Renewal

Here's a pastel I wiped off and reworked over the weekend during a wonderful workshop with Casey Klahn, the renowned pastel painter. The original was a cold wintry scene featuring a frozen river close to where I live, on a particularly dreary January day a few years ago. The new piece has a warmer and happier feel to it, I hope!

Renewal, pastel on paper, 12.5" x 16"

2014 Desktop Calendars are here!

In a few minutes I'll be picking up the new calendars from the printer. Included for 2014 are some new oil paintings as well as pastels. All work is new, and some originals are still available for purchase.

The calendar price remains at an affordable $18 plus $3 shipping & handling. PayPal accepted.

Click here to buy!

Today's Pastel Painting

"John's Corn", 12 x 12, pastel on paper. Thanks to John for letting us drive around in the cornfield!

This painting is available. To bid, click here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=161115543445

Paintings on Exhibit Now

I have a few shows currently hanging in New England.

I am Artist of the Month at the Bailey Art Gallery, 42 Spring Street, Newport, RI.

And, a selection of work is on exhibit at the Larkin Gallery in Provincetown and the Post Office Gallery, 38 Shore Road (6A) in N. Truro, MA.
Please stop in if you're enjoying a visit to any or all of these lovely seashore towns!

See also: Atir Salon, Acton, MA; the Gallery at 537 Mass. Ave., West Acton, MA

Pop-up Galleries

With a nudge from a forward-thinking businessman in town, I've been curating a rotating exhibit in a vintage house that's been rehabbed into a gorgeous building housing several small businesses and a Montessori school. Every couple of months I solicit 2D artworks from members of our Open Studio group to hang in the common areas of this building. It's been a great success, and building tenants and their clients have bought some of the works.

This weekend, 3riversarts is hosting an art & music project — AMP — in West Acton. We will have representation there as well, and the rotating exhibit will be open for viewing.

In a couple of weeks, the Open Studio group will have a booth at the Sunday Farmer's Market, a popular gathering place to buy locally produced & grown products. 3D and 2D works of art will be available to see and buy, and to offer a taste of what our October 19 & 20 Open Studio artists will be presenting. More on that event later.

Another member of our group coordinates a separate rotating exhibit in the manager's office of a nearby bank. The manager had a shelf installed specifically for this purpose, and now his customers have something interesting to look at while he's figuring out their mortgage payments.

Pop-up galleries are a great, small-scale way to bring art to a public that may not have other opportunities to see original art. Sometimes, a pop-up gallery can bring life to a temporarily vacant building while awaiting permanent tenancy.


www.3riversarts.com
www.actonopenstudios.org

Urban Scenes -- a series of three

This is the first in a series of 8 x 10 oils, painted from the third floor of an office building in Boston. The afternoon sun and the shadows cast on the buildings across the street were mesmerizing to me.

Finished: Lunch at the Colonial Inn

Here's the pastel from Sunday's sketch at Concord's Colonial Inn. 
"Lunch at the Colonial Inn", Pastel on paper, 8 x 8.5

A New Oil Painting

This little oil, finished recently, depicts one of the strangest, most incongruous architectural decisions I've seen in a long time. Let me just say that these are really the colors of this door & trim, and it's a back entryway to a grand old, cream and brown mansion south of Boston.
I'll never know how these paint colors came to be, but what a find for me!

© 2013 catherine f. meeks

all rights reserved

Meetup Groups

Yesterday I painted in Concord, MA with a plein air meetup group. A meetup group isn't a way to find a life/love partner, but a way to meet people whose interests are in line with yours. For painters, it's also a great way to paint outdoors without anxiety about safety. 

In preparation for my upcoming trip to Paris, I decided to design and test a lightweight, easily portable, TSA-safe kit consisting of around 40 Nupastels and a pad of black pastel paper with wax paper interleaves to prevent smudging. I also cut a few sheets of a beautiful fuschia paper to size, and carried that along as well. When I got home, I referred to my notes and ordered a number of pastel colors I'd discovered I was missing.

Here's my one-hour start of Concord's historic Colonial Inn, built in 1716 and used during the Revolution to store arms and provisions. Now it's a popular inn and a great spot for a lovely lunch al fresco.

Showing in Portland on Saturday!

If you're in the Portland, Maine area, please plan to visit my booth at the extraordinary WCSH6 Sidewalk Art Show! I'll be set up on Congress Street between Brown and Preble. Show is open from 9 to 4.