Rosy Faces by Marcy Brennan

Rosy Faces - Abstract Expressionist Acrylic on 24" x 24" x 1.5" gallery canvas - $500

The first few layers on this painting started out as a total abstract, but I decided to develop it into a fantasy rose garden and submit it to the February 2014 "Sweet Art" show at Art Mundo.  I used all my favorite colors in this one:  aquas for the pond in the bottom right corner, pinks for the roses and bright greens for the grasses and leaves.  It was such a joy painting this one!

Buy the original here
Buy a print here

Art by the Sea Show

Marcy Brennan at the Vero Beach Art Club's 26th Annual Art by the Sea Show at the Vero Beach Museum of Art, Holmes Great Hall.  This is a big show of over three artists showing their work.  It's mainly paintings, but there are a number of sculptures, glass and jewelry to see as well.  All work is for sale.  Marcy's painting "Lagoon III" is in the show, is 24" x 24" acrylic on canvas and for sale for $600.  There is one more day to see the show, Sunday Jan 26 from 10 am to 4 pm.

Jungle Trail by Marcy Brennan

Jungle Trail - 10" x 8" oil on canvas panel

I painted this with the Vero Beach plein air painters group in December.  We were sitting on a dirt road on the east side of the Indian River near an historic house.  There were lots of people out walking and jogging along this beautiful strip of land along the river.  We had a nice group of five people out to paint.  The weather couldn't have been more perfect!

Plein Air Fun by the Indian River

Tuesday morning was plein air painting with the Fort Pierce group. We went back to Old Fort Park, but rather than staying in the little park, we went across Indian River Drive, down a little hill, to the river.  

Sitting on a sugar sand beach with a nice breeze, we painted the morning away. We had a sweet little blue heron visiting us off and on, so he got included in my painting.  I took acrylics vs oils with me and it was fun and different.  There were five of us, and afterwards, two ladies and I went to lunch together downtown and sat outside enjoying more of the wonderful weather into the afternoon.

Here's my little 8" x 10" piece on canvas panel:

Here's the reference photo. It's a little dark and doesn't include the snake plants I put in the right foreground. They were off to the right, but I thought they added a nice balance to the composition.

More photos of the area - lots more paintings to do here! This area has a nice pool of water from a drainage area.

The drainage area created some interesting tide pools into the river area.  The small birds love it there.

This is looking north toward downtown.  One of the artists did a wonderful oil painting of this scene. 

I loved this twisted old oak tree.

Looking north you can see the artist I was painting next to.  We were facing south for our paintings. I sure love the blues and grayed blues in this scene. It would be a beautiful painting!

I ended this gorgeous day at the New Year's Eve party with friends in our community clubhouse.

Happy 2014 from beautiful, sunny Florida!

Making 2014 Amazing!

I've been busy this month planning for an amazing year in my art business in 2014.  My first step was to create a Manifeso or statement of intentions for 2014.  Of course, it had to be "artsy".  I had a great photo of my watercolor palette that had the coolest design of my fav colors, so I cropped that out for my background and spent several days thinking of what my over-arching intentions for 2014 would be.  I found this great idea for a manifesto at Megan Auman's Designing an MBA blog.  Here's my manifesto for 2014:

In keeping with the first point in my manifesto, I decided to create a business plan for 2014.  I read tons of blogs and newsletters from artists and art business gurus for business planning ideas.  I came across the most wonderful Business Planner via Andreea Ayers.  It's the 2014 Workbook and Planner by Leonie Dawson for the incredible low price of $9.95!  It's downloadable as a PDF file that you can type all your own info into and save/print.  I just finished my plan this week and have started working on mapping out all my activities on the calendar that is also included as a separate PDF file.  Just click on the humongous link below to get your planner and see all the other great products Leonie offers. (Hint:  don't click on the "P" in the middle or it will pin it to Pinterest.  You can do that too, but to get to Leonie's site, click elsewhere in the picture.)

Another of my top intentions this year is to use my precious time wisely.  I've become more and more of a time waster in my advancing years (:-D) and find I fritter away waaay too much time on Facebook and other online sites and watch too much TV.  Sound familiar?  So my intention this year is to be much more aware of my time and capitalize on it by creating art vs wasting it.

I'm a huge procrastinator and tend to put off doing hard things by checking email, Facebook, etc rather than just getting busy and getting the hard things done and out of the way.  So that's on my list of intentions this year too.  Plus I stay up too late and then don't get an early start, and mornings are my most productive times - not on my manifesto but it gets lumped into time waster/procrastinator.

Lastly, I've already begun my intention to spend more time in nature.  I started painting with two plein air groups in our area this fall and it's been such a joy being outside in the fresh air while the weather in Florida is so wonderful!  There's nothing like nature right in front of you for true light and color.  When I get home and print out the photo of the scene I'd been working on, it is so not the same. I now see what I've been missing by only painting from photographs all these years!

I hope you have a wonderful, productive, and artsy New Year and be sure to "Buy Local & Handmade" this year as often as possible.  Artists livelihoods depend on it. :-D

Vanilla Latte is in the News!

I made the newspaper today and I'm thrilled!!! My painting Vanilla Latte is in the White Show curated by Susie Cassens and is at the St. Lucie West branch of Harbor Community Bank through Jan 10th.  Susie sent in the photo of my work and the paper published it (approx 4" x 6" full color) in today's paper in the local events section.  My first press coverage!  Definitely excited about this.  Thanks Susie!

Here's the link to the newspaper online at TCPalm.com.

Back in the Studio

It's been awhile since I've had time to get into my home art studio and paint. Here's one of my two work tables and my palette scraped clean. It looks like a nice, colorful abstract in this photo.  I like to scape all the leftover colors off the palette and mix them together at the end of a painting session. It gives me some great grays for next time. I just put in a container and pop it in the freezer. 

Tonight I salvaged three 8"x8" canvas panels that I did a long time ago and just didn't like. I couldn't tell if I'd done acrylic or oil on them originally so the rework had to be in oils. I used a color palette of greens, yellows and purple and used the palette knife and impasto Liquin. I like to tape smaller canvases to a large piece of foam core so I can work either on the easel or hold the foam core in my hand to work more up close with the painting without having to hold the canvas and get paint everywhere.  Here are the three re-worked pieces - they're all abstracted nature scenes from my imagination.

While I've not painted a lot in my studio the past couple of months, I've been faithfully painting outdoors with my two plein air groups every week.  I tweaked a couple of plein air paintings tonight as well since I had lots of lovely greens and yellows left over from the re-worked paintings above.  I have more tweaking to do on a number of them.  So I laid all 12 of them out on my other table to study them and see which ones need more work.  I didn't realize how many I'd already done so far!

My studio looks really messy, but it's controlled chaos. I could have a studio twice this size and I'd somehow fill it up and still be wishing for more room.  ;-p

I've been reading several books and tons of blogs the past month to put together a business plan for my art biz which is why I haven't been in the studio.  I'm planning to make 2014 the year I turn a profit in my art biz.  This year, all my goals will be in writing with a complete plan to get there and all mapped out on a calendar. I'll be learning to use oils and cold wax medium next month for a whole new twist in abstract painting and will be working up 20 small canvases for a show at the Ft. Pierce library in June. I also plan to enter lots of shows this coming year and get my work "out there."  Do you have any ideas for where I can put my art locally this year for greater exposure and hopefully, sales? I'd love to hear your ideas and suggestions!