Diane Edwards Art Doodles

Madden Museum Show

2012-01-06T13:30:00.000-08:00

Winter on the Big Thompson, Oil on Linen, 18 x 24

I am very excited to have two paintings in the "This is Colorado Show" at the Madden Museum. The opening will be January 13th from 5 to 8 and the show will be up for the next month. This is a beautiful venue in south Denver next to the IKEA store. This is an oil on linen, one of my favorites.

2011-12-30T19:35:00.001-08:00

What a great Santa and a happy little girl!

2011-12-30T19:33:00.000-08:00

Opening gifts, oh, what a fun time! Papa, Lilli and Colin.

2011-12-30T19:29:00.000-08:00

We had such a great Christmas with all the family at home...Todd did a quick snap shot of us, unfortunately I lost Lilli's face in it all!

Christmas 2011

2011-12-30T19:27:00.000-08:00

My three grandchildren reading a Christmas book...Colin is not so happy as Faith and Lilli are! I guess he wasn't thinking it was so much fun! It was wonderful to have them all together.

2011-11-29T19:04:00.000-08:00

Now am I just a little prejudiced or is Lilli cuter than Shirley Temple? Todd's cousin's wife, Michelle, is a fabulous photographer and this is one of her best, I think!
My sister Nancy Dean gave her this princess coat and hat. Just lovely!

Vicki's dog, Chewy

2011-11-19T16:12:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed painting my sister's beautiful huge dog, Chewy. They found him in Italy, he was a stray who was abused by the Italians, mainly because he is so big and I imagine was looking through all the garbage bags.

Chewy is not so well now so we are all thinking about him and wishing him a return to health very soon. He is a very sweet, loving dog.

2011-10-15T17:18:00.000-07:00

2011-10-15T17:16:00.000-07:00

Lilli is face painting Papa, she has a butterfly on her face, not very good paint, but fun anyway!

2011-10-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

I was thrilled that my pastel painting 'Nocturne on the Front Range' placed Third in the Capture the County Show this weekend. This pastel is 24 x 36 and is framed with museum glass...really was beautifully framed by Mike Otteman of Loveland. I took the reference photo from my car as I was just zipping through Loveland from Longmont one evening...the sunset was just beautiful and I loved the snow fields in the front.

2011-10-04T18:38:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite paintings...called Winter on the Big Thompson. I have to crawl over tons of snow and when I got exactly right for the photo, my camera batteries were dead! So, I went all the way back to my car, stepping in my former footprints which were about 18" deep. I was so thrilled that I actually had two batteries in my van...and got the pictures! I have done two award winning paintings from this snowfall...what a beautiful day and a beautiful river, runs right through Loveland.

2011-09-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

This was the sunset from our deck this weekend. Is it beautiful or what? Lucky to live in Colorado, I was shocked how cold it was in California, now I have been just soaking up the warmth and sunlight here! Love it.

Essene of Spring in National pastel Show

2011-08-15T19:03:00.000-07:00

I am excited that my pastel painting, Essence of Spring, was chosen by Juror Richard McKinley to be in the Pastel Society of Colorado National Pastel Show, Mile High 2011. This painting is 20 x 36 and is framed with a hand made frame by Mike Otteman of Loveland.

The opening of this show is Saturday night from 5 to 7 at the Curtis Events Center in Greenwood Village, Colorado. The show is supposed to be one of the best of the year in Denver, so stop in if you have a chance. It will be open for the next four weeks.

Cottonwoods in the Snow

2011-06-19T16:10:00.000-07:00

I am so thrilled to show this oil painting in the Plein Air Artists of Colorado Show to be held in Saks Gallery in Cherry Creek in South Denver this June and July. The opening will be June 24th from 5 to 8. This is a wonderful prestigious gallery just down the street from Cherry Creek Mall and features the most famous artists around. How exciting! I will also be demonstrating there on July 5th from 10 to 12. The show runs through July 10th so stop in if you are in Denver!

Dale and Lilli enjoying the Rio

2011-05-21T10:52:00.000-07:00

Here are Dale and Lilli enjoying the Rio. She had a great time throwing pennies in the big fountain and asking each of us for our wish. What a character!

2011-05-21T10:47:00.000-07:00

Here's the whole Colorado gang on Mother's Day. Todd, Liesl, Lilli, me, my sister Vicki, Dale and Vicki's husband, Neil. We just finished visiting the local brunch restaurant and are enjoying the sunshine.

Towards the Foothills

2011-05-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

The foothills are beginning to green up and the trees are slowly leafing out, this has been a slow spring, but the flowering trees are finally in full flower.
I love all the apple, crab apple, plum and fruit trees in Fort Collins. Right now you can drive from one end to the other and see flowering trees on every street. I rarely paint the flowering trees and they seem to be pretty "spring specific" but maybe this year...!!

