Gossamer Wings is a soft-colored mixed media abstract painting using oil pastels, acrylic paint, charcoal, graphite and ink on 11 x 15 inches 140gsm archival paper created in an abstract expressionist style using techniques akin to Jackson Pollock with hints of Willem De Kooning.
The original is for sale directly from me or Saatchi’s online gallery which also offers various high quality print products. Other products — a shower curtain, duvet cover, pillows, and more are even available through Fine Art America.
Love it, but don’t need to make a purchase? Crow about it to your friends and be sure to follow me on your favorite social media platforms, be they Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.
New abstract acrylic painting on canvas using softer colors and palette knife. I love this!
The signed original is 16 x 20 x .75 on gallery wrapped canvas and is available directly from the blog at a discounted $395. Through Saatchi, it is offered at $1175. Saatchi also offers museum quality giclee prints and canvas prints too in case that interests you.
In addition to those prints, if you love this painting and think the design would fit your decor but want a more affordable option, other items, including notecards, other prints, throw pillows, duvet covers, shower curtains, tote bags, notebooks and cell phone covers, are available here.
It’s the end of summer and after a long walk with my faithful hound, Brody, our four-year-old yellow lab rescue mix, I decided it was time to capture some of the lightness and joy of summer in an easy-breezy work of art.
Behold: Summer Delight. It’s a mixed media piece of acrylic and inks on paper and both the 8 x 9″ original and copies are available through Fine Art America.
Parts Unknown – Abstract painting by Maura Satchell
In case you haven’t heard, the Tampa Bay area has been overwhelmed by water the past week and a half. We were fortunate and avoided the early onslaught as we escaped to Maine for a beautiful wedding and a fantastic soul-soothing respite at the Wave Walker Bed & Breakfast overlooking Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. Ahhh… the fresh sea air, the glorious fields and flowers, the incredible food and hospitality afforded us. Big thanks to Donna and Philip Doyen, our hosts at the B&B, and to our lovely Walsh/Mason and Vickery kinfolk up there and best wishes to the lovely bride and groom.
For the trip, we flew Southwest Airlines into Manchester and drove the coastal interstate route up to Acadia. On the way back, we took Route 1 and fell in love with the adorable towns we meandered through. We did stop in Rockland where the Farnsworth Museum is. It features a couple of Wyeth exhibits right now and many other wonderful works. Since Andrew Wyeth was my first art love, we thought it appropriate to stop in.
It was very hard coming back, believe me! But return we did. To rain and humidity and heat. It’s been okay, though, since I took this opportunity to refine a couple of old paintings in need of more tone and tlc. I also did an abstract that I am proud of and started on a painting of sunflowers.
If you enjoy these, you can purchase copies, notecards and even duvets of them at this site.
So a couple of years ago I painted our family crest for one of my brothers for Christmas. Thanks to a great photo, it’s available as notecards, prints and even acrylic and metallic prints through the online gallery I work with, FineArtAmerica.Com . My maiden name is Walsh, my dad wore a gold ring with the Pierced Swan crest and it was always a source of mystery and pride for me.
Cut to 30 years later and my first visit to Wales. My husband is from England and his mum, from Barmouth, Wales. We were there for an uncle’s funeral and had a little time to drive and tour the countryside which, for me, had a deep primordial draw that I couldn’t explain. Until I entered the gift shot where, lo and behold, I spied a keyring with the Walsh crest on it.
I know the Walsh name is huge in Ireland, the fourth most common name in all of that country. But according to Wikipedia, it evolved as the name for foreigners from Wales and Britain.
I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was about to go on a Flamingo – painting binge. You know, those gorgeous, brilliant salmon , pink , red , white colors of the fun iconic Florida bird. The idea came to me because the guest bedroom in our new (old but new to us) home is painted a bright, beachy aqua, so what better to set off the wall color than these fun birds?
Here, I present you a few finished products. I hope our guests enjoy them and I hope you do to. I sure had fun painting them! They’re acrylic paintings, glazed to preserve a luminous glow.
This one is a tiny 3″ x 12″ deep gallery-wrapped canvas. Stands cutely on a bookcase!
Here’s a big momma! This flamingo painting is a 12 x 36 inch one, again, on wrapped canvas.
And here with have a Flamingo with attitude! Preening itself in the Florida salt air. This cutey is also 12 x 36 inches.
I kinda love this one of a gaggle(?) of Flamingos at feeding time along the water’s edge.
