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

This week is Water! We'll be working on three simple treatments of water, and focusing on how to use wet-into-wet, wet-into-damp, and wet-on-dry for best effect. You can see the lesson notes with all of the illustrations if you click here and I hope to have a video from this lesson posted on youtube later this week. Watercolor landscape is a delightful exercise in letting go and accepting a project which will get away from you and take its own delightful direction. It's funny, after working in watercolor for years, you seem to be more objective and bemused about unexpected things that happen on your paper than you might have been earlier in the process. If you're in the North Atlanta area and are interested in my classes with the Parks and Rec Department of Forsyth County, give them a call at 770 781-2215 or visit my website at www.susankennedy.com . There will be two new Watercolor Sessions starting in late September and October!

I'm doing a few little paintings today, finishing up a few...thought I'd make a little video while I worked on the second layer of watercolor in this little oleander painting. I love love love the way that watercolor can be crystal clear, transparently glazed one color on top of another; it almost looks like stained glass. If you're nuts about watercolor like me, you might enjoy my youtube videos, here's the link to this oleander painting and if you go to this youtube channel you'll see all of my videos organized in one place. Have a wonderful arty day! Susan

You guys, this is my first online show in a while! Whew, it's a mess, too, I just kind of splashed the things up on my website, haven't even really described them a lot. But, if you click on the small photos, I tried to make their listings have a lot of photos and a little description of what's behind the paintings. Lots of fall themes, that's why I named the collection "Sweet Autumn." And...I named it so because fall is my favorite season of all. I hope you enjoy looking at my latest! They are truly works of love and freedom, more so than in the past. I hope the past few years of thinking and stewing, yelling and crying have been for a reason; I know that God's love has been what has kept my head from flying apart, and you can see some of the frustration and anger of the last few years in some of the works. Not many, but some. Mostly the paintings are a reach back to what I love about landscape: beautiful light, softness and depth, a sense of mystery that...

Click here to see this little miniature of mine on etsy! Sometimes I can't help painting miniatures! Why in the heck would I feel guilty about it? I don't get that. I feel that it's not respectable, or it's nit picky, which is not the kind of artist I want to be. I want to paint large, brash, luscious paintings, which are expressive and colorful! But sometimes it's really therapeutic to get back to my roots and pick up a watercolor brush that has, oh, three hairs, put on my reading glasses (cheater, I know!) and paint tiny. It seems to enhance the sense of a different time, a memory, because it's able to be held in your hand and looked at closely. And this painting is a memory, it's a rough approximation of the banks of the Amicalola River here in North Georgia, with a trout fisherman/fisherwoman that I imagined and put in there. Heck, don't even know if there are trout in the Amicalola. But I liked the figure, it looks shadowy and evocative. Saw "C...

This new floral is on etsy right now, I veered closer to realism when we were working on some floral-inspired abstracts in class. My hydrangea bush is finally blooming a little more each year, and I do feel that I should be graced with lots and lots of the intoxicating blooms, because I LOVE TO PAINT THEM!!! By the way, my next class in abstract oil starts this Saturday at Sharon Springs Park (you can see the details at the bottom of this class list document )or you can just call Forsyth County Parks and Rec at 770-781-2215 to sign up! We'll be having sessions on composition, technique, working with a painting knife, all kinds of interesting and inspiring work with oils or alkyds. Come join us!