Barn For My Dad

Last summer, while visiting my Dad in Minnesota,  we drove around back country roads looking for barns to photograph.  We got list a few times and found ourselves at this goat farm.  The owners gave us permission to walk around and take our photos.  Dad chatted with the family while I snapped away.  The barns were huge and old and beautiful.  It was like traveling back in time.  In the quiet, I stood to gaze at them in wonder.  How many generations of people lived,and worked here? The barn knew and kept it's secret.

Girl In Red Dress on La Rambla

I went to Spain once.  I loved the culture, the people and the paella! I came back with a paella pan, which is awesome by the way, and a lot of photos. My husband and I soaked in a lot of culture, art, architecture and history while we were  there, but my favorite days were when we walked down La Rambla.  The leaves on the trees danced with the pale blue sky and their shadows on the patterned walk way below and washed everything in shady, sparkling, dappled light.  My favorite spot for people watching and my inspiration for the oil painting posted here; Girl In Red Dress on La Rambla

Girl In Red Dress on La Rambla by Cheryl Harris White

Oil on canvas

24" X 36"
$300.00

Trees Of The Field

This is a new piece done with India ink. I loved how the trees look like they are singing joyfully. They are all lined up, as if they are playing follow the leader and dancing. As I was working on this, a song I haven't sung since I was a teen at First United Methodist Church of Carrollton kept running through my memory.  It was called TREES OF THE FIELD and here is just 1 verse of the Lyrics..

You shall go out with joy

And be let forth with peace,

And the mountains and the hills

Will break forth before you

There'll be shouts of joy

And all the trees of the fields

Will clap, will clap their hands

Trees Of The Field
by Cheryl Harris White
India Ink on Canvas Paper, Framed
12" x 48"
$250.00

Two Tall Mosaic Birch Paintings Ready for Chalk This Way

 I finished these two Oil paintings just in time for the Chalk This Way Art Festival coming up this weekend.  I used a lot of thick oil paint applied with a palate knife in a mosaic pattern.  They are very large; each one about 8 square feet and they look amazing on my red entry way wall.   Almost too amazing to part with.   Come see me in the tent at Chalk This Way in Lewisville to see these up close in person. The festival hours are from 9AM to 6PM. Location is around MCL Grand and Lewisville City Hall, at Church and Charles Streets, Lewisville, TX 75057.

Tall Mosaic Birch I                  Tall Mosaic Birch II

Oil on Canvas                           Oil on Canvas

24" x 48"  $400.00                                 24" x 48" $400.00

New York City Collage

This one was for my daughter Courtney.  She has been to New York several times and LOVES Broadway.  Some of the scraps from theater flyers and maps from her trips were used in this collage as well as magazine articles and paper scraps.  Combining them with the paint really captures the excitement of the city.  More like this to come. Enjoy!

New York City
by Cheryl Harris White
Acrylic Collage on Canvas
24" x 36"

Four Square Birch Oil Paintings

These 4 oil paintings remind me of confetti.  The trees seem happy to me, like they are having a party in the woods to celebrate the coming of spring.

Oil on canvas board
Framed in Black
8"x8" each
$40.00 each

Top Left  is Square Birch I,
Top Right is Square Birch II,
Bottom Left is Square Birch III,
Bottom Right is Square Birch IV,

First Place Asel Award Winner

I was honored to win recognition for one of my Posey paintings this month at the Visual Art League of Lewisville Monthly Meeting.   It is a group of such talented and varied artists whom I have had the privilege of learning and working with.  Many of them have realized amazing artistic achievements and I just LOVE the inspiration that comes from coversations I have had with each of them.  

This piece was done with acrylic and collage.  I actually tore up a hymn book for some of the flowers and glued them to the surface with mixed media adhesive.  I really liked how the old hymnal pages soaked up the paint.  

This was a mixed media technique I actually learned from Misty Oliver's Art Journaling workshop and I just tried applying it on a canvas board on a whim.  It turned out beautifully.

This painting along with 10 others are currently on display in Spontaneous II - A Three Person show in the North wing of the MCL Grand.  Free to the public and open Tuesday through Saturdays, 1-5PM from now through May 24th.  