Norwegian winter

2011-04-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

I received this photo from my friend Sigmund Aarseth a few weeks ago. He and his wife Ingebjorg live in this beautiful log house in Norway. I think they have had a lot of snow this year, but what a beautiful day this shows! I have been to their home a couple of times, it just reminds me of Monet's house and garden as they have built it and maintain the garden for Sigmund's gorgeous paintings. He doesn't have to walk far to see a paintable subject.

Into the Swamp, Pastel, 20 x 20

2011-04-28T19:05:00.000-07:00

Hopefully, back at my blog! I haven't had very good luck posting because my computer (with Windows 9) became incompatible with blogger. So, I am now on my NEW computer with Windows 7 and it is compatible with everything! Why do they invent new things that are incompatible if I may ask? Wouldn't you think it would get better...and not worse with a new "upgrade"? Windows 9 seems to be incompatible with so many things, I don't know why they even bother with it. Thank goodness I hadn't "upgraded" my new computer yet, just getting used to it!
This painting, "Into the Swamp" has won an Honorable Mention at the show at the Madden Museum of Art in Denver. Very exciting! I had entered it in several shows that it wasn't accepted into, just goes to show that jurors are "incompatible" also! Whatever. It is very frustrating to be an artist these days. What I think is my best work seems like it takes so long to break into shows...am I a futurist or what? Ha.

On the Way to Steamboat over Rabbit Ears Pass

2011-01-05T13:56:00.000-08:00

This is from one of the photos I took while leaning out of the van in the midst of a snow storm going over Rabbit Ear's Pass on the way to Steamboat Springs.
It is one of the paintings that I am showing at Art on Mountain Gallery this weekend. Come on down and see my work,I have 14 paintings, some of them new right off the easel.
I have been painting like a crazy person all this fall and I have 30 new paintings, but not all of them are presentation ready.

Painting in Taos, New Mexico

2010-09-26T13:27:00.000-07:00

This oil is of our local sculpture park and I just liked the hazy swamp grass and the ambiance of the September water swamp. Another outdoor painting that brings memories of the smell of the swamp (not as bad as you would think!) and the warmth of the hot Setember sun in Colorado.

Really could it get any more beautiful than Taos, NM? The golden chamisa, the blue mountains and the blue-grey sage? The trees had yet to begin turning but we still had plenty of color in all our paintings. I only wish I had the stamina to paint as many hours as I used to. Knee surgery has certainly slowed me down this summer. This beautiful scene is just north of Taos by Arroyo Seco. I will post my finished painting here as soon as I get it photographed.

Bear at Bear Creek Park

2010-08-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

Could there be anything more appropriate than a bear wandering around Bear Creek Park while we plein air painted? There he was just a few yards away seemingly enjoying himself as we were!
Painting en plein air is certainly one of the most satisfying ways to enjoy your day outdoors. I don't know of anything that is more fun, enjoyable, frustrating and almost impossible! That has to be one of the reasons I am so drawn to painting outdoors. I am preparing for a show of my plein air work at our Art on Mountain Gallery starting September 1 here in beautiful downtown Fort Collins. Come and join us on Art Walk night, September 3rd, at 102 West Mountain Avenue from 5 to 9. I will have about 20 new plein air paintings to show from the last couple of years of painting from Tuscany to Malibu, Colorado to Texas. The great thing about a plein air painting is that you can almost feel the atmosphere that the artist enjoyed at the time of the painting, unlike a studio painting, it's all right HERE, mosquitoes embedded in the painting, a few bear hairs and the usual blood, sweat and tears!!

Cruising the Baltic Sea

2010-08-01T18:08:00.000-07:00

Could anything be more beautiful than cruising the Baltic Sea? Visiting London, Bruges, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Rostock, St. Petersberg and Tallin, Estonia. Wow. We are numb with exhaustion! But it was gorgeous and there will be a few paintings resulting from this trip although my forte is landscapes, mostly with just nature and there are lots of buildings on our photos!

Glad to be home.

Off to St. Petersburg!

2010-06-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

This painting just went into the Evergreen Pastel Show in Evergreen, Colorado. It is a painting I did of the lillies in my backyard last year. They are just getting ready to bloom again now and we will probably miss them as we are off on a cruise through the Baltic Sea. We will go through all the Scandinavian capitals (except Norway) and Tallinn, Estonia, Berlin and Bruges, Belgium on our way to St. Petersburg where we will tour the Hermitage and probably see 1 millionth of their art. But just to be there will be great.

Landscapes from New Mexico

2010-05-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

We are packing up to go to Littleton and take a class from the guru of landscape pastel, Albert Handell. This should be a fabulous class and I hope to learn a lot. He is one of the Master Pastelist's that I've always wanted to study with so I am very excited.
This is a painting of some cottonwoods hanging over an arroyo in New Mexico that I did last year, I love the vibrancy of the leaves against the dark background. A fun painting.

Almost healed! Lilli and I reading Elmo.

2010-04-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

Lilli and I spend a lot of time reading books, especially since both of us have been under the weather. This is her Elmo book that I bought in LaMesa, CA, last year. A daughter of a good friend of mine there has a children's book shop! So cute, it has a train that runs around the top of the room, and darling little places to read to kids. I wish it was here, although we do have a very nice one, called Reader's Cove, that has a real Ark inside. Lilli loves it, she runs down the gangplank as fast as she can go, scary!

