NEST, 9098, textured bird nest with eggs © Carol Nelson Fine Art

There is something intimate about peeking into a bird's nest to see a clutch of eggs. It is a sight rarely seen, and it is reassuring, in a way, to see nature's wild creatures going on with their life's business as they have for thousands of years.
I painted this piece on Gessoboard, which is a very smooth surface. To suggest a structure of weeds, grasses and twigs surrounding the eggs, I used heavy body acrylic paints mixed with modeling paste applied with a palette knife. The knife edge gave the thin, grass-like strokes I was looking for.
This painting is sold, but, stay tuned, as I plan on doing a series of eggs in nests.

CITYSCAPE 2, 9097, abstracted city rooftops and architecture © Carol Nelson Fine Art

This is a larger version of the DSFDF photo of city roof tops. The first version I did is much smaller and is a mixed media piece - see blog entry of 10/18/2009. This one is on canvas and it simply acrylic paints and modeling compound . I've been working on this painting for about two weeks and it has undergone numerous transformations. I am finally happy with the result.

Being an abstracted version of the photo, it is all about patterns, negative space, and focal point. As you can see the complexity of the shapes increases to the right and slightly below the middle of the painting. Rotating the painting to a vertical format yields an equally interesting composition.

The colors evolved on their own. The reference photo was mostly subtle tones of blue, grey and yellow. Most of my work is not subtle in terms of palette! I love strong value contrasts so I was able to go nuts with this one.
For purchase information, please see my website.

HYDRANGEA BOUQUET, 9096, impasto still life of blue hydrangeas © Carol Nelson Fine Art

This painting is a commission piece for a collector who lives in Hawaii. With all the beautiful tropical flowers around her, she still misses the deep blues of the hydrangeas she remembers from the northeast. Her request was that the painting be predominantly of the flowers, have deep cobalt blues, and heavy impasto. SOLD

AUTUMN BEAUTY 9, 9092, sunken relief of autumn leaves

Another in my sunken relief series of leaves embedded in acrylic medium. Each one is 6x6 on MDF panel with heavy texture outlining the leaf shapes.
Please see my website for purchase information.

GLITTER GULCH 2, 9093, textured abstract with metals and metal leaf

More squares. I don't know why I find squares recurring over and over again in my compositions. Maybe their conformity is comforting on some level. I used a rug hooking grid to create the little cubes with acrylic medium. Two colors of aluminum and one of copper were used in the metallic shapes. Of course, I always prefer earth tones for most of my work, so there is a dominance of copper, bronze, and gold tone metallic paints.
For purchase information on this 11x6 cradled abstract, please see my website.

TWELVE, 9091, abstract composition using decorative mini tiles.

First, I bought the little tiles at Loews, then I created a composition to feature them. Actually, I don't know if they're tiles or stones. They have all the surface irregularity of genuine stone. I love the rugged textured look of the stone/tiles and the subtle colors are incredibly beautiful - OK, I might have enhanced the colors a tiny bit.
This piece is mounted on MDF board panel. It ended up to be quite heavy for such a small piece (14 x 4.5 inches). For purchase information, please see my website.

SOUP, 9090, alphabet letters abstract

OK, I admit this painting was just playing around. I had a vague idea about Madison Ave, media, advertising, the printed word, etc, etc. I showed it to my husband and he didn't see the connection. His title says it all. They're just random alphabet letters, so don't try to read anything into it.
For purchase information on this whimsical piece, please see my website.

AUTUMN BEAUTY 8, 9089, sunken relief of autumn leaves

This is another of my sunken relief leaf paintings. I blew it on photographing it. I varnished it before I photographed it and the shine is very distracting. I had to manually go in and digitally paint out some of the shine with my photo editing software. Because I had to turn down the brightness, the squares do not show their silver leaf shine very well. Problems, problems. What I need is a polarizing lens to eliminate the shine.
For purchase information, please see my website. SOLD

CITYSCAPE, 9085, mixed media abstract of city architecture

At my recent Metals and Mixed Media workshop, I worked on this abstract featuring several metallic and textural elements. I didn't have time to complete it at the workshop. As a matter of fact, it was still in the "is this going to work" stage by the end of the workshop.
As is often the case with abstract work, I looked at it with new eyes the next day, and did sufficient tweaking to it that I am now happy with the result.
The inspiration for this painting came from Karin Jurick's Different Strokes from Different Folks blog. The minute I saw her latest photo posting for the challenge, I KNEW I had to do it as an abstract. Of course the composition's the thing and there are so many different compositions you could make from this awesome photo.
For purchase information, please see my website.

AUTUMN BEAUTY 3, 9084, sunken relief of aspen leaves

This is similar to Autumn Beauty 1 & 2 in concept. The size of this one is 7.5 x 7.5 inches. For purchase information, please see my website or email me at carolnelsonfineart@comcast.net.

AUTUMN BEAUTY 2, 9083, sunken relief of autumn leaves

This is similar to Autumn Beauty 1 in concept. The size of this one is 4.5 x 8 inches. For purchase information, please see my website or email me at carolnelsonfineart@comcast.net.

AUTUMN BEAUTY 1, 9082, sunken relief of autumn leaves

Inspired by the leaves piling up in my yard, I tried this sunken relief of leaves embedded in various plaster-like mediums. This one was patching plaster. I pressed the leaves into a thick layer of plaster, and plastered over them, then carefully lifted out the leaves, which you can see were all on one stem. The imprint of the leaves results in a sunken relief.
For purchase information, please see my website.

RECYCLED, 9081, abstract collage with recycled materials

This painting started out with a piece of rusted scrap metal I found in a parking lot a year ago. The metal sat around in my studio until I finally decided what to do with it. I think it came off a rusted car.
The support, in this case, is a cabinet door. It is actually a nice oak door and it was unfinished, so I first started out by gessoing the panel and painting the edge black. I textured the panel with modeling compound. Then I cut pieces of silver and gold colored aluminum metal foil and copper metal and cemented them on to the surface.
The grid is some metal mesh I found in my garage. I attached the scrap metal to the panel with screws and copper wire. The silver foil was too bright, so I painted over it with quinacridone gold, a very transparent fluid acrylic by Golden. The blue is Golden's primary cyan, which is also very transparent. Using transparent colors on a reflective surface allows the shine to come through.
For purchase information, please see my website.

AUTUMN CROSSING, 9080, botanical abstract with metals and fall colors

I could have called this painting The Kitchen Sink. I used lots of stuff in this collage including metal foils, burlap imprinting, embedded leaves, metallic paints and acrylic mediums. As usual, the metallic elements were not captured by the camera, so this painting has a lot more sparkle and pizazz in person.
The leaves are turning and falling around my house, so that was my inspiration. When I look up at all the trees in my yard with their millions of leaves, I see beauty and a LOT OF RAKING in my future.
For purchase information, please see my website.
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