Why travel to Tuscany when there is Villa Catalana vineyard and garden in Oregon City? As part of their Art in the Garden Party, I made several trips to paint plein air, take photos, and enjoy the wonderful scenery based around the Romanesque stone house complete with red tile roofs, Corinthian columns, balustrades, arches, and sunny skies that made me feel I was in Italy! "Villa Stone House" started plein air and studio finished, is 11" x 14"
From the terrace there was a view of a pond with waterlilies and lotus flowers. On Saturday evening, during the party, we were serenaded by a jazz trio. "Villa Catalana Pond" painted from photos and imagination, is on a wrapped 16" x 20" canvas.
My last plein air painting from Saturday, "Waterlilies and Lotus" is 9" x 12".
Charlie was a sweet, funny faced cat who liked to sit on the fence guarding our yard. He had a "moustache" that was like Charlie Chaplin. This study was painted in black, white and Gamblin torrit gray, a gray mixture of pigments from last year's production of oil paint. There is something cool about painting in grays on a hot day. And Charlie will be remembered.
Selections from my "waterscapes", in oil and acrylic, will be on display at the Bread and Ink Cafe on Southeast Hawthorne and 36th, Portland. My paintings from the last few years have focused on creeks, rivers, ponds, ocean, anything with water, which there is plenty of in the Northwest! Shown are "Koi and Waterlilies", 16" x 20", oil, from the Japanese Garden, and "Johnson Creek Summer with Heron", also 16" x 20", in acrylic.
