I love a road trip

I Love a Road Trip No. 1

Welcome to Colorado  © 2012 Karen Mathison Schmidt, artist

5 x 7 inches • oil on archival, museum quality GessobordTM

SOLD • private collection • Shreveport, Louisiana

Here’s the first of approximately 1,000 paintings in my new series, “I Love a Road Trip.”

There won’t really be 1,000 paintings in the series, I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, I actually did take over a thousand photos on our road trip to Leadville, Colorado a couple of weeks ago – it’s been fun browsing through them and choosing ones to paint ... I’m looking forward to doing more of these.

But don’t worry, all you cat, dog, and garden and Louisiana landscape fans ... I’ll still be sprinkling your favorites in between all these road trip paintings!

Home sweet home

SOLD

Sitting Pretty  © 2012 Karen Mathison Schmidt, artist

8 x 10 x 7/8 inches • acrylic on cradled GessobordTM

private collection • Whittier, California

Hey, everybody! A week and a half ago I was in Leadville, Colorado, for a family reunion ... enjoying a WONDERFUL getaway, beautiful surroundings, cooler temperatures, great food and fun time with siblings, nephews, cousins, aunts, uncles, mom & dad. A sweet, much-needed vacation, but glad to be back home now with husband, dogs and cats. (Paul was unable to go, because he can’t do high altitudes ... one of Leadville’s nicknames is The TWO-Mile-High City; it’s a tad over 10,000 feet.) It’s only taken me a week of being home again to get back into the swing of painting again!

On the trip I took ... are you ready for this? ... over 1,000 photos.

Yep.

A lot were of family at the reunion. And some were of the town of Leadville itself. But most of them were from the car as we zoomed along highways (and a few byways) through Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and back again. I was traveling with my parents and my brother, so don’t worry, I only took photos when I wasn’t behind the wheel. I think I feel a series of  “On the Road” paintings coming on!

Here are all the first cousins who were at the reunion. What a colorful bunch! 

(That’s me in the pink jacket.)

Here we are right after the picture, making way for the next bunch ... you know those family reunion photos: “Now all the sisters ... now all the individual family groups ... now all the kids ... now all the cousins and spouses ... etc. etc. etc. ... now EVERYBODY! ” (I don’t have a copy of the EVERYBODY photo yet. My sister used the timer on her nifty Canon camera to take that one. I’ll be putting more family photos on Facebook for all you family members out there who might be reading this!

Rain on the horizon in New Mexico. Cool, huh?

Going through Colorado.

An old mountain schoolhouse.

It was overcast and chilly when we arrived in historic Leadville.

Some of us camped out in nearby Molly Brown Campground, the actual headquarters 

of the reunion. The rest of us stayed here at the Columbine Inn in Leadville. 

This is the entrance to our hotel lobby. Trés cute.

The view from the hotel parking lot. Not too shabby. 

I think that’s Turquoise Lake in the distance.

Driving home. I’m not sure what this is ... lavender, maybe? Love those colors!

The mountains are breathtaking, but I also think that

Somewhere-In-The-Middle-Of-Nowhere, Texas, 

on the way home, is just beautiful!

A new painting in progress ... and Roadie’s latest project

What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment 

the shining, elusive element which is life itself – life hurrying past us 

and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.

WILLA CATHER: The Song of the Lark

The Wild Bunch iris painting • 30 x 24 • WORK-IN-PROGRESS

This week I’ve been doing some updating to my website, tweaking my eBay store and adding more ACEO Limited Editions there, getting ready to start on two challenging (but fun!) commissions, and working on this large painting of a wild-looking bunch of irises which were blooming here at the American Rose Center in the spring.

And here’s a peek at Roadie’s latest creative project; it’s an installation piece entitled The Phone Book Deconstruct, With An English Home Magazine Thrown In For Good Measure:

Have fun with all YOUR creative endeavors this weekend!

Lovin’ the light

SOLD

Nantucket Dreamin’  © 2012 Karen Mathison Schmidt

8 x 8 x 7/8 inches • acrylic on cradled GessobordTM

private collection • Salem, Massachusetts

Yesterday I was working on a large iris painting when this happened. I just had to stop what I was doing and indulge myself.

Ray snoozing on one of my favorite browsing books, a photo book of Nantucket that I got years ago on a fondly remembered trip to that charming place, the afternoon sun filtering through the leaves of the tree outside the window, that light dancing all over everything ... now tell me: how on earth could I resist?

Since Ray has a habit of waking up and stretching as soon as I go for my camera, I quickly slipped my iPhone out of my pocket and clicked a couple of shots to capture the scene. Then I realized that the background was my really messy, cluttered desk. So I did some clearing up, during which Ray removed himself to his bowl in the other room for a snack. I took more reference photos, this time with my camera, planning to use Photoshop later to put this background together with the picture of Ray for my reference. And then, lo and behold, Ray came back and settled himself in the exact same spot as before. I couldn’t believe it! So as the afternoon light became more and more dramatic, I snapped away to my heart’s content, trying different degrees of zoom, this angle and that, until I had way more than enough pictures to choose from for reference.

Didn’t get much else done on the iris painting, but ended the day smiling, knowing that today when I awoke and hit the studio I was going to have a blast of a day painting this.

And I did.

Ray did, too.