A week ago, we had two lovely snowfalls back to back. It shut the schools down for, well, the entire week. It also meant closure of Sharp Spring’s Natural Area, an exquisite many acres of nearly virgin land. I parked outside the gates, and with my Iphone and dog, went exploring and picture-taking.
My plan was to walk a half hour or so, but, entranced by the exquisite beauty of it all, found myself returning to the car nearly two hours later. Smokey didn’t seem to mind and sprang about in the snow more lively than I’d seen the 10-year-old dalmatian in ages. I think she felt as uplifted as I did in “owning” the place, unspoiled by human footsteps, tire tracks and more.
I painted the above from one of the photos I’d taken, waivering about whether to add the foreground fence that bracketed the photo on the lower right side. In the end, I thought the stark expanse more like the breathtaking experience I felt when there.
The title – Winter’s Bone and Sinew – comes from a John Burroughs quote: Winter has given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.
> Growing up, my Walsh family had two things it could count on: chaos and the family crest. I don’t know where the original came from, but dad had a copy of the full crest mounted in a large picture frame on the wall, and wore the pierced swan on a gold ring all his adult life. The motto is “transfixus sed non mortuus”, wounded but not dead.
My younger brother, Kevin, who knew I was trying my hand at painting hinted a while back that it would be cool to paint the family crest. He even showed me a spot on a wall in his rec room where it would fit perfectly. So, I researched, got the best image I could find to reproduce, and used an enlarger lamp device and copied the image onto a 16 x 20 canvas with pencil. I had seen my BFF Bindy enlarge computer generated images in this way and figured it might just work.
The first day back to painting class for a shorter, 2 week “intersession” I brought in the pre-traced crest image and my acrylic paints. Starting with a very large (1-1/2″ mural) brush, reasoning that I was painting a large area, Hazel came by, first told me to work with a smaller 16-round brush and not worry about laying the paint on the canvas in any good order to begin with since I’d be covering and reworking it several times. I had been trying to paint as one would paint a wall, strokes all going in the same way, but she explained that doing that would show subsequent brush strokes that couldn’t possibly mirror the same length and style of stroke I was already using so random, smaller ones were better.
This was an absolute b**ch to paint, pardon my french! I had not planned it out too well, the greenery around the shield was supposed to be exactly the same on both sides, and the “arrows” that look like eyes and nose are supposed to be identical in size. So much for perfection. And I do recall Kevin saying he wouldn’t be bothered by a loose interpretation of the crest. He just wanted something…
All told, I think I spent more than 20 hours on this, but am very, very proud of the effort. I know I’ll have a hard time figuring out how to ship it — he lives in Virginia, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Sorry about the lousy photo – it’ll have to do in a pinch.
I plan to do at least one more crest for another brother, and try to do one of the “Borch” family for my ex-husband. As my son’s family name, I figured they would appreciate the effort I put into the research and creation and I knew he’d like it too.
> At least that is what I’ve found… Working in my own studio, I feel comfortable and can explore on things that might seem too ambitious for a 3-5 hour class where I have to tote all the gear in, subject myself to Hazel’s criticism, and work with limitations of size and scope.
So over this weekend, I tackled this lovely piece – it’s a 16 x 20 acrylic based on a photograph I saw recently and just loved because of the colors. I love the simplicity of it too. What do you think?
I am giving it to my older son, Kris, who has a small but bare apartment in Brooklyn Heights, NY. He needs color and I need space! I hope he loves it!
> OK, the vacation is almost over and I hate like heck to leave and return home.
That said, I’ve discovered a newfound love: ACRYLICS!
OMG, why doesn’t anyone ever tell new painters that they are so much easier to work with than watercolors? That the final product is vibrant, fun, exciting … brilliant! That they are forgiving and give the works more oomph?
I used to love the look of watercolor paintings and will admit they are beautiful. But now, honey, there’s a new kid in town!
I tried painting in acrylics both ways – watering them down and using like watercolors, as in the first painting, above. It was done on canvas, though, and the flaws of the cheap canvas showed through. Clever me, though I incorporated the flaws into the mast of the sunken wreck and the moon.
The other is a goldfish. I’ve been dabbling with her all week and think if I don’t stop now, she’ll be a mess! From my friends at painting classes, I learned that using craft-style “bubble paints” is OK as long as it is for really out there endeavors. I figured this goldfish and my gold glitter bubble paint were made for each other!
It’s the end of summer and after a long walk with my faithful hound, Brody, our four-year-old yellow lab rescue mix, I decided it was time to capture some of the lightness and joy of summer in an easy-breezy work of art.
