And the beat goes on.....

Life is back to normal after traveling home from NJ to be with family and friends for the marriage of my son to his beautiful bride. It was over a year of wedding anticipation and it really was worth it! It was such an awesome day - never to be forgotten. I was also able to deliver a pet portrait to my cousin who wanted a special gift for her son and daughter in law. She is a beautiful dog and I hope the pastel painting I did does her justice. Check my pet portrait page for "Juno."

So it's back to the easel for me and the first thing I did was decide to finish a piece that I was struggling with. I was going back and forth with it for weeks. It started just as a brush to canvas painting using acrylics once again. I love the immediacy of this medium and I was missing that experience. No extreme waiting time and there is a freshness you get with acrylic that I find harder to get with oils. Don't get me wrong, I still love oils for their own special qualities.

As I worked on this piece, I just felt like it was missing something. It was a scene that really spoke to me. The beauty of the mountains in the distance and the rhododendron display that graces Roan Mountain every June. I just wasn't getting the emotion I felt from the scene. So I went to the knife....the palette knife that is. It began to really jump off the canvas with the thick layering of rich and vibrant colors and I started to feel that it was going where I wanted.

It so happened that I had another piece that was sitting in limbo for a longer time for the same reason. This painting was one of the bluebells I did back in the Spring. I was just not feeling it so I put it to the side. After working on the acrylic piece, I thought I'd try the same approach, however, this work was in oils. Well, I have to say, it just made me so happy to see what developed. It quickly came alive.....truly. I'm so happy with both of these pieces now and happy that I will be able to call them complete.