I am working on some new pieces for the gallery, they are watercolor with webbing spray, such a fun thing to do, absolutely different from my usual work. I am enjoying my art more now than ever, mainly because I don't work so hard at it! More like fun.

Studio windowsills, porcelain ceramic

2010-03-13T17:28:00.000-08:00

This is the finish for my studio, porcelain tile windowsills. I wish the tulips were real but they are just for still life painting....we can pretend, though! (the white piles outside on the steps is, yes, real snow. It's gone now, March 13th, about time!) The cat not wanting a bath is Melanie, but I haven't had time to get her painted. Now that I am
home with my new knee maybe I can get somet of those putzy things done!

2010-03-13T17:24:00.000-08:00

In the studio, notice wood flooring meets carpet tiles (that's for us sloppy painters!).

New studio fireplace

2010-03-13T17:09:00.000-08:00

This is my new studio fireplace. The mantel was purchased in San Diego at an antique shop when I was teaching there in 1996. So I have hauled it around all over Colorado and shown it
in all my shops, etc. Now, it finally has a home. On
top of the fireplace I have a print of Nicholai Fechin's
Bali Girl which I got from a friend of mine, Judy Johnson, I keep it there in memory of her.

There's a very old sled from New Mexico leaning up against the mantle and, a carved pheasant (my Dad's favorite bird) on top.

In front is a Persian rug I got from Ebay. I guess nobody liked red that week because I got it for only about $200.00, it's an 8 x 10 and has gorgeous color and isn't even worn. Of course now it will have cat fur and painters "tracks"!!

It has taken us eight years to finish off my studio with the fireplace, the wooden planed floor and the window sills. Well, worth it, now...as soon as I get
my knee moving easily again...I'll be hard at it!

Knee Surgery, hope to get back to painting!!

2010-02-22T18:51:00.000-08:00

Last week I took Liesl and Katie up to Rocky Mountain National Park and we enjoyed seeing the elk out there relaxing in their winter feeding grounds. Katie is Liesl's cousin from California who has just moved here, we are so excited to have her here!

Enjoying our grandchildren is the order of the day this winter since I am going in for knee surgery on Wednesday, I hope to get back to painting and feeling much better in April.

This is our newest grandchild, Colin and his big sister Faith who is 11. We got to see them in January in Missouri where they live by Kansas City.

We hope to see more of them next summer. Don't they look alike!

Next is our grandchild, Lilli, who is sitting on my lap doing a Dora sticker book. What wonderful fun they all are!

March Along the Big Thompson

2009-12-03T16:58:00.001-08:00

In the winter world we have in Colorado there are times when you see snow and everything snow stands for in just a different way. This painting is one of those times, I waded through foot deep snow in order to photograph this beautiful river, cutting its way through the deep snow.
Unfortunately, as I raised my camera to take the photos, my batteries just died! So, back down
to the van to see if I had any more batteries, I was amazed that I actually did. Back up the banks, wading in the deep snow, trying to fit into my previous footprints so that my feet and pants wouldn't get any wetter than they already were...finally got my photos. Ah, the life of an artist...persevere is the name of the game!
This painting was accepted into the International Richeson Pastels 75 for 2010! How exciting and how gratifying to have your work appreciated...I possibly spent 30 hours on this painting, which is only 14 x 18, but has many, many layers of pastels!
It's a wonderful day in Colorado when the snow piles up in blue shadows and yet it is warm enough to run around and take photos, I am not quite up to painting out there, however!!

Enjoying our granddaughter

2009-10-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

Always so much
fun to babysit our granddaughter, Lilli. Today she was having a good time, watching Mickey Mouse on TV. I snapped this photo of her with the sun coming in over my shoulder. See the angel on the back table that I brought home from California, it is holding a sea shell, kind of seems to fit the photo somehow! Look at those eyelashes! Don't think she got them from my side of the family!!

Lillies from my yard, before the big Snow Day!!

2009-10-10T19:39:00.000-07:00

These lillies were so beautiful this year, I wanted to just preserve them forever, well, in pastel! Our backyard was just packed with flowers this year, I love the English garden look with cosmos, hibiscus, hollyhocks, asters, lillies, lilacs, clematis, phlox,
all planted rather carefully and neatly by my husband, Dale, and then reseeded by the Garden Goddesses willy nilly all over the place!

I really love this loose, fun flower style and want to do a lot more of it.

As to the Snow Day, we got about 5 to 6 inches today in Fort Collins, so long flowers! Hope to see you all in 2010!!

Grant Humphries Mansion

2009-10-01T15:23:00.000-07:00

Here's one of the paintings I did in 40 degree weather, a nice stiff breeze and a drizzle. One of the most beautiful spots in downtown Denver.

