Saturday, September 1, 2012

Milk and Grapes

Another great find!  i recently bid on a box of vintage milk glass at a local auction and won!  This compote caught my eye immediately and I just had to paint it.  The globe grapes were plucked off the vine before all were ripe (notice the variation of colors) and the leaf was a vibrant spring green.  I just love the color combination.   The contrast of the milk glass under low lighting was the finishing touch!  Hope you like it too.


Milk and Grapes
Oil on Linen Panel
11 x 14

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Flow Blue

I found this little Flow blue trinket box at a local antique dealer and  it beckoned me... :)   It's simple but yet very elegant.  This was a fun painting to do - the  variation of blues in the design and the various  shades of "white" made it a fun challenge.   Hope you like it too.  Painted on a linen panel.


Flow Blue
 6x8
Oil on Linen Panel 
Custom Float framed 


Please contact me if interested in purchasing this  work of art:
shirley@gipson-artist.com

Sunday, August 19, 2012

The Bridge

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a couple small studies I did on a recent trip to North Carolina using my EasyL Pochade Box from Art Work Essentials.  Here is a studio version of one of them, I'm naming it "The Bridge"  It will be on display at  the next exhibit "Visual Rhapsody" at  my church gallery beginning mid September along with a couple other paintings I'll be displaying here through December.

The old iron bridge was  down a country road just outside of Cashiers, NC (and still in use).  We parked, gathered our Plein Air equipment and headed down the path to  set up under the bridge by the water.  Every where you looked - another painting.  Extremely picturesque.  Just to the base of this scene were the beginnings of white water which I may capture on a future  landscape painting.  


Thursday, July 19, 2012

Tea Berry

This is a commission for a private collector.    Painted under low lighting in my studio...  Now, we'll wait until it's dry and send it off.

I'll be working on a rather large floral during the next few days (at least large for me. :) ) ... I hope to post it by  early next week.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Water to Wine

One of my granddaughters friends has a farm and recently invited us to come over and see his wonderful garden.  In the back there were some grapes growing on a vine and he picked a bunch for me to bring home so I could use them in a painting.  The leaf had been ripped and some of the edges had turned brown - more character as a subject.   The pottery is  a piece I picked up a while back.  It seemed the perfect choice for  the grapes to "pose" against.   The base is the antique oak library file cabinet I picked up in Round Top this year - proving to be one of my favorite wood bases to "pose" my subjects on.



    Water to Wine is painted on a 9x12 oil primed linen covered baltic birch 
     panel and I plan to float frame it to add still another touch of drama.  

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Plein Air - North Carolina

Just returned from a four day Plein Air  outing in North Carolina with several artist friends (Garry Kravit and Althea Heaton).  It was an amazing experience to see the plush greenery, waterfalls, lakes, mountain streams and mountain scenes.  Every where we turned another painting opportunity - very hard to narrow down what to capture on canvas.  I completed several studies and am sharing a couple of them here.  Both are painted on  a linen covered baltic birch panel -  8x10.    I plan to turn these two studies into larger pieces this summer along with a few other scenes of the area.

One of the studies shown here is a woodlands scene and the other is of an iron bridge.  We set up on a wood bridge to capture the woodlands scene and on the rocks at creekside to view the bridge, stream and incredible rock formations.  Each of us gravitated to a different scene and all of them captured the moment.  (I LOVE my EASyL lite Plein air prochade  and easel I purchased at Artworkessentials !  It made the adventure  so enjoyable!)

Thanks to my friend Garry Kravit and his wife Karen who made this event possible and to both Garry and Althea who made the experience unforgettable!  Check out Garry's blog site for additional pics.



The Woodlands Scene


The Iron Bridge

Monday, June 11, 2012

Breakfast Memories

Another enamel cup... this time a white one.  i really liked the cracked egg shells that were laying next to the blue cup - very dramatic.  I decided to do a similar set of for this one.  I think I'm ready for brown eggs now ... :)


5x5
Oil on Panel
Custom Framed - Float Style
Contact the artist for purchasing information