A Tribute to Mr. Sargent

Lily, Lily, Rose: A Tribute to Mr. Sargent, oil on canvas, 24x18"

This 24"x18" oil painting I did in tribute to John Singer Sargent's painting Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. (I'm not a fan of carnations so I left those out of my painting!) It was done for a flower themed invitational at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Art. Here is Mr. Sargent's luminous painting, a virtuostic masterpiece that has always inspired me:

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose      John Singer Sargent

One Last Sunset

Sunset, Pal's Peak, 2011

Back to reality in New Orleans....and just in time for the Great Deluge! I guess it's just that time of year... tropical storms, new students, the orchestra and art gallery season opening...but at least now we're reinvigorated after our time in the mountains.

Another page from my mountain sketchbook

Colorado Mountain Lion

Two more days...

Rattlesnake Rock

Today I painted a Daily Paintworks Challenge - using only adjacent rectangles of color to define the painting. It was way out of my comfort zone but I enjoyed painting this so loose. I'm calling this Rattlesnake Rock because over our twenty-two years on our mountain we have encountered twelve...yes twelve...rattlesnakes, that all seem to come from somewhere beyond these huge boulders. So, instead of hiking in these rocks, I paint them!

Drawing Trees

A Perfect Day

Our front yard on the mountain

A Perfect Day

Today was a perfect day - painting the mountains, listening to Mozart, enjoying the serenity of it all.

Mountain Bluebird Box

Our Mountain Bluebird Box

Home Sweet Home

Here is this year's grand opening of the Bluebird Box. As always, the nest offers an amazing collection of materials - twigs, leaves, a few flowers and lots of feathers this year! The soft down in the center of the nest must have made a comfy spot to raise those babies last spring. 

We cleaned out the box and look forward to seeing what creation they will have for us next summer.

Painting Mountains

This is a value painting in gouache of our mountains - using black and white paint only. It can sometimes be intimidating for me - surrounded by all this magnificence - to attempt a full color mountain landscape. Colors change constantly with the shifting clouds and afternoon storms, plus evening sunsets bring a depth of color to land and sky that could take me a lifetime to capture - but I keep trying! The mist that can often cover the mountains after a storm has passed on a hot day, is represented by the lighter hues in this gouache painting.

Breakfast on the Mountain

Honey Butter

During breakfast this morning, our little honey bear, sitting on the table in the sun next to the butter, looked so yummy I had to paint it.

Pages from a Mountain Sketchbook

Here are a few pages from my mountain sketchbook, attempting to capture the magic of this place, in watercolor....

Colorado Black Bear

Kinnikinnick

Buck on the mountain

Mountain Bluebird Nest

Chipmunk

Brown squirrel

This summer our mountain black bear has been getting into everyone's hummingbird feeders. They love the sweet syrup!  We're always careful to put away the bird feeders at night too, just in case.

Every summer, we have the ritual opening of the Mountain Bluebird Box that's hanging on one of our pine trees. The new nest we always find is so beautifully crafted and filled with the most amazing things - feathers, wisps of paper, string, leaves, even newspaper! Inside, the nest is lined with the softest down. We clean out the box and lay the old nest at the foot of the tree, anticipating that some other critter is going to use the materials for their winter abode. We like to think that the birdbirds, when they return next spring, appreciate the fact that we've spruced up their apartment every summer.

Squirrels and chipmunks are the worker bees of our mountain. Long about now, they're running around like crazy, carrying off all the birdseed, cheeks stuffed full to bursting, looking just like cartoon characters. They're getting ready for the long winter ahead. Good fiscal role models.

Gracie in her spot

Gracie on the deck

Our Old English Sheepdog Gracie has not made the trip to Colorado this summer - the first time in twelve years. She just turned thirteen and we figured the heat and altitude (7,800 ft!) might be a bit much for her. Today it got up to 95 degrees. I miss her, but I'm glad she's home in New Orleans in the air conditioning. This is her usual spot on the deck where she watches me paint.

Our Annual Mountain Retreat

The view from our deck - moon set

It's August - time to head for the mountains! This is our little piece of heaven in the mountains of Colorado. We call it Pals' Peak. The view from our tiny cabin is breathtaking and a daily source of inspiration and serenity. Every evening offers a sunset of staggering beauty - the endless variety of colors and shapes are amazing in our huge expanse of sky.

Twice a week, we to drive into town (Fort Collins) for a newspaper, groceries, art supplies, etc. On the drive back up the mountain last Sunday, here's the double rainbow that followed me home!

