A new painting and a muddy driveway ...

Hey, don’t forget to visit my NEW Online Gallery! (Link on right)


Heirlooms © 2008 KarenMathison Schmidt
6 x 6 • acrylic on Gessobord
gloss varnish for protection & easy cleaning • sold unframed

Sold • private collection, New Bern, North Carolina

I found this pitcher way back in the back of one of the kitchen cupboards when we first moved into our house. It’s definitely seen a lot of years of frequent use, it’s a little shabby looking, and I love it! I use it to water the potted chrysanthemum on the back porch.

Whenever I remember to water it, that is.

Don’t have to worry about that this week anyway, what with the rain and all. Just when they were ready to start painting the house, too. And it’s supposed to rain every day until next Wednesday. Bummer, dudes! Oh, well, no worries. I’m sure they’ll be able to get on it the week after next. At least it will start getting a little cooler for them in September!

Here are a couple of work in progress photos:




Meanwhile, here’s our driveway today:


Imagine how it’s going to look after 8 more days of rain!

Announcing my new online gallery!

Hey, click here to check out my new online gallery!

When you go to the gallery, just click on one of the albums to go to that collection, and then at the bottom of the page you’ll see viewing options. At the bottom right you can choose background color. I recommend clicking the 2nd choice, which is dark gray. At the bottom left you can choose the arrangement. Carousel is pretty cool, but mosaic is my favorite. Or you can choose slide show, where each painting appears for a few seconds before automatically going on to the next one in the group. Carousel works the same way if you click on the play button. If you choose to stay on grid view, just click on any painting to see a larger view.

There’s also a place at the top where you can subscribe for updates, so you’ll be notified via email whenever I add a new painting.

Go there and play with it, and let me know what you think!

Happy Monday!

Between Orchard and Pie ©2008 Karen Mathison Schmidt
6 x 6 • acrylic on Gessobord

Sold • private collection, Bethesda, MD

Happy Monday everyone!

I finished this painting on Friday, but haven’t taken the time to post it here until now. Hey, I’ve been busy!

Last week after I brought these yummy pieces of fruit home and arranged them (yes, "arranged" – I’m kind of visually compulsive, I have to admit) in a vintage footed milk glass bowl on our kitchen table, they were just begging to be made into a painting, so I obliged. I sure would like to say these luscious beauties came from Ed Lester’s Farm down the road a piece, but I’d be lying. As it so happens, they came from Super Target. A spur-of-the-moment buy during a milk-and-bread run. Somewhere down the line they came from some orchard on somebody’s fruit farm somewhere, I’m sure. Well, wherever they came from they were lip-smackin’ good! (Needless to say, they never made it to the pie stage.)

Here are work in progress photos – first, the initial sketch in mars black, then blocking in the main areas of color ...



Then (in the picture below) I added color glazes to deepen the underpainting: a Pthalo green glaze over the apples, Quinacridone violet over the peaches, giving them a kind of magenta-ish cast, and cobalt blue glaze over everything else. I went with a purple-yellow palette for this one – in other words, I tried to keep the colors of the entire painting toward the purple and yellow for the most part, steering away from true reds, greens and blues. Any reds are more orange or magenta, greens are yellowish, and the blues I used are purplish. This gives the painting as a whole a more coherent and balanced feel, color-wise.


... and here are a couple of details ...

A new outlook on life ...

Summer Song • 16x20 acrylic on gessobord • work in progress ...


This one is almost done ... I just need to add a few finishing touches. I squeezed in time to work on it in the midst of the flurry of activity surrounding the installation of our NEW WINDOWS!


Yes, as fashionable a look as it was, gone are the plywood and cardboard panels filling in for broken panes (except for the half-round opening in the attic, window to come, and one itty bitty spot to the left of the front door which will have to wait until we get the new front door). Here’s a before picture. I want to give mention to Nationwide Windows here in Shreveport; we went with their Restoration Windows line, and the customer service has been terrific!

We had the windows custom styled after the originals, and we considered getting the hand rolled glass to have that true antique wavy glass look, but as it turned out that was WAY too expensive. About twice as much as we could spend. So, sadly, I had to let go of that idea. But the new windows are really pretty. And now we have all working windows, so in a couple of months when the weather turns nice and cool, we can open them up and get a wonderful fresh breeze going through here.



AND they’re double-hung – they can swing toward the inside so I can wash the outside without going out with a bucket and ladder. On those odd years when I actually decide to wash the outside of the windows, that is.

Here’s the view from my temporary studio/office (a.k.a. the breakfast nook):


Beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful, here’s an excerpt from my devotional reading this morning:

Psalm 107:9

He satisfies the thirsty soul,
And the hungry soul He fills with what is good.

“God makes every common thing serve, if thou wilt, to enlarge that capacity of bliss in His love. Not a prayer, not an act of faithfulness in your calling, not a self-denying or kind word or deed, done out of love for Himself; not a weariness or painfulness endured patiently; not a duty performed; not a temptation resisted; but it enlarges the whole soul for the endless capacity of the love of God.”

– E. B Pusey (1800-1882)