Commissions completed.

Honeyeater is a recent commission for a lovely client in Cairns. She has a beautiful new home in the tropics and wanted a statement piece that would also echo the outside lushness. The varied honey eater is a bird common in the Cairns region.
 The choice of foliage and flowers was the client's choice, and a very effective one at that.
120 x 90 cm on stretched canvas panel



Bauhinias has gone to the same client, and again she gave me a brief regarding colours and subject matter. The house is very light and airy but each painting had to have the drama of a black background in order to connect the works with the modern furniture.  I really enjoyed painting both these pieces, and the client was a delight to work with.
120 x 90 on a stretched canvas panel.

Studio Snapshots

I have spent the last couple of days sorting through all my debris in my studio. It gets to a point where I can no longer work properly due to all the discordant images passing before me...time for a clean up and clear out!
So now my space is looking pretty spartan and I thought I would give you a glimpse into my little workarea before it goes too far awry again.
It is a room that we had built under our house a few years ago..nothing too flash but it's mine!!

This is the door I use to enter as it is at the base of our back stairs.
The old wooden  mat is a kerbside find.

Please come in!

I painted all the surfaces white to attract as much light as possible since it's a "downstairs" area. The paintings on the floor are commission pieces ready to be sent to their new home..laying flat as had to extend the motif down all sides.

My collection of vintage furniture ready for restoration.

An old pine chair without a base and a ladies sewing rocking chair, and a 1930's table

Work surface..yay!!



A side table from the 1940's.... painted white and in the process of decorating the top with an oil painting of doves.
 

Corner next to the entrance with sundry works. This is my sitting chair when I have to think about what I am working on. I have a bid going on an old "comfy" chair on ebay so I hope I win it.

Through the window into my back yard...an beyond to the neighbour's shed.

My view whilst I paint...working on a bird painting ...will post when finished.

Same space a few years ago when I was finishing up an MCA..



Thankyou for dropping by and hope you enjoyed my little tour:) 

The Ginger Ninja

My son's girlfriend has a new cat this year.... Ginger Ninja..love that name!
For C's birthday in August, I did a small portrait of her young cat and last week I received this photo of the Ginger Ninja beside his portrait. He has grown somewhat since his painting, which is actually a collage of an oil painting cut out and stuck down on printed text. I then realized that I had forgotten his whiskers, so glued down some white cotton which added more texture to the piece.
Great fun to do.

 

A Flower Garden

John Ruskin once wrote that "..the most beautiful things in the world are the mose useless". Had he never looked properly at a flower and the magnificence of their purpose..attraction, pollination, fertilization and continuation. How wrong he was!
Since I have been painting flowers so often lately I have now continued that theme in the garden. Garden..flowers...obvious yes, but up until about eighteen months ago, our backyard was dominated by three huge gum trees which obliterrated sunshine at ground level and also dropped an oily substance over the ground when their leaves fell. They eventually became a menace in storms, worried neighbours, and even though they were trimmed regularly, I had to make the painful decision to have them cut down as they were dying. To my subsequent surprise, I am now able to grow small things that would never have survived beforehand...I can now grow flowers. Beautiful!
I went into the garden early this morning and took these photos.




These just pop up by themselves but bloom in hot corners against rocks and in hard dirt.



Morning Glory...so aptly named and I have noticed often included in Dutch baroque still lifes.



This morning glory vine is rambling over a rusted old shopping trolley
 that my husband pulled out of our local creek. It now hides the compost bin.



A sculpture and a ceramic piece of mine.



Yellow = happy



Grevillea to attract the birds.



Another Australian native that grows to about 2 metres and has these wonderful little flowers.



Daisies...have been a great display for a couple of months now...indoors and out.



A wild Irs



Lilly pilly



Love the shadows in this lilly and the veins in the leaves.

 

"Steal like an Artist"

"Steal like an Artist"... a cute little book full of quirky bits of inspirational wisdom. Author: Austin Kleon.
Bought it from the School of Life bookshop in Melbourne last week,  and ironically the sales girl there said that she used to work in an art bookstore, and the most stolen book in that shop was this one:) Taking the title too literally?

 

Vanitas Designs on Etsy

Vanitas Designs is my new Etsy shop and I finally uploaded items to sell today...a series of cushion covers made from collected vintage tapestries.
Here is a link to the shop and another one here for Vanitas Designs facebook which I also only opened today:)Would so appreciate a like on facebook...I need 25 likes to set the website address properly (made a bit of a booboo by omitting that bit in the set up).
I love making things as I find it much more relaxing sometimes than the cerebral challenge of bringing a large painting together....most of my paintings invariably go through  a "lost" phase. It's great to step away and take up another activity..hence Vanitas Designs which is the result of my time-outs!

Had lots of fun playing with the different tapestries and sorting out which one to go with which backing material; sorting out the vintage buttons to secure in the back...and of course the pompoms. I had no idea really how to make them but thank goodness for Utube..can learn anything there. I took the very simple method of just twirling the wool around my four fingers, tying the wool in the middle once pulled from the hand, and then cutting the loops at either end....a slight haircut of the pompoms, and voila! They are fun!
These cushion covers are around 18 x 18 inches or 45 x 45cm and sell for $25AUD plus postage.
The next upload for Vanitas Designs on etsy will be a series of miniature round picture frames  containing thumbnails of my vanitas florals and bugs..will let you know when they're finished.

 

Website updated

Have been quite busy with one thing and another lately but have finally updated my website.
You can have a look here if you like:)   www.karencipressi.com

Be back shortly!