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So, I recently read an article in the Observer.com titled “Realism Returns:  The Resurgence of Traditional Art Skills in the Digital Age” written by Arline Mann (5/24/25).  The article outlined how representational art, (as opposed to abstract art), has become more popular in recent years.  Abstract expressionism was for a long time the more popular art style, with realism being widely dismissed.  But lately, fine art magazines, art institutions and the entire art market have been placing increasing attention on representational artworks and the artists who create them. 

For me, realism was the only form of art I could ever relate to, so it never really left.  Pretty, splashy watercolors were fun to make, but classical realism was so compelling that I wanted to paint in that manner almost from the beginning.

The reemergence of realism in art speaks to a longing for an escape from the fake imagery we are bombarded with daily.  We live in an increasingly stressful society, with noisy digital imagery constantly attacking us from every direction.   Today, there is a renewed interest in mindfulness as an antidote to that chaos.  Being present in the here and now is becoming, for many of us, a solution to anxiety, worry and stress.  And staying in touch with the reality of our surroundings seems to be a calming factor, if only we could tune into that more often. 

Especially today, when artificial intelligence is faking us out and confusing the definition of “real”, it seems even more important to connect to something truly real, or art that describes the real.  Realist art reminds us that the real world we live in daily is still out there - calming, steady and reliable.  It connects us to our outer world, helping us to achieve that calming mindfulness of living in the moment. 

Representational art also requires considerable skill, time, and training to achieve.  In a world that increasingly glorifies hastily made objects manufactured by machines, art that requires a great deal of human thought, effort, and time can make us feel more connected to the artist and thus, to all of humanity.  And we could all use a little more feeling of “connection.” 

As the article concluded, “In an era of increasing digital abstraction, that human touch remains uniquely compelling.”  I agree.

I will always be a person who strives to connect to the “real” around me.  It calms me, grounds me, reassures me.  It creates for me a sense of security and peace.  I hope my art can provide the same for my viewers.

I paint a lot of lemons.  And tangerines, kumquats, camellias, bougainvillea, etc. etc.

As a still life painter I love to paint from life, mostly living things, which puts me at the mercy of what’s available at the moment. Fortunately I live in California.  And in California even the dead of winter provides me with loads of sumptuous lemons and other citrus, as well as a variety of flowers.  Camellias bloom in the fall and winter here, and bougainvillea, my favorite perennial, is available in various colors literally all year round.  The lemons ripen in mid-winter and I have learned – ya gotta paint ‘em while ya got ‘em!

I was born in California, Los Angeles actually, in an area that is now a gang-infested ghetto.  I grew up in Orange County, breathing in the smog, surrounded by traffic noise and crowds of people.  The orange groves around my childhood home gradually morphed into subdivisions, strip malls and freeway offshoots.  Pastoral views of unspoiled nature were not exactly abundant.  I always fantasized leaving California for a small town somewhere where it snows, where no freeways existed, and the ground beneath my feet was actually soil instead of asphalt.  Just somewhere quieter and more in tune with nature.

California definitely has its drawbacks.  Unaffordable home prices.  The taxes are astronomical.  High crime rates. The traffic - ugh!  But these days, as I look out my window on a mid-winter afternoon and see my beautiful lemons peeking out from their leafy hideouts, my bird of paradise plants in full bloom, my kumquat tree heavy with brilliant orange fruit and the hummingbirds enjoying my azaleas - all at a time when other areas of the country are longing for just a glimpse of the sun - I think I’ll stay put.  

This morning I took a walk in brilliant sunshine in 70 degrees.  Came home and picked a bowl of juicy sweet cherry tomatoes from my vegetable garden, all on a day that bundled-up inhabitants of some other parts of the country are scraping ice off their windshields and shoveling snow from their driveways. Yikes!

So yeah, I’ll take California any day.

I am fortunate to have nature’s gifts in my backyard even in the middle of winter, and the beauty of these gifts never ceases to amaze me.  Soon, spring will bring even more subjects for paintings - wildflowers in the fields, roses just starting to bloom, as well as stunning sunsets over pristine beaches.  I feel blessed.

I know it’s not perfect, but my lemon tree and I agree - California is a pretty nice place to call home.

Recently I have been in the process of moving my art studio from one room in my house to a larger space downstairs. In doing so, I have had to sort through all kinds of paperwork, keepsakes and many, many books. Nothing sends you down Memory Lane like browsing through all the old books and mementos you have collected through the years. It reminded me how quickly time speeds by, all while we are busy trying to live our best lives. Before you know it, everything has changed and we are facing a new future.