Jim, Gracie and me

Les Fleurs d'Orleans I

Les Fleurs d'Orleans I, 40x40", oil on canvas

Here's another commission: This is one of two, 40x40" flower paintings I did for the Garden Room of Brennan's Restaurant in Houston, Texas. It was one of my most challenging projects, requiring infinite levels of patience and concentration, as I battled wilting flowers and falling petals under the hot glow of my spotlight! I tried to balance the profusion of elegant blooms with the simplicity of the vase, a common water pitcher. The reflective surface is a piece of glass with black velvet cloth underneath.

Homage to Mr. Homer

The watercolors of Winslow Homer are a wealth of information - how to wield a paint brush with confidence and freedom - how to place the perfect color on the paper with a single stroke - how to capture a scene of drama and pathos, all with a minimum of detail. He has taught me a lot. This sketchbook is filled with my copies of his masterful watercolors. For me, it's also a great way to keep track of color mixing combinations, record the properties of different paints and track my progress. Most importantly, it's given me more confidence as I attempt to create my own petite masterpieces.

The Rite of Spring

The Rite of Spring, 8x10", oil on canvas, mixed media

Often after finishing a large painting, particularly if it is a tightly rendered work of realism, I like to make something looser, more illusory and impressionistic - helps to keep me balanced. As I work on oil paintings and clean off my palette, I collect the unused paint on numerous small canvases to use as a base for these dreamscapes. This is a piece I painted in celebration of our orchestra's season finale, when we performed The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps), a monumental work by Igor Stravinsky. The opening segment, titled The Kiss of the Earth, begins with a haunting bassoon solo (the music that I have added to the painting) and is the focal point of this painting, as it is with Sacre. That is Igor's autograph right above the music!

Drawing Lilies

Drawing lilies on a beautiful afternoon in New Orleans.

The Magic Flute

The Blood Moon, 24 x 30", oil on canvas

The Queen of the Night and Pamina, Act II, The Magic Flute

Another commission completed this past season was the scenic artwork used for the New Orleans Opera's production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. This large oil painting was done for a climactic scene in the second act between Pamina and her wicked mother, the Queen of the Night. I painted a blood moon in a smoky, star-filled sky as a backdrop for this evil character in the opera but didn't know what her costume would look like. I was thrilled when I saw the coloratura soprano in costume - a blood red/orange robe!  

Another thrilling part of this experience for me was performing in the orchestra pit, while my paintings were being projected forty feet wide up on stage, just above where I was sitting! 

Here are a few more of the eleven paintings I did for The Magic Flute, along with a photograph from the performance. 

The Magic Forest, 12 x 16", watercolor, and ink

Papageno and Tamino in the magic forest, Act I

In this painting, I wanted to capture the magic of the very first time we hear Papageno playing his flute. The forest is painted in browns and sepias, plus a small amount of green, with the color to be found in the small orbs of light scattered throughout. They represent the sound and color of the flute.

The Three Temples: Nature, Wisdom and Reason, 22x30", watercolor

Tamino on the steps of the three temples

The scene with these three temples are the beginning of Prince Tamino's trials. My challenge here was to figure out how to paint temples! One day after a rehearsal, we drove past one of New Orleans' historic landmarks, The Greenwood Cemetary, and I found my temples! The City of The Dead, as we locals call it, is an astonishing collection of architectural wonders, filled with small temples. These three are my favorites. 

The gate of the Temple of Wisdom is part of a gate by Enrique Alvarez found in City Park, with the center being a part of the corn stalk fence found in my neighborhood, the Garden District. 

The Temple of Wisdom is for the musicians, the wisest people I know. A bust of Mozart crowns the roof of the building and just below that is a banner from the front page of the original 1793 libretto of The Magic Flute. The gate is a sunburst motif representing the heat of performance and creative fire. At the base of the gate are a variety of musical symbols - if you know what they mean, you may enter into the temple of Wisdom!

The gate of the Temple of Reason is from a wonderful house in my neighborhood at the corner of Seventh and Prytania Streets. I have changed much of the design of the gate however, adding mathematical and masonic symbols to mirror the kind of symbolism Mozart and his librettist  Emanuel Schikaneder used throughout the opera.

Papageno's Suicide Tree, 22x30", watercolor

                    Papageno and his attempted suicide, Act II

I searched everywhere for the perfect live oak tree for this scene. It wasn't until I finished playing a concert in City Park did I finally see it. As I was walking out to my car, there it was, illuminated in the dark autumn night - expressing everything I wanted to have in Papageno's suicide scene. In the production, all they had to do was fly in a noose for the scene to become reality.

