Rose garden of Santa Monica

Blooming southern California

Every now and then I end up painting flowers… I am more of an abstract artist but I am inspired by the beauty of flowers around me here in Southern California. The other night Liz and I walked down to Palisades Park to smell the roses in the dark. Even in the low light of street lamps, I was able to take a beautiful photograph of a white rose. The rose garden is in memory of Arcadia Bandini de Baker. You can find many different colors of roses in the park. Some smell sweet, some smell spicy, and some really don’t have much of a scent.

This painting was meant to be whimsical and the flower, which is a lily is based on an old pattern. My mom loved the white lily while I am more a fan of the stargazer lily. So I’m posting lilies today on Mother’s Day. I hope those who have a mom in their life spend a little time saying thanks. We all wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for our mom.

Thanks for stopping by!

Grit, concrete, rainy days inspire new vision

Black iron, copper, gray, titanium white and sand

12×16 Abstract 1267

Rainy days make the city feel more like concrete: gray sky, gray buildings, gray sidewalk. The graffiti painted over haphazardly with an off white. Lines beneath are ghost writing – visible in spite of the cover. Layers of patches and paint leave a gritty surface.

Etching stars into a gritty surface

The 12×16 Abstract 1267 has layers of black and silver with black lava, black and iridescent pearl underneath the top surface of unbleached titanium, gray and black. The shapes of stars were cut into the thick wet top coat to resemble the effect of cutting wet concrete or peeling paint.

Infinite love

Working with black iron metallic paint underneath gray and titanium white, the coarse, wet metallic bleeds through. I used a rust activator to bring the rust to edges. I used a copper metallic paint through the top part of the work and a blue patina aging solution brings out a bit of blue. This painting was inspired by the colors this past

14×18 Infinite Love

week on some cloudy days. The cliffs of Santa Monica appear to rust in the rain and water takes on a sandy gray color to blend with the beach. The sky boils with charcoal, gray, and small holes where I can see a hidden blue sky of a sunny summer day. This part of the year is full of weather transitions, turning winter to spring with brief reminders of how summer feels.

Valentine’s day

The painting also expresses a concept of unconditional love. I hope you have a good Valentine’s Day. Although the day is a contrived event designed to benefit businesses selling flowers and candy, I hope it can also be a time where people express love. On a dark and stormy day, the deep interior can still be warm.

New travel plans: New Zealand and Australia

This time of year is the best time to take a trip. I am hoping to find some summer weather or maybe an early autumn. I am heading to Auckland, New Zealand March 22nd to spend a few days seeing the area. This will be my first visit to New Zealand. I will fly from New Zealand to Sydney, Australia. This will also be my first visit to Australia. I picked Sydney because I have heard there is a big art community in Sydney. My visit to Portugal inspired my new work. I hope New Zealand and Australia will also be a source of inspiration. If you have any suggestions for what to see, let me know

Thanks for stopping by…

I appreciate your feedback and have been inspired by blogs kept by everyone who has stopped by. Travel pictures and experiences shared by you inspired me to choose New Zealand and Australia for my next trip.

Copyright

All work is copyrighted by me and is for sale. If you are interested in purchasing work, you can contact me at trishfalin@gmail.com. I am still researching how to sell work online. If you have a suggestion of a site or method that is working for you, let me know.

Other works inspired by Portugal… these are cell phone photos. I didn’t get a chance to photograph these five before they were went to their new home.

20×16 Abstracts hanging in their new home

20×16 Abstracts in their new home

Small view of coastal color

Small view

The beach in Santa Monica is layers of land, water, brown cliffs, and the green of trees and grass. On these beautiful fall afternoons, late afternoon, when the sun is starting to set, the colors blend in my mind. This abstract, inspired by the beauty around me, is only 8 inches by 8 inches.

I wanted to create a small work that I could take with me when I went to see my Mom who is fighting cancer. (She lives out of state.) She has a particularly aggressive cancer that started with a tumor behind her eye. She is blind in that eye and now has another tumor in the root of her tooth. It is difficult to see my Mom this way but also it was good to see her. I have been lucky enough to have my Mom in my life for many years. My Mom loves acrylic paintings with texture, so I created this one for her because it is small enough for her to hold to touch and look at closely. My time is short with my Mom and it felt good to share something with her. She is not able to travel to see my studio so this is the best I can do.

Art reflects life changes

I have been settling in my new place in Santa Monica and painting where I live while I search for a new studio space. The change in work space has inspired different approaches to my work. I also have been trying different brands of paint, which has also changed the outcome. If you paint with acrylic, then you understand the nature of working with it. Some brands produce a thicker paint that lends itself to the type of work I like to do. These works were done with the Blick brand of paint. It tends to be more liquid than what I have used in the past. I have been mixing it with different mediums such as glass beads, pumice, iridescent, crackle paste, and a few others to thicken it up. The work to the right is only 5 x 7 inches. It can be challenging to work on a small canvas…this one just happened. Often painting is almost an out of body experience – I am lost in the creation. I spent days afterword waiting for this one to dry. About a week later, when it finally dried, I still wasn’t sure what I thought of it, but it has a combination of some of my favorite colors of blue. It feels like late evening, last light of the day, the blue period before dark and the sky blackening behind stars.