The concept of time has been at the forefront of my mind for a while now. After the death of my husband in February I have had to make many changes in my life. Events like that force one to really think about how precious time really is.

It drew my attention to a painting I did many years ago - a watercolor that I named Passing Time. The painting depicts the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, which is housed in a building that was originally a railway station. The big clock is actually a window that looks out onto the River Seine below. The painting hangs on my office wall, so I see it every day. But lately I've been really noticing how poignant and meaningful the image is. Total strangers, standing in an art museum in Paris, staring out a window; others going about their business. The man in the foreground seems to be checking his phone, the lady at his right is filming the museum, all while a giant clock in the background is looming over the scene, tick-tick-ticking the moments away.

I took the reference photos for this painting while visiting the Musee d'Orsay many years ago. The art in the museum was amazing, but I was even more drawn to the light effects in the space. The daylight coming in from the giant clock window was so bright that the figures in front of the window were silhouetted against the light. It made for a striking image.

In painting the piece, the obstacle I faced was that there was essentially no color in the scene, due to the extreme lights and darks. My solution was to employ a watercolor pour technique, which means that the paint was thinned down to liquid consistency and poured onto the paper in layers, with the lighter areas being masked with masking fluid to retain their color and value in between pours. The result was that the image stayed intact, while I could inject some much needed color into the piece. And the giant clock window, ticking away in the center of the scene remained the lightest and brightest element in the painting.

These days when I look at that painting, I'm reminding myself to slow down just a little, really notice the world around me, and pay more attention to the "here and now". I'm hoping that being more mindful and fully present can slow down that tick-tick-ticking clock in the background just a little bit. It can't hurt to try! 

"Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back."

- Harvey Mackay

Ever wonder how artists come up with names for their paintings?  Me too.

It wasn’t until I entered my first art show that I realized that not only did I have to paint the picture, I also had to name it!  All art exhibitions require a name, even if it’s “Untitled”.   At first it wasn’t such a problem.  I was painting botanicals of flowers mostly, so the name was simply a label of what the painting was about - “Marilyn Monroe HT Rose”, “Abraham Lincoln Rose”, etc.  When I started painting still life, however, it got progressively more difficult.  After enduring snickers from entry clerks when I entered paintings into shows with mundane names like “Peppers and Onions”, “Tomatoes #2”, “Pink Rose in Vase”, etc.  I realized that I needed to come up with more creative names. 

But naming a painting can be a challenge.  I try to come up with a name that expresses what I most want to accentuate in the piece. “All About the Blue”, “So Very Red” - both were paintings that focused on the color I was emphasizing.  Sometimes the name just springs into my mind while I’m painting the piece - “This Little Piggy”, “Contemplation”; it just fits sometimes.  But other times, I just can’t think of a catchy name.  And that’s a problem, because the perfect name goes a long way toward helping the painting resonate with viewers. 

Greg used to be my go-to problem solver when it came to naming paintings.  I once asked for his suggestions on naming a still life that was comprised of some pears – three whole pears and a half pear.  He studied it for a few minutes and came up with the perfect name “1.75 Pairs of Pears”.  I admit I had to think about that one, but –O.K.  Sounded better than “Pears” anyway.  I entered it into a show under that name and it sold to –who else - an accountant!  I’m quite sure the name helped make the sale!

"1.75 Pairs of Pears", watercolor on paper

But once in a while the name comes to mind before the painting is even begun and serves as the inspiration for, and heart of the piece.  Such is the case with my latest painting “Roses for Mary Ellen”. 

So as my friend Barb recently asked me - “Who is Mary Ellen anyway?”  Glad you asked Barb.  I really don’t know.  I picked up the silver champagne goblet I used in the painting at a second hand store quite some time ago.  When I recently got it out to use it I started polishing it and noticed a sweet little surprise.  There on the lip of the goblet was a tiny name, “Mary Ellen” engraved in delicate script.  I realized that this was probably a wedding champagne goblet used in a toast by the bride and groom.  A gift perhaps from the Maid of Honor?  But, what happened?  Where is the groom’s glass?  Why didn’t Mary Ellen keep it?  Maybe the marriage didn’t work out.  Maybe she died and her kids gave it away. Maybe someone stole it and pawned it. Or maybe she just was cleaning out her cupboards one day and figured she could live without it.  I wish I knew. 

