Hello,Spring! 2011

We have been teased. We have had tastes of it.

Is it truly now on the way?

Farm Eggs 16"x16" oil on board Lin Anne Misja Fiore


I love April. Don't you? Sweet soft fresh soil,wafts of which drift through newly opened windows. Tiny buds on limbs struggling to embrace the warming air,the strengthening sunshine. These are the things that bring an artist to renewed life. I am so excited to paint this spring. All around me are swelling hills, greening with new grass, damp-wooded barns warming in new sunlight, vineyards blossoming into life. I have managed to do at least one flowering tree a year for several years now. I try to catch the delicacy of spring flowers before they are mysteriously gone. The skies,now "blued up", as my son describes it, call to me to paint the fluffs of pinkened white dotting them as the day sky turns to late afternoon.

Come along on my spring painting journey.

Soon the Fairy Roses will bloom (as in above painting).

The days are lengthening. The oil paints are saying, "Squeeze us right now"!!! Ha! New paint on my palette to match the new brightening colors around me. Ok.

Above painting notes: I love fairy roses. The bushes bloom and bloom with sprays of small roses. I love quilts and antique pots and bowls. This one,a turquoise coffee pot is one of my favorites. I love the glow of color it casts on the soft patina of an aged quilt. It was fun to capture the bumpy puffiness of the quilt fabric as it falls off the table. I like how the eggs are not quite stable. I almost changed this and then decided not to. Are they comfortable there on their home of soft cotton or are they ready to tumble as a Cezanne piece of fruit might. For me, this is the one tension in an otherwise very peaceful still life. Serenity and a bit of tension are both essential. I call it "enegized tranquility".

New Artistic Challenge

As you know, this is a painting/teaching blog. Students come and read and learn, fellow artists come to get inspiration (hopefully) from my work, and patrons come to buy. We all mingle together.

I've been hired by Grumbacher to do a series of painting Workshops in the Michaels Stores. They are promoting their line of fine Grumbacher paints-in acrylic. I have worked in oils, as you know, for many years. I decided, since the mediums are so different and yet much of the same "look" of a deep, rich oil painting can be accomplished with acrylics, I needed to share it with my blog-followers. This is going to be quite the ride. Hold onto your painter's cap.

I am challenging myself to reproduce all of my earlier oils in acrylics. The result: fine paintings, done in acrylic. It will be fun to compare. When an artist works from her own work, many of the problems are already solved by her in the first work. So, the second time painting the same work goes much faster. I intend to do these acrylic repros at a very fast speed. An oil usually takes at least 9 hours to complete. I have done demos of my orignals at these workshops within the appointed two hour class time. Since I talk a lot in class, I do not use the entire two hours just to paint, so that reduces the time to even less time spent on the piece.

Why is the time element even mentioned? Well, ask any artist, this is probably the most often asked question we receive when out in the public doing demos, or at out door booths for exhibitions. You all want to know, "How long did it take you to do that?"

I have an answer I give when asked this: "Oh, this painting here? Hmm, it took me 9 hours and 28 years."

Time is irrevelent, really. Technique and the mastery of painting methods is really the answer to this question. Why can I do a whole finished painting in an hour? I have worked out all the details already. I have the years of experience behind what I am doing, cutting through the struggle to to do what all artists call "Transcending the Technique". It is a glorious thing. When a ballet dancer transcends the technique, she is truly dancing for the pure art and emotion of it. The passion one feels is unhindered. Have we all "arrived" as professional painters? NO! We are all students, always. I hope I am still learning things when I am 90. I hope to make my best piece when I am that age.

Come, get a cup of tea, sit and watch, I have three to post to get this challenge started. As soon as I figure out how to use my new video camera I will add video of the various projects.

Exciting news: I hope you will find these new works every bit as lovely as the original, because the good news is-they are all going to be for sale at a slashed price. I do them fast, you save big! You receive your own original painting, much like the oil I began from, but unique in its own way.

Summer Art Camps

Ahh, Little Michelangelos Summer Art Camps are now over.

It was a good time.

Children ages 6-11 participated throughout weeks over June and July. Some of the projects we tackled:
Real paintings of St. George's Church with lessons in simple architecture, using boxes in perspective
Real paintings of images the child chose with an emphasis on color saturation in one hue
Sculpting, using air dry clay and stay soft clay, boy that was messy but fun
Drawing lessons, a real live puppy came on the scene in week 3 and the kids had a ball trying to draw him while asleep
Drawing lessons, emphasizing the difference between line drawing, mass and form.
Cartoon Lessons, how to draw a cartoon character and they made their own cartoon strip
Lots of fun crafts to rest the tension of their hard concentration
Pompom birds, decoupage, birds and butterflies theme, butterfly in origami, glittering craft store doves,painting real sailboat scenes on rocks, making tiny critters out of pebbles and googly eyes, lots of coloring pages and word searches, play doh, and marker fun, and the all-time favorite in week 3, tie dye shirts!

Come next year!
How do I sign up? please email me linannemisja@gmail.com or airnlight@yahoo.com
and I will keep you on the mailing list for next year.

Parents remarks:
"She is having so much fun!"
"He has been looking forward to this for weeks!"
"She tells me each night what she has done"
"You're a good teacher"
"She loves art and was getting so tired of not having a place to learn really good principles of art."
"Thanks for an offering like this!"

Kids remarks:
"I love this camp, are you doin' it next year??"
"I want to come to your studio, I'm tellin' my Mom"
" I like getting my hands messy!"
"This is Free Friday?? We can do whatever art project we want, really??? I want to do clay!"

Bye, kids, I will miss you, unless --oh wait, I may see you in my Art Loft for continuing lessons, let's paint!