Two Pears in the Sunlight is the last of my pear painting touch ups. I loved the bright yellows of the pears and the foreground texture. There is a simple looseness in this early painting that I wanted to keep so I just added the purple stripe and a bit more detail to the background wall.
It’s a bright painting for an early overcast Friday morning. Hope everyone enjoys the weekend ahead!
Two Pears is another painting that I started years ago. I had always loved the composition but thought it was a bit dull. I added the colorful wallpaper in the back and brightened up the pears which I think helped.
When I look at this painting I think of my instructor who said any time you have two of something they are in a relationship on the page. It’s kind of fun to think about what the relationship is between these two pears with one in the bowl and the other not.
I’m trying to give myself a media break since it’s so crazy out there. It takes discipline and will give me more time to starting to work on a new painting.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted. My daughter was home from college for a month and then left the second week of June for Japan. She has been traveling throughout Japan and is now settling in Tokyo to start teaching. It’s sounds like she is have an amazing experience. Perhaps because she only has one more year of college I’ve gotten the urge to start to pare down. I’ve combed through and sold of a lot of items that belonged to my parent’s estate and also cleaned out years of our stuff that cluttered up the garage and the rest of the home. There is still more to do but it is off to a good start.
I’ve also been going through all my original paintings and making high resolution scans that will enable me to sell on online art sites. I came across a couple of pear paintings started years ago that didn’t quite work. I decided that reworking them would be a good project for me to get back to painting.
Pear and Lemon is a new completed painting of the first one. I added the lemon to the lone pear and changed the tablecloth and feel it looks better than it did and makes a nice addition to my pear series. Once all my paintings are scanned, I plan to start selling the originals also. One thing I’ve learned the past few months is that it’s good to let go of things to keep the energy flowing. Hope everyone is enjoying their summer!
One of my goals for the new year was to begin a daily practice of making art. I’ve started sketching more and I try to have a painting on my easel most of the time. Here is a still life I recently completed, Lemons.
When I first started painting years ago, I painted several pears in this blue bowl. It’s helpful to start a painting from a real scene, you can focus on what you see, how the light effects the colors of the objects. I felt it would be a good exercise to do some still lifes where I could actually see what I am painting.
I chose lemons this time around as lemons are one of my favorite fruits. I use them daily to make marinaded salads and add them to tea. Their bight cheerful yellow color seems to match this time of year when everything is waking up.
It was a fun challenge and I am fairly pleased. In keeping with my goal, I’ve stared sketching a scene for a new painting, another still life.
I’ve been thinking about my pear paintings lately. They take me back to a point in time when I realized that I wanted to paint. Here is that memory. I was meeting a friend for coffee at a cafe, she and I both had our three year old girls in preschool a few days a week. It was a challenging time for me as my dad was in hospice care. Up until that time, no one close to me had died. I had never experienced the grief of losing a loved one before. My friend had lost her first husband and she was very understanding and helpful. I noticed there were framed pear still life watercolors on the walls around us. I had been making papier mache bowls which were very laborious and not selling as well in Atlanta as they had in San Francisco. I thought to myself, I could paint pears and it was at that moment in time that I decided to become a painter. Eventually my daughter went over to middle school and free time opened up. With no more Girl Scout leader or PTA obligations, I began painting every day.
Some of my first paintings were of pears which are pictured above. I love painting pears with their lovely feminine forms and beautiful warm colors. I think beginning painters paint pears because of their easier simple forms and the universal theme of pear still lifes through art history with so many well known pear paintings. Matisse’s pears come to mind. With some of my pear paintings I feel I had beginners luck, perhaps my happiness at more time to pursue my passion showed through.
Pears available here.
Heni's Happy Paintings 