Denver Plein Air---Brrrrr

2009-10-01T15:14:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I posted on my blog. I've been busy painting, painting...attending the Weekend with the Masters in Colorado Springs and running Art on Mountain. This has been a good fall, a little cold, but very beautiful scenery to paint out there!

On September 21st I spent the day in Denver at the Grant Humphries Mansion in the cold, wind and rain painting away. It was probably as cold as it gets in Colorado in the Fall. I'm surprised it didn't snow!

Here I am with my five layers under my plastic rain poncho, it was drizzling, which is not so good when you are painting with soft pastels!

I got a couple of paintings out of it, but it wasn't easy!

And, isn't it just a privilege to be an artist doing plein air! Yup.

2009-08-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

Thaw on the Poudre, Pastel, 16 x 20.

Rolling into Fall in Colorado

2009-08-22T16:33:00.000-07:00

Well, this has been one of the busiest summers ever! I just finished a two week workshop with Susan Ogilvie which was held in Longmont, CO. Wonderful teacher, two great classes, since I was in charge I managed to get in more than five days of these classes. We spent most of the morning out painting. It was HOT, hot, hot. Thank goodness, Susan brought us in to paint inside for the rest of the afternoon. Just got a little too toasty out there. We painted a couple of beautiful ponds, a museum farmstead and a friend's house and yard. I got about four pretty decent paintings out of it, they are mostly studies, but after a couple of days of trying to under-stand exactly what Susan's techniques were about, I kind of grasped the concepts. Although I have been painting forever, every class you take seems to open up new doors into the greater understanding of art.
I was very excited to learn that my painting "January Thaw on the Poudre" was accepted into the Estes Park National Show, Lines Into Shapes. This was a painting I worked out getting ready for the Quick Draw up in Cheyenne this Spring. I did about three paintings before arriving at one that I could paint in 45 minutes! This wasn't one of them! In fact, it was the first one I did, 16 x 20, and I just kept on adding and adding until I realized that there was no way I could even attempt to paint this one again! I guess you could say I got carried away!
I love snow, even though it is a different environment here in Colorado, it isn't like living in North Dakota.

2009-07-04T17:17:00.000-07:00

It seems like I spent weeks creating this Nocture of the Front Range for the National Pastel Show, only to have it not accepted. Oh, well, I got the painting "Serene Reflections" in but this one is really dear to my heart. I'll hope for the best for it and send it off again, one of the jurors for some show HAS to fall in love with it, right? Maybe it's just me, but I think paintings like this have mystery and beauty that can be created by the viewer, not much is spelled out, but it's all still there. My intrepid mountain climbing friends can name all these summits from south to north. Round Mountain is pretty noticeable but the others are a little more remote. We see this scene driving up and down highway 287, are we lucky to live here or what?

Independence Day/Serene Reflections

2009-07-04T17:06:00.001-07:00

I am so excited that my painting, "Serene Reflections" was accepted for the Mile High National Pastel Show for 2009. I also really liked the other paintings I did for this show...that didn't get in, but oh, well!! If you can get at least one painting into National Shows you are way ahead of the game, and...this show is close by, in Longmont, so I can drive the painting there. Having to ship paintings is not good, it costs so much to enter, so much to have your piece framed and photographed that by the time you have to ship it there...and, if it doesn't sell, ship it home, an artist is w..aaa..y into big time money. And, didn't we do this just to enjoy painting? Right?

I just returned from a 10 day vacation to the West Coast of California. It was really a thrill to see the coast line north of San Francisco. I visited my sister, Debbie, who lives in California and has a vacation home in Gualala. This is a really cool area to visit, beautiful rough seacoast and a different type of foliage and weather than you see down around LA and San Diego. I took about 250 photos and did three paintings. I have decided that my theme for the next year or so will be flowers and florals in the landscape. For about the last three years I have concentrated on water, lakes, reflections and I think this will be a fun, enjoyable series and get my juices flowing again.

2009-05-15T19:48:00.000-07:00

Two years ago on this day I was painting away in Italy! Dale and flew to Florence and I celebrated my birthday in Florence. Is that a great thing for an artist or what?
Here we are in front
of our fattoria, Italian farm house, one of thirteen houses owned by a Contessa who was 94 years old and had the most amazing and frightening German Shepherd! He was called Princey and we were well warned never to feed Princey in case we ended up part of the food.

What a Memory!!

Back at work, busy, busy

2009-05-06T21:17:00.000-07:00

January on the Cache La Poudre, Fort Collins

2009

Life has been one really busy whirl lately. I have been teaching painting, teaching marketing, evaluating galleries (cleaning, painting and redoing our Art on Mountain gallery) and jurying a show. Since my knee surgeon decided it was time to inject my knees that has slowed me down more than I ever thought possible, also.

I was really excited to receive an Honorable Mention on my San Jose Mission Arches painting at our Celebration of Color Show last week. Also, I have put 17 paintings in the Western State Bank in North Fort Collins and 9 paintings in the Reader's Cover BookStore. Next week we rehang a new show in Art on Mountain for which I have five paintings ready.

