For over a year now, I have been getting together with 3 other artist friends and painting flowers - mostly roses - that grow in the garden of one of the friends where we meet.
It's often an exercise in frustration, but the challenge of painting them has been a great practice. Color mixing, tonal contrasts, composition, paint surface, structure, etc. are all part of the problem solving process. Most of these are small 6”x8”s or a square 6”x6”.
Aside from the work I have in the Waterhouse Gallery, I've been showing in several other venues:
Santa Paula Art Museum's "Work from Home" show - a juried exhibition of work done by artists during Covid lockdown.
I began experimenting with oil paint on Yupo paper and painting the blooming plants in my yard. This is currently on view.
The past many months seem to have flown by. After a year and a half of Covid restrictions we have started to emerge out into the world again (carefully and masked). After going through the trauma of losing our beloved cabin, we were able to get ourselves another cabin and started to settle in there. A lot of work but worth it. It has been very healing.
I started doing an online course with Australian artist Colley Whisson. It’s a year long course and even though it’s all online, he’s done a great job of connecting with each student. I’ve also gained knowledge and direction with his wonderful critiques. The beauty of this is that he doesn’t know me or my work personally so he can look at my work with a completely objective eye.
I also did a weekend online workshop with Claudia Rilling - a fantastic painter whose work is more abstract than mine and that I had much to learn from.
In the meantime I have been consistently going out and painting every week - plein air - which has also kept my sanity and my work intact. Also painting every week in a garden with 3 friends: flowers! Mostly roses. Such good practice.
Also been in a few online shows and sold work through my Instagram account (#nwarner13).
Now to catch up with work from the last many months:
The Santa Barbara Mission invited a group of local artists to paint the Mission from various aspects and to display them for the summer in the 'Grand Sala'. This was part of a fundraiser for the Mission which suffered a decline in revenue due to covid restrictions and less tourists visiting this beautiful place.
