Dirt By Amy Stewart

New York Fruit Stand

Fruit stands are great fun to paint. And in this case, I managed to get just the right kind of figure in the scene--a guy standing around waiting for someone to buy his wares. This particular stand, if you're curious, was somewhere on Seventh Ave, in the forties, I believe. This is 5 x 7 inch oil on thin masonite board. Click here to bid. Go here to see more paintings.

Roosevelt Hotel Bar

Here's another painting based on the bar at the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans. I just love the way bars are lit--all that beautiful, jewel-colored light coming through the bottles. You'll see more of these in the weeks to come!

This one is 8 x 8 inches on 1/2 inch panel with slots in the back for easy hanging. Click here to bid. Go here to see my other paintings on eBay.

Smith's Bar, New York City

I just got back from a three-week painting trip in New York. I took a workshop with Karin Jurick the first week, and then, because I had my paints and supplies with me, I actually continued to paint for a little over a week--until I had to stop to let the paintings dry. I didn't want to carry an easel around New York and set up somewhere--painting is kind of messy, so clean-up is awkward, and the people keep moving around! But I did work from photos, using the fire escape in my apartment as a studio. Bliss! This is Smith's Bar in Hell's Kitchen, on 8th Avenue around West 44th Street. I just loved the neon sign. Many more New York paintings in the weeks to come--I have a stack of paintings I finished while I was there, and hundreds of photographs I hope to paint soon! This is 8 x 10 oil on board, with slots in the back for easy unframed hanging. Click here to bid, and don't forget to check out my other paintings here.

The View from Varick

When I go to New York, I always visit my publisher, not because I really need to, but just because it seems like an author-ly thing to do. They recently moved to an office on Varick Street, just below Greenwich Village. The view from their building is amazing. I love all of these rooftops, and of course having the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building in the distance is not bad, either. This is 5 x 7, oil on 1/2 in board with dovetail slots in the back for easy hanging. Click here to bid and go here to see other paintings I've posted on eBay.

St. Mark's Place

I'm on a real New York kick right now. In 3 weeks I'm headed there to take a painting workshop with Karin Jurick, a painter whose work I absolutely love. I'm still working from photos from last year's trip, but expect to see a lot more when I return in June!

I'm still debating whether or not to take an easel. It's not required for the class, but I figured that as long as I'm going to all the trouble to pack my paints and other supplies, I might as well bring and easel and paint in the park a few times.

This is the corner of St. Mark's Place at Cooper Square. St. Mark's is a lively little street that is very crowded with cheap trinket shops, but there's also a few great little places to eat there. It's a street I walk down a dozen times whenever I'm in the city. I always find something worth painting there.

This one is 8 x 10 oil on 1/8 inch masonite panel. Click here to bid, and go here to see the other paintings I have listed on eBay.

Pulp Mill!

At last--the pulp mill painting is up on eBay! This painting went into our 2010 calendar and also hung in Eureka Books' pulp mill art show, where artists all over Humboldt County contributed their paintings of the pulp mill. It's part of the landscape; we all get around to painting it eventually.

This is 8 x 10 on masonite panel. Click here to bid. Go here to see some of the other paintings I've got listed on eBay right now.

"New York Azaleas"

In anticipation of spring--some azaleas in an urn on a Greenwich Village doorstep. I am seriously jonesing for New York--and for spring!

This is a little unusual for me in that it's actually painted on a little stretched canvas, not on a panel. Makes it very easy to hang unframed if you're so inclined.

5 x 7, oil on stretched canvas. Click here to bid. And to see my other "Buy It Now" paintings on eBay, go here.

"Green and Yellow Onions"

6 x 6 inch oil on 1/2 inch-thick panel. Click here to bid.

One afternoon, when there was very pretty light coming into my living room in the late afternoon, I did a bunch of still life setups and photographed them. I'm still working my way through the photos. This is one of my favorites. It's funny how some paintings just work.

I do have a few other paintings available in my "Buy It Now" section on eBay--click here to see those.

Dolley and Bess

Here's another painting of my hens, Dolley and Bess. I don't know if you've ever tried to get a chicken to post for a picture, but it's very hard to do. I can get them to sit still by putting out some chicken scratch for them to eat, but then the question is how to make an interesting image out of that. I thought they were very sweet with their heads together like this.

This is 6 x 6 inch oil on board. Click here to bid. You can have a look at my other paintings available on eBay here. Thanks and enjoy the holidays!

Dolley is really my favorite chicken, although I've said that about all of them at one time or another. She's an Americauna and she lays light blue eggs--when she feels like it. As you can probably tell from this portrait, she is the sort of hen who knows her own mind and isn't afraid to tell you what she thinks. She's actually very bossy and makes a point of staying at the top of the pecking order. But she's also quite sweet--she has a distended crop that really needs to be massaged sometimes so the food will go down, and I can pick her up and put her on my lap and massage her crop, and she just sort of closes her eyes and leans up against me.

This is a 5 x 7 oil on board, painted on the half-inch boards with the sides painted black.

Click here to bid. 

I'm also adding her to a growing collection of chicken notecards on Zazzle.com.