Welcome to My Red Cape. Long ago in another time my husband Jack and I lived in a little old red house. It was the stuff of dreams to us for the few years that we were there. I live there still a number of hours every day in imagination, with old dolls and paintings and fabrics and feather trees. I draw inspiration and happiness from the memories of that space in time and share some of it here with friends who remember how to step with Alice through the looking glass and take delight in whimsies and antiquities. ~Edyth O’Neill

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Painting and Playing with Still Life

I remember many times in the past  calling my collector friends and asking "What are you doing?"  Sometimes the answer would be "Playing" which we both understood  meant arranging and rearranging interesting old items to make pleasing vignettes of our antiques.   Now that play has circled back again in my life in a different guise: arranging interesting things to paint and make a nice composition. 
Sometimes I am rolling apples or onions around on a kitchen table to catch the light from the window just so.

Lately I have borrowed little ship models from friends.  Here is a sweet example:

What adorable little lures! I have a small painting laid out with these swimming by the little schooner.

Finished are two paintings of another ship model.

Glare on both of these photos makes the very dark backgrounds look much lighter. The one above is on indigo while the one below is a rich chocolate.

The beautiful frames are from Andy Ybarra.

A buy on eBay brought me this adorable ship in a bottle, not old, an advertising piece for a rum company in the 1990's. This is the schooner Bluenose out of Nova Scotia.  A well known older hooked rug pattern of the Bluenose is one of my all time favorites.


This popular pattern was made in a number of sizes,  Sandy has a large lovely old one hooked to a glory!
Nautical hooked rugs are among my favorite things. 

The bonnets from friend Jean's collection shown below date mid 19th century. A painting of these may be titled "Conversation'. 

You can see I am having a good time these days.    I have lately been offered very nice representation for my paintings on Main Street in Fredericksburg, and am honored.    It is a town full of art and people who appreciate it. At present I am surely painting for enjoyment, but on the other hand these paintings are stacking up down the hall on the floor and some of them will have to go somewhere!     Not sure just how to move on this yet. My little ones are easy to sell and send and are not stacking up.  When I have more of them I can offer them on this site.  Some of the larger ones will have to go in a gallery soon.  Shipping them would be a bear.    edyth


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