Art Blog - Caroline Henry

I loved creating this art piece. Pears have such a lovely shape, and the paper itself provided inspiration. A luscious golden pear is painted on paper imbedded with foliage and petals. A smaller red pear floats in the upper left. It takes a close look to sort out the watercolor an marker work from with plant matter. The colors within the vegetation provided a palette for the painting. More texture comes from the stitchery on the backing piece, the linen threads of the first mat, and the suede finish on the 8" by 10" mat. A deeper hue of the same color group made a fine frame that kept the layering going. The floating pear and the off centered large pear give liveliness to art which has an overall feeling of warmth and calmness… Continue reading… 0 comments

I love the idea of joining visual art and literature in a show, so I wanted to enter the Visual Poetry show the minute I saw it on the L.H. Horton Gallery's list for the 2012-2013 year. The show opens on October 4 in Stockton, California, which has a lot more going for it than its bad press would imply, including this marvelous small gallery at San Joaquin Delta College which stages several national open juried shows each year. I had played around with the idea of portraying my summer loves of favorite refreshments and reading matter several years ago and created a less than successful painting effort in watercolor. The idea was reawakened when this theme forced me to think more deeply about connecting art and literature… Continue reading… 0 comments

I just posted a framed painting/drawing built around an ACEO card. "Coffee Cups" invites an amused and joyful view of life. Ordinary objects are given importance in the ink and marker drawing, and that same drawing is complimented by its embossed paper background and the surrounding mat and frame. Yet at only 8" by 10" framed, it does not demand a lot of wall space The popular 2.5 by 3.5 inch art cards may be kept in albums and storage boxes, but they also make some very nice framed art. From an artist's viewpoint, small art is a wonderful way to work when life takes you away from your studio or the great outdoors and you must achieve something within a small work space. From a collector's viewpoint small art allows us to enjoy more works of art than we might think we have room for… Continue reading… 0 comments

If you are a gardener, are you drawn to painting what you grow? Almost every floral I paint, almost every still life with vegetables or fruits worked into it, is inspired by time spent in the yard. This simple ink painting on rice paper celebrates the beauty of the artichoke. Lights and darks carry the repeated shapes of the layers of leaves. My artichokes produced their first harvest of the year a few days ago, One on the delights of seasonal growth is that we are reawakened each year to the beauty the reappears. Thus we have an artichoke at perfect ripeness--too beautiful to eat; too delicious not to. The soft tones made possible by ink painting provide a lovely black-and-white rendering of the soft greens of this vegetable… Continue reading… 0 comments

Original pastel shows three tangerines next to a celadon vase with an abstract water lily leaf pattern in blue. A blue silk cloth lies under these objects and a peach colored wall is seen behind them. This small pastel is on 5" _ 7" Ampersand pastel board, and will be shipped in its 8" _ 10" frame. I love working with the toothy Ampersand pastel board. It hangs on to the pastels extremely well. Notice the repeated shapes and colors accompanied by eye pleasing variation. The purple shadows and the fruit break the blue into a larger and a smaller segment, and the vase breaks the larger segment for three blue shapes. The three rounds of fruit are each smaller and paler moving back on the picture plane… Continue reading… 0 comments

A blue vase with yellow and pink snapdragons is arranged with two lemons and various drapes of fabric. Colors are reflected from one items to another. 10"_14" watercolor image. What pleases me most about his painting is the reflected light on the lemons and the way the wide part of the vase has picked up yellow from the flowers… Continue reading… 0 comments

Two pears on a table sit in front of a wine glass. The wine glass is half full suggesting a person nearby. The painting is done in sumi-e ink. Light comes from above and to the right, casting shadows below and toward the left. The work is done on rice paper. I received my first brush painting ink, ink stone, brushes, water dish, and brush holder, along with an instruction book in Japanese style brush painting as a gift kit several years ago. With that I began to do some self-taught brush painting. I've had fun with it and have sold a number of pieces including still life and whimsical animal paintings. I've had the opportunity to sign up for a class in November for more formal brush painting training by an artist who was taught by a Chinese master brush painter… Continue reading… 0 comments

This pastel drawing is a still life depicting a coffee cup and fruit on a table with a shadowed wall in the background. Warm brown and gold tones predominate but are cooled by the greens in the pear and apple and the blue shadows. Image is 8" by 12" presented in and protected by a 16" by 20" mat. It is currently listed on ArtId's Ebay store. Coffee is on my mind because of Mary Lawler's recent communication urging people to get their CD's of art completed for submission to the Independent Coffeehouse Network. I don't get it that so few people have applied. It seems to me this is a great way to get promotion which feels like entertainment to the viewer and potential art buyer at no cost except what you are already paying in ArtId fees… Continue reading… 0 comments

