Romeo so cute

Romeo so cute
Originally uploaded by denisedh

Romeo is watching me paint my newest portrait or Mrs. Escalier, so until I post the finished product - Romeo is all you get!

Romeo is one of my two black toy poodles and is 6 months old. His half sister, Coco lives with him too, along with Roxy our 9 year old shih-tzu.

Summer is over....memory

Portrait Exhibition Party at Anne Whitehurst's

Recently my paintings were gathered up from nearby customers and elegantly exhibited at the beautiful home of a good portrait friend and client, Anne Whitehurst. Her home is in Greenville, N.C. We had an open house atmosphere with great food and wine for potential clients and past ones as well. It was a wonderful evening and I think I enjoyed it more than anyone. Just seeing all the paintings I had worked on for years together in one place was overwhelming. Thanks goes to Anne for organizing everything and working so hard to make it a special day for me - and it truly was!! Enjoy all the pictures taken by my daughter, Camille.

Pictures from the exhibition

The Twins - 24x30 portraits

Twins Portraits Finished October, 2008

Portrait of Anna

This is a 10x12 painting of Anna Day.

It is very thin oilpaint. I had been studying the Bouguereau painting Venus with Doves, which is at the Ackland gallery in Chapel Hill. It is a very nice unfinished painting of his.

ARTIST
William BouguereauFrench, 1825-1905
MEDIUM
Oil on canvas
DATE
circa 1879
DIMENSIONS
Overall: 32 1/8 x 18 3/8 in. (81.6 x 46.7 cm)
CREDIT
Ackland Fund

Marsh Paintings

Two small paintings of marshland around Oak Island, NC. These are unfinished - oil on linen.

Need to paint this one

Camille at Atlantic Beach, NC

Camille graduates!

My youngest daughter, Camille, 23, graduates as a paralegal May 2008. My oldest, Melissa is with her sharing the spotlight! We are so proud of her. Camille is the subject of my painting as you enter my blog.

Robert finished!

Here is the portrait of Robert finished nearly simulateously with his sister, Katy's portrait. Keeping the backgrounds similar was very important since they will hang together in the same location in their parents' living room. Robert is long and lean and this canvas was almost too short to show that! He really needed a longer canvas than his sister but I managed to just fit him in with the same head size! 24x30.

Thanks for looking!

Katy finished February 08

I finished this portrait of lovely Katy over the holidays and signed it in February. Please excuse the glaring sunlight catching the different brushstrokes of the background. The final varnish, which will be applied months from now should even that out pretty well. I varnish with Gamblin Gam-Var by the way. This painting is a companion to her younger brother's painting which I'll post in the next entry. They are both 24x30 and will hang together in the parent's living room. I am very proud of these two paintings.

Suzanne finished November 2007

I finished this portrait of Suzanne during the month of November after working on it since July 2006. I am very proud of it and feel that is does justice to Suzanne. She loves her violin, plays it beautifully and this portrait caught her in the middle of becoming a young lady of 16. She was barely 15 when I started this and now drives a car on her own!

What eyes she has - and that smile! Thanks to her parents for giving me the priviledge to paint her.

This is a detail of the painting, which will be shown in the photo stream at the left hand side of the blog

24x30 oil on linen

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Haven't been here in awhile! Just realized my blog has been virtually out of commission due to a gif I accidentally posted with - which multiplied and caused my scroll to become hugely long before anyone could get to the pictures or anything else. I do apologize to anyone who cared enough to come to this blog and then had to leave due to that gif taking so long!

Its gone now!

I am working on 3 portraits, 3 landscapes and 2 figurative paintings right now and studying a lot in between. I found a great blog owned by Enzi Shahmiri, a fellow portrait artist. She has links to one of my favorite Russian artists, Ilya Repin's work so go take a look.

I'll post some updated pictures of my painting progress hopefully tomorrow since I am back!

Thanks for visiting.

Ballet paintings continued

Here are 3 paintings from my series I painted of Krista, a beautiful ballet dancer. She graciously danced for me on Saturday afternoon at the East Carolina University ballet studio while I snapped away taking many pictures.

The paintings are all for sale - waiting for an exhibit in an unknown gallery at this time. Any offers will be considered (for a gallery that is!) I have painted 10 paintings in the series and the range of size is varied. These 3 are rather small, 12x24, 16x20 and 12x18 from top to bottom. Contact me if you are interested.

Ballet paintings for sale!

The last two paintings are SOLD

Progress on my latest portrait of a young girl. This is 24x30, oil and unfinished of course. This portrait will have a portrait of her brother hung on the same wall in the client's home. Background should be extremely similar and I have started the brother as well.

Krista - 16x20 - Krista is the dancer I've painted 10 paintings of for a show. Now, all I need is a gallery to show them in...........