Posies in a Pot I
First Place Asel Award Winner
by Cheryl Harris White
Acrylic Collage
11" x 13"
$75.00

Posies in a Pot II
by Cheryl Harris White
Acrylic Collage
11" x 13"
$75.00

Java Mama, Cup of Joe

Here is another page I finished at the art journaling workshop at Misty Oliver Foster's Art Studio in Frisco last weekend.  I loved this old fashioned pair of ladies sipping coffee from their dainty china cups and silver tea service.  They seem so far removed from our current coffee shop culture; where we get to decide between Venti, Grand or Tall sizes of Mocha's, Frappes, Frappuccinos, Macchiato's, Latte's, Iced Coffee's and more.  Not to mention the choices of cream, soy, whip and other flavors.  The image of these two gals chatting over plain black coffee reminds me of a simpler time.  They are the focus of the page and to make them stand out, I painted over their images in grey tones, and used black and white pen to outline them. This contrast from the green page with red accents is what makes these two Java Mama's stand out and be noticed.

Java Mama, Cup of Joe
Art Journal Page
by Cheryl Harris White
Mixed Media

Be, Live, Bloom

Last weekend I went to an art journaling workshop at Misty Oliver Foster's Art Studio in Frisco.  She is a very talented artist as well as an excellent teacher.  I highly recommend taking her workshops if you ever have an opportunity to do so and included a link to her site above.  Check her out.

Below is one example of an art journal page I completed while I was there.  I included a quote I just love from Charles Dickens as well... " Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of it's own."  I loved this because even though there were seasons of my childhood when I DID NOT believe red hair and freckles were beautiful, that all eventually changed.  As I grew, I realized that not only is it beautiful, it's what makes me shine.  That's what made me bloom.

Be, Live, Bloom
Art Journal Page
by Cheryl Harris White
Mixed Media

Art At The Speed of Life Lesson 21

Lesson 21 in Pam Carriker's book was a pop up page and turned out really cute.  I had a lot of fun adding interest to this page with different pen strokes; patterns, cross hatching, dots, lines.  white ink and black.  It added some interest to the page.  The color filling the page is actually water color crayon, one of my favorite mediums on paper.  It is inexpensive, low mess, easy to clean up and allows for layering.  The crayon is activated with water after it is applied, but also can be activated with modge podge or acrylic sealer.

Whimsical House Pop Up Journal Page
by Cheryl Harris White
Mixed Media

Red Tree With Blue Leaves By the River

Red Tree With Blue Leaves By the River
by Cheryl Harris White
Acrylic Collage on Canvas

18" x 24"

The fourth piece in my tree series is the most whimsical of them all. There are fish making up it's roots, birds at the river and hearts carved into it's trunk.  It is happily accompanied here by the perfect quote from William Shakespeare...

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.  ~William Shakespeare

Shining Green Birch Trees

Shining Green Birch
Oil on Canvas
by Cheryl Harris White
12 x 12

This was a fun little oil painting to do inspired by a few lines of poetry I came across.  I used a lot of light shades of greens and yellows which makes the forest seem to shimmer.  Happy to be playing in my oil paint again!

The trees are God's great alphabet;
With them He writes in shining green
Across the world His thoughts serene.
- Leonora Speyer

Memories

Memories
Acrylic and Collage on Canvas
by Cheryl Harris White
3 ft x 3 ft
$200.00
In our yard in Ohio, when I was a child, there was a huge weeping willow tree.  Under it, my little sister and I used to play for hours and have tea parties.  We moved to Texas, when I was 8 years old and I have never returned,  but I remember it like it was yesterday,  and those moments were the inspiration behind this piece.  

Red Tree with Green Leaves

Red Tree with Green Leaves
by Cheryl Harris White
Acrylic Collage

18" x 24"
$75.00

 I liked the way this cool misty background turned out on this one.  I also like the idea of creating these trees with what ever color bark I choose instead of the same grayish tan bark we see on real trees everyday.  The result was in this piece, the roots ant the bark is what my eye most enjoys looking at.  These colors remind me of summer.

Intended to Grow

This is one of a series of four trees I have been finishing up.  The thing I liked most about doing these pieces, was how they grew as I worked.  Each layer became a platform for the next...until it was full and beautiful.  I just love things that grow.  There is one tree at the corner of our house that the previous owners had topped off and it hasn't grown since.  It is quite an annoyance, just sitting there taking up space, reminding me each day of it's wasted potential.  I think people are a lot like trees.   Some of them grow and it is beautiful to watch... but others are so damaged that they just sit there doing nothing.  We, and trees, were intended to grow,  and that is how I prefer it.  

