Susan Kennedy Art

The other night I was cleaning off my palette and trying to use up great gobs of red paint. I started painting red flowers and went nuts...this little imaginary still life ended up being the most realistic. Red's my favorite color, if an artist can have a favorite. It always pulls one in and says "you're alive!" Sometimes landscapes are what I do for months on end, and the subtle colors and greens can seduce me, making me interested in the tiniest shifts of color and light. I forget about the slap in the face that large blocks of red can give a person. So happy to get a slap again! This still life is something that just came out of my head, the floppy roses were what I wanted to get right, not in detail, but in gesture. The black wasn't really intended, I think I was trying to make the mug (or whatever it was) dark blue, but the black insisted on staying. It actually started to look like a mug, and I put a reflective surface underneath to stabilize all of the shap...

Another Miniature, very similar to the one I posted about recently...also mostly from my imagination. So therapeutic to get sucked into detail, almost like meditation 1970's style. Not that I did that, nor all the other things that went along with it, ha!! Or if I did, I'd probably not blog about it! There's something so attractive about water, I suppose I'm a typical artist to paint such a scene; but then again, a snapshot in time of a beautiful place is a true pointer to those things which make us human and creaturely. All of these things are truly passing away, but as a wise friend pointed out to me once: if there were no possibility of loss, there would be no possibility of love. That truth holds a lot of comfort for me. So enjoying the beauty of nature, even if it is passing; enjoying the roses, even though they are cut and will wilt...is the ultimate act of worship to me. Apologies for the mutterings, and hope you enjoy looking at these little pictures. SK