I felt a little sad that Mary Ellen’s goblet ended up sitting on a dusty shelf at a second hand store, so filling it with lovely white roses and painting it was the least I could do for her.  I will never know who Mary Ellen is or was.  But I’m happy I found her name on that goblet.  It made the still life feel just a little more special - and naming the painting especially easy! 

So thanks Mary Ellen for the use of your beautiful silver wedding goblet, and Cheers to you - wherever you are.

“Quit before you are done.”  What?  That is the advice I was given by an art teacher many years ago.  Her advice was an admonishment to the class to avoid overworking a painting to the point that you actually ruin it.  Any art students out there know what I’m talking about.  We have a tendency to just keep fussing and noodling with a painting until – uh oh!  Should have left it as is.

But when is a painting really finished?  In art, there doesn’t seem to be any real ending point, so it’s really hard sometimes to know when a painting is done.  In general, my ending point is when I feel that the painting says what I want it to say.  Some artists even deliberately leave certain areas of their paintings unfinished, feeling that whatever is there already conveys their message effectively.  But it’s not always that easy, especially if you have been staring at the same painting for days, even weeks.

Sometimes, in a desperate attempt to figure out if I’m done with a painting, I’ll ask Greg what he thinks of it.  All too often his response is something like, “Yeah, looks great”.  Not a big help really.  Other times I declare a painting finished when I’m so sick of looking at it I just don’t care anymore.  That’s usually an indication that I went too far. 

Like many artists, I have a hard time letting go of what I’ve been working on.  I spend way too much time fussing, changing minute details, looking at it upside down and sideways, backwards in a mirror, trying to find something else to change, improve, enhance, etc.  I often keep changing smaller and smaller details until it gets to the point that I can’t find anything left to change, or until the “improvements” are so tiny that it makes no difference at all.  That’s when I have to force myself to stop. 

But the best way I have found to finish a painting is to simply start a new one.  So I take a deep breath, and go through a ritual of sorts, in an effort to “let go”. I dismantle the still life set up, throw away any printed reference materials, clean my palette and brushes, empty the trash and tidy up my studio in an effort to make a new beginning.

As difficult as it is to finish a painting, it’s so exciting to start a new one.  So many high hopes for a masterpiece.  It may not get there, but the enthusiasm I feel when starting a new painting really elevates my mood.  I can’t wait to get into the studio every morning to continue the process. 

When you think about it, what is better than a fresh start?  A new beginning, a new chapter, full of hope for change, for something better.  So as we begin this brand-spanking-new year I wish you good health, prosperity, joy and wonder.  As someone once said “The start of something new brings the hope of something great.”  I sincerely hope there are great things in store for you in 2023!

"Great art is the outward expression of the inner life of the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world." 

 Edward Hopper

As an artist, I have a lot of paintings in my house.  Not all are mine, I do buy other artists’ work from time to time.  My favorite piece is a watercolor, painted by an artist who I only know as “Mary E.”  I bought the painting at a children’s art show many years ago.  The only thing I was able to learn about the artist was that Mary E. was a fifteen year old girl.  The painting, which I call “Kitty”, is of a kitten with the sweetest little face I have ever seen.  When I look at that painting, I am reminded of the innocence of youth - I truly believe that only a child who adored her kitten could capture that angelic expression on the kitten’s face the way artist Mary E. has done. 

I do believe that art reflects the inner soul, or as Edward Hopper would say the “inner life” of the artist.  When we see a piece of art that speaks to us and that we are drawn to for no apparent reason, it’s probably because something the artist is expressing connects with something we are feeling as well.  In this way, art connects people with their own inner life. 

Like Mary E., my youngest granddaughter, Olivia, is also fifteen.  On a recent visit to my house Olivia mentioned how much she loved the Kitty painting, saying that it brought tears to her eyes.  She was visiting from North Carolina and confessed she was a bit homesick and missed her cherished kitten Pearl. The Kitty painting touched those feelings of love for her kitten back at home that she was missing so much. 

After Olivia’s visit was over I was tempted to send her the Kitty painting to hang in her bedroom.  But then I got to thinking – she’s my youngest grandchild and she is growing up fast.  As childhood fades, so does a little bit of that wide-eyed innocence which is so beautiful but so fleeting.  I can’t extend Olivia’s childhood, but I can still catch a glimpse of that sweet innocence every time I look at that painting.