Green Tree with Blue Leaves
by Cheryl Harris White
Acrylic Collage
18" x 24"
$75.00

                                                     

My hand shake with 2013

2013 Hand Shake
by Cheryl Harris White
Acrylic on Canvas
36" x 36"
$200.00


This my handshake with 2013 saying, "Hello, my name is Cheryl. It's nice to meet you."  I'm not greeting 2013 with a list of promises or things I want to change or with the ridiculous mindset that this year will be better than the others, with fewer set backs, less losses, more successes than the years before.  We don't do that with people.  When we first meet them, do we say, "Hello, my name is Cheryl, I'm not that great right now, but soon I'm  going to reduce the amount of time I spend playing video games, be a better person, give more to charity, lower my sodium intake and get really skinny."  Not really.  When I meet a new person, I just like to listen to them, make eye contact and try to find something to like about them, which doesn't usually take very long.  2013 is the same to me.  It's just like any new acquaintance I meet... It's a new door I've never walked through... An interesting new friend I plan on getting to know.

I liked exploring that idea with each square on this painting.  Each empty square was a new beginning.  I stuck with a lot of green and yellow in the color palate but loved adding in some orange and red pops of color.  Each square turned out a little different, but together they make a very interesting visual combination.  

Dripping Autumn

Dripping Autumn
Acrylic and Acrylic Collage on Canvas
20" x 24"
by Cheryl Harris White
$75.00

I'm in love with autumn, and since today is officially the first day of fall, I'm celebrating it by posting this new painting.  I used thick, stripes of texture on the background and it reminded me of rain.  I liked placing the tree off center so we could focus on some of the other colors on the horizon and shadow on the ground more.  The tree, dropping some of it's leaves, looks to me like it is dripping with color, so that is how this painting got it's name.  

Evolution of a Landscape; Oil and palate knife

This is just a quick video I put together showing the progression of the painting below.  I LOVED doing this one.  My next painting at the studio will be a sea scape and even a bit more challenging.  Stay tuned for more progress!

Landscape with Poppies Study
Oil on Canvas with Palate Knife
by Cheryl Harris White
24" x 20"
UNAVAILABLE
completed at A Touch Of Paris Studio

Blue Vase and 1000 Gifts 901-920

Our most recent project in art class has been vases of flowers. Everyone's flowers were different, yet they were all absolutely beautiful. I had so much fun with it, that I came home and started another similar to it (below). The exercise was huge success for all, except for the poor bug who flew right into my painting and drowned himself in my thick yellow paint.  What a horrible way to go.  We all agreed it would have been a much better experience for him, if he had ended it all in one of our glasses of wine instead, but it wasn't meant to be. Maybe it was his way of telling me he just really liked my flowers.

Blue Vase of Flowers
Oil on Canvas Board
by Cheryl Harris White
9" x 12"

My list of 1000 Gifts continued...


Friday, February 24th, 2011  
901) Routine
902) Change
903) Stretching
904) Growth 
905) Milestones
906) Gladness in my heart
907) Realized hopes I didn't know I even wanted
908) Talking about flowers with a new friend
909) Four women painting vases o flowers at art class and laughing while we do it.
910) Relationships
911) Remembering my heritage
912) Helping things that grow
913) New life
914) A good neighbor showing kindness
915) Caleb selling his mugs for football
916) Pink in the sky
917) Damp shadows on the grass
918) The cool earth getting ready to bloom
919) Hearing my kids laughing
920) Shower gel

My Art Goes to Italy

A church community in 
Italy used art from my Parable Paint Series as inspiration for a fun evening of food, fellowship and creativity.
The painting they chose was the Parable of the Sower... 

from 

Matthew 

13:1-23

illustrating four kinds of soil; or ways people respond to Christ.  

These are photos from the night they got together to do their group art project.

I loved seeing the variety of ages of people working on the project together.  


Each of them painted a section of 

the original design.  

When they were finished, they were able to put them
all together ..

to

create 

the entire

image. 

 

What 


they


created


was


not



only


a


unique


piece


of 


art 


. . .







but


       also










a 

     beautiful 


                 experience!





Even though this all happened in Italy... I feel by sharing my art as the inspiration for their project,  I was also there.

 

Since I was not...
I had to miss out on their delicious food.  
Yum!   






I am so happy to share their creative spirit with all of you.  BE INSPIRED !!!