Thanks for stopping by …

I appreciate everyone’s feedback … it is inspiring to hear from others and also to visit your blogs to see your travel pictures, artisitic photographs, design, art, and read about your experiences. I think the best part of having a WordPress site is that you can interact with people from around the world. I haven’t been able to travel outside the country for a bit and so I love seeing and reading about your trips. I will be going in December/January somewhere… I’m hoping to explore a country I haven’t see yet.

Copyright

All work is copyrighted by me and is for sale. Please ask permission before using images posted here of my work. If you are interested in purchasing work, you can contact me at trishfalin@gmail.com.

Color of August

12×12

One Hot August Afternoon

I finally made the space to start painting again in acrylic. I had taken up using charcoal and a pad of paper for a bit during my move to Santa Monica but it doesn’t compare to working with a tool to create a three dimensional piece such as the one I’m posting today.

Colors collide

I wanted to use a hot pink with a green and white, and so I began working on this piece. Just laying the colors next to each other created a glowing affect. I mixed in several other colors to increase its complexity. I used five mediums in this one to add some variation in the surface. Glass beads are one of my favorites, but this jar contained smaller sized glass beads so the result looks different than previous works.

This photograph

It’s difficult to see all the color in the darker area but if you click on the photograph and enlarge it, you will probably see it much better. I was using diffused natural sunlight to get this photograph. Usually I set up bright white light to increase the detail in the picture, but I thought I’d try the natural light that floods into my workspace. I also tried a different type of acrylic paint that takes quite a long time to dry. I have my floor covered with several pieces that are drying – one two by four foot piece is probably going to take over a week to dry.
Thank you for stopping by …

As always, I appreciate comments and likes… it is very motivating to have some interaction. Painting can be a solitary activity. I’m not saying that is always bad because it also is a great way to take your mind off all the frustration and stress our world can bring on us.

Copyright

All work is copyrighted by me and is for sale. Please ask permission before using images posted here of my work. If you are interested in purchasing work, you can contact me at trishfalin@gmail.com.

Texturizing water and sky in acrylic paint

15×30

Got Color?

The spread of color in texture gives the water depth, although it’s hard to capture all that color in a photograph. I had intended to write about this painting earlier this week but I have been distracted by life. I will be moving my studio during the next three weeks to somewhere in Los Angeles. So, I’m not going to say a lot about this painting … I’ll just post it and get busy with the details of moving.

Almost summer at the beach

Water 27 on 18×36 canvas

June gloom?

Summer is almost here as the crowds begin showing up at the beach, but this also means the sun light is brighter which creates lighter colors on the water. The layers of color from the summer sky contrast light and dark with shadows from life underneath the water’s surface.

In this painting, I tried working with several colors in each stroke you see on the darker, more texturized lower half. I started with a base color on the canvas, as well as a layer of texture. Three colors used on the base underneath the final painting included a dark purple on the bottom third, a medium shade of blue in the middle, and red on the top third of the canvas. The textured lower half of the final work includes a dozen different colors blended with a tool. In some strokes you can see four to five colors.

The top half of the painting was produced through combining a pouring method with the same texturing used on the lower half. The intent was to mimic a sky that has a swirling colorful cloud cover penetrated by sun. The summer afternoon with its puffy clouds becomes a mix as the sun begins to set and the marine layer moves in.

Some extra features in this painting include an iridescent/pearlescent tinting medium and some metallic mediums to give the water and sky a shimmer found in summer days. The dreamy quality of summer days makes me want to take a towel down the street to the beach for a little break from work. I usually get a little beach time before I begin work on a new painting. Many days what I see ends up influencing my work.

The play of color between water and sky is part of the vision for color here. This painting is also an effort to produce the effect of a wet rainbow on a canvas. Water is a darker shade, the sky is the lighter shade. Huntington Beach usually is locked in fog for most of June, but the first three days this June have been sunny for part of the day. It’s a taste of summer a little early… add a little watermelon and it definitely feels like July.

Thanks for stopping by to look at my work. I’m a little behind on posting pieces I’ve completed this past week or two, but sometimes it takes time to capture the work in a photograph. This one in particular was difficult because of its size and contrasting shades of color. I used natural lighting and a wall in the gallery where the light is less direct. The early evening fog helped to create the perfect lighting to capture the color and not be overwhelmed by the shimmer of mediums used.