Hydrangea, 6x6 Oil by Carmen Beecher

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I think this piece is what inspired me to paint a large floral painting (my "Dragonflower"). This hydrangea was like painting a big bouquet on a small canvas, and it was a lot harder than I expected. I have been very busy on my projects for our December Christmas Sale, but at some point I want to paint another large floral painting.

For those of you who have been asking about our annual Christmas Sale, it will be December 7. We will have many new creative surprises this year, and as usual, our original art at very affordable prices. Save the date!

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Dragonflower, 20x20 Oil Painting by Carmen Beecher

I have posted so many small paintings in my blog and my Etsy shop, and I suddenly got the urge to paint something big and flowery. I have taken lots of pictures of my Cereus blooms, which are supposed to ultimately become Dragonfruit, but mine fall short of that achievement.

I like the glow of light coming through the flowers. I got the background by mixing Pthalo Green and Alizarin Crimson, and I like the intensity of that, but I seem to wear Pthalo Green for days. It seems to have mysterious properties enabling it to jump all over me and my clothes.

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WILD AND WACKY WEDNESDAY, Painting on Sale, "Pumpkin and Bittersweet" 6x8" Oil

Today I am featuring a little oil still life that should fit right into your house this time of the year.

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49 minus 10 rebate

Originally priced at $80.00, this little gem is currently on sale at $49.00  For TODAY ONLY when you purchase, I will send you back at $10.00 rebate!

Growning up in Ohio, pumkins, bittersweet,  hay rides, and apple cider could mean only one thing....fall and Thanksgiving were on the way.  I loved that time of year, and yearn today for sound of fallen leaves crunching under my feet and that special fall smell in the air.  In those days, everyone would rake the leaves into a large pile and all the kids would leap into them.  When the fun was over, it was time to burn the leaves and toast marshmellows.  What a great time we had.

Maybe this painting will bring a little of the magical time into your home this fall.  

Don't forget, when you purchase, you must state WILD AND WACKY on the order to receive the $10.00 rebate.  That's because, this offer is only for readers of my blog and it's the only way I will know you saw it here.  Offer expires at midnight EDT 9/25/2013.

www.CarolSchiffStudio.etsy.com

"BFF" by Carol Schiff

I just returned from a few weeks in the mountains of western North Carolina. We have an October trip planned, to take in the beautiful fall colors, which I am really anticipating. Until then, I will have to be satisfied with our Florida type of tree. They have a beauty of their own....not really big leaves or bright colors, but graceful palms and huge live oaks draped in Spanish moss and with limbs that seem to be a mile long.

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225 + shipping

These don't have Spanish moss, but I was taken by their entwined limbs, like they are giving each other a hug and will be best friends forever.

I painted this with a palette knife and I used a technique I call "color weaving".  It gives me lots of texture and I can get really subtle color changes.  I have a nice wide molding in a dark wood tone that I will use to frame this one.  I think it will make it pop off the wall!

I hope to get many photos of fall color in the mountains next month....it's my favorite time of the year!

www.CarolSchiffStudo.etsy.com

Big Hair 80s, Oil Painting by Carmen Beecher

I painted this for the Daily Paintworks "Paint Yourself Young" challenge. Remember the 80s? Large hair, mall bangs, big shoulder pads? In deciding what to paint, it was a tossup between this and one of me at age five, with a bandaid on my head, standing in front of a reclining pig.

WILD AND WACKY WEDNESDAY, "A Perfect Summer Day" by Carol Schiff, 6x8" oil

When I see this painting, I always picture myself on a porch swing with a cool glass of lemonade and a good book.

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$75 + shipping

What more could I ask for...sunlight, a bicycle, lots of flowers and plants and a beautiful view.  Heaven!

But, summer is almost gone and it's time for this painting to leave too.  Originally priced at $95.00 and marked down to $75.00, it's a bargain.  Today is Wild and Wacky Wednesday which means that today only, when you purchase this painting, I will immediately refund you $10.00 bringing your cost down to $65.00.  Now, that's  bargain!

To get the discount, you must write "Wild and Wacky Wednesday" on your order.  This offer expires at midnight Sept. 18, 2013.



www.CarolSchiffStudio.blogspot.com

My Nautilus Collage: Art, Poetry, and Memory

by Fay Picardi

As many of you already know, The Pieces of Eight has one member who is both an established poet and an aspiring artist. That member is me, Fay Picardi. I feel very honored to be a member of this group of creative, talented, and supportive women. And now the time has come that I must venture forth to do my first post.

Here goes!

For years I have been fascinated by the Chambered Nautilus or nautilus pompilius (I had to look that one up). My first introduction to this mollusk was in my English class when I was a Junior in high school. The poem was The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendell Holmes. During my quite extensive stint as an American Literature teacher, I found and used as a prop for explaining the imagery in this poem to my students. It was a center cut pearl shell left somewhere in the world by a nautilus, beautiful in its iridescence. I would have it still, decades later, if it had not cracked and I had not thrown it away, promising myself I would buy another. As with many things we try to duplicate, I was never able to find one that was a perfect replacement. For years now I have been treasuring instead a tear-out from a magazine which looks as close to the original as I have been able to find, even though it does not have the tiny passageways by which the nautilus moved from chamber to chamber.

 

(I usually have hung it sideways with the words "evolved thinking" vertical instead of horizontal.)

With the above photo's image burnt into my mind and the inspiration of the last verse of Holme's poem, The Chambered Nautilus, which I post below, I decided I must try to create a nautilus of my own. I must try to capture the feel of the movement from chamber to chamber and the final hallelujah the last line.

Here's my effort! I have made changes from my original plan. I did not print the words of the poem on the ridges of the shell. I did not make the ridges black. I was not able to make each section a wholly independent work of art. But I am very satisfied with the result. I do believe there is a hallelujah in there somewhere!

The Chambered Nautilus

The Chambered Nautilus

By Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. 1809–1894 Oliver Wendell Holmes

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,

   Sails the unshadowed main,—

   The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings

In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,

   And coral reefs lie bare,

Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;

   Wrecked is the ship of pearl!

   And every chambered cell,

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,

As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,

   Before thee lies revealed,—

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil

   That spread his lustrous coil;

   Still, as the spiral grew,

He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,

Stole with soft step its shining archway through,

   Built up its idle door,

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,

   Child of the wandering sea,

   Cast from her lap, forlorn!

From thy dead lips a clearer note is born

Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!

   While on mine ear it rings,

Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

   As the swift seasons roll!

   Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

   Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!