One of these, January on the Poudre is featured on this post. I painted this as a sample painting and a study for my Quick Draw at the Cheyenne Spirit of the West Show. It turned out pretty well and I love the area just down from our house a couple of miles where I have painted this scene many times.

In December, Dale and I did a quick trip through Minnesota and this painting is from a photograph I took while we were driving through a blizzard to visit Dale's parents. Very interesting drive...NOT. But I do like the painting!

Water Sonata

2009-03-16T13:30:00.000-07:00

Looking through my photos one day I came across this beautiful sight. I am not sure where I took this photo, or even when, but I just loved the fall of the water, so I painted it. Many times when I am out doing photography I just take dozens of photos and pile up all these ideas to paint. It's an little overwhelming when I find that I want to paint dozens of them!
On this painting I especially like how the background trees got really soft and blue, I changed a lot of this from the photo just to get the softness into the painting. This is a 18 x 12 pastel called Water Sonata. The falls are either in Norway or Colorado...I think! Somewhere I've been anyway!

September Song in Aspen Grove Gallery

2009-03-16T13:18:00.000-07:00

This March I have been putting my paintings in shows all over Colorado and Wyoming. It is a busy time! Last Saturday I was thrilled to see that one of my paintings, "September Song", won a My Choice award at Aspen Grove shopping center in downtown Littleton, CO. The gallery is right next to Pottery Barn so it is fun to visit and see what's new! (I love Pottery Barn and bought some gorgeous orange tulips while I was there...I digress) Anyway, my painting won a brand new wooden easel, value $300.00! That was a thrill. Prints of this painting are in the Surgical Waiting Room in the new Medical Center of the Rockies. This is one of my favorite paintings, it is 20 x 30 pastel and took forever to paint, it's definitely not a predictor of the value of paintings...how long they take to paint. Some great paintings go together so quickly...others take forever. Other painting take forever and never turn out no matter what you do! Such is the life of an artist!

Serene Reflections National Show Piece

2009-03-03T20:43:00.000-08:00

I am so excited I finally got a piece in the Artists Association of Colorado's National Show. I have entered nine times and gotten in twice. Tough show to get into and it is shown in a great venue right here in Fort Collins.
Because the show is so difficult to get into I spend about a month every fall painting a piece a hope has a chance. Those pieces often garner lots of awards in other wonderful shows, but obviously don't get into this one!

My painting this year is a pastel, 24 x 36, and it is a scene of a heavy snow in the mountains, with lots of unusual colorations. It was difficult and time consuming to paint so I have priced it accordingly. The frame is going to also be an expensive deal since it is so big, but it has earned the best frame I can afford! Or not, as the case may be! Hopefully, art will start selling again after the recession is over! Our gallery is holding its own, but with spring coming on I hope the art sales also come on!

Banks of the Poudre in May

2009-02-07T09:34:00.000-08:00

We live about five miles from the beautiful Cache la Poudre River in Fort Collins, right in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. One of the fun things that we can do is plein air paint almost any day of the year and create paintings of scenery that is beautiful. Last May a bunch of us went with Master Pastelist, Lorenzo Chavez, over to the Poudre River to plein air paint. It was a beautiful, clear day and we set up on the river banks and painted. For lunch we went to Vern's Cafe which is a great good ol' boy Cafe with homemade cinnamon rolls and low calorie stuff like that. Since it was the day before my birthday one of the guys ordered a big cinnamon roll with candles on it for me and they all sang, loudly, Happy Birthday to me. Wow, that was embarrassing...and fun, some of the people in the restaurant sang along just for the fun of it! Great day!! This painting will be in the Jack Richeson Book, Pastels 75. It should be out soon, I am anxious to see it, I have three paintings in the book.

Inside the Loveland Greenhouse, 11 x 14 Pastel

2009-01-17T18:07:00.000-08:00

Last fall we had an unusually cold, windy, really nasty day and instead of painting the outdoors plein air we moved into the Loveland Greenhouse. I really had a hard time deciding what to paint, I enjoy plants but this sea of green was too much even for me. At the back of the greenhouse they had this really nice umbrella set up, and I just loved the look of it so I parked my easel in front, added a couple of nice plants with the grass and painted happily away. This is one of my favorite paintings, I think I just love umbrellas, even though opening them inside is supposed to be bad luck!
Altogether I had a great week. This painting, as well as two others, were chosen for the Jack Richeson "Pastels 75" book which will be published in the next few weeks. The Western Spirit Show curator called and asked me to do the Quick Draw before the opening and I was really excited to accept. Quick Draw is a 45 minute drawing from start to finish and framed!! So, obviously, I will have to have my pastels "ducks" in a row for this one. You can't dawdle with a few hundred people watching!

