped feet first in a basin of cold water!