Female Nude Reclining on a Divan

There is a manifest sensuality to this dreaming woman with her body offered up to the spectator’s gaze, and we know from the Journal that Delacroix’s relations with his models often went beyond the pictorial; but there are also traces of the influence of Bonington in the presentation, and perhaps of Delacroix’s desire to emulate Ingres’ nudes.

Diana and Callisto

It portrays the moment in which the goddess Diana discovers that her maid Callisto has become pregnant by Jupiter.

In the Tepidarium

The tepidarium was the warm Roman bath. This painting shows a girl holding an ostrich feather and a strigel used for scraping the skin after soaping and oiling it. Alma-Tadema generally contrasted archaeologically accurate detail with aggressively modern figures and attitudes. He was also the most gifted exponent among Victorian painters in rendering exactly textures, surfaces and colours.

Phryné before the Aeropagus

The story tells about Alcippe , the daughter of Ares (God of War) and Aglauros. She was raped by a son of Poseidon. Ares immediately killed the rapist, and was brought on trial by the other gods. It was the first murder trial. After the facts were laid out, and they heard what happened to Alcippe, Ares was quickly aquitted. Alcippe was also called Phryne.

Danaë

Danaë being impregnated by Zeus, who comes to her in the form of golden rain (see Danaë for the explanation of this Greek myth) was a subject for several well-known paintings.

The Fortune

The Fortune

Female Nude and Pianist

 The Sleeping Venus

The Nude Maja

The identity of the Nude Maja has been the topic of many discussions. Theories range from Pilar Teresa Cayetana, the Duchess of Alba, to Teresita, sister of a priest. Some critics believe Goya had no model at all, but painted his “ideal” woman.

In the Tepidarium

In the Tepidarium

One Second Before Awakening from a Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate

The painting depicts a woman (Dalí’s wife, Gala) sleeping while sunbathing naked during a calm day on rocks floating over the sea, possibly at Port Lligat. An elephant with incredibly long, extremely thin legs walks across the sea’s horizon while carrying an obelisk. Near the woman float two drops of water and a small pomegranate. From a larger pomegranate comes a fish that spews a tiger from which comes another tiger, while in front of that second tiger a rifle’s bayonet touches (or nearly touches) the woman’s right arm.

Cleopatra

Venus Anadyomene

Venus Anadyomene offered a natural subject for a fountain: the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC has a lifesize bronze plumbed so that water drips from Venus’ hair, modelled by a close follower of Giambologna, late sixteenth century.

The Birth of Venus

Chloe

She has graced magazine covers, had wine named after her and poems written to her. She has experienced fame and adoration and has won high acclaim from critics. Her career began, like the many models after her, in Paris but she was created and moulded by a Master. She is a Melbourne icon, mascot for the HMAS Melbourne, an extremely fine work of art, she is an ingenue, a nymph, a celebrity. She is Chloe, the famous nude portait which has graced the walls of the Young and Jackson Hotel since 1909.

The Source

Reclining Nude

The Three Nymphs

Overflow

Actaea, the Nymph of the Shore

From Above The Clouds

 

From Above

acrylic on paper 

20" X 7.5"

On a recent trip to New Orleans I had some great art conversations with a friend. One of the subjects we touched on was Georgia O'Keeff's clouds. I have seen them and I love the pattern that she created.
On the way home, we were in the air for only a few minutes and traveling over the Mississippi coast when I saw this. I saw several patterns in the clouds. It interested me very much and had to remember it till I got home.
I do not think I have ever painted clouds from this view.

Have you ever thought about all the new views we have in our lifetime, both very large and very small. This is one. All the people that ever lived up to 1960, never saw this! Think of Galileo, in prison for "believing" that the world looked like this.

Scary Wash Over

One of the techniques I use is a transparent "wash over".  It can be done as a oil/medium wash and then paint right into the wet, or as in this one above, a turpentine wash with some ultramarine blue added and then let it dry.
The goal is, first to drop the value down a step or two. Second, and really the most important, to create a color edge that will stay with the painting and harmonize all the tones, in all the areas.
The scary part is that I can, for a while, completely hide (or ruin) the entire painting and I just have to trust myself that I can get it back.
In the last few years, I have also been working in acrylic, it's just so easy to wash over, wait 20 minutes and start painting again, but oil washing this way means that I do it at the end of the day and go home. UGH!
The reason I did it this time was to get a "depth of darkness" in the forest.

Two at a Time

This is the first day at the easel, working on these roosters. They are in oil on 36"sq. canvases.

They are a combinations of sights that I have seen several times while driving around the area.
I live in the woods. This area was once completely deforested for farmland. Then when that industry declined the land was left to regrow the trees. Now the entire area is a fractured forest mixed with horse farms. Most of the back roads have trees growing right to their edges and in the late afternoon the light comes through the trees. It can look like a strobe that keeps your eye from completely grabbing the scene.
Some people keep chickens and work small farm plots This maybe closer to the way it was when this area was first developed in the mid 1600's. Many properties, including my own, have stone walls, some that date back to Dutch, and then English settlers.
There is great enthusiasm for "free range" chickens and eggs. I love the eggs and we will buy my friend's Blue Moon Farm eggs even at 3x the price.
Free range poultry like the edges of the woods and fields since they must worry about foxes, coyotes and hawks.