Lake Loveland at Dawn, Pastel

2009-01-13T18:05:00.000-08:00

WATCHING DOUG DAWSON, MPSA, DEMO
Last Saturday I had the opportunity to watch a demo by one of the greatest pastelists of our times, Doug Dawson of Wheatridge, CO. He is a Master Pastelist in the Pastel Society of America and gave us a wonderful demo. In an hour and a half I wrote three pages of notes. Some of the information he emphasized was looking and relooking at the big shapes. He also talked about weaving one color throughout all the colors of the weaving (painting) to unify it. I thought this was a wonderful concept, using the analogy of weaving, you could really picture this working.
He talked about using toned paper, he uses pink for overcast days and yellow gold for a sunny day.
He did a really brave thing and had each one of us in the room pick out a color and he used all of them to do a painting of a big tree in front of a background of other trees. It was very interesting to see how he brought it all together with something like thirty colors being used!
Doug has a new book out so be sure and check it out if you can. I have his first book which I think I've had for almost 20 years.

Bales Aglow--Western Spirit Show

2009-01-09T19:52:00.000-08:00

In case you think this looks familiar, this is the finished painting that I did the study for in the posting I did of the Small Painting Show. The study is 6 x 8 and this painting is 20 x 24.

I like this painting, it speaks to me in so many ways of my childhood, life in North Dakota and our farm in Southwestern North Dakota. Today I painted all day and it seems like I always go back to farm and landscape scenes. Today I worked on a winter scene in the "Russian Style"...rough strokes of oil on linen, fun and entirely different from pastel painting. Keeps my short attention span on track!

National Juried Western Spirit Show

2009-01-06T14:34:00.000-08:00

I am excited that two of my paintings were accepted into the 2009 Western Spirit Show in Cheyenne. I haven't applied for this show before so it was really nice to get two paintings in. My Bales Aglow which is a 20 x 24 pastel and my Arches at San Jose Mission pastel painting which is 24 x 36. The Bales painting is such a reiteration of my childhood in North Dakota...even though our bales there were rectangular...very heavy....and awkward.

The San Jose Mission is in San Antonio and when Dale had a conference there a couple of years ago I went along and decided I would photograph all the Missions. Well, that turned out to be a little more than I could do, but I did take three rolls of film with my Fuji Advantix camera. I still really like to use that camera, it takes wonderful photos.I have to admit that I like the flexibility of being able to take many photos and delete the ones with my thumb in the middle!

The Western Spirit Show is in Cheyenne, WY, from March 7 to April 19, 2009. The opening reception is March 7, 2009, from 6 to 9 pm in Cheyenne Frontier Days "Old West Museum". You need to make reservations, it's a great opening...hope to see YOU there!

Winter

2008-12-30T11:48:00.000-08:00

As usual going into a New Year, I plan my goals for the following year. This year it's much harder for some reason, maybe the general apathy I feel after my Dad's death this year has made me less driven. Anyway, I have decided to paint animals this year, Herefords in honor of my Dad. He loved his Herefords and he picked them for their "conformation", something I never quite got the feeling of. So, this year I am going to study our cattle from old photos and paint some of them grazing and at their winter feeding station.
Feeding them in Southwestern North Dakota in the winter was a challenge that most people will never know. Lucky them! Sometimes it took us as long to get dressed to go out to feed the cattle as it did to feed them. I can remember my Mom and I getting dressed up in our "storm coats" as she called them. My arms would barely bend with all the layers. The scarf around your mouth would immediately freeze at 30 to 38 below zero. It was a real scary time, the water in the tank had to be heated and broken through for the cows and the calves. We had to haul out the bales, some of which were pretty tightly frozen and packed together. The great life of a farmer/rancher in North Dakota! Wow.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year

2008-12-26T17:17:00.000-08:00

It's very cold here in Colorado, but the sun is peeking out. I am working on reorganizing my studio. Today my friend Nancy helped me out putting pastels in a new cabinet I bought at the flea market for $95.00. It has eleven drawers in it and they are lined with red velvet! It is a new cabinet made by a local handyman for jewelery but it works great for pastels. It is extremely heavy and now it is probably close to 80 pounds with my pastels in it. Pastels are so expensive I wanted a case for them where they would get so dusty and messed up.

Liesl and Lilli, Christmas 2008

2008-12-21T10:24:00.000-08:00

North Dakota grandparents house in winter.

2008-12-16T11:35:00.000-08:00

Photo taken by Rev. Roger of my
grandparents house, built in 1914, a
Sears and Roebuck house. Now
owned by Doug Tarpo.

http://nordic-arts.com/

Rolling into the holidays, as usual I am trying to do a thousand things at once and lately that has given me some black and blue marks as well as pain! Hopefully, once Christmas craziness wanes we will be able to attain some serenity in our lives. Having spent the last few days in Minnesota, I have become much more excited about Christmas. Minnesota has to be one of the most Christmasy of all the states in the Union. Everyone seems to collect everything to do with Christmas!! My eight Santas pale in significance to everyone's "villages, snowmen, American dolls, ornaments, etc". Anyway, now I am digging out all our stuff to see if I can make a statement celebrating a Colorado Christmas!