Earth Fire, 20 x 24", oil on canvas

Tamino and Pamina in The Trial by Fire, Act II

The inspiration for this scene came from the volcanic eruptions in Iceland last summer. They were jaw dropping scenes of power and unpredictability, two elements I wanted to capture in this moment between the two principal characters of the opera, Prince Tamino and Pamina, their Trial by Fire. The lighting director used his prodigious skills to create a mesmerizing scene.

Sarastro's Palace, 22x30", watercolor

Sarastro's Palace at Night

Sarastro's Palace with Sunburst

  Sarastro's Palace was a real challenge for me. I had no palace here in New Orleans (!) so I searched everywhere and finally found images of some wonderful palaces in Turkey and Iran which I combined to create this. I added a number of hieroglyphics with hidden meanings (among them, music and flute!) along with many masonic symbols as well. The lighting director, Don Darnutzer, was once again a wizard with his lighting techniques and created some wonderfully different looks with my painting.

The artist gets a stage bow, between the Queen and Papageno

Patti on the steps of her Palace!

After the final rehearsal, my husband (who plays timpani in the orchestra and took the majority of these photographs) shot this picture of me sitting atop the steps of Sarastro's Palace. The Magic Flute was an amazing experience for me, filled with music by my favorite composer and featuring my favorite instrument!

Twenty Years Young

Twenty Years Young, 44x48", watercolor and mixed media

The orchestra that I perform with here in New Orleans, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, recently celebrated its 20th anniversary and asked me to design artwork for the cover of the season program cover. It was impossible to feature just one instrument in my painting - after all, there are 70 musicians in the orchestra so someone was bound to feel left out! Instead, I decided to include all the instruments. That's a mirror-imaged string bass in front to ground the whole design, but otherwise all the others are rendered correctly. (My initials are on the flute.) The conductor of the orchestra is represented by the twelve batons that form a starburst effect around the piece. The music surrounding it is parts of the musical scores we played during our twentieth season: Beethoven, Mahler, Stravinsky, et al. It was a great project and a real honor for me to get to do!

Strike Up The Band!

Strike Up The Band!, 30x48", watercolor and mixed media 

My daily painting has been interrupted much of this past year with several big commissions, which always take many weeks/months to complete. I did this one for the New Orleans Opera in April for their annual ball. The theme: Gershwin Strikes Up The Band. I painted George at the piano (the name of the piano is NOAA, New Orleans Opera Association, with the year 2011), along with many hidden references to his life and the musical. There's an opera ticket in his pocket to a NOOA performance of Porgy & Bess we did this past season and that's my piccolo and orchestra folder lying on the piano. 

Painting Music

Painting Music, oil on canvas, 24x24"

This terra cotta vase sits in my art studio, holding all my favorite brushes. While working on this painting, it became an analogy for my life in the orchestra: the varied tubes of colors representing different sections of the orchestra - the biggest tube is the biggest section: the strings - and the vase with the brushes observing it all, the audience! The long, thin brush lying on the palette is, of course, the conductor! That's where I put my signature, as the "conductor" of the painting. My biggest challenge was capturing the perspective, shape and reflective surface of the palette.  I learned alot doing this one.

Live Oak, Audubon Park

This pen and sepia ink watercolor was done as a preliminary sketch for a larger graphite drawing I did of this spectacular live oak tree in Audubon Park, one of the oldest live oaks in the city. I am completely smitten by our live oak trees and have undertaken a large series of drawings of all my favorite ones in City Park and Audubon Park. Should keep me busy for a while!

Teapot & Trivet

Teapot & Trivet, oil on canvas

This is an illusion painting - trompe l'oeil - a trick of the eye. The biggest challenge was to capture a graphite drawing in the oil painting. This deep cobalt blue teapot is one of my favorites and the trivet I found while vacationing in Colorado. This was painted at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Art. You can see the academy's wonderful north light windows on the right side of the teapot. If you look really closely, I'm in there too! This painting is available for purchase through my art gallery in New Orleans.

Lilies and Pearls

Lilies and Pearls, watercolor

I decided to do an all-white painting, so I gathered up all the white things I could find in my bedroom -  pearls, lace scarf, nail polish, jar of skin cream and my favorite little vase - added a delicious smelling lily and, voila. It's amazing to me just how many different colors are in whites and how often those colors can change with the shifting of the clouds outside my studio door! Painting light (and white!) is a wonderfully challenging thing!