I’ll send the painting to Olivia someday – but for now I think I’ll hang on to “Kitty” just a little while longer!

"Olivia at 2 yrs. Old", watercolor

I often wish I could paint faster.  I envy the artist who can sit down in front of a blank canvas and a few hours later sign their name to a masterpiece.  I’m not that artist.  I have found that the only way I can produce a successful painting is with careful planning and by following a tried and true step-by-step plan.  It works for me - I’m just a methodical person I guess.

One of the steps in my process is the creation of a solid value plan and value studies.  The term “value” may have many meanings in the English language, but in art it means the degree of lightness or darkness in a color.  In short, value means degree of light.  Darker tones are considered to have lower key values while lighter tones have higher key values.  A value plan is a study of where the lightest lights, darkest darks and middle tones are to be located in a painting and whether together they make a pleasing composition. 

Value study and preparatory sketch for "Silver & Gold"

Value is considered to be the most important element in a work of art, more so than color.  Human beings see light before their brains process color.  The eye is attracted to light elements against dark elements.  This is contrast, and it’s how a painter directs the viewer’s attention where we want it to go. It’s actually value, not color that creates the illusion of light and texture.   The importance of value becomes apparent when we look at a black & white photo - we still can easily identify even highly complicated objects without a speck of color. 

The value plan, or value pattern creates the structure of a painting.  It facilitates the movement of the viewer’s eye into, through and around the piece by using contrast of tonal values.  It holds the viewer’s attention on the focal point through that contrast.  A good value plan creates harmony, flow, balance, intensity and excitement in a painting.  We often think that we’re drawn to a piece of art because of the colors, but more often than not we are really attracted to the value pattern.  That’s why I always make sure to have a good value plan before I begin to add color to a painting.

So I’ll continue to make my value studies, as well as preparatory sketches and even color studies before I begin each painting.  I’ll never be a fast painter, but that’s o.k.  I love the process as much as the results!

My roses let me down this year.  As spring unfolded I had a dozen ideas of how to use my white iceberg roses in a still life, but I needed a lot of them.  Thanks to our usual San Diego weather pattern of May Gray followed by June Gloom, most of the roses in my yard were small and wilted with the stems and leaves suffering from mildew.  Bummer!

 With the deadline looming for an art show I really wanted to enter, I had to come up with another idea fast.  No time to wait for better weather and a new round of blooms.  But to paint a still life, you really need to find something that inspires, so I got to thinking.  I remembered that I had used some old books previously in still life setups and I had really enjoyed painting them.

I started rummaging through my bookshelves for old books, thinking that they might make an interesting subject.  I found a few, but then remembered that I had a box full of old books that had belonged to my late mother.

Interestingly, I don’t remember ever seeing my mother read a book during my childhood.  As a single mom working overtime to support two kids on a grocery clerk’s wages, she just never had any time to read.  But somehow, one of the few things she saved from her childhood was this motley collection of books. 

There were story books - Swiss Family Robinson, Gene Autry and the Thief River Outlaws and others - some bearing her name written in fountain pen with a childish scrawl.  There was a child’s piano songbook (I didn’t even know she played piano!)  Some the books appeared to be schoolbooks.  One of them was a history book that was older than my mother was and I suspect had been given to her by her uncle.  It bore the faded stamped label of City Schools in Fairbury, Nebraska, as well as a faint penciled listing of names and dates just inside the cover.  It appeared to be a list of the students who had checked the book out of the school library from 1905 to 1908 – wow!  Folded up inside that book was a small, very old American flag bearing 48 stars.  I wish I had asked her the story behind that.

My mother was not a sentimental saver.  She loved a clean house and did not appreciate clutter.  Any unnecessary "stuff" had to go (I was livid when I discovered she had given away my Barbie dolls!)  How special these books must have been to her, that she had saved them her entire life! 

The more I pored over these old books the more I became aware of just how exquisitely beautiful they were. The yellowed pages, the weathered spines, the faded titles on the covers spoke of years and years of use.  What stories they could tell. 

As a still life artist I paint what I love, what I see as beautiful.  Most of the time that translates into living things – usually flowers or fruit of some kind.  It’s always exciting to discover the beauty in something mundane and ordinary that is right under our noses.  What a joy to realize that I had this box of amazing books that were so captivating, not just because of their weathered appearance, but because of the history they held and what they had meant to someone I love.  

These treasured heirlooms are the subject of my latest still life “Well Read.”  They will no doubt find their way into many more of my paintings in the future.  Mom would be pleased.