Feeding the Kitties

2008-12-08T20:55:00.000-08:00

Last fall after my Dad passed on I painted this from a photo I had taken several years ago. My Dad loved his cats and wanted to keep them around to keep the rodents down around the farm. In order to do that it was important to keep them fed, also. So every morning he would fill up a little ice cream pail with table scraps and some cat food and take it down to the barn.

Here you can see the little black kitties rushing out to greet him. He would call "kitty, kitty, kitty" and they would come in a blur. They were all wild, feral cats and you couldn't get very close to them. Now I guess they are all at someone else's farm because there's no one left to feed them at Flagstaff Farms! Time and life move on somehow!

Small Paintings Show

2008-11-20T09:02:00.000-08:00

Happy almost Thanksgiving everyone!

We are having a new Small Paintings Show in Fort Collins at the Readers Cove, a nice bookstore on Harmony Road and Lemay. Our opening is Friday, Nov. 21 at 6 pm so be sure and come.

I am putting in the corn stalk one below as well as this painting I did of bales in a fall field. One of my favorites...I love those round bales and due to their size never had to haul them anywhere, unlike those little rectangular nasty ones!

We are off to Texas for Thanksgiving. I'm sure the weather down there will be just ideal, the one time of the year that it is almost perfect in Austin. Have a great one!

Painting at Grant's Farm in Loveland.

2008-11-16T18:11:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago some of my friends and I went out to a farm near Loveland where they grow pumpkins and painted the area and buildings. There were bunches of little kids there with their Moms picking out pumpkins and gourds for Halloween. Cute.

I really liked this doorway and the huge stalks of the corn nearby. It was very, very cold. Probably 40 degrees with a wind about the same speed. Not the easiest kind of atmosphere to paint outdoors! I would have to say that painting outdoors is just the greatest thing that an artist can do, however. You just seem to see articles, atmosphere, color and distance in entirely different ways once you start painting outdoors.

I started my love affair with painting out when I was in college and I trundled my junior high, high school and college students out all my teaching career. They actually liked it the best of all drawing projects that they ever did. It is just so invigorating to experience all the outdoors has to offer. The more you do it, the more your painting improves.

I painted some great views of Long's Peak from this property also, it's a wonderful farm with a great barn and a lake.

Art on Mountain Gallery, Fort Collins, CO

2008-10-20T09:35:00.000-07:00

This is our Art on Mountain Gallery at 102 West Mountain Ave in downtown beautiful Fort Collins, CO. I am the gallery director and have been for several years. We moved this gallery from the center of the Opera Galleria where it was the Benson Gallery to Mountain Avenue in
beautiful downtown Fort Collins. We have a wonderful location right between two great restaurants, Austins and Enzios and across the street from the Rio Grande Restaurant which is probably the most popular restaurant in Fort Collins.

This space had been a French Antique store called "The Nest", and it was. It was painted in splashes of bright red, yellow green and kind of messes of nest like stuff stuck here and there. The gallery artists looked a little pale when they first saw it, but I had a vision of what it could become and, with the help of all the artists and especially our carpenter, photographer James Steele, we created a beautiful little gallery. Everyone works hard to keep it beautiful and fresh.
Stop in whenever you are in town and see my work and that of 30 other award winning area artists. Beautiful art work, great prices!

Liesl and Lilli

2008-10-19T15:32:00.000-07:00

Our daughter and granddaughter enjoying the summer sun. Lilli is now walking and talking a little. At least she has finally said "Nana".

Yesterday I spent the morning out painting the Old Town Square in Fort Collins. It was a beautiful day and I really enjoyed it. There were lots and lots of people walking around and watching us paint.

Fort Collins is just this beautiful city full of young people pushing baby carriages, lots of them dads!

I painted the buildings on Linden that were copied by Disney World in their small town USA in Floriday. All the leaves were golden, it was a wonderful day.

The Contessa Stairway, Vallala, Italy

2008-10-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

I did this painting for my beautiful niece, Kristi,

to hang in her new house in California.

I painted a study of this while in Italy. It was

one of those perfect days, standing out in the

sunshine, on the side of a hill overlooking

Sienna, almost surreal in its beauty. I was standing nearby a beautiful area of umbrella

pines on a small gravel road. On the other side

of the road was a drop off into acres of olive

groves with poppies blooming on the side.

Could it possibly get any better than that?

I painted this in oil on a heavy linen canvas, it

is a wrap around canvas and I had my framer, Mike Otteman, do a beautiful heavy black frame that floats the painting.

This painting is 24 x 20 and has the essence of

Italy. The Contessa is 94 and she came out to

see the paintings we were doing. She always had her dog Prince with her. Price was a very scary Germany Shepherd, we kept our distance! But she was very friendly and spoke great English. Her second husband, Hugh, was

Scots and she had met him when they occupied the Villa and her lands during the Second World

War. I'll bet she was a beauty, she was still pretty at 94. The lands and her 13 houses had come down from her line of the family. So, when she met Hugh, she just put her husband and her son in a different house! Guess that worked fine.

