Flower Islands

Foxglove

Original oil painting  18x14"

by Susan Roux

I made the last of my deliveries yesterday. Three sets of art to three different galleries. The day was picture perfect for a coastal delivery. The three hour drive to Blue Hill takes me through winding country roads eventually connecting north on Route 1. For those of you not familiar with this route, it begins in Florida and follows the coast all the way up to Maine. It's a lovely drive during off season, but can be a traffic nightmare at tourist time. Quaint shops with interesting names and creative signs stimulate my artistic juices. Even without stopping, reading the names and seeing original looking store fronts sends my mind dreaming. Interspersed are glimpses of the ocean always with islands jutting out and keeping the seascape interesting. I didn't think I'd be doing much plein air this year, but yesterday's drive awoke the desire.

I stopped at a roadside garden shop. Color was overflowing! Did you know I have Monet syndrome? Not only do I love painting flowers, I keep creating more and more gardens around the house! I've been mixing annuals with perennials and the changing color show throughout the summer is the perfect haven for an artist to relax in. My burst of work is in the spring and with summer-like weather, planting is earlier than usual. There's a great rush of anticipation as I design my gardens. Like adding color to a canvas, I imagine which plants will be blooming together. It's like painting blindly. As the shapes grow, shadows are created and with it possibilities for wonderful compositions!

I bought a few colorful annuals to place in unusual planters. I've been designing a new outdoor seating area with a great view of sunset. All my flower beds have curves, most being ameba shaped. I don't like straight edges in my landscape. I'm finding the negative space (lawn) as interesting and important as the flower beds themselves. When I think of the various shapes I've established, I'm reminded of all the islands making Maine's waterfront so spectacular. As you drive by, one island seems to be moving in front of another. It makes those rock hard planters covered in evergreens come to life! And so it is with my island flower beds. As you walk around, the flowers from one bed seem to move in front of another. I've always been attracted to that illusion of motion. I find it interesting that without consciously thinking about it, it's how I've designed my surroundings. 

Everything is a composition. Colors, shadows and splashes of light. Whether painting or planting the journey is similar and the passion is present.

Do you have Monet syndrome too? Have you created flower islands? As an artist, where do you go to unwind?

Note: Foxglove was a little corner garden on Deer Isle. I painted it with one of my classes. It was included in the body of work I delivered to Blue Hill Bay Gallery. If you come to Maine this summer, it's a beautiful artsy coastal town to visit, only 30 minutes south of Bar Harbor. Do stop in and say hi to Peter.

Susan Roux Workshop 2012

Monarda

Original oil painting  18x24"

by Susan Roux

You're invited!

I'll be teaching an oil painting workshop in August and would love it if you'd join us in three days of fun with color! The focus of the workshop will be on Color and Value and it's purpose with regards to design.

It will be three days packed with exploring color. Come stimulate yourself as we dive fearlessly into luscious color! Learn to add excitement to your paintings while remaining in control. 

Do you fear color? Are you having trouble with color harmony when using too many? Are you limiting yourself for fear of not achieving harmony otherwise? How about neutralizing? Is making mud a problem? 

Then this workshop is for you!

I'll be explaining many properties of color to help you understand it, thus help you keep it in control. 

Free yourself by allowing your inner creativity to unleash on canvas. Learn to add visual excitement to your work. Let your paintbrush dance on the canvas. Don't be so preoccupied about staying within the lines and achieving harmony will become an ease. 

I'll encourage you to apply paint in various ways to help you expand your choices of brushstrokes. We'll be working wet into wet. As the paint gets thicker on the canvas, we can begin to push and pull paint around. Drag your brush, twist your brush, just let it dance on the canvas! Free your spirited energy to just pour out.

Depending how tight or loose you want to keep your paintings, I'll show you how to bring this burst of color into shape. Color and value work together to create the illusion of light, depth and form. As a unit, they can help direct the viewers eye around the canvas, adding power to the overall design. 

This workshop is intended for all levels. 

Come to Maine during the dog days of summer and deepen your understanding of color!

Hope to see you soon...

For further information click here.

Note: You may remember seeing the distance in this painting. It was posted in February before the entire painting was complete. This painting is at Blue Hill Bay Gallery in Blue Hill, Maine. For purchasing information, please contact Peter. 

This new morning

June Blossoms

Original oil painting  24x18"

by Susan Roux

I've been juggling painting time with outdoor gardening time. You know what that's like, right? It seems every year I establish a new flower-bed or revamp an old one. This year is no exception.