I never really liked sunflowers very much.  Roses, yes - so complex and sensuous.  Lilies, pure joy.  Irises, daffodils, and tulips - colorful harbingers of spring.  But sunflowers – they always seemed too clumsy, too big and too hard to cut and arrange in a vase.  And they just seemed too – happy. 

I painted my watercolor “Sunflowers” many years ago.  It found a place on the wall near my kitchen when Greg and I moved into our current home.  The painting matched the surroundings and was the right size and shape, so there it has hung for the last several years without much notice or thought.

Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Like most everyone, I watched the news with horror and grief at what the Ukrainian people were enduring, but also with deep admiration for the determination of these courageous people.  At the same time sunflowers, the official flower of Ukraine, were suddenly everywhere. 

Marchers worldwide protest the Russian invasion while decked out with sunflowers. Florists have been selling bouquets and sunflower seeds to raise money for Ukraine.  People are wearing sunflower jewelry and sunflowers stitched onto their clothes.  Artists have been busily painting sunflower paintings and auctioning them off to raise money for Ukraine.  A local art organization had a special sunflower show, with proceeds from sales of sunflower paintings going to refugee causes.  It seems we have embraced the sunflower as a symbol of unity and a message of love for the people of Ukraine.

There is a saying that “symbols are the language of something invisible spoken in the visible world.”  The sense of helplessness and outrage when we watch images of Ukrainians suffering at the hands of an aggressor becomes overwhelming.  In those moments, displaying a symbol of solidarity is all we can do to say that we care.   It’s not much, but somehow it helps.

In light of recent events, I don’t think I will ever look at sunflowers in the same way again.  Rather than just big, yellow flowers that match the tile on my kitchen backsplash, today when I look at my “Sunflowers” painting I see symbols of resilience, courage, and hope.  And that makes me happy.

Wherever the sun goes

The sunflower will follow

Through all of the pain

And all of the sorrow.

  Londrelle

So really - why is the sky blue?  Short answer -  it’s not.  It just looks blue.  According to a great book I have just finished reading- Color and Light, a Guide for the Realist Painter by James Gurney, the sky looks blue because the shorter blue and violet wavelengths of light in the spectrum are scattered around in the atmosphere far more than the longer, straighter wavelengths of red and yellow.  These shorter blue and violet wavelengths reflect back to our eyes and become more visible than the other colors.

What’s more, there is a reason that the sky directly overhead is a deeper, cooler blue than the sky at a distance over the horizon.  It’s because when we look at the horizon we are looking through more atmosphere.  Consequently the warm, yellowish light bouncing off of the earth and its objects mixes with the blue of the sky, making the horizon appear lighter and warmer in color.   So the higher we look in the sky, the deeper blue-violet it appears. 

Most of us have noticed that distant mountains appear a little purplish (as in “purple mountains majesty”) but why?  It’s because we are looking at the distant mountains through these tiny light rays of blue-violet light that are bouncing all around us.  It’s as if we are looking through a mass of transparent drops of blue-violet, making distant objects appear more purple the further away they are. 

Something else to ponder - why is the sky in sunsets and sunrises typically yellow and red-orange?  At sunrise and sunset, the primary light source, the sun, is so low that the light travels almost parallel to the earth’s surface through more atmosphere, sending the longer, straighter red and yellow light wavelengths directly to our eyes.  The shorter blue wavelengths become even more scattered all over the place and out of our vision.  As a result, the light we see in sunsets and sunrises appears more yellow, orange, and red than blue.  This red-orange light is also reflected off any clouds in the area, making them appear orange as well.

Evening Sky Over Iron Mountain, oil on canvas

This book is full of fun facts about color and light that I probably learned in 5^th grade science class but quickly forgot.  The actual scientific explanations are much more complex than what I have described here (don’t even get me started on rainbows!) But even my limited understanding makes these light and color properties so much more interesting.  

So what does all of this have to do with painting?  Understanding why light and colors behave as they do gives an artist fundamental tools to create an illusion of reality in their paintings.  Author/artist James Gurney not only explains numerous characteristics and behaviors of light and color, he also suggests tips in which an artist can accurately portray these qualities in their paintings.

Something about being an artist that I have long appreciated is that it forces me to notice the beauty of the natural world around me.  I have always marveled that the sky on a clear day is such a beautiful shade of blue.  I find it even more fascinating now that I know why!