Summer Palette

No sketches or paintings to post today.  Flowers and fresh summer produce have been my palette this month.

'Fairy Queen' Mealycup Sage, 'Debonair Dusty Rose' Petunias, and 'Marguerite' Sweet Potato Vine grace the planters on my deck.  This year at the suggestion of a friend I mixed Osmocote into the soil and the plants are blooming as if they were on steroids.  Perhaps they are!  Lots of rain and lower temperatures than normal have helped as well.

About 4 months ago I decided to try a vegetarian diet.  I discovered Martha Rose Shulman's cookbook, The Very Best of Recipes for Health, and Mark Bittman's, VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00.  Both write for The New York Times and I love their articles and recipes.  These two books, together with lots of recipes from the internet, have made eating a vegetarian diet fun and delicious. 

My first meal of the summer enjoyed on the deck: a lentil and bulgar salad with tomatoes and olives.  Fresh mint and parsley from a hanging basket added zing to the salad.

You might wonder why there is a knife in the picture. It's an Oxo knife I bought for $12 at the local hardware store. Cutting and chopping with this knife is a wonder it's so sharp.  Little things like this knife, the blue and yellow napkin with lemons I bought in Provence, or the reusable mesh bags I bought to use at the grocery store instead of plastic make me happy.  What could be better-sun, flowers, a beautifully prepared salad served in the wooden bowl my father enjoyed!

Stay tuned for my next post!  I'm in the middle of a large 36 x 48" painting (for me that is large) of a southwest sky and mountain landscape.  One day I threw caution to the wind and painted with palette knife and cloth.  What freedom!

My Cylburn Art Show Reception

Here I am at left with a friend

The reception for my art show at the Cylburn Arboretum was held on May 24.  It was a wonderful party with over 60 friends there to support me-what a wonderful tribute!  Lots of nice compliments and out of 13 works for sale, 7 sold.  It's a great feeling to have people respond to my work.

Cylburn Art Show Review

Great write-up about the Cylburn art show this weekend by Kathy Hudson. Check it out!

The Watercolors of Joan Elisabeth Reid: Baltimore Fishbowl

Art Exhibit at Cylburn

April Showers

Spring blossoms are all too fleeting.  It seems they have just arrived and already this morning's rain has caused many to cascade to the ground carpeting it in white and pink.

A Fairyland of Blossoms

Baltimore is awash with blossoms.  After weeks of cold weather we suddenly experienced two days of 90 degree weather.  Bradford Pear trees planted along the streets create a drift of white that remind one of snow.  The cherry trees are at their peak and Cylburn Arboretum has a particularly lovely orchard.  Accents of golden forsythia peak from gardens and hedges.  It is a fairyland.

The Limonaia, Boboli Gardens, Florence

The Limonaia

A year ago at the end of April I returned to Florence after many years.  I spent both my junior year abroad and a graduate year in Florence, studying Italian and art history.  What a pleasure it was to spend so much time in that magical city where around every corner an architectural or sculptural treasure awaited!  I loved wandering through museums, attending concerts, walking through the streets, watching people in the piazzas, shopping in the markets, and learning to cook wonderful Tuscan meals when not studying.

But I also found special places to retreat from the city.  The cloistered garden with its towering pine tree in San Marco was one such place.  Climbing the hill toward Settignano and looking back at Florence far below was another.  The gemlike church of San Miniato al Monte with its striated black and white marble always lured me to climb high above the city.

The Boboli Gardens is another oasis.  Located behind the Pitti Palace, the gardens provide shady paths that soothe and cool after the summer heat of Florentine streets.  The paths lead down to the wonderful Piazzale dell'Isolotto where immense terracotta pots filled with lemon trees surround a pool of water at whose center rises the fountain Oceanus.

The first year I was in Florence I bought a small watercolor set and tried to paint the fountain, but was lacking in skill and confidence.  I vowed I would come back when I could paint it.  Last year I had the opportunity and it was wonderful to sit there and see this magical place come alive on the pages of my sketchbook.  In my mind were the watercolors John Singer Sargent painted of the sculptures and potted lemon trees in the Boboli Gardens.  He was a master of light and painted with bravura.

After painting, as I walked up the hill on the path that would lead me back to the city, I saw that the doors of the limonaia--the lemon tree greenhouse--were open.  I slipped into the cool interior. Sunlight flooded the floor from the windows.  Rows of lemon trees in their terracotta pots receded into the distance where a window hinted at the world beyond.  The painting above is my homage to Florence, to the oasis gardens that I loved so much, to Sargent, to sunlight.