Maine has had plenty of rain recently. Just as the weather warmed nicely to do the outside work, it also  gave way to too many soggy dreary days. Bring on the sun and the perennial gardens come to life! It doesn't matter that I'm knee-deep in framing and trying to deliver to my galleries; when the sun finally shows it's lovely face, I need to go dig in the dirt!

I was suppose to deliver to The Wright Gallery today but I changed it to tomorrow. Rain is predicted then, once again. Usually I try not to deliver in the rain, but I need to take full advantage of the sunny days. I tackled a rather large project outside and once you begin to lift plants, it's kind of necessary to place them in soil again soon.

I love the seasons and the feeling you get as a new one announces itself. Spring, summer, fall. They're all such nice ones to revisit. Winter and mud season are never my favorites, but necessary to experience the wonderful charge that comes with spring! It feels like a new morning...

Which brings me to the title of this post and the title of Luka Bloom's new CD. Have you downloaded it to your library of tunes yet? For those of you who aren't acquainted with his music, let me tell you a little secret. Luka should market himself to artists. Listening to one or two songs won't do it, but play a long session of his music while painting and it's like magic! I've tried it on lots and lots of artists. Everyone has the same reaction, that it's perfect to paint to, except Kevin. But I blame his ancient player and bad speaker system. You see he likes to listen to the sixties and seventies stuff and his system is from the same era...

You can't expect to hear today's songs on yesterday's equipment. It's like trying to watch an HD movie on a fifties black and white TV! Doesn't work.

So because of that, I don't count Kevin's experience as a real negative. Plus he always tries to give me a hard time anyway...

Back to Luka. His words are always uplifting. His melodies are soothing and they're conducive to swaying. Both making your body and paintbrush sway. He also falls into short bouts of chanting which put you into a wonderful trance. You know what I mean, that great Painting Zone... Don't you just love getting there?

I've become so accustomed to painting solely to his music, that now instantly upon hearing it I want to slip off into that zone. It's has such a relaxing quality. It calms the spirit and allows you to focus and fall deep into your art. If you get the opportunity to see him in person, do yourself a favor and go. His show is worth the small fee it will cost  you. Plus Luka's pretty funny!

This New Morning!    

It could be your new art friend. 

I wanted to thank everyone who voted for me. It seems I've surpassed the required 77 votes needed to get to Time Square! I just love new experiences!


Note: June Blossoms is a scene from Monhegan Island. You can see part of the Island Inn in the distance, enveloped in costal fog. It will soon be delivered to Blue Hill Bay Gallery. Peter will be happy to help you if you'd like to purchase it.

Spare time

Stonington Ledge

Original oil painting 14x18"

by Susan Roux

Getting back to normal.

At least I hope so. My life has been flying at a faster pace than usual and I'm very happy to return to my simple routine. Isn't that funny about routines? They can become so mundane and make you fell stuck in a rut, but lose if for too long and you're quite happy to return to it. This week my only commitments are the classes I teach. I wonder if I can get to the end of the week without creating new ones for myself...

It's usually a challenge.

I don't know about you, but I can't seem to keep my idle time idle for very long. As soon as there is spare time, I begin to fill it up. The same is true of my desk. My students know it is a piled mess. An organized mess though. I can usually find what I want in seconds. What my students don't know is if I take a day to clean it, I no sooner begin to fill it up again. Not just with random papers. Oh no. I start searching the internet finding things to apply to or getting ideas and of course I don't want to forget all this information I'm compiling, so it goes on paper. Lots and lots of paper. Then books and notebooks and folders followed by post-it notes and tiny pieces of different colored notepad paper to keep my thousands of thoughts in order. In the end, there isn't any order to be seen. Clutter covering my entire desk.

So as much as I would love to have a clean desk, I almost fear cleaning it. Fear of giving myself more projects!

For this week, I'll retreat to my easel. I've missed spreading paint around. How long has it been since I've painted one of my dreamy beach girls? Too long, I say.

