Susan Kennedy Art

Tuesday is Watercolor Class and Wednesday is Oil Landscape! The New Year is bringing new art possibilities, and I'm revamping my lesson plans to offer more project ideas for students. You can see the photo of some of the paintings we'll be doing together in Oil class (the still life with the wine bottle is only partially done); if you don't care for the Landscape element of the day (Trees, skies, mountains, water scenes), I'll have another option for you to try, normally a simple still life. You can see the soft focus red flower still life in the center of the photo which is an example of what you can do in class! I'll post more about the January Watercolor class also, the focus will be landscape and still life elements too! If you're interested in these six week sessions in Fowler Park and Sharon Springs Park in Forsyth County, Georgia, you can call to reserve your spot at 770 781-2215 . Feel free to email me at kennedyartstudio @bellsouth.net if you have any q...

This abstract is one I did a couple of months ago...I called it "Sunset at the Fish Cannery" because as I painted, it began to look like a city or a factory, and some of the glowing colors looked like sunset. It's always poignant how a beautiful sky can redeem even the most mundane and polluted landscape. You can see it in the work of some of the impressionists and their city scenes. Interesting to me, and a hopeful commentary on life and beauty. I hope God can pour his beautiful light on the dirtiness of my life! The painting also became a bit of a cartoon, I enjoyed it as it looked more and more urban, and I imagined fish workers walking out of the factory in the evening. The workers being fish, that is, not humans, with lunch pails in their hands, I mean fins. Goofy. I hope you enjoy!

This is one I just finished up; I had been sitting outside on our property here in North Georgia, getting used to painting outdoors again in preparation for an upcoming Plein Air class I'm teaching. I actually avoided falling over in my wobbly camp stool, and thoroughly loved the sights, smells and sounds of painting outdoors this fall. What a delight for the senses. I hope the painting captured just some of the air, the light, the leaves rustling in the breeze. You can see the painting on my etsy store, if you're interested! Just click the title of the post above. Making time for painting is like centering a pot on a wheel: even though the annoyance of getting out your things is there, the payoff is so wonderful: a new look at life, a new song in your head, new colors swirling around you. Art becomes more important to me as I get older, you might know what I mean. May you have a wonderful day, and have time to smell the fall!

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