On the Other Side of Silence

What is she thinking as she is posed for this painting? What is behind the silence in her eyes?

I am reading slowly through Makamoto Fujimura’s book Art and Faith… slowly because there are so many wonderful thoughts to contemplate. His chapter called “Jesus Wept”: Martha’s Response contains a quote by George Eliot, nineteenth-century English novelist…

“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

And imagine if we could hear the thoughts of all humanity… I would never think of dying in the tremendous noise and vibration and the hearing of the thoughts no one would want anyone to hear… but it would be overwhelming. I’m so thankful for silence. And yet looking into my daughter’s eyes in my painting of her… I still wonder what is behind the silence in her eyes?

11″ x 14″ oil on linen

Yellow Umbrella

Looks like he’s having a nice luncheon in Taos, New Mexico. I couldn’t resist snapping a photo of this gentleman with his yellow bow tie under the yellow umbrella to paint at a later time. 🙂

8″ x 10″ oil on linen

Cowboy Jim

Jim Garling has been a friend of our family for many, many years. He taught my boys guitar and fiddle 20 years ago. This man is an incredible entertainer and genuinely loves people. His light shines abundantly wherever he goes.

One day we saw him playing in our favorite Guthrie coffee shop, Hoboken. The light was streaming in the windows on his bright orange shirt. I took several pictures, because I knew someday I had to paint him, and this pose was just perfect.

11 x 14 oil on linen panel

Here is another picture of the same painting before I put the background in…

I was really hesitant to put a background in, because I really liked the way it looked plain. But I’m glad I did and Jim and his wife love the painting, so all is good.

I know that I last posted here in June of 2023, but I couldn’t log into WordPress on my computer for some reason, and I never figured out what was wrong. Now I have a new computer, so I am going to be hopefully doing some catching up on here. 🙂

Classic…

Little girl sitting at the counter… pink dress, bobbed hair with bow… classic…

Day 30 ~ last day

Can’t believe this is the last day of the month and the last day of our challenge. And… I can’t believe I am feeling so lazy. We just had an incredibly wonderful thunderstorm and I’m just sitting here enjoying the sound of thunder and rain all around me.

I did finish another painting today that I had to scrape, because the barn was too red. Scraping to make the barn more subtle, more in the background where it should be was my goal, but in scraping I also removed the snowflakes. Today I restored the snowflakes…

Tomorrow, I think I will post a review of what I accomplished and what I didn’t accomplish on this challenge.

Thank you, Sage, for doing this with me. ❤

Day 16 ~ try, try again

I can’t try anymore… something is just not coming together with this piece. I really think I need to start over on a fresh canvas, or perhaps sand this one down to the bottom layer…

At first I thought it would work… then I added the chandelier…

Not happy with it… I will try again some day…maybe…

Day 15 ~ indecision

I’m at a stopping point with this painting now. I need some advice on the background. Still not sure if I should cut the painting down or paint the background one color. What are your thoughts?

Here is the same image, just cropped. Does that look better?

Personally, I think the background is too busy. Perhaps, I’ll put it away again and take a fresh look in a few months.

Sometimes that just happens. 😦

Oh… Half way through the challenge!!! Yay!!!

Day 13 & 14 ~ scraping and layering

I have been working on a painting that has been sitting unfinished in my studio for over a year and I find my self continually scraping paint off and layering paint on and I still have a lot to do before I’m finished. I’m searching for a color pop…something that will really make this painting glimmer…

So, here is my unfinished work…

I have painted two other cello paintings, this will be my third. This one is my daughter Tera, who played left handed cello in our family band for years.

I’ll go ahead and post the other two so you can see them…

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Cello Love ~ Rachel and Cello Love ~ Emily

Personally, I just love how these turned out.

I’ll be back at it tomorrow and I’m hoping it will all come together.

Sweet Sisters

18″ x 18″ oil on canvas

(The color doesn’t look quite right on this photo to me, but it could be my computer, or so my son told me when he helped me take the picture, so that it would be good enough to make prints from. How does one know for sure? I guess I can view it on some one else’s computer and see how it looks…)

I enjoyed painting these two sweet sisters picking wildflowers in this field. The story behind this is pretty amazing. To keep it short I will just say that the parents ended up milking donkeys to heal a serious auto-immune disease that one of these girls developed over night… They now make all kinds of donkey milk soaps and skin care products. I saw this photo on Instagram and ended up painting it for the mom. She loves it. When the painting is dry I’ll deliver it to her and meet them all plus the donkeys. 🙂

Day 30 ~ Behind the Glass

8″ x 8″ oil on canvas

I took a photo of this cute little guy when we were at our favorite Guthrie coffee shop Hoboken. Don’t look too close, but I just noticed a lion face on the hood of his sweatshirt. I’ll have to change that… 🙂

This is the last day of the challenge and honestly I can’t believe I made it. I don’t want to whine on here, but just to say I went through several days of excruciating middle back pain. My shoulder has been hurting intensely where it was hit by a car years ago… to the point where I had to hold my arm up to paint at times. My husband has had a terrible tooth abscess, my daughter has been sick for a week with chills, fever and headaches… It has been a difficult month. On the brighter side we are all recovering and feeling a whole lot better. 🙂