Still looking for red buds

Eastern Redbud, 6x6" oil on panel

In conversations about spring blooms in North Carolina, my brother frequently mentioned Redbuds. I never knew what he was talking about because I wasn’t seeing trees with red buds. I have since learned that the Eastern Redbud is the tree we see in the Carolinas in early spring that has a brilliant magenta bud and flower. It grows in the wild, but it is also used as a planting in many commercial and private landscapes. Here I have depicted one on a commercial property. Truthfully, I think these trees are most beautiful along the highway in early spring when their intensely magenta buds contrast so radiantly against the still grey backdrop of winter.

This was my third painting on a paint-out in Raleigh on Tuesday. I’ll be  posting many new landscapes I’ve done en plein air in Hot Off the Easel, my other blog. For a while at least, I’m reserving On the Plein Air Trail for my tree paintings.

Spring smorgasbord

Yoshino Cherry, 6x6" oil on panel

Like yesterday’s Weeping Cherry, I painted Yoshino Cherry from the comfort of my car on a gusty day in Winston-Salem. The blossoms of both trees are predominantly white with a touch of pink. Here in North Carolina it’s almost impossible to keep up with the trees that are coming into bloom right now. I may have missed an entire peach orchard in bloom just twenty miles down the road. A non-artist needs to know that being stimulated such as a plein air painter is by surrounding visual beauty is comparable to feeling really hungry, then being offered a smorgasbord. You want it all, you don’t want to pass up the opportunity to capture it all. We’re visual pigs is what we are.

Grieving Japan

Weeping Cherry, windblown, 6x6" oil on panel

When I first tried to identify a Weeping Cherry, I assumed it was a willow. It wasn’t in bloom, and it looked very much to me like a willow. What a marvelous tree, what delicate branches and flowers! On Monday, a windy day in Winston-Salem, NC, I painted this one in the comfort of my car. The name of the tree speaks to the catastrophic events that have so devastated Japan.
 

I have plans to donate proceeds from the sale of this painting to the Japanese Red Cross Society. Bids will open at $100.

A close calamity

Tulip tree, 6x6" oil on panel

Right down the street from Friday’s fabulous paint-out was a lovely tulip tree. We didn't have this tree in Minnesota. Long before the tree has leaves, it bears a large flower that closely resembles a purplish pink tulip. I remember my first experience painting a tree like this. The tree was large enough that I could sit under it as I painted. The petals fell down all around me as I painted, some of them into my palette.

I was well into the painting on Friday when I was approached by a worker on the street.“We’re going to be coming through, so I hope it won’t disturb you,” he reported.

When I looked down the street and saw what was headed my way, all I could say was, “Oh, stop it.” The bearer of bad news gave me a strange look.

When you check out the photo below, you’ll see why my painting and all my gear had to take temporary shelter in my vehicle. Wet oil paint acts like a magnet to even the smallest amount of dust.

Leaf Busters

Lakeside paint-out

Willow, 6x6" oil on panel

Wow! My very first blog entry from my new laptop! I'm lovin’ it. If my x-techie-husband could only see me now!

Got to a Paint NC* paint-out this a.m. at about 7:30. This is why you didn’t hear from me earlier. The temp was 83º when I packed up to leave at 4:30. it was the kind of day of which plein air dreams are made.

Seems like weeping willows grow in most areas of the U.S. I'll have to Google them. The deeper blue behind the willow is the picturesque lake on which the host of today’s paint-out lives. If I were thirteen years old and saw the painters in such a setting and the epicurean lunch that was spread out for us, I‘d be thinking without a doubt the life of an artist is an easy one. Wrong!

*Paint NC is a group of North Carolina artists, mostly in the Triangle (Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill), who spring through fall each year, get together twice a week to go on paint-outs at various designated locations. If you’re inclined, read more about us at Paint NC.

Lucky stars in North Carolina

Star Magnolias, 6x8" oil on panel

 I may have captured the shape of the tree better had there been only one tree. But this is a MamaBear/BabyBear relationship between two trees, and honestly, I didn’t see Baby Bear there until after I’d chosen the format and begun painting.

Star Magnolias are another tree species native to Japan. I planted one on the north side of my house in Minneapolis and often wonder if it survived. It would make me too sad to visit my old house there. The Star Magnolias I’ve seen in bloom in Minnesota appear different than the ones here in North Carolina. In the North Country the blooms look like those flowers we made with tissue as kids. Or like wadded up toilet paper thrown on a tree. Maybe it’s the snow that gets to them up there. No offense intended, Minnesota.

Not illustration

Remnants of autumn, 8x6" oil on panel

It is not my intention to create an oil painting walking guide of trees indigenous to North Carolina. It is my intention to document in oil those trees that talk to me. For years I have passed trees and said to myself, now there’s your quintessential Live Oak, or there is the perfect representation of a Magnolia tree. These are the trees I want to paint. In some cases, I want to paint visual definitions of various tree species. Botanical artists do a good job of this. I want though to do this in my own style and hopefully, to bring more life to the work than I see in most botanical illustration. I want these to be tree paintings, not tree illustrations.