Stonington Ledge is one of nine paintings I recently delivered at Blue Hill Bay Gallery (not to be confused with the Blue Heron Gallery), located in lovely Blue Hill, Maine. I stopped in to visit Peter, the owner, last June during my weeklong get-a-way to Deer Isle in quest of painting lupines. He agreed to represent me starting this year. You remember, right? Stonington is a lovely fishing village located on the tip of Deer Isle. Painting works for Peter was a real joy. The scenery up there is calming and beautiful. Much like the people who inhabit the area. The pace reminded me of Ireland. It's so fulfilling to know such places exist and when we really wish to slow down, we can retreat to these little gems to participate and be rejuvenated in their ways.

Another interesting fact about this painting is I did it with some beginner students. It was their 3rd painting. Yes, you read that correctly. Third painting. I won't tell you we did it in a snap, but without any pencil drawing, I let them through this complex painting, step by step. Their results were astounding! I had second year students watching this painting develop and feeling they were still not ready for such a composition. But seriously, I could have led them through it as well...

Gimp

Original oil Painting 20x16"

by Susan Roux

A quick side note to my last post, Toemailer has informed me of a program called Gimp. I'm not at all familiar with it, but its an image manipulation program that allows you to alter your photos. Gimp is free to download! So thank you Toemailer for letting us know. Many people don't have Photoshop and a free software to fix photos is welcomed and necessary.

Ok, I know there aren't only art blogs out there. But have you ever gone searching out of our little community? I must confess I really haven't. I follow a few writing blogs, but it still falls under the creative arts. I've stumbled over cooking blogs, knitting/sewing blogs and photography blogs. That's about it. So really, what's out there? Have any of you gone to explore?

Toemailer is a blog about toes. Really, go check it out! I kid you not. People send in photos of their bare feet in different locations and it gets posted. Twenty followers thus far. I'm not sure what to think of this. I haven't followed yet, but curiosity just might make me hit that button. Perhaps we should all go follow, all send in photos of our feet, and see how long it takes for them to all get posted???

Sorry, I'm not just strange in the morning. Its an all day thing...

I'm really interested in what's actually out there in blogville. Please leave your comments and tell me some of the most unusual blogs you've found. Maybe leave us a link so we can verify and see for ourselves.

Posted is a scene from Blue Hill, Maine. I've been painting it with my Wednesday night class. I think mine is finished. Class will return with it to put their finishing touches this evening. I haven't decided on a title. This painting will be part of the work to hang at Blue Hill Bay Gallery next year.

Don't forget to leave comments on unusual blogs! Thanks.

Without class

In the Lupines

Original oil painting 14x18"

by Susan Roux

I'm preparing a body of work to be exhibited next summer. I know it sounds far off to be beginning so soon, but the inspiration is alive and current. I feel its the perfect time to dive right in.

The morning I left for Deer Isle, I received an email from my artist friend Sandy. She suggested I go visit Peter at Blue Hill Bay Gallery, located directly in the picturesque town of Blue Hill, Maine. She is represented there and thought Peter might be interested in my art.

Talk about a last minute rush to pack a few finished paintings, grab frames, hardware and tools. No time left to put anything together. We were just about to leave. Running out the door, I remembered to print out a resume only to find it wasn't updated for 2010... Change some dates, pop in resume paper and hit print. In ten minutes, I managed to somewhat prepare for a gallery visit. Phew!

I was hoping to finish some magnificent work on location to totally impress him, but that didn't turn out to be the case. All my works were unfinished and the lupines were fading daily. By Thursday afternoon, I decided to give Peter a call.

This is never the way to approach a gallery, yet here I was doing it...

I like to project an image of class. Unfortunately Peter never saw it. His gallery was closing for the day in two hours and I was thirty minutes away. Throw some unfinished paintings in the car, hair all a mess and still in my painting clothes from a morning at work, yet I was off to Blue Hill.

I can't emphasize enough how it helps to know someone currently in a gallery. I did not enter the gallery with my best work. Luckily he could see through the plein air struggle and saw something he liked. Something that held promise. He delighted that I was so interested in the lupines. To my great surprise, he's taking me on.

We decided it would be best to plan for next year rather than try to rush a body of work instantly. And so here it is. My inspiration to paint lupines and the rocky coast of the Blue Hill Peninsula including Deer Isle and perhaps Acadia is front and foremost at the moment. Posted, In the Lupines, is my first finished painting for next years exhibit.

In the Lupines/detail

Yesterday, after my early morning lupine painting session with fog, I returned to my studio to finish the painting I'd started on the island, in the lupine patch. (They're purple. How can I resist?)

Hope you're immersing yourself in what nature has to offer. Its so beautiful...

(Happy Anniversary Honey!)