As I pack my new work and head out to St. James Court Art Fair in Louisville, KY I wanted to quickly share some of my newest pieces from August and September.
Inspiration can come from many sources. In August I visited the Kentucky State Fair to photograph FFA farm animals. I've always been drawn (pardon the pun) to cows but the FAA kids were also showing their prize goats, mules, chickens and rabbits on the day I attended. What great sources of inspiration for my funny animal portraits.
On the way back to Lexington I stopped off at the Louisville Zoo and captured more fun animal portraits including the giraffe having a good chew. Giraffe's are so goofy looking!
In September I returned to my beloved farm in Mingo WV and my friend Joy Cooper and I took a day to do some plein air painting with our pastels. I've never been happy with my plein air efforts but finally I settled into a quiet place and was able to capture the essence of the scene.
"Joy's Drive Noon" was started around 10:30 and finished by noon which is normally very harsh light, but the shade of the forest gave the strong dark and light contrast that I'm interested in depicting.
"Hill Meadow Evening" was started during the beautiful "golden hour" which in September in WV is 6:00 PM. I only had an hour to capture the best part of the scene - the tree, mountain, and fence posts. Back at the farm house I finished the field by referring to my memory and the LED monitor on my digital camera.
After a week in WV my husband and I drove to Cape Cod by way of Philadelphia, Mystic Seaport, Ct, Plymouth, MA and finally Cape Cod. The salt marsh pond with the salt grasses illuminated by the evening light was gorgeous as well as the ocean, the sunset, the swamp and everything. This was a wonderful change of scenery and inspiration from the very familiar Appalachian Mountain regions that are my usual source of landscape information.
