Thursday, December 8, 2016

Santee State Park


"Santee Welcome" 11x14, click image to enlarge
I was thoroughly inspired this year at Santee State Park.  Here are some of the studies I have done since coming home.  Two or three of these will make it to larger paintings.  Which ones do you think should make it to a big canvas?


"Santee Lily Pond," 11x14, click image to enlarge



"Take me to Church," 11x14, click image to enlarge



"In the Thick of It," 11x14, click image to enlarge


"On the Horizon," 11x14, click image to enlarge

"Blue Hour," 11x14, click image to enlarge





Monday, October 17, 2016

Vista Lights - Harvest Art at Vista Studios November 17

Click to Enlarge


The resident artists of Vista Studios present new work in Harvest Art from November 16th-29th in the gallery at 808 Lady Street. They will open their studios to the public and will host a free Opening Reception on Thursday, November 17th from 5-8pm during the Vista Lights celebration. Vista Studios is home to 12 artists and each will be presenting new work.

Eileen Blyth will present Manic Weather II, acrylic & graphite on paper. It is part of a group of work done during a residency in Italy last Spring.

Stephen Chesley will offer works that exemplify the poetic peace of the ordinary. These recent works will offer studied relief from an increasingly frenetic world, and summon a rich solitude. Chesley’s palette of blues and greens connote symbolic dispatches from nature highlighting the fragile gift of water, sky, and trees and their increasing demise.

Pat Gilmartin is continuing to work with glass mosaics and fused glass. For Vista Lights she will have several new pieces to show, including an intricately patterned mosaic gazing ball. She also has some new additions to her popular series of small, sculptured ceramic faces. 

All year long, Heidi Darr-Hope has been breathing, thinking, and making mandalas.  This is partly due to an on-line E-Course she’s developing.  Creating Brave: Mindful Mandalas is an eight-week class on how to use mandala making as a form of stress reduction and healing.  But making mandalas is nothing new to her as she’s been creating these circle drawings for her own private use for many years as a way to play, de-stress, unwind and get lost in the creative process.  Normally, the daily drawings are sketchbook doodles and as thoughts come to mind, they are written within the mandala. For this show, she has created larger ones on canvas.

Sharon Collings Licata is returning to some of her earlier figurative forms, both animal and human, by continuing these series: Repose (rabbit) Shore Repose (egret) and Moon Goddess (reclining nude). The subjects emerge from the stone as simplified, graceful forms.

During the past year, Laurie McIntosh was commissioned to create 16 original works for the courtyard gates of the newly renovated Richland County North Main Library. Several of the paintings created from this project will be exhibited during this show as well as new pieces from her Pages series. Pages is part of an ongoing series of deconstructed paintings created with multiple layers of calligraphic marks and grounds. The deconstructed pages are then reassembled and unconventionally bound to create new visual relationships between the images. 

Kirkland Smith continues to collect, sort, and assemble everyday household disposable objects into representational art. Her assemblage work evokes nostalgia while also seeking to challenge consumer habits. 

Ever optimistic, Laura Spong works to capture the energy and excitement of doing new things. Responding to the upcoming changes in the gallery and to the future, in general, Laura’s work Dispense with Doubt reflects her attitude that it will be different, so let’s move on and into it.

South Carolina State Parks have been inspiring Michel McNinch this summer.  She is in love with painting her home state.

David Yaghjian claims he is still trying to learn how to paint. His latest attempts involve looking at a covered chaffinch cage, which caught his attention when watching the movie Arabian Nights: Volume 3.  He worked from amodel that approximates the real thing.

Also showing in the show are Robert Kennedy, and Walton Selig. Gallery hours will be from 10am-5pm daily. The gallery will be closed Thanksgiving Day. For more information, please visit their website: www.VistaStudios80808.com.


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For more information and hi-res images please contact Kirkland Smith atKirkland@KirklandSmith.com or on her cell: 803-622-7838.

Happy Artist



So happy to know that my art has been given such nice places to live.  Check this out:


 



Plein Air at the Beach!

Fantastic workshop painting "en plain air" at Litchfield Beach.  Perfection.  So proud of all my students.  Here are some photos.  We saw the sun rise over the ocean three mornings in a row!  Painting at Brookgreen Gardens and on a little spit of land right in the marsh.  We will definitely being doing this again.  Inspiration at every turn.  Of course, we tried out the local cuisine also!  We know how to have a good time!




Riding in Style around Litchfield Beach, SC

Santee State Park / Artist in Residence Program



The South Carolina State Parks offer a Artist in Residency Program each year.  

It is time to apply for next year's participation.  

Look here for the application.  

It is truly a beautiful thing.  






Duff Green Mansion

Robert and I had a lovely stay over the summer at the Duff Green Mansion in Vicksburg, MS.  We highly recommend it.  Very relaxing.  Here is my painting of the mansion and a few other photos.




Duff Green Mansion, oil, 16x20
(Click to Enlarge)






Portrait Workshop

We had such a nice workshop.   We studied John Singer Sargent's history and his charcoal sketches.  Kirkland Smith gave a great slide show.  They had fun translating that knowledge as they worked from old photos of ancestors.  Here are some pictures of the gang working hard.  We had two days of figure drawing from the model also.  So fun that we decided to do it again.  Stay tuned for details.  If you are interested in participating, give me a shout by email.



Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Piccolo Spoleto Outdoor Art Exhibition - May 27-June 12



Be on the lookout for my newsletter.  Should be in your inbox by tomorrow.




























Piccolo Spoleto Outdoor Art Exhibition - May 27-June 12




I will be there all day every day!  Come on out.  My booth will be under the statue of John C. Calhoun.  Easy to find me.

Here is one of my works that will be in the show:


Sullivan's Causeway, oil, 11x14,
click to enlarge























Porgy and Bess will be performed at Marion Square this year via a simulcast on the Jumbotron.  Mark your calendars.  May 30 @ 7:30pm.  What a treat.

Here's a link to the Post and Courier's article with the details. 




"Spoleto Festival, in cooperation with the Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs and Piccolo Spoleto Festival, came up with a solution. It will live-stream the performance of “Porgy and Bess” on a Jumbotron screen in Marion Square at 7:30 p.m. May 30, then rebroadcast the opera at 7:30 p.m. the next night in the practice field of West Ashley High School.


The Marion Square simulcast and West Ashley rebroadcast are made possible in part by the sponsorship of Wells Fargo and are open to the public and free. Festival officials are optimistic about the weather but will devise a contingency plan should the forecast include rain."

http://www.postandcourier.com/20160504/160509771/spoleto-festival-to-live-stream-porgy-and-bess-at-marion-square-rebroadcast-at-west-ashley-high-school#.VytL-F5FkRs.facebook