A show title brought about the idea for this piece. The title was "Still Life Dreams" and I started thinking in terms of how a still life might appear in the dream state. At first I thought of having it held by an elephant or turtle--both mythological holders up of the world. But I thought those creatures might end of looking like ceramic pieces that were just part of the still life, and I was not yet thinking in terms of a natural background. Then a bug seemed like a good idea, because the size would be so out of joint. Of all bugs, the grasshopper seems the unlikeliest creature to balance a load--imagine the objects flying when he leaps. The drawing disappeared into the grasses when completed. At that point I decided to add color to the background only… Continue reading… 0 comments

A basket of green Granny Smith apples, gathered to bake a pie, sits on the counter. The rich Aztec gold shade of the wall provides a good complement to the apple green. I've painted this on the wonderfully toothy pastelbord by Claybord in early Octover. This was a first attempt with this surface, and I discovered that I really love it. I bought some more next time I was in an art store. Most of the painting here was done with side strokes, using edges only for those areas where clear lines needed to be drawn, the crispest of these being the apple stems. The blue of the shadows was also used to create added interest by breaking up the bloks of color in the background surfaces. Near whites highlight the reflections on the apple surfaces… Continue reading… 0 comments

Yesterday was my first blog entry in a full month, August having been a month of turmoil and distraction for me. Then I started September with an art event which was a real lift. Friday evening, which was Lodi's First Friday Art Hop, I was the artist at Lodi Wine and Visitor Center with a collection of Florals and Still Lifes. The painting here was one of four that sold. (My 90-something year old neighbor picked those persimmons last winter and brought them over in the white basket specifically for me to paint.) I love community art walks both as a participating artist and as a viewer… Continue reading… 0 comments

I've been off the blog for a time, and with much reduced art activities as the needs of my extended family made ofr a busy and stressful August. This little still life is one of the few things I completed. I enjoyed working in strong colors and playing with reflected light as well as deep shadow. Certain images, such as pears and calla lilies, have such simplicity and grace of form that they are always a pleasure to paint and often charm viewers. I suppose everyone has their own go-to favorites when they just need to paint something even it life and time are pressing in upon them. Pears are definitely one of mine. I may share another recent pear on a different blog entry, one with a totally different approach… Continue reading… 1 comment

Creamy white callas reflect the purples and greens of the sweet-scented lilacs and leaves below and around them. Stems in the clear galss vase show through in greens and yellows. A blue black background gives the still life punch. The white stand beneath the vase is alive with reflected color. This work is painted in oils on canvas board. What I like most about this painting is my vase in which the water reflects the darkness of the wall and the stems are suggested within the optic distortion of rounded and slightly lumpy glass. The wall behind is vase was actually a rather ugly mid-tone blue, which reflected fairly darkly in the glass. The color was a poor compliment to the lilacs, and I felt darkening it made the painting much more interesting… Continue reading… 0 comments

I wish I had taken a before photo of this still life. I painted with a group last Tuesday. We were working from a still life set up which included a lemon, a rose, and a cluster of rose leaves against black velvet and white linen. Most of them worked on a vertical plane, but I decided to do a horizontal composition. I did not want to center the two major items in the still life, but in my effort to get them off-center, I wound up with the center of my white rose creating a bull's eye effect at the middle of the painting. The area to the right of it was only draperies. I liked the form of the rose, and I liked the lemon with its rich yellows, its greenish low-lights and the bright white highlight… Continue reading… 2 comments

I wrote about this pastel still life a while back. It had been sitting for a while as I was so busy with helping rebuild the Lodi Art Center gallery and working on other projects that I was not putting much time into it. I grew weary of re-assembling the set up every time I needed to use the weights. As you can see, I've been working on it again, based on memory rather than arrangement or photo. The angles of the top red weight were all wrong. I've lots of details still to work out, and I think I need to mute down those books in the background a bit. However, all in all, I like the way it is coming. I've entered it in an upcoming show (the send entry form early and bring work later sort) under the title "Accidental Still Life"… Continue reading… 3 comments

Yupo has received a lot of attention in the blogs recently. Since I just added a piece, will also add some comments of my own. I like Yupo very much. I like the bright colors, the way it makes me work at getting the image I want, and the pleasant surprises it creates. Notice the very watery look in my background. The non-absorbent surface helped me get that. For the details I find I need a light touch and dry brush technique. I thought the bright tangerine and lemons had a nice presence against the more muted pale depression glass plate and white tablecloth, silver teapot, and white teacup… Continue reading… 2 comments

This pastel has been sitting for a couple of weeks, but I am ready to get back to it. I set up the still life with the weights. Ideally I would have had a large block of time to work straight through, for I also lift those weights three or four days a week. However, it did not work out that way, and I kept having to re-set up. I left off in a combination of frustration and interest in other projects. I chose the elements of this still life as a colorful, but non-traditional, grouping of objects. The idea of keeping fit, the books behind the towel and weights, and the paint brushes which will appear in that unrefined cylinder behind the other objects are all meaningful in my life. I think I've benefited from moving away from this… Continue reading… 0 comments