The Art Fly

“Onward and Upward”

Posted on by Norine


Oil Painting
8×10″ panel

There are infinite variations on this theme of Nature and ordinary objects – as you may have noticed on this blog! This composition hints at the next one and the next… There are so many beautiful natural objects around my studio and house that it’s sometimes tough to focus on a particular composition. But, a few things always win out – it’s all part of the process.

As strange as it may seem, it sometimes takes a very long time to settle on a simple composition with the selected objects. But, you know intuitively when it’s right.

This painting will be part of an upcoming exhibition so please email me if you are interested in it. It will be mounted on the “floating” style of frames that I designed for my Meditations series. When I began this series the paintings just seemed to want to be free of an enveloping frame altogether. I bevel the edges of my painting panels and – for gallery exhibition – I mount them on wide dark textured back panels that enhance the paintings.

“The Visitor”

Posted on by Norine


Silverpoint Drawing
4.5×7″ lavender-gray prepared paper

A “ordinary” feather – one of Nature’s exquisite designs. Silverpoint Drawing is such a meditative medium. For me, a great way to quiet the mind is to sit with my silver stylus and a feather, seashell, flower, or a beach stone…and tune out our high-speed world for a while; no blogging, texting, tweeting. Better yet, to sit outside with the real tweeters and relax, especially after periods of intense creativity.

See other feather posts: “Soft Landing” is an oil painting, posted on September 2, 2008. “Arrival” is a silverpoint that was posted on June 24, 2009.)

Please email me if you are interested in this drawing.

“Field of Sunflowers”

Posted on by Norine


Oil Painting
8×10″ panel

Here’s something I keep returning to – a field of sunflowers. It’s a breathtaking site to happen upon, which I did near Stockton, NJ. This is the fourth variation that I’ve painted of this particular scene. I started this one last year but got sidetracked. I find that it really is good to come back to a painting and work from memory anyway.

Please email me if you are interested in this painting.

“Life Lines”

Posted on by Norine


Acrylic Painting, graphite
6×6″ panel

Continuing the theme of meditations on Nature, I’ve been focusing on striped beach stones at the moment. They’re all over my small studio, inside and outside, along with seed pods, tree bark, shells, skulls, wood carvings… These treasures constantly stop me in my tracks. So, I give in and stop for a moment to study what it is that could have that effect. The words timeless…elegance… mystery come to mind and it seems I encounter a curious part of my own imagination. Suddenly a long, shapely seed pod becomes a canoe; stones become mountains, a clear sphere is an eye, me wondering at this magical world. As I play around with compositions, a word or a thought always comes clearly to mind, so I go with it. That becomes the title of the work. This is the essence of my ever-expanding Meditations series, which I’ve come to understand as my personal iconography.

You may have noticed that I work in both oils and acrylics. I have separate easels and separate brushes set up in my studio for these two mediums that serve different purposes. When working in acrylics I like painting on panels instead of canvas, using layers of glazes and then adding some details in graphite pencil. In oils, I don’t use pencil but do use panels, stretched canvas, or canvas that I mount on panels.

Please email me if you are interested in this painting.

“Popcorn”

Posted on by Norine


Silverpoint Drawing
3.5×5″ lavender prepared paper

This was drawn with a silver stylus on specially coated paper. It’s a Renaissance-era drawing medium known as Silverpoint. With time the silver lines tarnish to metallic sepia tone. The highlights are drawn in white charcoal.

Plenty more of these to see in The Art Fly archives, and on My Website.

The buyer will receive this drawing matted or framed, included in price!





“Arrival”

Posted on by Norine


Silverpoint Drawing
8×5″ blue-gray prepared paper

Ordinary things, like a feather and a pebble, have a quiet beauty; a worthy subject for a silverpoint drawing. Silverpoint is a Renaissance-era drawing medium whereby the artist draws with a stylus of silver metal on a specially prepared surface. Please view The Art Fly archives and My Website to see more of these drawings in various tones of color.

The dissimilar textures and shapes of these objects were pleasing to me. The highlight on the pebble was initially just a few straight lines of white chalk. But, that seemed cold and aloof from the feather, and in competition. Then I lightly sanded that area, as I typically do in my drawings. I drew in curved swirling white lines, which added interest and targeted the point of contact.

To the buyer: the drawing will arrive with a mat or frame and a silverpoint description card will be attached.





“Bounty”

Posted on by Norine


Oil Painting
5×7″ bevel-edge panel

“Bounty” is my contribution to the Different Strokes From Different Folks (DSFDF) artist blog, where a photograph is posted bi-weekly and artists are encouraged to work creatively from that challenge. For this one, I decided to gesso the panel in black, which is not how I typically begin. From there, I really enjoyed the sensation of color coming up as if from the depths of darkness.





“Sweat Lodge Frames”

Posted on by Norine


Photograph

Back from a week in beautiful Montana! Imagine the great Rockies as far as the eye could see, horses roaming acres of fields, eagles soaring, clear winding rivers, wind farms, prairie dogs, sapphire mines, First Peoples Buffalo Jump….which is where the photo was taken.

The literature from the First Peoples Buffalo Jump (Ulm Pishkun) State Park describes: For more than 1,000 years, prehistoric men and women of the Great Plains hunted bison by driving them over cliffs. Ulm Pishkun, is possibly the largest buffalo jump in the world, was used as a jump site between 900 and 1500 A.D. Below the cliffs that stretch more than a mile, the soil reveals compacted bison bones nearly 13 feet deep.

Consider this: “The buffalo was part of us, his flesh and blood being absorbed by us until it became our own flesh and blood. Our clothing, our tipis, everything we needed for life came from the buffalo’s body. It was hard to say where the animal ended and the man began.”
John Lame Deer (Sioux) 1972