Charlene's Featured Artist Reception at Gallery Saratoga 12-2010

My featured artist show in Gallery Saratoga marks the end of a very busy year of art shows for me. What a lovely day it was too. Rich played drums in the trio while I talked with family, old friends and new. I never did paint those vineyard scenes I wanted to paint, but I'll try again next year for my featured show in August. (As you can see I already had enough paintings to fill the wall.) For now I'm happy to get back to house work, decorating for Christmas, wrapping presents and having family and friends over. I'll try to post more pictures of the show soon.
Thanks to all of you who came to the show! Your love and support keep me going!

Gallery Saratoga Garden Party and Art Show 8-09

We had a lovely garden party and art show hosted by Gallery Saratoga this August. A jazz band played while people looked at the art. I shared my booth with two other artist friends. Fun for all.

Villa Montalvo: Stairs to Heaven

After so many months I'm back to update the blog. I missed you all and I missed doing the blog! I'm going to start by showing you some paintings I'm currently working on called the Villa Montalvo Series. I've painted 6 and I have 4 small ones drawn out and ready to paint. Three are hanging in the Gallery Saratoga this month. Villa Montalvo is a beautiful set of buildings that use to be owned by a prominent Senator in the area. Here's what Wikipedia says:

Villa Montalvo is an Italian Mediterranean style mansion nestled in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, in Saratoga, California, United States. It was constructed from 1912 to 1914 by California statesman and businessman James Duval Phelan. After Phelan's death, it was donated to the state as a park and then a cultural and arts center, as it exists today. It is a historic landmark and in 1978 was awarded inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places.

Myself and my two artist friends (two followers of my blog, guess who...) decided to paint and photograph the Villa one day. Soon after we got there we settled in and I turned around to see these wonderful stairs cut into the hill. I just knew I had to paint them. Later when I got home I saw the pink roses arching over the top of my photo. This was just the start of what would be a magically wonderful day.

Gallery Flowers #2: Red, Orange and Yellow Lovelies

Fun, pure fun. I just had to paint the flowers at the gallery again. Someone brought in these red and yellow flowers (can anyone tell me their name?) and I painted while it was my turn to sit. It's great to just let the colors flow and play with the salt. Look at the colors in the photo of Hildy's lovely loon paintings and pink, yellow and orange seascape on the wall to the right of the desk. I let them inspire the background of the painting. And yes, that's really how I set up to paint this time.

Gallery Saratoga

I thought you'd like to see some of the places where I'm displaying my artwork. Here's Gallery Saratoga, a co-op artist's gallery in Saratoga, CA. Each month we move over to the left a space until eventually we show our pieces all around the gallery.