Watercolor: Hope’s Freesia (& art festivals this & next weekend)

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This watercolor is fresh off the art-table and I’m in the process of framing it now. It was my demo painting at the San Diego Artwalk a few weeks ago, and I finished it here in the studio this week, just in time for the next two festivals. The reference photo was snapped with a cell phone in my kitchen, after a lovely friend gave me a handful of fragrant freesia from her garden (thank you, Hope!) The sunlight here by the sea looks so different draped over the same objects I had at my previous home in the desert. The light is shining from the same big yellow ball in both places, but there is something lustrous and a bit showy in the squinty brightness here that I’m so happy to chase in watercolors.

Here is where I’ll be exhibiting this weekend and next:

Thousand Oaks Artwalk – Saturday & Sunday – June 4 & 5

Hillcrest Drive & Wilbur Road in Thousand Oaks, California – I’ll be in booth #58

Web site: http://cvam.us/default.htm

San Diego Festival of Art – Saturday & Sunday – June 11 & 12

Waterfront Park 1600 Pacific Coast Highway in San Diego, California – I’ll be in booth C310

Note: admission for this festival is $13 (this is a fundraiser, for wounded warriors, folks with disabilities and children in need) You can buy 2-for-1 tickets on the web site in advance with the discount code SDFAArtist

Web site: http://www.sdfestivalofthearts.org/

While framing art for the above festivals, I’m listening to two books on history, and each of them are flushing my brain with engrossing details about modern vs current definitions of hardship, the history of democracies, the efficacy of music, how early American laws were written (with a supply of quill pens & ink, a short deadline, by candle light, in a hotel room, on sheaths of curled & lumpy parchment), the immense power wielded in articulate oratory skills and the way success hinges on an individual’s potency, passion and conviction in any endeavor. Have you read/listened to Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, and The Immortal Irishman by Tim Eagan? What did you think? I’m thoroughly enjoying both books, and each of them makes me wonder what happened to English language over time; we don’t use more than a cupful of words compared to the oceans of them in these chronicled notes, letters, laws and journals.

• A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.  ~W.H. Auden

 

 

Art Quote
This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.
Steven Pressfield

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