WOW FORT COLLINS

2008-10-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

This week the Colorado Coalition of Artists or COCOA has sponsored an art show called WOW Fort Collins. Everything in this art show had to use the initials wow, so I created a very abstract painting, which I used as a reference Michelle Vice's photo of a water and woodland scene. This painting I called War Over Water, mainly due to the problems we are having here to avoid the ruin of one of our most beautiful assets in Northern Colorado, the Cache La Poudre River. There is a plan afoot to build a reservoir on the Poudre north of Fort Collins which will really affect the flow of the river going through town. This painting is a reflection on the water of the battle we must fight to avoid losing our beautiful Poudre.

Capture the County, Winter Shadows

2008-09-29T19:34:00.000-07:00

This is a painting close by to the last painting that I called Winter at the Ponds. This painting is of the late afternoon shadows close by the Cache la Poudre River north of Fort Collins. This is an oil, quite large, 24 inches high and 36 inches long. It received a Second Place for Oil Painting at the Cheyenne National Show and I am not putting it in Capture the County show which will be in the Art on Mountain Gallery.

This has been a better week for me, painting-wise. I just finished a real abstracty painting that is 24 x 24 on a wrap around canvas. I will post it when I get it photographed. Tomorrow I am going to finish a couple of paintings that I did plein air to also put in the Capture the County Show. The weather here in Colorado couldn't be better, one of the greatest things about living in the state of Colorado is the long beautiful fall. In the evening it gets down into the 40's but each day it hits the high 70's or 80's. The Chamisa that blooms so prolifically here is in full glory. I have a back-lit chamisa painting that I did for the Lines Into Shapes Show in Estes Park. It reminds me of the warmth and fragrance of the Colorado fall days.

Winter at the Ponds, New Mexico Choice 2008

2008-09-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

I was really excited to get the notification that my piece, "Winter At The Ponds" was selected for the New Mexico National Pastel Show in Albuquerque this fall.

I really like this painting which is of the area right

north of Taft Hill Road, off the Poudre River

in North Fort Collins, close to where we live.

Being from North Dakota, I enjoy painting snow

and winter! This was a nice winter day, the

snow and water smelled clean and earthy the way I always remember from North Dakota when

we had one of those "warmer" days. The pond was not frozen, so it reflected the soft blue sky

that we had that day.

This is the first time I have gotten into this show, so I am very excited about it. I am going to go

down to Albuquerque anyway to participate in a Scandinavian Butikk which is held on Nov. 1st, this is a good excuse to spend a few days with all my friends down there!

I am also taking a class from Sheila Rieman who paints beautiful colorful animals in pastel. She is

actually from North Dakota, Sentinel Buttee, which is close to where I grew up. It should be fun

to take her class in Albuquerque and to see this wonderful exhibit. The exhibit is on the fair grounds of the New Mexico State Fair, it is beautiful in November, smells like apples, pinon smoke in the air and the gentle warmth of fall...usually about 65 degrees, my favorite temperature!

2008-09-21T18:36:00.000-07:00

This is one of my favorite fall scenes, the Cache La Poudre River at Martinez Park right in
downtown Fort Collins. This scene is only three blocks from our Gallery, Art on Mountain where I show my work and where this painting is hanging.

This painting is 36" high and 24" long. I have painted this scene three or four times, this time of the year the Poudre River is so beautiful reflecting the clear blue skies of our wonderful state.

This has been a difficult fall, my father died two weeks ago, he was 95 but was one of the best right up until the end. He must be looking down on me right now making sure that I keep on painting! He was a great supporter of my painting and I have done several of him and the North Dakota scenes that he loved so well.

My family always has been really supportive of my crazy painting career, even though sometimes they probably wonder why I don't get a "real job". It's too late now, I have retired from "real work" and will just keep painting!

Hopefully there are still people out there who want to see painterly scenes of the wild and scenic Poudre River, plains, mountains and contented cattle...my favorite subjects!

Diane's Doodles Blog, September 6

2008-09-06T18:15:00.000-07:00

Hi, if you haven't heard of me before I'll fill you in a little on my history. I was born in North Dakota and raised on a farm/ranch with four sister siblings. We had a lot of freedom to ride our horses and play all over our farm. When I was seven I knew I wanted to be an artist and so I have worked at that all my life.

Lately I have been trying to work some new things into my art. Since I am a Signature Pastelist with the Pastel Society of Colorado and also paint in oils, I decided to break away a little from my usual work of realistic landscapes and start to abstract them a little. I don't know if I will ever really change my style but I want to stretch the reality of it a little.

This painting is of a waterway on our land in North Dakota that was homesteaded by a man named Fisher. The WPA built a dam on it in the thirties. We now have a couple of wild horses who live here and enjoy the water and the green grass. This painting is a pastel, size 9 x 12 and it was painted a couple of weeks ago.

I want to paint a really large painting of this, so this is kind of a study even though it is a complete work of art by itself.

I am also working on a series about trees, which you can see there aren't any here, so I guess I deviated a little from that plan! However, I will post my tree paintings as I start to get them finished.