Pleasant Hill
Pleasant Hill, California is where the East Bay Artists Guild has two storefront exhibits and where we had an outdoor event called Art on the Plaza every Sunday 11 AM to 2 PM from Mother’s Day 2007 through Labor Day. In preparation for my first participation, I took lots of photos of the shops around the Plaza so I could get some paintings started. I have two nearing completion: Daphne’s and Peet’s. On my first day, however, I began with an abstract splash of two colors. One passerby, a sweet older lady, asked if I was painting a vase. I had been observing a landscape forming, but when she pointed out the vase, I decided to go with it, the day being Mother’s Day suggested flowers anyway. This is the product of that day:
Note to self: I haven’t figured out why my posts arrange themselves in reverse order. I also don’t know why sometimes I’m given the option to post as a thumbnail and sometimes not.
This is an early stage of a painting on canvas board. It shows Peet’s Coffee on Crescent Drive.
This is an early stage of a painting where I’m starting to block in the shapes.
This is a later stage of the blocked in painting. Now I’ve added a glaze over the shadows, but I was impatient and went too dark. I have since begun this same composition on a new canvas, beginning in black and white. I plan to gradually and faintly build up the glazes.
In October 2007 the Guild dedicated a set of display panels to paintings created during our Art on the Plaza summer. Not all paintings are represented here, but five artists of the many who participated hung their works at 55 Crescent Drive. Here are two photos where I tried to show this set of panels. Actually, I can’t seem to insert them here. They appear at the top of this page.
