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.
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.
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.
I'm also adding her to a growing collection of chicken notecards on Zazzle.com.
(Note--this is the email blast that goes out to my newsletter. If you're reading this blog, you've probably heard all this before! Regardless, if you'd like to sign up for the mailing list, here's where you go to do that.)
Hello all,
I am ending 2009 at home--at last! By the time I hit the road again in January, I will have had two glorious months at home. Good thing, too, because my next book is due in the spring and I needed a little quiet time to get it done!
More about that next year. Meanwhile, here's a bit of good news: Wicked Plants is up for Best Cover of the Year on Amazon.com. I'm so happy to see the designer, Alvaro Villanueva, get a little credit for this great design. If you'd like to vote, click the link here--and tell your friends, if you're so inclined. Voting ends Dec. 17
Looking ahead to 2010, I've got events lined up in (deep breath!) Los Angeles, San Diego, Memphis, Palm Beach, Kansas City, Lincoln, NE, Redlands, CA, Austin, and throughout the Bay Area. If you're in any of those places, check the Events page for details.
I'm also looking at possible events in Chicago, New York, Anchorage, and England, so stay tuned. Or get in touch if you want to cook something up.
Oh, and I wanted to share the dressed-up holiday version of Wicked Plants, which arrived by mail recently:
In the publishing trade, this is called a "belly band"--it's a little wrap-around thingy that sort of jazzes up the book for a special occasion. Which reminds me--if you'd like an inscribed copy of any of my books to give as a gift this year, it's not too late. Go here to order directly from our bookstore, and if you choose "standard shipping" we'll upgrade it to Priority Mail for free during the holidays in the hopes of getting it there in time. (Note--we don't have any of these cheery "belly band" copies in the bookstore, so if that's important to you, check with your local independent bookstore instead.)
Oh, and speaking of buying stuff this holiday season, I'm very honored to be part of this group of local painters called Lost Coast Daily Painters. We each take turns posting a small painting online every day (my day is Tuesday), and now we've started to put our art on notecards, calendars, mugs, etc. at Zazzle.com. I mention this now because today only they are offering a bunch of special deals, including $9 off calendars and 50% off notecards when you buy 10 or more. Here's the discount code: 12DEALZAZZLE.
That's it for now, folks. As always, you can find me on GardenRant, on Facebook, and on Twitter. Have a peaceful holiday season!
--Amy
The group I paint with, Lost Coast Daily Painters, is pleased to announce the release of our 2010 calendar on Zazzle.com. We've gathered Humboldt County scenes painted by Kathy O'Leary, Rachel Schlueter, Linda Mitchell, and Amy Stewart.
Zazzle has made it very easy for artists to create calendars, notecards, postage stamps, and other products with their art--and it's not printed until you order it. I hope you'll stop by the store and check it out.
I'm particularly excited to see Linda Mitchell's award-winning painting of Eureka Books and Rachel Schlueter's awesome paintings of local bars on notecards. Well done!
And I created some notecards and postage stamps based on a series of portraits I did of my chickens--plus some still life and New York street scene paintings. It's all here.
So here it is, just in time for holiday shopping. Stop back often--we're adding new designs all the time.
I'm still working my way through New York City! Every time I think I've painted all the interesting images from my trip last summer, I find another one. Street vendors are hard to resist--I love the umbrellas and these simple figures. These carts were at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, across from the Plaza, right in front of the Apple store.
6 x 6 inch oil on board. This is 1/2 inch thick board with dovetail slots on the back so you can hang it on a nail with no extra hardware. The sides are painted black.
Click here to bid. Please note that this painting will not ship until Nov 16.
It's been fun trying to track down the exact location of each of these paintings. In this case it was easy--the address of the 30-minute photo shop on the left was printed right on the awning. The shop in the center is a Vietnamese fast food restaurant called New Saigon, and then there's a grocery store on the corner. A typical East Village street scene. This one is 8 x 10 on panel.
I love it when it rains in New York because the umbrellas come out--great curvy colorful shapes against the geometry of the city. And you get those wonderful reflections on the streets and the sidewalks.
This is a little one--5 x 7 on half-inch thick board, with a slot in the back so you can hang it on a nail with no extra hardware.
Here come the New York paintings! I took this from the window of the incredible apartment we had for our last trip to New York. Right at the corner of 59th St and Fifth Avenue, with windows looking out over Central Park, the Plaza Hotel, and of course Fifth Avenue, straight down to the Empire State Building. In an apartment like that you don't need art on the walls, because Manhattan is itself an ever-changing and ever-fascinating work of art.
More to come. But I gotta say, so far this is my favorite of the batch. It's 8 x 10 inch oil on board, ready for framing.
Change is good
