Inside the Village

"Hilltown Pathway"
13 x 7, oil on linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2014

During the recent workshop with Maggie Siner, we painted inside one of the beautiful perched villages of Provence. These ancient villages--with their steep cobbled streets, odd shaped buildings, beautiful old facades, and cheerful window boxes--present a number of intriguing painting motifs. Such a feast for the eyes! It can be difficult to narrow your focus

Painting the Quarry

As I wrote in my last post, I was recently part of a workshop group, painting in the Luberon area of Provence. Our group consisted of nine painters, under the instruction of the talented Maggie Siner. We started the week as strangers,

Ochre

Ochre Cliffs, Roussillon, France
(c) Lesley Powell 2014

I have recently returned from France, where I visited the village of Roussillon for the first time. Roussillon's claim to fame is its fabulous colored soils, which for decades supplied the entire world with ochre pigments. In fact, it was a scientist from Roussillon, Jean-Eteinne Asteir, who

Lavender Fields Forever

"Lavender Below Bonnieux"
8 x 12, oil on linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2014

I just got back from a painting trip to Provence. Everywhere there were huge fields of lavender, at their absolute peak. Borrowing a phrase

Happy Bastille Day!

"Eiffel Tower from my Kitchen Window"
19 x 8, oil on linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2013
(SOLD)

July 14--the day of the fall of the Bastille in 1789. The Bastille was a fortress type prison in Paris. Its prisoners were often held on arbitrary indictments, and could not appeal. In fact, the Bastille typically held a number of people imprisoned for displeasing the royal government in one way or another. Thus, the Bastille was a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy. 

"Grand Palais"
11 x 14, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2013
(SOLD)

The storming of the Bastille on July 14 by the "common people" is said to represent the start of the French Revolution. Liberté, Egalite´, Fraternité!

"Vineyards"
10.5 x 17.75, oil on linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2012
(SOLD)

If you are in Atlanta, don't miss the annual Bastille Day celebration on July 17 at Huff Harrington Fine Art. Here's the info about it. I'm pleased that some of my paintings show in this post will be featured in the show. Vive la France!

Fields of Inspiration

"Field Study"
6 x 6, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2014

I have a growing stack of small plein air paintings that I dare not part with. They are the fruits of my working outdoors, interacting directly with the subject, and "seeing" with all of my senses. Some of them are pictured in this post. No photograph could inform me, no snapshot could inspire me, as these paintings do.

"Study of White Church"'
8 x 6, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2013

I often work from these "sketches" to create larger works back home in my studio. I am not alone in this approach. Charles Movelli has written in his essay "In Praise of the Painterly Painter" that so-called "painterly painters" prefer to work directly from their subject, or from sketches done on the spot. They call these pictures their "brains". Interestingly Morvelli notes that painters rarely sell these pictures. In that regard, he quotes the great English landscape painter John Constable, who said "I don't mind parting with the corn, but not with the field in which it was raised!"

"Hilltown Study"
(c) Lesley Powell 2013

Amen to that sentiment. Here's to the inspiration and cultivation of many more paintings from the acres of my little "fields"!

Independence Day

"Fourth of July 1916"
Childe Hassam, 1916

CELEBRATING INDEPENDENCE DAY
AND THOSE WHO FOUNDED

OUR GREAT NATION!

Quoting John Adams: "I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."