Restoration is underway!

Hey, everyone! Our internet is still out, hence no posts for a while. I’m posting this from my parents’ house in town. Our satellite dish is due to be repaired on Friday, so maybe after that I can get back to regular blogging. Meanwhile, I just wanted to let everyone know that our restoration project has officially begun -- work began back on May 6, and I’ll have more progress pics to show in the next week or so, after I get around to downloading them from my camera.

Have a great week, and I’ll post again soon!

The garden series continues

Remembrance (Pansies on a Cloudy Day) © 2008 Karen Mathison Schmidt
6 x 6 • acrylic on Gessobord
gloss varnish for protection & easy cleaning
SOLD • private collection, New Bern, North Carolina

For this painting I started out with a slightly different composition, but I changed it halfway through by painting out a couple of the blooms. It was just way too busy before; I like this composition much better. One of the major lessons I’m learning with this garden series: flowers are tough! I mean, I love painting them, but its a lot harder for me to create a satisfactory impression of them than some other subjects. I think the reason for that may be that in real life flowers are just so darn beautiful!

Uh-oh, I feel a poem coming on ... let’s see, um ..... ok, I’ve got it.

(To paraphrase Joyce Kilmer):
Paintings are made by fools like me, but only God can make a pan-zee!

Ok, ok, knock it off, I can hear your groans all the way over here.

ANYway, here are some close-up details:

Satellite blues revisited ...

Hey, everybody! I tried to post this yesterday, but our satellite went out just as I hit publish. Such timing! I came over to my parents’ house to work today (They have cable internet here in the big city) and so here’s the post I tried to publish yesterday:

Yearwood Road on a May Afternoon © 2008 Karen Mathison Schmidt
6 x 6 • acrylic on gessobord
gloss varnish for protection & easy cleaning • sold unframed
SOLD • private collection, San Luis Obispo, California

Our electricity was out for a good part of the day yesterday, due to severe thunderstorms and heavy rain. It’s times like this that I wish we lived somewhere like Santa Fe or Taos or something. Or Hawaii. In the non-monsoon season of course.

For several hours we were without phone and electricity, and our driveway was a veritable lake. We were completely cut off from the outside world. We did get our mail though. Even on days like yesterday, you can pretty much always count on that. An Albertson’s coupon circular and an AARP membership card offer for me.
AARP! Yikes!

I got away from it all by painting this little picture of our country road. Hard to believe this lovely afternoon with blue sky and puffy white clouds was just a couple of days ago. Well, northwest Louisiana weather being what it is, it will probably be just like this again in a day or two. I just have to be patient, I guess!

No work in progress photos of this ... I painted it fast and loose! (the complete opposite of the way I live.) But here are some close-up details:

Oh, and by the way, today (2 days after the horrendous storms) is absolutely beautiful, just like in the painting. Just as I suspected it might be.

And now for something completely different ...

Waterfront Glow ©2008 Karen Mathison Schmidt
6 x 6 • acrylic on Gessobord
gloss varnish for protection and easy cleaning • sold unframed
SOLD • private collection, Vancouver, B.C., Canada

I was just finishing up the sketch for my next garden painting:


while listening to my The Last of the Mohicans soundtrack, when I got the sudden urge to do a painting of a waterfront scene. I know, I know, what do pansies and The Last of the Mohicans have to do with fishing villages? Hey, I didn’t question it – I just went with it. I fished up (um ... pun unexpected!) some old reference photos and settled on this little scene, which was about one square inch in the middle of a much larger photo with a lot of sky and a lot of water and a lot of boats. I zeroed in on these few buildings, took some liberty with the colors, changed the shape of the dock, added the walkway with the lights and, voilà, here’s what I came up with.

I like how this one turned out ... the atmosphere it evokes. I’m really not sure of the reason for my sudden urge to paint this at this particular time. Maybe somebody out there will have a sudden urge to, oh, I don’t know ... buy it, perhaps, hmmm? We’ll see.

Here are some details:





And now, back to the pansies!

Not even Solomon ...

Matthew 6:28-29

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Consider These © 2008 Karen Mathison Schmidt
6 x 6 • acrylic on Gessobord
gloss varnish for protection and easy cleaning • sold unframed
sold • private collection, Scottsdale, Arizona

Here’s my humble depiction of more breathtaking beauties from a sidewalk garden in town.

And here are my work in progress photos.

1. The initial sketch, using Mars Black.


2. Blocking in the main colors areas.
My husband calls this “the crayola stage.” He’s a real riot. Although I must admit it does kinda look like a coloring book right here. So, ok, – “the crayola stage” it is.


3. Adding more detailed layers of color ...


... adjusting the background color as I go along.


As usual, once I got past a certain point I got lost in the painting and forgot to take more photos until I emerged on the other side of “finished.”

And here are some close-up details:

Iris time again!

Irises Out Front © 2008 Karen Mathison Schmidt
6 x 6 • acrylic on Gessobord
gloss varnish for protection and easy cleaning • sold unframed
sold • private collection, Carrollton, Texas

It’s that time of year again ... I just love how these beauties keep coming back again and again. These irises are growing in a front yard garden a few doors down from where we used to live in town. All the beautiful gardens along the sidewalk in our old neighborhood are among the things I’ve really missed since we’ve moved. If all goes according to my little plan, I’ll be planting some irises and day lilies in my own yard this fall!

Here are some details:

True Peace

Psalm 121:5-6

The LORD watches over you –
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.

Irises – work in progress

I wanted to share my devotional today from Daily Strength for Daily Needs:

I rest beneath the Almighty’s shade,
My griefs expire, my troubles cease;
Thou, Lord, on whom my soul is stayed,
Wilt keep me still in perfect peace.

– C. Wesley

One great sign of the practical recognition of the “divine moment,” and of our finding God’s habitation in it, is constant calmness and peace of mind. Events and things come with the moment; but God comes with them too. So that if He comes in the sunshine, we find rest and joy; and if He comes in the storm, we know He is King of the storms, and our hearts are not troubled. God Himself, though possessing a heart filled with the tenderest feelings, is, nevertheless, an everlasting tranquillity; and when we enter into His holy tabernacle, our souls necessarily enter into the tabernacle of rest.

–T. C. Upham (1799-1892)