Sea breeze

I have been flexing my abstraction muscles – and it sure felt good. Oils on 4×4″ deep edge canvas. Inspired by the view out to the Tasman Sea.

What does it take

before Mt Egmont becomes unrecognisable? Not sure to be honest – it seems to be I can move a long way from how the Mountain “really” looks before it stops being Egmont.

This is small, and done in oil pastels and watercolour. Just playing round with Egmont as a symbol really.

70_365 : still dreaming of snow!

It’s still really hot here; the idea of snow capped peaks is very appealing! No doubt the reality is not quite so inviting…

55_365 : more small oils

Still working on the small oils. Love the light we have at the moment.

54_365 : late posting!!

But at least the art was done. Playing with small scale oil paintings inspired by the local landscape.
For some reason the photos I took of this one did not turn out very sharp – sorry about that.

16_365 : mixed media

This work is based on my view of Mt Egmont, initially done in Indian Ink and water soluble oils. Once I was happy with the image I altered it further in Photoshop. The final image is 5×7″.

5_365 : our famous mountain

Visually it’s right at the end of our main street – Mt Egmont.
Remember the Tom Cruise movie ‘The last Samurai’? This is the mountain that features in the movie. Egmont is stunning summer and winter, snowcapped or almost bare.

15×18″ on prepared artist grade paper, in artist grade oil paints.
$50 incl postage. To enquire, email me on cathsheard@xtra.co.nz

Back to the paint brushes!

Well, Meg is doing amazingly well on chemo. No side effects, no sickness, no lumps and no cancer cells in the blood tests 🙂 Long may it last … thanks for all the kind messages we’ve received wishing her well.

So, I’m back to painting – with mixed results!! I’ve been playing with different materials – including water soluble oil paint, and oil sticks. In the portrait I was really only interested in capturing this young girl’s amazing hair, not her facial features.

The landscape is one of the on-going series of abstracted landscapes. I’ve sold a couple of these now and have also listed with http://www.artfind.co.nz – so we’ll see what happens.



Whether they sell or not, I‘m having fun and that’s the main reason I paint.

A revelation!

I had a revelation – I was reading an article in Artist’s Palette called “Creating Memories” about Aussie artist Petrea Fellows.

She works mainly in charcoal, ink and some watercolour to create works based on her recollections of landscapes. Many border on abstraction and she says she “interprets the landscape through memory”.

I’ve been fascinated for ages now by the sky, especially at dusk, and the way it is changing as our weather alters. Mum and I both feel we are seeing new colours and cloud formations we never used to see. I think these are warnings in the sky about what is happening to our planet.

But I hadn’t been able to make a connection between these feelings and my art. And now I have. Ever since I read the article, I’ve been using all kinds of media to put down my recollections of the evening sky as it is now, and as I remember it from the past – without feeling I have to make it “real”. It is *very* exciting and really liberating…

Sunsets and the moon on the brain!!

I have a real obsession with sunsets and the early evening moon at the moment – I’ve been photographing them, painting them, drawing them, dreaming them!

Having done a lot of watercolour and acrylic versions, I got out the oil paints this weekend and tried a fairly abstract version. I put gloves on and smeared the paint with my fingers – not a brush to be seen 🙂

Think I’ll keep playing with it yet…