"Tea Party" --- Sold

My 2nd painting at the Wayne PA Festival was done at a placed called the Willow Brook Farm. It was raining heavily. I decided to paint inside an old barn. I found whole bunch of antique items and formed a typical still life setup, which is indeed my "cup of tea". I did not set up a light and use the existing lighting in the room. It was fun, and I completely forgot the rain outside.

In Zion National Park

Last week on Art With a Needle

After I wrote about going back and improving the three small machine-stitched houses, Margaret left a comment that "had you not been DONE with them, I might have suggested a cord-and-gel-medium horizon line, knowing full well that horizon lines are not to everyone's taste."  I am generally a big fan of horizon lines, but these houses appear to be sited on the top of hills, with the viewer sited considerably downstream, so that the top of the artistically unmowed grass constitutes the horizon line.  At least that's my story.

But she's right.  I am DONE.

painted board background, I think they have come a ways in terms of complexity.  I did feel I had to improve them (as my readers so rightly suggested) a bit, but there's also a point at which you have to say "enough," this work has exhausted its rightful claim on further effort.

I do like the dense machine stitching, combined with the simple, stylized house shape.  I might return to this series sometime and try for a more nuanced treatment, but not now.

My favorite miniature of the week: a bit of wool roving needle-felted onto a piece of wool felt:

"Red Geranium" --- Sold

I have participated the 13th Wayne Art Center Plein Air Festival from May 13 to 19. I did 12 paintings, sold 10 of them and won an award. I want to thank Anne and Phil Graham for offering their lovely home for us to stay. This one is my first painting there. It was a raining day. I decided to stay indoors. The location was at Valley Forge Flowers.

Home improvement

Several weeks ago I wrote about three small pieces of art that I started to make for the "home" show at PYRO Gallery this spring.  Although I didn't use them for that show, I did go back and finish them later, and posted the final results.  Readers Sylvia and Sandy both commented that they thought the pieces looked unfinished, and I had to admit that they were right; I was thinking the same thing but decided to repress the thought.

before

before

before

After these comments I decided I needed to un-repress and do something about it.  (I knew this all along, but pretended I didn't.  Self-deception is a bad practice.)

Sandy had helpfully suggested that maybe just a dark line of stitching around the houses to separate them from the sky would be sufficient.  And that would have been the easiest thing in the world to do, if I had only been able to remove the nails holding the machine-stitched pictures to the batik-wrapped wood panels on which they were mounted.

But I had done too good a job of nailing.  I tried various pry bars with no success.  I generally hate to use glue of any sort if I can stitch instead, but that didn't seem possible, so went to Plan B: gel medium.  Found some navy cord, twisted two plies together for a heftier line, and pasted them around the houses.  Definitely an improvement.  Thanks, Sandy!

after

after

after

And now I am DONE with these babies!