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For many years now summer in Nashville includes an August weekend festival to celebrate the all inclusive tomato, bringing together fruits AND vegetables. Read all about it HERE.  For one very sweaty weekend, thousands gather in East Nashville for music, parading, ART, crafts, food, and general mayhem. Roads are closed, stages are set, booths filled with creative stuff line the streets, and a beautiful gallery opens with so many tomato paintings it boggles the mind. And since the honored tomato is a uniter and not a divider, all the other vegetables and fruit show up in paintings as well. Here are my three pieces accepted into the 2025 Tomato Art Show...all three were set up as still lifes that I painted from, including "Tomato Girl" who was inspired by discovering a two-legged carrot in a produce package and adding a lettuce skirt, onion face, and mushroom eyes, complete with raisin pupils and red leaf lettuce lashes. She's a cutie!  Tomato Trio 12x9 Oil on Panel, framed  Tomato Girl 9x12 Oil on Panel, framed  Tomato Jar 6x6 Oil on Deep Canvas Thanks for reading! And happy, sweaty summer!!
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 Isn't this the best name for an art event that has the purpose of elevating awareness and support for the conservation of natural areas within our city? Experience the beauty of Warner Parks through the eyes of local artists capturing the landscapes, light, and spirit of this beloved natural space. Free and open to the public, "Finding Sanctuary" art show and sale supports the Warner Parks by donating 45% of the proceeds to the projects of forest management, wildlife research, trail restoration, public access, education, and more. https://warnerparks.org/initiatives-and-impact/ Here are my three paintings that will be hanging in the show...  Mossy Rocks 12x12 oil on panel ("Mossy Rocks" 12x12" oil on panel, framed.) Tennessee trees are draped with dense vines winter, spring, summer, and fall, as though adorned for an entire year of parties. The rocks below, at the foot of the trees and on the banks of the Little Harpeth River, are wrapped in thick soft moss like gifts for the visitor. This and the next painting ("Field and Stream" 8x16 oil on panel, framed)) interpret the scene using two different canvas aspects: one close up using a 1:1 square canvas to direct the focus on the soft, green "gifts" under the trees. The second painting uses a 1:2 ratio, twice as much width as height, opening up the scene to tell the bigger story of water, grass, and forest.  Field and Stream 8x16 oil on panel And for painting #3...a little bird: "Watchful Wren" 6x6 oil on panel. One of the smallest of songbirds here. in Middle Tennessee, yet quite territorial with a scolding vocabulary to match. I enjoy painting songbirds and typically use a Canon PowerShot on a tripod to capture a good image of these energetic cuties. The paintings may be small but the time and effort is equal to larger works, believe me. I do love it, though, when I get it right; when the feathers look like feathers and the eyes and the sassy attitude shine!  Watchful Wren 6x6 oil on panel If you are local, I hope you can make it to the show; if not, it will be online after the live show with the unsold paintings. (Check for the link on my Events page when the online show goes live) Thanks for reading my blog!! Happy Spring!
This past fall found us at a reunion of dear Tennessee friends in a beautiful area of Montana, just north of the Yellowstone National Park entrance. These are some of the first friends we made after our move to Hendersonville and it meant so much to be reunited with them and spend a week at Ashling and Sage Ranch Mountain Homes. (thank you Bill and Nancy!!) Lots of laughter, adventure, and fellowship found their way into influencing the paintings from that trip. If you've been to Montana, you may remember the wind. So much wind! Not conducive to painting outside so I needed to rely on photography and memory for the paintings I made after the trip. Even though todays cameras are better than ever, they aren't a complete substitute for rendering color and values. With some photo editing and memory, adjustments of hue and chroma, creative cropping, and improved value and contrast increases, here are some examples (original photo on the left/painting on the right): Photos tell some of the story; paintings can capture the impressions made by the beauty of the moments. See these and more Montana paintings HERE.
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